Reaching There

Inspiration for this Post I recently watched a movie called Serpico, starring Al Pacino and directed by Sidney Lumet. It had a very interesting scene where Al Pacino's character, called Serpico meets, a bunch of people in a party. The commonality between all the people he meets is that they are doing something else and they want to be something else. Al Pacino's character says " How come all your friends are  on their way to being somebody else? I'll let you ponder and find a meaning for yourself in these lines (I do recommend the movie if you're a fan of Al Pacino or Sidney Lumet).  However my post isn't about the movie or trying to be somebody else.   It is about the confusion I was in for a long time when I believed - "I wanted to be a .....". I can probably fill in tens (if not hundreds) of words in there. Each and everyone of us can fill words that describe our goals, wishes, desires or simply a random thought that came into...

The number quality that is a favorite among major business leaders , spiritual leaders and women looking for life partners is humility. It is a quality that arms you with overwhelming sense of strength and peace. Or it could leave you completely in shambles because it tends to open up parts of your mind that weren't so receptive to all the bullshit that goes around in the world. It is a tricky emotion to reside in your mind. Like any other emotion, say happiness, sadness, guilt, pride or indifference it shapes your personality and defines the core of your existence. This leaves an interesting question - whether I can fake humility? I can fake happiness, for sure. For example, when I meet an unpleasant person but I have to act as per the societal requirements that dictate that I be pleasant to this person. I act with a smile on my face. There are other examples, when you're in a group and you've to pretend you're enjoying the pleasantries, you fake hap...

Too often we forget that we're living on a pale blue dot. President Obama in his recent remarks on announcing the Clean Power Plan reminded me of the time when I first saw Carl Sagan's episode of Cosmos where the picture has an arrow that points to the blue dot. As Carl Sagan talks about all the memories that have been created on this blue marble, the viewer is left mesmerized and humbled by his words. It was perhaps for the first time the generation of the technological age saw Earth as a big home rather than just cities connected with highways.  And as President Obama too said in his speech "We only get one planet. We only get one home. There is no Plan B." His words echo the famous lines of an ancient Hindu scripture which says "For those who're known as magnanimous, the entire world constitutes but a family." Before writing this post I watched the 'Pale Blue Dot' video again. But as the YouTube asks you to go through thirty sec...

Writing a poem, short story, novel or anything with words is a process that is slow and tiring. There are plenty of advises I can capture from brilliant writers as well as from peers who are going through the struggle of creating in their daily life like I am. There are tutorials on YouTube that claim to help you write a short story in under one hour.  Also there are videos about writers talking about writing as a difficult process where the first draft is often shelved for months, maybe years, until the characters or the theme gestates into a life of its own. So there are different schools of thoughts that can help me or at the end of the day confuse me as well. However like any other form of art or learning the process that works for me derives from my own personal experience . Whether it is time tested theories that I learn from other writers or it is something that brews in me subconsciously for some time until it pops out in my conscious as a revelation or an epipha...

#picturepoem Trying something new!

Writing is an important medium of communication that has been in existence for thousands of years. A lot of what we know about the world and about ourselves is because someone at some point in time decided to record the truth. Whether it was early human beings leaving the details of their seemingly mundane human life on walls of damp & dark caves in form of sketches and hand prints.  Or poets, writers, artists in the long lineage of creative human beings who decided to explore human emotions and the effect of human emotions on relationships, nature and universe. Everyone, Shakespeare, Keats, Russel, Kabir Das, Shankaracharya, Tulsidas, Lao Tzu, Mandela, Wordsworth, Premchand, Bukowski, Abaza, Van Gogh, Bakshi, Spielberg and others have given us troves of sometimes abstract yet profoundly meaningful words that have the power to move even the most inertial mind. We're all wonderful creatures who have been blessed with the same ability to conceive truth from the deepest ...

We're all self-motivated individuals. We like to outgrow our boundaries and intensely believe we serve a higher purpose in life. Whether it is taking care of your children or building a skyscraper. We're all attracted towards a higher calling in life. Knowingly or most of the times unknowingly we do serve the higher purpose in our lives.  Everyday tasks we do, whether those are brushing your teeth, reading a book or meditating are small steps towards a higher realization of our conscious! Well the point is we're all smart individuals yet we fall in a trap that we create and it leads to a miserable life at best. This can be called a self-entrapment of human soul (in case you don't believe in soul substitute it with conscious/brain). Stage 1 Recently I got a chance to mentally observe myself as I was writing a poem. As any individual engaged in a creative activity one needs to start with a mental freedom and a sense of humility. Its equivalent is I-don't-...

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 1 - Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Declaration of Independence All beings, great or small, are equally manifestation of God; the difference is only the degree of manifestation.  Swami Vivekananda Your Lord resides in each patient's soul. Believe this and serve them! Treat each patient as your equal and serve them unconditionally. Jagadguru Kripalu Ji Maharaj, founder JKP charitable hospitals Since the existence of mankind a great many men have waged war against the inequality that surrounds us. Some are poor and others are rich. Some are rulers and others...

We all want to find our place in this universe and desire for a life filled with passion. Whether our universe is our family, home, town, planet, job or the entire universe. We believe in something bigger than us that is worth losing all, whether it is your wife, son, friend, dog or a cause. This provides us with a sense of fulfillment and happiness. It reassures us that we're living an extra-ordinary life. The above thought begs a question though. What is extra-ordinary? Mankind has been striving to answer this question for centuries. Whether it was an effort to demarcate between ordinary and extra-ordinary on the basis of power or wealth or other measurable parameters. Or simply attributing supernatural attributes to seemingly ordinary thing or a person. Hence the reason for superheroes or material gains. However our intention to demarcate implies that a difference really exists! Which further implies that there are certain shortcomings that are preventing us from being...

A lot of people debate on lot of -isms and some go on to form a treatise, school of thought or a philosophy that seems to explain reality observable & fathomable by their current intellect & state of mind. A lot of such belief systems are available for our mind's consideration; such as scientific theories that explain the workings of the material universe or spiritual philosophies that explain the material mind as well as direct towards something that's beyond material human mind. I've seen endless debates that try to prove or disprove the other. Whether people trying to disprove the existence of God to people trying to prove God through logic. Scientists have proven the existence of sub-atomic particles to large amount of dark energy in our universe. Numerous people debate whether such discoveries have made the God redundant. Religious philosophers try to warn the scientific community of a world sans God. These debates are endless and starkly futile. We can spend...

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. Thomas Jefferson Sraddha   is commonly translated as faith, but it means the adoption of truth. It is a process of accepting and grasping what truth is. Our intellect must be able to catch the truth, then seek the truth and realize it on our own. From Samkhya Karika (Karika VI) The God Question  Too many people are radicalized by this simple phrase. It produces reactions that range from emotion of disgust to emotion of bliss. I don't think there is any other question that brings so much stubbornness to even slightly delve from the current state of belief. If you ask a theist why does he believe in God? The answer is seemingly simple that the religion is a safe haven that provides a much needed relief from the atrocities of world and seems to point to some kind of abstract joy.  On the other en...