YOUR NAME

Thoughts change, circumstances change, expressions change, beliefs change, stimuli change, reactions change, capabilities change, efforts change, relations change, reasons change, days change, age changes, interpretations change, perceptions change, nature changes, people change, climate changes.

The past changes.

Man’s need to rule changes, man’s need to control changes, man’s need to delve changes, man’s need to understand changes. The arrogance of knowing changes. The hesitation in accepting ‘maybe’ changes.

The importance of oneself changes. The size of the ego changes.

The scheme of things…the world…whatever else…

It was. It is. It will be.

Don’t mind me, people, I just happened by.

Of course, it was no coincidence, this coming of mine; or yours, for that matter. But do not get carried away by it, you and I had no part in it – we started ‘living’ after it happened. We are not to be held answerable for the times we were born in, or the conditions; these are decisions of Someone or Something that we do not know as yet.

Loyalties, fights, judgements, right and wrong, good and bad, love and hate, falsehoods and truths, honesty and deceit, courage and cowardice, madness and prudence – I’m sure they all have some meaning, some purpose…

…but then again, everything changes. And every idea, every emotion, every reaction, every problem, every solution; each one comes to our lives just when the time is right.

Anyone can conjure a hundred reasons why he should have been ‘wealthier’ or better placed or more sought after than he is, but these are just imaginings; illusions; bits of straw in the wind.

One line of the Song Divine of ‘Aarti’ from Guru Granth Sahib…

ਹਰਿ ਕੇ ਨਾਮ ਬਿਨੁ ਝੂਠੇ ਸਗਲ ਪਾਸਾਰੇ ॥

Har Kay Naam Bin Jhoothay Sagal Paasaaray ||

हरि के नाम बिनु झूठे सगल पासारे ॥

Without the Name of the Lord, all arrays of enterprise are false.

Happy birthday Jashan.

RAINDROPS IN HELL

The stench is very powerful - sickening, overwhelming, all-pervading, unimaginably terrible. It is not the smell of burning flesh and bones and bodies and hair….

…it is a ghastly reek of wretched souls set ablaze for eternity.

Through eons of human existence, we had been warned of the fires; tales of horrendous heat, of boiling oil, of tortured flesh, of wailing minds…

…they were inaccurate warnings. The flesh, bodies and minds do not matter here. The hearts no longer exist. Nothing. Hell is just nothing, nothing but formless realms of Suffering; tortured souls who now Know, but cannot go back with their Knowledge to the time when it would have served better to know. It is the chosen place for those miserable ones who refused to learn through millions of lives and deaths. The lessons of each passing were not enough to teach them, till the end of the very last passage, they held on to that which would not let them rise; and finally they were drawn down into the Inferno.

It is not a place for repentance, for repentance carries hope. It is not a place for realization, for realization defines self.

It is about despair.

We hear of Truth, Beauty, Love – absolutes; definitions, aims, conclusions of Life.

Hell is ruled by Despair, the definite conclusion of absolute hopelessness. All the miseries on earth had a sweetness underlying the bitter, here it is only flame and heat, and suffocation of hope.

The Evil One holds sway over the proceedings here.

When he has subjected a wretch to eternities of despair, choked the last vestiges of hope out of any who would not understand otherwise, this same Evil One conspires with God and commandeers a drop of rain!

Together, They aim the raindrop at the one-who-burns. It travels deep into the fire whose heat is beyond understanding, it falls gently upon the innermost reaches of the tormented soul; and for a fleeting moment, almost illusory, the fire is doused and the pain forgotten!

The Evil One is, perhaps, the most misunderstood and most maligned one in the Scheme of Things. They are brothers-in-arms, these two; the ‘Evil One’ and the ‘Embodiment of All That is Good’!

Nay, they are One! They, are He. Administering together the toughest lesson of them all.

Another drop falls, and another. Are they really raindrops, or are they teardrops from the eye of a loving father who feels the suffering of his child?

And with every cooling drop from on high, the soul learns, at last, to understand blessings; to see them where they were never visible before; to feel the abundance that it chose to question or ignore on earth. As it begins to perceive, the blessings begin to pour…

…a gentle breeze blows, a thousand flowers bloom, their fragrance permeates all… The only way out of hell is a door leading to heaven, from one eternity to the other.

The raindrops are buoys that keep one afloat in the ocean of despair; His reminders of heaven in hell, His promise of the only reality…

…One. 

INNER CORE

It’s Tiffy’s (Jannat’s) birthday today.

He draws pictures, so I’ll draw one for him, some day…

INNER CORE

Someday, I’m going to draw a picture; nothing very complex – just a diagram with a few circles, probably concentric.

The innermost circle needs to be deep. I really do not know how a circle can be deep; maybe I’m mixing up my dimensions, maybe I’m imagining spheres in cross-section; maybe I mean ‘intense’.

Anyway, I think I’ll colour it blue. Blue not really as in water or ocean or rain; blue not really as in sky; blue maybe a bit like the far-off mountains, but not exactly…

…deep inner-core blue.

An inner core that is not a fiery red full of vigour and verve, and the need to go out and do or achieve! An inner core that is not an orange of ambitions yet unfulfilled, that is not a dusty brown of endless toil; nor even a light green of fresh leaves sprouting wisp-like in the spring of young hearts, only to turn darker and one day fall to a chill autumn breeze.

Maybe I’ll paint it the blue of the eyes of a baby who’s been through millions of lives and has now been born to this, the last; eyes that have seen it all, and know that there is no more to see – or to seek; eyes that look up at the mother who nurses and know the depths of her soul; eyes that this time around are going to absorb, whose images are going to blur and fade and mix and smoothen out on the canvas to, at last, See.

An inner core of deep tranquillity.

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The inner core will be surrounded by a second circle.

I cannot imagine its colour. It has to be soft. It has to be gentle. It has to pulse with life! Yet it cannot be all consuming. It must merge smoothly and effortlessly into the blue of the inner core, losing its own entity and subtly ripening into deep tranquillity.

This sphere will be of love, and whatever it touches shall be drawn into it, coloured with its own hue. Where tranquillity lies imperturbable, love shall beat in a deep rhythm of heart and encompass all it encounters. Love shall sometimes seem to lose, but in every ending, it shall emerge victorious.

In fact, it shall be the strongest armour and the deadliest weapon; and the only victories ever, will be those of love.

Like the inner sphere, this one too shall be deep; it’s depth unfathomable, unimaginable, indefinable.

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A third circle; or sphere; or cross section of life.

Its outer edges will show turbulence, controlled as it grows inwards; like stirring a thick liquid that hardens gradually into something that cannot be stirred any longer; maybe like what happens to good honey as the weather turns colder.

The outer edge of turbulence will signify resistance, non-acceptance, rebellion. Antipathy.

Progressing inwards will show the gift of willingness to understand the other point of view – not adopt, but understand; every other point of view, or even just the need for the existence of every other point of view…or the right. Empathy.

It will also be the recognition of the possibility that opinions can change, people can change; ideas, situations, circumstances, perceptions, aims – everything can change, and does - even oneself. There is nothing to get worked up about, really; one only needs to stop judging. The journey inward through this circle will see a blurring of the image of oneself, and an emergence of an image of a great design that can only be felt, only be wondered at, only be appreciated; not explained.

And everyone and everything will have a purpose, and one’s own reaction will define oneself; and compassion shall be born.

Yes, this great, magical step inward shall be compassion. The sphere of compassion needs to be vast, universal, infinite, knowing no bounds.

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Outside the sphere of compassion, on the crust will be the surface that we sometimes think denotes Life; an array of protrusions and intrusions and heights and depths and euphoria and gloom and despair and hope and explosions as we used to see in the pictures of the sun in long-ago school atlases. All these will be stimuli, conditions, circumstances, reactions, emotions.

Funnels of lust, anger, greed, cloying attachment and arrogant untamed ego, will seep through fissures and try to pierce as deep into the picture as they can. They will make inroads sometimes into the sphere of thick, viscous compassion; disturb sometime the soothing layer of love; and make the inner core of tranquillity retire deeper.

And sometimes seams of tranquillity will also flow unbidden from the inner core.

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A deep inner core of tranquillity; of oneness, of being; the abode of That Which they call God.

Someday, I’m going to draw a picture. And I’ll live it from the outside inwards, leave behind the memories of the surface turmoil as I travel deep…

…and who knows, someday the picture may only be one circle of deep inner core blue.