Joy

 

Birds on the line

 When the stakes are high and there is a fine line between dream and fantasy, life and adventure, when you have spent ages sitting on the edge stuck onto the wire waiting for something interesting to fashion out of nowhere, when nothing evades your attention, when you are tired and bored by the drudgery of things, when you want with all your heart to escape - you find something unmistakably filled with joy and rapture and you want to sit on the sunny-side-down hand sure footed and impervious to perturbations and you start to revel in the cheerful smile of your patron, your inspiration and source of desire and you bid them to make yourself a part of their game, you wish to wash away some part of their weariness and cheer them on, to not stop, to touch the finish line, a bit more, little by little, you try to fashion yourself in their image, their infectious joy, their awesome beauty, their freshness and liveliness.

You say you have found everything, you desire for nothing more. You want to become the source of their inspiration, to return the favour. You are a bit uncertain. Can this be so simple and plain? Can the world evade us out of our blindness to the obvious, the pure simplicity of it all?

And you decide to hang on the line a bit more for another day, for another flight, for precision, for another wind perhaps to knock you over, to eliminate all doubts of yourself and theirs, to be sure of their desire to carry you on on their shoulder.

Yoga and Yagya

In Indian thought the highest goal of the individual is to get into union with their higher self. This union it is claimed results in such sublime ecstasy that desire and need for something baser dissolves itself and the way towards a life commiserate with the deep and ever present nature reveals itself and becomes easier to follow.

A little reflection on the knowledge of vedas reveals the centrality of the institution of Yagya. Yagya is usually described as the holy sacrifice wherein offerings are made to holy fire with constant evocation of holy spirits representing various important elements which are essential to life like Sun, wind, rain etc.

In my own interpretation, I consider Yagya to be an exchange. Whenever two or more agents come together to exchange their gifts, the products of their labor, with each other - a Yagya is seemed to be have performed. The goal of all Yagyas is Yoga.

The Yagya is performed when a teacher pours his knowledge out to the pupils and pupils try to imbibe as much as possible vis-a-vis teacher. Yagya is also performed even in the simple act of eating when a morsel of food is joyfully received by the body - it is the exchange of the all providing nature and yourself. Yagya is also performed when an artists picks up his brush and paints the canvass - here it is the exchange between the artist’s imagination and the viewer’s imagination. Yagya is also performed when a customer and a businessman come together to perform a mutually beneficial transaction.

I understand that so emphasising a symbol which is so representative of a particular way of life carry the possibility of alienating others but it is so simple a symbol and so simple an observation that anything and everything of value we do is made possible by the tacit compliance of the nature. I think humans of all disposition and varieties will find resonance in this interpretation of life.

Whatever we do, if the act itself carries any meaning, is as much done for my own benefit as for the benefit of some other. Nothing in this world can live on its own without the help of others.

When we realise this and act accordingly with utmost goodwill, with no malice towards anyone, our acts appear as sacrifice for something refined, good and pure. These Yagya’s we perform on a daily basis are our means to the final union, the Yoga.

I also believe that our bodies mark the passage through which the pure elements can reach their goal - the highest self. What is breathing but the most important act to continue our lives and what are lives but a journey our spirits take to dissolve into the divine. This whole life then becomes an elaborate Yagya.

I also believe if someone somewhere will find meaning to life, they will stop to wonder at the possibility that there is no higher meaning to life that living most gently, lovingly and with utmost care.

If we consider universe to be a perfect thought and human to be the most developed and advanced life form and also believe that there cannot be two perfect thoughts and hence to conclude human, in its present form, is a stage aspiring and trying to imitate the perfect thought i.e. the universe.

Dreams

Science 

Science has come very far but still it cannot be said how far along it still has to go. 

We do not understand gravity, particles like photons and electrons, we know nothing of singularities like interior of black holes and Big Bang and do not have an intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics.

We do not understand consciousness. We do not understand beauty, love and pain. We do not understand life and we do not understand evolution. A virus has caused much destruction and there is no cure of cancers.

We do not know how deep mathematics goes and if all the knowledge and experience can be expressed within its purview. We do however understand as a symbolic game it is unbounded and is the only language in which much of our understanding can be definitively expressed. Still what new forms it can take and how its complexity may unfold, we yet do not know.

It can be arrogant to assume that a life form like humans can have a total understanding of everything in the universe. Still the yearning after knowledge has been the fundamental and most distinguishing trait of our life form.

The world

With progress of science there have been tectonic shifts in ways we live. The varying uses of electricity, developments in transportation and communications and inventions of newer materials would all seem magical to a person from as recent a time in human history as say 18th century.

Still, the world is rift in conflict. People steal, deceive and fight one another for a chance at better life. Though no one can definitely say what better life is, for some the material comforts are paramount and for some spiritual longing takes precedence. Most of the constitutions of the free world identify freedom as the most fundamental right of every one of us. Yet it must be asked what would freedom amount to when whole communities are living in poverty or are sick and the wealth and power of others causes much envy.

Education is considered as a great emancipator but what would even the best of education be to the masses who have no opportunities to get out of the unfortunate situation they find themselves in. The responsibility of job creations is mostly left out to the private businesses. But businesses aim to get the most done with minimum possible workers so they have no incentive to generate employment in numbers that addresses the problem in any meaningful manner.

This has resulted in a state where millions suffer in most abject and desperate situations while some maintain impossible standards of living. The artificial boundaries between nations sustained due to different views formed out of often times limited political and social imagination and a fundamental failure to recognise that humans everywhere have much more in common than what sets them apart results in a world which is highly lopsided and unequal.

The problem

This inequality within and amongst nations is like an active volcano waiting to explode if some fundamental changes are not made to our organisation of the world. Some countries have managed to reap the benefits of their geographical and historical situation at the expense of the others. It is a well known fact that capital grows on capital and capital attracts all forms of creative energies to itself more strongly than anything else. This means even the best of talent goes into serving the causes of the machinery that sustains and maintains this inequality.

Entrepreneurial innovation is important and must be allowed the freedom to grow to build better products and ease standards of living. These, however, cannot bring respite to the masses on an immediate basis especially those who are struggling with poverty and disease. For that there is a need of political, social and economical reimagination.

Dream

The people of the nations must come together to allow for greater movement of people and resources. The political north is abundant in resources but supports much less population as compared to the political south. By allowing greater movement of the people and recognising the need for employing talent to solve problems of developing world, there is a chance of a more equal and just world. We must realise that people suffer in poverty not out of will but due to misfortune which is man made. It is our ignorance which sustains and perpetuates poverty and it is our empathy and understanding which can remedy it.

Those who can find employment anywhere in the world must be allowed to relocate and work. Those who cannot find work at sustainable wages must be provided for by an international system of rationing. The relevant technologies and innovations in financial engineering can contribute significantly to address these issues as well.

A positive movement with particular aims and goals must be developed. This will require combined efforts of academics, politicians, policy think tanks and a consensus building among citizens of the world. The United Nations can be a significant partner in this process but it has been plagued by labyrinthine procedures and processes which renders it ineffective to make effective decisions. It often times even fails to stop wars which are blatantly immoral.

A world needs to be envisioned where each child born anywhere in the world receives good education, food and care. It is to be recognised that meaning of economics is judicial allocation of resources amongst all. The economic system where people get filthy rich on the labor and hard earned money of others without proportionately giving back needs to be significantly reformed. I believe that when the struggle for survival is significantly reduced, there will be a great unleashing of the creative energies which will result in much art and joy. We may then even be able to solve the deeper mysteries of universe and being.

A passage

There is a philosopher who reading my blog posts commends me on my joy in realising in experience the many claims in Indian tradition, who advices me to work in freelance rather than in constraining environment of academia. Jubilated and intoxicated I let my guard down and stereotype a whole tradition and way of living as cynical and the philosopher stops responding.

There are two philosophers of science who are probably wondering at a new found interpretation of a principle which shaped our modern science of cosmos and are not sure to either dismiss it as trivial or consider it to be of profound import.

And there is a girl in some corner of the world surely waiting for me to knock on her door and me who doesn't understand the constraints of girlhood and wonders on the special role they have to bring life into the world and nourish and cherish it.

And then there is this passage -

"According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a crime is committed against a Dalit by a non-Dalit every sixteen minutes; every day, more that four Untouchable women are raped by Touchables; every week, thirteen Dalits are murdered and six Dalits are kidnapped. In 2012 alone, the year of the Delhi gang-rape and murder, 1574 Dalit women were raped (the rule of thumb is that only 10 percent of rapes or other crimes against Dalits are ever reported), and 651 Dalits were murdered. That's just the rape and butchery. Not the stripping and parading naked, the forced shit-eating (literally), the seizing of land, the social boycotts, the restriction of access to drinking water. These statistics wouldn't include, say, Bant Singh of Punjab, a Mazhabi Dalit Sikh, who in 2005 had both his arms and a leg cleaved off for daring to file a case against the men who gang-raped his daughter. There are no separate statistics for triple amputees." - The Doctor and the Saint, Arundhati Roy

And the world stopped and I lie almost paralysed overtaken by emotion. What dreams have I been weaving of ridding the world of all evils imagining writing, nay day dreaming, from the comforts of my parent's home. Being 30 and still with not a clue what the next day would bring. I shudder, nay I can't continue reading for I know not what would this dreamer do to me. Taking out of context, I almost dismissed Ambedkar to be too bitter and sour and taken refuge in believing that there is definite greatness in Indian civilisation. But four pages in, this tiny book holds up such a magnificent mirror.

I would have consoled myself had this been fiction but these are facts and with what matter of factness she writes the passage. And what do I but dream with no hope but to find resonance somewhere, to hit a chord somewhere and bring to end this shameful spectre we run in name of humanity. But what else can I do.

And tears have not stopped flowing.

Looking into the sky

The sky is always a sight to behold, in daytime and more so at night

Of all the elements it is the most clear, untainted by anything gross

It is boundless for what binds it are the horizons that are mere illusions

The clear blue is magnificent and more so that dotted with white strokes

There is never a dull moment in the sky except when it brings the joy of rain

That rain which so quenches the thirst of the Earth, is the act it does in some style

Slowly the clouds gather and hide the Sun, dimming the lights

And then one drop at a time, giving the sensation that it will soon start pouring

The clouds come home and disperse once again to restore the sky in its glory

The sky which inspires life to take flight and be free