Straight from the Heart

On a New Years day it seems that time is progressing faster. The old year takes away all the sorrows of the past and the New Year brings in new hopes for happiness. Or is this is just another illusion our mind traps us in? As at best, time is continuous and in actuality it probably does not really exist except in our minds. Yet, just to honor eons of imprints left on my mind, I have decided to follow my mind. So I have decided to bring a change today only because today happens to be first day of another new year. I have resolved to write something straight from my heart.

I am sure that everyone has been taught, at some point of his or her life, that whatever you do you should do it with your heart. The problem is that no one teaches us how we are supposed to live with our heart. If we start to live with our heart the society as we see it today will stop existing and maybe that’s the reason why we were never taught how to live with our heart. Our mind is not us, it is an organ just like our heart, our hands or legs. It is a very powerful organ, so powerful that it misleads us to believe that we are our mind. We never think of our self, as being our hands or our lips or eyes. Yet seldom we are able to differentiate between our self and our mind. Our mind forces us to live the way it wants us to live.

Mind is not only a powerful analytical instrument but it can also transmit and influence other minds. In fact none of our thoughts are truly ours they have been implanted in our mind by other minds. What this creates is a network of thoughts the origin of this network dates back to Adam or whoever the first being was with mind. These thoughts are not pure they change with each transfer. This creates a very complex web of intertwined thoughts, which in the India philosophy is called the maya jaal. Strong minds are able to shift the fulcrum of the web of thoughts to create religions, ideologies and society, as we know it.

Very rarely, individuals are able to transcend the web of thoughts and think of thoughts that are so pure that they change the course of human evolution. These are individuals who are truly living with their heart. But this does come at a cost. Jesus was crucified, Darwin was (is being) out-cast even today. Buddha taught enlightenment through detachment from every thought, even the thought of god. His philosophy got so warped, by the existing dogmas, that Buddhism has become the fourth most populous religion of the world and Buddha has become god. Einstein must consider himself lucky that most people could not (and still do not) comprehend his genius. He got away by just being called a mad scientist.

We are all held captive by our mind. Our mind is not really ours but it is formed by borrowed thoughts and ideologies. The more we grow up, the more entrenched our mind gets in the web of thoughts. I am who I am today because of imprints of ideologies, social norms and expectations left on my mind from the day I was born. Anytime I tried to venture out of this web I was severely punished. Now I am so afraid that I have just decided to follow my mind.

Nothing I have written here is pure. These are all borrowed thoughts just like every thing else I do. I have failed again in writing from my heart. But that’s okay, breaking resolutions is socially acceptable.

And in about a year it will be New Years Day again!

Traveler

Life is just an illusion
Causing this confusion
Of matter and possession
Of envy and obsession

I am just a traveler
In this never ending cycle
From an illusion to an illusion
To an illusion to an illusion…

Truth is only fallacy
There is no history no legacy
There is no present and no past
No moment that is the last

I am just a traveler
In this never ending cycle
From the truth to the truth
To the truth to the truth…


Who is I and who are you
Why is I and why not you
I have all these questions few
Yet I have I have no clue

I am just a traveler
In this never ending circle
From the answer to the answer
To the answer to the answer…

End is the only reality
From beginning to eternity
Beginnings always lead to an end
Ends lead to new beginnings

I am just a traveler
In this never ending circle
From the end to the end
To the end to the end….

Good Bye

The sun has ebbed, the sky forlorn
The lone last leaf is clinging on
The storm will howl the wind will brawl
The lone last leaf will have to fall...
Walking past I just wave goodbye
No tears shed no need to cry
The lone last leaf will always be
Some part of the majestic tree.

Tears

Theses tears will never stop flowing

Will keep trickling down drop by drop

Your memories will never stop glowing

Until that day when time shall stop

My mind is soaked with this endless rain

My soul is numb can’t bear this pain

The pain keeps growing day by day

God is dead, to whom should I pray?

Belief

I believe in earth without borders
I believe in faith without religion
I believe in humanity without race
I believe in love without possession
I believe in truth without excuses
I believe in education without awards
I believe in pride without arrogance
I believe in dreams without expectations
I believe in laughter without inhibitions
I believe in passion without regrets
I believe in belief without conditions

I

I was around 7 years old when I first asked myself the question “Who am I”. The question haunted me and sent my mind into frenzy. If my mind was asking this question, I was not my mind and if I was not my mind then who was I? Who was my mind asking this question to? I would feel very uneasy every time this question occurred to me and I would completely loose track of things that were happening around me. This question haunted me for a few years, not constantly but every once in a while. Then gradually as grew into my teens the question went away.

I had identified my “self” with the image that I saw in the mirror. On some days the image in the mirror looked perfect on other days it would be full of blemishes. The morning ritual of looking in the mirror would set a tone for the rest of the day. As an artist would, I then started finishing that image. Various hair styles were tried out before settling on middle parting which highlighted my features the best. It was adorned by Classic fit blue jeans, a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves, black timberland shoes and Ray Ban sunglasses. I was the man in the mirror and I liked what I saw.

The 20’s raged through and as the 30’s began to roll in, the image in the mirror slowly started to fade. Confusion began to set in as I began wondering; “was I only this image in the mirror that could be so easily eroded by time?” By that time however my CV was already 4 pages long and it was not difficult to convince myself that I was more than just my image. I began to earnestly build my new self, working hard burning the night oil. I made many sacrifices, painfully borrowed time from my loved ones and used it to build my credentials. As my image in the mirror was starting to form a few wrinkles, I reminded myself that I will be judged not by my looks but through my accomplishments. The rat race was on and I wanted to be the fastest rat.

Now my CV is bigger but it can’t fill the void inside me. It seems like I have been running the wrong race. I can’t convince myself anymore that, I am just an image, a style, few awards, accolades, achievements or some combination of these physical expressions which will eventually dissolve into time. Over the past two years, that same old question “who am I?” has started to haunt me again. There is a renewed quest to find the “I”, this time though the journey seems to be heading inwards. As I embark on this journey I am sure that there will be many more questions to answer, obstacles to overcome and the mystic fog of Maya will keep leading me astray. Through this fog though, I can sometimes see a faint glimpses of my “self”, a self that is eternal and untouched by travails of time or space.

I am hoping to find my “self”, my real “I” some day. And I have a strong feeling that when I find my “self” it will be no different than your “self”.

Let me just be a tree

Life, some say, happened by chance. They say that it is a result of the culmination of infinite number of sequences starting from the start of the universe. Others say that life is a divine creation. Like one fine day the almighty decided that life had to happen. Who knows where the truth lies, it is most likely somewhere in between. But I often wonder; if I have to be, then who would I rather be?

Hindus say that you are born a human after going through millions of other lives. Who wouldn’t want to be a human? We are of course the most intellectual of them all. We can manipulate every living and non living thing around us for our own comfort. We know that life is not just about living but it is also about leaving a legacy. Our intelligence empowers us, gives us the confidence to change our world. The same intelligence however, gives us greed, envy, pride and other sinful traits that are so uniquely human. This struggle of good and evil within the human mind is sometimes so intense that it makes me question the value of intelligence.

So what about being simple non intelligent bacteria? Eat when there is food and go dormant when there is none. There would be no worry of the future and no regrets of the past, life would simply be in the present. But replicating every 20 minutes is crazy. I can barely handle one of me, having thousands of me around is a scary thought. Plus bacteria do live in the weirdest of places and I don’t think I can handle that.

Maybe I could be a predator like a lion. I would be the king of the jungle the ruler of my domain. There would be no one stronger than me and the whole world would be at my feet. But I think I would be a terrible predator because I just don’t have the cruelty in me to kill that newly born fawn just so that I could have a meal.

So how about a tree, the most benevolent of all beings? Trees of course provide us with our basic needs like food, shade, shelter and clean air. What attract me to trees though are their deep roots. Roots that keep them grounded to a place for ever. Like all living forms a tree will perish due to the act of god, greed of a logger or need of a weaker creature. But until that day the tree clings on tight and never leaves that piece of earth that first helped it sprout.

I have lived in 4 different cities in the last decade. With every move there is always a struggle to form new roots. In every move there is that elusive search for the piece of earth that will ground me forever. And every move makes me wonder; if I had to be, why was I not a tree.