Monday, July 21, 2008

The Gift called….LIFE….

“A Prize is something we achieve for our performance towards other’s…

But….A Gift is received for the other’s love towards us..”


A few Gifts I’m blessed with….completely without any performance from my side…

· To be alive and breathing …at this very moment..

· To be born as a human being…and not as a field rat…or a coackroach..

· To be part of the conscious world who thrives to think above his own self…

· To be born a healthy child…without being physically or mentally impaired

· To be born in a home…and not left on the road to survive or die on my own…

· To be blessed with loving parents…grand parents…and so many others who
cared about me then as they care about me now…

· To be born in India.. a country whose priority has always been wisdom over wealth…. has never invaded any other country in her whole history…a country which teaches love and contentment…over selfishness and greed..

· To have the ability to think that the purpose of life goes beyond eating , sleeping and earning money…

· To still have the ability to love…even when we continue to be surrounded by lovelessness all around us...

· The ability to have the courage and hope…to face life….when many decide otherwise…

· The ability to ask the question ‘why’…the basic trait of curiosity which demarcates a man from other animals… a human child is naturally born with such immense curiosity..

· To be ability to appreciate the beauties of nature…the sound of music…the vastness of the universe…

· To be able to laugh…a rare ability bestowed on mankind probably no other animal is gifted with…(a hyenas laughter is just a cry…it has no joy in it..)

· The ability to create…art., music , literature., architecture…or simply a happy surrounding…

· The ability to dream…the most striking ability of mankind…which has taken him sometimes to the moon…sometimes at the summit of Everest…and sometimes to the highest level of consciousness…although Animals too have the ability to love…but no one else is blessed with the ability to dream…

· The ability to cry for others….a rare ability….which points to us the glimpse of the fragment of the immense compassion the nature has bestowed us with

…I guess they are right when they say…

“THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FOR FREE…….”

BUT…..

what are we doing with so many free gifts..!!!!!@#????
Struggle………an effort to shape destiny.

It has often crossed my mind that the word ‘Struggle’ has been somehow associated with a very heavy negative tone …something that works against us…something which might break us down…something we need to be scared of….
…. It has often struck me though that ‘struggle’ is seldom a problem on its own…rather, it is more the effort we exert from our side to face an unforeseen situation…..a strength within which instead of breaking us down….actually saves us from it……

I was, (as all of us are )…exposed to the experience of struggle at a very early stage of my life…

When I see a little baby crying helplessly on the cot…it reminds me of the struggle I had gone through for not being able to express myself when I was a child myself…or for not knowing the language the world around me understood… not being able to make people understand my needs…how helpless I used to feel …when everybody, except me could convey their needs so effortlessly…
I STRUGGLED TO LEARN TO TALK ….
..strangely , today, when I’ve perfectly mastered the art of talking and can express all my needs in the most articulate flash of words….
why do i still find it so difficult to express my dearest thoughts to the ones i love the most in this world..?

It was a shame to take a trip of my own house…sometimes on a cot.. sometimes on somebody’s shoulder…or sometimes just being dragged along the floor.. in an earnest effort to save time….how humiliating it was..!
I could Often sense the hidden smile on other people face…amused by the fact how I could not walk….and they could….
I STRUGGLED… TO LEARN TO WALK on my own……
….today, when I walk all over the earth effortlessly…with almost painstaking poise and dignity…head held high..never have to be bothered again by anybody’s sarcastic smile…
…why do I feel befind the showcased confidence... that I’m still so far away from learning to walk on my own..?

I used to be jealous of the people around me…who knew so much…about so many things..and I did not.
I STRUGGLED TO LEARN TO BE ONE OF THEM….

Fourteen years of my life I had spent ‘struggling’ to gather knowledge
From the most esteemed institution recommended by wise men ….knowledge that told me everything that needed to be known…art, literature, science….
Today when I’ve learnt well all that they had to teach me…

…why do I feel that in spite of knowing everything that I needed to know…I’ve learned nothing about my own self…or of the dear ones who surround me all the time..

...why does a strange feeling persists , that with all the worldly knowledge...I still remain completely oblivious, failing miserably to perceive all the small everyday miracles which go on happenning around and inside me...without ever asking for my appreciation ?


They told me all the time that I needed to be somebody….somebody special….somebody they can be proud of…they showed me people who have reached the heights of life….Doctors. engineers, enterpreauners….
I wanted to be like them…
I STRUGGLED HARD TO BE LIKE THEM….

Today…when I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve…when I can with vehement conviction proudly consider myself as one of ‘them’…

Why do I feel that in spite of all that I’ve achieved…being the ‘somebody’ people so desparately wanted me to be….I’ve completely failed somewhere deep within….

I HAVE FAILED TO BE MYSELF……

Today..The profound wisdom of these two lines reverberates somewhere…may be in some well hidden corner of my heart…
"nothing fails like success…” and….

"the greatest struggle in life is.... to be yourself” .

Monday, May 26, 2008

happyness....

Happ’I’ ness…..lets take the ‘I’ out of it to be happy…

What is happiness ?....has anybody ever experienced it..? or is it just a myth which people go on searching…something similar to a ghost…a god..or may be an UFO..nobody seems to have ever experienced it…

…One thing is for sure..Talking about happiness or collecting information about it has never made anyone happy... Just as collecting information about water will never quench anybody’s thirst…

Happiness seems to be more than an intellectual understanding…it is more of an experience…it is more a way of life….
Isn’t it ironical that every human being craves to be happy and no one can actually become happy in his seventy years span of life…?

May be a glance at what keeps us unhappy…and an effort to eradicate those might lead us into the path of happiness.. .its worth giving a try I guess..

It is said that since the prehistoric days man have learned most of his survival skills observing the various animals around him…may be he missed to observe one thing…that all other animals in this world are living a perfectly happy life…totally in tune with the environment and the nature which surrounds them….
Only man is not.
..nobody has ever heard of an elephant or a lion or an ant ‘searching’ for happiness…they may be searching for food…but never for happiness...animals seem to be always happy except when they r put into a cage….either in the zoo..or a smaller cage specially made to hang a parrot …it makes one wonder whether it is our jealousy towards the animals which lead us to perform such heinous act after proclaiming to have the highest consciousness among all of god’s creation…

Man has caged everything…..including himself.

Man is unhappy because…it is his choice..!! he has chosen security rather than happiness in every sphere of his life…he has chosen to live by the mind and completely by pass the whispering of his heart….
it is not a surprise that everyone gets worried when someone falls in love…because…
love does not guarantee security …although it never fails to bring tremendous joy to anyone who dares to follow the path decided by love….

A fish in the water is never thirsty…..

A thirst....deep and desperate, arises only when one is disconnected from his natural state of being…and man is suffering this feeling of dislocation since the advent of human race on this planet…..it really makes one wonder…what went wrong..?!!

We have taken ourselves too much away from nature, and the natural instinct that every child is born with…with every new invention that science comes up with….we move a little farther away from the hope of being happy in the world that surrounds us…we have drifted apart so much that….

Happiness has become a fiction…strangely,the most difficult thing today has become to be a happy person….

BUT, there is HOPE……

Because every child is born with the gift of happiness…the gift of joy…there is still hope that if we could make ourselves to return to a state of innocence…happiness is possible…

Happiness is being one with ones ownself…man is completely out of touch with himself..!.. happiness cannot be achieved…just as love cannot be planned…but it can ‘happen’ only if we walk towards.. our ownselves…the nature of the journey will be totally opposite from what the world has been teaching…

It is not a journey from A to B…..but a journey from A to a deeper A…

...a journey where the ego dissolves in every step…a journey devoid of ambition…. contrary to the journey showed by the world where in every passing step …with every social success we go on feeding our own enemy…the ego which finally drives us crazy….
…a journey which involves self realization…. Understanding, experiencing the inner joy…rather than running towards the outer comfort…a journey which takes us closer to nature….and ..takes us towards the true meaning of life...and ..living..

Impractical…is it..?...or did u say irrational…?
Ok….be practical and Remain with your miseries then…that seems to be the destiny of the human race anyway….
…it is not irrelevant that the noted psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud..after a deep analysis of hundreds of human minds once claimed that..

“Man can never be happy…at the most he can be a little less unhappy”
The human being….
The human being is an extinct species…Nobody really knows whether even it ever existed or not…What we see around us today are simply human forms…the ‘being’ seems to have got lost forever…
As the world has been taken over by the mechanical revolution… so has been the human mind…with every passing day the distance between man and a machine is decreasing fast….the machine becoming more intelligent and man .. more mechanical…parameters like efficiency…productivity… output..and appearance has become the deciding factors of how a man is
…gone are days were we judged a human being by his warmth...sincerity..sensitivity..and ..goodness….today we r desperately in search of ‘useful’ people…people who we can use somehow now……only to get used by them later on…
Today creativity has been replaced by productivity…passion by workaholism…happiness by comfort…and honesty by manipulation…making the entire nation suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder leading to a completely insecure schizophrenic society….

The human mind …has been reduced to a bio computer…devoid of any emotional tantrums.
Researchers have found out that Emotions come in the way of production…emotions are a great hindrance to output and performance….who wants an emotional man in the office..?
But..unfortunately.. its emotions which demarcates a man from a machine…a bio computer goes on repeating the same action…never analyzing it..questioning it..and seldom defying it. The whole education system designed by us has been used to destroy the natural instinct of the species…either to create obedient employees or dumb soldiers… but never a human being with a mind of his own…
…….it leaves one to wonder why the buildings of schools and that of jails are so strikingly identical in appearance…

The world we live in.. is dying everyday….suffocated by the fumes and aggression of human civilization…and the indifference of the human form towards its dying mother is alarming…the mother seem to have produced robots and not sons..

The human form is so far the most self destructive species that walked on this earth…the most efficient killing machine the world has ever known…all his scientific inventions seems to have been wasted on creating a more powerful and more destructive detonator which will destroy the human race with our beautiful blue planet together in the near future…
Civilization…unfortunately has failed to make the world a better place to live in….such scary picture of love lessness the world has never seen before…

The greatest revolution at this juncture will be a true human being…and only a human being and not merely a human form will be capable of changing the lovelessness which surrounds us....into a lovable atmosphere….a little space for mankind to breathe his last breadth….
obviously a true human being will never be recognized.. .and even if recognized, shall not be tolerated by the mechanical human forms…who goes on repeating everyday mindlessly...with no joy or laughter …no hope ... nor love….simply waiting for death to come and put an end to his miserable…journey…called life.
The true human being is not an improvement on the human form…he is a birth of an absolutely new species…unconditional, devoid of religion, nation, caste and all other discrimination which has been destroying our earth for ages…he will be totally disconnected from the past…from the entire history of mankind….The history of mankind is a shameful history of ghastly wars…5000 wars in 3000 years of human civilization….where men have been continuously killing each other in the name of glory.. ..in the name of religion…and in the name of nations..

The true human being Will never let it happen again….his concern will be to increase the joys of life…the pleasure of living…more love…more creativity...more compassion...more humanity..
He will no longer allow anybody to sacrifice us under any beautiful name…his priority ..not wealth..or prosperity…but to reach into the deepest core of the human consciousness…

The manipulative mind has failed….and failed miserably to keep the human race happy…we r too busy to notice what really matters…the need today is not of sensibility….but of sensitivity…the world has seen too many smart people…let smartness be replaced by goodness and sincerity…to mark the advent of a new human being….

Let the earth remember the human being as a happy race who lived to enjoy the gift of life…and not as a species who lived 5000 yrs on this earth either to kill each other or to enslave his own species…physically..mentally…and psychologically….to fulfill his stupid meaningless interests….Samuel Johnson laments ’man is born free..but is everywhere in chains”…

The new human being will thrive for freedom…as a man thrives for a drop of water in a vast barren desert….Freedom being the paramount objective of his life….only freedom can lead a man towards happiness…and a true human being will be a happy man.

a poet envisages a true man …and says…
how happy is he..who is born and taught…
Who serveth not to other’s will
Whose armour is his utmost thought..
His weapon is his utmost skill…”

· “I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active, neither more happy….nor more wise than he was 6000 years back..”
laments Edgar Allen Poe