Dasvidaniya

This Hindi movie raised some thoughts in me:

Amar the terminally ill patient displays the character of a man who is ready to give up those things that he loves most, to keep others happy. And yet, he has to be the one who has to suffer and die. As we have all heard before, good people usually die young. Maybe this is the way God rewards good people - by taking them to a better place than this bad, bad world, which is not the ultimate reality.

What disappoints me is those people who believe in actions more than in words, are the ones who aren't ultimately understood properly. They are the ones who don't get to enjoy the small things that make normal people happy. Like movies, like a game of ping pong, with the people they really love selflessly. It maybe a convoluted argument, but I am not interested in logic. What saddens me is the way some people make very important judgment calls in life, based on small things, but not big things.

I believe in equilibrium. The very thing that looks beautiful to you when you are happy, will look extremely ugly when you are angry and frustrated. So, what is the truth? The truth is in you, not the thing you are looking at. Base your judgments on things like this - yourself, not on things that aren't real. True happiness comes from transcending yourself. Like the psychologist Maslow said, you can go beyond self-actualization to self-transcenence when you see others enjoying the fruits of your selfless hard work. Like your kids and relatives. But when you dig deeper, you begin to think why you should be happy only when you see YOUR people happy? Doesn't unconditional love dictate that you want everyone, and then moving on to all life, every creature, to be happy? I believe that is when you visualize the solution to the mind-body problem, your soul gets liberated, and you become one with God.

What on earth is Godlessness?

By definition, God is omnipresent. (God is everywhere)

How then, can anything be Godless? That would only point to the irrationality of the subject, wouldn't it?

What do you need in life?

"What is the most important thing that every human being needs?" I guess that's an important question every one of us have asked ourselves at some point in our lives. "What do I want in life? What do I need? What do I do to get what I want? How do I become great?", are all questions we have all posed to our inner minds right before we fell asleep.

I have thought about these things for a while, and I came up with a theory about needs and wants. For every human, there is a fine line that divides his needs from his wants. Once these needs are fulfilled, he goes on to get what he wants. And that line is subjective - ever-changing with time, space, thought and emotion. So, what is that we all need that is never changing? I came up with a hypothesis. Just like any other idea we have already had we but never published because it's not our field, this has already been published by some domain expert decades ago.

Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of needs" is strikingly similar to my theory of human needs and wants.



If you read the Wikipedia article about it here, and look at the criticism section, you will find that, surprisingly, it didn't receive any logical or rational criticism. Someone said there exists no such hierarchy and our needs are non-hierarchical, and dismissed it saying it cannot be proved. "So narrow-minded", I thought. Maybe he should have just said "That theory is not falsifiable, hence not scientific." Unfortunately, that guy didn't provide any alternative hypotheses that ARE falsifiable. And he says poverty is any of these needs being unfulfilled. I thought the definition of poverty was the inadequate availability of fundamental human needs like food, water, clothing and shelter.

It's very interesting when Marlow says that self-transcendence exceeds self-actualization, and that too, near the end of his life. Reminds me of our duties to do something about global warming, it does.

Good = 3, bad = 11

Lorenz's Law of Mechanical Repair:
After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.

When your hands don't get covered with grease and your nose begins to itch, you scratch the itch and then forget about it. How many itches that you scratched in your life do you now remember?

Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

If the tool drops right next to your feet, you pick it up and go on with your job. Do you commit that to memory?

Kovac's Conundrum:
When you dial a wrong number,you never get an engaged one.

If you DO get an engaged tone, you wouldn't notice if it was a wrong number.

Cannon's Karmic Law:
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

You will remember your previous day's lie because it turned real today. Would you remember it if it didn't?

O'brien's Variation Law:
If you change queues, the one you have left will start to move faster than the one you are in now.

You will go on to buy your ticket if the queue you just moved into moves faster. Will you notice the queue that moves slower than yours?

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Why am I doing this - asking if you remember? I want to prove that people forget the good that happen to them much more easily than the bad that happens to them. I read an NYTimes survey that found that on an average, a person tells 3 people about a product he liked, but 11 people about a product he didn't like. See? This is why right is harder and wrong is easier much more often than not - in fact, 11/3 times more often.

The coolest way to handle terrorism

This is in response to my previous posts, Inward and Outward Terrorism, and The importance of humanization. I have found the answer to my questions. The Saudi government has a rehabilitation facility for convicted terrorists that follows the same principles that I have been advocating in those posts. Look at this BBC article here about that facility. Do you know their ideology?

"You cannot defeat an ideology by force. You have to fight ideas with ideas."

Isn't that amazing? I am a thousand percent for it (I will even donate if I can), if India or the US implements something like that to combat terrorism from outside and within.

Of what use is culture and religion?

I came to discuss this in one of my peer groups in an email thread, and I thought it would be more useful to post it on my blog.

Of course, religion is an important part of any culture. I concur. As with any aspect of human life, every religion has its own huge or minor peccadillos. And from the mere existence of multiple forms of cultures and religions in the world itself, we can logically infer that no culture or religion is inherently better than or superior to another - the same argument again - better is logically meaningless. Religion is part of a culture, but culture by itself is mostly defined by the symbolism followed by its people. Culture helps shed ignorance among people and helps them get onto to "higher and better things".

Vivekananda explains this concept using an example of a sage demonstrating it to a him. Link here:

"Many years ago, I visited a great sage of our own country, a very holy man. We talked of our revealed book, the Vedas, of your Bible, of the Koran, and of revealed books in general. At the close of our talk, this good man asked me to go to the table and take up a book; it was a book which, among other things, contained a forecast of the rainfall during the year. The sage said, "Read that." And I read out the quantity of rain that was to fall. He said, "Now take the book and squeeze it." I did so and he said, "Why, my boy, not a drop of water comes out. Until the water comes out, it is all book, book. So until your religion makes you realise God, it is useless. He who only studies books for religion reminds one of the fable of the ass which carried a heavy load of sugar on its back, but did not know the sweetness of it."

So, my point is this: until your culture/religion makes you realize God, it's useless. After you realize God, it's then also useless. Its only use is when it's put to its intended use. That is what I mean when I say religion is useless. For example, take the bindi on a married woman's forehead. It's intended use is to symbolize the sacred connection between husband and wife. For people who don't know its intention, it's an important aspect of mockery and comedy in other countries. "The dot", they call it. "It's a camera!" "Scratch it, you might win something" are their ways of making fun of it. And most young women in this generation no longer see its intended purpose, and thus they don't wear it anymore.

And coming to the discussion of the European origins of Hinduism and the Indic languages, it's very useful to notice the roots of our languages: Sanskrit, Hindi, Telugu, etc - they are categorized in the Indo-Iranian branch of the tree of the Indo-European languages (tree image here). Linguists have believed for over a century that all the Indo-European languages originate from one common language that they call the Proto-Indo-European language (link here). This supports the Aryan migration theory.

Inward and Outward Terrorism

As far as I know, there are two kinds of people when it comes to dealing with adversity. Ones who turn inward and ones who turn outward. The ones who turn inward hang themselves or jump off a cliff, and the ones who turn outward get a gun and start shooting students in classrooms. We all know that the casualties are much more for the outward-turning people. And it's a pretty good estimate of the paap they committed. And most of them are what we call terrorists, right? We call them that, but that is not what they call themselves.

The inward turning guys do think a little about turning outward and doing random killings, but they couldn't live with the shame of atrocities they would have committed. Because in their world, they will be lonely after that. Their life won't improve, because they will either go to jail or lead a life of eternal anonymity from thereon, and this won't be any better than the one they have already been living before they self-destructed.

The outward-turning guys - they don't care about the shame. They feel the shame, maybe too little to be ever admitted even to themselves, but they feel it. It's masked by feelings of victory and achievement. It's masked by a sense of contribution to their race or ethnicity. It's masked by the sweetness of revenge. And they get addicted to it. They do more of it, because they need it to protect themselves and their family, and they want it, because they are soldiers now. Soldiers of peace, or holy soldiers. Or warriors of god. They portray themselves in a positive sense. Not just positive, but the highest sense of self there is. But they drown themselves in this ocean of feelings of success, and eventually they don't notice that what change they wanted from other people didn't come.

Both of them are wrong, and stupid.

The ones who turn inward and self-terminate - they need self-discovery and they need to learn about themselves. They need another chance. Because complacency is what they couldn't live with. They want to achieve something, but they don't have the resources. They can't think of anyway to change their life. Some do - they give up everything and run away from home. They will be free and happy - even for a short while, because their life is in their own hands now. Nobody is around to tell them what to do all the time - even if they lead their life on the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder.

The ones who turn outward and exterminate the "traitors" and harm-doers - they too need a chance. And you know what the difference is? People are too scared of being hurt, that they don't even give them the chance to learn from their mistakes and do something good. We see cases where some of them learn that this a wrong way to lead a life, and give it up and surrender. They enter what resembles "witness-protection". This is also a life of anonymity, but it's not filled with shame. It's now filled with a sense of lifelong achievement. This is mild and positive. Everybody is scared to give them a chance. And this is where the government must step in - because the government exists to do what people cannot do by themselves. Give them a chance and a different spatio-temporal identity forever, and they will (surprisingly more often than we expect them to) CHOOSE IT.

This would be my way of dealing with adversity. Of course, there will be those who won't listen. There will be those who will continue to do what they believe in, even if everyone in their little world thinks it's wrong and despicable. For the inward-turning half of them, let God give them a better existence either in their next life, or after life. For the remaining outward-turning, adamant guys, harsh action is the way to go. And this must be the last option in the list.

The importance of humanization

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/example/heim6314.htm

Read this article about humanization and de-humanization. It explains why negotiation with the "bad guys" is important. It explains why it's extremely important to see their human side.

I have an idea, a vague idea about a hypothetical talk show:

The President/Prime minister (P) versus a supporter of harsh action against the "bad guys" (S)

P: Take this philanthropist X. do you think he loves this work?
S: Yes
P: Take this normal guy/your relative/you/. do you think he loves his wife/children?
S: Yes
P: Take this drug user/acquitted murder suspect/similar personality. Do you think he loves his family?
S: Yes
P: This character X: do you think he does? X must be a person whose activities must be in controversy that have never been proved/disproved.
Do you think he does?
S: Yes, I know where you're going.
P: I am glad you're intelligent enough to know/not stupid enough not to know.
Now , take this Guantanamo bay detainee who was falsely detained. Do you think he does?
S: Yes
P: Take this convicted felon - do you think he does?
S: Yes
P: Do you think this convicted terrorist does?
S: Yes
P: So, you agree that all these people have a human side and are capable of experiencing both positive and negative human emotions and rational thought?
S: Yes
P: So, what makes you think they are not open to negotiation, logical arguments and rational discussion?


The character of S looks very dumb here, while most S's are very clever or they argue like one.

This piece needs a lot more work for a final draft to come out, but i may never have that time in my life, so, this might be it :)

Aren't they liars and hypocrites?

I met her last Saturday. I didn't know her before that. All I knew was that she was a grad student at CMU. I thought we had a candid conversation. I had a good first impression of her. She said she wanted to go with dating instead of an arranged marriage, though I would have expected otherwise of her, with her being the elder sibling and all; that she would try to be responsible and lead her brother with the currently popular and safe approach to a long and happy life. It's probably outdated in this generation, isn't it?

Indeed, I asked her if she found or is seeing someone. She gave me an answer that sounded like a NO to me, but just a few minutes ago, I saw proof that was a blaring 'YES' to my question. "Ha! Such liars!" was the first thought that came to my head as soon as I saw that scene. She was holding hands with a guy and was walking down the street. She didn't notice me, maybe because they walked past me and could only see my back, or because she was mentally lost in another world filled with maya-like happiness.

Anyway, having been in the same situation around a year ago, I can try to understand her situation, but is it any of my business? My interest in her didn't climb past the 'I just know her-she is a friend' threshold in the first place.

You might be thinking this is one bizarre situation or probably an outlier and I shouldn't generalize based on one of those, but haven't I seen recurring proof that I am right in this case? Did I not ask that Mongolian girl to have dinner with me, not give her my card? And wasn't I promised a call later? And boy wasn't I disappointed when I saw her days later performing the same exact act this girl was showing off minutes ago! Count rises to two now!

Probably the worst among all these cases is that of an immediate relative, but it still is not my right to judge or opine unless asked. I still don't want to take risk by making that public.

Count = Count + 1; Number_Of_Liars = 3. Output_Status = Surprise!

All that I learned from these experiences is that there is as much intellectual diversity among women as there is among men. And I don't mean that in a positive way. This is particularly important because having grown up with two sisters and an extremely (probably overly) patient, giving and self-sacrificing father, I had until now always placed the race of women much above that of men. I had no idea that I was headed for utter disappointment when I landed in the "big bad world" and saw things with my own eyes.

Time to judge me? or time to judge women?

What do I ultimately want? I want honesty and truth when it comes to the "fairer but darker inside" sex. If I can't have that, please give me the strength to live without them, the determination to pursue and infer them from experience, and the perseverance to keep trying when I can't find them because I couldn't see the wood for the trees.

Limiting language

The protagonist in the movie "Smart People" says, at one point, "We respond to literary texts using precisely the same fundamental interpretive categories as authors and poets use to create them. So there's no need to posit any kind of unstable ontology or ruptured consciousness."

I thought that was an excellent comment on literature and the work of literary critics. Do you understand what that means?

Shallowness and forgiveness?

What is the relationship between the two? Are you shallow if you can't forgive someone? Are you deep if you are understanding? Are you shallow if you are selfish? Are you deep if you are selfless? When it comes to things that matter, will you trust people, even if you know you will be hurt? Is that plain carelessness, or omniscience? You are your own judge. Nobody knows you as well as yourselves.

Your opposition

Your opposition is essential for your existence. It keeps you in control. It helps you learn right and wrong. It proves that you know nothing. It proves that you know everything. Without it, you will wallow in ignorance. Without it, you will turn into a pig. It hurts you to help you. Nice concept, isn't it?

Love, trust and life

It's very easy to love someone. You don't have to do anything, just give them what they want. Be happy that they are happy. If you can't, just tell them you love yourselves more than you love them. But, is it easier or harder to trust someone than to love someone? You don't need to know anything about that person to love them. It could just as well be Endorphins and Dopamine rushing through their receptors. It takes more to trust a person. It takes reciprocation to trust them. It takes knowledge to trust them. It takes experience, happiness and suffering with them, their past and their present, their reaction to truth and lies, their understanding and their love to trust them. It takes both your lives to trust them.

And yet, you can never know anyone enough to trust someone. Nobody is perfect, which means you can only trust people on a limited basis. Don't be scared, but be cautious. Be daring, but don't be stupid. Mistakes are only as grave as the consequences they cause. You can never know what's going to happen. Do the best you can, do what you think is right. That's what everybody does - what they think is right.

There exists no eternal truth. Even if it does, it's beyond reason and rationality. There will always be people who will need proof, and are fearful of belief. There will always be people who will believe, and eschew reason. As long as there are humans in this universe, there will be variance and difference. It takes just one person for differences to exist - you. There need not even be someone else to argue with you. You can be your own hindrance, your own conscience. You are the master, and you are the slave. You are the engine, and you are the car. You are the fuel and you are the exhaust.

What you do with what people do to you, depends on you. What people do to you depends on what you do. The world is centered around you. The world is within you. That's duality. A particular flavor of duality.

Happiness

To the hunter, prey gives happiness. To the sailor, reaching his destination gives happiness. Who are you and what gives you happiness?

Scary reaction leading to self-blame

They cannot bear to hear the truth about themselves. When they hear it, they can only do one of two things. Yell at you, or lock themselves in a room and cry. Both scare me. What should I do? Not telling the truth makes me suffer. Telling the truth makes me suffer. Do you see another side to the coin? Looks like this is a biased coin, just like unfair life. What would you do? Suffer or suffer?

Spikes in my heart rate

They helped me suffer, they helped me lose. I resent them, I despise them. They caused me to confuse reason with emotion, good and bad with right and wrong. They tread upon me. And before I realize it, they helped me grow up and be strong. Maybe a little too much I grew up. Maybe a little too strong I am. I have aged, but the body hasn't. Am I in the wrong place in this world? Maybe a tad too early in life I quit looking forward to the beautiful reality. Or am I afraid to take drastic steps, having been trained always to take the safe course?

I read somewhere that life is a series of rough drafts being torn one by one. When will the document be complete? Or are we not supposed to finish? Haaaa! Save me, O life!

Engineless car

The car was on a dirt road. Something yanked the engine out of the car and pushed it on to the highway. Now it's just a metal shell. It can only go so far as the push can take it.

This illustrates what happens to a person when he/she loses their drive - the soul.

Anti-realism

The question is not who, the question is when. The answer is "not now".

The meat on the bone

Together, they make the body. The meat cannot stand without the bone, and the bone need not exist without the meat. Everybody wants the meat, but nobody wants the bone. Bones are piling up around you and meat is accumulating inside you. Look around you! Soon, the bones will fall upon you and crush you!

Dead fish in the river

It goes wherever the river goes. It has no will of its own, no direction of its own. It will rise with the water, and fall with the water. It loses slight parts of itself on the way, but the other living fish don't care. They have their own wills and directions. Ends up eventually in the sea, it will. And now, it's lost in oblivion, and its body decays. It becomes nothing, which makes up everything.

Secrets and lies

They grow old and they grow wise. They tell you what you want to hear. They forget what they want to say. When they say what they want to say, you explode! They had been hurt by small explosions in the past. They won't be comfortable near a huge one. So, they forget what they want to say.

So clever!

You say they should grow up, and yet they won't. You say they are pigs, and yes, pigs will be pigs. They will never turn into horses. If the pigs give you what you want, why do you want them not to be pigs?

You know what they want and yet, you cannot give them what they want. You want it too, but you don't want to say it. You are lucky to have the opportunity to get morally outraged when they ask, but when you say what you want, they simply get bored. How unfortunate it is, that they get to be just bored but you get to be so outraged?

They are so desperate and stupid, and yet you cannot keep them happy. So clever!

The coin's other side

They say without meaning, and they mean what?

They show you they are worried and you tell them not to worry, but they solve their problems without your help. What do you get? Their worries. You are now miserable, and you feel cheated forever by their race.

Slice the coin, but each slice will still have two sides. What should you do?

Don't touch it!

There it was. I touched it and it gave me pleasure. I pulled it closer and it broke. What was its purpose? Why was it there? I should have just ignored it. It would have at least existed.

Say it and lose it

I want to learn how to act. But if I act, how will you know what I am trying to tell you?

You ask me what you want from me. You ask me what you can do for me. But if I tell you, the purpose is lost. You will do whatever I ask you to do. That is not what I want you to do.

The moment I tell you, it loses its significance. The second you ask and I answer, it's importance vanishes.

Squeezed

Everybody needs me, but nobody wants me.
I gave you everything, but I received nothing.

Don't keep polishing the nails, for they are dead and they have no inner beauty.
Bananas are yellow and coconuts are brown, but they are both white inside.

Homelessness

He doesn't belong to this world. He doesn't want to feel attached to names and numbers, religions and nations, groups and kinds. What am I? I? What "is" I? It's almost impossible for him to spend a day without using the word "I". He wants to use the third person to refer to himself. His soul is craving to be separate from his body. He feels homeless everywhere. He can never tell if it's good or bad. Experience tells him there exists no absolute good or bad. All definitions of good and bad are subjective. One has only to use these terms to get on to something higher and "better". But, what IS it?

He believes in God, but he never saw a point in talking about it. The concept of God is extremely personal to everyone. But, sometimes he can't keep it to himself. He now thinks that the idea of God is an extremely useful idea to live an easy and "good" life.

Once you define death as just non-existence of life but not an actual state, then is it better or worse to "live"? In this world of attachments and desires, how does one remain pure and perfect? He knows something but he can't explain it. He is limited by words and language. Someone told him that linguists couldn't take the idea that language is limiting. Language is a tool. Just like a book. When you understand what it's trying to convey, it's no longer useful. That doesn't mean books and languages are useless. Their purposes are temporary. Permanence only exists outside this so-called "reality". This world is transient. "Maya", it is called, according to "The eternal law". Why is the pursuit of the absolute so hard? Why is he not "there", instead of trying to keep "going" there? Who put him behind this veil and made him want to get out? He wants to use the idea of God just to refer to whatever is outside this virtual reality. God will help you when you are in need, but He is not always good. He will also make you suffer in this world to let you know that this world is not real, and only He is the absolute reality. This is why he and He are spelled differently. Wow! The "he" is trying to reach Him with His help.

This reality is full of frustrations, needs and wants, feelings and thoughts, desires and miseries! Oh God! Help him find peace! The last thing he wants to feel is fear. The only fear he wants to have is the fear of fear itself. How can he do that?

Hindus upset over Hollywood film "Love Guru"

Please read the article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7460522.stm

before you read my opinion on the issue.

I agree with Dr. Chopra that "the premature outcry against the film itself is religious propaganda". The best part I like about Hinduism is the tolerance it promotes towards other people's beliefs and practices.

"We all know when you show a person with a sari and a mark on their forehead that will be associated with Hinduism." If you have seen the movie "Khuda ke liye", or "In the name of God", and understood what Naseeruddin Shah meant by "Islam mein Daadi hein, magar Daadi mein Islam nahin hain", then you will see what my point of view is: "Hindus wear saris and marks on their foreheads, but saris and marks on foreheads don't make Hindus." One can keep arguing out the details: the points that support your view and the points that support my view, but arguments don't usually address the issue, they merely say "Here's an issue that worries me."

Changing the rating to disable a section of the population from seeing the film is not the way to go, I say, that is not Hinduism. If you are worried that young teenagers might get a skewed view of the religion, you must educate them about the religion and what it exactly is about. If the teenagers who see it think that's what Hinduism is about: Saffron robes, holy beads, saris and Tilakas (forehead marks), then that is what you are making them think. Tell them, that is not what that religion truly represents. Hinduism recommends you to find your own purpose of life and find your own way to achieve that goal. That requires adaptation to varying times and conditions. That means the time has come to question the adherence to dressing and bodily decorations - and it's for you to decide whether or not to keep and support that "tradition".

Religion is always an interesting issue to talk about!

Your children are not your children

Persian poet Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself;
They come through you but not from you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For, they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls lie in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit,
Not even in your dreams!

I personally think this is one great poem. I have been trying to find a way to express my feelings about parents' control over their children. Control their emotions, but not their thoughts. What is that feeling you get when a poet writes exactly how you feel about something? Can I call it resonance? If I can call it so, I felt resonance with the line "You may give them your love but not your thoughts." Absolutely amazing line. And note the use of "may" in the line. Parents need not give their children the love they "need".

When A loves B, A must give what B wants, but not what A "thinks" what B wants or needs. That is unselfish love.

Idea interception

Delhi in China

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=china&ie=UTF8&ll=37.303552,97.57782&spn=0.605169,1.2854&z=10

Mucus Transfusions!

Live your own happy life

Life sucks

The spiritual need for marriage

After some experience with dating a girl from another country where dating is the culture, and given my past experience in a country from where Yogis, the perfect humans, come, I now think I have gained some knowledge to answer the question why one should get married. I am talking about the spiritual purpose of marriage; I am talking about love, which is inter-personal in nature, but not bhakti, which is the devotional love of God.

I say the path to God has innumerable obstacles, the most important of which are addictions that give illusory pleasure to our senses. Examples include spicy/tasty food, smoking, drinking, sex, drugs, and the worst of all, inter-personal relationships. The relationships I am talking about are between ANY two persons: Mother and child, husband and wife or sister and brother. I say they are the worst, because they last a lifetime.

I see a trend in the life of any person. A human is born to his parents, and he starts his life at the receiving end of love. His mother and father practically live for the child, and give him love. Love brings everything he needs. It can turn the world around. I completely agree with J.K.Rowling that it's the most powerful force in the entire universe. I could probably call it the only force in the universe. The child progresses through that stage to the next stage, where he shares that love with his siblings. A desire for independence starts with fighting with siblings (for toys?) and parents (for a bike?). Love that is shared, begins to cause conflict; but however, he gets used to it, and adjusts his life to suit the situation. He is learning. He is still at the receiving end of love. After going through that stage, he turns independent and is now single, or a brahmachari. He is living by himself now. But, he is not perfect yet. The role of love is not over in his life. The real fight has only just begun. When he is ready, he gets married. This is where he both gives and receives love. He is simultaneously in both the receiving and giving ends of love. Married life is both love and war. The received love is a desire, and the war is misery. He becomes a man now. The man is on a path to find the equilibrium between the two forms of love, and that conflict is not giving him what he really wants. He cannot find that eternal peace of mind we really craves for. Then arrive his children. Here begins the next generation. The man now is at the giving end of love, and remember, parents always love children more than children love their parents. The love the man gives to his children, is not returned to him in full. (This is kind of a law of nature. I don't know why.) But, he seems happier with his children than with his life partner. Now, why is that? He realizes that the happiness that comes from love, comes from loving, and not from being loved. Realization must come here, and that realization tells the man, that ideal love must be one-sided in one's heart, that is, only outwards, towards all creatures on Earth (or in the Universe, I could say). This is when the man realizes that receiving love is an addiction, and is a life-long illusion. This is why I called human relationships the worst of all. Because it takes a lifetime to end that addiction. A Turkish friend of mine, gave me that wonderful statement: "Love is an illusion." But then, what is the reality?

The Reality is God. It's as simple as that. It's eternal. "The whole world is an illusion." Hearing this statement, Robert Pirsig (author of a book on Philosophy, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), who was studying Oriental Philosophy in Banaras, India, got crazy. He couldn't believe that the whole world was an illusion. He quit studying Philosophy and went back to the US to be a reporter. Shakespeare said "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players..." Statements like this make most people crazy. They poisoned Socrates, and crucified Jesus. Ha!

I want to be free - Elvis Prisley

There's no joy in my heart,
only sorrow
And I'm sad
as a man can be
I sit alone in the darkness
of my lonely room
And this room
is a prison to me

I look at my window
and what to I see
I see a bird
way up in the tree
I want to be free free
Free - ee - ee - ee
I want to be free
like the bird in the tree

What good are my eyes,
they can't see you
And my arms,
they can't hold so tight
I have two lips
that are yearning,
but they're no good to me
Cause I know I can't kiss you tonight

I look at my window
and what to I see
I see a bird
way up in the tree
I want to be free free
Free - ee - ee - ee
I want to be free
like the bird in the tree
I want to be free
like the bird in the tree

Duty

When did man first kill another man? No sooner than the birth of the human race, which was billions of years ago. When did one man last kill another? Just a second ago, somewhere on this earth. As long as men exist, they will kill each other. Animals kill each other too. Man is, in this way, no different than any other animal. Then how else is man different from other animals?

What will you do when you see in yourself a budding desire to cause harm to another creature? Supress it, and try not to ever have such a black heart again. What will you do when another man approaches to kill you? What should one do? What does an animal do? It either fights or flees. A man may beg for life. He could flee or fight. What does a man who practices non-violence do? He will not fight. He will not beg, because he has his dignity. He has a right to live. Or does he? What would you or I do? I may thank him for ridding me of these bonds of life. But that is not what I truly want, though. A human must show compassion even to his enemy. History teaches us to love even their enemies. Arjuna was told to fight and kill, not because Krishna liked war, but because it was Arjuna's duty to fight. Performing one's own duty is so hard, it was easier for Arjuna to give up fighting, or maybe even give up his life than to kill. Such is the importance of duty. Life is duty. Yet, how many of us realize our own duties?

If you consider it a lion's duty to kill a deer for its own survival, then its a soldier's duty to kill another. Then how is man different from animals? Back to the same question again. Men think and animals don't? Both think. Man is intelligent? How do you define intelligence? Is it consciousness of his surroundings that makes man different? I don't seem to find an answer. Maybe I am thinking too much to find a simple answer.

Peace of mind

Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

-Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

When you get stuck

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance:

Getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then later figure out the right order.

Quality

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance:

1. Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a non-thinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.

2. I was talking about the first wave of crystallization outside of rhetoric that resulted from Phaedrus' refusal to define Quality. He had to answer the question, If you can't define it, what makes you think it exists?

A thing exists, if a world without it can't function normally. If we can show that a world without Quality functions abnormally, then we have shown that Quality exists, whether it's defined or not. Subtract quality from a description of the world:

Fine arts, paintings, symphonies, poetry, comedy, sports, tasty marketplace items, movies, dances, plays and parties would all be gone. A huge proportion of us would be out of work, which would force us to indulge in non-Quality work. Pure science, mathematics, philosophy and logic would remain unchanged. If Quality was dropped, only rationality would remain unchanged.

The world CAN function without Quality, but it's not worth living. The term WORTH is a Quality term. Life would just be living without any values or purpose at all.

Please don't want!

I might be repeating thoughts from the post "Love and marriage" before, but I want to write this post, because I want to think straight. I think well when I talk to someone or I write things down. So, here I go:

I realize that it's perfectly possible to live with a person you have never known before, for the rest of your life. A small example: How do roommates live together? Do they not fight with each other, but yet adjust even for a a duration of a couple of years? There is proof for this, Indians realize it: They get married and then fall in love. Love is not essential before marriage. What is essential is the ability to adjust and sacrifice things for the one you love. Where love exists, hatred exists there - every coin has two sides. What half the Americans do is they divorce when that hatred pops up in at least one of their hearts. In my opinion, if they still stick together long enough, they can begin to love each other again. Since love didn't last long before they hated each other, that hatred will not last long too, they only have to wait it out. Love seems beautiful, and then they get married. Hatred and problems are ugly and hard to cope with, and they get divorced. That's how half the people live here. Now I begin to think that marriage and divorce are two sides of the coin of "a life together". Oh! Another point - If you WANT to get married, you should be ready for a divorce - "Desire brings misery" seems true everywhere. Then how do Indian people get married? I got it! It should happen by itself. You should not look for someone to get married to. What Indians do is let their parents find someone for them. They don't even ask their parents to find someone for them. Now, THAT seems right! The concepts of divorce and love marriages are FOREIGN to the Indian people. Maybe this is what is one of those things that are bringing the rich tradition of India down. Indians don't divorce because divorce doesn't solve the problems you face in marriage. It only helps you escape. What guarantees you that you will not be in the same situation again if you marry someone else next? Nothing. What will you do then? Maybe you will realize then, that divorcing is a waste of time, and a big pain in the neck and adjust with your second spouse for the remaining part of your life. My first husband, my second wife, etc are terms that make me sick to the stomach. I don't want to hear such stuff. Makes me want to go back to India and settle there for ever.

I might speculate on what kind of person is going to marry me, but that will only crank up my desire to get married, which I don't want to have now. Remember, marriage must happen by itself. Don't want it! What will I do if someone approaches me? Tell her to ask my parents :) Haha! That obviously seems stupid, but it's deep, going by the explanation I have given above.

What a realization! In this perspective, relationships are a waste of time. Valuable time you can spend doing other important things to develop your personality and character. A person dies, but his character remains. What defines a person is his character but not always his job.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am right, but these are my thoughts and hence I am.

The Eternal Law

A paragraph from "The Man Who Knew Infinity" by Robert Kanigel, pg 35:

The genius of "The Eternal Law", then, was that it left room for everyone. It was a profoundly tolerant religion. It denied no other faiths. It set out no single path. It prescribed no one canon of worship and belief. It embraced everything and everyone. Whatever your personality there was a god or goddess, an incarnation, a figure, a deity, with which to identify, from which to draw comfort, to rouse you to higher or deeper spirituality. There were gods for every purpose, to suit any frame of mind, any mood, any psyche, any stage or station of life. In taking on different forms, God became formless; in different names, nameless.

The statement in bold made me so emotional. I was overwhelmed with feeling I can't describe in words.

Squiggly line

Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid. I see you lurking there on the periphery of my vision. But when I try to look at you, you scurry away. Are you shy, squiggly line? Why only when I ignore you, do you return to the center of my eye? Oh, squiggly line, it's alright, you're forgiven. - Stewie Griffin

I like the squiggly line...I don't know what they are called, though.

One of my ideal jobs

I would like to become a librarian. If I become a librarian, I can read all the books I want. Yes, I am after knowledge. Knowledge is in the library. Library entices me because I want to have all the knowledge I want in the short life I have. Vivekananda defines knowledge as a classification of all information, at some point. Classification of everything in the world. That reminds me of the library. Library is organized and classified. It is a hierarchical structure and represents the classification Vivekananda talks about. That's why I like libraries.

But, if I become a librarian, its obvious that I will not have time to study. Because the job of a librarian is not to study, but manage the library. His job is to help others study. Oh! Even a librarian doesn't have the time to study. I need to work and earn money to live and no time to study. All the time is being lost in working, and there is no time to study. That is why I am doing a PhD. To study. But what I am going to study during my PhD is a drop in the ocean of all knowledge. How do I drink the ocean? I can't live forever, so it's kind of impossible. I need to decide what to study and what not to study. Knowledge and experience also lies in telling what is important and what is not.

Ripples of thought

I began thinking about thought. Religion and philosophy and science have something in common. When you go deep enough, what some people don't understand or realize is that the world is an illusion. All the world is human imagination. Some of my previous posts say these things. I am pretty sure this sounds outrageous to you, the reader. Imagine an object, like a chair. What is a chair? Describe it for me, please.

A chair is something you sit on. You can feel it with your skin, and you can sense its weight if you lift it by hand. Your mind senses the existence of the chair through the skin and muscles. Your mind feels the chair. You can see the chair with your eyes: It's black or brown, made of wood and is hard and has legs and a backrest, etc. You describe what you see. Sight through the eyes reaches your mind. Your mind sees the chair. If the chair smells like something, you can even say your mind smells the chair. If you hit the chair, you can hear it being hit. Your mind hears the existence of the chair. What is the fifth remaining sense? Oh, the sense of taste! I am pretty sure that, if you lick the wooden chair, you can taste the chair :) Your mind tastes the chair. I keep using the word mind instead of the brain, because the brain is just a physical object. I refer to the mental concept behind the brain, the mind.

Having your mind sensed the chair with all your five senses, can you still imagine a chair even if the chair doesn't exist? Yes, you can. So, it means that the chair need not exist in reality for you to imagine it. What the human mind needs to imagine a chair, is an a priori concept of a chair. But, I find it hard to believe it. That needs memory. Where does memory come from? This is where I get stuck. Having discussed this, if you extend this discussion, I think you can see that the world doesn't exist outside the human imagination.

Wiki says this is the mind-body problem. This is the dualism in nature. Energy and matter, mind and body. Dualism everywhere, balance everywhere. I need to take a further step into monism. It seems intuitive to me that there is only thought in the world, and there is no physical world. Don't ask me why. I can't answer that question. Because I don't know why. I only think it's true. Maybe that's what God means. I hence question the existence of God. I try not to believe in God, for the purpose of finding and realizing God. That's the best way to do it. Reasoning and logic can take you only that far. Philosophy and religion go beyond reasoning. That's why the general public look at philosophers and religious people as crazy people without a purpose in life. That's because these crazy people question the purpose of life, and move the masses and disrupt their routine life. The government doesn't want the public's life to be disturbed. They are against philosophers and religion. I think this is where the concept of "separation of church and state" comes in.

Life is questionable. Philosophy says life and death are two sides of the same coin. Thus far, it's obvious. The Hindu god Brahma creates life and the Hindu god Siva destroys life. There is the third god in the trio, Vishnu, the God of preservation and sustenance. You can call the forces of life and death by any name. Names are not explanations. Selfish people make advantage of the fear of death. As long as humans remain humans, that is, the need for food, shelter and clothing exists, humans will fight among each other. Differences will exist. The world will remain like this. You cannot change it. Practice your principles instead of preaching them. Even if you preach them without practicing them, you will be a hypocrite.

I begin to think about hypocrisy. Most people think hypocrisy is bad. Hypocrisy is when the person does not practice the idea he supports. Should he follow a principle he states for the principle to be true? That's definitely a big NO. Gravitation exists whether or not Newton discovered it. For an idea or principle to be true, the person stating it need not be the one following it. See the idea, not the person. Lobbyists and reporters make a living based on the fact that people think hypocrisy is bad and hypocrites are questionable creatures. Perhaps they are right, because it's more impressive for a person to preach something when he follows it, because people will not question him: Why don't you follow it when you say it's true? Actually that question is unnecessary, because that's where it gets personal. People get personal instead of helping each other out towards achieving a common goal.

The identification of a common goal is important for people not to fight with each other. It all comes back to the same question again: The purpose of life. Since nobody knows the right answer (there is no right or wrong), people can't pursue that goal, and they set their own goals in life and pursue it. If it conflicts with the goal of another person, they fight.

Love and Marriage

All that I talk about love and marriage are from my personal experience in this month. I read somewhere on the internet that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. It's absolutely true to me in this case. Absolutely. I began to ponder over the concept of marriage for the first time when this hit me in December 2007. As far as I understand, marriage is a necessity. The little bit of philosophy I read a while ago tells me marriage is a necessity and a duty, whether it's social, personal, emotional, or spiritual. It is a step towards higher realizations of life. Given this hypothesis, I will discuss my thoughts on this. I have seen two cultures in my life: Indian and American. The more time I spend on it thinking and hence the deeper I go, the more similarities I see, differences are only apparent superficial and shallow - they only divide people and cause disharmony among people who are not so broad-minded to see the similarities within.

Similarities are in the answers to questions like "Who?", "Why?", "When?": How do you choose whom to marry? Why should you marry that particular person? When do you decide whether or not to marry? When do you actually marry? These are the thoughts that seem to have similar answers across cultures and borders.

I will start with saying that you can marry anybody. ANYBODY. (Start the thinking process with disbelief, and build up on it.) That's true only when both the partners realize it's true. Since no two persons are alike and nobody is perfect, it means that marriage is aimed at bringing two people, who are most similar, together. But, is that necessary? Can differences be eliminated with time and harmony be achieved? Apparently not, because life is short. It will need sacrifices from both sides to make it work, because love means giving and not expecting to receive. What can bind them together? Is love a prerequisite for marriage? Millions of people who have never even known each other got married and lived together for all their lives. Love cropped up in their married lives either as a necessity or by itself. I am pretty sure they are happy with their married lives. You can't measure happiness, but you can tell it works, because happiness doesn't come from outside, but it's inside yourself - only the external world drives you away from discovering it within yourself.

When do you decide when to marry? My opinion is this: You think about getting married when you start feeling alone, because everybody else is getting married: Your friends, your relatives, your siblings, etc. Since they have their own personal lives now and they can't afford to hang out with you and spend time with you; you are left alone, and you start thinking about company for yourself because everybody else you know has company in their lives. I think this is where same sex marriages come in, since that company need not always come from the opposite sex, unless you are heterosexual, and feel the need to satisfy your physical desires. Since nobody I know is not after satisfaction of those desires, marriage is not essential in that respect: personal necessity. I think this is why some cultures have very early marriages, since people achieve puberty at very early ages, ages at which they don't even know what to think and don't even have the knowledge to understand what is happening to them.

My posts might be disjointed because I write as I think, and I can't write as fast as I think, and if I think about how to write while writing, it blocks the process of thinking itself, and it doesn't serve the purpose of writing. So, I ask you to bear with me and be patient as I learn that art of writing and thinking at the same time.

Now comes the emotional part: Is marriage a necessity for satisfaction of emotional desires? For most people it is, since they are emotional. But what exactly do I mean by emotional desires? It's the need to share your opinions, feelings: both happy and sad. This brings together people who think along similar lines: they must have the same tastes, the same culture, come from the same place, speak the same language - in short, have the same superficial attributes of life. But what I think they must have in common is the thought process. If they think the same way about life, that is enough to bring them together. All differences can be eliminated in due course of time. Of course, they can never be truly eliminated, but only reduced. Differences keep occurring in life not only in marriage, but everywhere: in your job, in your own mind, in your family, with your friends. What needs to be common to the two is the way they try to overcome these differences. That is what I call similarity in thought. But if, given a problem, there are always multiple ways to solve it. Do the differences lie in the problem statement? Or do the differences lie in the paths they take to achieve the same solution to the problem they both agreed on?

Coming to the spiritual need of marriage, I don't know if it's a necessity or not, because spirituality is in the mind and not in what you do. Can you be spiritual even if your partner is not? Should I be talking about this in the first place, since most people don't find it entertaining enough? Should I care for what other people think about spirituality? Should I write about it whether or not there are people to read this? I write because I want to share it with somebody nonexistent, when nobody I know is willing to listen to all this crap about my thought process. Maybe that is why I don't talk much and think too much. It's getting worse by the day, which I don't want to happen. Maybe I should post this stuff on some dating website when I need someone. :)

I have to read my book now, so see you later.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Thanks to Amith for suggesting that book for me to read:

Some extracts from the book:

Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. the whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and the Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. You common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.