Hope & Numb

A system so rotten to the core, it breeds contempt. The sheer scale of misery makes the stomach churn.

Constant abuse of the downtrodden while the elites live in their airy palaces with pearly gates and no care for anyone else.

Everyone in charge of keeping a check is part of the grand scheme to keep trampling the unfortunate and making sure the status quo remains.

Some are lifted up to keep a hope alive that things could change when it never will. But without this hope, the whole system created by them would crumble as it’s built upon the dreams and wishes of the very ones that they have kept from ever attaining an ounce of happiness and freedom.

They are forced to live thinking of a better tomorrow, toiling day and night for the supposed betterment of their future generations. But they do not really want them to have any kind of freedom or lasting happiness, because if they do, who will break their backs day after day for a pittance that does not afford them a basic dignity of living. Forget living, they don't even get to have any sort of dignity in death either!

For the rest of us, who do not belong to either stratum, the easier option has always, always, been to ignore this. Out of sight, out of mind, ignorance is bliss and what not! While I do not associate with this mentality, I cannot help but spare a thought for them because once you empathize, it's very difficult to look the other way. And it then becomes extremely difficult to carry on with our daily lives since we then can see the injustice and oppression happening all around us. So, instead, we end up building walls around ourselves, because feeling nothing is a whole lot better than feeling the weight of knowing. That is to say, numbing our senses is far easier than facing the onslaught of seeing things clearly.

Soul..??

Recently I have been reading and listening to a few philosophical thoughts and also self-styled godmen and gurus, and also a few friends and family. The general consensus is to imply that the inherent destination of soul or atma or atman is pure bliss/happiness/peace/moksha/nirvana whatever you want to call it. And we, as humans, should strive towards it. That is our basic objective in life. 

They also in one way or another state that the inherent nature of the soul is never changing throughout different births. And the karmic theory kind of revolves around this absolute truth about the soul.

This made me think, if that's the truth, then, why doesn't the atman seek the same when it's in the body of a lion or a parrot? Why is it only okay with sustainability of the physical body that it inhabits then?

A lot of philosophical thinkers, especially within the Indian tradition, say the soul and body are different entities. One of the greatest shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita also reads - “vāsāṃsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navānī gṛhṇāti naro'parāṇi | tathā śarīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇānyanyāni saṃyāti navānī dehī”, loosely translating to - “just as we discard old or soiled clothes for new clothes, so does the soul discards old bodies for new.” Clearly marking a distinction between the body and the soul/atman.

But if the soul were to truly want moksha or whatever, why does it not make the body attain it inherently in any other form of life? Why in all other forms is it perfectly happy just engaging in daily survival and activities that help sustain its current physical form? Is it that the soul itself is lost? If yes, that means the soul is corruptible? But how can something which is supposed to be part of the Brahman or the universal singularity which is supposed to be absolute and pure, be corrupted or lost? That in itself is a contradiction. How can something absolutely pure and incorruptible be formed out of integration of impure and corruptible sub-parts? 

I think the soul, if there is something like that, wants to simply exist. Nothing more, nothing less. That is the reason that survival is the biggest motivator for any living thing that the said soul inhabits. You can say that those are bodily instincts, but then how do these instincts appear? Do bodily instincts exist separately from the consciousness or atman or soul? If, life in itself is nothing, and the soul or atman cannot die, then why does a one day old baby have any survival instinct, that too inherently? The bodily instincts come and go along with our consciousness. And without consciousness most gurus would not be able to define what soul is. So we can deduce that consciousness itself is the essence or proof of a soul or atman. And consciousness is indistinguishable from the drive to persist and survive. Where does it leave the atman or the soul as described by various philosophies then, I wonder?

Between Being and Becoming

Recent experiences got me thinking, why do so many of us live a weird life of constant internal contradictions?

The single point of misery for a lot of people is this blatant unexamined sense of being that they become.

I keep seeing so many posts on social media about being who you are, but inherently those posts try to make you someone you are not! People keep talking about karma and how they are manifesting things. That certain folks would be hit by their karmas since they did something bad to them. In all of this they forget that the universe itself manifests in everything around us, including us. So someone causing pain to you is also in a way the universe! 

I keep seeing so much gap between who people are, what they want to project and what they end up projecting. The constant bargaining that they keep doing with themselves. We throw the term “be your authentic self” around too much. But, no one really talks about what is your authentic self? Ask 10 people the question: Who are you? And I bet 9/10 won't be able to say anything apart from their work or education, or worse nothing at all. 

So much effort is being put into being someone that we forget to be ourselves! 

This constant war that we are waging in our minds, seems to be the cause of the mental exhaustion we feel. The more we work towards being someone, the more we get away from who we are!

Karma?

It's been a few months that I’ve been thinking about how weirdly simple yet complex the idea of karma is. You do good, and the universe imparts good upon you; do bad, and you’re damned with worse. It’s intuitive. It doesn’t involve God or any external force. 

But as we delve deeper, do we truly understand how convoluted karma is? My biggest issue with the concept is that it discourages the development of an inherent moral compass. For a believer, how difficult would it be to stay moral if karma were scientifically disproven, if actions had no guaranteed consequences? 

It’s hard for people to grasp that moral values don’t always need a carrot-and-stick approach. People can develop an internal sense of right and wrong without external rewards or punishments. But that rarely happens, because for centuries we’ve conditioned ourselves to expect consequences for everything. It’s understandable that primitive humans relied on this for survival, but it doesn’t hold up in today’s world.

Another disturbing aspect of karma is how it’s used to rationalize suffering. Are we really supposed to believe that children dying of starvation in remote villages are paying for sins from a previous life? Can anyone, with their hand on their heart, truly believe that?

Without diving too deep. I’d end with a few questions for anyone who still believes in karma and its philosophy - 

If karma follows you through birth and death, and is said to determine your rebirth into human form, how did your previous lives accumulate karma?

Do animals collect good and bad karma too?

When do you think your first karma emerged?

When were you first tangled in this karmic spiral?

Where is karma stored and counted?

And finally, if you’re being puppeteered by karma without ever asking for it, how does that make you feel?

Transition

Water droplets making their way down his face

Jumping off from the chin to the wet ground below

His stare unperturbed 

The huge Mango tree some 30 ft away

His entirety was soaked

Forgotten how long he had been standing there

He looked up

Up at the murky sky

The gentle rain

Hitting his face like a barrage

Lit a cigarette, dragged a big puff 

Held his breath for sometime and let it go

Only if letting things go was as easy

Old friends

The lot of them, crazy bastards!

Old love

The only time he felt human

Old life

Everything seemed like a haze

What exactly was he reminiscing about

He heard someone call his name from his back

He turned around

Walked a few steps

Looked back at the tree, with wonder

Walk

A long walk

Full of troubles

You walk nonetheless

What choice do you have

What choice does anyone have

This journey has to be completed

By you, by me and everyone else

What is at the end we already know

Yet we long for a different end

The prize is the journey itself

Lest we forget

Meeting people, building experiences

That's the whole point in't it

The path is illuminated by them

And not by anything else

Yes you may tread away

Into the darkness

Wandering in the unknown

For quite a long time

How do you trace back?

Your people hold the light

For you to see

When you realise you have gone astray

Look for it, the light they hold

For your people will never abandon you

Trust the light and walk back

Hold on to them and make it right

The end isn't any fun to reach

If you haven't enjoyed the starry night

With a bunch of guys that you

Can call your own

Who make you feel at home

Even at the harshest of times!

 

About, Self.

The other night, I was pondering over finding one's true self. And that's when I stumbled across a major roadblock, I think most people would face on this journey. If you ask anyone, 8/10 would say they are good humans, with all the basic values, habits, etc. But how many times do we actually do things that are opposite of this? Very very often! Even if one doesn’t agree on the face.

How is one supposed to find their true self, if they are unable to even see themselves as they are? How many times do we actually agree to being completely wrong or out of line regarding something? This is still something outward. What about the times we were jealous or envious of someone but we wouldn’t show it or talk about it? It’s only something we know about. Can we really think about it and be completely one with that feeling and own it? Unless we acknowledge such aspects along with everything else, how are we supposed to even know ourselves?

So how do we do it? More often than not, this proves extremely difficult for anyone. And this basically links to us being able to accept that we have done something which is not right. I wouldn’t call it wrong, because who am I to say what’s wrong for anyone else! It is also not about always doing the right thing, but more about accepting our actions and introspecting on them. Because, internally, we all know what is right and wrong for ourselves; it is about accepting it externally as well. Without any justification. As and when we keep accepting more and more of our decisions for what they are and not as reactions to things happening around us, we will be able to see ourselves for real as well.

This process is definitely not easy. As we are not ready to be completely liable for all the decisions we ever took or will take in the future. Especially the bad ones. We want some or the other situation to be liable for it and not ourselves. But when we do this, we end up being a reactionary person. Someone who depends on external stimuli, always! And can such a person ever be something on its own? Is this identity individual by any stretch of imagination? If something is defined only by things that surround it, the thing itself does not have any meaning. In its singularity, it has no value.

This also goes back to the previous topic of being able to sit with yourself. When you do that, you are also able to understand more about the decisions you have made and why! Slowly one starts to question their decision. One question leads to another and another, which spirals you down to the base of it all. The place from which the choice emerged. This would be the root of your conscious thought on that topic. This doesn’t seem like an easy process at all right? How many of us can actually do this? But I believe that once we start doing it, on a regular basis, for most of our decisions, in due course of time, every decision that we take, will start stemming from this root of your conscious thought rather than something reactive and superficial. And this is when one will also meet themselves!

It is not only about mindful decisions, but finding out your true self! And the best way to find out about it, at least from my perspective currently, is to know what you truly think about something and how you truly react to it. And not what the situations around make you think and react. It might not even make a lot of sense at first glance, but the more I think about it, the more true it feels. I might be wrong, but that is what I decided. I will walk these never ending fields without a compass with my own sense of direction and see where it leads me. If and when I have to course-correct, I shall do it. But for now, it seems like I am a child running on a playground!