Death - Pursuit of the Absolute?

Lately, I have found myself pondering quite a bit about the mystery of death. Why is everyone so scared of dead? We all will die, that's inevitable. Then doesn't it make sense to instead embrace it, understand it? I am not talking about hurting self, that's against the flow of creation. What I am talking about is following where the universe intends to take us. When you see a movie that indulges you, you enjoy it. However, could you still enjoy your most favourite movie in an infinite loop? Imagine the agony of a student who has failed and thus is compelled to repeat his class.

We need an end - like the period in a sentence. Everything that we dislike, hate, love or cherish must have an end. I feel we are mostly frightened of unknown rather than death itself. Didn't you sometimes in your life take a leap of faith and dived into. Many times the objective science did it too, that’s how we discovered the vaccine of polio. I don’t think, the leap of faith comes out arbitrary, you sense it, you observe it quietly coming, promising a gateway to the unprecedented horizon and gradually manifesting into intuition. It might work or perhaps would never. However, when you know what you are doing is not working either, isn’t it better to seek out the truth beyond the familiarity? If you haven't ever come across this intuition, which I doubt, I am truly sorry, you can't even know what have you missed. When death comes, instead of welcoming it, we start crying. Everything, including knowns and unknowns, is temporary, it will keep changing, everyone you know will die, everything you own will vanish eventually, it's all illusion. Again, No I am not arguing about harming self, that's pure sin, not because of what I have been told, but because in essence, you are asking for a favour from this universe to take you out of this loop of life and death and then you sway against its rule and hope to get what you want. You won't. You break your own pledge, that you had made to the cosmos when you had rearrived, to return only when you would be called. Besides getting rid of the physical body is too damm easy, what about disposing your fears, your lust, greed, envy, desires, pride and attachments first - can you easily get rid of them, too? When your time comes, and if you have already renounced these, you will not have fear of losing this physical existence, made of ashes.

I feel, there is nothing fearful about death, the death will be a celebration if we live our time nobly and justly, and then we will keep living in the hearts and stories, remembered and forgotten. We will exist nowhere and everywhere. If we embrace death this way, death will not barge into our homestead but instead would lovingly arrive as our dearest friend whom we didn't get to meet for a long long time. Do not repeat the mistakes, again and again, don't hurt a soul, including yours, consciously; make penance for your sins till you have time, change lives, do good, and perhaps you will return to the totality. We need to die, we must be willing to die someday so that we could relish this life before it comes to its conclusion, the final conclusion.

“Life is just a memory, bitter or sweet, it is nothing but a memory.” ~ Aghori Sri Vimalananda

Suggested read:

The first series of Aghora trilogy: Aghora I: At the Left Hand of God

The book gives a glimpse into the spiritual journey of Aghori Sri Vimalananda.

“The more you become aware of death’s certitude, he would say, the more urgently you will strive to live an impeccable life, to seek a healthy relationship with that infinite and permanent reality that lies beyond our world of the temporary and the mundane.”

Enlightenment of Detachment

It’s widely misunderstood when you hear about detachment. The majority take them as avoidance of suffering, recklessness, or abandonment of the world. It’s not that. What does detachment really mean is that you must orient yourself towards the higher good you can imagine and then having done that, act in the moment, that includes you must gracefully accept suffering, as well, as it enters, and let it go as it leaves, you become aware of self and surrounding. Even attachment to avoidance of sufferings creates its own suffering. In ancient Greek, there is a word for this - φυγόπονος, which means fear of pain that makes you avoid the pain. Pain is ultimately inevitable in most scenarios, however, suffering is optional. Your resolve might be tested along the way, through the fire, but don’t conflate what is expedient and comfortable with what is correct or perhaps the moral thing to do. Living in the moment without the higher goal is like slowly building yourself as the strongest enemy you could ever imagine. Every action has associated suffering, for example, a woman conceives and she will have to suffer the consequences of childbirth, you marry your love and your loved one will, for sure, die one day. If suffering seems so absolutely inevitable, does it necessarily stop you from orienting yourself towards the higher goal and living in this moment? It doesn’t because it’s always optional in nature. On the same note, people misunderstand attachment too, they say, in order to achieve enlightenment, one must renounce attachment whole because life is suffering and attachment makes it worse. It doesn’t, it only causes suffering when you can’t release things when it’s time to let them go.

Perhaps what you think suffering is for you was, in essence, a blessing from the beginning. Death, for example, people say it’s the end of life, so that must be terrifying. Perhaps it’s the ultimate silence, peace and calm you always yearned for. We exist as a dot on the timeline of this eternity, but our actions will have repercussions that would reverberate throughout time, the butterfly effect. We must thus decide to face suffering head-on and accept it as gracefully as possible. That’s detachment when ecstasy and suffering become one. In Finnish, there is a saying, "New snow is the death of the old snow". In order to move ahead, you must die to all you once loved and you must be willing to die, so that you may live and live abundantly.

- Prof. Jordan B. Peterson. Voice of sanity in the world of confusion. Thank you.

An epiphany after another

While heading towards Delhi from Siliguri, I began getting sick, real sick, with fever, severe cold, and paralyzing dizziness, the cough was so bad that it started hurting so badly, every joint was filled with ache and pain. I thought it might be due to sudden exposure to one of the highest altitudes at Indo China border, or possibly I ate something which I shouldn't have and will go away soon. That was my notion, because, I don't get sick often. But this was something entirely different. I decided to instead stay in Calcutta for a few days before pushing ahead, it didn't help and after a few days, I headed towards Delhi. I was asleep the whole time, the taxis, the plane, the staff at the airport, the taxi drivers, the air hostess, all of them had to wake me up. The shortness of breath, fatigue and cold combined with high fever took me down like never before.

I couldn't help but sleep continuously throughout days and nights. And then one night, I saw a dream of me travelling on a large ship, myself infected priorly with a viciously infectious disease which made me touch the nose all the time, unknown to me at the time of boarding. It spread like wildfire on the ship and soon all the people in the ship fell prey to this. All the people on the ship were touching their nose all the time. It was not fatal, not causing any medical contingencies, just making its victim touch their nose all the time. This dream made me feel so awful in my dream - while looking at people, I knew in my heart, I was the cause for the spread of this beast.

Whatever antibiotics I had taken so far proved ineffective and I hadn't bothered to visit a doctor despite having medical insurance. The next morning, the first thing that I did was to visit a doctor and asked for a full body checkup. It came nothing except for the possibility of air pollution being the reason and was advised to leave Delhi at once and stay in a village for a while, I came home. I did recover without any medicine, but it took more than two weeks. Big cities are not my thing anymore.

Only after a few months, I got a call from home to return immediately because a new virus, COVID-19, had come around in India. I was already in Kerala, too far from home, the place where the first patient of Corona was officially found. Was that a sign? Some say the universe gives us signs every day in our sleep, in our timeline, in our conversations, in the cloud, in epiphanies. However, only when we pay attention to them and piece them together, we notice a pattern. The universe is communicating with us, perhaps. Epiphany tells us a tale, which we often don't listen, perhaps because we are neither listening nor observing, but instead, we talk over one another, many times we don't even listen to our own intuition. Our societies encourage us to lead the conversation. When was the last time you really listened or someone really listened to you? When was the last time when only this moment mattered to you? I call it one step at a time - this moment just one purpose, one thought.

"Does anybody ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?

Saints and poets maybe. They do some." ~ Thornton Wilder, Our Town [https://amzn.to/34QDeBN]

अर्धनिर्मित गाथा

यहाँ कोई मित्र नहीं है, कोई आश्वस्त चरित्र नहीं है

सब अर्धनिर्मित है

अर्धनिर्मित इमारतें हैं, अर्धनिर्मित बच्चों कि शरारतें हैं

अर्धनिर्मित ज़िन्दगी कि शर्ते हैं

अर्धनिर्मित जीवन पाने के लिए लोग रोज़ यहाँ मरते हैं

अर्धनिर्मित है यहाँ के प्रेमियों का प्यार

अर्धनिर्मित है यहाँ मनुष्यों के जीवन के आधार

आज का दिन अर्धनिर्मित है

न धूप है, न छाओं है

मंजिल कि डगर से विपरीत चलते पाँव है

अर्धनिर्मित सी सेहत है

न कभी देखा निरोगी काया को, न कभी दिल से कहा अलविदा माया को

हमारी अर्धनिर्मित सी कहानी है, अर्धनिर्मित हमारे युवाओं कि जवानी है

हम रोज़ एक अर्धनिर्मित शय्या पर लेटे हुए एक अर्धनिर्मित सा सपना देखते हैं

उस सपने में हम अपनी अर्धनिर्मित आकांक्षाओं को आसमानों में फेंकते हैं

आसमान को भी इन आकांक्षाओं को समेटकर अर्धनिर्मित होने का एहसास होता होगा

क्योंकि यह आकांक्षाएं हमारी नहीं आसमान की है

बिलकुल वैसे ही जैसे यह अर्धनिर्मित गाथा तुम्हारी है और आयुष्मान की है।

- आयुष्मान खुर्राना

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xriJ_sA45Y

Home

It's been a few days since I arrived in Canada. I was hoping that I would be super excited - after all, it was an effort of a year to get the residency. However, it feels as if even if I had not chosen this path, life would have been equally eminent, but then I had chosen this path for a reason. When I was packing my stuff, I felt nothing about the start of this new era - neither joy nor sorrow. Still feels nothing - that's comforting feeling indeed, I don't deny it. Although, what really mattered to me, when I was packing, was entirely different. Father was sitting in the corner, speaking nothing and just watching me pack with eyes filled with deep sorrow, that really made-makes me sad. He didn't even come to drop me at the station, which he always does. Once our parent loses their partner, they become our children. I should have said something to make him assure that I am still only a call away, but I didn't. What was I thinking. Canada seems too far from home. Life in Canada is easy, I accept that but if I ever go back to India, which I might now, it will be solely for the family.

http://www.careerizma.com/blog/why-nri-return-to-india-reverse-brain-drain

Thoughts of Delhi - Life

When you go through a deep heartbreak - you lie in your bed, you feel deeply sad, you keep thinking about it until you don’t feel asleep (which you didn’t even realize - when did you fell asleep), perhaps maybe in dreams too - you keep dreaming about it - instinctively hoping that all these might relieve you of your pain, but nothing of this does really help, does it? It, instead, makes you sadder. Still, you keep doing it even though you know that this is making you more sad but you still do it. It hurts and you knowingly keep hurting yourself. Perhaps, your soul has already come in full power silently and has already started erasing those times which is hurting you so deeply, so intensely. Those marks on time take time to be unmarked and it hurts. It hurts like, when you pull your own skin out from your body like you are flaying yourself, but even more slowly. It hurts that much. But you need this, even if you just didn’t realize yet, you need it. So, you keep hurting yourself by remembering them. This is what Mourning feels like. You are mourning for something, which was never yours - you just didn’t know yet, you forgot conveniently but now remembers finally - This hurts, doesn’t it?

This is how you mourn deeply, silently, alone-ly, reverentially, lovingly. Can’t this, the mourning, be a beautiful experience in future? Someday, you might remember it (this mourning) fondly, perhaps? This comes, when you finally move on for forever. You forgive them and self - you have just unremembered someone. Perhaps, when life sets on, a more memorable turn comes up. This is what forgiving is, living life is, saying life is so so beautiful is, appreciating what you have is, being thankful is. You live yourself. That would make you a kind person unknowingly, make you feel connected to the needy ones, to ones who are still suffering. This is how it counts.

On the same note, why can’t we celebrate happiness alone? Why can’t We be happily alone within self first?

That’s what life is: Sorrow and Happiness. There can’t be anything in between these two extremes.

So, if sorrows of the past come back to haunt you, show them the future. As Rumi says, after all life is the balance of holding on and letting go. Love Live life happily - that’s what counts!

On a funny note: Don’t mourn for anyone until they are dead :D
On a serious note: Mourning is very very precious. It’s truest manifestations exist only in a very few quantities. Once you exceed its limit - you get used to it. So, don’t mourn over un-mournable - mourn only for those that made you a better person, a good person, a just one.

Peace Out. Sabakher!

- Last Night in Delhi : End of This - Start of New.

Bullshit of Delhi

In the early days of marriage, a woman is always interested in every bullshit of his man, no matter how stupid it could be. Perhaps that’s one of the ways to know more about his man. So whenever the guy gets High, she listens to him keenly and perhaps she loves every bit of his bullshit talks. But what about after 10 years!

So after 10 years, when the husband gets high and starts his bullshit talk -

Wife: Arre aap chup rahiye. Humko Sab Malum hai. Nhi sunaiye. (You please keep mum. I know everything, don’t make me listen to it again).

So she keeps saying the same thing whenever he gets high and then he keeps Mum.

Then one day he got high again but this time he also had a plan. He went to his wife and starts his bullshit talk.

Then she says: Arre aap chup rahiye, humko sab malum hai - aap kya boliyega. (Oh, you please keep mum, I know everything - what would you say)

But this time, the husband says: Nhi nhi ... ess bar ekdum naya bolege (No No... this time I will say something entirely new)

Then her wife replies: Humko Malum hai... chup rahiye aap :D
(I know that already, you please keep mum :D)


PS: that’s my own joke and it’s been half an hour I am laughing over this... why not share the laughter. Smile Darwins and Darlings ☮️