SOCIAL. DISTANCING

There is this fresh buzz in the air, of social distancing
Which reminds us of an old practice of social stancing
Social stancing, however, had been used, selectively
Social distancing is fair, as an exercise in balancing.

But, have we thoughtfully embraced social distancing?
Do we realise, it can be a way to energy-harnessing?
Are we sure, we need extra space all around us
For convalescing, celebrating, and further advancing ?

No, this social distancing, regrettably, is panic-driven
And the panic in this case, is clearly pandemic-driven
On leaving office, we are obliged to head to washroom
Before excusing us to greet our spouses and children !

This looks very much, an exercise in self-abnegation .
Are we on a hunting spree for some shooting location
With masks on, to shield us from any viral aeration?
Shall we hug our spouses and children in 3D Animation?

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi

DEJA VU 2020

I get up every morning, in blooming amazement
As I look forth beyond me, in sheer wonderment.
The world of sleep was full of wonderment too.
Which of them is real? I am in for bewilderment.

Am I asleep now, or, was I asleep heretofore ?
Then I could talk, touch, see, hear, all the more.
In fact I could be present, or not be so present
At will; as there were no barriers, any the more.

Are the micro and the macro universes twosome ?
Or are they in entanglement and hence onesome?
Or are they separate, and distant from each other ?
Or are they mirror images, happy and gamesome?

And where do I figure on the cosmological plate?
Can I, for the nonce, possibly serve as a template?
Or, I, like you and them, happen to be a print out?
No, no, I can melt and meld, and finally eventuate .

Guess, it is always somewhat more than you guess
Cosmos is no pauper; it keeps on doling out largesse
The whole is always more than the sum total of parts
Here the stakes are high; Gestalt is Consciousness !

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi

MOTHER'S DAY 2020

Blessed are all those who have their mothers
To protect and save them, like stolid buffers.
Who else is going to keep a vigilant eye, so that
Nothing untoward, our hopes and dreams, smothers?

Where on earth, will you find someone like a mother
Who braves all odds, so her children won't  suffer ?
Where else will you find such a cosy bosom, where
Without compunction, you can snuggle into shelter ?

Without becoming a mother first, you can't ever know
What a mother does to you, to make you grow.
When she puts her eyes into thine, and stares at you
The embryo of love takes shape and begins to grow.

Her touch brings to life, all that the future will unfold.
Without her touch, you would never learn to uphold
And assimilate the gifts of Nature, benignly bestowed.
Yes, the eyes to wonder, following the eyes to behold !

Bonding with your mother will ensure that you peep
And ask yourself incessantly : How deep is deep
When you begin to enter the depths of the human heart ?
And that will be a memento, worthwhile to keep !

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi

INSIDE vs OUTSIDE

Hi!Downcast?Not allowed to venture outside?
Figuring out how the impalpable time to bide?
My friend, you can put all your worries aside.
Stay with me. I will take you along-- INSIDE.

Inside is where you are always, most welcome
Inside is where everything is just awesome
Like as outside, there is a wide spectrum
Of things and events, that are all winsome .

Find how different is being inside from outside.
Outside, you fry and cry ; and shy and hide.
You kick off and show off and pamper your pride.
Inside you take everything in your stride !

Inside you won't find heat, sweat, or tenterhook
As things go, don't have no heartbreaks to brook.
There is no toil or moil or turmoil to withstand.
In every nook and corner it is illumination to book.

There will be lights galore: blue, pink and white
And you will see red, yellow, green and violet.
What lights you see, depends on how deep you go
The deeper you go, lotuses will turn blue or violet.

You can go places you have never before been to
There will be mountains, lakes and rivers too
Trees, skies, stars, galaxies, and the blue moon.
And you may come across you-- one light in two !

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi

AHA, THE LOCK-DOWN

   I ENDORSE HANDS DOWN   

In the wake of the great lock-down
There has been a lull in the town.
Not a case has been reported of
A face fraught with flicker or frown.

My wife is fine, dressed in her gown
Be it blue, pink, white or brown.
She loves to look from the balcony
With her comb, sitting like a crown.

Bereft of traffic snarls and honking
City ranking jumps to sterling.
Now the day is alive to fresh blooms
And the night sleeps to her liking.

The dawn comes bright, and shining
The air is clean without a blighting.
One can breathe-in morning crispiness
And collect all freshness sans blinking.

There's none to straddle your silence
As you take it to its magnificence
And reach out to the innermost core
In a hyper loop of flooded effulgence.

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi

I TOO LOVE GOLD

I too love gold, and all its glitter

Glow of its flame and the flicker.

I too love its yellowsome flush

That sends all maidens to blush.

But my gold doesn't add to bullions

Nor is it sought by crowds of millions.

Nor does it turn any big heads

Mounted onto wearisome legs.

It doesn't break people's hearts

As when they make false starts

My gold is not cold, as bullion gold

As it smiles, it keeps you on hold.

It warms the cockles of your heart

Even before you cross your heart.

It talks to me when I am prone

To sad thoughts and by me, alone.

It touches my thoughts benignly

As it caresses my cheeks lovingly.

My gold can hold you in its hold

Before you know you're in its hold.

Look! I don't buy, I grow my gold

As it makes me merry, it's marigold!

Temples can be built of bullion gold

But fragrance comes from marigold.

Mary's gold was christened marigold

Now I grow marigold like mera gold.

Om Shantih

Ajit Sambodhi

BE A VOID AND LET GOD IN

I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was naked and you clothed me; I was homeless and you took me in.

Matthew 25:35 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, used to go early in his life, to pray in a church.


Soren Kierkegaard
After some time he was struck by the incongruity of hijacking all the allotted time, leaving no time for God to say His piece. He, thereafter, stopped praying but felt all the same queasy on discovering that deep down he was still talking. Ergo, he entered into a pact with himself to become all ears so he would catch God's voice and listen to it. One day a great silence descended upon him and thenceforth he gave up going to church, for good. Asked to comment, he replied: To be that Self which truly I am I need no midwife.

It will do us immense good if we take a leaf out of Kierkegaard's book and try to understand the syllogism involved. The major premise obliges us to correct an aberration in us in order to make us eager listeners instead of compulsive speakers, at least when the stakes are so high. Doing away with the houses of worship is a minor premise. So the conclusion one draws is that God is always available on tap everywhere, if only, we become silent and listen to Him.

The onus is on us, the promise, enticing; and the process, apparently quite simple. What then is the stumbling block ? Mind, I would say. If we scrutinize our mind at any given time, we will be surprised to note that we are either ruminating or fantasying. That is to say, we either happen to be in the past or in the future, but never-- I repeat never-- are we to be found present in the present. While munching at a pretzel, or watching a bud crack open, or riding a hobbyhorse, well, we are missing from the scene. We happen to be on one of the far ends, the past or the future, but never in the middle, in the present, while it is the present that holds the key to nirvan. So long as we remain committed to the past, and captivated by the future, our present will remain burdened with doubt and pain.

Why do we fall for future promises ( the past was also future at one time ) ? Because we love chasing rainbows. A jerk is all that is needed to haul us out of the dream state into the present. To stay put in the present, nothing is to be done, just a look is needed-- a look without any expectation, without any distinction, without any evaluation, without a whisper of manipulation. We have simply to witness the dynamics of the scene. Yes distance yourself from that which you are watching.

One day the unbelievable happens: thinking stops, mind and ego drop off, a silence engulfs us, and pure consciousness, in the form of bliss bubbles up. As we accept life in its totality, we cross into the realm of a thought-free awareness. The most important mission of our lives being manumission, it entails that we live, love, and die in this illuminated state. Without this enlightening awareness, the present becomes miserable; love painful; death ugly. Let us therefore strive to be present in the present because the present is a priceless present to us from God.The past is buried in history, the future lies frozen in mystery; it is only the present which is emancipatory.

The Japanese, as heirs to the Zen culture, have a word for this state of being in the present--muga (literally, present moment awareness). Muga is a correlative of mu (nothingness), as it is from the timeless and the spaceless nothingness that the world of space and time has come into being. Muga can be attained by way of mu only, the reason why we rise above space and time while trying to stay in the present. Whenever we are consciously into something, we cross over to the state of mu and something of the beyond starts working through us. Wu, a Chinese emperor and disciple of Bodhidharma, underlined the importance of mu by building a temple at Shaolin, which is completely empty.

Dear readers, I intend to give you a rehash of a beautiful story Two Old Men by that inimitable story teller Count Leo Tolstoy. I feel it will take you where I wish you to be, in an easier and interesting way. Efim and Elisha are the two old men of the story, fine specimen of simple peasants from the Russian countryside. Both had large families, sons and grandsons living together with them. Efim had even married off a grandson.Both were hardworking and peaceable, and had a clean record to look back to. Efim was well off, hale and erect, with a long beard. Elisha was neither rich nor poor, rather short of stature with a black curly beard, and a bald pate.

They had once vowed to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, together. Efim had been postponing it on one pretext or the other for a long time. First it was his grandson's marriage, then it was his youngest son's return from the army. Now he said he was busy building a new hut. Efim was very much a man of the world, like any one of us. He was busy all the time crossing his t's and dotting his i's.

Elisha, on the other hand, was a man of cheerful disposition and was more concerned about matters of the soul. There is nothing more precious than the soul, he intoned in a bid to persuade Efim, to fulfil the vow. When Efim came up with a new excuse of having empty pockets, Elisha gave the lie to his fabrication. Said he: you have ten times as much as I, and yet you talk about money. About himself he was sure that though he had nothing at the time, he would have enough by then(the time they start).

After a lot of deliberations, Efim finally gave in. They decided to start on the journey, a week later. Efim had money ready at hand. Elisha scraped it up selling some of his hives. His wife and daughter in law also contributed to the kitty. On the appointed day, they were seen off at the edge of the village, by their respective families. It was to be a long and arduous journey, on foot upto Odessa, a substantial distance that will take them months to cover, then by ship to Jeffa, and again on foot for forty miles to Jerusalem. Efim's heart lay back in his household cares. He was overwary of his son, should he squander his hard earned wealth, in his absence. At one point he almost wanted to turn back.

Elisha journeyed on in a rejoicing mood. He had assured his wife: You are the master and will know how to do what's best for yourselves. Presently, his only care was how to please his comrade, how to avoid saying a rude word to anyone, how to get to his destination and home again in peace and love. Walking along the road, Elisha would either whisper a prayer to himself or go over in his mind the lives of the saints as he was able to remember. His only other diversion was taking a pinch of snuff, now and then. In the first leg of their journey they covered 500 miles in five weeks. They then entered Little Russia, which nowadays goes by the name of Ukraine. Their homemade shoes were worn out by then and they had to replace them by new ones.

While they travelled through Great Russia, they had been buying their own food, but in Little Russia, people vied with each other in asking them to their huts where they were fed gratis. They even stuffed their bags with bread and cakes, for them to eat on the road. However, shortly afterwards they reached a district where the harvest had failed and people were driven to abject misery. While making their way through a village, Elisha who was not as good a walker as Efim, wanted to stop for a drink of water, but Efim would not. So he said to Efim: You go on, but I'll just run to the little hut there. I will catch you up in a moment.

While Efim followed the high road, Elisha turned towards the hut. As he entered the enclosure of the hut, he saw an emaciated young man lying on the ground, outside the door of the hut. He asked him for a drink of water but got no response from him. Elisha then knocked at the door of the hut with the ring that served as the door handle. After sometime, which appeared quite  long to him, all that he heard was a groan. Dear me, some misfortune must have happened to the people ? I had better have a look, he said to himself and turned the ring. The door was not locked. He entered the hut.

He was met with a blast of foul air. An old woman sat on a bench with her head laid on the table, while a gaunt little boy pulled at her sleeve. On the floor lay a semi-deliriant woman tossing her legs. The foul smell came from her, as there was no one who could help her. The old woman lifted her head and said, What do you want man ? We have nothing. Elisha told her that he had come there for a drink of water. There is no one--no one--we have nothing to fetch it in. Go your way, he heard her saying. Is there no one among you, then, well enough to attend to that woman ? demanded Elisha. No, we have no one. My son is dying outside, and we are dying in here, said the old woman. The little boy whined: bread, granny, bread.

By then, the old woman's son had managed to stagger into the hut and unable to hold himself, slumped in a heap by the door. Illness has seized us, and famine, said the man. Pointing towards the little boy, he said: He is dying of hunger...and began to sob. Elisha pulled the knapsack off his back and put it on the bench. He untied the strings and took out a loaf of bread. He then cut off a slice and gave it to the boy. By then his sister who had crept behind the stove on seeing a stranger, also came out. Elisha gave one to her. When he gave one to the old woman, she said their mouths were parched. If only some water could be brought.

Elisha immediately went out and brought a pail full of water, after gaining information about the well and the pail. The young man and his wife, were too sick to eat bread. Elisha, therefore, went to the grocer's shop and bought some millet, salt, flour, and oil. He found an axe, chopped some wood, and made a fire. Then he boiled some soup and gave the starving people their first meal in weeks ! Yes, when they had pledged their 3 acres, and were in debt of money, flour, and bread, they begged, scraped food, and finally started eating grass, which is what gave the man and his wife sickness, Elisha was to learn later on. 

The man and his mother ate some and the rest was licked clean by the children, who curled up and fell asleep in each other's arms, soonafter. Elisha gave up the thought of catching up with Efim. Instead he thought of replacing cooking utensils, clothes, and rations. He would wait for the family to pick up strength, so they could look after themselves, he mused. Children were the first to recover, then the old woman and her son also improved, but the wife gained consciousness only on the third day and then she asked for food. The fourth day happened to be St. Peter's day. Elisha thought of breaking bread with the family. So he brought milk, and flour, and helped the old woman bake for the feast. On the feast day, Elisha went to church, and then broke the fast with the family. The young wife got up and moved about, and the young man shaved and put on a clean shirt, washed by his mother, and went to beg for mercy from the rich man. He wanted permission to use his meadow and farmland till after the harvest, but the rich man didn't relent. He wanted money.

Elisha had thought of moving out after the feast. But now he became thoughtful. If he left them halfway, the family would slide back to the state, he had found them in, without the cornfield. So he told himself: Tomorrow I will redeem their cornfield, and will buy them a horse, and flour to last till the harvest, and a cow for the little ones; or else while I go to seek the Lord beyond the sea I may lose Him in myself. This is what he did and then turned back to his home, as there was not enough money left for him to continue on the journey. The present is only an interface between the past and the future. So there is no elbow room for vagrant thoughts to enter into. To be present in the present is to become silent and descend into the very depths of our being. Osho encapsulates the whole purport beautifully :

Be silent and know
You've nowhere to go.

Om Shantih

Ajit Sambodhi

COUNT YOUR BREATHS

Recently I received an e-mail from my youngest daughter. She is the most vivacious of my four daughters, which in a way, is good for me. Whenever I intend to slouch under the pretense of advancing age, she gives me a shake, in her own way. This time it is in the form of an e-mail. She writes: I have been thinking these days that if we let the things the way they are, instead of fighting for our rights / the way we want things done / our personal views etc., is this wrong?...It will be easier to just sit back and let things happen. I had sent her a muted response, though in my heart I knew it needed elucidation because it is a question that touches upon everybody's life.

Walter Bradford Cannon, an American physiologist  had defined fight/flight/freeze as the reflexes of an animal in times of threat. All these are kneejerk responses acquired out of the compulsion of living insecurely all the time, with predators. They hold good for us also, because a part of us is still animalistic. Though we live securely in our homes, without any threat from predators, there exists a lurking fear in our subconscious, perhaps as a remnant of the past, when we too lived without the walls of safety around us. As part of a species that is still evolving, it is indispensable for us to understand the mechanism behind the reflexes of fight/flight and freeze , so that we may  upgrade our choices.

Fight/flight/freeze are all parts of a strategic reflex. I am tempted to call fight/flight, a kind of reactive reflex or re-action, in short. In a similar vein one can experience the state of freeze, which may be called  retro-active reflex or retro-action, in plain English. My daughter is at a loss to understand whether she should fight back or sit back, if she finds herself in a spot. That is to say whether she should re-act or retro-act, in a quixotic or prickly situation. It is in no way less than a Hamletian dilemma. In this article I intend to put forth some popular approaches which aim at finding a resolution of this most common conflict, that overwhelms most of us, most of the time.

Edward de Bono, the Maltese physician, author, and inventor, introduced the concept of lateral thinking in 1967. He summarized his concept in the maxim: you cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. This is another way of saying that you have to change your antiquated concepts and perceptions, by getting rid of your conditioned responses. As the epithet lateral suggests, you have got to sidetrack the banal, as if it didn't exist, to usher in the fresh and the creative. So according to de Bono, instead of falling back into the timeworn ruts of re-action, and retro-action, one must charter an innovative way to resolve the crisis. 

In total contrast to this approach, the Hegelian Dialectics aims at bringing the two opposite poles together, and strike a balance between them. Hegel calls the proposition, thesis, and its antipode, antithesis. Resolution comes in the form of a synthesis of the two. There is no question of either/or. You are not supposed to choose one against the other. The resolution must come out of keeping the elements of both sides in mind. You cannot drop either of the two. Ergo, it is obvious that for the resolution to come about between re-action and retro-action, what we need to seek is the common ground between the two. So we sideline the prefixes re- and retro- and vote for action. It will be a kind of pure action, devoid of any devolving ligatures.

We don't have to re-act, nor do we have to retro-act. All that we have to do is act. That will constitute our action. Here it will be obligatory to know what we understand by action, or more strictly, by pure action. Imagine a pair of scales having re-action in one pan and retro-action in the other. When the beam shows no deflection, it means, it is centered at the fulcrum. The fulcrum is the point of rest. It appears to be actionless, but still it is performing the actionless action of balancing re-action against retro-action. It is tilted neither towards re-action, nor towards retro-action. It is established in itself. This is pure action, that is, action without re-action or retro-action. Pure action is action on itself; rather, action by itself.

When we are close to our true self, pure action happens. When we are close to our ego self, re-action or retro-action happens. Being close to one's true self is called being awake, or being in meditation. To be in meditation mode does not necessarily mean to sit alone and close one's eyes for a particular length of time. We can be in a meditative state any time and all the time. With a little awareness it can become our natural state, just as the strategic state has become natural to us. We don't have to do any stratagem to stay in the strategic mode. We just work that way. So also we don't have to do meditation  to remain in a meditative state. Let me tell you how.

Scientists say that there are large voids in the multiverse. Every moment new universes are born out of those voids, as the old ones vanish into them. So also there are voids inside each one of us. To slip into one of those voids gives us the taste of meditation. Indira Gandhi, one of the most powerful woman of her time, who was loved and loathed, feared and adored, like that other powerful woman, HPB, reminisces about these voids in her memoirs, Remembered Moments. She writes: I have always felt that within you, within a person, you have such voids, and you can retire into them without disrupting yourself. You may be doing anything. You may be having a conversation or you may be in a crowd. But if you want to retire into yourself, you can retire and you can do almost anything you like...that is why you can't get tired because you are automatically relaxing yourself. 

Perhaps without being aware, she has given a fine elucidation of the meditative state. As such we don't have to fight back or sit back. We have  simply to roll back to our original space. Call this space your heart, your God, your void, or your inner sanctum sanctorum. When we are in that space, there is no conflict within us. We are at peace with ourselves. As a result of it, pure thoughts issue forth which translate into pure actions. Some people call these thoughts intuitive thoughts and such actions, God- induced actions. However it is a very tricky situation, because ego is so wily, you may take ego-self to be your true self. Ego masquerades under different guises and so there is always the danger of mistaking ego-propelled thoughts to be God-induced thoughts.

It has been, therefore, a frontline endeavor of seekers to find out certain ways which ensure an unassailable capability to generate pure thoughts. In Vijnan Bhairav, which is an ancient treatise dating back to 4000 years or more, we find a compilation of 112 practices that are supposed to ensure success in an otherwise iffy domain. These practices are meant to suit all types of practioners such as avadhoots, aghoris, tantriks, householders, kapaliks, and myriad others. Again people of different temperaments would gyrate to different types of practices. However regular guys have all been found to opt for the science of breath. It is commonly practiced even now because it gained immense credibility, having been championed by no less a personage than Gautam, the  Buddha.

Buddha called it anapanasati. Buddhists who do it nowadays, follow a very rigorous regimen which may balk most of us. Shorn of all frills, I call it conscious breathing. Just be aware of your breath. Watch it constantly. If you find it difficult, start counting your breaths. Counting sheep, you have fallen asleep countless times. Counting breaths, you will waken up like you have never woken up before. Before you have counted 100, something will stir up inside. Just don't get distracted. Continue counting. You will notice some changes taking place inside. If you continue with the practice for sometime, you may not like to abandon it, after all. Why? Well, because you may have passed into a meditative state, for good!

Thich Nhat Hanh, perhaps on his first visit to the US, was greeted with unseemly rudeness. He simply took a deep breath, smiled, and said: I have come to seek your goodwill. I am sure the Dalai Lama would have done it with a sky-high laugh. What the Vietnamese monk does with his deep breath, the Tibetan Guru does it with his laughter. The idea is to collect oneself and become centered. When we are centered, it means we are in the meditative state. And when one is in the meditative state, only the right kind of thoughts will generate. Consequently only the rightful actions will take place. So there is no need to fight back or flee back or sit back. We should roll back to our center, instead.

I would now like to recapitulate the story of Elias as told by Leo Tolstoy. The story is as much of Elias as that of his wife Sham-Shemagi. Elias was a Bashkir who had inherited a modest fortune from his father. However the couple's managerial skills, and industry made theirs the richest household of the region. They had every thing in abundance and people envied their lot.  Both worked hard and hired extra hands to tend to their flocks and herds. Women workers were hired to milk their cows and mares and make kumiss, butter, and cheese.  They were honest and modest and were known for hospitality, far and wide. Whoever visited them was served  kumiss, or a drink, or sherbet, and a hearty meal. People of position sought their aquaintance.

They had two sons and a daughter. One son got killed in a brawl early on. The other son took a self-willed woman for wife, and ceased to listen to them. So Elias gave him a house and some cattle and parted ways with him. They married off their daughter, who also died early on. Now only the two of them lived together. As they advanced in age, events started taking a turn for the worse. Once an epidemic took a toll of their cattle. Then successive bad harvests reduced them almost to a state of penury. As if this was not enough, neighbouring Kirghiz stole away their herd of best horses. By the time Elias was seventy, he was selling off his furs, carpets, saddles, and tents. Now he and his wife had nothing on them except the clothes they wore.

Their neighbour, Muhammad Shah, was a good man, neither rich nor poor. He was well aware of the generous nature of the couple and the cruel turn of events. So with a view to helping the couple, he offered them jobs in his household. Elias would work in his melon fields in summer, and tend to his cattle in winter. Sham-Shemagi, would milk the mares and make kumiss. In return, Shah would feed them and clothe them. He exhorted them not to work beyond their strength. Also he asked them to be free to ask for anything they needed and he, Shah, would get it for them. It was fair game and the couple started working for their neighbour who was their master now.

Once Shah's relatives came to visit him from a far off district. After meals they were drinking kumiss with their host when Elias passed by the open door. Shah asked them if they had heard of Elias, to which they said 'yes', as his name was known far and wide. Shah told them that the old man, just gone by, was Elias. He then narrated the whole story how Elias and his old wife Sham-Shemagi were working, at present, as his servitors. The guests clacked tongues in disbelief. How the wheel of fortune goes on moving, touching zenith and nadir in its course, they murmured. When the guests asked Shah if the old man grieved over his loss, he replied: Who can tell? He lives quietly and peacefully, and works well.

One of the guests wanted to talk to the couple. So Shah summoned Elias and his wife over a cup of kumiss. After the initial greetings, the guest broached the subject. He questioned Elias if he felt sad over his lot. To which Elias said he had better ask Sham-Shemagi, his wife. She is a woman, and what is in her heart, is on her tongue, thus spoke Elias. The man turned to Sham-Shemagi who sat behind a curtain with her mistress. Well Granny, tell me how your former happiness compares with your present misfortune, he posed his question. She answered from behind the curtain: My old man and I lived for fifty years seeking happiness and not finding it; and it is only now these last two years, since we had nothing left and have lived as labourers, that we have found real happiness and we wish nothing better than our present lot.

The guests and the host were astonished and so must be you, my dear readers. But the woman is speaking from her heart and the heart never lies. It is a case of total reversal of fortune, but the couple does not resent it. They are neither bitter, nor diffident. They are not playing the blame game, either. What the deep breath did to Thich Nhat Hanh, and laughter does to the Dalai Lama, penury did to the Bashkir couple. We are accustomed to living at the periphery. All re-actions and retro-actions happen at the periphery. As long they were rich, they were obliged to live at the periphery. They hardly had time for each other. She continues: When we were rich,...we had no time to talk to one another, or to think of our souls, or to pray to God.

Their loss sent them to the center. Now, when my husband and I wake up in the morning we always have a loving word for one another, and we live peacefully having nothing to quarrel about...We work as much as our strength allows, and do it with a will, that our master may not lose, but profit by us., continued Sham-Shemagi. They are neither fighting back their lot, nor sitting back resignedly. They are just doing their new job with the same spirit with which they had done their old work. Now they are happy. They have catalyzed misfortune into good fortune. If you like you can bypass the misfortune part. Just by counting your breaths, you can be rich and happy at the same time. So don't you fight and don't you sit back. Just count your breaths and embark upon a new path.
Wish you Godspeed.

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi    

THE BODY IS THE MEDIUM

When I first read Marshall McLuhan's popular one liner of the sixties: the medium is the message, I felt like he had been clued in about  a sutra in Kalidas' Kumarsambhavam, written about 1600 years before. The sutra is: shareer madhyam khalu dharm sadhnam. It translates: the body is the medium to observe all dharma. In this play, Parvati is shown doing intense tapas of self-abnegation to win over the heart of Shiv. She becomes very weak as a result of the self-restraint that she is observing. Shiv approaches her in the guise of a young lad. With the view to reminding her, he asks her if she has made the necessary preparations for any contingency that may arise, in the wake of these austerities.

He drops hints to let her know that the body should be taken care of first because it is only with the help of the body that one can fulfil one's dharma, or obligations. As a first step, one must ascertain that the body is strong enough to survive the rigors of self-denial. If the body fails, the very purpose of embarking on such an arduous journey gets defeated, he advises her.  Whether one is on an inner journey or outer, that is to say, whether one is pursuing spiritual attainments or worldly achievements, the body remains indispensable. Neither salvation nor indulgence is possible without the body. The body is the medium and the medium is the message.

Just by casting a glance at somebody, one can easily tell whether one is a renunciant or householder, young or old, healthy or decrepit, upbeat or downcast. Even a look at the face of a Buddha figurine gives the experience of an inner freedom from all fears and desires, such is the significance of the body. Our body is the medium of performing various functions and our body sends out messages, sometimes clear and sometimes subtle, of what it is doing. Therefore it becomes imperative to enter into a close friendship with one's body and forge a loving bond with it. It must always be borne in mind that the body is a unique gift, and also the first of its kind, from God.

Know also that DNA, the body's software, is far more advanced than any software created so far. The functions of a single molecule of DNA far exceed the functions of a supercomputer. Is this good turn of God not sufficient enough to elicit from us a word of gratitude to Him ? Can you name anyone else who would bestow such grace on us, without any obvious or secret deal ? Should we expect a bonus of  gifts from God, if we choose to be indifferent, negligent, or abusive to our body ? One can do miracles with the help of this body. Just try to recall to your mind the images of Raman Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekanand, Bhagwan Nityanand, Nisargdatta Maharaj, Baba Muktanand, Neem Karoli Baba, Meher Baba. 

What an illustrious galaxy of illuminated souls, they constitute! All of them were big names in the field of soul consciousness. They were all god-intoxicated souls, living examples to show that one can become godlike in this very body. Yet all of them suffered from various ailments, for short or long periods. Swami Vivekanand* tops the list with thirty one ailments in a short life of thirty nine years, most prominent among them being diabetes, asthma, Bright's disease, dyspepsia, and gallstones. To begin with he had a robust, disease free, statuesque body. Don't you think he could have easily doubled his much needed stay on planet earth, had his body received just a little more care ?

While Nisargdatta Maharaj, Raman Maharshi, and Sri Ramakrishna contended with the menace of cancer, Neem Karoli Baba and Baba Muktanand jousted with diabetes. Baba Muktanand, later on, developed cardiac problems which became the cause of his death. Neem Karoli Baba passed away after he slipped into diabetic coma. Bhagwan Nityanand died of chronic rheumatism and Meher Baba lived with peptic ulcers all his life. Why ? Because their bodies had not been properly looked after, in keeping with their necessary requirements. On the other hand, a small group of sages, such as Rishi Dayanand, Paramhansa Yoganand, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Swami Laxmanjoo, Swami Ramtirth, and Swami Sivanand could pay better attention to  their bodies, because of a slightly altered backdrop. 

The upshot was that they were spared a totally unwarranted intrusion of diseases. Death came to Rishi Dayanand Saraswati, not from disease or old age, but at the hands of an offended nautch girl, who with the complicity of the cook, gave him milk poisoned with powdered glass, to drink. Swami Ramatirth met with his death while taking a bath in the river rapids. Swami Sivananda passed away in dhyan mudra in his own cottage. Paramahansa Yogananda chose to depart before so many eyewitnesses. As he concluded his after dinner speech given in honor of the visiting Indian Ambassador to the U.S., Binaya Ranjan Sen and his wife, he lifted his eyes to the kutasth center and his body slumped to the floor.

In our body, kutasth center is the crown chakra or sahasrar. Sri Aurobindo had a fall and broke his thigh bone, which took its toll of his health. Sri Laxmanjoo had an uneventful, and peaceful exit. One must be very clear in one's mind that it is not at all obligatory to become sick. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that one can't lead one's life without ever being sick. On the contrary, even if one embarks on one's life's journey on a sticky wicket, one can have a good innings, through meticulous effort. BKS Iyengar, who is a living legend, and adored as bhisma pitamah, redoubtable grandfather of yoga, was a weak and sickly child upto the age of sixteen. He had been prey to many serious illnesses, such as typhoid, tuberculosis, anemia, malaria.

His brother in law, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, a polyhistor and yoga guru of the Royal House of Mysore, took him rather reluctantly under his tutelage! Baba Ramdev, the modern day yoga megastar, claims on his website that he was struck by paralysis at the age of two. He had knock knees and also problems with his stomach. It was not an auspicious start for a toddler, but now at 41, not only has he rid himself of his maladies, he hopes to make every willing individual, healthy. It is not a wild dream. Anybody intent on being disease free can be so. Now whatever I have given here is anecdotal, I agree. But the field is so rarefied, that it is hard to produce statistics.

Swami Ramatirth coined the term shishnodar to denote a phenomenon which he underlined, was responsible for the break down of the human system of values as a whole. This included the moral, physical, and intellectual aspects. Though it is not a literal translation, I call it FFS or the Freud and Food Syndrome. While it is true that FFS plays a very prominent role in bringing down the level of human values, I feel that FFS itself depends upon the quality of our thoughts. And our thoughts, in a large measure, depend upon our inner state of harmony. FFS becomes conspicuous only when there is a lack of inner harmony in us. People who depend too much on food and Freud would do well to look inside themselves for the inner imbalance in them.  

Let us stop here to understand the etymology of the word disease. The term disease has a very fascinating origin. Whoever thought it out must have been a very thoughtful individual. Now this word comes straight from the Old English word desaise (des+aise). In modern day spelling des becomes dis and aise morphs into ease. So disease refers to the condition of being deprived of ease. It is not a factuality but the absence of a factuality. The factuality in this case is ease. Now ease issues from inner harmony. Disease therefore, points a finger towards inner disharmony. Now see that if there is one word that can sum up the inner state of a sage, it is harmony.

So if our sages have suffered from diseases, it is not from any inner disharmony nor because of the FF syndrome. The reason is they were not householders. In Upanishadic times we had sages who ran their households as well. The body needs as much attention as the soul. A householder is in an ideal position to work for both, body consciousness and soul consciousness. Swami Vivekanand would remain without food for three days, and on the fourth day he would be suddenly invited to a lavish meal. Baba Muktanand had been without food for a week, and then was offered poorees to break his forced fast!

It happened this way with Meher Baba, with Sri Ramakrishna, with Nisargdatta Maharaj, with Neem Karoli Baba, either out of ignorance, or indifference, or compulsion, but it did happen.
Those sages who led a comparatively settled and regular life, remained disease free through out their lives. Charak talks of vyayamashakti, or the power of exercise as a vital element of staying disease free. In an episode Charak is shown in a garden with his disciple Agnivesh, while a herd of gazelles run past them, and the herdsman wobbles along with the help of his pikestaff. To Agnivesh's query why the man was infirm, while all around the animals were bouncing cheerfully, Charak says that the human beings are very intelligent. They know how to think and they think very hard to sideline physical labor somehow. It is lack of vyayamshakti that makes them diseased.

Recent research shows that children have more of friendly fat called brown fat. It keeps them warm, beefs up their immune system, and guzzles their calories. See how vigorously they kick and paddle even as helpless infants! But those adults who manage to keep exercise at bay, store white fat. While brown fat has a lot of mitochondria, which is what is called the body's chemical factory, white fat works just like a storehouse for saturated fats. However the redeeming factor is that one can convert white fat into brown fat, any time one makes up one's mind to become friends with one's body. You thought it right. Yes, just by doing exercise! And you don't have to sweat yourself in a gym or on a race track. Our yogins had done the forethinking for us.

The most likely area where the white fat gets deposited is the cavity of the abdomen. All the organs that fit into that cavity are called the viscera. The visceral fat shows itself up on the waistline also. The visceral fat is the doorway that flashes a welcome sign to most of the illnesses. Our yogins have given us three very remarkable yogic exercises to convert the harmful white visceral fat into beneficial brown visceral fat. They are 1. Nauli 2. Agnisaar 3. Kapalbhati. Choose any of them according to your liking and mental disposition. You may, if you like, combine any two of them. Or if you are too much forthcoming, you may do all the three at a time, with the watchword caution.

To begin with, one is advised to do them under an expert's guidance. I know of two cases where hyperenthusiasm on the part of the practioners proved counter productive. In one case the practioner developed hernia, and had to undergo an operation. In the second case, enteritis or the inflammation of intestines ensued and the enthusiast had to give it up altogether. Done properly, these yogic exercises have an edge over physical exercises. At the end of physical exercises, one feels tired and longs for rest. Not so with yogic exercises. After a full session of yogic exercises one feels fully charged to undertake any challenging work.

Sri Aurobindo had made it amply clear to his preceptor, Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, that his interest in learning yoga was not with a view to withdrawing himself from worldly affairs. It was rather to secure strength for working energetically towards things vitally important for him, his fellowmen, and his countrymen. His integral yoga is a perfect blend of his passive brahma and his active shakti. He was able to build up inside himself a solid mass of psychic energy while his body worked out its day to day obligations like anybody else. His main tools were pranayam, mindfulness, and walking. Like Buddha, Sri Aurobindo walked for exercise and mindfulness.

He had created *a channel a foot wide and two inches deep in the soft floor of his rooms by his regular walking, according to Peter Heehs, his biographer. Sri Aurobindo was a householder, to begin with. It was tragic that his wife, Mrinalini, died at a young age, of influenza. He considered his household a laboratory where he experimented on transforming it from mental to supramental level. With his household as the epicenter, he developed a yogic community of supramental level around him. He hoped that a time would come when this community would work as a template for the rest of the world to charter a supramental course for itself.

Multibillion dollar worth cosmetic industries are vying with each other to give shape to the exteriors of the seven billon strong population of our planet. With what success, only the users and the promoters of the products can testify. Our yogins thought otherwise. They didn't bother themselves about the exterior as such. They were happy and contented with the barest of accouterments. However they were keen about keeping the interior in a shipshape manner. They knew that energy spreads out from the epicenter, that evolution always happens inside out, not outside in. They respected the body like we respect a temple, and did all they could to keep it clean and healthy.

There were no temples in Vedic times. Where was the need to have them, when the bodies served the same purpose? They gave their bodies clean thoughts, pure food, and yogic exercises to keep them fit for living and for god-realization. For clean thoughts, mantra repetition, and hymn singing were used. Food was essentially organic, and eaten frugally. Remember what Napoleon advised: However little one may eat, one always overeats. I would like to modify it a bit--eat little but eat nutritional; add exercise to stay functional. As for exercise, yogic asanas, mudras, and pranayam were routine. It is exercise that releases irisin, the wonder hormone that changes white fat into brown fat.

The domestic life included all the motions of a sanyasin's life. Where then was the need to have separate streams of householders and ascetics? It was only when hypocrisy took roots that the need arose to bifurcate one broad stream of life into two narrow sreams, that of householders and sanyasins. As of now hypocrisy is not dead. In fact it is thriving, and so are the divisions and the sub-divisions. There are myriad types of pujaris and their countless types of temples and tabernacles, and their ensuing inconsequential feuds. Temples are built and broken, every now and then. If only they turn their outward gaze towards their own bodies, I am sure God will feel obliged.

*Vivekanand's 31 ailments: From The Monk As Man: The Unknown Life of Swami Vivekanand by Sankar; Penguin Books, Pages 175-176

*a channel a foot wide and two inches deep: From Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography by Peter Heehs; Oxford University Press, Page 78.     

 Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi

       

MAHA SHIV RATRI

In the pantheon of Hindoo festivities two nights stand apart. One is Moh Ratri and the other is Maha Ratri. Moh Ratri translates as the night of illusion, in English. It happened when Krishna was born in a prison house and was transported to a place of safety at a distance of 5 miles, across the river Jamuna, in the dead hours of the night. The veil of illusion was so complete that no body had an inkling of what had transpired. Moh Ratri is nowadays celebrated as Krishna Janmashtmi. Maha Ratri, which in English means the great night, refers to the night of Shiv's wedding to Shiva. Since Shiva is reified shakti; in a way, it is a night when Shiv is infused with the shakti of Shiva. Therefore, after being united with Shiva, Shiv is worshipped as Maha Shiv. Without Shiva, the same Shiv is reduced to a shav (corpse). Maha Ratri is celebrated as Maha Shiv Ratri.

Broadly speaking there are two types of laity: literalists who go by the book and metaphorists who don't like to see a tree without a Dryad inhabiting it. Literalists are generally seen to gravitate towards ritualism, ultimately. A symbolic act gets somewhere morphed into a rite, and then rituals take it upon themselves to uphold it. There is nothing unusual in the use of symbols though. Symbols are unavoidable. Even words are nothing more than symbols. But words can't deliver a present, they have ability only to represent it. If I type the word apple here, it only represents an apple. It is not going to make a present of an apple to me. So the problem arises when a literalist forgets that a symbol is not an end in itself. It is just a signpost. But make no mistake, it is a live signpost. It should be allowed to breathe.

Only then it can conceptualize what is otherwise abstract or incomprehensible. One must remember that meaning is always larger than the symbol. The asterisk (*) here may be used to represent a star which is humongously bigger than this symbol.  Symbols are, hence, signals; live signals, not substitutes. They are like the finger pointing towards the moon, not the moon itself. And therein come the metaphorists. In matters spiritual, we can name them Bodhisattvas, at large. Baba Muktananda once told the story of a Shiv Yogi. He was denied entry into a Shiv temple for he came from the so-called low caste. Undaunted, he went to the beach, made a lingam of sand, put a bunch of flowers over it and sat before it in meditation.

It was revealed to him that it was not imperative for him to worship the outward lingam as the real lingam was an integral part of him, in the form of the spinal column which sustains the spinal cord inside it. The abstract version of the spinal cord is referred to by the yogis as the sushumna nadi. Perhaps because he was at an advanced stage of sadhna, he did not need any outer symbol to meditate upon. It should, however, not be construed from this that it was for the first time that such a revelation had come to somebody. Revelations have been happening always, at all sorts of periods, but of course, not to all sorts of people. Therefore, to pass on the knowledge to others, it becomes imperative to make use of a coded language. The symbol works like modern day time capsules that are buried deep in the earth for the benefit of posterity.

Just like it is with parables, symbols are meant to remind people in a hands-on way of something that is different from the promise of its surface. This helps people in breaking their conditioned responses, enabling them to puzzle over them and figure out for themselves what they really mean. After all, gold pay streaks are not seen on the surface; they are found deep in the veins of the earth. Etymologically speaking, lingam is a Sanskrit word which means a sign. It also means the mool prakriti, Root Nature, or the Cosmic Power. You must have seen that the most sought after article for the worship of lingam is a bel leaf. Why? Well, because it is trifoliolate. Every leaf is made up of three leaflets. They represent the triune power of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh. In a way the leaf symbolizes the Cosmic Power.

The phallic appellation applied to the lingam is a recent development, borrowed from Freud and nurtured by his adherents. If what they say has any substance in it, how are they going to explain the presence of the ophidian? How did it get coiled up round the lingam? What is the serpent doing there with no garden of Eden in sight? Anyone having a nodding aquaintance with yoga can easily vouch for the kundalini lying coiled at the base of the sushumna, like a serpent. Meditating on the lingam means meditating on the sushumna, to awaken the Cosmic Power of kundalini, which lies asleep in the root chakra or muladhar. When the kundalini is aroused, it sends its emissaries, the light photons, to the brain, sometimes in a stream like flow, sometimes like a streak of lightening, sometimes leapfrogging and sometimes crawling like ants. They turn the brain into a powerhouse of light.


In yogic parlance, this process is named the ascent of kundalini to meet her spouse, Lord Shiv. Mool Prakriti, or, the Cosmic Power ascends up the sushumna to seek union with Purusha, that is, the Absolute. It is said that she had been lying asleep at the base of the sushumna because of the veils of illusion wrapped around her. As she stirs up, she tears through these veils, called the chakras, gets purer and purer succeedingly, and finally merges into the ocean of pure light in the sahasrar, at the seventh chakra. This is how Shiv weds Shiva, his shakti. According to the adage shubham iti shivam, that is, whatever is benevolent is Shiv, benevolence gets wedded to shakti, that is, strength. This underlines the fact that to be effectively benevolent, one has to be strong as well.

The union takes place because sushumna serves as a bridge between Shiv and Shiva, his shakti. Sushumna is a Sanskrit word which means beautiful. As a column of light she really looks gorgeous. Yogis have sung paens in her honor. Many hymns have been written in her praise. She is so bewitching, many sadhaks won't like to lose their identity by immersing themselves in the ocean of satchidananda. They spurn even moksha, saying they don't need it. The Shiv Yogi I talked about before, was such a sadhak. He became so much enamoured of meditating on sushumna, that the seven-node baton that he always carried with him as his trademark, began to reverberate with the sound of om namah shivaya, his mantra of choice. His disciples meditated on his baton which had become a symbol of sushumna nadi for them.

By now it must have become apparent why Hindoos solemnize their marriages walking around the flame of fire seven times. For them, the flame is a replica of the sushumna nadi and the seven circles denote the seven chakras that kundalini traverses before she finally consummates her search. In the temples of Shiv you must have noticed that people circumambulate the lingam seven times so that their wishes are answered. My point in writing this article is to explain the story behind the story of rituals. There is nothing wrong in observing rituals if they are done with proper understanding. Because then they won't remain mechanical, I mean lifeless like a machine; they will become vibrant, that is, full of life. Therefore, the need is to get transformed on the inside. Then there will be no need to do cosmetic surgery from the outside. Once one gets strong from the inside, outer events tune themselves to the inner rhythm.

Here, I would like to introduce you to the story of Maharshi Dadhich. It is a story from Hindoo mythology. You know in mythology, fact and fiction combine to create a fantasy. If in the process, the meaning is not lost, the story is said to be a success. It is such a story. Once upon a time, a battle raged between the gods and the demons. The demons had an upper hand, so the gods rushed to Brahma for help. Brahma advised them to go to sage Dadhich and beg him to part with his merudand, that is, the backbone. Dadhich, though himself a fakir, never disappointed anybody, as an almsgiver. He willingly donated his merudand to the gods, who made a formidable weapon, called vajra, out of it. With the help of vajra, which means hard and strong, the gods defeated the demons. As you can see the story is a spiritual allegory. Let me now explain it:

Gods and demons are symbolic of the forces of Good and Evil. The battleground is inside everybody, where the battle is always raging between these two opposing forces. We are always trying to do our best but sometimes we do end up making a mess, of course to our chagrin. Man is, by nature, a very noble creature and fortunate too. How ? You see only man has the wherewithal to meditate. Without meditation it is never possible to achieve superconsciousness. Even a highly developed intellect cannot break the barriers of consciousness to achieve superconsciosness. Consciousness is defined by body-mind and is therefore problem oriented. Each solution will come up with fresh problems. Superconsciousness is another name for soul consciousness. It is solution oriented.

Since, without meditation it is not possible to break away from body consciousness, man remains prone to making mistakes. From the Maharshi's example it is amply clear that it is the merudand that comes to our help in our times of crises. You see the axis of the earth on which it moves, is also called merudand. The earth's very support is the merudand, and so is it our body's and our life's support too. Literally speaking, merudand means gold-staff. Pace Einstein's energy equation, on the spiritual plane, sushumna is an avtar of merudand. Sushumna is of the color of gold. With the blessings of our sushumna, we can pull ourselves out of the quagmire we have managed to push ourselves into. Since sushumna and spine are interchangeable, we can safely say that the inner strength corresponds to developing a stronger spine. That is why we have such phrases as a spineless man for a namby-pamby guy and a spined man for the redoubtable one. A spined man is like vajra, that is hard and strong. By hard, however, is meant a state of determination, in which one is capable of taking hard decisions.


Obviously, all this boils down to making the sushumna strong. You see our energy level dips every time we open our eyes or mouth, move our fingers or imagination, love one or hate another. Besides these activities, there is a huge leakage of energy from the background gossip going on incessantly, that doesn't stop even in sleep. We average about fifty thousand thoughts in twenty four hours, which is increasing everyday because of the shortening of the attention span, induced by fast computers and cell phones. And look, the only source of energy intake is the food we eat! Unfortunately, it can provide us with only the physical component of energy, whereas we need emotional, intellectual, and spiritual energies as well. Obviously we run ourselves on a depleted supply of benevolent energies.

This recurring deficit of benevolent energies makes us bite the bullet of negative energies. We succumb to all sorts of negativities in our behaviour. What do you think, the newspapers are splashed with every morning? News of benevolent energies? You will have to search with a powerful magnifying glass for one. Recently a University of Massachusetts researcher Robert Feldman published his study on reflexive lying in the Journal of Basic And Applied Psychology. He found out that in a short span of 10 minutes his subjects told an average of 2.96 false things. Civilizations flourish on the backbone of integrity. Decadence starts when commercialism takes over, because commerce is preoccupied with profit and loss, not morality and ethics.

An overview of the global behavioral graph is enough to show that perversion of thought has become the norm of the day. Why do we have to resort to lying, let us ask ourselves. Is it not to show ourselves in a better light in public life, than what we know in private, we are in? Aren't we pressing the wrong button to show us in the right image? If we are convinced of our veracity, where is the need to look different. And if we think we are not upto the mark, let us work on ourselves, instead of indulging in petty tricks and gimmicks to look what we know so well we are not. If we sincerely wish to arrest and reverse the trend, we need to cherish our sushumna. When we meditate on sushumna, all energies realign themselves and start flowing into it. The upshot is that sushumna grows stronger by the day.


With the emergence of a strong sushumna, we can make up the deficit in energy budget. Yes, a strong sushumna facilitates the bonding of Shiv with his shakti. Benevolence gets fortified with strength. Since the leakage of energy is stopped to a large extent, we build surplus energy reserves of benevolence. We become strong from the inside. Now we don't need to run from pillar to post in fruitless pursuits. According to Sri Ramakrishna, kanchan and kamini, that is, lucre and lassie, are the two foot soldiers of maya, well-known for tempting people to commit all sorts of stupidities. A fully lit sushumna with humdinger reserves of benevolent energy is a surefire deterrent to these brazen pillagers. So dear readers, it will do us a lot of good if we celebrate Maha Shiv Ratri each night of the day, on each day of our life. However, we can do special puja on the 14th night of krishna paksha in the month of Phalgun, so that symbolism lives on.

Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi