Less is Always More

Recently I had an occasion to revisit our time in Metz, about six years ago. I had joined the local community pool to faithfully continue my 1km lap swimming - which I started when I turned 30. I am 62 now.

As was my nature, my daily swimmings were acts of constant vigilance and improvement - each stroke should be better, each lap faster, each turn at the wall - smoother. I was constantly trying to better myself and it worked. While most swimmers were older, heavier, disgruntled and carried out their time in the pool with dogged determination to survive, live, be healthier, my time in the pool was an act of love and pure enjoyment. I have loved water since I was a child. It took my 27 minutes to swim the distance, give or take about 30 seconds.

Yet, at the back of my mind was always this irksome thought - what about play? I was never bored, but was that because of all this focused trying? What would happen if I remained merely present and swam - because I liked to. So that one day I decided to try just that.

I swam that day without effort, without checking the large wall clock at each lap, with out trying for a better speed, or a sleeker stroke. I swam in effortless awareness of water, myself and my breath - silence and - bubbling out, up and down, up and down. Just that much.. nothing more to do - glide up and down like a Koi Carp.

When I was done - I glanced up and found that I had swum the fastest ever - for me. By 4 minutes!! I couldn't believe that this had really happened. 

I've carried a memory of this at the back of my mind - as I swam, did my evening walks, and even here in Kyoto, where I use Google app to walk the most I can and also the fastest. I wonder why I have never repeated that experiment or been guided by it, in my future activities. Maybe I like competing against myself, maybe it's easier to cave in to habits? Actually, I think it's because it's far easier To Do the Most we can - than To Do Nothing - just Be Water and Flow, with ease, and with the tide.

I am Free

When I was young, I had romantic notions of freedom. I aspired for personal freedom - to be me - whatever that be - a current fad or a specific choice. I did not realize then that this was a very privileged kind of aspiration for one who already enjoyed many freedoms and was guilty of many others.

Today I realize that I am already free in a variety of ways. Let me list these:
I am free from hunger, free to have a shelter, free from ill health. I am free to travel, free (more or less) to protest, free also to know my rights. I am free from self doubt, and free to a large extent from individual fear. I am free to be greedy (in so many many ways), and free enough for intense self criticism. I have an independent conscience and am free to express, especially moral outrage at all wrongs and perceived wrongs - within or without.

I wrote all this as I traveled on a bus to the site of Ejipura demolitions and realised that no society was truly free where basic rights of all were still not secure. Today, I realise that I no longer aspire for freedom - but I strive intensely instead for justice - for All.

The Other

Ever since the recent heinous gang rape in Delhi and its aftermath, I have been thinking.

I have been thinking of what causes such senseless violence, what causes people to fill streets, only sometimes, and what causes their blood thirsty screams for vengence, castration, and killing. And in each of these cases, I come upon an 'othering' - her and them, her and us, us and them and so on. In fact, now when I stare at the world, I realise that all social behavior relies on this fracturing duality of identifying and separation.

Kabir confronts this separation and rejects it when he sings:

"Ham sab maahin, sab ham maahin
Ham hain bahuri akelaa"

I am in all, all are in me
I am alone and together

or,

"Chalati Chakki dekhkar, diya kabira roye
do paten ke beech me,sabat bacha na koye"

Watching the two grindstones, Kabir cries,
between the to stones, no one survives (from here)

referring once again to the harsh dualities of this world and their grief.

In a similar vein, Advaita Vedanta is based on the realisation of unity of all - self with the universe and the concept of "you are that"; while Lao Tsu in his famous Tao Te Ching talks about a life of harmony when the dualities get unified following the Path. In fact, his successor "Chuang Tzu felt it was imperative that we transcend all the dualities of existence. Seeing nature at work and the way in which it reconciled these polar opposites pointed the way to the Tao where all dualities are resolved into unity" (from here).

I suspect, more and more, that it is this separation between the internal and the external, the within and without, good and bad, man and woman, natural and manufactured, separations of class, caste, language, region, food, culture and every possible fragmentation that we create, which also creates the violence filled society that we see today.

So in the dawn of this yet young year I resolve:

I am both a man and a woman.
I am a harijan, banya, kshatriya, and a brahmin,
I am a hindu, muslim, sikh, christian, jew, jain; I am a believer and also a seeker
I am the rich and the direst poor
I am oppressed and oppressor; victim and the violator, sovereign and the subject;
I am both profound and the profane,
Infact, I am all the other while I am also Me.

Let me live in awareness of this.

Shoes and Saraswati

The other day, I went into my son's room to find him reading, leaning back on his chair, his feet - with boots - propped on his desk. And - I freaked out. Totally lost it. I raved and ranted about disrespect shown to learning, knowledge, to Saraswati herself. Now, this is not very usual behaviour for me. My son went quiet and followed my instructions to touch the table with his right hand, and then to his forehead in an act of repentance, seeking forgiveness. I behaved as my Mom would - and thought I was teaching my son lessons in value systems, cultural and traditional.

This was about a month back. I have since carried the incident in my head and wondered about respecting - learning, feet, hands, everything. Usually the learning that we are all taught to respect is done with our heads and via the medium of books. Saraswati - the goddess of learning is represented by the written word, and her Veena. And of course, it is good to respect these. My wondering has however led to a series of questions.

Are things learnt with head, better than things learnt with one's hands? I remember a New Year's message years back from a friend " Dream with your Hands" .It was a beautiful and unusual wish that I have kept with me since.

Why is touching anything with one's feet considered an offense that can be undone by seeking forgiveness by touching with our forehead. Is the head considered better than the feet, or legs? And why? Again, I remember my great discomfiture when reading Vivekananda. In one section Vivekananda talks of the caste system with the Brahmin represented by the head and the lower castes representing lower parts of our bodies. Is that the origin? Is this the brahmical system of hierarchical categorising that I am propounding, unwittingly, in the name of tradition, culture, and teaching respect.

I now understand that I cannot mechanically ground my kids in the habits of my ancestors. It is ok to not root them in tradition and culture, as long as I root them in their own questioning. What I can teach them, via example,  is a respect for all - all living, all myths, all cultures, all songs, all that sprung from the infinite wealth of natural wonders or from truth and beauty of human creation. I can teach them love, respect and silence.

Three Axioms and a Movie

There are few movies that have impacted me, consciously, more than 'The Last Samurai'. It contains three axioms embedded within its script that are now part of my consciousness, and guide, if not all my actions, substantial numbers of my introspected moments in need or crises. The truths presented here, are not too uncommon - I must have encountered versions of them before. Yet, as presented here, these truths were catalytic to a changed me - changed by realisation and sufficient recognition to make space for them in my life.

The first of these, that I remind myself to use regularly, is "Know your enemy". This principle works at all levels from internal scoping to external arenas, from queries of spiritual nature to environmental emergencies or trampled people's rights. Seeking a knowledge, and understanding the opponent, is a first step towards winning a battle for change. I often have to remind myself of this - either to make time to sit under a tree, or study legal papers on repressive laws, if I am to effectively oppose it.

The second axiom that hit me was about "No Mind". Again, I realise that the purest, most effective actions emerge from instinct and reflex and have less to do with step wise procedural and consciously-minded actions. I have encountered different versions of this again and again through my life. I remember the many times when Bahuddin Dagar would open an eye during Riyaaz and say 'socho mat - Gao' (dont think, sing). This action without instruction sometimes contains the key for right decision and precise, faultless execution. It is this quality that makes a perfect dive, hit the right swara, or paint a fluid Enso - a Zen circle, in a single stroke. The goal of living this axiom is then a life lived in the conscious moment, perfectly.

The last axiom dictates the perfectness of all, that 'is'. There is a beautiful line when the Samurai says that the search in life is for a perfect cherry blossom - and such a life is not lived in vain. And, towards the end the Samurai realizes that 'they are all perfect'. It is man's nature to seek the special, be fragmentised by categories good or bad. Maybe this awareness of the sameness, the universality and beauty in a million stars or a single grain of sand, or every blade of grass or all cherry blossoms, holds the key for shedding both the ego and also the identity that have misguided human history.

I remember many years back, I was headed to a small island in the Amndamans, with my kids. We were staying at a small and very cheap hostel in Port Blair. It was night, and we were in bed listening to the waves and also someone in the next room playing the tabla. Around 9pm the lights went off. There was no pause, break in the tabla playing from next door...the beats continued playfully in improvised harmony to an ever increasing tempo for the next hour or so, to a final crescendo and then silence. I had been listening intently with two tired and now sleeping kids on either side. I remember waiting to encounter my neighbor with curiosity and eagerness. The person who emerged from the room was very young, maybe mid to late twenties. He had been learning Tabla from some guru in Benaras, where he lived, but was presently travelling around in Andamans. I remember asking him about the other islands, and the beaches there. "Are they very beautiful?" I asked, to which this young person replied, "How do you choose between beauty of beaches, or hills, or different days...they are all beautiful" and he said this with a slow and gentle smile.

I have carried in awe this sharing of a stranger's experience, wondering how it must feel? Could this really be right? or rightly experienced? without categories? I now recognise that this might be so for a few rare souls and that it cant be found be seeking - only becoming.

Impartial Immorality

An absurd conversation with my fourteen year old took a turn when she declared, “ I want to be Immortal” –

I said “that’s not possible”

She said “then I rather be reborn again and again and again – I hate the thought of my body rotting with the soil”

I said “that it will anyway”

She said “then I prefer my brain not to rot”

I said “that too will”

She said with an irritated look “ you know what I mean – I don’t want my mind to disappear!”

I said “Since I do not believe in any particular religious model, it is probably true that we all just disappear into nothing – this could serve a purpose; if people were conscious of their mortality then they would lead better lives”

And then she said “ If there is no afterlife, or promise of a better after life, why should people prefer to be good. There needs to be a reward – that is why religion is good. People are bad for the expected reward like wealth, power – whereas there is no reward to being good except the satisfaction of being good – the only thing is if they are not caught then they can enjoy being bad!”

That stumped me!

I asked “ Do you think if a person is dying they would not want to be good”

A cheeky smile and “why should they??”

Diminishing Death

“ I have to be aware of my own irrelevance and fight it” – Satyadev Dubey.

I stared at this quote on the pages of a Prithvi Theatre Calendar 2009 ‘Mad Mad World of Satyadev Dubey’ with a strange discomfort, a stirring of a hidden resonant chord, an uncanny feeling of an unacknowledged self stepping out to confront me. The calendar pages carried stark B&W images of a man, beautiful, virile, arrogant – the mad SD. I sat mesmerized in the darkened office, flipping and staring at the images and quotes of a man who is considered by many as father of modern Indian theatre.

A year back, maybe a couple years back, I was at Rangashankara for a performance of a Greek tragedy. Besides me sat a well dressed man, old, silver hair, frail. A friend whispered to me “ That’s Dubey – the director”. I shrugged – uncaring. I am not a theatre buff – give me music anytime, especially long solos in vocal Hindustani and I cannot imagine a better treat. So, I was fairly unimpressed with a famous director sitting next to me. I remember exchanging a few pleasantries – nothing memorable. Now the same face was staring at me from a desktop calendar, decades younger, stronger bearing, glint in eyes, full of energy, power, fire, proclaiming arrogantly “ I am the best, its not an act, it’s a fact.” I am hypnotized, captured – by these images, this man that was, as also the echoes within. What happens to that fire, that blazing energy that vanquishes impossibility? Where is that person, once captured and immortalized by a lens, and the spirit that proclaimed these words? How did that person become this person that sat next to me?

It occurs to me that death comes to us in tiniest, immeasurably small measures, in every moment lived, with every inhaled breath. Death is not a curtain call to a grand production called ‘Life’ which is lived out to a grand climax – it is imprinting, tagging us as we journey along, either plod or dance, in diminishing moments towards a certain finality, a death. The curtain begins to fall even as the play begins. Now death is not a finale to living, but an end to a cumulative process of ending – more approachable, acceptable, familiar, and even comfortable. No need to fear swimming dark currents of an unknown, we are already swimming, unaware, in an unknown towards an unknown - and it is easy. In living, we are dying and it is as it should be.

What would be frightful, unbearable, would be a curse of being eternal – to have infinite leisure to do whatever one wants, without a certainty of an end – of an undefined culmination that hides, plays, diminishes slowly but can finish in a fierce crescendo or a gentle, hauntingly prolonged note. To have the possibility of an unexpected thrown in to every moment makes the journey worthwhile, the impossible worth conquering, a moment rapturously lived.

So in this play the life proceeds – in an ever engrossing time-pass, irrelevant and therefore amusing, a play between rights and wrongs, just and unjust, black and white. I stand in front of a mirror and stare me down – I try to seek death hiding and diminishing me in diminutive measures - the disappearing light from my eyes, the grey in my hair - and I laugh! Death is revealed in hundred lines that my face breaks into, webs about my mirth. I have tagged death!

Sacred Secular

I am a self proclaimed agnostic...maybe there is a God, or many Gods, a spirit that guides us, or a greater truth that beckons us. I have decided that if this whole damn life business is just a Maya, an illusion, then let me be illuded, deluded, play the part - as if its real - participate in earnestness in this great time-pass. I seek no liberation, no salvation, no enlightenment, no heaven beyond now, no hell to guide my moral force. And yet, can I really discount the religion and culture that fashioned me - that unerringly still guides my path, untangles my rights from wrongs? I dance to a background orchestra, chorus of all my ancestors that I call my conscience. My conscience is my only true mentor, a guide to what I will and I will not do, boundaries that I can never cross, at least in my imagination. My imagination itself the sheet on which I lay down my paints, my lines and its vastness is bequeathed to me by my past. This past that put me in direct play with the entire vast universe, animate, vibrant, where all roles between all its substances, are continually interchanging, a rock could one day be me, and I - a scuttering cockroach - all apparently in a blink of an eye, in seamless movement of time, backwards, forwards, across dimensions and multi-dimensional.

Yet, I get ahead of myself. The background first, since all of this has a purpose - an agenda, as do many of my blogs. A dialogue in quietness with myself to resolve inner questions, or at least phrase the questions better.

I grew up in a conservative Jain joint family. We belonged to a sect that called itself sthanakvasi and swetambar - which means that the family did not participate in idol worship and our monks wore clothes. All our living, actions, inter relationships within the family, with the outside, to the animate and the inanimate world and to the world of Gods, demi-Gods, devils and demons was played out within this backdrop, this stage of being a conservative Jain. It was a colorful world of effortlessly intermingled real and imaginary, present and mythical, spiritual and magical. It effected the way we thought, spoke and acted. There was a singy song for many things we did, like,

One sin to spill water
five to spill milk
countless sins to waste food
if intentionally willed!

and this would have its opposing counter of

One punya for gifting water
five to gift milk
countless punya for gifting food
if intentionally willed!
---
punya = a good deed credit that counts towards one's postion in next birth.

When we spilt milk, we bowed and smeared some of it on our foreheads - that we place you with respect on the top of our being, and intended no offense by our carelessness.

As Jains, we were very strictly vegetarian and staunch followers of non violence. Thus grandmother would rinse her plate after every meal and drink this water; allow ants, mosqitoes to bite her without waving them away ( because they needed to live); the louse we got in our hair as kids was gently wrapped in strips of soft cotton and taken far away to let free; no pesticides were ever used inside our home; we did not eat many vegetables during most year, and for the four monsoon months, we ate no vegetables at all. This was the time when jains of all sects performed great number of fasts, with and without water; it was a time for prayer and purification; time to work off some of the accumulated karma by self denial, and disciplined non-action, because all action involved violence,visible or otherwise.

Through out the year, grand father filled dairies with religious mantra, and these pages were torn, mixed with flour, and fed to the giant red carps in the pools - we stared at the greedy carps in wonder while grandma told us that they were greedy to improve their next rebirth by eating all the powerful mantra stuff. So the fish would become humans, and humans could become fish, ant, bird, or God (enlightened souls). We were told that we were in this endless game of enjoying rewards, or living out punishments for our actions in previous births - only when this accounting was zero (not just equating one's sins and punya) , could we become truly enlightened.

And then there were stories, stories for every evening of my childhood, sitting with a brood of another ten, twelve cousins at grandfather's feet to listen to stories of princes, monks, magic, and the glory of the highest enlightenment - liberation from the cyclical birth and deaths. I only remember asking one question often " If there is no birth after enlightenment, where do you live?" The answer was always " there is no you - so you do not need a place to live" and this completely boggled my young imagination. Could not imagine a no-me! Now I can imagine a no-me even without dying - is this a realisation or a delusion?

This background that fashioned me, I completely rejected, as an adult, in my evolution to be a superior rational being. My living world is guided by mostly rational actions, or at least logically justifiable. In fact, I place a greatest value on both rational thought and consequential actions - in that order. However, I have been denying this sneaky suspicion that often times, my actions are already identified, and then I use reason and rationale to justify them - that is, I am living my life backwards. I remember, this was often a way I approached science. I often instinctively knew the answer - that only left a minor problem of working out the math. Now, it appears that despite my great show as a modern, urban, educated, westernised woman, I am mostly faking this layer over my true self that I had little to do with crafting. My truths, boundaries, texture of my compassion, the depth of my non-violence did not come from the lengthy hours with physics texts. And by rejecting this core, I have somehow broken that thread of continuity that would have served my children well. This is after all the crux of my problem. In rejecting religion, I have somehow failed to rig signposts, shine beacons, illuminate a way with an inclusive awareness of all nature, respect for all props in their maya dance. The importance of self that imbues a modern western model does not acknowledge our minor role in the universal web, or the greater consequences of collective individual drive. It fails to speak to children in a tongue of wise ancestors, separate sacred from the profane, of magical possibility of irrationality, of compassionate responsibility that is larger than a person's singular drive to success. At their tender age, between youth and adult, world beckons them to high exam scores, shiny career options, point them towards job options that will buy them real estate, car, wine - but will they, like me, even know that they are nursing an emptiness of these accumulations, will they have a vocabulary to reach deep and listen - to a voice beyond rationale, reason, to quest for themselves when they have acquired everything and it means nothing? Is this how we have all failed? we, the next generation of parents that have substituted glitzy TV for stories, presents for personal time, logic for conscience?? Have we failed, so terribly?? How do we atone? What should I do?

Zen of Sewing

These days I have taken to sewing...menial sewing on my tiny twenty year old machine-lines and lines of sewing-long, endless straight lines continuing on and on to the whirring of the machine, morning to night, pretty back-achingly non-stop for three continuous days. When I tell friends and family on phone "I am sewing", I get these responses,"you are so creative", "you are so industrious"-yet the work I am doing is fully devoid of creativity-and industry? well, it is work that is marginally useful, but immensely desirable in my present state of being. To focus on a straight stitched line speeding its course at the tipping edge of the fabric, while fingers guide the fabric pushing it along, requires a no-mind attention, awareness in just the moment, and the challenge of being in only-now; in other words, to do it well, is as zen a state as any I know-walking zen, sitting zen, sewing zen. I do not do this well, and I have a prompt signal-a line gone wavery, a fabric slipped away, a gaping hole where a line to infinity might have been...its like a whack of the master's stick, attention brought back, lines resumed, infinity again sought-my life is a journey paralleling the line that I stitch, as smooth and event less as that on the fabric-these days I have taken to sewing and taken it well-there is nothing else I would rather do.

Action and Detatchment: The Gita Way

Its been about a year since I have been completely captivated by the principal idea of Bhagavat Gita - that of detached action, as a way to conduct ones life. Such action is devoid of greed for gain, or fear of failure or loss. It is done purely in spirit of right action, conduct-complete, calm, poised and concentrated in its very self, uninfluenced by external factors, and thus independent of intent or outcome.

At Kurukshetra, Arjuna-the supreme warrior-is filled with sorrow,and grief at confronting his relatives and friends across the battle line. He is ready to renounce war rather than raise arms in violence against his kin. Then God Krishna, his charioteer, mentor, friend, advises him:

Follow the path of your Karma, without pondering on the fruits of that path.

This mythological battle described in the epic Mahabharata has often been seen as an allegory for the battles that we constantly fight-the good versus evil, right versus wrong, raging within.

Or maybe, it is a guidepost, a beacon, shining awareness that lines must be drawn, and battles must be fought, in order to follow, conscientiously the path of right personal action, correct conduct through this passage called life. Krishna warns Arjuna against weakness and cowardice, in facing his enemies, internal demons, in name of caring, and compassion-since both arise from attachments-or Maya, illusion, in the great, eternal cosmic theater.

As the new year begins, I jump into my own Kurukshetra, to play hide and seek with Maya-to run from her laughter and clasping hands, be caught, and then run after her in joy, seeking her flitting, illusionary form, for as long as we do not tire of this Karmic game.