Perception

Suffer and learn

The things we say, every action and every tiny intention behind that action, has the potential to hurt others and in return ourselves. All of these intentions occur at the speed of light and race through our system like electricity through a wire. Most of the times, of the few times when we do put our attention to what we just did, its too late and we mostly notice our intentions in hindsight. Most of us are completely blind to what causes us to behave the way we do, and in turn we think we know exactly what occurs in another person and why they are the way they are.
Most people have perfected the art of convincing themselves and others that they are right. While this skill is important (when needed) it takes away the oppurtunity from us to learn, from opening up to the point of view of others, which could be our blind spot about ourselves. We could be wrong. Furthermore, when aspects of our behaviour are being exposed it is hard to notice the difficulty of the moment and the many reactions, mostly aggressive we have towards the person exposing us. Sometimes even our aggression towards them is justified as defensive, as counter to their attack.
Human relationships and communication are far too perplexing and take up a lot of energy. Often I feel helpless in the face of passing comments - often namelessly said in favour of everyone, but very clearly to the "right" person at the "right" time. While no comments should be taken personally and specially not ones made in favour of a general audience, the intention behind such pettiness (blame game and general whining) has been allowed to affect me, by me. When I seek advice, or to share my irritation and find a solution, people repeatedly tell me that I'm young and naive and too sensitive. I do not know how to dodge this apparent roughness with skill as they have learnt over their hard earned time on this planet.
While social dynamics are to be handled wisely, diplomacy has its limits. I feel I have reached my stopcap several times. The incessant regularity of passive aggressive remarks is almost abusive. Along with that positive enforcement is next to nil.  If I were to advise anyone in my situation  it would be - Leave.

Yet one has to suffer to learn.

That which is, has already been.

Golden Rooster

A morning with a golden rooster is always a good morning. I've been thinking of compiling a series of postcards and here's one.

Good. Bad. True. False.

Yesterday's task from A Course in Miracles - the book I'm reading- said,
I'm upset because I see a meaningless world.

I see a ----- world, but I'm upset because I see a meaningless world.

I see an ignorant world, a chaotic world, a selfish world, a difficult world, a struggling world, a sick world, a surviving world, a suffering world, but I'm upset because I see a meaningless world.
The world actually is meaningless, devoid of any such inherent meaning. Just like my thoughts, these associations, these labels are my own.

In this inherently meaningless world I look for certainty, clarity, meaning on the outside - in books, horoscopes, opinions of those I perceive important, I rummage through the past and look for references and examples. I place people in my situation and myself in theirs, to look for what would be logical and acceptable and wise to do. In the Good World I percieve, I search for the Bad to prove the World truly Good and my perception correct. On coming across Good in the Bad World, I think them to be signs, miracles, or doubt my perception, and lead myself into utter confusion.

But the Truth is beyond both Good and Bad, because good and bad are things I've subjectively labelled onto things, people and occurrences. There may actually be Ultimate Good and Ultimate Bad or may not. But I'm not going to figure them out through my frivolous thoughts about a meaningless world.

This marvellous curious wine-tasting.

 (drawing made on September 12,2012)

Its been difficult lately, to look deeper inside. I had a feeling a few months ago that I was a better person. I was able to look out for my parents, be patient, calm and able to listen and absorb what was happening around me. I was blindly reacting less, and getting a sense of what it was that I'm here to do, when suddenly life took a turn. I was following all the advice, the signs I saw and  I walked onto a new road, a road that was going much faster. Don't ask me where it's going because if I knew I probably would be more comfortable on it. It's exciting, there's people with me, love and even tonnes of arrows pointing straight at the spongy grey clouds within, those things that prevent me from being true. There's the right amount of bait - work required, challenge with help - to keep on going, with equal amounts of difficulty.

Each day, I see more of the buzzy, fuzzy issues that keep me from sharing love, general love, with those around me. Comparison, Jealousy, Wanting attention in a particular way, Certainty, Safety and Expectations of Undying Commitment... these things that choke the flow of life and make it boring to live. These things that makes our friends our enemies; into people we need to be wary of and our loved ones into people who are out to get us. Each day I notice how my mother's worry has become my own but in its own distinctive way. You know, how mother's can worry endlessly when they don't know where you are and what you're doing - wondering if you are safe, or cooking up things like you don't care for them, or have abandoned them. OK, If you're mother doesn't feel like this, that's great. I have the same anxiety about friends and lovers.
This happened just when I thought, I was going the right direction, somewhere, somewhere over the rainbow.

A friend said to me the other day, "How do you know you are not in the right direction still? And what makes you think that you have regressed instead of progressed?"
My thought was "because it feels so uncomfortable and at times unmanageable. I react irrationally and sometimes I'm plain ridiculous. I lose sense of that space from which I can see things from, with more perspective, than just my limited hormonal or emotional one. Very often I'm caught in a bubble. A bubble-like state of being separating me from what is really happening. I'm peering out of it, everything looks warped, chaotic, Wrong. I take leaps into these uncomfortable places and doubt catches up on me. There is no way to be certain of anything"

There's no way to conclude what I'm talking about here. I'm just on a road. But there are a few words I wrote to a friend in a letter, which concluded that letter.

Nothing on this road is what I planned, or chose with my intelligent thinking. But I try to grasp it, understand it, analyze it, in some form of thinking so I can hold it and say - Look! this is what I've got. This is who I am. I forget that this is life's plan, with me.
Why you and I can share this even after we have enough reason not to care? It's because we share Love. Real Love which is for our brothers and sisters, co-travellers in the journey of life and most importantly our neighbours. All our friends, parents, random strangers, lovers are firstly our neighbours.

Love thy neighbour.

If I can only remember this when I'm facing a lover, my mother, the autorickshaw wala. I will remember, Love doesn't aim to possess but support and enable others on this marvellous curious wine-tasting called LIFE.

Reality is mostly like a hunter looking for a moment of vulnerability - Adyashanti.

The Guest House - Rumi

Buying my lottery ticket.

To be able to look beyond my comforts and needs even to merely execute a chore for Papa, to be able to work through discomfort, to think beyond myself requires great strength. In the presence of the Will to do so, the Way there wasn't clear and when I could see the way, the strength was wavering. Often I have failed my aim. Thank you for a glimpse into the way to this possibility.
As they say, to win the lottery one has to at least buy the ticket. Infinite Gratitude.

Kala Mandala 4,6 and 9

Riots of colour that began as playful peices to hang up in front of the bed. Something I like to see first up in the morning. Many petalled unfolding brightness containing one and all and many. An ongoing experiment. These are 4,6 and 9.
 Last year I made versions with people's names in the centre, people I missed and whose words I kept as reminders to keep working on myself, like a personal direct line to them. The one I made with Yusuf written in the centre is on the left side bar of this blog.

kala mandala : 

kala is time.

kalla is art.

mandala is that which surrounds the centre, a space, a way to organise.

Somewhere over the Rainbow

(click to listen to the song on youtube) 

Somewhere over the rainbow 
way up high
And the dreams that you dream of 
once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow 
blue birds fly
And the dreams that you dream of, 
dreams really do come true

Someday I'll wish upon a star, 
wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
High above the chimney tops is where you'll find me
Somewhere over the rainbow 
bluebirds fly
And the dreams that you dare to, 
oh why, oh why can't I?

Well I see trees of green and red roses too,
I'll watch then bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

One's daily life is the realisation of the ultimate reality

[excerpts from an email]

Knowing what to do is not enough, and even reading what I have to do many times over is not the same as doing it.

Confusion sometimes can be a step leading to clarity.

"Attaining this place, one's daily life is the realisation of the ultimate reality [genjokoan]. Attaining this place, our daily life is the realisation of the ultimate reality."

 

-To Forget the Self by Dogen Zenji in The Buddha and His Teachings.

Everyday questions from one's daily life have often helped unlock profound truths. Starting from Buddha finding sickness, death and asceticism on his journey on an average day. To disregard these events might not always be the wisest thing to do. However, if one is overwhelmed its not a fair place to think from, I agree. To be able to discern why the event is significant and what it teaches us, an ability to do so has to be developed through practice on a daily basis - the ability to see things as they are.
Yet, nothing is certain.

Zen says truth has nothing to do with authority, truth has nothing to do with tradition, truth has nothing to do with the past - truth is a radical, personal realization. You have to come to it.

Knowledge is certain; the search for personal knowing is very, very hazardous. Nobody can guarantee it. If you ask me if I can guarantee anything, I say I cannot guarantee you anything. I can only guarantee danger, that much is certain. I can only guarantee you a long adventure with every possibility of going astray and never reaching the goal. But one thing is certain: the very search will help you to grow.

I can guarantee only growth. Danger will be there, sacrifice will be there; you will be moving every day into the unknown, into the uncharted, and there will be no map to follow, no guide to follow. Yes, there are millions of dangers and you can go astray and you can get lost, but that is the only way one grows.

Insecurity is the only way to grow, to face danger is the only way to grow, to accept the challenge of the unknown is the only way to grow.

Osho Dang Dang Doko Dang Chapter 7

You are not what happens to you ...

Aug 21, 2012
The last few days have been marked by strange happenings. I've stopped taking my medication for thyroid, after a discussion with a friend. He was saying there is no difference between my father who takes 17 pills a day - to walk straight, go to sleep, breath right, thin his blood and I, who takes one pill to produce enough thyroid hormone to keep me awake, active and free from the feeling of thick flow in my arms, the feeling of blood moving thick, low bp.
I had no answer. I had only accepted this remedy for a while so as to let the moment pass, the moment made of many small moments - a performance at my heels, watchful mentors who were teaching us ballet like clockwork, 43 degrees of sun, my father in hospital who needed my love and attention and probably general loneliness. I let the grueling moment pass, I surrendered, I gave up, knowing I couldn't handle all this just then.
And now, post this conversation I've stopped taking it. The pill isn't going to cure me anyway, why take it? The thyroid pill isn't going to go to my thyroid gland and say, "Hey mister! you're making less of that stuff I really need to be up and about."Its just going to give me my daily fix and let all the dust rot under the carpet.
So that's that.
Walking in a crowded place feels weird, people moving really fast and animated. My fingers feel thick and heavy as my arms pendulum and co-ordinate with my feet. To think I'm a dancer who is tired in climbing a flight of stairs is embarrassing. But that's how it is now. Squeezing a lemon and even typing this text out is tires my wrists.
Days like today, when I went far to fetch a few things, gently through the rush and the maddening crowds, sometimes, like today, make me feel like I did something. Took a step against it all. A sense of accomplishment. Exhausted but happy.

 Spending time feeling these sensations, meditating, Tai Chi and even a conscious slow long walk helps feel more and handle more discomfort. It grows and grows and grows till I can bare it no more.
Something like this was happening in February in Goa.

(drawings from Goa 11-12 Journal)

Gurunanak Hospital, Bandra, 10th August 2012.

This is what happened yesterday.

I've just woken up feeling tender, as if my skin peeled off me. As if I were just born. The windows and doors have been shut, for noise penetrates and disturbs me. The fan is off, even the mildest breeze feels harsh. I'm cold, sensitive and at lunch I couldn't taste my food.

This morning as I woke up I felt sad. Not recognizably so, just tired, spacey, dazed. There was no real reason, so I pinned it to finding mentions of a former lover with a new woman on a website.  This anger- sadness turned around in me as I tried to sense where it was and what it was. But it was time to get ready and leave for the hospital where my father had undergone a Bronchoscopy yesterday.

On route to the hospital I told my cousin that I'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed. It hadn't been long since I stopped seeing somebody and eventhough I've willingly let him go, knowing we're not the best for each other, him meeting another woman still stirred a reaction in me. I guess its ok, I'm only human. He asked me to play music off my phone and when his compositions played, I felt a denseness consume the car. My eyes were caught in a daze and I'd left the car. No matter what I thought, mental solutions are just that, the feeling of loss was there, evidently. Though somewhere I felt, it wasn't the original cause of the my feeling.
As we inched closer this feeling morphed like a cloud blowing one way in the wind. It morphed but persisted.

We reached the hospital and met father. He was fine, primarily concerned about the Rs. 20,000 he'd spent in one test and one night stay at the hospital. Feeling cheated and accounting for everything that had been paid for, he realised a comb and thermometer had not been claimed.

Somewhere around this time, I remembered what was so rotten about this morning. The second before I woke up, I heard on the phone "he's dead". It was part of a dream. It was about papa. I've had these dreams many times and people said if you dream death, you add time to their life.Well, I just left it at that - a dream.

At this moment, a nurse walked in and said Papa needed to get a shot of Vitamin D but the billing was done, so we had to purchase it from the hospital pharmacy and get it administered at the Casualty Dept.  After expressing concerns on how much it would cost and why and who and how, we proceeded.

Papa and me got into the lift, while my mother and cousin said they'd come after checking all was done. We got to the ground floor of the hospital and sat on the seats next to the lift. The sadness returned, stronger than before and almost paralyzed me. Even as I write this I can feel the tightness in my belly, shooting pain in my wrists and a collapsedness. I remember getting teary and feeling like a camera panned across the room and settled over me with great focus. A stillness.

A family walked down the stairs. Each of them holding at least 2 plastic bags. A boy, of about 8 or 9, a woman who's face my eyes wanted to caress , a older woman and man, who faced away from me.

The woman by whom my eyes felt called seemed beautiful at first. Her rounded eyelids, nose and lips. The way the eyelids shut and opened had a softness and smoothness. Once the whole picture appeared - soft steps, droopy posture I figured she was extremely exhausted , her eyelids were swollen because she'd probably been crying or awake all night. When she turned to away, I felt she'd given up.(just don't know what)

The doors of the lift opened and people walked out, including mother and cousin. They pulled out a stretcher on wheels with a frail main on a breathing machine. Late thirties. She was his wife, the boy was their son, the older woman his mother. We could hear his breath amplified through the ventilator. I thought he was going to be well, because they were taking him out of the hospital.

Meanwhile mother returned with the injection and we proceeded to the Casualty Ward. "Yes, it cheaper to the get the injection here than with Dr. Palrecha, plus we'd have to go to him, he doesn't visit homes and he'd charge us his usual fee".

We passed the Radiology Room, X-ray, CT Scan and Pathology Lab and I felt a lot of "heavy stuff" happens here. I've never liked the thought of screening someone with these waves. When the door of the lab was opened I felt as if some of this stuff was leaking.

The Casualty Ward, a large room, no patients, mostly machines. We waited as  the nurse said someone would do the injection for us. A lot has happened here, my sadness had a place.My eyes circled the rims of channels for curtains that curved around each bed.

Then we heard a stretcher being dragged in, inefficiently so, as they bumped it against the walls of the room. They were in a hurry. On the stretcher was the same man we'd seen outside, with his eyes and mouth wide open. This time we couldn't hear him breathe.

They hurried to move him from the stretcher to the bed opposite my father's. They gathered his lifeless arms and legs together before they lifted him. He didn't seem to register anything. The nurse said over the phone "Dr. Amit, please come down immediately". They spoke frantically
- Where were you taking him? Why? Where is he from?
- He's from your ICU. He's your patient only. We were shifting him to another hospital in the ambulance.
- He's got no pulse.

This hit me. They noticed us and closed the curtains. Where I stood I could still see the monitors. Mother was impatient and wanted our work done so we could leave. I was frozen, a mix of curiosity and concern ran through me. On the monitor I could see 3 flat lines, no movement, no sign of life.

I realised I was clutching my bag very hard. A nurse approached and asked us what we were here for. My mother found a person to be urgent with. I was very angry at this. Somebody was dying next to us, may be was already gone, how could we be concerned about time and a vitamin injection! Every word she said made me angry, also because it asked for my attention against what was happening. Finally, I asked her to keep quiet.

- Does anybody know him?
- Who's he with?
-Where is his family?

I felt I did know him as I stood there. Then she came, his wife, walking very slowly as we were walking out.
I wanted to stay, I felt as if I was part of this. I shared her loss.

I didn't know how. Unexplainable things happen in the middle of these events, underneath the things that happened. They spread like explosions over my body, shinning a strong light, shaking out a sense of knowing. Time waited, moments were longer and there are no words for those moments, and no words, actually there is not much understanding of what was witnessed. In a flash of a second, a life gone. Gone where?

Courage and invisible support to the family.

Happy Birthday Papa

11th August 2012

Do we do life? or...

In keeping with the earlier theme of "We are the makers of our fate" here's another question
Do we do life? or does life happen?

Celestial Bodies of Arambol.

The celestial bodies of Arambol: Mars, Venus and Jupiter were visible in a straight line east-west, in the night sky of Arambol. Musicians in various kinds of turbans under various influences, material and immaterial were similarly visible and present. Silent and musical.

Thank you Life. (from The 2011-12 Goa Journal)

Thank you Life.

For the sun and the stars

The sky and the earth

and for everything in between.

Thank you Life,

For giving my the oppurtunity to face

the situations I've been running from *

and for the courage that helps me face them.

For the people who challenge me,

press all my buttons, so I Realise in bitesize.

Thank you for all the people who inspire me,

help harvest the fruits to share with more people.

Thank you Life for your nudging guidance

through challenge to see each day is just another day to learn,

to open up, accept things that change, things that don't seem to

and the things I've been holding onto.

Thank you.

* in this very life time!

All in a shade of red or blue vs Green-Green Borivali.

More drawings of Papa while we wait at various doctors, tests, at nursing homes, and hospitals. Sometimes, Papa gets very angry and sees red all around. Everything that takes place then is a shade of red. At times everything is coloured in a shade of blue.Oscillating from anger to sadness and sadness to anger. Fever to shivers and shivers to fever. We approach the Doctor hesitantly as he asks for increasing dosages of steroids. Another doctor rules that out and asks for tests of Tuberculosis. Often feeling unheard, helpless, or generally clueless we return home with efforts of making peace and developing a little joy in the family. This to my heart, seems like the best medicine. A medicine our family hasn't seen for years. Old patterns of behaviour emerge all the time. Mum often finds me disorganised, messy or generally lazy. I find myself making for the door unknowingly, out of habit, at these moments, but catch myself and accept the moment's discomfort.Today I did go out for a walk, and much prefer the nameless neighbourhood of suburban Borivali, over the young and racey popularity of Bandra, our former home.

The Big Bang has happened many times

 Continued from the wick and wax...
I remember trying to understand if we were actually the makers of our fate, would my father choose to put himself to sickness, or my mother choose to put herself through agony. We might be the makers of our fate at some level, through our actions, our karma but we are surely not in control of it. We are not conscious of it.

The wick and the wax. The glass and the water

In response to a friend's belief that we are the makers of our fate and life doesn't happen to us. My belief (I don't think belief is the best word for what I meant here) : Both are true, but within a certain way of looking.
We are the wick and not the wax. We are the medium, the temporary vessel. Many many layer below identity the particles are the same but at observable reality the glass is not the water.
What if the glass said "the water is mine" or "I am the water".