Purpose

A few posts ago (and, oh, how few) I mentioned about things just "happening." Good or bad does not matter. The lessons are there whether you can grasp them or not.

Yesterday, I was watching the movie, "Hugo" (based on Brian Selznick's novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret), and in it there were some lines. I am quite a bit ashamed that I have never read the book, but it is alright, because, if I had read it before, it would not have made any sense to me. However, in the movie there is a small sequence where Hugo, the titular character, says this:


I would imagine the whole world was one big machine
Machines never come with any extra parts, you know.
They always come with the exact amount they need
So I figured if the entire world was one big machine....
I could not be an extra part
I had to be here for some reason.

For the first 40 years of my life, I had no purpose besides survival. And survival was just "go through the day, pay rent monthly, pay taxes yearly, avoid all emotional entanglement, get drunk, wake up. Rinse and repeat."

But the real problem is, where does the question of purpose arise from? Why does this whole gambit of purpose ensnare us? Why is it so strong?

For most of my adult life, only once did I ask, "What is my purpose?" and got no answer, my solution was simple. Ignore what you are and have a good time. My erroneous idea of a "good time" was being drunkenly unconscious to what I truly am. Yet, today, this movie prompted me to ask again. What is my purpose here?

What is my purpose here?

Well, that is part of the learning process. It is a very neat divine trick. You are given this life with a purpose, but you have to realize it yourself. No amount of godliness/atheism/good deeds/bad deeds/ ... it does not matter, ultimately it is all you.

I think the most important reason why anything lives is to ask, "Why?" but I am afraid that would be like saying a dog exists only to chase its own tail. But - how happy is the dog chasing its own tail, and how much does that teach us.

A dog's tail is right there. When we see it running around in circles we are amused. Are we so different? We are perfect. We need absolutely no one but to realize that all life, in and of itself, is perfect. So perfect that even god is not required. But we laugh at the dog and take pride in ourselves.

We have come fully equipped. And yet we are unstable. We cannot help chasing our tail. Like dogs we think we are making tremendous progress, but what are we really doing?

All our material achievements are just that. A dog chasing its own tail.

You know the big joke from the movie The Dark Knight where the Joker says to Harvey Dent, "Do I look like a guy with a plan? Do you what I am? I am like a dog chasing cars. I would not know what to do with one if I caught one." Even someone totally bad can have so much clarity.

That is what we have become. Dogs chasing cars. Even if we got the car, what can we do with it? Piss on its tire? So much horsepower, so much comfort, and what can we do? Piss on the tire. Great accomplishment.

Anyhooooo .... coming back to purpose. I just got the thought today that this life is given to us for two very simple "purposes."

1. To ask "what is the purpose," the easy part.

2. To realize that purpose. The difficult part. Difficult only if you cannot accommodate the first part. Once you have assimilated the first, the second flows as easily as milk turning into curd (easy) and then milk turning into butter (a little more work is needed, but possible).

Come to think of it. Assume yourself as grass. You go through the four udders of a cow. Milk. And then, my goodness, the possibilities. Curd, yogurt, butter, purified butter (ghee), lassi, chach, kheer ... endless possibilities, not to mention all the flavors of chocolates.

We are like grass trying to figure out our purpose, but there is some discomfort. A cow has to eat us, digest us four times over. Then someone has to take us out. Then we need to be "processed."

The purpose of life is to realize that just because you are grass does not mean you are tied to the ground. Someone is there, even if it is just an animal, to lift you up and take you to a position where millions of people can enjoy and benefit from you. By the time they are in that position, no vestige of the grass that you are now will be left, but that is irrelevant. You purpose is solved.

There is nothing on this planet with "spare parts." We are absolute beings except for one thing, self realization.

My guru says, "God? Who is god? What you believe, is that god? Am I god? Are you god? Is a blade of grass god? Is a pebble god? Is a rock a bigger god? Is the sun god? Is the air god? Is the sky god?"

The point is it does not matter. All they say about god is true. God is omnipresent. Which means there is nothing in the universe in which god is not present.

Of course, your definition of "god" is quite likely to be different.

My god has only one purpose. The poor sod is patiently waiting for me to come to a state where I can come to sufficient realization and walk up to it and say, "Well? And where have you been all this time?" And it will say, "You incorrigible moron, I was waiting for you."

I know my purpose.

Do you know yours?

Oh well, the purpose of life is to figure out why you have this life.

All else is irrelevant.

It's not a magnet, it's a black hole.

This is not exactly cheerful, but it is important.

Yesterday, I was reading (finishing it actually) the book, "Messages From The Masters," by Dr. Brian Weiss. In it there was an anecdote.

One day, a student of Buddha was meditating when he suddenly could not feel the ground where he was sitting cross-legged. He opened his eyes and saw that his body was floating a few feet from the ground. He got excited, brought himself down, and then ran to Gautama saying, "Master, master! I have learned levitation." Buddha opened his eyes, smiled, and said, "That is very nice, but why did you let it interrupt your meditation?"

In a previous conversation with a fellow meditator, a colleague from my office, Mr. Pandey, he told me that even after you start on the inner path, the outer will not let you go, easily. To illustrate this, he gave me an example from the Gita. Krishna told Arjuna, "Think of yourself as a chariot driven by five horses that are your five sense organs and essentially define your physical existence. These horses are not disciplined. Each one has its own will and wants to go its own way. If this lack of discipline is total, the chariot itself can be wrecked beyond hope (for its current iteration as a chariot)." And there are a few other horses as well. There is ego and desire and a few more subconscious horses. So every human being has like close to ten or dozen horses, all trying to take the chariot where they want. (There are similar examples in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism - in alphabetical order - saying the same thing). (sorry, about double parenthesis -- This is why addiction is a problem. Whatever you do, in my case EtOH, those horses temporarily align and move in one single direction, and, oh, the joy of it. What clarity can one perceive when the horses are properly aligned. Every problem dissolves and the whole universe says, "All RIGHT, let's party.").

Of course, I did not believe him then, but I do now.

The task of meditation and yoga is to discipline these horses dragging the chariot in different directions as per their whim, unite them in thought and deed, and then travel.

But they are very powerful. They have no sense of discretion. They just see something at a distance and start galloping towards it, regardless of consequence.

Even my guru says that though you have started on the spiritual path, do not assume the material will simply let you go. It will try to suck you back, not like a magnet, but like a black hole. It will tear you apart in its eagerness to make you follow it instead of it following you. However, it will behave like a magnet. A black hole can be cruel. The difference of the gravitational pull across the length of an object being pulled into a black hole can cause the object to be reduced to elementary particles. A magnet is more seductive. It is like life a piece of paper, your true self are iron filings on one side, and your desires as a magnet on the other side. They will not even touch you, but they will change your orientation in undisciplined ways.

And there is no escape. You cannot dissipate your life for forty-plus years, sit down for two months and expect your own tendencies to say, "Oh alright, we give up." They will not. They will scream and shout as if you were murdering yourself and your compassion (not really compassion, but) for yourself will make you give in.

I wish there was another way where I did not have to fight my own self, but I suppose that is the lesson to be learned and I am having difficulty learning it.

The ironical thing is, I know. I know exactly what is happening, but I cannot do anything about it. Either the new thought process is not, well, I do not wish to say powerful, but let us say, it does not have sufficient immediate payload. It is all there and it is vital, but there are no immediate benefits.

I probably sound like a stark-mad raving schizophrenic with multiple minds, but that is how it is.

But I suppose that is how karma works. In a certain sense, it is there and we cannot escape it. It is like a store of energy and we are given a physical plane to dissipate it. It is tricky, if you try to dissipate it, it will fight back.

Not entirely sure, but the changes in me in the past two months must have bred a certain arrogance that I could leave this monster behind and, so to speak, "move on." And that is all the monster needed. It's got me in its grip and I do not know when I will be able to break this grip again. I thought the grip was all there was and I was enjoying it. Then, suddenly, there is more than the grip. I was exultant, said goodbye to the grip, and it got me again.

Life used to be simple. Then it got even simpler. Then it got so simple, one could weep at its simplicity and the needless complications that we have created on this world.

And then it got all complicated again. Back to square one, except with the knowledge that square one is transient. Nothing that happens on square one matters unless it can move on to the infinite. But this one square, square one, the only place we know, it is not a place. It is the core of a black hole. it will want you back.

That is the whole trick. To escape it. And there are no shortcuts.

I thought learning had been achieved and only practice was left, but there is still too much. The irony is that when you truly realize the only thing you realize is how ignorant you were, but the realization of that... there are no words for it yet, at least in my vocabulary.

Everything was going fine, but this self played itself false. Perhaps there is not enough maturity (we mature like wine, the older the better :)), perhaps there is something else that is missing.

I can escape the black hole or my karma, but it is all up to me. However, I am in the grip right now and a bit constricted, so it is not easy to figure out how to put this.

My only solace is a hymn in Sanskrit that is my constant companion written by an enlightened being who only said, "what I am NOT." Unfortunately, my guru says no one in a family situation should ever listen to it because if you have spiritual tendencies you will leave the whole material world behind and become an ascetic. But we have duties, and even our own desire for enlightenment, if it interferes with our normal life, is wrong.

I am devoid of aversion, attachment, greed, delusion, pride, or jealousy.
I am beyond the four major goals of life: righteousness, wealth, pleasure, or liberation.
I am of the form of aliveness, eternal bliss, and auspiciousness.

I am beyond virtues, sins, joy, or sorrow.

I am beyond mantras, pilgrimage, vedas, or yagyas.
I am beyond that which is judgement, what is judged, or the one judging.

I am of the form of aliveness, eternal bliss, auspiciousness.

I wonder when I will reach there. I am impatient. And perhaps that is why I am still here.

The Pendulum

I have a friend in the US. I first met her in Bombay. Most of my friends over there are a result of my employment with Live Wire! BBS. I knew a lot of people back then, but retain contact with a few.

Drunkenness has always been my problem. I can get drunk on anything. Even in my 20s, I was drunk on Asterix, Tintin, and of course, even to this day, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE. I wish those books were still being written.

Things stick in your head that immediately dissolve all the turmoil going on in that mighty but fallible instrument called the mind. Whether it was Captain Haddock's, "Ten thousand blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon," or Obelix's, "These Roman's are crazy," or Wodehouse's, "Yes, but, dash it!"

Right now I am thinking of Obelix and his "These Roman's are crazy."

In a conversation with this friend, I once told her, "These humans are crazy."

I enjoy a decently made movie about aliens (if you do not mind a lot of cussing, you should see "Paul," a hilarious take on aliens), but I never really accepted the concept of aliens. Even my science fiction riddled mind could never come to terms with life in some other part of the universe, so at odds with our own, that they could just overwhelm us with fear (or laughter). However, I never felt part of humanity. There was too much difference. "They" and "I" had to have different origins. We did not meet at any point (except after about 60 mL of gin, then everyone was a brother and friend).

So, I told her, "These humans are crazy." In those days there was not much email in India, and certainly no social networking, we just sent the equivalent of an SMS through our 12 Kbps modems and thought it was amazing.

What we had been talking about I cannot exactly remember, but what I do remember is the constantly changing nature of people's demands from life and from each other.

There was no consistency, a thing that always created boundless confusion for me. Everyone seems to have ever-changing demands. You are supposed to follow a god, a religion, an education system, an economic system, a survival system, a social system (no, a social system does not encompass everything), a peer system, and goodness knows how many others. Since I always led a "cut-off" life, I am not sure of what other aspects are there. You can probably quintuple the list if you put your mind to it, but I cannot.

However, within all these systems, if there was a connection point, if it made sense, if it somehow meshed together - perhaps it could be accepted. It is rude to say so, but most people simply live with the system and never question it. That is perhaps the main reason why it works. Not because there is anything right about it, but simply because it is convenient. If water quenches thirst, does it really matter what water is? Yes, It is H20. But when there is thirst, or lack of cleanliness, or heat, does anyone think, "I need a chemical symbolized as H2O."? We only think of the properties of water and not what it is. We take the chemical, mix it around in any number of ways, and use it. Who cares?

But I am at heart a skeptic, even today. I feel compelled to question everything. The only difference is that previously when the answer did not satisfy me, I rejected the entire reason for the question arising, but now I am willing to think, give more consideration, try to understand why I am not satisfied, and even if I am not, trust my instincts that the answer is true even if it does not satisfy.

Anyway, it so happens that people swing. In India, first there were the untouchables, today they have reservations. In the west, women were not allowed to be part of the priesthood and now they are. In the Middle East, women were not allowed to vote and now they are. Holland is the only Roman Catholic country (in terms of majority, there are others faiths living there too) where euthanasia for terminally-ill patients is legal. When Columbus came back the second time to now-America, the natives were enslaved, killed, driven out... etc. and today even they have reservations. You think reservation is a problem in India, just look at what is happening in the dream destination of world.

There was a time when in India, the only country where spiritualism was treated with the respect it deserves, only a portion of the population was engaged in what we now call materialism. And even then the materialist put aside a few moments of his/her daily life and devote it to something that did not involve mere physical survival.

Then came the dreary days of war and conquest where damn near everyone wanted this place. The British got it eventually (so did the Mughal Empire, but its hold was not anywhere close to the Brits'). Spirituality went underground (literally). This has been happening all through the attempts to conquer India but the rest, as they say, is all history. The material happenings are known, but very few remember the subtle alteration in Indian society that eventually led to the death of a spiritually-dominant culture to a materially-dominant culture where in the 21st century a great number of so-called gurus are con-men and the rest are clubbed into the same category out of fear and lack of understanding.

The employer of the company that I used to work in in Bombay, Live Wire!, found his guru a long time ago and I once read a statement of his (not quoted verbatim), "All this (mess/suffering/foolishness) will lead to a more spiritual generation of humanity. All might not learn, but enough will learn and remember not to make such mistakes again." That was the import of what that guru had said. I do not even remember the year when I came across this, but I know I treated it utter scorn.

"Yeah, right!" about sums up my reaction. I saw no hope for this doomed species who seemed extremely bright at coming up with new ways of strangling itself to death.

And yet, it is happening. The west is becoming increasingly curious (albeit misled, they are still trying to use spirituality as a means of physical well-being) about spirituality and what it entails. Even in India, despite all the con jobs, curse them, a healthy portion of the population is striving to look beyond the material.

The odd thing is that only the very poor or the very rich seem to be attracted by it. What we call the "middle class" toddles along, surviving day-to-day. It is as if something is giving a signal that unless you experience at least one end of the extreme swing of the pendulum, the true need will not arise.

It is food for thought that why do only the extremes choose to look inward? Why not everyone. Has survival become the only reason for living in this temporary state. Is that how we have structured our society?

I cannot believe that. Not anymore. I think this disparity is needed so that all of humanity can mature to an extent that we suffer enough of past transgressions and arrive at a balance where there is room for everyone and create a world where those out of balance can be helped to find their balance.

The pendulum will never stop swinging. We will always be between two extremes, but enlightenment means (among other things) to find the balance. There will always be disturbances, distractions, negative actions, thoughts, and feelings, but what if the world is being run by those who can see beyond all that and knee-jerk useless reactions and focus on instant gratification of the ego and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the overall good.

Actually, there is no "overall" good. That is just bullshit. If the whole world benefits, it is not possible that you will not benefit. But we like to think of a "overall" good because it makes our ego feel like god.

There are many pendulums; personal, social, economical, religious, belief, etc. They have been swinging for a ridiculously long time. We swing between extremes. Today this, tomorrow that.

It is time to find a balance. Extremes are no good. As long as the pendulum swings both ways, we as a species will always be divided. We cannot stop it from swinging. That is not in our power. But we can create a situation where a few extremes do not harm anyone, including those doing the swinging.

Awareness is the key. There is only one control. Personal control. Everything outside the body and mind and emotions, is not in control. Anyone can seize control of it for any number of reasons because the pendulum will not stop swinging. Swinging is not the pendulum's fault, that is its function. It only swings to let us know that we need balance, that the true essence of what we are is at the point where the pendulum crosses fastest, perpendicular to the earth, on either side of that it can only slow down.

So let the pendulum swing, but at the apex of its movement, seize that power, and transform. That is where the true power lies. That is where the pendulum has the most impact.

Everywhere else, it is only receding, merely to fall back and move in the opposite direction, over and over.

P.S. There are many meanings to the phrase "A pendulum swings both ways." The above is my limited interpretation.

Distress

This once happened. A man was wrongly accused of a particular crime, and the king gave him a death sentence. He was to be executed next day morning. So when he was brought before the king, the man said, “O King, if you give me a year’s time, I can teach your horse to fly.” The king said, “This better be true, otherwise you will be executed by being crushed under the feet of an elephant. The man said, “Ok. Give me your horse and a year’s time; I will teach it how to fly.” He was given the time. He took the horse and went home. His wife was very distressed: “What did you do? How are you going to teach this horse to fly? What kind of horse ever fly?” The man said, “It’s one year. In a year’s time, the king may die. Or I may die naturally. Or the horse may die. Or, who knows, the horse may fly!”

The existing situations need not decide what happens tomorrow. Existing situations can be a guide, but never a cap, never a decision on what happens tomorrow. Distress and stress is coming because people are projecting the existing situations into the future.

-- Sadhguru

Pit Stop

Have you ever seen a car race (formula 1, stock car, anything)?

Every once in a while all the cars go in for a pit stop. In as short a time as possible the car must be refueled, cooled, the tires changed, etc. In short, a full "service" is performed, and the car runs away again, squealing tires, trail of smoke, zoom, gone round the bend.

I was just thinking that life is like that. There are vast stretches where the rules of normal traffic do not apply. In a certain sense there is absolute freedom. Freedom in the sense that you can break all limits. The driver who breaks the most limits eventually gets the checkered flag. In this sense, life is different because no one is racing for a prize. Life is too personal to be a competition. One basically races to leave all bondage behind and emerge at the finish line a perfectly clean, absolutely complete being, free of everything - and achieves the ultimate freedom.

It is not a matter of winning anything. It is more a matter of leaving everything (not in the material sense of "things") behind so that by the time you cross a certain point, you have become victory itself. If an example is required, Buddha (and many others) raced so fast he left his physical death behind. You could say he was a corpse that walked around, because he had transcended mortal death itself. The physical form remained only to propagate what he had learned. However, that is too esoteric a topic.

The pit stop. That is important. The race happens elsewhere. This life, on this planet, which we believe is the be all, end all of everything is merely a pit stop to tune the real engine responsible for this life in the first place.

The sad part is, very few are concerned with fine tuning the engine so that it can race at its maximum possible capacity and reach the end point as fast and as peacefully as possible.

A lot of people (me included) are too busy worrying about how the damn car looks. Is the paint okay? Does it have a music system? It is faster than the other cars? What kind of side-view mirrors does it have? Is it analog or digital? What is the fuel efficiency? How much power does the engine have?

The details of the body of the car consume so much time that entire lives, or pit stops, can be wasted in just worrying about the outside of the car instead of fine tuning it so that it works better and better on the racetrack.

That is how life is lived today. The external demands way too much attention. The car is just a tool given to us so we can travel from once place to the next. It is not given so that we get all obsessed with the car itself and forget what it is capable of, or worse, spend so much time decorating it that we never drive it.

I have a colleague (what ho! Pandey sa), who once told me something he had read in a book by a guru. The guru said, there is the tool and there is the purpose for which the tool was made. For some reason, we have become so obsessed with tools that we have lost sight of why the tools were made.

The simplest example is money. Money is not the purpose. The purpose is something else but money is  the tool. If money truly brought happiness then the rich would be the most blissful people that could ever exist. But that is not the case. Even they are miserable. It is because they tend to forget that getting entangled with the tool is folly. The tool is meant to be used in a certain way.

If you want to cook one meal, you do not light up a million fires. One small fire will do. If you set up a lot of fires, the surroundings will burn down and even the meal will give no satisfaction.

But it is difficult to think in those terms. Difficult not as in true difficulty of man trying to fly without an airplane, but difficulty in the sense that man knows how to fly but he has become so obsessed with airplanes that he has forgotten that the power of flight lies within.

There is nothing out there. Everything is in here. Fixing the "out there" is of no consequence unless the "in here" is not being worked on as well.

This is not life. This is a pit stop. A tool. Those who learn to use the tool can reach a point where pit stops are not required anymore. They are able to function perpetually. The only reason the pit stop exists is to reach that point.

Focus on the engine that makes the car go and not on what you can do for the decoration of the chassis.

If you take the engine out of anything that works, the only thing left is an empty shell, and that is not really good for much. Life is important, the body that carries life also needs its comforts and it is foolish not to invest in that. The problem arises with the assumption that the comfort of the chassis is good for the engine. An awareness of balance is vital.

Race cars are stripped of everything. Essentially, a race car is a human being from which everything that impedes its performance has been removed, even comfort to a large extent. You cannot drive a race car with your family. It is meant to be driven alone. You can drive the car of life to the comfort of everyone but the important thing is what is driving the car. But we seldom focus on that.

If we do, that car can become so accommodating that the entire universe can ride it to eternal bliss.

The chassis is important, it needs its care, but it does not need decoration. The chassis is perfect as it is. What matters is the engine. Today, there is so much burden of the chassis that we cannot think of the engine.

Imagine this very planet where everyone just maintains the chassis optimally and where a single engine can take the burden of a million chassis.

That is what a guru is. It is just one engine with the capacity to carry countless chassis at top speed. The guru's responsibility is to teach everyone that you have your own engine, you do not require carrying, but that lesson is not easy to learn.

I am very glad that I found a guru who could teach me this, but like he himself says, this does not require teaching, it all there inside.

The engine never stops working. All that is needed is to be aware of it. Once that awareness comes, the whole pit stop conundrum will be as easy as breathing.