Sachin, aap bhagwaan hain!

So, have you been wondering what has kept me so quiet on the cloud for so long? Yes? Read on. No? Read on. It has been quite a ride, the last three-four months. Sometime back i decided to quit blogging altogether. Why? Because the whole concept of sharing my philosophy on life seemed a futile exercise to me. I thought why and how would it make a difference to any one? I mean people would most often read a post, swallow the words and move on, because sadly their is no enzyme that would help digest the swallowed up words. The words have to be chewed and crushed into thoughts which are directly absorbed by the heart and the mind. Every post would drop on a person's life like the monsoon rain, that would bring ephemeral delight, but not eternal bliss. Only later I realized that its not only the banal rainfall every time it rains, some times there are thunderstorms too, that leave extended impressions. Impressions you forget only with time, because better and more dominating impressions take their place. This is what brings me back.

I've been lucky enough to have laid my hands on some of the great books that have come out of some of the greatest thinkers of the past and the present. The books have shaped and reshaped the way i think and the way i see the things that are in and around me. Every great book presents me with a new set of glasses that help me see the world in tints unknown to me at that time. New dimensions keep getting added to my thought process with every reading and thanks to these great books I, today, stand where I am.

What if the authors of these gems too refrained from writing, ascribing their repulsion to the same logic that kept me away from writing as well? Surely I would have missed out on knowledge and pleasure that to some extent, my text books have failed to provide. That is why I would love to continue writing, in hopes that someday (if not already) someone will get influenced by my thoughts, make them his own by embellishing them the way he likes, and start his journey with a new set of glasses, replacing the old and broken ones. I don't need any accolades for the way i key-down my thoughts, that is not my aim. My goal is to make this world a better place to live in, and to me that comes by helping people repaint their outlook on life. I really don't claim to be the happiest person alive and I am by no means the authority on life and the way it should be lived. I haven't and can't ever put to end my learning process. That is bound to last as long as i live. But as and when i feel like sharing something insightful, i'd never shy away from doing so. Maybe you'll remember me on your deathbed as a person who if not substantially, then, marginally helped in making your life a little more meaningful. 

So what do i suggest? Stop. Read. Think. Repeat.

Thanks for your time. Ciao!  

Thank You, Sapna Maun.

The concept behind the meaning of Rationality has eluded me since the time i started thinking about it. To put it in the simple words for the lesser mortals i'd say that the meaning of Rationality as stated in the dictionary doesn't make sense to me at all.

For starters let me just pull out the definition of the word from an online dictionary:

rationality [ˌræʃəˈnælɪtɪ]

n pl -ties

1. the state or quality of being rational or logical

2. the possession or utilization of reason or logic

3. a reasonable or logical opinion

Here you go. Read it? Just read that one more time. Done that? Do it again. Re-re-read? Did you notice a peculiar thing? Or maybe it is just me, that is precisely why i am writing this post; but the meaning doesn't grow upon you with every re-read that you give it, and on the contrary it seems to die down. The definition is contorted. What really is ridiculous and fake about this definition is that the words used to define the term Rationality aren't any easier to be defined themselves. The above reference is to the words 'quality', 'reason' and 'logic'. Now, you could stop and think over it, or just carry on reading because human beings tend to seek the easy way out, Always.

The problem i guess is that rationality is a subjective term. I mean something may seem logical to one person, while it may seem illogical to the other. Mind you, i'll be using the term rationality and logic interchangeably. Say for example there are four people, who stay together and have just had a very heavy dinner at a restaurant 5 km. from their home. For going back they could either take an auto who would charge Rs 10 per person, or they could walk back which is always an option if you don't have time and stamina as constraints. For some reason three people feel like walking back home, because it will help digesting food. They 4th guy argues; well, you could walk a km if you like but 5kms is like wtf?! But then everyone also earns decent money and the three of them enter a sort of argument with the other guy justifying how walking will help them digest food and save money too. The 4th guy then gives up on the argument and prefers to take the auto which charges him 40 rupees. He reaches home half an hour before every one does, but feels sad about how he couldn't convince the others to take the auto along with him which could have saved him 30 rupees. Strange, the ways of the world, he feels. Basically he realized it turned out to be some ego issue with a 3 on 1 situation and survival of the 'fittest' too. Is the 4th guy doomed for life if he doesn't change his ways? Is he not respecting evolution?

Well, if you ask me to analyse the above story, no body was irrational. Everyone just did what made sense to him. I mean the 4th guy could say the other guys were fools, wanting to save 10 rupees and walking 5Kms for that, but something will stop him. That is he can't just say what made sense to him is the best possible thing. It may be for him, but not for others. This is the heart of the discussion. You can never claim that at any given moment your actions were rational and what others did was irrational, for the very simple reason stated above. People have different levels of intelligence, things that make sense to one person are different than things that make sense to other people. While there may be many people who will buy your argument but you just cannot convince the whole world into believing in your definition of rationality. Take for example this blog post, it will make sense to many and not so much sense to others. Its all about feelings and perceptions and these, vary from people to people. Then, why, may i ask, is there a need to define rationality when no one is qualified enough to grasp its meaning.

But and this is a big BUT, there will always be some enlightened men, who gauge both sides of an argument and scrutinize the very process of defining rationality and then move on without defining rationality as a word but taking it as believing in something that makes sense, for the benefit of the whole society, always weighing in situations thoroughly before jumping to conclusions, understanding the very subtle argument that people with increasing amounts of intuitive powers and the intelligence to distinguish between intuition and prejudice, will have increasing amounts of clarity of the meaning of rationality and logic. With this heavy realization i have nothing more to say but that, I take pride in the fact, that I am one such man.

I am not one among you, don't count me as your normal friend. I am very different from what you are, i am neither a superior nor an inferior, i belong to a different dimension, a different universe altogether. Thanks for your time. Ciao.

Life's Little Ironies

I don't know. What i do know is, that it is not one of the best ways one can start a new blog post or any piece of writing for that matter. But Yeah, I don't know and yet, I do care. I care for the things that happen around me and as a consequence I care for the people who are responsible for things that happen around me. I am neither an egoist nor an egotist. I'm not superior to anyone of you. I might be more intelligent but then it hardly matters if i score a 130 on a IQ test on which my fellows score a 120. Seriously, IQ tests mean shit. I'm also not more emotionally sound than anyone of you. Different things appeal to different people and they react differently. Simply, it is just that. There is only I thing i have found in which I find myself above most of the people I've ever met. It is common sense. Well you might argue then, that if i say that different things appeal to different people which in turn implies that they react differently implies that their judgement varies. Well, no doubt it is correct, but a correct judgement is something which one can defend if the need be. If somebody fails to defend that, then it should be pronounced as false judgement. Correct?

Okay so this is precisely what has been happening. It has happened on numerous occasions, people around me have time and again failed to justify their actions to me. The way people react to crunch situations; situations that demand not only their intellectual judgement but their emotional judgement, more often than not puts me in shock. Well the 'Guru's' teach us to accept people as they are, so that's what i am doing Sir, but only with a slight modification. In my mind that person lacks common sense, i accept that person as he is, lacking this sense of judgement. I can't and therefore i won't try to make him understand my feelings. Let him be the way he is, if he can't understand me, there is no point wasting my time on him. Sir, in some cases 'Ignorance IS bliss' and this is just one place the saying fits in beautifully.

In fact to some extent my opinions don't even matter to you. Right? Well neither do yours. I just live by my philosophies, i keep building and rebuilding them over time. I keep walking on this 'Circle of Progress' just like everyone else. Every time i walk myself out of a tricky situation, a more graver one reappears. I improve, update and upgrade myself every time but life's like that, it keeps you poking in the ass time and again. This way i justify the 'Circle of Progress'. I'm sure my philosophy doesn't appeal to everyone and thankfully it does not coz i don't want to end up living my life as a preacher. Look for whatever works for you and as long as you can defend it, you are in for an awesome life.

Remarkably it appears that i have left quite a few loopholes in whatever i have said above. Its pretty evident the only person to whom you must be defending your philosophies is yourself only. But then you can't go on living a life that surrounds only you. No, that is selfish. There will always be people around who really matter to you and to whom you matter. It is in front of those people that you should be able to defend yourself if the need be. Failing in which, with all the respect, in my opinion, that person just lacks judgment, simply lacks COMMON SENSE.

Thanks for your time, and patience. Ta Ta.

Siddharta

A working sudoku solver finally and i'm free. Free to write and free to express. Its been a really long time since i posted anything new but here it goes. So recently i read this book 'Siddhartha' by Sir Hermann Hesse. 

This guy won the nobel prize for literature in 1946 primarily for his work 'The Glass Bead Game'.Couldn't get my hands on that book yet but after reading Siddhartha i got a faint idea of why he must have got that prize. Now i'm not going to narrate the plot of the book but what i will do is i'll just put down some dialogues from the book which i thought were both insightful and beautiful.But before that i'll let you hover your mind over these lines by paulo coelho from his book 'Like the flowing river' (another book worth reading atleast once) 

Be like the flowing river,
Silent in the night.
Be not afriad of the dark.
If there are stars in the sky, reflect them back.
If there are clouds in the sky,
Remember, clouds, like the river, are water,
So, gladly reflect them too,
In you own tranquil depths.

And here you go. Some dialogues listed below. Read them kindly, adore them, admire them, praise them and most importantly enjoy them :

• Siddharth Gotama to the Hero : " You've heard the teachings O son of a bitch ( sorry thats Brahmin ), and its good that you have thought about them deeply. You've found a gap in it,a mistake. You should think about this further. Let me warn you however,oh seeker of knowledge,of the thikcket of opinions and of arguing about words. Opinions are insubstantial: they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish; everyone can support them or discard them. But the teachings you've heard from me are not my opinions, anfd their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. This is that what Gotama teaches, and nothing else."                                                                                                                                        
• Hero to Siddhartha Gotama: "I have not doubted in you for a single moment. You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realization, through enlightenment. It has not come to you by means of teachings! And so are my thoughts, oh exalted one-nobody will partake in salvation teachings! You will not be able to convey and share with anyone, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! There is one thing that the teachings of the do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one among hundreds of thousands has experienced for himself. This is what i have thought and realizes. This is why i am continung my travels- not to seek other, better teachings, for i know there aren't any, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and either to reach my goal on my own or to die. But i'll often think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a saint."                                                                                        
• "Daily, at the very hour appointed by her, he visited beautiful Kamala, wearing pretty clothes, fine shoes, and soon he brought her gifts as well. Much he learned from her red, shrewd mouth. Much he learned from her tender, supple hand. He was, regarding love, still a boy and had a tendency to plunge blindly and insatiably into lust like into a bottomless pit; she taught him, starting with the basics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleasure cannot be be taken without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every area of the body, however small it was, had its secret, which would bring happiness to those who know about it and unleash it. She taught him, that lovers must not part from one another after celebrating love, without admiring one other, without being just as defeated as they are victorious, so that neither one started feeling fed up or bored and get that wicked feeling of having abused or having been abused. He spent wonderful hours with the beautiful and intelligent artist, became her student, her lover, her friend."                                                          
• Ferryman to Hero: "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?"                                                       
• Hero to Ferryman : "And when I learned it, I looked at my life, and found that it was also a river, and that the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and the old man Siddhartha by only a shadow, and not by something real.  Siddhartha's previous births were also no past, and his death and subsequent return to Brahmin was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, and everything is present and has existence.                                                                                                                                               
• "When someone is searching" said the Hero, "then it can easily happen that the only thing his eyes see is that for which he is searching. He is then unable to find anyhting or let any thought enter his mind because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search. He is obsessed ny a gial; searching means having a goal. But finding means: being free, open, and having no goal. You oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, because in striving for your goal, there are many things that you don't see, even though they are right in front of you."                                                                                                                           
• "Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness. Knowledge can be transferred, but not wisdom. It can be found and lived, and it is possible to be carried by it. Miracles can be performed with it, but it can't be expressed in thoughts with words. This is what has driven me away from teachers. Another thought is that the opposite of every truth is just as true! That is to say, any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one sided. Everything that can be thought with the mind and said with words is one sided, its all just the half of it, lacking completeness, roundness or unity."                                                                               
• " Great thinkers may try to thoroughly understand the world, explain it, and despise it. But i'm only interested in being able to love the world, not despise it. I don't want to hate it and have it hate me; i want to be able to look upon it and myself and upon all beings with love, admiration and great respect."                

 These are only few of lines i found truly amazing. I know it may appear out of context to you guys but as long as you are able to get the gist of it doesn't really matter. Read the book completely and the meanings grow only more profound, only more subtle only more enjoyable and only more awe inspiring.

 Hats off to the great artist and his amazing work. I'll keep putting up new posts regularly. Thanks for your time tata :)