Category: Philosophical Musings

My philosophical Musings.

Telling a tale I don’t know of.

July 3, 2017

KATHA

Let go. Let go. Let go. I did just that. No rules, no imagery just the subconscious guiding the fingers, just nothing, may be not even my subconscious. There are things which just happen sometimes, and one may never know why. A few things which I may not even care if they look good or not. That’s not the purpose. Its like talking to yourself through a canvas. If you know what I mean.

I may never put it up for public viewing, in a gallery or I just may. I don’t know why but after doing this I am still struggling to come back.

The Light has no Shadow.

June 10, 2017

I fell for reading philosophy very early in life, If I remember correctly when I was 12 or 13. A book which somebody gifted my granddad and since the title said something about Gurus, I happened to decide somehow ( I don’t know maybe it was the blue cover on the book or something else which attracted me) to glance at the first page which led me to the second and before I knew it I was hooked. It was not a very complicated proposition, a simply put book with lots of quotes and some cool logic, with which it tried to explain the need of a Guru. I later mentioned to my granddad about me reading the book and he asked me a few questions about the book to make sure I was not fooling around and when he was convinced I did read the book, I could sense he became a little amused and surprised that I could comprehend the matter discussed. He must have told during some family sitting all my uncles and aunts and my parents, because then I started getting a lot of books as gifts, and close family started to treat me with a little more ( how do you put it, like I was some strange young mature boy). Well I enjoyed the attention and found it cool.

As I grew in life I could sense this love for books philosophical was there to stay. As I grew I read a lot of Osho and Krishnamurthy and later Francis Bacon and other Big and small names. But to confess somehow I had hit a wall. Osho I could understand and Krishnamurthy too but most others I just could not comprehend. I just could not make head and tail of what they were saying. I decided to be a little organised and categorised my quest into Eastern philosophy and Western Philosophy and further in Ancient Medieval and Modern. I organised my book shelf in the same manner and planned my reading in a fashion that I will pick up book each from both shelves and give an hour to each every day.{ I could not get a formal education in the subject since I had planned to finish college and join the Army, which I did. (I carried my books on all tour of duties and read where ever I could).}

I tried making sense out of existential philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger. To tell you the truth I lumbered “Being and Nothingness” by Jean Paul Sartre for a long time wrestling with the content but mostly it was just dead weight to me.

I also had this strange habit of visiting most religious places, talking to all kinds of ascetics and Monks and Sadhus and Babas and Aghoris, and priests. To understand practices and cultural beliefs and question everything. But my wall just would not fall.

Well the easiest thing to do is formally get an education, to sit in a lecture hall and sit and listen to a professor who may lead and guide and bring my wall down. Which circumstantially I was not inclined to do. I also would not concede to the fact that my love for the subject is ill placed. So I read on even when I could not understand.

However several years back as a young Captain, commanding a Company, I had just returned back from an all-night operation we had launched, and after debriefing the company I was sitting in the early morning hours on a small machaan ( sort of a platform in the trees I had got made for myself ) sipping tea, and looking at the jungle beyond. It was all strangely calm, after an all-night downpour which left us soaking wet. (I had still not changed). Somehow I remembered a paragraph of Sartre’s  “Being and Nothingness” and I could understand everything in the most Lucid manner. I asked the boy serving me tea to fetch me the book and I tried reading another paragraph and I could understand that too, too tired to continue I changed and went to catch up some sleep.

Later that evening I realised what had happened, in that moment of tired , sleepy, almost slumber state I had for some time let go of my preconceived prejudiced conditioned mind. And in that brief moment when I could see the book and decipher it as it was and I could understand. In that brief moment I just became a witness, of myself and the witness has almost superhuman possibilities.

You see I had just been introduced to myself, and I was pleased with whom I met. The witness was me. As soon I understood that there is a distance between whom I think I am and who the witness is, I could sense that there is more to me than just the me I thought I was. It’s difficult to put it into words.

You see when the witness watches it watches the flower for the flower, with no meanings attached, other than the flower itself. The sweetness of the essence of the flower remains just that , the essence of the flower, and in that moment itself.

The walls are gone now, and I am so lucid, for in me is the light and the light has no shadow.

A tribute to greed peddlers.

May 25, 2017

FOR WHOM

For Whom

“Global warming is happening now. The planet’s temperature is rising. The trend is clear and unmistakable.

Every one of the past 40 years has been warmer than the 20th century average. 2016 was the hottest year on record. The 12 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998. 

Globally, the average surface temperature has increased more than one degree Fahrenheit since the late 1800s. Most of that increase has occurred over just the past three decades.”

Source courtesy: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming#.WSbyEmiGPIU.

“2008 Financial crisis”

Source courtesy: Holier than thou greed ridden financial system.

The list can go on and on.

I pay my humble tribute to the greed vendors, through my work. I wonder what business do the child of the future have to look up in hope to the hand that provides, when all it can do is peddle poison.

(Pun is intended).

The strange case of invisible monkeys.

May 13, 2017

 

A very long time ago in India, in a village there lived a young man. He was known for the pranks he played on his friends and neighbours. His antics sometimes went little too far from being just harmless jokes. But at least he and his friends were happy. But now it was becoming more and more difficult for him, since people in his village had started avoiding him. He, himself was bored here.

Near the village there lived a great sage who also ran a Gurukul (School) in the great traditions of India. The school due to the fame of the Guru (the great sage) received students from all over the world. The guru was greatly revered by all due to his wisdom.

So one fine evening it came upon him that he must now go to the Gurukul and play his pranks there, he may even outsmart the Guru and in the process, who knows he may learn a thing or two. Next day early in the morning he took off for the Gurukul to meet the Guru. On reaching the Gurukul he saw the Guru sitting under a huge Banyan tree, meditating. He touched the Gurus feet as a mark of respect and sat down on the ground waiting for the guru to open his eyes.

The Guru on finishing his meditation opened his eyes and asked the young man the purpose of his visit. The young brat tells the Guru that he was here to learn Levitation.  “Levitation” the guru tells the young man, is not something to be learned, it is a stage which one reaches after years of meditation and following a very strict lifestyle. And the Levitation in itself is not a means it is just a milestone along the way, it’s just that it is hyped since it looks miraculous.

But the young man will have none of it; he kept insisting that he wanted to learn just that and nothing else. The guru was getting late for his classes and thus told the young man that he was busy as he can see and that he can spent some time in the Gurukul and help with the chores. And later the Guru will teach him a DIY, presto, quick way to Levitate. The young man thought that there was no harm; he was getting free food and lodgings so he stayed.

Months passed by and the Guru did not get time, the young man too could not get to the Guru and kept doing sundry jobs at the Gurukul like washing clothes, brooming the grounds, tending to the Gurukul farms and so on and so forth. And then one fine day when he has had enough, he    confronts the Guru somehow and requests him to teach him now since he has spent a long time waiting to learn the Art of levitation. The Guru again asks him to spend  some more time in the Gurukul and wait for the day he will be taught Levitation.

More than a year passes by and the young man has had enough so he goes again to the Guru. The guru sympathetically asks him to sit down. The young man was mighty elated. The guru tells him that there is a certain mantra which if chanted a certain number of times will give him the power to levitate. And then he can levitate at will any time he chooses. The guru calls him near and chants the mantra in his ears and tells him the number of times he has to repeat the mantra. That’s easy! The young man thinks to himself and as he gets up to go and start his chant, the guru adds a warning;

“ remember as you begin to chant do not let any thought of a monkey or an image of monkey come to your mind, if it happens then you have to start chanting from the beginning”

That’s easy the young man told the guru and walked towards a tree to sit and start.

 A few days passed by and the guru also started to wonder about the whereabouts  as he could not find the young man around the usual places he used to be found. And then one morning he saw the young man walking towards him tired and all freckled up. He looked as if he had not slept for days may even skipped a few meals. He has aged a few years in the last few days.

He came and sat at the Gurus feet . The great sage asked him after offering him some water “ have you learned the art” finally.

The young man staring into nothingness replies “ No ! O great sage, but I am seeing monkeys everywhere, they are all around me . They sneer and laugh and refuse to leave my company. When I started the chant , I was confident that I will finish it in a day but after the first few chants a monkey thought came to my mind. Then I started again and this went on for days and now every where there are monkeys of all colours, size and shape. Even now as we speak, although you cannot see but I can see monkeys behind you, on top of you , In fact O great sage you have started to look like a monkey too.

And then it hits you like a ton of bricks, “hey do I have my own monkeys which do not let me do anything, do I see them all the time around me?? do I debate more and more with my own monkeys, monkeys in my head. Have I not bargained for them because I thought I was the smartest guy, who could figure it all out better than most and keep the most glamorous of the results for myself. ” . Because only the empty vessels will be filled and the full will be emptied. The day I feel I am full, I stop the process of receiving from the universe. 

You know what I discovered , just knowing why, what, when and how the monkeys exist is getting rid of them. 

The healing balm of illusion

May 9, 2017

YODDHA

Yoddha

I was reading a book while painting this particular painting, .i.e.,  in betweens, and by saying in betweens I mean to say that as with a lot of crazy people like me when they get into this creative cloud, it gets so difficult to get out till you are done with whatever it was that you intended creating, and thus all those in between things like a cup of coffee or an odd book happen to be within the vicinity of that cloud, the result which that cloud is producing and the sights, smells sounds and whatever else it involves.

The book was ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ by Friedrich Nietzsche. In that absent minded stupor I was in, a para struck me and I share,

” Must we not suppose that the highest and indeed the truly serious task of art – to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitation of the will………… ”

Well the brilliance of the way it was said shook me. I made myself some more coffee and sat, and this time with closed eyes and thought to myself, that if my mind takes a journey into the recent past maybe the last fifty years, how much art would really fit into that category.

“to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitation of the will…………”.

As my espresso kicked in I came back to my own cloud and hoped that I am doing justice to those words.