Magic

When you hit the right note in the piano, it feels like a story has begun. When you write the right words, it feels like it is music, and letters show you a musical story; maybe that's why they say "being in the rhythm". How can I write something that plays music in your mind, rather than just ringing a bell? Shall I recite a poem, recite a collection of related beautiful words that conveys you a story? Shall I write a song, words of music? Or rather shall I tell you a story that inspires you, you get goosebumps and you feel like an inspirational soundtrack playing back in your head? Well, I might not be able to create any magic, am no magician. Its weird to think that we all know magic doesn't exist, nor does magicians, they all trick us, and yet we call them magicians and even the tricksters call themselves magicians, much like politicians calling themselves saviors. They know they can't create magic, but we keep on relying on them.


Every country has a lot of magicians, they are so good at selling wonders, immersing you completely in their fairy tales. For a moment you enjoy the wonder and pay to see the magic but once its over, the magician is just a man, with tricks, and all his deeds have explanations. It does, but it depends if you can figure it out or not, but there sure is an explanation. A good magician is never out of tricks, and sadly, we never cease to get startled, and as the magician gets better, we pay more to enjoy his performance. And before you have realized, the game takes you over, and you pay lot more than just the ticket to watch him. Nepal has been a stage, a big stage for all performers, behold, they don't create any music, or movies, or a drama, they create enigmatic wonders, far better than any magician ever had. A vegas magician might immerse you in the magic for a few hours and maybe you remember it once in a while, but here the magician will make sure you remember the performance your entire life, it will be engraved in your identity that you had the blessing of encountering something such intricately convoluted and subtly planned that no matter what the show will be a success, no disaster, no tear, no heartbreak can stop it. Rather, the performance gets even better.

Why do we love magic? The idea of getting gold out of thin air is mesmerizing; Einstein might feel otherwise. It is high time we stopped loving magic and listening to fairy tales.Hasn't the world already seen much? Strangely, the universe keeps on telling the same story of hatred and filth or do we always let the magicians create it? When a magician calls an audience to the stage, and performs tricks on him, he gets amazed with the dexterity of the magician, and at the same time, all the audience, in the theater, or watching TV, will also be inawe. But the person on stage feels the wonder more than the others do. Now, what can the magician do to create the same immersion for all the others? For all the others, the imagination of the reward of immersion makes it more wonderful than it really is. Or the magician plays a very generic trick that everyone gets involved and share the immersion but when you are out of it, and you have lost yourself. This is more than just magic, it is Manipulation.

How can the spell be broken? Don't believe in magic. It is that simple. But what if you are forced to watch the magician perform or even get paid while you enjoy his show? Well, there is no free bread, you will have to pay a very expensive ticket once the show gets bigger and the magician is surrounded by new aspiring magicians. Who is a better magician? A magician that shows gold that was hidden in his jacket, or a magician that eats crops from his own field?

A good life

Do you believe you are living a good life? On what basis do you judge its goodness? Is it a worthy or a worthless life? If you were a good son, daughter, father, mother, brother or sister but never ever helped a stranger, will you regard your life to be a useful?, Or  what about the other way round? What about you were never there for your family but helped hundreds and thousands of strangers all around the world? Which is more fulfilling? We never have prizes for people serving their families, maybe it is supposed to be a thing that you are meant to do, so no one gets any special reward for it. Maybe because the process of living together in a joyous family is already rewarding in itself so no one gets recognition for enjoying their lives.

A picture of Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into my mind, maybe when you have a fulfilling life, then you think about others. Or you can take the other route, when you are self sustained, keep on increasing the sustainability and get even more richer in emotions and finances, and never think about anyone else. So, presumably, people do whatever fulfills them. What about having a balance, what about having a life which is fulfilling the both way i.e, you are a family person, and at the same time, belong to the ages.

The beauty of a problem

Karma in Sanskrit means work, but it also has a deeper meaning if you attempt to elaborate it. The word is pretty popular among Hindus, they believe in Karma - work, Dharma - righteousness, and then Satya - the truth. It is interesting to see an analogy i.e, Karma being the mind, Dharma the heart and Satya being a true combination of mind and heart. It is a fact that mind and heart, though separate, function together for an optimal solution for a given problem. Why do I mention about problem here? Because simply, we are all problem solvers. When we look at life in a way we define it as problems and solutions, it becomes a simplistic view of life. Meaning, we either create problems and we solve them or we solve problems created by others, that is all we do throughout our lives.

So, how can everything be a problem? Let us start. A person is born to solve the problem of continuation. It is a fact that if the current generation ceases to reproduce, there will be no humans left. So, agree or not, we were born to solve the problem of continuation. Each one of us is a great warrior taking the responsibility of the whole generation to create a future for coming generations. Next, we need to survive, because our body is so made that we need to eat and drink. For at least now, we cannot imagine life without food because I do not know what the future holds. What if a great scientist finds out a way we never needed food. Isn't it interesting to imagine a life without food, when you never need to eat or drink. Then we won't have to spend time cooking, cleaning dishes, partying, we won't have digestive tract, we will have different mechanisms that we get energy, perhaps like solar panels, we might get energy from the sun, maybe we will be like cyborgs, maybe not, who knows, this is a crazy world already. For now, we need to eat to survive, so solve this problem of the crazy stomach first. How? Have a field to grow food, farm animals, but wait, you might not have any. You can barter it, oh no, it is so difficult to barter, lets's create something handy and call it money. So then, money was made to make life easier, a universal thing used to trade things. But of course, we trade emotions, love, and what not for money. It is another discussion to see whether money solved our problem or not.

With money, came a flurry of ideas, businesses, jobs, economies, markets and the financial palaces of the modern world. But still after centuries of prosperity, billions are still fighting to solve the second problem  -food. If we think deeply, these two problems cover all the problems that we have in this world. Why do you have to work so hard? Stomach, continuation. Why do you have to party? To enjoy, to have a healthy life, to stay alive - continuation.

How actually does a problem comes into existence? Because of the circumstances? So isn't it the circumstances that creates a problem? Its more like a chicken and an egg situation. Problem takes its form when you are unprepared, or you have no idea about its solution or existence. For example, fixing a laptop can be a problem to one but a child's play to another. Won't it be fascinating to image the creation of the universe is this perspective? Why would the universe be created? Why would the problem of continuation be preceded by the root problem of "the beginning"? Ok, we create generations to solve the problem of continuation, so "the beginning" must have happened to solve an existing problem. When there was nothing in existence, why would there be a problem? Maybe, that was the problem - there was nothing there, so something needed to be done to let "the beginning" happen.

It sure solved the emptiness, but did it actually solve something more? Further, why was beginning and continuation so important?

Good man

There will never be a perfect man, never a perfect world and never a perfect solution, maybe that's why evolution takes place. But there can always be a good enough solution, so maybe the quest here can be to find a good enough man, not a good man because good can be sometimes linked to perfection, and that actually doesn't exist, so should there be a  word called perfection even in the dictionary? What is its significance if it doesn't exist? Should we make a benchmark for something that is not achievable because there is always a good enough solution, never a perfect one. So there is never a perfect man, never even a good man, just a good enough man. You should disagree? We live in concepts. We live only in concepts. We assume good or believe bad or stay neutral, that is what we do.  

We are always finding a perfect man, in reality we look for leaders, and visionaries, prophets, and Gods. In imagination, we look for batman, superman, spiderman, any superhero, any imaginable superhuman. Why? Why do we need one? Because that it is not achievable? But to have a benchmark, to have order and normality. Very strange that we need supernormal people to make things normal. It means that normal people can't make things normal? Very strange, my understanding. It might also mean that it needs abnormal people to make things below normal and supernormal people to bring things to normal and normal people just stay there to be normal.

So normality is always in between abnormality and supernormality. 

A small truth

If I have to imagine a world, and I do dare, I envision a society which knows compassion; a land with no occupancy for animosities. But when I do ponder, I am skeptic; for the hidebound edifices of haughty minds provide, but a bulwark to prosperity. It is not hard to acknowledge that utopia is a distant dream, and it's conceivable that we may never realize it. Because, despite regarded as mindful and soulful beings, we find ourselves convoluted in a maelstrom of divisions and bogus idiosyncrasies. It is ironic that we all understand the gist of beautiful living but yet we adhere to deeds which only lead to remorse; we truly comprehend the shadows of our own fallacies and yet we choose ways that inevitably results tragedy. So the question is, why do we do it; why do we indulge in tawdry things that we always wanted should never be a part of our life? Because we pretend; inside we are not genuine and when truth debunks the castle of greedy indulgences, we cower like helpless beings. Because we lack the fortitude to face our own inner foes, we cannot forgive and we are ashamed. We neither give any chance for compassion, nor do we believe we are capable of it. A wall isn't made of a single stone, each stone is a story of bravery. One small step in the right direction can enlighten your senses and you can clearly see and face your mistakes. So, why wait for someone else to instigate the change you want to see? Be the change.

Shiva

Shiva

Shiva, even when you take the name, you feel so satisfied and secured. Shiva. Shiva. I am talking about the Hindu God Shiva. Yes, there are many Gods in Hinduism but the core of it is not the physical appearance of God, the core is the concept. There is a definite difference between what pleases the eyes and what pleases your vision. So, rather than going for the appearance of God, I feel humbled to try to understand the concept behind it. Well, I have never seen Shiva, but I feel immense truth in the words of a Saint, Adi Guru Shankaracharya who wrote amazing lines about Shiva, "I am nothing at all but the eternal bliss, the eternal joy. I am Shiva." It is about total liberation, total freedom, total joy, eternal joy and bliss. We don't even have the concept of freedom and here we are trying to analyze eternal freedom and eternal bliss.

We are born to be free, free of what? You might have heard the saying, "You should teach the person to fish but not give the fish." That is freedom, and when the person enjoys the fishing, it is joyful freedom and when he understands that he is not fishing at all, then maybe, that is when we start talking about eternal freedom. When you do something and understand that it is being done and yet you are doing it.

Physics is amazing, it is just a name given to understand our nature. We can never think above physics, because we cannot think above matter and energy. That's why literature and art comes to the rescue many times and many times art at its best is physics at its best and physics at its best is art at its best. But there is even more. There is infinity, the symbol of total freedom, eternity. When you become infinite, you have eternal freedom or when you become zero.

One word that defines Shiva for me is infinity. When you are infinite, everything become so tiny, even the trillions of universes become so tiny. I can say that it is a wonderful human achievement even to coin the word Infinity, because that is Shiva for me. And it would be amazing to think that the infinity is so joyous, the joyous infinity. There is Shiva in joy, there is Shiva in infinity. So whenever you'll see pure joy, you'll see Shiva, performing his eternal dance.

The T Trinity

Time is a funny concept, why? In a way it exists and in a way it doesn't. You cannot change that happened, and you cannot rightfully change what might happen, but you can always do the best you can to see that whatever happens, the best and the most right happens. When I stand in the time scale, and visualize events of life passing by, events from the past, slowly passing through the present and becoming the future, it feels an awe and yet to stay at the present is the pleasing of all, watching eveything like a big movie, the movie of your own life, unfolding in front of you, in ways which you like or sometimes otherwise. Like you are the director, actor, musician and writer of your own movie, your own life. But there are certain patterns or templates that the universe gave to each one of us that we need to stick to, the innate nature of our being, and based on the scope of the being and the personality that develops around that nature, we create our own life, our own choices, our own desires and our own small worlds of faith. Events come and go, people come and go, worlds change, universes change, if anything that is constant, that is change. If you want a rose, you need to go to a place where you can get a rose but if you want to have a rose in your backyard, you better plant it, of course you can always imagine grasses to be lovely roses but they are not. It's a lovely planet that we live in, gives so much, so much, have been giving for a long time, never asks anything, something to learn perhaps, never late to start something that is nourishing and truthful? We are nature and we are time, we were a small single cell and now we have trillions of them arranged so perfectly that I can write these words, and worlds apart, you can read it. Earth has changed, people always change but has time changed? And should it change, should it be something like, suddenly it is the 19th century again and when you wake up the next morning it is the 25th century, can it afford to be like this? It will be a weird and unmanageable universe. Something to learn, perhaps, calmness, and constant persevearance. If time were a human being, I would salute and humbly bow to its feet, for its unimaginably clam, peaceful and stable character. We are never old. will never be, because, cells die, cells live, when we are neither, we wont. When we are events of time, we never die, we just have a start time and a finish time, but when we go back to the time we were there, we are again alive, but yes, when we are there, we are full of life energy, but then later we don't. So there ought to be a difference between events of time and the lifeful present. But wouldn't that be amazing if we could integrate them both? In the way we are always lifefully alive, like the immortal thoughts and the immortal truth. Something that is amazingly immortal, is the truth and how beautifully truth and time work together to create a wonderful universe. There is nothing that is false, if something is false, then that is just the absence of truth. So, maybe Time and Truth are the real guardians of this universe, the pillars that maintain this universe. So isnt it worthy to spend time in truth? Or spend some truth in the limited time we have, before the window closes? Truth isnt gonna change, neither can time, they both can give tricky interpretations, but you'll know it sooner or later.

When I look at a tree, I feel so humbled, so humbled, just grows and grows, and just gives and gives, even after it dies, it gives, even after it dies, gives, then burns to give, even after it had died, given, burnt, it still gives. Three Ts, Time, Truth and a Tree, such a wow Trinity they are. One guards, the other maintains, and the last one just gives. A lot lot to learn, such a wonderful world, such a priviledge to be here and then to be able to feel its greatness and its humility, even though I just take a birth, automatically I get engaged to all these wonderful concepts, and many times, almost, everytime, we take it all for granted. Spend time in falsehood, which is the absence of truth, be in a time which is either past or future, or grow downwards, do things that harm, never take you up. Nature is such a huge resource, universe is such a great teacher, time is such a great protector, if you pay attention, they'll never let you fall, will never ever let you down, so what about learning something from these great teachers? So, maybe growing limitless in truth by just giving makes you time independent, because humility never dies.  And when you are in truth, you'll never ever regret, because it is nourishing and life giving.