fantasy

The place is heaven. Nature simply oozes. Meadows, trees, birds and all things beautiful. I am lying down on the soft grass, my head resting on my mother's lap, a soft lightly-scented breeze fanning my face. Charlie Parker, sitting next to me, is playing some beautiful, improv jazz into my ears, the sounds as pure as it can get. After some time, Charlie takes a break. I excuse my mother, and Charlie and I walk to a nearby stream. The stream flows only Scotch. Charlie and I, drink our fill. We smoke some heavenly cigars and talk of our lives on Earth and have a good laugh at the stupidity and futility of it all. Back to my mother's lap, I fall into blissful sleep.

reality

Reality is when you are working on your computer, and your little dog, jumps up to your hand, so frenetically attached to the keyboard, and with her small paws, takes it away from your mindless connection, and you look into her small beady, imploring eyes, and find the whole world in it.

five people i would like to meet in heaven

I am firmly set on three of them and they are:

Charlie Parker, Alan Watts and Ramana Maharishi.

I am still working on the remaining two and hope I get to do that before somebody decides to meet me in heaven. :)

web of life

These days, I am getting more and more convinced that we are all connected via some web. This attests to the non-duality theory of Advaita. I do not know why, but you can call it a hunch. One of those crazy hunches that are the result of whatever I ingest or imbibe.

If only we knew the protocol, the format of the message and the encoding of characters, we could get connected to any one on the web of life and have a 'conversation'. Wow, can you imagine that? There is a slight problem there! What about voice mail? That will be available in a future version. :)

zen

I have been drawn to Zen several times, and at all times, for some reason, perhaps silly, have withdrawn from it. I am reminded of my early dating days where some women commanded my attention, and then, they dropped off my radar for reasons as silly as a bad breath, or a gaudy lipstick.

My first foray into Zen was reading Shunryu Suzuki's classic, Zen mind, Beginner's mind. It was at best, a ramble and the only thing I plucked out of it, was the gem that one should look into everything with a child like awe and curiosity. This was followed by a book of koans, which did a great job of putting my mental faculties into a quandary, and even brought out my best snoring performances.

Then came, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which so far managed only to lie in digital form on my cavernous hard drive.

I chased other spiritual disciplines like Advaita and Taoism. These too failed to answer my questions to my satisfaction. The theories were too complex or rather, I could not draw any simplicity, the Aha sort, out of them.

All the while, I had been listening to Alan Watts, the brilliant, humorous British theologian, philosopher, and he somehow seemed to appeal to my sensibilities. Well, after I listened to a whole audiobook of his, I decided to find out what he had to say about Zen. To my delight, I discovered that Zen has no set doctrines, no spiritual texts to follow and even no preconceived definition of God. I liked that. So now I decided to eat, when hungry, sleep, when tired and more so, blog when agitated...

a thing to remember

I think in order to make the world a better place to live in, every human being should just remember one thing: they are not special, they are just fortunate.

in pursuit of god

First of all, to the fanatics, pardon my lower-casely treatment to the word 'god'. I have been wanting to voice this opinion for the longest time but remember the shrink's reward theory. Tonight, I am rewarding myself with a couple(?) glasses of Riserva 2003 Chianti wine, nothing spectacular to write home about , but nevertheless, a reward from nature's ample bosoms. :)

I think, mankind, the kind that have evolved so far, should stop wasting time in the pursuit of 'god' or to origins of our wondrous universe. I would like to decry the countless resources, time in particluar, spent by the physicists, philosophers(the armchair variety too), spiritualists and the ilk, for this meaningless pursuit.
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For simply one reason: we are not that evolved yet. Period. We need to accept that we are either, not that intelligent, as we think we are, or we are not ready.

Instead, I preach(me being the worst student), that we simply enjoy our fragile existences and help our brethren handle theirs with care too.

The way: Love, contentment, no one-upmanship.

For this, do you think we need to bring 'god' into the picture?

cooking, what is that?

I recently spotted this item at a local Trader Joe's. Fresh peeled hard boiled eggs. What are we coming to? Kitchenless homes? Cooking computers embedded in a high tech cookhouse that can bake, roast, grill etc. with access to cool racks, where you store all the ingredients in its intended storage bins, enter the recipe in a cooking language, and voila, your dinner is ready, with, needless to say, the right wine recommendation.
Today's chefs will actually be cookware engineers adept in languages like FuD, Chow, Rcp etc. My imagination is going wild here but if you see ready-made boiled eggs, it spells a grim future for tha art! Remember cursive writing?

hiatus

It has been a while since I have visited this neighborhood. I am not writer enough to attribute it to writer's block. The mind is still active and constantly cooks up topics and my position on the same, for a blog meal. Then what is it that prevents me from penning, or digitizing for that matter, a few words?

A steamy affair with my work(especially in August)? A disdain for the world? Sheer laziness?

I am at my wits' end, but I am sure a visit to a shrink might shine some light on my left cerebrum and I can very well imagine (s)he joyfully announcing 'Aha, you are not motivated enough! I suggest you promise yourself a reward for every blog your write!'.

What ever happened to the sheer love of writing? Where did that disappear? Or is it dormant waiting for the right motivation? I mean, the right reward.