B & B

I thought I should devote a post to my 2 great blog followers.

I like pulling BDC's leg occasionally (maybe because I cannot pull her skirt). Has a silent beauty about her. Fiercely loyal to her young. Has a good night vision and in the jungle she lives in, it is a necessity. Daytime is okay because the other creatures don't like to mess up with her, except ofcourse those who don't understand her image, like a spider and then she has to be careful. Perhaps behind her mask is the Solitary Reaper of William Wordsworth.

If BDC is beautiful on the inside, BT is beautiful. I have never seen someone talk more openly (ofcourse I also talk openly but I have the alibi of labeling myself as mentally unwell). I pray to God to give her peace of mind (and perhaps some cash too. She has or can easily get the other things).

Thanks B & B.

Converting the melancholy of loneliness into the joy of solitude

People are alone most of the times. I don't know the exact percentage but I think it's around 99% of the times. Even when we are among friends chatting, we are really not there sometimes. So what to do about it? Separation is a big misery but so also is mindless useless interactions that takes one nowhere nor lets one appreciate the finer nuances of life. I believe that the key to happiness in solitude is to engage or involve oneself in social activities while still aloof. For example, the father of the bride is the key person in the success of the marriage ceremony (ofcourse, excluding the bride). If one notices really successful marriage ceremonies, the father does most of the arrangements and work, chatting here and there every now and then with the guests. But he also gets a lot of satisfaction seeing, hearing, smelling etc. from a distance the different things that are all happening in the marriage hall. If however, the father had either involved himself in some activity of his own, he will be lonely even in such a large gathering and if he sits along with all the guests and keeps on chatting, the ceremony will go bad. My father died peacefully and happily after making my sister's marriage ceremony a grand success. All through the wedding, I just met him only once while playing a game of cards with relatives (which he won).

50% (or maybe even 100%) of my warped thoughts got unentangled today

I have understood how my relationship with my ex girl friend had got wrong. So, now I know how I can prevent a future relationship with another girl from going wrong.

While it is embarrassing for me to write this publicly, I will go ahead since this is a very interesting and useful find someone can use.

I think my relationship deteriorated after I started masturbating. There are 2 issues to be answered when one fantasizes on one's girl friend or someone else. It's attention and affection.

1. If one masturbates thinking on someone other than one's own girl friend (or boy friend), one is taking attention away from her. Relationships, like many other things, grows with time spent on it.

2. Assuming one doesn't masturbate thinking on someone else but instead on one's own girl friend (or boy friend), one then doesn't really share affection because this is a one-person act. There is no point in sending a card or a hello on the phone because the hormones have left the body already to bring in the romance.

In my case, I 'discovered' masturbation oneday. I even made a joke to my friend that life has many surprises and like masturbation, one can find another revelation (which thankfully is true to me now as I live like a reborn). People and doctors will ofcourse keep debating on this and maybe there is room for debate if one doesn't want a single person romantic love relationship or even much interested in one.

This is not just a matter of romantic love relationship but is also a matter of the propriety of fantasizing on a third person. The third person or her or his partner might resent it. So when one does this, one is sowing seeds of sexual rivalry, jealousy etc. Free sex is something debatable. Just as no woman or man was heard to have complained about Rama's advances, no one seems to have complained of Krishna's acts. Maybe history or Hinduism is biased but in my opinion, it's a balance of quality, quantity and type. Rama had a wife who was solely and romantically devoted to Him and vice versa but Krishna had many with whom the romance was masked by spirituality and vice versa. I guess in this world, there is no one who is fully Rama or Krishna but everyone has some percentage of the 2 extremes. The same logic applies to females too. But then, Krishna came later than Rama. When Krishna came, the age was a lot worse or nasty or base than Rama's time. And today, it's perhaps at the all-time worst what with all sexual deviancies. But it is also said that one has to live like Rama and live as Krishna advised us to....which means...more of devotion to a single person and less of sensual wanderings.

There are no right or wrong answers

I love tests where there are no right or wrong answers.

When there is no expectation, one can be one's natural self instead of trying to put on a mask and giving the answer that's supposed to be right.

Actually, there is a bit of rightness or wrongness even in some of these tests, for example, when one willingly tries to go for an self-examination to improvise on the weaknesses.
 

LUCK

To get some luck or to work with fulfillment, do this...

The Indian Spirituality Way


L - for Long
U - Uninterruptedly
C - Choose Shreyas (goodness) over Preyas (passion)
K - KrishnArpanam or Krishna Unakke Preethi or something like Krishna, I dedicate the results to You

The above is a clubbing of ideas from the Pathanjali Yoga, Katha Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita.

One way to interpret, which I personally find useful for me, is...basically on one side one takes in enjoyments and on the other side one has to give out as work. While enjoying, when one leaves out passionate grabbing and takes in the good which comes for free, one minimizes the debt to the society. Also, when one relinquishes the good results, one becomes entitled to be set free of the bad results as well. It then becomes easy to practice what Krishna says...When one offers to Me with devotion a leaf, water, fruit or flower, that I accept from the striving self, as it is offered with devotion. This way, there is the minimizing of wastage both in enjoyments and efforts, and benefits go to the intended ones.

The Middle Way

L - for Long
U - Uninterruptedly
C - Choose the Middle Way i.e. neither spiritual self-mortification nor material self-indulgence
K - Kala factor (Time factor...do things at the appropriate time)

The Mensa Way

L - for Long
U - Uninterruptedly
C - Choose the better option
K - Kala factor (Time factor...choose within the given time)

Okay, Arv...thanks for these wonderful tips. But do you follow these? Or have you proved these techniques in your life?

(Arv squirms, wriggles uncomfortably and screws up the face to get an answer)

Arv: It is for me to say and for you to hear and anyone to follow.

:)

On Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi

While I read the book on Meditation for Dummies, i got a couple of ideas clarified and I would like to share it with you.

Dharana is concentration or focus on a single object. I have found that using the metaphor of training a puppy helps. The mind keeps wandering but one just has to bring it back, however far it has wandered off. With every bringing back, the resistance to meditation decreases and one gets lengtheir and more frequent periods of meditation.

Dhyana can be called as receptive-awareness. Only a recptive mind can absorb the efforts of Dharana. When one is asked to open, there is immediately the fear of vulnerability. But then, when one practises anywhere between 20-120 minutes of spirituality like meditation, the rest of the day will more or less be an outcome of what was practised as an exercise. This is the Law of Attraction. You don't even need to understand abstract ideas like these when you can understand that a 5 minutes of drama rehearsal breaks the ice among the different actors. Since one has practised only what's beneficial, one can feel safe about being receptive to the experiences one comes across everyday. The other thing about Dhyana, which is, awareness, can be understood this way...as soon as one starts meditating, one is no more driven by the current of one's life atleast during the meditative period. So instead of being an actor or a player in one's own life, one becomes an audience or spectator. Such a change brings about a different viewpoint about one's own life script or story or reality. This leads to insight.

The paradox of Samadhi is that it is attained fastest when it is not aspired for. When one has made a lot of spiritual progress and is on the verge of nirvana or liberation or moksha or salvation or whatever name one gives it, the natural tendency is to leap over the last step anxiously. This results in even pleading for one's own cause forgetting for a moment that all that is required is to just carry on from 99th step to 100th step like how one stepped from 1st to 2nd or from 76th to 77th. Infact, asking for such a wish cannot liberate but only bind because it is by the absense of selfishness that one steps forward. So, what can one feel good about at this stage of waiting? One can become aware that one's normal way of living as expected discharging the responsibilities is satisfying others and this brings in some sortof fulfilment. Over time, one automatically gets carried into the transcendent state.

That's all, folks. I have written a lot on spirituality in my blogs. there is nothing more to add on spirituality that I know of after this which matters. Some of you might have seen my older blogs where I lived terrible life. I have also posted personal stories about my life. I have also posted many things over twitter, facebook, answer websites and forums. My understanding have not been always clear but now I can say that I have told you everything I know about life without falsifying or hiding anything. Maybe it's not in a readable format. Maybe you can use them as pointers or guide. But please go to a proper Guru to understand how to practise it because I'm really not a Guru material. All the best.

I will ofcourse continue posting my personal tidbits. Thanks for reading this.

Teamwork

I came across a great, interesting and enlightening article by Sir Vivian Richards (The King of Oneday Cricket' according to an impact on cricket measurement website) in 'The Week' magazine (the World Cup 2011 Indian edition where 12 previous and current experts where I caught the essence of teamwork. A game like Cricket or Football has an extra interesting item over a game like Tennis or Chess in the form of team work. I used to like this way back in childhood without having any understanding that even such a thing exists. While single player games itself involve multiple co-ordination, multi player games just take it to the heights.

Anyway, he was mentioning about his experience in the 1979 World Cup when West Indies won the tournament (As I write this, WI has just got out of this year's WC). There he was telling how he was batting with Collis King and how as he was going really well, Richards simply rotated the strike, thereby complementing him, instead of trying to outcompete him. And once Collis King got out, Richards went for his big shots and the innings ended in him hitting a last ball 6 from an impossible to play inswinging yorker.

This sort of play even became a model soon later when cricket teams used to incorporate a steady player and a striking player (like Sunil Gavaskar and Krishnamachari Shrikkanth). But soon this model deteriorated because players really didn't understand the reason behind it. They just thought that one slow paced player and one fast-paced player will be good in any situation when instead both might be playing defensive or both attacking in their respective styles.

So basically, I sort of understood that team work doesn't mean either at any time not doing anything or doing everything but instead playing a complimentary role (2 player) some time or supplementary role (multi-player) most of the time AND taking the initiative at the call of the hour. In this way, both the responsibilities and joy gets shared equally and there is resonance or flow or sync or whatever one associates team work with.

Thanks, Sir Vivian Richards.