Training the mind - 15

There’s happiness in emptiness

When vision isn’t obstructed by fear

Parachuting in through thought

Invasion of loneliness multiplies wants

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” Lao Tzu

Everyone is looking for a certain depth of experience in life. Without that depth, be it through emotions, intellect or enjoyment, we may as well be robots and not humans. Our nature is to seek happiness and that is the deepest of all experiences, as it is the basis for anything we do. Any thought that makes an impression on one's mind creates that depth. But a thought, no matter how deep cannot penetrate the bottom of the mind and see beyond the mind. That is, thought which is the product of the mind cannot be bigger than the mind. Each thought represents a portion of the mind. It is a mere reflection. Just as one cannot feel the heat of the sun by dipping a hand in its reflection on a lake, one cannot experience the whole of the mind through thought. Going from the reflection that thought is, one needs to have a direct perception of the source, if the mind is to be truly understood.

The blueprint

Coming alive in a holographic reality

Few things are a certainty

Trying to appease the seen and the unseen

The mind fails to come clean

When groomed as a divisive ruler

It can become a conceited double dealer

Creating a ruinous projection of the macrocosm

While enriching its own make believe microcosm

Separated from the great silence

By an invisible wall of Hadrian, that keeps out violence

Emanating from a thought ridden enclave

That can easily enslave

Sight is limited to the low

Which the mind is eager to know

Becoming a distracted power

Shunning its true home high in the tower

Free thinkers

Fear may be undone

When the tussle with ignorance is won

Not through battle hardened grit

But by a free thinker’s spirit

Now there’s little threat of heresy

As more are indifferent to prophesy

Enmeshed in the mundane

Making this adventure very plain

Dousing any excitement that could be had

Thoughts are difficult to change when they’re ironclad

In their pursuit of virtue and fear of sin

For mankind, both have always been

Going back to any ancient riverine tribe

Historians may thus describe

As bereft of advances in science

Sticking to superstitions in defiance

Timeless

Walking on this rock

That’s bound time in a lock

New shoes carelessly stomp on the archaic

Forgetting life thus far has been far from prosaic

Living in time’s good books for a generation

Is not a permanent foundation

The old and new meet everyday

A reminder, one’s time will decay

Time does not delay

It has no fears to allay

Part of the life’s bedrock

It cannot be stopped with sweet talk

The clock may run slow

If the mind does not stow

Thoughts of a kind

That surreptitiously bind

Wings to freedom

A trusting Icarus’s sorry plight

His wings of freedom could not right

The lesson for feathers of pride

A lonely fall cannot be denied

It was not the treachery of the wind

But it was the sun that skinned

Wings off his back

As he plunged like a lead sack

The enormity of his feat

Would not find takers for a repeat

His name endures

Immortalized, unlike mine or yours

Mind yearns to be timeless

Even as the body loses attractiveness

When the bait of life is taken

That struggle cannot be shaken

Holding true

The hard slog is done

Somewhere within there’s a memory of that run

The many twists and turns our forefathers have borne

Have bettered current lives, but we continue to mourn

Happiness isn’t a gift of the stars

Or like gold bought in bazaars

Synonymous with truth

Unmoved whether life is rough or smooth

Truth isn’t waiting to be excavated

It’s everywhere once thoughts are sated

It is a pathless land

That was a philosopher’s final stand*

The moon stands witness to every age with a name

In ours, truth is relinquished for fame

Bought and sold like grapes off a vine

Forgetting the body is a shrine of the divine

Training the mind - 14

Cloudless sky, a spectacle the almanac fears

Vision of the heaven to some, but farmers wish otherwise

Vagrant clouds spilling their guts may bring welcome relief

But roots look elsewhere, their success is in the depths

“Modern science is based on the principle, ‘Give us one free miracle and we will explain the rest.’ And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy of the universe, and all the laws that govern it, from nothing in a single instant.” (Terence McKenna)

Time is a concept that is hardwired into our mind. The question of what time is has never been satisfactorily answered. We use time as a measure and using that ‘miracle’ of time we have come to define the past, present and future. And by an extension of that, nothing in life as we know it may exist without time. From the perspective of the mind, the past is what that senses have already perceived, the present is what the senses are currently perceiving and the future is what the senses will in all probability perceive. Ordinarily mind looks at time in this way. What the senses perceive in real time is what we refer to as the present. It is constantly changing and is an insignificant fraction of time. The mind conditioned by prior experiences and memories cannot relate to the world without the aid of the senses. While one is asleep or under the influence of deep anesthesia, the senses don’t operate and hence the awareness of the mind, conditioned or otherwise is absent. Even though ordinary waking consciousness may be absent, the living consciousness or the life principle is still very much present. In that state, the present reality may be negated from an individual’s perspective. Furthermore it cannot be said that reality does not continue to exist just because it is absent from one individual’s conscious perception. When the mind is on a break, time ceases to exist. Time brings depth and perspective to the mind. It is also the culprit that divides the ever present reality and starts the process of conflict within and amongst thoughts.  

From seed to seed

A tunnel with a roof of green

Through which light longs to gleam

Promises at the end are rich

If only one can stop the mental twitch

Leaves stand in attention

Like uniformed guards who don’t question

When the stride is right

The commander will surely come into sight

The tiny seed works in the silence of the night

Knowingly fully well a sturdy wood’s might

Great seafarers of yore

Would not be written in the mariner’s lore

But for those seeds

Which never surface to witness its deeds

Why would it see the need?

When planted in the right soil success is guaranteed

All that one is

Hanging on by a thread

Of thoughts that will not shed

Burrowing in the depth

Of a mind of infinite breadth

The make believe is all too real

How else would one sustain that zeal?

To bring home the bread

Hunger for more is what one must dread

A storm rages

Unchecked for ages

But the sun shines anyway

Waiting for change get underway

Layers of knowledge melded together

Held together by an invisible tether

That bond is hard to break

When it has taken lifetimes to make