This sutra was powerful enough that it can stand alone by itself and be applicable to each and every one of us, regardless of what we are currently doing.

The Sutra goes:

By Cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.

Just 4 keys and we got our peace of mind all the time:

Friendliness:

By default we can set the state of our mind to Friendliness. If we find a happy person, who is better off, then instead of avoiding him/her out of Jealousy or shamefulness, we can become friendly. If we are friendly to a happy person, he/she is going to share the happiness and probably lift us to that state. Hey, if we are friendly to someone who has a car, he can give us a lift to work. Wouldn’t that make us happy? (and of course, It is not just about the happiness from money, but happiness in general).

Compassion:

Nobody wants to be unhappy. But at some point because of our ignorant choices we experience pain. To such a person, instead of blaming them for their pain, we can try to understand their pain and be compassionate to them. For example, we can be compassionate to a sick person, instead of pointing out his mistakes. He probably knows that already. There is no need to increase the pain.

Delight:

If we see a person like Mahatma Gandhi, we can be delighted. We can see the nice qualities they exhibit and try to adopt them to an extent in our life. This might come easy because, we are easily inspired by popular personalities.

Disregard:

No one is born wicked. We can always be Friendly or Compassionate or Delighted towards any person. But if we come across any wickedness, then the best thing to do is to disregard them. Any amount of advice will just fly off their head and may probably pull us into their rut.

We do not need to be associated to any form of religion or spiritual path in order to follow these for our peace of mind. A slow transformation of attitude of our mind with these 4 keys, is bound to do wonders.

If we practice this like riding a bicycle then we don’t need to remember them, it will just come to us automatically. No one can take away the peace of mind that we deserve.

Our Peace is our birthright.

Many Thanks to Sage Patanjali and Swami Satchitananda for a beautiful Commentary.

There are five dan’s in Raavanan’s dandanakka chanting. Raavanan is a roller coaster ride of emotions, of the audience who are feverishly trying to find out who is the real Raavanan. Mani is a beautiful essayer of People’s emotions. When it comes to putting it together visually through the actors, the light, set and the music, he is a master. Raavanan is exactly that and much more and some less.

MUCH MORE:

It is a story revolving around 3 powerful characters. Dev the cop, who doesn’t give up and who wants to “encounter” everything related to Veera. Veera, the tribal leader who has 10 screaming heads in him, that of good and bad (and also one head chanting dandanakka). Ragini the ‘classy’cal dancer who becomes the target of Veera and who begins to see the two men from different perspectives.

It moves from what we would normally perceive as a fight between good and evil and associate them to people. Dev being good and Veera being bad. But very soon as the story unfolds in the background of beautiful forest landscape, the perspective of the story gets tilted in favor of Veera. Veera’s life, his people, his family, their sufferings and the justice that he seeks for them against oppression. As the story moves towards the end, the line blurs and you won’t know what is good and what is bad and who is good and who is bad. Everything merges and what you see is just events happening like a chain reaction.

The visuals and art work are stunning. Perhaps Mani’s best picturisation till date. Vikram rocks as Veera. It stopped me from even considering to watch the Hindi version, as I really doubted whether Abi could match his performance. (It seems to be so, as I am seeing bad reviews of the Hindi Raavan) Prithviraj’s Dev was quite a surprise. His portrayal of a cold blooded cop reaches its heights when he smiles as he shoots Veera and his brother. Aish was beautiful as a daring woman with growing softness for Veera and reaches her peak when she fights Veera in a slow background of “Kattusirukki”.

SOME LESS:

Beyond these three characters, Karthik as Hanuman and Prabhu as Kumbakarna seem to have been wasted a little bit, although they did their part well. In my opinion I feel Karthik needed a much more screen time to assert the role of Hanuman. There were some loose ends and abrupt moments in the screenplay when Karthik appears as a surprise where Aish is being Hidden by Veera and when Aish just stops the train and walks out in search of Veera, easily giving away the prize money to Dev. It was difficult to digest them in an otherwise tightly written script.

Raavanan is a treat to Mani’s fans. But I really wished Mani could have made just Raavanan and focused on it alone. We are missing “the Mani” ever since he started putting one foot in Bolly and one foot in Kolly. Perhaps this is the reason for the few minor discrepancies that I had described. I am not an expert to say this though.

Also, for god sakes, please begin putting OST like Hollywood. The background score is just awesome, too bad I can’t have them in my iPod. Is someone listening to this? Do you feel they should do this?

Alright that’s it, let me stop my buk buk buk buk buk!

“Folks, now that we have announced iPhone 4G, it is now outdated. Completely archaic, vintage stuff. For all practical purposes, it is irrelevant for the team.”

He goes on to dictate the requirements for iPhone 10G.

“Here ye Developers, for iPhone 10G bringeth world peace and harmoney, I mean harmony.”

1. We build this completely from the ground up. The entire case is going to be made of glass. In fact everything will be glass, the chipset, the circuit board, even the package, everything will be glass. We have a phone that is classy now, and this way we can market it as “Classy and Glassy”.

2. No one needs to care about what is inside the phone, but we have to build it in such a way that is mind blowingly unimaginable. The processor must be like a mini human brain. Pea size is more than enough, because that is the most of the brain we use anyway, even though we have a whole cauliflower stuffed inside our skull.

3. The display must be completely revamped. It must be a resolution of 19800 by 12000 by wowowowow! Sharp, Sharp, so sharp that it should cut through our eyes like hot knife through butter. We will call this our “Cutting edge technology”.

4. With iPhone 9G we will drop our touch screen input. We don’t need it anymore. It is so old and I always hated why people held on to it for such a long time. Gosh! They are so attached to old stuff, it’s like they wouldn’t let go off of their floppy disks! All inputs will be driven by thoughts. Yes, it will be the first to feature a thought driven interface. You think and it will make a call. No more touching the screen and stuff, my fingers are so tired.

5. Let’s have a camera wrap. This wrapping camera will be wrapped all around the iPhone and every single point in the device will be a camera. It will capture 360 degree 3D HD video and you can make 3D virtual phone calls. Sort of like Star wars, you will be projected life size and you talk.

6. And please please please, Let’s have a Jet pack in this atleast, I have been asking for it for the past 10 iterations!

7. I understand the technology is limited now, so we will skip Teleportation until 11G.

One of the Team member says “But Steve, for making this happen we will atleast need several years for technology to develop.”

Steve says “I know. I am just making sure you have enough to work on, until I die, go to heaven, reincarnate and become Apple CEO again!”

All in fun, Steve! The world loves what you bring out. It keeps us thinking and having fun at the same time.

This question is completely stupid and yet has to be answered.

When it comes to spirituality, you have only one thing to offer – Sincerity. That’s it. Nothing else is useful.

If you take the example of Ramana Maharishi, he didn’t go to any organization for learning some kind of meditation. He just took five rupees from his house, left the place and went to Tiruvannamalai, tore off his clothes and sat in meditation until he got realized. After all this the Maharishi describes enlightenment as

“Now nothing can disturb me anymore”

Yes, no talk of any form of God or any promise of nice comfortable Heaven. Tell me, if any of us can be like what he was? If someone spits on you, would you be quiet? Ramana not only stayed quiet but he forgave the one who did it. He just did absolutely nothing. That’s enlightenment and you cannot act enlightenment.

If you really have that inner call to seek, that enthusiasm then with all sincerity you can sit and do any form of Beginner’s meditation. The internet is full of simple instructions to begin meditation, like Zazen, Vipassana, Mindfulness. The point is if you have that sincerity, you can pick any of these and just sit in Meditation.

After a while when you need to go higher up, you will be automatically guided to a form of meditation that suits you well. Definitely, wait for that to happen, wait for all indications to point in that direction. Some people don’t even need that. They are gifted and they get the guidance directly from inside, just like how Ramana did.

Now to learn that specific form of Meditation, you have to pay a little bit for the effort that they have taken to travel to where you live and facilitate it for you. It is exactly like training yourself into a technique. It is like going to an institute to learn Java in order to Program. You pay the fees, you learn and then you get out. That’s it. But Programming itself is more of Problem solving than just putting together some Java syntaxes. All those who know Java are not great Programmers, Great Programmers are never restricted by one Language.

With whatever limited tools you have, you bring out unlimited possibilities. The fees is only for the technique learned that’s it. After that the only acceptable form of fees is “Sincerity” to your “Self”.

1. Be Vegetarian.

2. Count the calories of what you eat and burn the excess on treadmill. Some even use scale to exactly calculate the calories.

3. Eat less and less and less.

4. Eat whatever dish made out of healthy food items even though they don’t taste at all and look really obscure. Maintain this list of healthy food and be obsessed with only eating that, resulting in more paranoia.

And probably a lot more that I cannot think of right now.

The spirit of eating right is in the eating.

While what you eat is equally important, it is useless if you don’t know how well to eat it.

So let’s clear the misconception and let’s try to eat right, the right way.

1. Be a Vegetarian by choice and not by force. Vegetarianism is born out of compassion towards other living beings. Until you feel that naturally, do not be so.

2. Eat at the speed of the body and not hog at the speed of the mind. Chew nicely and when you do that, you will eat at the speed of the body. You will listen to the body and naturally eat less. No need to count calories, because the body will tell you what it needs now when you listen. You will notice, you will be filling your plate with less food as you go.

3. Time table eating can bore the heck out of you. Eat normally, what you wish, at the speed of the body, 3 times a day. Fasting can purify your body and senses, but don’t be obsessed with it, do it only if you can.

4. Do not drink water atleast 30 minutes before you eat, while you eat and atleast 30 minutes after you eat. Water douses the digestive fire and can affect digestion. But don’t forget to drink water the other times to flush out the toxins.

5. Eat what you feel is tasty. Because the digestive fire is induced more with tasty and nice aromatic food.

6. Do not eat/cook emotionally. You will attach all that emotions and thoughts to the food and affect your digestion. Not only that, but it can also affect your thoughts, character and personality. Don’t ask me how, but they do. So Eat/Cook the food in silence.

7. Eat Consciously. By this I mean, that watch what you are eating without judging the food or yourself. Because at some point we get carried away and do what everyone does, “Top up” with more food. If we watch then we will refrain from doing that. This will leave a gap in the stomach which is good as it will be easy to rotate and digest the food.

8. If you believe in God, then offer the food to God and eat it. Just do it mentally with a loving heart, don’t need to place the food at the altar every time. This particular point needs deeper understanding, beyond just the rules of dogmatic religion.

These are just simple guidelines for normal people who lead normal lives.

Food is the best medicine for your body. Eat less and you will be  sick, Eat more you will still be sick.

Ego is devastating when you don’t watch it, But Ego is so funny and weak when you begin watching it.

Begin watching your Ego and see how Funny and weak it is.

Ego is a tiny little force that you use to move around this universe in this life.

Ego grows and identifies itself with a person’s desires and needs – of wealth, of hunger, of sex (male or female), of creativity, of religion, of profession and in fact everything down to what underwear you are wearing at the physical level and to the thoughts and emotions at the mental level.

Funny thing is if you say I don’t have ego, your ego grows by saying that.

If you remain identified with your ego, you will be pulled wherever your ego wants to pull you working through your senses. This is the only way the ego can feel alive and strong, by fulfilling its desires.

Now let’s say you have concluded that ego is bad and you can kill it and control it by suppressing your desires and shall we say “skillfully letting it go”. Ego doesn’t go away. Ego now plots different other ways to make itself feel strong and wanted.

Ego tries the negative way. It uses anger, jealousy, lust and emotions to keep its identity (People who say are on a diet, are usually vulnerable to such emotions). Because once it begins to bring out the negativity in you, you begin to feel guilty and that guilt is so strong an imprint that Ego will hold on to you using that force. You feel horrible while the Ego feels awesome because now it is revived in a different way.

Everything conjured by the mind as thoughts is the work of Ego, just to keep itself as the master.

Don’t do anything. Just be yourself. Begin watching the Ego. When someone glorifies you, see that your ego is getting massaged. When someone hurts you, see that your ego is getting hurt. The beautiful thing is that if you just remain and identify yourself as that witness, you will see that the ego is the one that needs all of it. It needs praises to grow, it also needs hurts to grow. Ego doesn’t care whether it is praises or hurts. It will use anything currently available for the sake of its growth.

But once you become the pure witness, completely detached from the ego, you will see that the ego will slowly let go off its hold on you. Ego will bow down and just become the instrument called steering wheel. You are no longer elated by praises and hurt by emotions. But beware, ego will try to use your weakest moments to come back up and gain its strength. But as long as you know that it is just your weakest moment (like you are feeling sleepy) then you will awake inside.

All you have to do now is find out the driver and request that to take hold of your car and live life in love.

Ego’s job was to just write this. The essence does not belong to it.

On a nice sunny morning, after breakfast Ananda walks to Shiva’s house situated in a nice green farm. It was a simple hut with only the basic necessities. Shiva grew all that is needed for himself to eat. He only painted for others, there was not a single painting in his house.

Ananda knocks the door. Shiva opens it and greets him with a friendly smile, as if he knew he was coming.

Ananda politely bows down and asks “I am a school boy, I am interested in painting and I come here in humility to learn more in painting.”

Shiva let him in and spoke “This is the test my boy. Here is a white wall. You have as much time as you like. If you paint the most beautiful thing that you can think of, then I will accept you as my student.”

Ananda was very hopeful that he can paint his best.

Ananda was very good in painting nature.

On the first day he began painting mountains, rocks and houses around them. He sat there looking at it intensely for the whole day. He did not leave home. Seeing the boy’s dedication Shiva offered him some food and water. He ate and remained watching it unmoved, adjusting the painting, as the night fell.

Shiva said “My dear boy, I keep the door open. You can leave home and come back next day when you feel like”, as he slept.

Ananda was staring at the wall for too long and he forgot he had to leave home. He slept there on the floor.

He woke up the next day and with a flash of inspiration, began painting a river on this painting. It needed a water body. He continued to stay there and work on the painting.

On the third day, he added a nice orange shade to the subjects on the painting to show the light from the sunrise in his painting.

On the fourth day, he added some flying leaves, flower petals, and flowing hair and clothes of men and women to show the presence of a light breeze.

On the fifth day, he felt his painting was not complete. He wasn’t sure if it was the most beautiful. He sat there contemplating. He stopped painting now.

On the sixth day, he began to think there are too many things in his painting. He began erasing them one by one and continued to do so.

Shiva began to smile now, as if he knew what was happening in his mind and where he was going to get.

At the end of seventh day, Ananda erased the whole painting and turned to Shiva and bowed down to his feet.

Shiva calmly asked “What happened? Why did you erase all that you did for 7 days?”

Ananda got up with tears in his eyes “O master of masters! The most beautiful painting in the world, does not come from me. It is the white wall itself that is beautiful and only that can bring out a perfect painting from me! I do not know anything!”

Shiva held him up with tears of joy in his eyes.

“My boy, you have passed the test. I will teach you the art of listening to the beautiful white wall, which alone can tell you what to paint on it.”

Love and be Joyful

People had deep respect for him and adored him very much. The village had transformed into a heaven under his moral guidance. People helped each other, treated each other with equality and respect. There was brotherhood all around.

One day …

The teacher died. His time was over, his body was no longer suitable to live and he left. People were sad. They were depressed and hurt by his demise.

They took a vow to celebrate such a great man’s birthday every year with a holiday.

Years passed. The man who kept the thread of fraternity was no more available to keep that thread alive. People forgot the thread. They forgot love. They forgot equality. They forgot respect. They forgot Joyfulness.

But they didn’t forget the teacher. They promptly celebrated his birthday every year. They even made sure every organization and school declares holiday during his birthday.

They love the Teacher every year during his birthday. But they forget the teachings to love the person right next to them.

Who is important? The Teacher or his Teachings? It can’t be both.

But is it that simple? Let us ask a Man first.

What does it mean when a Man says Yes ?

1. Yes, I can do it, even thought I don’t know to do it.

2. He said Yes, so I say Yes. Beer pressure, I mean peer pressure.

3. God definitely doesn’t know, but it is a Yes.

4. Yes. That’s it, what else you want!

What does it mean when a Man says No?

1. No. That’s it, he is really exhausted and he really means no, so leave him alone. Let him watch some TV.

Now it is Women’s turn.

What does it mean when a Woman says Yes?

1. Yeah right. If a woman says a straight yes, please leave me a message after the beep.

What does it mean when a Woman says No?

1. No. But why don’t you try to figure out!

2. No in Antartican language means “Yes”, too bad you misunderstood me because you don’t know Antartican.

3. Ha ha, it may be both 1. or 2. Like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It is there and not there.

4. God only knows. But I won’t tell you which God. 33 Crore Gods in Hindu religion alone, you are stuck my man!

5. I know because I am God.

6. Not enough choice.

Men, If you are hurt by this post say “YES”. Women, If you are hurt by this post, say anything, because I am not going to know the real meaning anyway!

– Smiley added just to make sure that this post is written in lighter vein and that I was just Kidding. “Yes”, I was just kidding.

Here is what has happened so far:

——————————————-

Geek Husband: Honey, Dosa is so boring. It is simple and plain like the old text only Internet.

Wife: Ok, Let me get creative.

Geek Husband: Wow! I love this tomato Dosa, Wow Spicy Dosa and Masala dosa, Double Wow! This is so good, this is so latest, this is so Dosa 2.0!

——————————————-

Wife: (In a Hot tone) Honey, what we are going to experience tonight is going to be like never before, It is going to be so 2.0

Geek Husband: (Reddish and Profusely sweating and stammering) ehhhh…errr… really …2.0?

Wife: What! Did you forget? We are going out for Ice skating tonight? I told you … Don’t you remember!

Geek Husband: Ohhh! that … Skating 2.0! I thought … never mind! (Wiping the sweat)

——————————————-

… In a early 2000′s Yahoo chat room …

mduveeran: Yo all, Cricket is so boring don’t you think! Hate the one whole day games and completely reject 5 days!

rdrav2000: Get off mduveeran, You know nothing about cricket and its technicals.

lmodi2008: a/s/l please?

sach2001:  Hmm, agree with you rdrav2000. lmodi2008, boooriinnnggg! ask any other question.

mduveeran: ahhhhhhh, I am yelling. I will Pee and come back and Yell! No one is listening to my Idea, Cricket 2.0!

lmodi2008: Hmm, I will Pee and Yell. Hmm, I Pee Yell. hmm, IPL. Got it guys, Cricket 2.0. May be we should play 20 overs a side game.

rdrav2000: Ha ha ha, In your dreams lmodi2008!

——————————————-

The above dialogues are completely Imaginary 2.0 and has nothing to do with any real life character 2.0.

Ram is not a single person. Ram is the quality of infinite goodness that is possible in every one of us. Ram is there, where there is no Ravan. Ravan is the manifestation of suppressed badness.

The song goes “Mann se Ravan jo nikale, Ram uske mann mein hain”

“The one who removes Ravan from his heart will have Ram in him”.

Again it is foolish to think Ram and Ravan are just persons. Ram and Ravan are personification of Good and Bad.

So how do you remove Ravan? By going to temple and Pray to the idol of Ram, offer him flowers, fruits and some money. Make prasad and distribute it to people who are dieting?

NO!

By watching your negative/bad thoughts that arise in your mind, without judging yourself, the thoughts move away from you like a cloud. What remains after that is a shining goodness. You can be a great person performing good deeds and helping people and all that, but it is useless if there are bad thoughts in you that you haven’t let go. They grow in you, in the back of your mind, suppressed and one day when Ram is sleeping, they rise in you with all its powers and bring out the Ten headed monstrous Ravan from you. Ram is needed here in all his greatness to slay this suppressed Ravan.

Let the bad thoughts get away from you, slowly and not allow the Ravan to grow. Ram is already there in your heart permanently, he will just shine freely when there is no Ravan in you.

Here is a more modern analogy – With Ravan, even 1TB of Ram will feel like 256MB, but without Ravan, even 1TB of Ram will feel like infinite TB of Ram 

1. Saints don’t advertise themselves. They don’t promise you abundant money, fruitful career, successful life and all that. They help people silently, unaware of them. They don’t want praise, nor any attention. How many know of Saints in Rags around the Tiruvannamalai Hill? I never knew and I have never even been to that place yet!

2. They definitely don’t sell you spirituality as a package deal. If they teach you meditation, it is something that they got from their masters and most certainly they will not teach you anything but what you need. Usually the fees you pay for these, go to administration and some charity work, not for glorifying themselves more. There were days when a saint used to teach meditation for 5 rupees to sincere seekers.

3. Their definition of spirituality is realizing your real self. That’s it. Not gaining some supernatural powers.

4. They definitely don’t cure you of diseases. They will ask you to go to a doctor instead. They might help you, but they won’t say that they will cure you, using some kind of special powers that they have. Nope.

One lady approached a particular saint and said, “God came in my dream and said that you can cure my disease”. The saint said, “Mother, God didn’t come in my dream and tell this, so I suggest you to please see a good doctor”.

Sometimes there may be exceptions, but it is not realistic and practical to generalize these exceptions to all cases.

5. They do not force you into changing your habits. They would say you will change gradually by yourself. They don’t ask you to wear a marking on your forehead, or wear a particular bead mala or change your dressing style or grow long hair/beard or even change your diet or pray to a particular God. They don’t care if you are an atheist or even if you eat “Beef”, they will teach you meditation just as it should be taught.

A thief came to a Zen master asking him to help him to get out of this awful thing he was doing – stealing. The master just said, continue stealing, but whenever you do, be aware of what you are doing. The thief brought in awareness, and he just couldn’t steal anymore.

It is not wrong for someone to teach meditation to people in large numbers. But the General public should understand that, meditation is like a medicine. The medicine should be had only as per prescription. The Doctor may prescribe the same medicine to all for common ailments, but people have to understand that the effects will vary depending on the level of ailment that they have. Beyond that, only case by case basis will work.

You will need patience. After all Spirituality is about speeding up evolution to realize your true self and evolution is a slow process. Just beware of fake Godmen and move on with your life.

After reading the first chapter, I felt the narration, though based on ancient mythology, feels very modern and I really liked the pace and the way the story is unfold. The concept is very good, just read the “About Shiva” section of the website to get an understanding. I like the Author’s (Amish) belief that Ram and Shiva were just Humans who rose to Godhood of Vishnu and Mahadeva.

If any of you are reading this currently or have read it already, do let me know your comments. I am planning to grab this book, the next time I hit crossword or order it online.

In spite of that, I remain a Loyal F1 fan. I sat back to watch the Bahrain GP instead of the IPL match, last sunday. Interestingly, the new F1 format had pregnant cars (loaded with fuel, to go the entire race) and was pretty boring. One race wouldn’t determine anything, but if this is how it is going to be, then this F1 season is going to be terrible. I miss Kimi and the race when he fought Alonso till the last but one lap, when his suspension gave up, the race when he passed Fisi in the final lap to clinch the No. 1 spot, the season when he fought Lewis Hamilton. This paragraph will be a “Blah …Blah…” for Non-F1 folks, but the F1 season is just incomplete without the Iceman.

The point is, the IPL T20 matches are offering similar, if not the same excitement in some matches. Loads of runs, Nail biting finishes, Unpredictable victories makes IPL as attractive as those tight F1 races, but I will never agree that they are same.

So now that I am watching IPL, I have decided I need to support some team to make it lively. There are positives with every IPL team and so for the sake of the game, I would be happy to see any team playing great cricket to win the game. But to keep it fun, I am supporting RCB, since Bangalore is my workplace and I am also supporting CSK, as Tamil Nadu is my Home place. After a great couple of matches yesterday, it felt great to support RCB and CSK for the win.

The only problem is going to be when RCB and CSK face each other. Who do I support? It is like the Climax of “Tamil Padam” when Shiva faces the villian “D”. Kadamaiyaa? Paasama? (Duty? Or Love?). Heart says Love, Mind says Duty. But I guess, I will be happy either way.

The photo displayed above has nothing to do with the post. It is exactly like how the things written on the IPL player’s T-shirts and Gears has nothing to do with the Game or the player. Just click on it and enjoy the photo stream of Bannerghata National Park, Wildlife Grand Safari.

Bannerghata National Park – Herbivore, originally uploaded by ubababu.

I was out on a day trip to Bannerghata National Park this saturday. It was a wholesome treat to the family and my camera eyes. The Grand safari was the most enjoyable with a good glimpse of the wildlife – Lion, Tigers (yes 1411 Tigers left and I saw 2 of them here), White Tigers. I am uploading the photos to Flickr as I go.

The Safari area and the Zoo is a no plastic zone. The guard at the entrance, checks the belongings, breaks open all the snacks that are in plastic bags and puts them in one plastic carry bag that we have. He does let go of water bottles and a carry bag or so. This is very reasonable as one would need to drink water and would also need a bag to carry some dry snacks.

The result though is misuse by our folks, even after calling it No plastic zone. I have no idea how this particular Aquafina bottle appeared there, but it sure seems like they should do something about it. How would it feel, if you have an empty Aquafina bottle for lunch or a snack? Exactly how, that deer is going to feel. The Biology is the same.

Be Responsible, Rules are there for a reason!

Of all the woman, why did I fall in love with you?

says Karthik. I bet, a lot of those who are in love with a complicated woman will say just this. The entire movie “Vinnaithandi Varuvaya” rides on this expression and the drama resulting from this. The expression should not be mistaken for the boy’s frustration. It is an expression of pain resulting from unbounded love for the woman. Certainly, the expression itself is unbounded and is probably the only way to convey this unexplainable feeling. This is why, every important character in the movie, repeats this dialogue at key frames in the movie.

The Director was excellent in creating situations that would cause this pain, be it Jessie’s father or her brother or herself or even himself. Every scene inadvertently makes us feel “Of all the woman, why did Karthik fall in love with Jessie?”

A Simple Love story. People like simple stories with just a few complicated characters and in this one, it is just one complicated girl Jessie, the woman who pulls Karthik at first sight. Gautham Menon picks a simple story but excels in the way it is being told. Karthik and Jessie are intensely portrayed making the audience feel exactly what they feel, with the right expression, right words, right locations, right light and the right background score. No patched up scenes at all. Everything was fluent with the screen play and fit in very nicely. Excellent editing.

Simbu and Trisha have lived the story. They did not just act. Kudos to Gautham again for that, especially for bringing such a stuff out of Simbu. Even the one single fight scene was very captivating. No Simbuism, but just some realistic Boxing. After a long time I am really enjoying a fight sequence, as it didn’t have any stupid rope tricks.

The only other character that probably plays a major part was Ganesh as Ganesh the Cinematographer (from Kaaka Kaaka) himself. He lighted the moments with good humor and was a nice catalyst to the story’s pace. It was a really good idea to keep this character this way.

AR Rahman’s music goes beyond the skies. The audio when I first listened to, felt like just another ARR album. But when you watch the movie in a theatre with the flow of the story, the characters and the scene, ARR’s music becomes mind-blowing. Half of the scene’s intensity is conveyed in it. It pulls you halfway in the feeling and the rest of the elements soak you in completely. My favourite song is Aaromale and the background score based on that song.

This movie cannot be reviewed quantitatively. It cannot be given any percentage of marks or stars. You just have to go, watch and feel what the characters feel. Halfway through the movie, I told my wife, I want to fall in love with her all over again. That is review enough for an unbounded feel of love, that can cross the skies. The last time it caused a similar feeling would be for Alaipayuthey from almost a decade back.

Watch it once, watch it again and again and then buy the DVD and put it in your collection.

I did not know when I would come back again to blogging. Well, here I am. I guess this movie made me cross the cyber skies!

Edit: I guess there are 2 endings being shown for this movie. I watched at Innovative Multiplex in Bangalore and my friend had watched at the Forum Value mall, and we both saw different endings.

A lot of us have attempted it. In fact every one of the 6 billion odd people of the world can describe life in their own words and each one can be interpreted in innumerable number of ways by the same 6 billion odd people. Any one that begins to describe life, uses one aspect of it depending on his/her speciality. A physicist view of life is entirely different from that of a politician or a priest. In all cases, they have a view of life and then they begin to live according to their views and their society influenced ambitions.

The basis of misunderstanding of life is just this. To have a view of life and then living that view. Because it is in our nature to try and understand everything with known factors and just live by that well known popular definition.

Let us take an example of a sweet dish, say Gulaab Jamun. Describe it. A Round, brownish sweet flour based dish in dripping sugar based solution. You can then break down to its constituents, recipe and list down the calorie value. Let’s say you took 1 hour to do all that. That would be your extensive description of Gulaab Jamun and you may even write a Wiki page for that. But to someone who has not had Gulaab Jamun in their life, all of this means nothing. They are just mere words of description which he/she can interpret and imagine in his own ways. Now serve one of this to this person. The person eats it and declares whether he/she likes it or not. But now, he also knows what a Gulaab Jamun is. No description is needed but somehow the moment he ate the Jamun, he knows what it is.

Life can only be created by another life. We owe our life to our parents. The tree that stands tall and big owes it to the seed from the fruit of another tree just like it. If you go back in the reverse, you will find that all known lives are only created through another life. We can trace this back till the point where the Universe existed as just primordial life substance.

According to Big Bang theory the Universe came out of an infinitely dense point of nothing. According to String theory this known Universe is just a result of collision between two other parallel universes. Whatever it may be, the Universe in the beginning was just a hot molten primordial life substance. The primordial life is the one that has evolved itself into various life forms as it exists in the universe now. Imagine that moment of heat when the whole Universe is densely packed in just a square inch or so. Earth, Sun, Moon, Planets, Galaxies, Stars, nebulae everything is contained in that one square inch of primordial life.

When that primordial life expands into what it is now, do you think Earth is a different object from Moon? Do you think the star in a distant Galaxy is separate from the stone lying on Earth? Physically they look separate, but their origin is nothing but that life substance. Now what about us. Humans. We didn’t jump from somewhere into this Universe. We evolved from the same life substance as this primordial life. Hence we aren’t separate either. If you keep thinking in this terms you will understand that the whole Universe is nothing but just this life substance evolved/manifested into various forms.

I cannot call this a creation because everything was just there and only evolution and manifestation of life is happening.

Life evolves itself and manifests itself into various forms because it wants to know its limitlessness by manifesting into infinite forms. It wants to live all of its possibilities, through the various life forms including us. In that sense the Human form is a stage in evolution which is able to perceive and experience this life in the most advanced way possible. So if you think about it, it is not us that are living our lives but it is Life itself living the life to experience and know itself with the help of this manifestation called Humans.

Whatever you do in life, be it good or bad and whatever you experience, pleasure or pain, you are just being an instrument for life to experience those various characteristics. When this instrument is no longer fit to experience life, life dissolves it in itself. If the life that is manifested inside the instrument has more desires to experience the life, it manifests again by being born as another life form, not just human but any life form. This is what they call as reincarnation. This can go on and on because as long as this particular portion of Life has things to do it will keep manifesting, because Life has nothing but infinite time and infinite Life energy to support this Life.

In short, Life is not something that has to be defined and we live by that definition, but rather we let the life live through us to experience life itself.

This is an incident involving a few of my friends but unfortunately I wasn’t present in this situation when it happened. So I am narrating it from a third person who heared it from the friend’s cousin perspective.

It was a fine evening in Chennai. An evening that could have been spent relaxing at the beach or playing in the nearby ground, but they decided to spend the time boozing at a local bar. This local bar is of the local kind which people in Tamil Nadu call it as “Wine shop” and pronounce is as “Voyin shaap”. It is all driven by the economics. Depending on how much money they can pool in they go to a 3 star hotel pub like the Tinto at Residency inn or a decent pub or a billiards club and if the money is tight they end up in this particular Wine Shop. There is no preference or differentiation of class when it comes to boozing. After all we were in college and we had only so many things to think about – booze, girls, more booze.

So on this fine evening my friends started their pooja (code word for boozing) in one such local wine shop. Just like the wheels on the bus go round and round and the Cycle of life goes round and round, glasses of whiskey and vodka go round and round, sometimes mixed with pepsi, sometimes with coke, sometimes with water from water packet, sometimes in RAW Format (not the Camera RAW), and in some weird times it can go around with Orange Juice, especially if you are in USA and you have exhausted your supply of soda cans and you have no other choice but do the mixing with Breakfast items!

And as it settles and goes, the first round is usually an initial slight jolt. It warms up everyone, relaxes them. It puts them in a mood of laughter and it slowly increases the steam and volume of their voice. After the second round, people forget the count. They can no longer keep track of the rounds and hence after Round 2, the count never goes up. It’s like those film actresses who celebrate their 28th birthday for 20 times.

The topic of discussion changes from politics to Internal Affairs. People start speaking their mind out. The family, the girl next door, the girl in the opposite door, the girl who closes the door, the girl who never opens the door, the girl who slapped him (twice), the girl who gave him halwa (and he gave Mixture (pronounced as Mikchar) in return), in short the discussion of Internal Affairs has always been about girls and how the guy loves her so much or how he lost her to another guy who had a car. While some of them come only to drink with no Internal Affairs to discuss, others come only to eat side dishes. They are designated Side dish eaters, Like me. Hey, I was a good boy, I can’t publicly tarnish my own image or risk going back home with “Boozer” written on my forehead.

So, as the rounds went by, with people losing count and not knowing when the barrel becomes full, one of them stops talking. No speech, closed mouth, eyes looking at the top and head slowly whirling. At this point he slowly points his hand to the fan and requests it to be turned on. People around him ask what happened, and why is he pointing to the fan as it was already on and running fine. In the next second, his mouth blasts open and a huge map of the motherland is laid out on the table with puke.

The waiter comes and calmly cleans the mess, they are used to it. But after the cleaning he doesn’t move.

“Oh, here is 20 Rupees!” hands out one of the Side dish eater.

“Saar, extra give saar!” asks the waiter politely.

“En paa?” (Why man?)

“Saar, Vaanthi perusa irunthichu saar!” (The Vomit was big)

Another side dish only eater hands out 10 more rupees and makes him happy. But just as he is about to leave, he calls him back and says

“Hey, you cleaned up the Map of India, but you missed Sri Lanka!” pointing to a small portion of puke left out on the table.

Atleast they got something out of the extra money that they gave and hence the Map of Puketopia was drawn and withdrawn.

MORAL OF THE STORY: When you do something, do it completely. Never leave a residue.

Pancake Mommy Pancake,

Mommy fired the Pancake,

Rice flouru and Urad flouru, mixed and formed the pancake,

For the father fouru,

For the mother threeu,

For the brother twou,

for the baby onnu,

Eatu Eatu Desireu,

Turn and ask means rituals!

Which song you ask? It is the Tamil Rhyme song – Dosai amma Dosai. Thank you Youtube! What would those of us staying away from the homeland, do without Youtube!

What time is it now on your watch? Is it 6PM? Would you call it as “Now”? But one hour later when it is 7PM it can still be called “Now”. Go forward 10 days and you can still call that as “Now”. Heck, by the time you say the word “Now”, the now might have moved a couple of seconds. I am writing this now, but you will read it later which is now for you. So when exactly is now? If you think about it, our past, present and future is nothing but an infinite string of “Now” – Now, Now, Now, Now …! It has always been now and only now has existed in real and nothing else.

What about the past and future? Where are they?

The past is not going to be found outside. You can find its imprints but that’s it, there is no secret place where they keep re-enacting our past. The past is in your memory. We remember things and that is how we relate to the past.

- We love the good things of the past and we want to repeat that experience and we also hate the bad things and we don’t want them to happen. This is when we intensely pray God! We pray to God that we don’t want old bad things to happen again to us. But they happen to us anyway and then we say “Why God Why!”.

- The opposites of life makes sure that if you get something good, you also get something equally bad. So if you want something better from the past, you will have to accept something worse too. It goes on in a vicious cycle and if you believe in re-incarnation we continue this ignorantly in our next life.

- The Past should be used only for learning and for guidance. You have to totally understand that what worked in the past may not work in the present moment, lest you want to end up in that vicious cycle.

So where is the future then? I have no idea! According to what I have read, there is an infinite cosmic mind and it contains possibilities of the future. Let it be so or Let it not be so, but our point has been that we always worry about our future. We have to earn enough money so that we can live a peaceful life in future. We have so many dreams built up, believing on a future that is yet to happen. We work with the financial adviser and chart out a really intelligent plan which is based on the “Stock Market” and add hope to the equation. When our hopes shatter, we blame it on the Society or Government or we get angry with our Gods. Well, Future is always going to be full of surprises.

The Surprises of Life
I will share with you a short Zen story I read.

A student goes to stay with a master to learn fencing. For the first week, the master asks the student to completely do only the household chores like cooking, washing, cleaning and serve the master. The master treated him like dirt. Apart from this, the master began to attack him with a stick every now and then randomly. The student would go to the kitchen and he would be attacked, he would go to the bedroom and he would be attacked. Every time the student kept track of which places he hides and he would become alert there. But the master kept using new hiding places and surprised him everyday. The student finally gave up, he left all the memory of the hiding places. He became completely alert wherever he went and was always ready for a surprise attack. The next morning when he went inside the kitchen, he immediately defended the surprise attack in the blink of an eye. The master said “Now you are ready to learn!”.

The experiences of the past makes us more alert and this is the learning we have to carry. Be aware at all the times, because life is full of surprises. It doesn’t mean you have to live in fear, it just means awareness or alertness. It was not the past solution of keeping track of the hiding places that helped him, but the new solution of acting out of alertness in the moment that helped him. Your alertness decreases when you worry about the past and dream about the future all the time. When you be in the moment, your alertness naturally follows. For learning more about Awareness, I found the book – Awareness By OSHO to be very informative.

Tuning into the moment
What does this mean? Shall we all stop doing what we are doing and just go live in the moment, partying all the time? That’s not only impractical, it is also stupid. So don’t get carried away when people want you to live in the moment. Think what it means.

It means that, continue doing whatever you are doing, but the only focus should be on what you are doing right now with complete awareness.

When the Zen Master eats, he just eats. But when we eat we do the following:

1. Talk.
2. Think about stuff.
3. Worry about stuff.
4. Criticize the food.
5. Count the calories.
6. Keep track of the time, so you eat fast.

Basically we do everything but eating. Passively eating and actively engaged in other stuff. If we do the reverse, Consciously eat  and let the other stuff just float by like clouds. When you consciously eat, you will automatically relax and eat slowly. You will be more in the moment. This is actually easier said than done. I have been trying this for the past few weeks (struggling, with stupid jokes flowing during serious contemplative moments!) and I am hoping that I will get a hang of it someday.

So What happens if you are in the now? You tune yourself with the Universe. You will begin to exist with the flow of nature, establish a deep harmony. When you are in the now, a lot of questions get answered automatically. It is like answers flow as thoughts from the silence of your mind automatically with no effort. The entire Universe is in Meditation and when we tune ourselves into it, we are naturally in the meditative state.

I also learned that any technique of meditation only helps you to be in the meditative state. It is just the beginning and it has to be like that all the while during the day even when we don’t practice the technique. The more things I get to know, the more ignorant I feel.

So Let’s Just be.

THE BEGINNING
Each of us are born from our mother’s womb (or a test tube) as a free being. The only thing we probably knew was eat, sleep, excrete. We didn’t even have the need to think about anything because what do you need to think when you are being taken care of by your parents! But as we grow, we begin to learn from our surroundings. So a person born in a small village in India is only exposed to the teachings he can receive from there. In other words we begin to see the world around us as whatever there is. This also holds true for religion. We are all born into a religion to which the parents belong. If the parents are atheists, we are born atheists too. But the point is, when we are born we learn to see what we perceive from our nearby external world as the truth. This is our beginning stage, the stage where we narrow ourselves, where our exposure is limited and our idea of the world is confined to our location. This is a stage till we go to a school.

THE SCHOOL
As we grow, we know more. School teaches us history of the whole wide world in its own prejudiced way. I mean, we believe what is written in a text book to be the truth and hope that what is written there will guide us in our lives. We are exposed to science. We are taught how to communicate. Basically, we learn from the books, through the interpretation of the teacher. Our understanding now becomes wider. But then, for the most part, the education that we take is understood more from a career perspective. A Long preparatory effort of money making in your later life. A few of us learn it for the sake of learning, for the mere joy of understanding something new and expanding our knowing. A rare few of us can see beyond school and learning and find their own path, but in general we end up preparing for the big money making days, whatever way it may be. Art, Music or Literature doesn’t matter, only that which can help you earn money is learnt. After all, money is needed for our survival, so we ourselves do feel the necessity. Whatever opinion on religion we had will most likely continue the same during this stage.

THE RAT RACE
We land a job or some of us hopefully will land a job after we graduate. We work tirelessly for a big name corporation to earn our living. We sacrifice everything for the sake of earning money. We put up with the boss, we put up with the traffic, we put up with life in general and focus our whole energy in money making. This can be endless and varies from person to person. The desire never ends and as years pass by we continue to live a meaningless life of making money. Not that it is wrong, It is just that we don’t get a sense of fulfillment, a perception merely. Also, there is a retirement life that needs to be taken care of and all the talks about preparing for the future keeps you very busy.

THE TRANSITION
During this stage, We tend to know more now, because we read the news and blogs on the internet, it makes us more knowledgeable of the things that go on around the world. We begin to have our own opinions. We can talk about various topics for hours with our friends during that Saturday night party and really go on till we can prove that we are more knowledgeable than others. Our ego builds up and it may make us question the need for a religion or a God. The Atheist mind now comes into picture. We feel the need to go beyond our tradition. This is not bad and may not be good either. Because, the questioning Atheist minds is actually the first step to the Truth, but if you let the ego breed into Atheism, it might mislead you. Some of us, eventually get tired of taking a side and fighting for one way or other and progress to a stage of Agnosticism. But again any judgment of any transition happening to an individual is wrong, so don’t be worried about whatever you are right now, whatever is happening right now is the truth. Whatever situation you are in right now is the reality, worrying about the past or wondering about the future wont help at this point.

But life can test you. Life gives you jolt sometimes. Life wants you to understand life and not just go on in the closed confined beliefs that you carry, whatever it might be. Your whole understanding of life will be questioned by life itself. This is the point where you are given a chance to get out of the Rat Race, to break free of all prejudices. You are merely given a chance to understand things better. But we want logic don’t we. We want explanations for everything. Sorry, but the jolt that life gives to you will have no logic. It will just happen for no reason. It will challenge you to enter the world of questioning yourself, questioning your understanding of everything.

There is only 2 possibilities from here:

1. You can choose to ignore, offer whatever resistance you can and get back into the Rat Race after facing several hardships and then continue blaming Yourself, Society, Government or God.

2. You can begin the process of questioning. You can step into a whole new world and a new way of understanding. A new life will begin. You will be in the Rat Race, but the Rat Race won’t pull you with that force any more. You will start going at your own pace. That own pace might be faster than the Rat Race Pace or slower. But the difference is, in the former you are being pulled and in the latter you are in control and you choose your speed. It will be like every one is begin pulled at 50 miles per hour around the track in their lanes and you would be flowing consciously at a varied speed, walking freely at the pace comfortable to you, in your own lane. You will begin to break free.

THE SEEKER
If you chose the blue pill, the point number 2. Welcome to the world of seeking, where you seek only the absolute truth. If you took this step, don’t worry because there are always fellow seekers who guide the other seekers in your path. Your real journey begins now, it doesn’t matter where, but it will happen only in the now. Only “Now” will be important. Whatever your mind so far has thought about Religions, Atheism, Agnosticism, Some cult are only stepping stones. They were just connecting stations before your long journey of seeking. Your Journey begins not in the future nor did you miss it in the past, but it is in the changing now. It is now and never ever. It is very important to understand what is “Now”. What is Now? We will see…

1. The Mac Chime sound

2. Show Apple logo and spinning wheel.

3. Login screen

4. Load up.

5. Keep the total boot time to 20 to 25 seconds so that windows doesn’t feel bad.

When you turn on the PC, this is what happens:

1. Ha ha ha.

2. Show Windows logo and send a tiny blue line spinning in a line to show that it is doing something.

3. Wait for user to get irritated.

4. Show a better Windows logo and a fancier blue thingy spinning in a line to show that it is doing something else much fancier than before. Put the word Microsoft before every word (including the word Microsoft).

5. Show following random messages

- Windows is starting up (Duh!)

- Running Startup scripts

-  Applying user settings

- Sending viruses to Alien ships

- Ordering Pizza

- Laughing at the frustrated user.

6.  Login screen. Ask user to press the secret combination to invoke the login prompt (read CTRL-ALT-DEL)

7. Wait for Logging in.

8. Login and Load up all the taskbar programs and don’t let the user do anything else.

9. If Superman has done 1 million rounds around the Earth (assuming he does 1 round per second), then allow the user to take control and do the work.

Well, I guess this is one other opposites of life that I should have mentioned in my previous post!

One way of looking at it was, without the bad you cannot appreciate the beauty of Good. Without night, you will not appreciate the light from the day. So, does this mean bad is essential? Should things go bad? Should there be “badness” in this world? Don’t we all think that how peaceful the world would be if everything is just good? May be we can all export the badness (not bad people) to some other planet and just keep the juice of goodness on Earth? Will that give us happiness? My mind was taking crazy spin around these thoughts when I was trying to relate what the Zen wisdom of law of opposites meant in real life.

Where is it?
It was a constant search. I never realized that I should look in the direction of the thoughts that come in your mind. You have so dwelt in our thoughts, so become one with our thoughts that we forget to watch our own thoughts and we just lead a reactive life to our thoughts. In other words, we just identify ourselves with our thoughts. If we get anger, we show it. If we get sad we react to that sad thought. All of this happens as we get stimulated from our external environment and we just remain like a dancing puppet in the hands of the external world controlling us all the while.

The next thing we do is the moment we see what we are thinking, we immediately judge ourselves with those thoughts. We judge that we are good when we are kind and we are bad when we are angry. Because, we have identified ourselves as this Body and Mind, anything good done by the body and mind makes us feel good and massages our ego but anything done bad or goes bad makes us feel bad about ourselves and we accumulate fear, guilt and what not! We then let that trigger more emotions within us. We are just a bundle of these chains of infinite emotions of opposite polarity arising from our thoughts. The modern civilized man has actually lost himself in his mind of opposite emotions.

This was the opposite that had to be looked at. The opposite of Good and Bad thought right within us. Knowing is Good, but if you are not conscious enough, it can cause the rise of your ego and whenever someone questions your knowledge and if you don’t seem to know it right, your ego will be hurt and you feel bad. Knowledge caused the Goodness in you, while the Hurt ego made you feel bad. This is the kind of existence of opposites within you.

Why is it?
The realization was that Good cannot exist all by itself. It attracts very quickly the equivalent bad very close to itself. So Good and Bad exist together as neighbors in your mind. How crazy is that? All the while, the moral world wants everyone to only be good, but the law of opposites says you can only be good if it can attract equal amount of bad. Go ahead, give it a thought, this is always true and there is no escape. If you are conscious you will quickly find that all the so called “badness” thoughts are actually getting buried by you within yourself because you are afraid the society might think you are mad. So long you would have thought you had controlled your anger and then one simple insult or a provoke you burst and you don’t even know it happened.

What to do?
At some point, some circumstances lead me to this book – “Emotional Wellness” by Osho. I mainly picked it up because I wondered if it could help me manage my fear and anger. I had no idea that I would be introduced into the world of consciousness and being aware of yourself and how one can deal with all your emotions completely. The essence of the book was to take the stance of a neutral observer and watch as you feel these emotions, without making any judgments. The emotions don’t stay within you if you just watch them. They stop their flow and stay with you as soon as you want to pass a judgment. Otherwise, They just flow out slowly and steadily. It becomes a living meditation where you watch your feelings all the time as a neutral entity/being. You will finally become that neutral being from where only the light of neutral energy flows. This is what is described in the book and if you read that in detail, a lot of it makes sense. Osho keeps it interesting and understandable with Zen stories and humour throughout the book. The only thing left for me is to experience this practically and I had been practicing that ever since I finished it (which was 2 weeks back I think!). At first, it seems difficult but I think as you go it would become more free and natural to observe.

The Fight of Good against Bad:
The society always tells of the stories of the fight between good and bad. The Good finally wins and the bad is destroyed. Sorry, but they are just stories where only people who couldn’t manage their “badness” were killed by the society. The truth is there is no point in killing bad people, not even killing yourself if you turn bad. Because it is the badness that you have to let it out. There is no point in letting the Good and Bad in you fight with each other. This is exactly why Gandhi and Buddha vouched non-violence as their motto. Ahimsa is the way that they said. If you have bad thoughts in you, you just watch it and let it flow out, leaving absolutely no stain in you. The moment you judge you leave the stain of guilt. Never Judge, just watch. Watch it fill your body and flow out of every single pore of your body.  This is also what it means when they say offer it to God. Osho simply said that in practical terms. If you let it out, it is automatically absorbed by God or Universe.

Do you remember the scene when Munna forgives himself and asks for forgiveness from Circuit in “Lage Raho Munnabhai!”. The emotions were let loose and they flowed out. What was left was the unconditional friendship love between them. Where was Munna’s anger/guilt and Circuit’s sadness after that one single act of letting it flow consciously? In fact this is exactly what Gandhi employed against the British. He will remain the watcher, will not react and will neither co-operate to all the laws laid out by the British. Only peaceful protests. Gandhi made the entire country just remain silent and watch as the British left us eventually. It is another story whether we really got the “Freedom” after that. But the essence that Gandhi applied externally is the same for your inside, with respect to the fight between Good and Evil.

Watch the evil in you without any judgement and also watch the good in you without any judgment. You will raise above the ordinary Good and Evil and you will become pure unconditional goodness. This is what is preached by Osho, Buddha and all enlightened souls.

And now we Begin:
If you want to understand the universe, you have to understand yourself first without any judgment or conclusion about yourself. You have to keep observing yourself until you reach the point where you simply become the observer with no relation to the thoughts that arise in you. You go on as being that neutral observer after that. This process never should stop, and the wasteful thinking slows down and would eventually stop. This is the state, the state of a neutral observer that has no opposites. You are then in control and aware of what you do. You can then choose to provide that neutral energy to whichever thought you wish to. Your thinking will now be clear and conscious. This is where I am trying to get to and I am wishing that every single human gets his/her opportunity to know this and get to this.

I am now reading another book of Osho – “Awareness” to know about this in detail. So far this book has been great and I will try to provide a summary and a review when I finish reading it.

The funny thing is the door opens up to you in strangest of the places in strangest of the situations. The Universe knows where to get you started. This is why I am always surprised that my journey into the world of truth and spirituality started with a simple cartoon TV show. Can you believe it? Neither can I! The show is – Avatar, the Last airbender. I got curious. The philosophy and concept behind the show was extremely intriguing for me and even though some of the names of concepts were familiar to me, they were totally new because I had not gone any deeper into those. Nevertheless, it happened and the door was opened out for me. I chose to step in. This was 2 years back and I had no idea what I was stepping into, but looking back I am glad where I am and I am glad that I stepped in.

I chose to read about Zen Buddhism and the associated Eastern Philosophy. I picked up a simple book on Zen from the library – Zen, the Beat way by Alan Watts. It was a compilation of Alan Watts’ Radio commentary on Zen. It opened up to the world of Eastern Philosophy and I actually felt ashamed that I, coming from the east, had to travel all the way to a small town in the west to read about the history of the region I come from. Interestingly, Alan didn’t say anything about the religion as such and he covered various Eastern beliefs and how each of them conveyed the same exact underlying meaning. It was a great learning happening on that day. A 100 page book did kindle a lot of curiosity in me. I started searching on what all these meant, I wanted to know more because I believed there is something in this that will offer solutions to me. There was some unknown attraction towards this, I didn’t force myself into this but it was just happening and I was being pulled into it.

I like science. I like to question the logic behind everything and see if there is scientific proof to those. I love science fiction stories and movies. Quantum physics had also fascinated me for a long time. Not at the deep level, but at the high level of knowing what it means. Any show on the Universe, Planets, stars I was there watching. Knowledge was the great thing that was happening to me. But knowledge was causing a tussle within me. I come from a city in south India that is full of temples. I had been to a lot of these temples and Hinduism is a very important part of me. Obviously, when knowledge got to my head and fueled my ego, I was beginning to question all of the religious beliefs. One part of me was becoming the atheist and the other part was the born theist. They were pulling me apart. It was my very own Personal Kurukshetra.

Well now, the war is quitened. There is no more tussle. They are both there, but they don’t fight anymore. They are quietly residing in me doing their own part. Spirituality is not related to any particular religion alone. It caters to everyone, it includes everything. It is the coexistence of the opposites to become the whole. What does all this mean? I will will write about this more and share my expeiriences on various levels. I will try to be as simple as possible because my aim is to not provide multitude of information, which you can get from books and internet (and I will mention them once a while when I can), but my aim is to provide you a simple peek into all of this through my experience.

Is it that you don’t speak any word and that means silence? Or is it that you don’t express anything and that is silence? or does silence mean no noise or no sound? So is that the way this blog has been under silence? But if that is the case, why do I still get hits and some people read it and even leave comments? Just because I didn’t blog for a while, did this blog stop expressing? It was silently expressing. It had nothing new, but its past has been reverberating the walls of blogosphere for a while.

Why am I saying all this?

It is difficult to explain and express Silence in a few paragraphs, but I am attempting this here. I don’t care if this attempt fails miserably, because I have already agreed that it is difficult to explain silence.

When you stop speaking for a while, you slowly start seeing and feeling your body even more than when you speak. You start performing activities with your body by paying attention to your body. But a lot of times this attention span can fluctuate. Sometimes you concentrate very well, like when you are out on the street to take some photographs, but sometimes you just do certain things for the sake of doing like filling a document at work.

Why is this difference?

The difference is our mind. Our mind naturally tends to move towards something that we desire, something that we like, something that we love. So if you love photography, you work with all your senses, mind and heart that your body responds to it automatically. But when you do something that you don’t love, you leave it to the brain while your mind wanders. Mind is a thought machine that can keep running infinitely like a never ending Indian Soap serial. Your mind will think about anything from next meal to the next movie that you will watch.

So if your mind keeps working after you stopped speaking and after your body is done with its activities, is that really silence?

No, if your mind is working out thoughts constantly, it means it is not observing silence. Mind is a part of you that also needs to rest like any other part of you. Mind has to be silenced as well. So, we sleep and we feel great the next day. Sometimes even as we lie down and sleep we keep having dreams and nightmares and we are not really in a sleep state. We end up waking with a bad headache or perhaps wanting to curl back and sleep more.

Silence is thus the state when all of your words, actions and thoughts completely stop.

What would that feel like? For a person like me, it is very difficult not to think. I just keep thinking one thing or the other. How else do you think I come up with such stupid blog posts! A lot of books and resource on the internet can help you find the definition but Silence can only be explained by experiencing it.

If you go by the definition for Silence that I gave above, you can look for it within you and try to find it. Because, in silence there is peace. Your mind is not working, especially not working conflicts of decisions coming from head and heart, which is probably the worst battle that Humans ever fight. The fight within.

How do we stop it and how do we experience it?

The answer is you don’t try to stop it. Because if you try to stop it will come back again with more power and more variations. It is practically uncontrollable by your force. So the answer is find the gap between words, actions and thoughts.

- When you speak, take a pause between a sentence or a few words and enjoy that pause. There is silence in it. Because when you pause your speech there is a tiny moment of blankness before you restart your thoughts, form the words and speak.

- When you perform an action, pause between steps and relish that pause. There is silence in it. For when you stop your action, there is a tiny moment of blankness before you work your mind again and go to the next step.

- When you think, pause between thoughts and meditate on that. There is absolute silence in it.

That is real Silence. The Silence within you. And when you experience it more and more you can feel the silence lengthening and it will give you new thoughts that give answers to your problems and probably a solution to put your thoughts to rest, probably a solution for the problem you were thinking about.

Ever wonder why you feel so great when you listen to some great music? Your conscious mind stops having thoughts and starts loving the music. The silence in you lengthens causing you to be more at peace. This applies to all things you love. When you do what you love, you do it with very less thinking because everything that you want to do just comes to you with no effort. You exert no additional force to think, you just let it flow. You only think that you are thinking while in fact your mind is actually allowing free flow of creative thoughts through the gaps of silence.

A lot of answers can actually be found by feeling that gaps of silence. Experience that silence, that is real silence. External silence is temporary, internal silence is with you all the time even when they are playing loud devotional songs with jarring speakers in your street.

Silence is indeed Golden.

This is just a summary of message that I inferred by reading from a few resources. This is not mine, but this is everyone’s!