Why #2

As always, whenever I find myself writing, I have to ask myself why I’m doing this. This is not particularly exclusive to writing; my knack of spontaneously diving into an existential crisis usually has a very broad effect, affecting literally anything I do. As far as writing is concerned, it is not an activity that comes as a casual undertaking. Writing is serious business (however frivolous I may seem after publishing), and I find myself pouring out hours or work into each tiny article. With enough focus and attention, and if I’m lucky, I’ll reach a stage where I actually enjoy the monotony of churning out word after word.

 

Many times, I’m not so lucky and I’ll eventually land up in a familiar corner of my mind with conclusions not very far from, oh my god I am such a narcissistic douchebag. I should probably go hang myself. 

 

Writing is a call for a attention. I want to be heard and appreciated. It’s the most selfish, self-absorbed activity I can conceive of, second only to every other self-preserving, self-pleasuring activity humans undertake. There, I said it. I am a narcissistic douchebag. There’s not a big chance I’ll be looking back at my ‘work’ ten or twenty years down the line. I’m only doing this for the likes. The only saving grace I can find here is the hope that this might serve as a reminder for others who might read this and be reminded to ask themselves, why.

 

Here’s an idea – ask yourselves, why, but only, like, all the time. Question everything and let this self-questioning not stop merely at writing. Let it be at the back of your mind, every time you make a decision. Let the intentions behind your actions be known; always visible, never unconscious, and let them be your compass in life, to guide you forever into clearer times. In the end, who knows what might happen. You may just shut down your computer, and live to breathe, not breathe to live; careless about the whys.

 

“Knock, And He’ll open the door

Vanish, And He’ll make you shine like the sun

Fall, And He’ll raise you to the heavens

Become nothing, And He’ll turn you into everything.”

― Rumi

Helpful_hank Writes About Nonviolence

I’ve never protested in the street about anything. I have to admit, the ghastliest encounters I’ve ever had have been with strangers on Internet forums. But setting aside my personal triumphs, there is a form of protest that I deeply admire, for the sole reason that I am incapable of ever facing an opponent in this way. In my current state of relying too closely on my fight-or-flight instincts, mustering up the rationality, courage and perseverance required to face terror in the face and react with nothing but love is something I will gladly leave to the experts.

Anyway, here is a perspective on non-violence that I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling upon.

From reddit.com…

Nobody understands nonviolent protest.

Nonviolent protest is not simply a protest in which protesters don’t physically aggress. That is, lack of violence is necessary, but not sufficient, for “nonviolent protest.”

Nonviolent protest:

• must be provocative. If nobody cares, nobody will respond. Gandhi didn’t do boring things. He took what (after rigorous self examination) he determined was rightfully his, such as salt from the beaches of his own country, and interrupted the British economy, and provoked a violent response against himself.
• must be certain not to justify the violent reactions they receive. It cannot succeed without rigorous self-examination to make sure you, the protester, are not committing injustice.
• “hurts, like all fighting hurts. You will not deal blows, but you will receive them.” (from the movie Gandhi —one of my favorite movie scenes of all time )
• demands respect by demonstrating respectability. The courage to get hit and keep coming back while offering no retaliation is one of the few things that can really make a man go, “Huh. How about that.”
• does not depend on the what the “enemy” does in order to be successful. It depends on the commitment to nonviolence.

A lack of violence is not necessarily nonviolent protest. Nonviolence is a philosophy, not a description of affairs, and in order for it to work, it must be understood and practiced. Since Martin Luther King, few Americans have done either (BLM included). I suspect part of the reason the authorities often encourage nonviolent protest is that so few citizens know what it really entails. Both non-provocative “nonviolent” protests and violent protests allow injustice to continue.

The civil rights protests of the 60s were so effective because of the stark contrast between the innocence of the protesters and the brutality of the state. That is what all nonviolent protest depends upon — the assumption that their oppressors will not change their behavior, and will thus sow their own downfall if one does not resist. Protesters must turn up the heat against themselves, while doing nothing unjust (though perhaps illegal) and receiving the blows.

“If we fight back, we become the vandals and they become the law.”  (from the movie Gandhi)

For example:

How to end “zero tolerance policies” at schools:

If you’re an innocent party in a fight, refuse to honor the punishment. This will make them punish you more. But they will have to provide an explanation — “because he was attacked, or stood up for someone who was being attacked, etc.” Continue to not honor punishments. Refuse to acknowledge them. If you’re suspended, go to school. Make them take action against you. In the meantime, do absolutely nothing objectionable. The worse they punish you for — literally! — doing nothing, the more ridiculous they will seem.

They will have to raise the stakes to ridiculous heights, handing out greater and greater punishments, and ultimately it will come down to “because he didn’t obey a punishment he didn’t deserve.” The crazier the punishments they hand down, the more attention it will get, and the more support you will get, and the more bad press the administration will get, until it is forced to hand out a proper ruling.

Step 1) Disobey unjust punishments / laws

Step 2) Be absolutely harmless, polite, and rule-abiding otherwise

Step 3) Repeat until media sensation

This is exactly what Gandhi and MLK did, more or less. Nonviolent protests are a lot more than “declining to aggress” — they’re active, provocative, and bring shit down on your head. This is how things get changed.

The concept of nonviolence as it was conceived by Gandhi — called Satyagraha, “clinging to truth” — goes far deeper and requires extraordinary thoughtfulness and sensitivity to nuance. It is even an affirmation of love, an effort to “melt the heart” of an oppressor.

But now that you’re here, I’d like to go into a bit more detail, and share some resources:

Nonviolence is not merely an absence of violence, but a presence of responsibility — it is necessary to take responsibility for all possible legitimate motivations of violence in your oppressor. When you have taken responsibility even your oppressor would not have had you take (but which is indeed yours for the taking), you become seen as an innocent, and the absurdity of beating down on you is made to stand naked.

To practice nonviolence involves not only the decision not to deal blows, but to proactively pick up and carry any aspects of your own behavior that could motivate someone to be violent toward you or anyone else, explicitly or implicitly. Nonviolence thus extends fractally down into the minutest details of life; from refusing to fight back during a protest, to admitting every potential flaw in an argument you are presenting, to scrubbing the stove perfectly clean so that your wife doesn’t get upset.

In the practice of nonviolence, one discovers the infinite-but-not-endless responsibility that one can take for the world, and for the actions of others. The solution to world-improvement is virtually always self-improvement.

Buddhism and Meshuggah

I’ll be honest, this is not a post about Buddhism nor Meshuggah, at least, not entirely. At the most, I deeply admire their celestial presence in my life – one being a synergistic concept that values truth and selflessness; the other being a critical inspiration and a force that breaks boundaries and continually pushes artistic envelopes. But these two have played a far more important role in my life, which I have only begun to understand and appreciate. Also, I thought the title would be kinda cool.

 

However vaguely, Buddhism and Meshuggah may be somewhat critical to the point I try to make here. After all, like most of my posts, this is yet another attempt to articulate my desire for wholesome action that needs to be taken in one’s life, if one seeks enlightenment.

 

It is obvious how and where Buddhism fits into all this, but Meshuggah?

 

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”

– Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 

Every time I read this quote, I increasingly disagree with what Seneca has to say, because each and every time, he makes me consider all of my desires and all of my fears until I finally reach the conclusion that they’re none but one and the same.

 

When I think of fear, the aversion to an imagined unpleasantness, it seems eerily similar to the underlying emotion that I find buried under any sense of desire; contrasting itself and being discoverable only through its ability to seem as the solution to the imagined unpleasantness. But fear and desire are two sides of the same coin.

 

The fear of change forces us to make changes; the fear of death originates from a desire to live. Non-acceptance. Not seeing the freedom in surrender, we are forced to fight a losing battle against ourselves. Don’t know what I’m talking about?

 

One day, though it was ringing, I realised I didn’t have to answer my phone. By any means, it was not the deepest realisation anyone has ever, yet it seemed profound, like I had discovered something big here. It seemed as if, so far, my life had been programmed by this tiny device and I had been trained to always heel to its polyphonic will. And unlike some adult elephants, unable to break loose from a small rope thanks to years of mental conditioning, I felt like I had broken mine.

 

Or had I?

 

All that I have ever taken for granted is all that has caged me. The hard part was digging under the crust, uncovering simple realisations, one thought at a time. What better way to do this, as one of these thoughts had once imparted, than to face my fears, over and over and over again?

Through years of irregular spurts of meditation and self-realisations, the least that an improving mental clarity has done for me, is to allow me better appreciate these lyrics…

 

Reality untouchable, transparent, invisible

to our fixed, restricted fields of vision

Existence taken for granted, absolute

Uncomprehended by our content minds

 

Possessed, owned, run, controlled

by the common sense-infected rational gaze

Onward forever we walk among the ignorant

Never stray from the common lines

 

– Thomas Haake, Rational Gaze

Maybe I should move to Japan

Up in Asian clouds / fresh off Asian ground / no need for no panic / when noodles are to be found / if you got koka / I’ll be around no probs / moving far east / planting seeds / roll a joint / smoke some sea weed

Sayonara ya’ll.

bombay

Get life / intense / pushed out of the rabbit hole / at mom’s expense / no more one-bedroom apartment / time to get common sense / cut the cord / heaven sent / welcome to independence / go to school / pay taxes pay rent / to survive to buy food / heaven sent – pav bhaji in the matrix

🙂

Why

It’s funny how you uncover more of the past, the further you are from it. The older you grow, the more you understand what shaped you and made you the way you are today. I don’t necessarily like all the things I find, however insightful they may be. The skeletons in my closet aren’t the prettiest things in my life. The deeper I dig, the more dirt I uncover, the more I only feel buried under it.

 

When you grow up with only one sibling whom you lovingly call, Suicidal Depression, and are best friend with the realisation that nobody, not even you, really understands why you feel the way you feel, you learn to deal with problems on your own, you learn to depend on yourself, but most importantly, it’s the invaluable amount of introspection gained from all the time spent alone, driving you to put together the pieces of the puzzle. A decade of questing for clarity gives you quite a unique perspective on something that you have always struggled with – the elusive self.

 

Illusionary, according to Buddhists (not that I disagree, but it really doesn’t make a difference), but what a powerful and troubling concept. The discovery Buddhism, or simply, meditation was the The self suffers because of a deep ignorance of reality; by not seeing things as they are, but as we’d like them to be. It is always and will always be mind over matter.

 

“How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” – Thomas Henry Huxley

 

When I think about of the intricacies of this, sure, I understand what he means (or at least I think I understand what he means, because really, what is knowing anyway). But whatever that understanding may be, it fails to reach any state deeper than an intellectual understanding. It’s like knowing how to eat a healthy diet or live a better lifestyle, but never actually getting around to doing it. What is I find more important in my life is not more realisations of why I am angry at the past, but rather, a spiritual practice that helps me attain peace within the present. Yet, when I tend to sink into the former in these brief instances when I skip my regular daily meditation, at least I find solace in the fact that I utilise that time and emotional space to make some pretty art stuff…

 

http://aalapdavjekar.bandcamp.com/

Man I Just Don’t Know Anymore

Tonight I find myself in a little town called Tuljapur, famous for its temple that is devoted to the goddess, Tulja Bhavani, deity to millions of people spread out over several Indian states, and a popular attraction for devotees looking to be blessed, privileged, endowed and favoured, lucked up and made happy. Needless to say, it is the spiritual equivalent of fast-food. Also, I have no idea why I am here. This is also not my first time – the last time I was here, I was reportedly seven years old and my experience with the place was so terrible that I threw a fit of rage and screamed, “I am never coming back to this piece of shit place!” I was a pretty nice kid.

 

If you’re still wondering about the fast-food comparison, it is because most people who come here, are here to demand things. Oh please god, fix my ailing kidneys. Or, please, oh great and mighty female counterpart of Shiva, I want a better car this Diwali. So maybe I made it sound more juvenile than it actually is. I’d imagine some people, at least, ask for good things for others as well. But whatever, this is probably no different than asking for gifts from Santa. My father, apparently, wants more success in his business. Well, who am I to judge. The whole world wants things and I am a part of that equation.

It is difficult to explain what something like Vipassana does to you, especially over a period of seven years of regular courses and semi-regular practice. And since I don’t exactly have a version of me who never got into meditation to compare myself with, I’ll never actually know the exact difference it has made. So I will speculate. I think it’s done a lot. I’m hardly ever angry, or even if I am, the emotion fades off before I know it. I am more open to different perspectives and ideas and don’t really let emotional fear get in the way of doing things, at least not as much as it used to in the past. Our biggest hindrance in getting things done, I’ve come to realise, are emotions. Sure emotions are cool and shit, but they’re annoying as fuck and take away your mental peace. Believe me, mental peace is important. It brings with it clarity and focus and if you’re lucky, wisdom. These things make life much more fulfilling and enjoyable and after a while, if you’re the type that is still struggling with compassion for humans, like me, then you will be split between taking the back seat and finding comfort in emotional detachment with all issues relevant to being human (when you are at your best), and getting constantly annoyed at how ridiculous and careless most people are with their emotional shit (when you are at your worst). You will also constantly criticise society for its (perceived) shortcomings and argue with your mother over her composting habits. You will enjoy working out a lot.

 

This is known as not having a balanced yang and yin. There are various solutions to defeating this problem, some them being compassion meditation and heart acupuncture, among many others. Now, I mentioned all of this because this is possibly the reason why I am present at an uber-spiritual place and yet cannot find a way to just take it in and appreciate it. What this pilgrimage is about, I’ll never truly know. It just is and that’s all I can say at the moment. Tomorrow morning I wake up at 4AM and head to the temple to circle it, meet god, take my blessings and then leave and have breakfast. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the last bit.

 

 

Here’s to enlightenment. Whatever that is. Speaking of which, here are 21 Models of Enlightenment that might help you understand this strange term. Note that this will not enlighten you. Also note that I didn’t just make this shit up. This is from Daniel Ingram – meditator, musician, physician, green builder, family member, dancer, etc.

 

1. Non-Duality Models: those models having to do with eliminating or seeing through the sense that there is a fundamentally separate or continuous center-point, agent, watcher, doer, perceiver, subject, observer or similar entity.

2. Fundamental Perceptual Models: those that have to do with directly perceiving fundamental aspects of things as they are, including perceiving emptiness, luminosity, impermanence, suffering, and other essential aspects of sensations regardless of what those sensations are.

3. Specific Perceptual Models: those that involve being able to perceive more and more, or all, of the specific sensations that make up experience with greater and greater clarity at most or all times, and usually involve perfected, continuous, panoramic mindfulness or concentration at extremely high speed.

4. Emotional Models: those that have to do with perfecting or limiting the emotional range, usually involving eliminating things like desire, greed, hatred, confusion, delusion, and the like.

5. Action Models: those that have to do with perfecting or limiting the things we can and can’t do in the ordinary sense, usually relating to always following some specific code of morality or performing altruistic actions, or that everything we say or do will be the exactly right thing to have done in that situation.

6. Powers Models: those that have to do with gaining in abilities, either ordinary or extraordinary (psychic powers).

7. Energetic Models: those that have to do with having all the energy (Chi, Qi, Prana, etc.) flowing through all the energy channels in the proper way, all the Chakras spinning in the proper direction, perfecting our aura, etc.

8. Specific Knowledge Models: those that have to do with gaining conceptual knowledge of facts and details about the specifics of reality, as contrasted with the models that deal with perceiving fundamental aspects of reality.

9. Psychological Models: those that have to do with becoming psychologically perfected or eliminating psychological issues and problems, i.e. having no “stuff” do deal with, no neuroses, no mental illnesses, perfect personalities, etc.

10. Thought Models: those that have to do with either limiting what thoughts can be thought, enhancing what thoughts can be thought, or involve stopping the process of thinking entirely.

11. God Models: those that involve perceiving or becoming one with God, or even becoming a God yourself.

12. Physical Models: those that involve having or acquiring a perfected, hyper-healthy or excellent physical body, such as having long earlobes, beautiful eyes, a yoga-butt, or super-fast fists of steel.

13. Radiance Models: those that involve having a presence that is remarkable in some way, such as being charismatic or radiating love, wisdom or even light.

14. Karma Models: those that involve being free of the laws of reality or causes that make bad things to happen to people, and thus living a blessed, protected, lucky, or disaster and illness-free life.

15. Perpetual Bliss Models: those models that say that enlightenment involves a continuous state of happiness, bliss or joy, the corollary of this being a state that is perpetually free from suffering. Related to this are models that involve a perpetual state of jhanic or meditative absorption.

16. Immortality Models: those that involve living forever, usually in an amazing place (Heaven, Nirvana, Pure Land, etc.) or in an enhanced state of ability (Angels, Bodhisattvas, Sorcerers, etc.).

17. Transcendence Models: those models that state that one will be free from or somehow above the travails of the world while yet being in the world, and thus live in a state of transcendence.

18. Extinction Models: those that involve getting off of the Wheel of Suffering, the round of rebirths, etc. and thus never being reborn again or even ceasing to be at the moment of enlightenment, that is, the great “Poof!”

19. Love Models: those that involve us loving everyone and/or everyone loving us.

20. Unitive Models: that you will become one with everything in some sense.

21. Social Models: that you will somehow be accepted for what you may have attained and/or that you have attained something when people think you have.

 

For those of you who are utterly confused by this, fear not. It means nothing and is actually an obstacle for anyone on the spiritual path.

 

Note: This is scheduled to be published a few days in the future because I think that feature is really cool. In reality, this is all happening on 3rd February, 2016. Not that it matters, but neither does anything else.

I Had a Big Lunch Today

Arguably at the guttural end of its lifetime, our civilisation continues to push towards a shallower truth. Regardless of how shallow they might be, as anything that clenches a primal urge to survive, society and culture, powerful forces of self-perpetuating ideas, give everything it takes to breathe another day. The individual that is born into such a society is naturally taught to take on traits, habits, desires and a mentality that help drive such a struggle forward; only actions appealing to the pre-cultured masses are entertained. These characteristics prevail and perpetuate themselves to a point where all tradition, all religion, all conceived truth – the very foundations of societal hegemony risk collapse at a single individual’s mere betrayal of these ideals.

Concepts like status, marriage, jobs, patriotism, consumerism, entertainment, age, life and death, reproduction, food and sex – everything that we know so well and take for granted, have such distinct and strong opinions attached to them, because they’ve been ingrained; imprinted almost, onto our collective mindset for centuries as cultural truths, forming as much as our identity as our hands and our feet. We seek control over the meaning of these things and find comfort in the consistency of that meaning. Anything that threatens these core values and beliefs must either be regarded as foolish or just plain dangerous, to either be vetoed or vilified.

Lately, however, things have begun to change quite drastically for me. The more I deepen my spiritual practice, the more I learn to look at the world from an emotionally detached point of view. It’s not a choice. It’s an alternate perspective and it’s a rare thing to have in common with people you meet in the street. I find myself losing interest in things highly valued in society. I find myself critiquing culture and tradition quite often regardless of the strange looks I attract because no matter how much mental peace I might attain confirming my own beliefs, there’s also that annoying yet faithful skeptic inside who loves to keep things cynical.

Yet, as I sit here on this commode, offering up this afternoon’s lunch as an offering, I feel blessed knowing how lucky and how privileged I am to have such a good life; that I have the ability to take a dump and write at the same time and strangers who I’ll probably never get the chance to meet, will find a questionable sense of entertainment upon reading this.

Ah, the guttural end of civilisation.

 

Changes and Shit

The above image is a personal testament to how one’s life just changes in an instant. Yes, the photo of a cheese and ham sandwich is proof of how fast things move on. In fact, the cheese and ham now speak volumes to me while before they were just items on the menu. Now they mean so much more. In a disgusting way, of course. You want a better explanation? Ok.

This is what happens when you go vegan, and not just because it’s a really cool thing to do (my street-cred quadrupled over night). No, I’ve seen documentaries and I have also read a book. That, I believe, does make me an expert on this subject and I will gladly propound and proffer my reasons for finding the cheese and ham disgusting.

There are three main reasons why I am a vegan (there are more but I haven’t thought of them yet):

1. Health – if you do the research, you will find out that animal products are terrible for your body in the long run, especially milk.
2. Animal Rights – because the way we treat animals in the food industry is beyond terrible. Watch a couple of documentaries: Cowspiracy and Food Inc. and you will know exactly what I am talking about. Even the dairy industry is no stranger to treating bovines like bitches.
3. The Environment – because animal farming is the one of the biggest factors in climate change. The amount of resources required to fatten a cow, slaughter it and ship it across the world to be consumed is absolutely ridiculous. I’d rather just eat a couple of carrots.

In any case, and in all honestly, I’m not trying to change the world. People need to make their own choices and it’s never a good idea to be pushy about personal beliefs. Remember, you’re only reading this because you’re curious, and you have no job (which can be fun, but you still have no job, tsk).

This time, last year, I went to Thailand for three months to train in Muay Thai. I loved every bit of it. I ate meat four times a day and drank tasty whey protein shakes, in half a litre of milk – seven days a week, for three months. I feel like I lived a great life. And the good times were good… until I came back to India in March, got a routine blood test done and discovered I was pre-diabetic. If you ask me, I was as baffled as a pig who thinks he’s the boss cause he’s eaten like a king all his life but eventually finds himself in the slaughter house. Oh boy.

Anyway, I decided to ignore my report and my doctor’s advice on going easy on the sugar. I went along on my merry, ignorant way and had a fantastic adventure travelling through South India. It was around July when I discovered Sadhana Forest, a community that is busy planting a tropical evergreen forest outside of Auroville, in Tamil Nadu. Oh, and they’re completely vegan, don’t allow any kind of processed foods in the community, and absolutely lovely people. It’s a great place. The kind of lifestyle I have in the community is something I had once only dreamed about. Don’t get me wrong, there is tons of work, but at the end of the day, you feel like you actually lived and did something beneficial for the Earth and the environment and you didn’t participate in any mindless killing of any fellow beings.

To keep things brief, soon enough, I was completely vegan. I did get cravings for besan ladoos with ghee at one point of time and I found myself cheating but 99% of the time, I was a vegan. Currently, I’m stricter than ever about what goes into my body.

Two months ago, I got another blood test done and my pre-diabetic bullshit was completely gone – replaced with a ‘Blood Glucose Level – Excellent’ note. Haha. Hahahahahaha. Oh my god, was I surprised. Actually, not really, because I had just finished reading the China Study, a humongously well-researched book on how eating animal products will make you susceptible to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, brain disorders like dementia and Alzeimer’s, and various kinds of auto-immune disorders. It’s conclusion? Switch to a completely plant-based diet. Well, well, well. Did I dodge a bullet here?

Here is a child upset by change. Did you know we’re the only species that cries at birth? I wonder if it’s the sudden eviction from the comfortable one-bedroom flat in your mom’s uterus that causes all this annoyance, and naturally, babies have only one way to respond to annoyance.

But hey, change is great, right?. Shed the old, embrace the new. With every day comes a new chance to live a completely different life. I’m grateful that I was given so many opportunities to correct myself. But the question is, do you want to live a better life with every passing day? Of course you do, you silly fuck. You don’t have to wait for an arbitrary date on a completely useless calendar to decide you’re going to change your shitty, messed up life. No, you can do that right now. Lazy piece of shit.

I currently have no more philosophy to offer you. Goodbye.

Careful with that Opinion

Frequent mind altering / life changing / many faltering / decisions I make leave me sauntering / through shit which needs more altering / daunting is a molecule that begs for more pondering

Important things can spend the afternoon being less important / while I spin through this disco life / with no discordance / only deliverance / an eruption overflowing barriers of silence / to tell you why / you need to live

 

Junkies be as junkies do / I’m a traitor to your crew / of hotheaded rednecks / with cold blood and turtlenecks / fake jobs and fat checks / who make investments for breakfast / suck on a dick come have sensex

Note: I’ve been completely sober for months now. I endorse nothing but decent photography and meaningless rap/poetry. If there’s anything you should take away from this, it’s that you should do what you want. I don’t claim responsibility for your miserable life.