Letter to a Non-meditator Friend

Dear

I understand what it is to be staying without family ... or knowing there is none around if you want to take a year off from work.
Our situations are different, but I can imagine the plight. One thing is for sure, it does not take just a day to come out of such situations, or feelings. This feeling of plight, even when you are well-placed currently, and more sensible than most, is sometimes too abstract, and one doesnt know exactly what to fix, it seems to permeate everything to some extent.

It will be comforting to know that you wont have to go around changing others or everything around you to gain happiness, you have to take over control of just one thing, your own clarity of mind. What usually happens is that we keep going around in circles, we perceive some people as good, then we start doubting that goodness, and then something crops up again and we replace that trust.
Again the same circle starts of evaluating and revaluating our feelings for someone, and revaluating ourselves against them. All this and more happens when we live superficially, What is it to live superficially, lightly? When we have to constantly change our evaluations of things and people around us, when there is no constancy, when this happens one should understand one is in shallow waters. If one is facing emotional upheavals, one is living superficially. It is not Grand living, it is not noble living. One becomes anguished and that anguish spreads to others. One not only feels vulnerable, but also becomes vulnerable, getting deeply influenced even by small seemingly insignificant matters that steal one of one's vital energy.


It takes lot of patience to steer yourself out of such plight, to become one of stainless steel, it is akin to crossing an ocean, or getting in to a top B-school, it takes effort in the right direction. Some people have a better vessel than others, support of partner, family, children make this ocean easy to cross. What dissuades us from understanding what is right is our own fear of the consequences, greed and delusions about things, they grasp a hold we cant resist. Some moments of clarity may come, but they are deeply overshadowed in everyday humdrum.

One has to learn to expand these moments of intelligence until it spreads to each situation you are facing, when this sensibility that comes with insight, detachment and every-present joy, penetrates and inspires each action you undertake. There is a way to it, and it takes practice.

As long as you know you are on your way, storms can keep coming!

Lv
Pooja

As I Change

This Saturday I went for a group sitting

Finding verse to catch the framework ...

May be there is harm, may be there isn't. This morning I wondered if I'd like to skip a year of hardship and move to the good ones ... it is the same, it is the same ... it is not as if bad is bad or good is good ... for me it should all be the same.

Revisiting

Overwhelming ... powerful ... some connexions stir you, make you cry

Being Born in this great land of dhamma, feeling the air, the soil ... the presence, the sensation


Powerful existence, vigor, placid calmness, humble Himalayas, deserts, depths, sun, rain, scent of the soil, blessing ... the land of Gods

#Am back from a retreat and almost cried out of gratitude. India has been the place for so many seekers in the past, humble home!

Sthit Pragya

When it all passes by and the consciousness remains still-observing!

Starting with identifying just One moment of Clear Observation ...usually it is difficult to identify if you observed well. The moment of clear observation comes when the mind is temporarily free from defilement- greed, avarice etc. giving way to some concentration, focus, some power of will over the mind, some awareness to observe the non-stop reel of thoughts, some stillness of the mind...
Thereon, when one stills the mind, to objectively experience whatever experience is available at hand-pain or pleasure, pleasant or unpleasant, that one discovers a new dimension of observation that does not directly 'suffer' the 'experience' but is just aware - a still mind unaffected by pain, pleasure...very rare moments, very delicate moments for a starter. Even starting to identifying these moments seem like a move closer to being right, only with practice can I sustain this observation even in strong, more intense experiences. Right now, I cant hold it even if I start speaking to someone, it is only when I am quiet ...

So I realized with an oz of deeper understanding the stith pragya must be reference to a person who could sustain this equanimous understanding even in the most intense human experiences, in all experiences in fact! These people conquer not only terror or torture or bliss or elevation, but establish themselves in concentration and awareness. Thus, they fathom not just the conscious mind but also the sub-conscious. Sportsmen too sometimes use somewhat a similar technique to conquer boredom, to achieve concentration, and to better their game through practice, the will to take one more lap, even faster

Another winter afternoon passes by

I hope to spend this evening with some yoga, plan to take no dinner ... and to sleep with a clear, calm, and aware mind

sans desire to be ... or to not be (something/anything)
Loads of metta

#read some quotes by Nietzsche ... think he was seeing some profound glimpses, glimpses that open up the pathway to wisdom ... towards becoming a true saint )

Once upon a time was born a fairy child ... she wailed on her birth, wailed like wild. And then she grew up and she became lady luck. Fair ways were her fare and love and comfort she will share.
And then...
Aye old man, before you could tell she grew old, and by and by dwellin in joy, she left this world.

Why did the fairy die in joy? Fairy can be assumed to be a being with a lot of goodness, apart from the wings. Even as the best of us suffer sadness, I think she made no extra effort to keep herself happy. It is so evident. This is unlike ignorance (esp. for women). I like to think kids are innocent, but even they sometimes kill ants.
But then I am assuming to know … like we laugh at older myths wherein people believed the heart to be the organ of thinking before they discovered it was the brain, our coming generations will have reasons to laugh at us.
It is inexhaustible. Some make good progress...but do they know?? No. We are all seeking to be aware.
Stick to your values, and keep back straight when you walk till then. I will be writing more stories, and just little stories

A friend asked me to write on grief, of separation, or earthly desires and the post came up. I said sadhu sadhu sadhuI am writing from office and it seems years since I last wrote. I see How much being in media had affected my writing and has made it impersonal ... I think it is also because I feel less of an individual and more a part of the environment and the world now, it is a shift in sensibility with significantly lot more information, never enough though.
lv

A Night without light

Its winters

Chilliest winters as far as I can remember. This year in Himachal (we had gone for a field trip there to collect data for our dissertation, on Kangri) we stayed in villages, though the main city wasn't far frm there, but it wasn't as chilly as it is right now in Delhi. It snowed in Kashmir, heavily, and it is 2 C here. man! without electricity on fourth floor with big windows and a door covering almost all breath of the room with nothing just palm trees outside, it is beautiful yes, but very cold.

Studying linguistics, in comp room, they hv electricity here in A block, it is past 12

posting pic o me and classmates in himachal, above