Monday, May 21, 2007

truth is a pathless land...

- Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself; do not go out looking for a successful personality and duplicate it.

- Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.

- Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it. LEARN, MASTER AND ACHIEVE!

- The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.

- The more relaxed the muscles are, the more energy can flow through the body. Using muscular tensions to try to "do" the punch, or attempting to use brute force to knock someone over, will only work to opposite effect.

- The possession of anything begins in the mind.

- The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt on any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man.

- If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

More quotes from Bruce Lee here.

Title of this post is a master liner from Jiddu Krishnamurthy who influenced Bruce Lee's (and of many others too) philosophy. More quotes here.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

longing...

I am living in an incomprehensible state of mind these days. Like a convict who awaits his verdict wistfully with each passing day, waiting for himself to announce the final decision. I don't know what my mistake was – perhaps it is because Adam ate apple from the tree of knowledge. I may be a convict of that, because I am a descendant of Adam’s. Whatever it may be, but the uncertainty gets darker with every sunset, and my heart burns stronger with each sunrise. Amidst this mix of emotions and rationale, I ask of only one thing from myself – honesty in words and honesty in actions; a difficult thing indeed.

I feel homesick quite often, nostalgia for a place I have never seen or been. It is not for the home from where I started my journey from. A bird came out of its nest to spread its wings and learn flying over unseen lands, but that nest never could become its home. This longing is for an invisible home where this journey can stop and I can be reborn. Perhaps this is an impractical dream of an imaginative Utopian; perhaps this is the desire of a nomadic heart. Suddenly I am feeling that I have a big responsibility towards myself, my ideals and my beliefs. May be it is about the time I start my journey back home.

In that sense, I consider myself a little unconventional. My peers give me that idea with their surprised eyes and agape mouths when they listen to what I have to say. I feel a little nervous when I find that I don’t have similar aims as they have, I don’t have similar desires as they reflect. I get frightened sometimes at the idea that whether I will be able to fit myself here or remain an outcast in a society where I can never belong.

All through this I keep telling myself that I am not going to live in fear. I am not going to imprison my soul inside traditions from the fear of getting lost and destroyed outside. I would rather prefer dying like a man who had open roads in front of him, than living like a man who had walls all around.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

vector introspection...

Blogs are little difficult places to write out every possible thought arriving in the cerebral terrain. Blogging is not same as writing in a personal diary, where the content belongs exclusively to the writer and his/her carte-blanche friends and family. Blogs are wide open to the curious (internet) explorer world on the other end of optical fiber, which makes it impossible to write down everything that once struck writer’s mind. Also usually a person tries to put a little extra intellect (collected from here and there) when he/she is writing in the blog, because they know that one day or the other it is going to be read by someone and that’s the only opportunity they’ve got to be understood.

At the frequent psychological tides and ebbs of human life every person needs to believe in himself. He needs to find things around his existence which inspire him and bring back his energies. Course of human life is analogous to the volatile sensex which goes bullish when becoming strong and bearish when weakening. If a person is progressing in his life, he will encounter more difficulties and once down for a while, will rise back to higher peaks. On the other hand bearish life goes down, comes back to lesser peak and subsequently goes down to lower depth. A person needs to continuously monitor the course of life and rapidly change its definitions.

Almost every person who has a little brain and who takes bath every morning gets ideas at one point of time or the other. But there are very few people who walk with those ideas, cultivate their roots with those ideas. The reason is simple – one has to walk absolutely alone with his ideas. One has to win his fears and tell the traditions and society to go to hell. Behind every such rarity of human existence, there are rules, traditions, conventions, societies whereas in front of this man there is open road still unexplored.

Most of the times, a person spends significant part of his life struggling with himself. He keeps fighting his own divided identities and becomes his own enemy. Only thing that can bring him to senses is a little hope.

Well, most of the times, problem is not where the symptoms are. Because today we have loads of entangled strings attached with our existence. And we cannot cure the problem by attenuating its effects. Introspection is the remedy for the malady. But introspection alone cannot help, because many a time introspection turns into self-criticism or narcissism. Need is of ‘vector introspection’ which (like mathematical vector) has magnitude as well as direction!

Duh! There is another saying by the way: those who can – do and those who can’t - write! ;)…

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

area of darkness...

The morning comes as usual. I pull myself up from my ‘bhoomi-shaiyya’ out of my REM sleep and rush myself to pee. Roomie is out pumping iron in the gym and I am alone with myself. It is 6:30 AM. Finishing, take a couple of sips of cool water to wipe off the Hyderabadi summer night. Couple of slurps and one big Ahhh!

I had read somewhere that ‘your character is what you do and think when you know nobody is watching you’. So I try to keep some part of my conscience aloof from the rest of me to figure out what sort of character do I have.

Keep morning apart. There are people who go shopping. There are people who prepare for CAT, GMAT, GRE and alike. There are people who chat on yahoo or Google. But then they are no longer alone, right? But yeah no one is watching them, so they can be whatever they want to be! There are people (I included) who walk around naked when they’re alone; sometimes suddenly becoming cautious whether the doors and windows are shut! There are people who take a few steps further and… Ok! Ok!… you understood. There are people who sleep, there are people who put rocky muzzzik (with zzz’s) and scream along with Iron Maiden, Metallica or Linkin Park. There are people who draw, work out, sing, play guitar (most find guitar cool. Till now, I haven’t seen anyone who wants to learn tabla or flute), read or write etc. And there are people who do more than one of the above listed things or may be the things which are not listed above. But the point here is ‘where the mind of a person goes when it is without anyone around’.

Well, I return to my morning. To couple of slurps and one big Ahhh!

So with weary eyes and dreary body I switch on the PC and first person I see on this new day is ‘the sexy’ Jessica Alba (the wallpaper on my desktop wearing only underwear). I sigh as her silky body smiles back with those devastating eyes. Tch… Ssss… Huhhh… Phew…!!! Mixed emotions (love, awe, desire, lust, bliss)… Mind tries to jump off the precipice of reality.

Next thing – orkut – no scraps! Then gmail – no mails! icicidirect – ok, investments doing good! Now mind starts giving warning signals that if nothing is done it can lead me to ‘Enter-only-if-you-are-above-18’ websites and… dot dot dot…

So, before that disaster happens, I take few sips of Thums-Up to call upon my bowels. S*** happens, and eventually brushing of teeth and bathing. Suddenly I feel the need of doing some introspection and so I isolate myself in my room from the rest of the house and start my initial daily boot (analogy drawn from Operating System boot) – yoga. Yoga gives me confidence, energy and guts (sometimes) to face the day. Once asanas are over, I have felt my body completely and regulated my breath, I try to analyze my mind. It is like looking at the darkness inside yourself with your eyes closed.

A sudden revelation happens – fear. I have been living in fear till now – fear of becoming dispossessed, fear of being alone, fear of losing everything. In that area of darkness, there is a beast that scares me. In my mind I find that, it is same ‘I’ that is devil at times, it is same ‘I’ that is near sainthood some other moments. I find that I am divided into loads of identities; I find that there are strings attached to my existence which pull me like a puppet. I find that I am not doing what I really want to do.

I ask myself – why am I afraid? Why am I not free? Why do I have to live in fear? Why do I have to run away from myself? What will happen if I keep living like this? What is my biggest fear in life?

Answers… No, they haven’t come yet! Gaawwd!?!?!

complicated...

There is a saying in my village that ‘Lucky is the man who is blessed with the healthy defecation every morning…’

I have come a long way from the point of being one step away from the unrecoverable kidney infection. Tobacco and alcohol are not meant for every mortal. Or perhaps there is a minimum physical qualification for being able to make use of these things. Or perhaps the degree of physical strength is directly proportional to the amount of drugs that a person can take. At first, I started drinking and smoking to elevate my mood, sometimes as stress-buster. But later, when I involuntarily indulged myself in excess of alcohol and tobacco, one day I realized that they have started driving my mood! My pee came out like chlorinated water, with traces of white albumin in it. My sleep was more exhaustive than relaxing. My mood was volatile and my confidence extinguished. I decided to step back.

Before I make any judgments about the THINGS, I must say that alcohol is not a bad thing, neither is tobacco. They are like every other beverage or plant – neutral. It’s just that bad people make bad use of things, and unknowledgeable and undisciplined people (like me) make misuse of things. The effects of alcohol and tobacco on human health vary with the amount taken. One will find that ‘excess of things is bad’ and if they are taken in moderation and with discretion, they can help improving the overall health.

But this whole set-up is to convey one more basic idea – ‘how does a person boot into existence every morning!’

Imagine the operating system on your laptop which takes hell long time (like VISTA) to boot and show the desktop where you can start working. When you reach the desktop and open the task manager, you see many processes running and a few of these processes are actually slowing down the performance of your computer. Some of these can be Trojan Attacks or Viruses.

Same way every morning a person boots himself or herself from sleep into existence. I found that most of the mornings, even when my brain is awake, I pretend to sleep. It’s a state when I am awake but still sleeping. Technically this is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep – which is not relaxing and most of the dreams come in this state.

After pushing oneself into wakefulness, one usually takes time to finish up the daily chores – defecating, brushing teeth and taking bath/exercise and breakfast. Let us assume that it is after breakfast that we can consider our operating system fully booted with all drivers ready to use. What usually happens with a diseased body is safe mode boot (clean boot) with minimum set of drivers active.

That’s a huge area of research for us modern beings whose day starts a little different when we pull our civilized asses out of our bed. Main focus should be to minimize the boot time and include all necessary steps in our boot process.

There is another saying that ‘We drive fast because we trust our brakes…’ and if our brakes are not trustworthy we can fall at times when we most need to keep moving!

<<…10 Minutes pass and I am staring at the monitor, my brain somewhere in the mountains... Avril Lavigne’s 'Complicated' playing in my ears...>>

...To Myself

What the hell was trying to write? Period... (Back to senses...) Anyhow! I need to bring my body back to health and strength. Last one month has been quite revolutionary with respect to physical and mental growth. But I need to breathe some air of the mountains soon! I am going roaming this time on the mountains!!! Ssssssssss… Ahhhh!!! Preparing myself for that ultimate encounter!

Sunday, May 13, 2007

walking in your shoes...

And then I told myself ‘what the f***!’ is happening. I become impatient once again. Comparing myself with those ahead of me brings me frustration, comparing myself with those behind me makes me calm. My will is warped. I want to be in a road where nobody is in front of me and nobody is behind me. Yeah!

The other day I was playing chess with my colleague at office and unavoidably there were three-four spectators. One of them was known to me and so he became a little advice-giver type of spectator while others only watched silently. Game starts… we reach a critical move… my colleague makes a move… this fellow barks out ‘you should have taken the knight’… I stare at him and say ‘let him play boss…’ my voice was warning coated with a little honey. So he calmed down for a while.

We resume the game. After a while again critical point reached. This fellow again starts ‘that’s it… move the knight… take the bishop…’ this time to me. I look at him straight in the eyes and tell him ‘Boss! You come and play at my place. I don’t like other people playing my game!’ Tension grips, but we resume the game. I managed to win finally but I didn’t feel like I won! Doing certain things is like having sex, you can't let others state terms to you!!!

That’s the problem with the game-watchers, they are very eager to comment and criticize, but when it comes to playing it themselves their sphincter loses its grip, and they get a verbal diarrhea of excuses. Some times I wish I was deaf so that I never had to listen to these assholes.

‘Advice should not be given until unless asked for’.

I don’t like playing other people’s game.
I don’t like other people playing my game.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

personal growth...

In Repetition, Kierkegaard's literary character Young Man laments:

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Great psychologist Erik Erikson (author of Pulitzer Prize winner 'Gandhi's Truth') formulated the theory of 8 stages of psychological development of a human being, which is a must read for every growing person! In his words:

Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite, was once a child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His triumphs will be measured against this smallness, his defeats will substantiate it. The questions as to who is bigger and who can do or not do this or that, and to whom—these questions fill the adult’s inner life far beyond the necessities and the desirabilities which he understands and for which he plans.

How to deal with existential crisis?

Human personality, in principle, develops according to steps predetermined in the growing person's readiness to be driven toward, to be aware of, and to interact with a widening social radius.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

the gulag archipelago...

Some mind-blowing excerpts from The Gulag Archipelago

Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 4 "The Bluecaps"

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.
And correspondingly, from evil to good.

Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 8 The Law as a Child

We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.


Saturday, May 5, 2007

it's painful...

It’s painful to know that you cannot change the world around you. It’s painful to know your weaknesses and your limitations. It’s painful to know that there is little trust left. It’s painful to know that you are losing trust in your capabilities. It’s painful to know that you have very little self-respect left inside. It’s painful when the mind doesn’t understand that body is decaying every day and keeps craving for more and more. It’s painful to know that you are no longer what you wanted yourself to be. It’s painful to know that you are running a race which doesn’t belong to you. It’s painful to know that nobody listens to you or gives attention to your ideas.

It’s painful to know that you have no love in your life. It’s painful to know that you are about to fall from the cliff of fortune when uncertainty will push you hard. It’s painful to know that it’s your virtues that bring you all frustration.

It’s painful to know that the people you trusted and banked upon were themselves bankrupt. It’s painful to know that you will have to walk alone all your life if you want to enjoy your journey. It’s painful to know that you are through and through lonely from inside. It’s painful to know that you deceived yourself in those times when you needed yourself the most. It’s painful to know when your own people don’t understand you and don’t support your ideas. It’s painful to know that you are stuck in a place where you never intended to go. It’s painful to know that your hope is dead.

It’s painful to know that you cannot be what you are because you will not be accepted that way. It’s painful to know that life has lost every meaning for you and you have lost the will to give any meaning to it. It’s painful to know that you are starving for love but you cannot express yourself.

It’s painful to know that your life will never be like you once dreamed of it. It’s painful to see the broken pieces of your ego when you look inside. It’s painful to know that you are divided into fragments from within yourself. It’s painful to know that in the multitude of your identities, you have lost yourself. It’s painful to know that your past is your present and your present will be your future. It’s painful to know that there is no end to this angst. It’s painful when you ask yourself the questions which you cannot answer.