Garden of Your Life

I thank Kishore Shah for sharing such beautiful thoughts with me. Love the clever usage of puns and the profound wisdom underlying the words.

A Guide To Planting the Garden of Your Life

PLANT THREE ROWS OF PEAS:

1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of soul

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:

1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:

1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another

NO GARDEN IS WITHOUT TURNIPS:

1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnip for service
3. Turnip to help one another

TO CONCLUDE YOUR GARDEN YOU MUST HAVE THYME:

1. Thyme for God
2. Thyme for each other
3. Thyme for family
4. Thyme for friends

WATER FREELY WITH PATIENCE AND CULTIVATE WITH LOVE. THERE IS MUCH FRUIT IN YOUR GARDEN BECAUSE YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW!

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Am I Letting Freedom Ring?

There are three forms of behavioral existence I experience in my life. One defines the relationship I share with myself, my body, mind and soul. Second is how I (a collection of my body, mind and soul) interact with another human being. And third is how I as part of a group of human beings (country, religion, race etc.) interact with or perceive another group of human beings.

Since “I” is common to all three forms of interaction, I assumed that “I” would remain constant in both its nature and essence. I could not be more wrong! I see disturbing changes in the way “I” behaves in the three different dimensions. I describe this change “disturbing” because it exposes the hypocrisy in me and  presents a huge obstacle in my path to Bliss.

And I do not think I am alone in this predicament. Many of us are unaware of this dormant contradiction that is plaguing our being. It is time to take notice of this malady and remove it as soon as possible from our journey towards spiritual awakening.

The title of this post is inspired by the fact that above thoughts came to my mind while I was listening to this:

“…..Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring — when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics — will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28, 1963

Ask God for an Enlightened Mind…the Rest is in Your Hands!

Om bhūr bhuvah svah

tat savitur varenyam

bhargo devasya dhīmahi

dhiyo yo nah pracodayāt

– Gayatri Mantra, Rigveda (3.62.10)

This is one of the most revered mantras from Vedic Hinduism and is an invocation to the Sun God, Savitr for an enlightened mind and stimulated prayer. So why does one of the most widely quoted Vedic mantras, the prayer that symbolizes the break of dawn, ask the Holy One for only an enlightened mind and glory? There is no mention of food, no plea for peace and happiness, no asking forgiveness for our sins. There is no reference to success or failure nor is there any appeal for the good things in life. Why?

Because only the Mind is absolute. Everything else is relative, and in most cases an emotionally conceived illusion. In addition, Mind is a truly free entity. It is divine. We cannot control the thoughts that emanate from it. Yes, we can train ourselves to control how we react to those thoughts and direct them into actions, but we cannot suppress the birth of a thought or check the nature of those thoughts. And for what we humans feel helpless against, we must turn to God.

Everything else, everything, is subordinated to us. We have been blessed with powers to deal with hunger, sadness, stress, sins and evil. Some of us treat these “Imposters” as just that and do not let them affect our lives. The rest of us have capabilities to change the circumstances around us. However this ability relies heavily on having an aware, intelligent and healthy mind.

Hence, prayer to God should seek divine thoughts and an enlightened mind. The rest is in our hands.

As always, comments welcome!

fast.faster.fastest….to nowhere.

The thoughts in this post were inspired when I read “Context and Content”.

Objective: To study the apparent “need for speed” observable in human behavior of recent times.

Data:

Vimshottari Dasa system of Vedic Astrology considers a normal human life to be 120 years long. For benefit of this post, and considering the huge change that lifestyles have witnessed over the last 3 millenniums, we shall reduce that figure to a more modest 75 years. So in numbers,

Average Human Life = 75 years = 900 months = 27000 days = 432,000 awake hours

Observations:

1) I have been using Lean Tools to optimize my movements in my house. And I don’t like it! Its become an obsession. Every movement of mine is coordinated to do the maximum amount of work in least time. Its become so bad that when I place a cup of water in the microwave, I can’t just stand there for a minute while it gets heated. I have to occupy myself with some other task, like filling the water bottle, to make the most of that 1 minute. I can’t even sit on my desk waiting for my laptop to boot!

2) A lot of my friends have been asking me the processor speed of my mobile phone. I don’t get it! I remember when the most important parameter in judging a mobile phone used to be its strength and not its speed. If my phone survived a 20 feet drop, it was a good phone!

3) I am getting increasingly impatient at traffic lights. I honk at the car in front of me even when the light is red!

4) At my wedding, I asked my priest to conclude the rituals within 45 minutes. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken close to 3 hours.

5) I am embarrassed when my mobile phone does not stream an online video within 10 secs of clicking “play”.

Explanation:

We have become wholly entrapped in a web of illusion, a world where our minds have been tuned to think that “Time is Money”. We have been manipulated into choosing the fastest journey, without knowing what our destination is. We are made to believe that the speed is important, not where we are headed or what stops on the way we have missed out. It is like sitting in train going at the speed of light. You cannot see anything outside the window of the train, the train has no stops and your destination is the point you started from. You pay for the thought of traveling at the speed of light and nothing else.

Reality and Illusion

The thoughts in this post were conceived when I was reading Pat Cegan’s wonderful post titled “Figment of My Imagination.”

What defines our interpretation of the world? How can we trust that what we sense is real and not just an illusion? Lets explore a few arguments and see if we can answer these questions, and in the process define illusion.

Human beings have been gifted with two powerful abilities that enable us to interpret events that happen outside our mind. These abilities are Logical Reasoning (LR) and Emotions.  They exist in the form of 2 windows through which information passes to reach our mind, where it is interpreted. Hence, Observation of an external events passes through either or both of these  windows and results in an interpretation by our mind.

When an observation in the form of a sensory stimulus passes through the window of Emotions, it is corrupted by our desires and wants, and the output that reaches our mind is an illusion. When an observation passes through the window of LR, it remains uncorrupted by any of our subconscious biases, and the output that reaches our mind is reality.