I was just traveling on the path and you came. You could come since the space is much yours to use as much as it is mine. You could stay for the same reason but you asked me to stay for a while. I did for I am of that nature. You made a request that I could fulfill and I fulfilled it.A while. That could have been all.
But you asked and you asked me many questions. I answered them because you asked. I answered what I knew, what I thought and what I could. I did not ask you to ask or need to be asked. I am fine being silent, and alone traveling through this transient path. You broke my silence and encroached on my loneliness and yet I did not complain.
When you asked, I answered. You did not like my answer. I did not ask you to like my answer or have a need for you to like it. I answered because you asked. I did not answer to make you like it or to like me. I do not think of you less or more based on how you reacted to my answer. I was only thinking of your question and of my answer. That should have been that. Simple. Questions and answers.
When I answered you, I do not cling on to your question – or to your reaction to my answer. I have no power over whether you like it or not. I do not wish to have that power for I do not need more burden than the burden of passing through this transient life. I get no pleasure from wanting to influence you for that too is transient. I have no interest in transience.
Having asked the question, you clinged on to my answer. You did not like it. You were upset that I had given you the answer that I know. How can I give you any other answer than the answer that I know? How can I lie to myself? I did not intend to appease you or to upset you with my answer. When you asked I intended to only answer your question and continue walking.
What other intention can there be when a question is asked? A question is asked to elicit an answer. If you had any other motives than just to get an answer from me, then that is from you. That must be your nature or you may have made it your nature. I do not fault you for what you are or chose to be. Day does not begrudge night nor vice versa. They simply exist. Should we not?
You were upset with my answer and I recognize that. I want to continue my walking. Idleness will delay my entry onto the next path. But you hold me back even when I recognize that you were upset with my answer. There is nothing more I can give from myself but you still try to hold me back. You think you are holding me back but that is an illusion. You cannot hold back what you do not have.
When I continue the path I was on when you came with the question, you think I am walking away from you. I cannot move away from you for I was never near. Like day and night, we were just there. Neither near nor far but just there when it was meant to be.
But you did not want to let me go until I give you the answer that you want. But how can I give an answer that I do not have? I can only give you from myself, not from without. You want something that I do not have and you fault me for that.
If it pleases you that the entire miseries of the transient world should be placed on my shoulders, so be it. I will neither accept nor reject it but I will let it be.
You seek the illusion. I seek the reality. Transience is an illusion to me but a reality to you. So be it, I say, for I have no control over your perception. Neither do I want to control it for that is impossible.
I have seen this in my mind many times before.
And I see it again and again.
Do I have to explain everything to you? I have no explanations but only answers from within.
My answers, not yours.
END.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Chapter
The Judge
It was a cold winter morning. Darkness at 11 am. Snow forming a thick carpet on the ground.Santim, however was freezing not from the winter but from the injustice he just saw dispensed. His face was all blue and he felt his soul withering. His mind numb. ‘Was that the Council of Elders or a flock of cattle?’ The question kept recurring.Unable to make earthly sense, he slowly let his eye lids close and fell into the deep dark bottomless hole . As he kept falling with closed eyes, he kept seeing.
“This is the day when all justice shall be dispensed. All with grievances with anyone including the King shall assemble”. The officious voice promisingly called out to the crowd that began to swell. The trumpet was blown and soon thereafter the 5 fat, aristocrats with fine clothing took their position on the stage. Each sitting in a red, throne- like chair. The Elders. The Dispensers of Justice
.
The roll call always so promising to the innocent peasants, the sheep, the masses. The rituals dazzles the mind and unsuspectingly hides the Farce.
“Your Wise Elders,” begins the paid, fat prosecutor, “This man, Sikara Jamili, stands before ye charged for stealing a loaf of bread. A heinous crime indeed for this land condones no criminal conduct. I ask for the maximum sentence that ye deem fit to impose. O Wise Elders”. Pleased with his speech, he sits down.
Being charged for stealing a loaf of bread, an advocate is the last person he was able to afford. He was blessed with relatives, equally poor that he was unable to even think of bail money. Sikara therefore had decided to conduct his own defence. He had great faith in the compassion and listening ability of the Wise Ones. But for this crime, he has a clean record. All his friends know him to be a kind and honest man. He will relate all these to the Wise Ones and they will understand. They must have children too. He has heard about the Garden of Justice. He has faith in them.
The Wise Elders look down at the accused man in tattered clothes standing in the specially made dock. ‘What have ye to plea?. The Elder in the middle asks him.Sikara mumbles something which inspires the Elder to present a lecture to the crowd. He lectures on the virtue of speaking up in the Garden of Justice” The man attempt to speak again and immediately gets stopped by the Elder, now visibly angry.
“You did not address me as O Wise One! You did not address me as O Wise One! Don’t you know decorum?. And he proceeds to give another one hour of lecture on decorum in the Garden of Justice.
How very often do we sacrifice justice at the altar of decorum and man made rituals?
A sharp arrow darts through Santim’s heart. It does not matter that Sikara is uneducated and unprepared from birth to appear before the Wise Ones. It does not matter he thinks it is important to explain why he stole the bread. It is does not matter. For justice to be dispensed at all, one must begin with the rituals. Decorum. Santim keeps falling and seeing.
There was a loud thunder in the sky. ‘Hear one, Hear all. The clouds are dark and rain is soon to come. The Wise Elders shall now adjourn. All accused to be kept in the dungeon until the Wise Elders sit again in four months from now’,
Sikara’s trial, therefore, gets postponed. The dungeon, Santim knows, is the prison where the accused are kept until they are tried before the Wise Ones. In one cell which is about 12 feet by 12 feet, there can be as many as 10 prisoners. All supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.They may sleep on the cold floor but are given one blanket each. He will be fed with what they call ‘food’. Occasionally, the dungeon wardens will come to kick them around for sport. Since he carries the sin of poverty, he has to atone for it by being punished before being found guilty. For Sikara, the 4 months pass slowly like 40 years.
In the dungeon, Sikara sees the face of Zirasha, his 4 year old sickly daughter, his angel. He loves his wife and his other 4 children too, but Zirasha is special to him. She was born sickly and had a kind of disease which required her to be fed more often than normal children. The Medicine Man had predicted her death one month after birth but Nature intended otherwise. Lack of feeding can be fatal for her as her abnormal stomach walls will be gradually destroyed through lack of food. Whenever she does not eat, her eyes roll until only the white is seen due to the pain. He begins to cry. He does not care that he is punished but why his child too?
‘I have been a useless father’, his mind tells him as he cries. He feels the pain Zirasha must have felt from not eating for the 2 days he was in hiding with the loaf of bread. As a provider, he has failed. Who can he complain to when fate had decided this?
Santim’s eyes gets blurred by the pool of tears. Life is a chain reaction. One event affects the other. We all know it. It is in Nature. When you put your hand in the fire, you know what ensues. When you place you hand in the ice, you know what results. Nothing stands in isolation. Nothing. But Santim’s heart cannot accept why Sikara’s daughter ought to be punished for the deeds of her father. Justice on earth is indeed blind and dented.
Exchanging jokes, smiling a lot and laughing loudly are the domain of the rich, powerful, famous and the successful lot. If you cannot, you will never be one.
Never mind that others are dying from lack of everything.
Its their fate!
Tears fall from Santim’s closed eyes. Man made laws by the exalted few supported by the foolish mob called the people. The People. Where are they now to stand in defence of Sikara? Do they not see that what befalls Sikara crime was poverty and wanting his sick daughter to eat, to live? Not a mortal cares when it touches not their own skin.
Santim did not know whether to be angry or to be sad though his tears had a life of its own. In this confusion, he experiences numbness and surrender to the laws of nature.Then his mind looked at the image of the 5 Wise ones whom the people are applauding and bowing down to.
Five Old Shameless Man, knocking on grave’sdoor – yet unrepenting!
Make an exit when you willingly can for unwillingly you will be exited from life when the Angel of Death punctually knocks on your heart.
Then, you may no time for redemption.
Santim awoke from his drowsiness and realized the Supreme One still wants him alive on this earth. Why? I am a spectator and a traveler on this earth. There are too many scorpions on earth and I cannot ask why a scorpion stings. It is its nature. The rule of nature and the rule of human base desires are at total variance. Clarity in one, confusion in the other. Of all the scorpions, the most vile one is the unbridled “Me” which is the ultimate cause of injustices on earth.
.
What is the rule?
Me. My family, my children,
ME!!!!!
Me!Me!Me!
NO,
These are exceptions to the rule, so says the Balancer.
Santim recalls the evening whence he was not sure if he had been sleeping or awake and heard these voices :
Give me Life, Lord.
[and what will you do if you are given one?]
I want to breathe, experience humanity. I want to taste its joys, sorrows, pain, happiness and all that temporal experiences that is called “life on earth”.
I want to know what is eating, sleeping, growing up and then dying.
[Are you sure?]
I am sure that is what I want. I will be good and I will not cause any mischief on your Earth. For sure I will take good care of earth which will be my mother while I am alive.
[You speak of things that you know not]
I mean these things. Just give a chance. Give me life – any life. I want to taste it.
[You will not want the pain and you will be intoxicated with the joys. You will reject a complete life]
NO. For sure I wont. I know that both pain and joy is life. If it is life that I want, I must want both these things. I will learn from both. I will not get intoxicated by joy and depressed by the pain. I know none of them are permanent. So, please give me Life.
[You will want to cling on to life]
Ha ha. NO. No way. Life is transient and I know it is transient. I will not be illogical to want to pretend what is transient is permanent. As I grow up in life, I will prepare myself for giving it up.
[You speak of things that you know not]
Trust me, I know these things. I just want to taste life. I promise I will live life to the fullest by appreciating everything life has to offer. I will share my joys with others and share their pain. I will praise the Lord by making sure others can taste the greatness of His Creation.
[You will be arrogant and possessive.]
Impossible! How can I ever be arrogant when I as baby will have to be fed and tend for by another human? So, too in old age or sickness. I will be forever humbled by the forces for nature and my limited knowledge of the secrets of life.
I will never be possessive when I know nothing really belongs to me but is on loan from mother earth. I will not be happy when other has none. So, please give me life.
[You will destroy and kill earth and all that you come into contact with. You will upset the balance of nature]
No. No. I will not. How could I destroy when it will be mother earth that will provide for my sustenance on earth? I will leave behind my mark of contribution to mother earth – as a gratitude for sustaining me on earth.I will respect all the other men and women, the flora and the fauna, the seas and the mountains, the animals and all creatures. Trust me and give me Life.
How could I ever kill when it is Life that I want for myself? I am propagating Life and not Death. So give me a body and give me Life.
[You will cause dissension and disunity among your own species]
No, please I will never do that. I will remind myself and others that the body is just a vessel to travel on earth. It is not the real “I” or “them”. I know that whatever the colour of the skin, biologically we all of the same species. I will make sure we all will stick together like a herd of elephants. We will not fight each other. We will help each other. We will not create labels to disunite. Please give me a chance – give me Life.
[You speak of things that you know not]
[Be that as it may, you are hereby given life and shall suffer the consequences of your request. Upon your first breath as you leave the comfort of your mother’s womb, this conversation shall be erased from your memory. You shall live a life on earth and shall die on earth. Life shall you taste as you write the script from your own hands]
Cobwebs.That always comes to Santim’s mind whenever he falls into a state of helplessness.There are moments in his life which seem to overwhelm him and weaken his spirit. Very small, delicate but powerful moments.
There was a time when his business was bad. No customers walked into his shop for 5 months. He panicked. He suffered anxiety which in turn gave him back aches and stiff necks. As a result of this, he was almost immobilized and could not concentrate on his shop. He has his mother, his wife, his children and his 5 staff to feed! Without customers walking in, there is no money. His business was undergoing a challenging moment. Like most human beings, he has allowed the challenging moment to grow into a bigger problem by his mind – worrying.
“There is no problem that you cannot walk away from.
You remain because you choose to.
Most of the time, opportunities appear in the disguised garb of problems”.
He recalls these words he has heard somewhere. He recalls how he cried when he was a 3 year old boy struggling to put on his shoes until his mother had to help him out. And for weeks thereafter he was upset that he couldn’t do it by himself. He had even felt that his mother had taken away his glory by helping him out. There were many moments in his childhood where he had experienced what he thought were insurmountable problems…only to grow up and realize that they were opportunities for growing up.
Many years of blissful existence, we bat not an eyelid, but come one stormy night and we………question the Supreme One?.
Without money, he could only see unhappiness around him. It is moments like these which make him suddenly aware that his business all the while was sent to him by some Supreme Force. He just opened his shop and waited. And for some reason, the Supreme Force has now decided that he should go through this period - a break.He could either worry or know that there is a reason for this break and it certainly cannot be a “punishment period” in the normal sense of the word.
One way of taking out a seed stuck in a choking 6 year old boy is to invert him upside down and pressing his chest hard. Painful experience for the boy.Are we punishing him? If it was so, then almost all medical procedures are punishment”.
People are different. Nature behaves in one way. Humans think in a totally different way.You are born an Indian because you are born in the manner you are born and people call you Indian. The same with the English, Chinese, Austrian, and so on. People give labels to make sense of the world. That’s fine. What cannot be fine is when they take the labels to be Truths of their illusions. The Truth is that all are humans – creation of the Supreme. It is the height of human arrogance to insist on the illusion as the Truth. And there are just too many illusions which we have created. So used to them, we cannot tell the difference.
Labels begin with the noble aim of assisting communication
But end up enslaving humans
And become the cause of mischief and misery
And the immortality of illusions.
White or black. Brown or yellow.A yellow child has all the disadvantages which a brown child does not in a brown community. A Brown child is placed third class in a yellow community. This is determined by the adult of the yellow and brown community. Adults are very often not wise.
The Truth is:
All grow old, and few grow up.
Often, the lines of aging are mistaken for signs of wisdom.
Drunk with illusion they act against Nature’s determination. Solidarity, brotherhood, community – clever ways of the devil to ostracise humans from humanity! Santim wonders, can we not let what is just be?
In a human community, it does not matter if you are yellow, brown, white or black
For that is nature’s determination.
All of you are subject to the same natural laws.
An All Forgiving Merciful Supreme One cannot be “punitive” on his weak servants. Many a time, what we consider as “punishments” are nothing more than guidance and re-alignment of our selves because He loves us. Often, we need to be realigned because we seem to have drifted away from the Path. If we are not realigned, we remain on the off-road and forever we are lost. He realigns those He pleases and leaves those astray whom He pleases on the off-road.
Santim walks around his shop, looking up at his favorite corner. He saw an insect stuck to the cobweb and the spider casually moving towards it. The flimsiest of home, and yet a death trap for the insect. Flimsy as it is, the cobweb traps food for the spider and is a home for the spider to feel safe. In nature, strength is not measured in terms of steels and bars as we often do. Steels and bars can never “break” water. Throw steel into water and it drowns. These are nature’s ways which we never took the time to understand. Such is the way of the Supreme One, if only we understand.
But what need is for the mortal who has been given temporary pleasure on earth to understand the Supreme when he thinks he is a “supremo” on earth?
Santim realizes that thoughts of flimsiness and weakness, solidness and strength are human illusions only. Generalizations become truths in this lazy world. The easy way out is by categorization, for the sake of uniformity and control. In the name of uniformity, we sacrifice Truths at our own peril. Unable to manage diversity, we attempt to impose uniformity in futility. After a while, we tend to become what others say we are and we live a life which our soul is not meant to be. The community garlands us for our evil transformation – the perpetuation of the Illusion.
When the body walks this life in the opposite direction to the journey of the soul,
the soul screams and there is no peace!
Look at the world
Is there real peace????
The cobweb is a constant reminder to Santim that the Supreme One’s language is not merely written in some published book but in the Book of Nature. The Book of Nature is the most glaring but the least read. Nature does not have to operate in the way we understand it. It is our ignorance and arrogance that demands nature to abide to our wishes. We cannot rewrite nature. It is written. Be and it is..
Fools think that by removing the mountain and placing it elsewhere, they have rewritten Nature. The mountain is but a minute part of Nature. The whole Balance is the Nature. Human can never rewrite the whole Balance. Hence, when you tamper with part of nature, you unleash the wrath of Nature in your way. Soon, you shall know if you do not know already!
Each tampering with nature is the expedition of our own destruction.
We, therefore, destroy ourselves with our own hands.
Santim recalls, somewhere it is written that the devil was cast out of the Garden due to his arrogance. Instead of submitting to the Supreme One’s grand Plan, he wanted to improvise and judge. He had his own ideas contrary to what was in Nature. He could not let what is, be. He cannot accept. In futility, he is doomed to proof the validity of his invalid ideas. Likewise today, acceptance of what is, is condemned as passive. One cannot see the dynamism of acceptance. Refusal to accept is rebellion. Rebellion is the cause of internal chaos, the birthplace of the Ego. I am the “I”. It is the “I” that must be seen and heard.
Desires and Egos
The inspiration to move in the direction of the illogical, the impossible,
the fire of hell.
Hell and heaven is more than a word. It is more than a concept. Many go through it in this lifetime and many others keep thinking that it is only a place somewhere in the Otherland. It is an experience. You write it in your script of life as you live every second. You ignite the fire and you plant the flowers. You. Both can be addictive and habitual. Intense anger and hatred burns up the chest like a fire raging within. Giving and loving brings forth the smell of the flowers in the Garden of heaven.
A heart full of unconditional love,
Unjudging,
Accepting,
Is a garden of peace – heaven.
Many utter the belief of the Supreme One on their tongues and yet do not understand unconditional love. They actively deprive others what they want plentiful for themselves.
And what love have you when you deprive the child who is not of your tribe?
And being so, you call yourself a servant of the Supreme One?
Rejecting heaven here, have you in the Otherland?
Being a fool trapped in your illusory body,
you have yet to understand the language of the Supreme One.
Santim Raj, we saw earlier is a wanderer after his own soul. That was in the initial period of his journey. He was wandering after his own soul while his soul was doing its own wandering as was meant to be.The time will come when his wandering and the wandering of his soul would meet at the confluence of understanding – that state of true peace, true existence. Until that confluence is reached, he is destined to be confronted with the duality of his existence – his and his soul’s[1].
He remembers the dream he had. The dream that taught him the fruits of his mind and the fruits of his heart. The mind, a gift from the Supreme, which directs and redirects his very understanding of the creations around him. The heart, yet another gift, that yearns for the Truth and the light to guide him in the hour of darkness. As he basks in the happiness of his gifts, the nightmare came to him.
Everythingis but a duality but for the Supreme who is One.
The nightmare of the mind. The mind that receives and processes all that the eyes perceive and perceive not. The mind that forms a conclusion or a misperception. The mind that has been fed with the thoughts, foolish tales and silly ways of his fathers. The traps within the intricacies of the mind.
1994, they speak of computers. Garbage in, garbage out. How graciously the Supreme sent out messages to the ungrateful servants, yet they hearken not to His message. We see not the mercy of His guidance for we are more excited with the toy. Wow, this is technology! We hear, yet we listen not. We see, yet we have become blind.
Garbage in, garbage out.Truth in, Truth surround.
When are you going to stop clicking the mouse to see what message the computer is meant to relay to you?
Click, click, click all the way to grave.
And who wants to meditate on whether the food for his mind is garbage or Truth? The shield of ego and defence mechanism can only be penetrated with the needle of humility and subservience to the Supreme. The maya of results is a potent distracter, in all its forms, from the path to the Truth. And the enemy of your soul is you.[2]
The virtue is in the doing, not in the expecting. If your doing must bear the results, then you usurp the powers of the Supreme. The servant does, the Supreme dictates. You are but a minute imagination of the Supreme. Accept this or live this temporary life in futility.
The mind that focuses only on the result is prone to egoism and frustration. Achievement leads to egoism. Egoism leads to self worship. Self worship sets forth illusions of godliness, the recipe for self destruction..
Failure to achieve leads to Frustration. Frustration leads to desperation. Desperation, the opposite of patience, becomes the playground of the devil.
But the mind that forgets the objective is easily led astray, like a float on the ocean.
The mind creates and constructs and in construction it prepares the inevitable destruction of all civilization. God’s land is developed and in development, many are left without homes. Home becomes a price to be paid. An investment. Home is no longer shelter for the body but a statement of your status in life. Those who speak of the Supreme even revel in this statement. They support by their doing.
Your doing describes you clearly than a thousand words you speak. You become what you do.
The mind creates a system that purports to serve humans. It argues and it innovates. In time, the humans become slaves of the system, their new master, monster. The mind alone. The heartless mind.
We have established institutions that train the mind alone. We prioritize them. We glorify them. So can destruction be avoided by our systematic planning of the destruction itself?
The nightmare of the heart. The seat of creativity and self-nourishment. The very center of self-destruction and madness. The heart knows nothing but feelings and itself. The pure heart[3] recognizes no in betweens or half ways. It does or it doesn’t. It unleashes passion and power beyond its own control. Santim Raj remembers the death and destruction arising from his friend’s love for his beloved.
Ramana, his friend had fallen in love with Sharina. Both their parents objected to the relationship on grounds of religion, culture and race. Ramana was 26, educated, talented and holding an important position is the business industry. His parents are multi-millionaries and had he wanted, he could just live off his parents’ wealth. And even this, his parents offered him to leave Sharina. It pained his mother that he should want to marry someone alien to the culture of her forefathers.
The entire episode left his mother devastated and his father hopelessly lost. In the sadness and the humiliation her society generously placed on her, his mother died. Ramana left his home which had sheltered and loved him for 26 years to be with a stranger he has known only for 4 years.His love was blind to the sufferings he is causing around him for it yearns only the love of his beloved.
And Sharina? Her entire society was aghast that she would even consider marrying a heretic, a kafir. Her silent mother could only cry tears of begging her daughter to understand. Her father was praying to the Supreme that his daughter be saved from the raging fires of hell. And he had to do something to save his daughter’s soul, even if it means killing her if she went ahead with her blasphemous designs.
And they did. Sharina and Ramana did get married in an unconventional way in their conventional society.They had broken all norms. They have challenged all limits. They have dared to love. And yet in their love, their hearts have hardened to the yearnings of those who loved them and cared for them.
One night, the room rented by Ramana and his wife was broken into. They were both sleeping. Ramana remembers a struggle, a fight and the last words of his wife: “ I will always love you”. When he wakes up, the motionless bloodied, body of his wife welcomes him. And he cries a loud cry that fills the sky, which no one hears.
And you, arrogant fool, think you know what love is?
Santim has read and seen many wars fought on the waves of emotions. Homes destroyed, children mutilated and women humiliated. Fellow humans descending to levels lower than animals by following their hearts alone. Senseless, irrational cruelties evoked by drumming up emotions.The mind swallowed by the passion of the heart. Follow your heart is good advice. Follow your heart is dangerous advice.The mindless heart.
Oh you ignorant man, think you know what the heart is and preach you that alone!
The mind and the heart. The heart and the mind.Which? Why? Santim knows many pretend they have the answers. Santim knows many believe they have the answers. They mistake their journey for the ultimate Truth. Like the wanderer who thinks he has arrived by just walking. So they preach what they are learning, not what they have known[4].
In preaching, they forget to listen but to their own voice, their own dreams, their own mind, their own hearts. Slowly becoming self-centric, they preach and they talk, talk, and talk. Forgetting to listen, they stop learning. Death of learning gives birth to fantasy.
Mouth. You have one mouth and it wants to talk, talk and talk. Alas you forget, the Supreme gave you two ears and a heart to listen! And a mind to think…..
To remind himself, Santim looks into his mind and heart and recalls a poem that he had once written.
