Walking...

I have lived totally - as the only way to know the self or forget it. I’ve felt the feet fearful and excited as they walked without a destination, knowing only that the present was a minefield that had to be traversed. So I’d walked into the darkness on the air, riding the breeze of a dreamy desire… Yes, I risked things. I was young and put my heart at the altar of an unknown god. That was the condition you see, only by putting your heart there would you know the god from the false gods… and so I lost many pieces of my heart… bit by bit… but it still beats… and many of the parts that were crushed by the false gods, bitten off by the wolves, they grew again and yes, it beats yet…

This electric tingle that can be felt if you sit quiet in the room where I wrote poems, is from the moments where I dared to let the storms come. Yes, there are broken bricks and cinders, where an angry dash of lightning fell… but it lit some things too… a gentle fire for instance that holds light and warmth burning there in the corner of the room where I wrote so many poems… not everyone sees it, but it doesn’t matter.

Will something more bloom or this the journey’s end… not death but a stop as if in a station where the train never arrives? 

No this not a complaint… it is the a story of someone who took a train not knowing where to land… but knowing that a train had to be taken and   maybe, maybe you’ll find the destination… It matters little now… perhaps there is no destination, nowhere particular to land.  Sometimes the scenes outside are not beautiful, sometimes the compartment is empty,  or full of people who speak languages that mean nothing to you. 

I speak as one on the train yet and though all the scenes are not my liking and though I can say nothing of destinations, I’m glad I took the train…

Can I force eternity to speak to me? Can I look at the window and ask the darkness to unfold a question or a dull gaze and become a living story?  Perhaps I can ask but don’t know if the there will be answers... we can but ask, we can but walk, we can but move in starry wonder… knowing that the heart may be crushed at the altar of false gods, that the train may lead nowhere, that darkness may forever remain dark... but to take a step forward, that is for us to do and in that lies our freedom our adventure of being human.

Winds of change

I’m sitting at the sea-shore at Pondicherry. There are big boulders placed where waves come crashing again and again leaving melting patterns of foam which again become waves that crash. And so it goes on. It’s never still, the sea. Never! A ‘calm’ sea, simply means the waves and movement are something we humans can handle. It’s not a tsunami, that’s all!  So much like life. It’s never still. Never! Or it wouldn’t be life. Stasis is an illusion of the mind. So long as life is, change is inevitable. The earth rotates and revolves as do the other planets and other cosmic bodies. In the womb of the earth, there is the movement of life. On the canvas the sky, various forces sweep their strokes. It is there in our hearts where emotions run like water, changing their form, but flowing…

Change is not sudden, though it may appear to be so sometimes… It usually begins with a whisper, mostly unheard, like the delicate flutter of a butterfly’s wings. If you do hear it, it’s only to ignore it. Till it changes to a roar! It manifests as a distinct event or happening at times – a marriage, a change of job, shifting places, meeting new people, a break up, an illness, learning something new. A change is a realization of an ‘isness’ at a certain level. It is an external manifestation of an internal movement. Within the individual and outside too in the world or society at large, we live in a whirlpool of movement. The mind is like a moving kaleidoscope of thought patterns inter-spread with emotional spaces.

External change is a culmination point. It is when a process announces its presence, or a certain movement manifests a phenomenon that has been going on. Change is not arbitrary. The heart doesn’t have an attack for an arbitrary reason, those arteries have been clogging for quite some time! Divorce is not a sudden volcanic eruption, emotions, thoughts, differences have been simmering for long. Even when it is a fast and furious relationship, the personalities of the individuals concerned take a long time to form. Yet the manifestation of change sometimes has a degree of wonder or shock attached to it. You may be preparing for marriage for long, but finally a wedding day marks a change. A girl has looked forward to growing up and then one day she has her periods! The baby has been growing in the womb, but then a day arrives when it is born. Change! The cells are disintegrating but one day death happens. Change! Of course not all changes are conspicuous or measurable or tangible. Sometimes it is a falling of something, a letting go, like of anger, or possessiveness. I’ve seen angry young men become incredibly soft hearted grandfathers, and restless young girls become calm, serene, and wise women. It’s not a change you’ll notice the same way you’d notice a huge building or a grand wedding, or an economic splash (or a world war!).

There are some of us, who make changes easily, almost crave them, while for others change is frightful, or has no lure. Not all movement leads to positive change or growth, mind you! You can go round like a broken record and produce no music. If the rolling stone gathers no moss and stagnant waters stink, then what is the right course? How does one recognize that the time is ripe to make a switch? I can speak for myself. For me it has been a ripening, an inner feeling that grows and grows till it becomes so strong that it cannot be ignored. At times my body has recognized and responded to an energy shift faster than my mind, and I’m plagued by breathlessness or aches and pains which seem to have no physical origin or explanation. While the left side of my head loses itself to syllogisms, the right side of my head has already spoken to my body. This force literally forces me to change. It is different from a desire, it is like an inner inevitability. To suppress or ignore it would be to live a lie. Usually it begins with an idea, often borne of discontent or dissatisfaction of the present situation, then it takes a form, a vision – perhaps it would be better if we could do it like this. If the current situation doesn’t permit this, I start searching for how it can be done, or at least come nearest to it. Like when I first started teaching as a young teacher, I felt education should mean freedom for the child, it must be more meaningful and deeper, where the emotional fabric of the child is deeply affected and transformed, not a perfunctory scratching of the surface. It should mean growth for the teacher too. I quit my job, wondered and searched for something ‘different’. Then I stumbled over a very different kind of educational institution one without uniforms or rigidity where education touched the whole being of the child and sought to transform it. Where teachers could introspect and grow. There was a catch though, there was no salary, you had to work for free but would be given board and lodging. I did, and have lived to look back on that period as one of the most meaningful periods of my life.

If movement is a constant why are we afraid of change so often? Patterns and their repetition seem so natural. Water flows more easily on a path which is already moist; it is easier and generally more sensible to walk on familiar terrain than constantly charter new paths. That’s where the catch is - habit…. We want to walk on the familiar path even if it leads to a blind end. If more people are taking it so much the better! Yes, change is scary. Otherwise it wouldn’t be change. There is almost always a risk involved. You don’t know what lies ahead when you marry or take up a new job. Not entirely. Sometimes your own ideas or what you dreamt of falls flat on its face. The unknown challenges us. I have personally used rationality, but find that the more significant changes in life are a ‘happening’ rather than a left brained choice or organized events. Synchro-destiny is more than a fancy concept. I have more than once quit jobs because I felt I did not belong there any longer, that I should do something different, though at that point I had no clue what that ‘something’ was. But once a decision is taken to let go of that which does not ring in harmony to your inner music, you find your music soon enough. I, in fact, feel that the moment one’s mind decides to move out of the space that does not ring true, that decision, creates and carves a path which takes you where you belong at that point in time.

Sometimes, no almost always, there is a period of testing and trying, but it passes and your heart settles into a space that feels right. No place or space is final or absolute. But evolution means embracing change. If change comes at a price, so does everything else in life, including ‘security’. You have to consider the price and if you want what it offers, agree to pay the price. If every step is lived with awareness and is a conscious choice, the price paid is usually worth it.

n - Harvinder Kaur

(Published in Life Positive magazine, August 2010)

Reading people's thoughts!

I switched on the T.V. a while ago and on BBC entertainment channel there was something called 'Touchwood’ being relayed. I caught the programme in the middle, just at the point when a girl was giving another girl a pendent in a restaurant. Suddenly the other girl- with oriental features – gasped, because she could tune into the thoughts of the other people around her. It was a kind of mind reading device. The story moved through with the pendent giver turning out to be a human-heart eating alien disguised as an attractive woman (who has a lesbian relationship with the other girl – Toshi, I think the name was). While the movement of the plot didn’t anchor me, the situation presented did. Tuning into the minds of others – something I’ve been reading in the newspaper for the last couple of days – is probably going to be possible in the near future.

I’m wondering – is it worth it... How much is a passing thought worth? What can it do? With due respect to the explosion of the 'think positive’ and 'create a world with your thoughts’ movement, this seems to me only the tip of the ice-berg. Perhaps because it is easier said than done. For the mind to have power it needs to be able to harness thoughts. Thoughts buzz like flies in the mind. There needs to be focus of all those if the thought is to have any potency. That’s what one of the characters says in the story, "at least my thoughts are consistent”. To gather one’s energies and not dissipate them, now that’s going to make a difference! That’s what many mind exercises and meditation techniques seek to do.

I’ve been lately thinking how we tend to dissipate ourselves. Last night I went to a meet/seminar where Indian and American School Heads met – organised I realised, in the hope that the Americans can learn the secret formula that makes Indians so good at Maths and Science. It was an initial ’test the waters’ kind of meet, with drinks and dinner, and no future course chartered, a lot of visiting cards changing hands. I couldn’t help thinking – what a waste of time for me! This kind of ’just like that’ thing is okay if you don’t know what to do with your time, but the need to insulate yourself from dissipation, seems strong in me at this stage in life. Many of my friends, I know will say, if you are in touch with the universe’s energy you shouldn’t feel like this. But I do feel it, and think, wasting your time or energy on trivialities is ...well, a waste! Have to add here that the drive in the dusk accross Marine Drive and the new Worli sea-link was a treat though... So, while one can make most of a situation, there is yet, a need to think about the situations we invite into our lives.

To come back to the training of the mind. The world of the human mind seems to be open to ...manipulation by those who do have strong and focused minds. And if a person wants to use it in a certain way, he or she can. But it is the world ’beyond thoughts’ that intrigues me. Some call it the realm of the enlightened. Okay, no big deal, you can give it a holier-than-thou label! Yet many, if not, all of us have experienced spaces of thoughtlessness... a space conducive for what is termed as enlightenment... I suppose for those this is a more constant state can say more... I’m listening!

-HK

What is happiness?

Happiness is what remains once I remove the clutter from the untidy room of my mind. Thoughts, anxieties, ambitions, desires… oh! so many desires… zoom like crazed electrons around the inner nucleus of my being… Moreover, I have often been sucked in by the whirlpool of other people’s unhappiness – something I’ve learnt to guard myself against. Often people are vocal about their anxieties, disappointments and troubles and when you lend a listening ear these often affect your own inner state, (unless you are considerably advanced!). Even when they are not vocal, they wire into my aura and steal my ‘happy energy’! While compassion to the other is important, it should not be confused with drowning yourself with the drowning.

I don’t really have to do anything special to be happy – only let my energy be freed from the illusion of pain. This is not to say that life is a rosy path, but we need to distinguish between real problems and imaginary problems. The real problem calls for action, the imaginary one doesn’t and is often limited to “what if..” or “I bet my boss will fire me..” “They gossip about me…”. If you can do something about a problem to solve it – good, otherwise what’s the point of worrying? It’s like being in a train and hoping it will go faster, with the acidic anxiety of being late for work churning the stomach. RELAX! No amount of worrying will make the train go faster!! Either make sure you catch the right train at the right time, or accept being late calmly. Otherwise this is useless anxiety and the mind needs to be taught to let it drop. It is essential that we distinguish between real problems and anticipated worries. While we should be prepared for the worst
(life is unpredictable) this shouldn’t be confused with an obsession with possible disasters in the future. After doing what we can… let go…there lies happiness.

In training the mind for this, sometimes some concentration or meditation techniques help, or perhaps being in natural’s glory, or listening to or playing music or simply not being with incorrigible anxiety addicted people. I always find that when I listen to certain kinds of music the outside world falls… it’s almost like a fountain of joy that rises in your spine and flows all over. Happiness is a natural state, it does not require any learning technique, but perhaps we have to unlearn ways to be unhappy! In quelling the mind’s leap to mirages of pain you find the path to happiness.

- Harvinder Kaur

Friendship at any age

Colder Older

Thinking vs. Feeling

When was the last time you felt angry or hurt? Or had an overwhelming feeling of pity or compassion towards someone? Emotions are part of our lives from the time we are born, till we die, irrespective of how we deal with them. Do they help in enriching your life, making you a better individual, or are you a slave to them, allowing them to control your thought processes?What would happen if a supremely intelligent but emotionally dry person like Mr. Spock of Star Trek, the popular TV series, entered into an argument with an emotional being like the renowned poet Rabindranath Tagore, about the usefulness and validity of emotions? What follows is an interesting debate between two such seemingly conflicting parties, the thinker (T) and the feeler (F).

T: Being emotional is not going to help you to know the world better. Do you understand a blade of grass better because you are emotional? A charged emotional self is only going to get in the way of knowing an object.
F: There is some truth in this - but it's not the whole truth. Certain emotions, to some degree, definitely put you in a frame of mind or affect your rational faculties and thereby influence your knowing or not knowing something. If you are enthused to a degree you will concentrate better than, let's say, when you have a negative, hostile attitude towards the person teaching you.
T: But that's an indirect, marginal influence!
F: It's indirect, but not marginal. Today, educationists are worried about the attitude of students and their indifference to learning. And attitudes have a lot to do with emotions as well as your rational self. They influence your other faculties - primarily your reasoning abilities.
T: So, you mean a good natured, positive scientist is likely to be more successful than a grumpy old one?
F: Well, it would be dangerous to generalize but it's hard to argue against the notion that an enthused, balanced and positively oriented mind is likely to function better while cracking a problem, than a cynical, grumpy, angry person.
T: Okay, but that still makes reasoning a better way of knowing than emotions, doesn't it?
F: There's more to emotions than this. Tell me, is knowledge of the physical world the only knowledge worth gaining - what about people, their behavior and artistic expression? To understand anything to do with emotions you need to have the faculty of emotion yourself. You can't understand a poem by dissecting it like a frog. You'll understand the meaning of words and the background and other factual details, but to truly understand a poem you have to feel, respond emotionally.
T: In psychology, the science of behavior, we do take into account emotions, but only after they are studied rationally.
F: That may be so. A rational view of emotions doesn't imply that emotions don't count in helping you to know the world. The world of art is the world of emotions.
T: The world of art is a world of lies! There's no reality in artistic expression. It's just what you imagine, which is just a euphemism for wool gathering. And if emotions lead you to either an expression or an understanding of art, they just lead you nowhere - to a world that doesn't exist.
F: Tell me, the fact that you are angry and charged up now - is that unreal? And if I write a poem or short story depicting your state of mind, showing your stream of thoughts, what causes it and how you react, is it a lie?
T: If you write about me then it's not fiction, it's not art, it's either biography or history or psychology.
F: And do you suppose all these fields you've mentioned are free or devoid of imagination? Do you presume that only that counts for knowledge, which describes measured and confirmed facts alone? Then we would be left with only data as the sole descriptor of 'truth' and everything else would be rubbished!
T: Well, if you don't like the idea of data as the sole descriptor of truth, that's your problem. After all, everything else is subjective and depends on how you see things.
F: So, you are suggesting that if it's subjective it's not real; it's not knowledge?
T: Yes, I am. Any comments?
F: Well, all scientific inventions, discoveries and theories begin with the subjective perspective. It's because one person sees something or thinks something that it eventually becomes a theory or device or discovery.
T: Yes, but eventually it is open and clear and definite for everybody. There's little scope for argument or interpretation or subjective individualism. It's not like art when five people can hold five different views about the same painting or poem and all can be right - or wrong!
F: Perhaps you haven't understood the subjectivism in science or the objectivism in art.
T: Perhaps. Tell me - I'm listening.
F: Water boils at 100° everywhere in the world, right?
T: Right - for once!
F: But what about on the hills, does it still boil at 100° there?
T: Well, the condition of pressure and sea level has to be taken into account.
F: So, some scientific 'facts' such as boiling point of water or even the color of objects, is only 'true' under certain given conditions?
T: Yes, that's true.
F: Well, that's not unlike the emotional world. People will largely react in certain ways if you take into account their basic mindset or the conditions they are exposed to.
T: That sounds confusing. Could you explain with an example?
F: Let's say a person X has formed a mindset where s/he believes that everyone should be treated equally and if s/he finds that this is not done, anger is the natural reaction, unless of course the person has been trained to overcome anger. If another person Y is in a similar situation, and has always accepted that 'all are equal but some are more equal than others' then there will no anger, jealousy or rebellion.
T: That's pretty complex!
F: The world of emotions is undoubtedly complex, individualistic and subjective, but that doesn't make it less authentic or less important. It is a different world from that of objects and things that the physical sciences deal with; however, it is there and is very much real.It is more subjective because human beings develop because of multiple influences and forces, whereas trees or plants only need sunlight, water and protection from microbes and animals, etc. It is easier to predict about a tree than a person because of emotions and other things, but that must not be confused with unreality.It may well be that we haven't spent enough time or resources in trying to probe into the 'science of emotions', and because we do not understand enough we tend to dismiss it cynically. Much like the ostrich that sinks its head in sand when it sees danger!
T: Are you calling me an ostrich!
F: Not necessarily. All I'm saying is that you need to see things from a different perspective to understand the relationship between emotions and reality. Just because you can't pin down and dissect emotions in the laboratory is not enough ground to reject them as useless or worse, as a barrier to knowing reality. Something can be nebulous and yet reality. I would agree with you in so far as saying that emotions don't have a direct or significant role to play in understanding the physical world. Yes, empathizing with the structure of the atom isn't the best way of knowing it, but please remember that the hexagonal structure of the benzene ring accepted by science, was seen in a dream by the scientist.
T: So, you are saying that it can be vague, changeable and yet real?
F: Yes, the world of emotions throws light upon the human world and has its own chemistry and physics that science has yet to discover fully. But don't tell me you've never even heard of the chemistry between lovers. That's a bridge between the definite physical world and the seemingly vague and indefinite emotional world.
T: Umm… but you will - or rather, your world of emotions will leave the physical sciences - physics, chemistry and biology out, won't it?
F: To a degree, yes, but the scientist is human, not untouched by the very real world of emotions. I think it's important to understand that emotions highlight a very different dimension of life or existence. If we continue to measure or judge them with the parameters of only physical sciences we will miss out on understanding them. Perhaps the physical sciences should try to accommodate experiential knowledge. Even though I know science holds objectivity to be its God, that simply leaves out the world of emotions and all that it is associated with. If science is to become more comprehensive it should review its methods.

-Harvinder Kaur

(published in Life Positive)

The Creative Spark

Dawn. The sun bobs up from the horizon, spilling its gentle rays on the rocky walls of an unknown cave. The moon quietly bows away with a zillion stars in tow. A cave man, hard like the stones he works with, watches the dawn as the wind plays with his unkempt hair and the cry of a newborn drifts into his ears. He stands motionless, entranced, unable to articulate what he feels or fathom why. Little does he know that he is mesmerized by the power of the Creator and His Creation...

It isn't easy to come to terms with the somewhat nebulous, intangible, but strangely fascinating concept of creativity. The word is derived from the Latin 'creatus', meaning 'to bring into being'. More often than not, creativity has been associated with the arts—painting, dancing, sculpture, literature, and so on. Then, is it correct to assume that if you can paint or dance, you are creative? Dr Krishna Maitra, a reader in Delhi University, India, and executive member of the Asia-Pacific Federation of Gifted and Talented Children, negates such an assumption. "We shouldn't confuse creativity with talent," she explains. "Talent is a specific aptitude in a specific area. For example, people may be good at music or dance or painting without being creative. Creativity involves talent, but talent is not creativity." Maitra feels creativity happens when various forces—be they environmental, motivational or psychological—interact to create something unique. And this is not necessarily limited to arts alone."Creativity is a transfer of energy," states painter Jatin Das. "When you observe something, say a tree, and imbibe the energy from there, then you transfer it to a medium or form." A definition that is given an individual touch by painter Joydeep Banerjee: "In creativity, the self seeks expression through personal language." Creativity involves manifestation, making the invisible visible. The creator is merely a vehicle, a medium, rather than an independent being empowered to create what was never there.

GENESIS OF IDEAS
The notion that creative ideas flow from a higher source rather than from the mind of man is not entirely new. We find traces of it in Greco-Roman culture, famous for its invocation of the Muses before any artistic activity, as well as in the writings of various New Age mystics. In his work Uno Mystica I, New Age guru Osho states: "It (creativity) is action through inaction, it is what Lao Tzu calls wei-wu-wei. It is not a doing, it is an allowing… Hidden behind man is God. Just give him a little way, a little passage, to come through you. That is creativity: allowing God to happen is Creativity." Psychologically speaking, the creative process involves a voluntary relaxing of ego-controls after consciously analyzing the subject at hand. In other words, it is a think-hard-then-let-go process. This 'letting-go' also helps the preconscious to operate freely on ideas. And it is in this frame of mind that the moment of serendipity, the magical 'eureka' experience, dawns.Often, ideas come during relaxation or through dreams. Explaining how his notes were inspired, music composer Mozart once said: "When I am… completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly." It would, however, be naïve to assume that all creation necessarily comes from the inner being. Many come from the conscious mind as well. For Nirmal Verma, celebrated Indian writer, creativity is a matter of "regular hard work and not inspiration. There's nothing glorifying about it. It's 99 per cent perspiration". Verma feels that creating something involves both conscious and unconscious processes. "It is a kind of confluence of various forces," he says. "For instance, you witness a sunset. This catalyses a chain of memories which work into the present and influence your work."

CREATIVE PEOPLE
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America's greatest thinkers, was sickly and dull as a child. Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal's bard and Nobel Laureate, was a miserable misfit at school. Vincent van Gogh, Dutch impressionist painter, lived a life of abject poverty, developed schizophrenia and cut off one of his ears for a prostitute. All these people were unique in their own ways. In fact, if we scan the life and times of most creative people, we would find a varied range of idiosyncrasies, habits and tendencies that characterize them.

Misfits: Tagore was not alone in being a misfit at school. Many children have problems fitting in the school framework because of their curiosity, their tendency to question more. Creative misfits can be differentiated from dull mischief-mongers by their basic liveliness, awareness and individuality.

Loners: Creative individuals often prefer being alone for various reasons. They also have a strong tendency of doing things in their own, slightly offbeat, way. Henry David Thoreau, an American philosopher and writer who spent some time in complete solitude, wrote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him keep step with the music which he hears, however measured or far away…"

Non-conformists: The innate originality of a creative person's thoughts and ideas often make him swim against the current of the world. Shelley was thrown out of Oxford University for writing a pamphlet on the necessity of atheism, Copernicus was excommunicated from the Church for declaring that the earth revolved round the sun, Bernard Shaw raged against blind patriotism.

Original and imaginative: There is something golden within the creative person. The creative spark, when it flies, inevitably shines in the darkness of ignorance. Creativity is often characterized by original thinking, sometimes laced with a sense of humor, even when things are not going well.

Sensitive: Sensitivity fuels the creative power. Of course, creative people are not always sensitive in the same way, nor do they react similarly. But the quality of awareness makes them notice things. The flutter of wings, the sound of falling raindrops or children playing… nothing escapes the sensitive individual.

Adventurous: A desire to explore the unknown, both externally and within the mind, is also an important ingredient of creativity. This quality is present more in creative-minded scientists who leave no stone unturned in their desire for knowledge. Take the example of B.P. Sen, a chemical technologist formerly with Hindustan Lever. According to Sen, one of his best achievements had been building an "unsinkable" boat as a child, using plastic pipes and wooden poles.

NURTURING CREATIVITY
While creative expressions are generally characterized by spontaneity, this does not imply that the seed of creativity doesn't need to be tended. There have been times such as the European Renaissance when creativity flourished unabated. There have also been places and countries where the controlled environment has forced many creative people to flee, a classic example of which can be found in the former Soviet Union. Here are some nurturing pointers that may help you enhance your own creativity and see it blossom in the youth of today:

Catch them young: There is a dire need to understand and help a child exploding with the creative urge. Most children can be led, trained and encouraged to be creative. If creativity is suppressed at this crucial stage, it can have serious consequences on the child's psyche.

Allow flexibility: Understand the difference between discipline and rigidity. While a certain amount of discipline is desirable, even necessary, in the creative arena, the unpredictability of the creative insight calls for fluidity and flexibility. An excessively rigid routine is a death sentence for all creative thought. There is a need for balance. Creativity demands some time. You can't force it. Allow it to bloom.

Seek and provide an encouraging atmosphere: Not all creative people are aggressive. Some may be quiet, shy and content to work unnoticed. Many even need encouragement to go forward. An open platform for expressing thoughts is necessary for any creative activity. Such a platform of expression also demands a stimulating environment. Whether it means changing the look of your home or workplace, or re-framing your activities, the idea is to catalyze creative powers.

Return to nature: Nature is an amazing source of inspiration. And to stoke those creative sparks that have been dampened by a mechanized existence, there is a need for direct communion with nature. Try and feel each action in your life. When was the last time you stopped to listen to the pitter-patter of raindrops or the rustling of autumn leaves? Let nature seep into your heart. Whenever you give your heart a chance, you actually give creativity a chance. Stop! Now listen to all the sounds around you at this very moment. Were you aware of them earlier? Catch yourself when you ignore something beautiful. Watch the splendor of nature unfolding as the day goes by or even the birds gliding across the blue sky. Life is creative. Life is happening. Now. Don't miss it.

-Harvinder Kaur

Life Positive, November 1998

Zen Poetry

The sun had set, leaving behind a trail of mellow gold. The air seemed ripe, and ready to receive whatever the Enlightened One had to bestow. Bhikkus sat on the mountaintop clad in saffron, the color of holiness and healing, awaiting in eager silence the Master's sermon.Then the master came. The air changed. Dust settled within and without. Everyone waited for his divine lips to part, for the soul of wisdom to find the flesh of words. But the Master spoke not. He only held aloft a golden lotus, his eyes speaking of the unfathomable. All were silent, and bewildered.
What did the Master mean? Then Mahakashapa, the blessed disciple, smiled. He had understood and partaken of the Master's message. What transpired between Mahakashapa and the Buddha? This silent eloquence of the Buddha during 'the flower sermon', which only Mahakashapa understood, carries in itself the secret of Zen.Bewildering? Welcome to the world of Zen-the unspeakable way. In 520 BC Bodhidharma carried dhyana (meditation) to China, where it came to be known as from India chan. By the 12th century it spread to Japan where it was called Zen. So essentially Zen has its roots in the Indian tradition of Meditation. At the surface, it is yet another way of life, a path to the Ultimate. What is Zen in reality? This is a question to which Masters have seldom given straightforward answers, if any at all. The reason-an explanation is simply impossible. It is like asking someone to give you a bucketful of light in a hall of darkness! Words and language are an ineffectual medium to convey the ineffable. And Zen is nothing if an ineffable experience. In Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia - the story of the life of the Buddha in verse-the Buddha's opening lines of his first sermon after Enlightenment express the same:

Om Amitayam, measure not with words the immeasurable,
Nor sink the string of thought into the fathomless,
Who asks doth err, who answers errs.
Say naught!

Back home, in Kabir's dohas (couplets), we find the same helplessness, about being unable to express the inexpressible. Jo dekhe so kahe nahi, kahe so dekhe nahi, Sune so samjhave nahi, rasna, drig, sravan kahi, and Had mein batha kathat hai, behad ki gam nahi, behad ki gam hoagi, tab kachu kathna kahi. (Sitting within limits he speaks, knowing nothing of the limitless, When the limitless is known, then what will be there to speak?) Thus, language has no value in the world of Zen. Words are but signposts to another world. You cannot reach the sun of Realization on the waxen wings of words. This is reflected in poetry from different times and different climes. So when Walt Whitman invites you in his Leaves of Grass to 'Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems' it is an invitation to the world of Zen, where the true taste is perceived by your own tongue. Whitman's poems naturally elucidate and explain the pithy, tight-lipped Zen philosophy-

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

The essential feature that differentiates Zen texts from other sacred scriptures is that while scriptures are supposed to transmit spiritual truths, in Zen the transmission is outside the scriptures. In order to facilitate experiencing the beyond-mind state, the Zen master often resorts to strange and bewildering methods. Even more bewildering than Buddha's silent gesture. While one Master may raise a single finger to answer, another may kick a ball, while yet another may just give you a tight rap on the head. So if you think that Zen is absurd, crazy, irrational, # * $ =^mind-boggling, you are dead right.However, poets like Emily Dickinson would find sense in Zen's seeming nonsense:

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, - you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Huston Smith in The World's Religions says: "Entering Zen is like stepping through Alice's looking glass. One finds oneself in a topsy-turvy wonderland where everything seems quite mad-charmingly mad for most part, but mad all the same." However, as with Hamlet there's 'a method in their madness'. Tradition says the Zen Master will give you a hard blow when you're least expecting it. This 'blow' can take various forms-shocking acts like killing an innocent animal by way of answering a question, or a rebuff or beating as feedback on your progress, or a less violent but equally bewildering koan. Zen koans are a prime example of the Zen shock methods. The word 'koan' literally means a problem. Here words could give you that elementary nudge that pushes you off the cliff.

So beware if the Master asks you: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Or: A cow passes by a window. Its head, horns and four legs all pass by. Why did not the tail pass by? An appropriate koan was given to a seeker by the Master according to his need at that particular stage of development. The disciple was supposed to ponder over the koan for a certain period of time, which could be one, two or many years, as the Master thought fit. The koan-which often took the form of 'absurd poetry' bordering on the nonsensical-bears an uncanny resemblance with some of Kabir's dohas. So in Zen texts we find: Stones rise up into the sky, Fire burns down in the water. Or: Samandar lagi aag, nadiyan jal koyla bhayi, Dekh Kabira jag, machli rookh char gayi. (The ocean has caught fire, the rivers have been burnt to ashes, Watch and awaken, says Kabir, the fish have climbed the trees). With such writings, one must be careful so as not to get caught in the web of the mind. These questions are not meant to be a mere intellectual exercise, nor are they tools to sharpen the mind. Zen is above mental gymnastics. Here, what counted was the experiential perspective. This may happen when your rational mind is provoked to excitement and then exasperated and exhausted, it falls into a state where true insight penetrates. This often proved to be the moment of Enlightenment. A phenomenon which is sudden and uncontrived, in fact, beyond contrivation. It is said a nun, Chiyono, experienced Enlightenment suddenly when a pail in which she was carrying water split and broke. She wrote, "This way and that way I tried to keep the pail together, hoping the weak bamboo would never break. Suddenly the bottom fell out. No more water; no more moon in the water-emptiness in my hand."Osho comments on this phenomenon in No water, No moon-Reflections on Zen: "Enlightenment is always sudden. There is no gradual progress towards it, because all gradualness belongs to the mind and Enlightenment is beyond the mind. So you cannot grow into Enlightenment, you simply jump into it. You cannot move step by step; there are no steps. Enlightenment is just like an abyss, either you jump or you don't jump." While the Zen way of life in no way encourages verbosity, not even fluency, it has however given the world the gift of the haiku. Haikus are small 17-syllabled poems, which may well have a transformatory effect when in the right moment. Somewhere behind the veil of words is the wordless. Reality that surpasses all expression. While this is seen clearly in haikus, yet they may become a springboard to the world beyond mind. Poetry has always been given a place of dignity, even reverence, in the spiritual world. It wears around itself a halo of the golden light of God. Wordsworth said that poetry is the most philosophical of all writing.Commenting on the relationship on Zen and poetry, R.H. Blyth states in his preface to Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, "Wherever there is poetical action, a religious aspiration, a heroic thought, a union of the nature within a man and Nature without, there is Zen."

Haikus are almost emblematic of the Zen philosophy. They are not didactic or lyrical talk of the mundane, and very often don't seem to make much sense. How about a few?

Ah, what a pleasure to cross a stream in summer-sandals in hand. -Yosa Buson (1716-1783)
A stonecutter stops to cool his chisels in clear water. -Yosa Buson
On a temple bell it has stopped, and gone to sleep-a butterfly. -Yosa Buson
They were all quiet, the host, the guest, and the white chrysanthemum. -Yosa Buson

Haiku-something pithy and brief-has found its counterpart in English poetry too. We find the soul of wit in Ogden Nash's brief poems, even though they may not have been intended to push you to Enlightenment.
REFLECTION ON A WICKED WORLD:
Purity is obscurity.

THE BABY:
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.

JELLYFISH:
Who wants my jellyfish
I'm not sellyfish.

CANDY
Candy is dandy
but liquor is quicker.

In the Zen world nothing is profane, all is Light. It celebrates ordinary life. Divinity doesn't need a special mode to cast itself into. Seeking the extraordinary is the task of the Ego. When it moves in the world of activity, Divine consciousness seeks to perform no miracles. You find this reflected in the writings of modern poets too. Nissim Ezekiel, for instance, in his short poems writes, You read wisdom books in the spirit of the comics, and the comics in the spirit of the wisdom books. And: Whatever you pursue, let it not be happiness. May you find it often resounding in your normal pursuits. Tagore sings the same tune. For him, Deliverance is not in renunciation. Of course, Tagore does not go as far as the Zen master who says 'kill the Buddha', as being mesmerized by the image of the Buddha may block the Awakening of many a seeker. However, Tagore comes near to it when he denounces the chanting and telling of beads, in Gitanjali, "...there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust." If you fail to see Divinity in ordinary life, it is because you're not ripe, and your vision is not clear. A Zen master was once asked how Enlightenment had changed his life. "Well," he said, "before my search began mountains were mountains, the sea was the sea, the moon was the moon. When my search began the mountains weren't mountains anymore, the sea wasn't the sea and the moon wasn't the moon. Now when the search is no more, the mountains are mountains, the sea is the sea and the moon is the moon."

To the man of Divine vision, this world is 'all beauty and all bliss'. Mystic and poet, Sri Aurobindo echoes this in his writings. In 'Divine Hearing', a sonnet, he writes:

All sounds, all voices have become Thy voice,
Music and thunder and the cry of birds,
Life babbling of her sorrows and her joys,
Cadence of human speech and murmured words.
In 'Divine Sense', a similar experience has found expression:
Surely I take no more an earthly food
But eat the fruits and plants of Paradise!
For Thou hast changed my senses, habitude
From mortal pleasure to divine surprise.

What change has occurred here? Evidently not one in the world outside, but in the vision within. It is like taking off dark glasses from one's consciousness, and finding a beautiful world. Or, as Shakespeare would have it: 'Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so'. In Milton's Paradise Lost, the powers of the mind are extolled. The mind is seen as a magical instrument, one that can "make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven". Likewise, in Zen poetry there is no discrimination between the so-called ordinary or extraordinary. Zen poetry thus rebels against the classical tradition where only 'great' subjects, such as war or love, were chosen for poetic expression. The most celebrated epics in the world-The Illiad, The Odyssey, The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, depict a grand scale war amidst other things. Why so? R.H. Blyth explains this relationship between poetry about the ordinary things in life and deep religious experience. He says: "To the religious, all things are poetic-eating, drinking, sleeping, going to the loo—not one more than another. To the poetical, all things are religious, every blade of grass, every stick and stone, the butterfly and the intestinal worms." It is interesting to note that Walt Whitman called his masterpiece Leaves of Grass. Swami Vivekananda who was in America at the time the book was published remarked that the book had been written by 'a sanyasin' (hermit). Great minds, Divine being at all times and all climes think alike! The Zen master in Kabir emerges and sings: Jo bolun so hari katha, Jo karun so seva (Whatsoever I say is the Divine tale, whatsoever I do is service Divine).
-Harvinder Kaur
Published in Life Positive, February 2001

The world and I

I was confronted with a like it or lump it situation in my professional life. It was not the first time. Like most people, I neither liked it, nor could I leave it, because that didn’t solve the problem either.
It was not something that could be called a compromise, but simply a case of encountering reality. Wherever you went you encountered the inevitable. A lot of it had to do with ‘others’. ‘Their’ behaviour and ‘their’ decisions affected my life, altered my physical living conditions, dictated my time…’they’ almost ruled over my soul.
I was standing face-to-face with a strange paradox—people, ‘other’ people, affected my life in ways I didn’t like but could do little to change. What could I do? Practically nothing to produce immediate results, change the decisions of ‘others’ that affected my life, and leave me at relative peace.
The only choice I had was to alter my mind, change my perception just to survive—since I didn’t have enough power to change external, physical circumstances. Then I would become ‘the other’ for other people! You are either the hunter or the hunted. Can you ever come out of the hunt? Can you ever be really free…?
A practical way out would be to accept the notion that desire breeds misery and abandon desires both noble or otherwise.
But that would be escapism—creating the facade that since something is too difficult to achieve, pretend that you don’t want it! It would not lead to an authentic change within—it would be a cheap mental ploy for a loser to experience a false and fleeting feel-good state.
That is what I would call a compromise. I don’t know what enlightened masters would counsel me but for now this is my plan… To harbour deep within my heart the seeds of discontentment, to slowly nourish them till they grow and flower into something fruitful… In practical terms this would mean to keep trying both in the inner and outer world for a change till…well, till you get it. Meanwhile, I’m coping with ‘the others’!
-Harvinder Kaur

( www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1028723 - 49k;Wednesday, May 10, 2006)

Divinely Discontented

Have you ever said to yourself, “This is not it?” ‘This’ could be anything—a job, a relationship, a frame of mind. A hungry hollowness haunts the heart, an inexplicable notion that you are meant for something else. Welcome to the path.

You may not realise it, but your discontentment is a sign that you are a seeker. A seeker of divinity, of enlightenment. The discontented husband and wife on the verge of a divorce, the hurt father and rebellious son, the dissatisfied boss and bitter employee... they hardly seem to be candidates for divine discovery. They just want a simple harmonious life with the usual desires—creature comforts, workable relationships and lots of money. It’s success (read happiness) that everyone seeks, not spirituality. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

A spiritual life in inevitable if your discontentment is deep and persistent.

No doubt many people live in a state of bovine complacency where ignorance is bliss. But a vast portion of humanity knows what it is to feel a clawing sadness when burning desires turn to ashes. The problem is that our desires are as half-hearted as our discontentment. So, we get the ubiquitous whiner who cribs and cribs but doesn’t do enough to change his or her situation.

Discontentment has been more maligned than understood. It is a strong kinetic force that compels you to seek, to explore the unknown. It is the wind that swells the sails that push life’s boat forward. It does not, however, guide you beyond a point. It will tell you “this is not it”, the way it told Gautam Siddhartha, ultimately leading him to Buddhahood. However, you have to be aware at all times. Buddha’s awareness led him to realise that extreme fasting and hardships lead to the door of death rather than light. That’s when he understood the importance of balance or the middle path.
Discontentment is not a sin but a sign that you haven’t quite reached. Use it to light the way.

-Harvinder Kaur

(www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1007313 - 50k; Friday, January 13, 2006 )

As you see it

Some young seekers had an audience with a Zen master. They were curious to know how his state of consciousness had been altered by enlightenment. The master told them obliquely, “Before I started the journey, mountains were mountains, trees were trees and rivers were rivers. When I started seeking, mountains stopped being mountains, rivers weren’t rivers, and trees were no more trees. Once I ‘reached’, mountains once again became mountains, trees were trees, and rivers, rivers.”

What had happened? The master was referring to a manner of perceiving. What had changed was not the outer world of mountains, trees or rivers but the inner world of the man. We create our world by the way we view it. Happiness and sorrow are often the result of what we regard as good or bad. Our beliefs, opinions and outlook form the premises by which we arrive at our judgements. Change those premises and you change your world. It happens all the time. Like the Zen master, a child often looks upon his parents as demigods, till perhaps his youth when he notices their flaws and shortcomings, which lead to his disillusionment, even rebellion. A mature adulthood leads to yet another metamorphosis in perception, and parents become worthy of appreciation, if not emulation, again.

When I was 13, I watched Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke Khilari, and thought I had wasted my time. I happened to watch it again some years ago and found it a masterpiece! What had changed was my notion of a good movie.
Life is constantly asking us to make judgements, to classify or label things, people, places and decisions as right or wrong, good or bad. From buying a T-shirt to choosing a life partner, we use our perception to make judgements. Our mindset and conditioning act as filters through which we view the world. If the filter is coloured with greed, envy, fear, love or hope, so will the world seem to us. In this sense we create our own world by choosing to retain or reject our filters. So, to change your world, change your mind. Literally!

-Harvinder Kaur

(www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1013393&CatID=19 - 50k; Thursday, February 16, 2006 )

Encountering Silence

Imagine an empty house. Silence. No TV, no music, no electricity. Silence. No work, no deadlines, no illness, no aim, no relationships. Silence.

When you isolate yourself from the noise outside and its immediate causes, you face a vast abyss: dark, unfathomable, scary. It’s almost as if you are standing at the edge of a cliff on a moonless night.

The search for truth often forces us to explore our inner worlds. It is easy to follow the teachings of others, of masters who have already traversed the path. But even if they hold the light, you have to walk with your own feet.

Much of life’s noise—its strutting and fretting—is to avoid that abyss within. Hence, the busy bazaar of life to escape loneliness. A crowded life to avoid drifting lonely as a cloud. We clutter our life with things, people, events and issues not because of their own value but because they help us remain in our comfort zone. It is important, if painful, to ask why we do what we do. How much is necessary to live a meaningful life and how much to create noise that drowns the unfamiliar sounds of silence—mere ploys of the mind to prevent reaching a mindless state?

If you are satisfied with touching the mere skin of life, if the inevitability of death or the wonder of birth don’t jolt you, well then, good for you! But if they do, then you have no choice but to clear the clutter in order to look within.

Isolation is necessary to travel to that inner space, which people avoid. It often forces us to look at our inner emotional and psychological selves, make some challenging changes and a get new perspective. From here the journey begins. That is why seekers inevitably go into isolation for short or long periods at some point in their lives. The initial darkness must be entered. It is the only way to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
-Harvinder Kaur

(www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1011061 - 49k; Friday, February 03, 2006 )

Yours faithfully

Have you seen the eyes of the faithful on a mission? The burning of the faith fire in the form of patriotic zeal, religious reform, or scientific search, has fueled people in ways unmatched. Neither the carrot, not the stick can compete with the momentum given by something so intangible, yet so powerful as faith.

Faith exists in almost everyone’s life to a greater or lesser degree. From going to the doctor, getting married, discovering new lands, inventing things or seeking God. Even science is not free of faith. Most, if not all scientifically ‘proved’ laws begin with a belief, a hypothesis that is either ‘proved’ later as truth, or rejected totally. Not so, with religious faith. God is neither proved nor disproved and perpetually falls in the grey zone of belief. Does intense and total faith imply that what we believe in is true? Do we create that which we believe in or do we delude ourselves and project the unreal phantoms of our minds onto a reality that is independent of our beliefs?

Civilizations have existed for ages with beliefs as its base. Battles have been fought, won and lost for the sake of that which we believe to be true. This is more true of religious belief than perhaps any other. Scientists have rarely taken up arms over the atomic weight of an element! So, a scientific approach solves controversies perhaps even wars can be wiped out if we acted solely on empirical evidence. However, if we act only by that which is proven and testable then we may never act or live because that leaves out much of life and the world.

To some extent you have to have faith in the concept of faith, as a prerequisite to knowing. On the religious path faith is the key that opens the door to a divine reality. In the spiritual mind, myths, visions, prayers, stories mingle to form the private inner world. How much of this is true we can never know. The secret is to have a balance of faith and doubt. Neither be blinded by faith nor be so rigidly against it that it closes the doors to discovery.
- Harvinder Kaur

(Tue, June 6, 2006; Reflexions; DNA)

Courage for truth

Courage and Truth are intimately connected. Courage is a prerequisite to Truth. It keeps you on the right path and steers you away from a false and treacherous comfort zone.
While the ultimate Truth may be an abstract understanding of the manifest and the unmanifest, it is reached through a concrete journey. A journey that compels us to look deep and if necessary, course-correct. Retiring to a monastery is not required, but a paradigm shift in perception is. The path to Truth (or enlightenment) forces you to take a candid look at your beliefs, and notions about various things. The rearrangement of the inner furniture—even junking some—requires courage.
This is not to say that the proverbial beaten track leads to blind alleys. However, if that track is chosen for fear of the wild, then that fear will block the light of Truth. Gathering sufficient courage will lead to an inner revolution. Truth is not for the weak; it requires the ability to leap into the unknown. If you compromise and ignore your inner voice, you miss out on the opportunity to live life and unearth its treasures.
However, it is dangerous to confuse the inner voice of consciousness with the guileful voice of insatiable desires and drives. A callous covetousness may make someone ‘courageous’ enough to satisfy his whims without caring for others. So, a child may want to eat all the possible flavours of ice-cream available, while the adults may want cars, houses, awards, sex partners…Courage involves a lofty kind of ‘selfishness’. The person of courage always pays the price. The object is not to hurt the other, or to gain unfairly, but live a true and meaningful life; if someone is hurt, so be it. Like Lord Krishna’s advice to Arjuna in the Mahabharata war, the object is not to kill or grab unethically, but given the circumstances there was no choice for Arjuna but to fight. To renounce it all at that point would have been a cop-out. A painful choice for Arjuna, but true--and yes, the price was dearly paid.

-Harvinder Kaur

(www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1014159&CatID=19 - 49k; Tuesday, February 21, 2006 )

Untying Emotional Knots

Does it hurt – in that space where the heart is, the seat of emotional torment and rapturous love? There is hardly a person who has not known pain since it is so intricately woven in the fabric of life, but the pain of broken relationships beats them all. The point is does the heart heal totally after turbulent times or do thorns bury deep and at treacherous turns prick deep and old wounds open?

To break a relationship or to make compromises to keep it going takes its toll. Whether its parent and child, husband and wife, brother and sister, lovers, or the near proverbial saas and bahu relationship, everything comes at a price. Emotional healing is often a necessity we overlook in the heat of life.

Sometimes tough decisions are required – especially when it’s a matter of deep faith or principles. You have to decide which road to take at the crossroad – and accept what comes along that path. Are you ready to convert your religion to marry somebody? Are you ready to sacrifice a scintillating career to be able to bring your children up with personal warmth and care? Are you ready to exchange your dream with your parents’? Choices. If you make them right you can avoid deep emotional scars. IF!

But being human we make choices that prove to be wrong in time. We are fallible and everything in the world changes. To think that we can go through life without error and pain is somewhat utopian. So, how to fill the wounds, ease the pain and yes, move on? The answer is simple but not easy – wisdom.
Wisdom is applied knowledge. Somewhere we carry a premise in our mind that pain can be avoided. Perhaps. But since a painless life is rare, the best option is to let go of past pain. Don’t resist pain when it comes, accept it and then let it drop. Don’t brood over it, thinking this is a deep cosmic conspiracy and you are singled out to suffer. Everyone suffers, but not everyone overcomes suffering. Wisdom lies in accepting what is natural – in this case both pain and healing.

-Harvinder Kaur
(Thursday, June 29, 2006 ; Reflexions; DNA)