What is the core of happiness ,the Road to long lasting well being

 Being spiritual is really fun, best part is you can be atheist and still be  spirit of a higher order. My definition of spiritual individual is very simple, they are sorted out individuals. People like Osho, Allan Watts etc are somewhat really good at conveying there spiritual knowledge  in simple way. Watts comparison of money with latitude and longitude, time etc conveying that it is a  concept evolved out of the need to overcome difficulty of barter system. It is an offshoot of the invention of language by humans to describe the world around. He without wasting any time adds the invention of language is highly inadequate to comprehend a much more complex world. 

So is money just a measure of wealth and not wealth itself. Riches and wealth for him are completely different than money. He describes riches as refinement attained by skilling oneself, intelligence, arts etc also the land, forest, gardens . Basically any act of Creation is an act of wealth making.

 The basic acts of human life like clothing, food preparation, love making, conversations, mediation, fitness etc., are so neglected that it has been relegated to a secondary place. No training is available to anybody to refine on this aspects of living a rich life. Instead what happens is that we as a society are so mad in pursuance of money that we sacrifice the youth and health for it to enjoy the same post retirement. This whole aspect of post retirement life and working life is really denying a whole generation their very right to life. A whole generation is seen running after money, stressed out and with a deteriorated health. 

Why is it that the best moment of creation, winning at something, facing a difficult situation at work place or family and overcoming it gives the kick as in the kick derived out of smoking a cigarette. One needs his/her share of kicks to keep going in life or else I don't see any reason to be alive. Be it sports, performing arts, listening to a scholar, reading a book, watching an excellent movie etc everything will touch you in a way money just cannot. The feelings generated, the state of excitement, the state of flow can't be imitated by any amount of money.

Although the illegal drugs and alcohol are used rampantly just to escape the drudgery of life by the same people who are running after money, terming the same as enjoyment. The pressure of money pursuation blinds such individuals to see and enjoy the beauty on the journey called life. Instead such individuals are so bogged down by there goals wrapped around money making that they forget to live. Such persons are never present in the moment, always in hurry of going somewhere. This permanant state of mind causes a chasm between the mind and the body leading to tiredness and a depressed state of mind. Out of my personal experience  I have learnt, tiredness occurs first in mind and the body just reacts to your state of mind. A state of disarray then produces same effect on the body.  Long term and short term effects such as weight gain and stomach upset, headaches etc. A

 Famous quote regarding life says life  is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans. Therefore it is very necessary to be in present in the moment and understand the reality.

In conclusion I must say the simple joys of life, pursuit of excellence and skills etc., are the core elements of a life well lived.

-Akshay

The Mindless monologue

 As a school going kid I remember how six to eight kids  travelling to school in autorickshaw spoke sparingly because everyone's mind would be occupied or rather tangled by some unknown anxiety and fear regarding mundane chores in school but which felt larger than life then. If one forgets to wear a tie or belt, or doesn't do homework etc., then the whole task used to be save oneself from getting caught. Even till today mind is still caught up in Saving oneself from getting caught on wrong side of the rule. Going to office in morning, mind is still occupied by one thing or the other with very less space to think independently and creatively. Nothing has changed in a way from school to office, mind is conditioned to be prison of its own imagination. This imagination schooled by fear, anxiety and nervousness. I feel it's like that of the elephant in circus who is tied by a thin chain to a hook in ground and the elephant feel it cannot move away from the hook because elephant doesn't even realise it's strength. Is it fault of elephant to not realise it's strength or is it fault of  circumstances that the elephant never realises hook has been tied to its mind by conditioning. I can feel sorry for the Elephant but fail to see the chains my mind has been conditioned to.

 Mind cannot stand void. "I think, therefore I am",by  René Descartes doesn't seem empowering to me. Instead it becomes clearer to me that the thinking voice is not me, but it is occupying me. Infact I am not thinking, my mind cannot stop the thinking voice, I don't have any control over the voice. The thinking voice keeps chatter going on all the time, just that I am able not to show it. The day I show it outside by speaking out loudly with the voice I will be pronounced as lunatic. Although it's not me alone , we all as a society are lunatic just that it is not showing up. I realise I can't even think, I just fill the void by the voice talking in my head. 

The Caste Conundrum

 

She was raped, broken, cut, and strangled,

It meant a lesson for her and her likes,

To stay within the limits, their caste had defined.

 

Sweep the streets, Clean the drains,

Meant to be labourers, bounded by the system,

Oppressed and dehumanized in their existence.

 

To be depended, to be servile,

To please the master as he desires,

Precisely the web of caste system defined

 

Centuries passed,

Being duped, thugged, and robbed,

Brainwashed to not fight the system ordained servitude in disguise.

 

No rights, no voice, no capital, no might,

No entry in the village, no entry on roads,

Their sight a pollution, their shadow called for bathing.

 

No lands, no education,

The very body is their means of subsistence.

They toil hard to earn two square of existence

 

 

The system still defines the roles,

They toil, they migrate, they labour,

Never to realise the System ordained desperation.  

 

The privileged understands,

The disadvantaged are to be kept in disguise,

To make them in-fight, never to unite.

 

They get murdered, raped, mutilated,

Their properties burned and looted,

When tried to showcase their pride in a moustache, bullet or a horse ride.

 

The System serves well and is self-sustaining,

The underprivileged are also graded and Sanskritised,

Instilled with the caste pride, is tutored to see his own kind as a lowly tribe.

 

Blinded by religion, caste, and tribe,

The Bahujan fight among themselves,

From his living room, the privileged smiles at the buffoonery in sight.

 

 

The streets are being swept, the drains are being cleaned,

The dead  carcass is pulled, the night soil is getting disposed,

Convenience for the privileged is garbed as Virtuosity for the exploited.

 

The system  of caste runs unbound and the privileged gets rewarded     ©   

Akshay Mohan 

I can't breathe

This is unjust, you can't treat me like this,

I am not your slave and you no master anymore,

I am not a pariah, and you the pure anymore,

I am not weaker sex and you the dominant anymore.

This is the 21st century, 20 years have passed, yet you are not ready to see the fact,

Your Declaration and  your Constitution, Everything said that all are equal,

Everyone has the dignity and rights on account of being a human.

No one will be discriminated for any birth ordained condition.

Yet you do not recognize my value as an individual,

Beaten and bruised I am to be kept under the tight noose,

My life  worthless, breath not important,

My gasps in those last moments, nothing ever mattered.

Only a desire to see me down on my knees,

That I am rendered voiceless and meek,

This was never limited to the geography of a continent,

The exploitation of the weak has been the history of glorious human feats.

A lowly being is to be controlled by force,

Should behave and give in to the so-called civilized world,

No voice for the Equality no place for the Justice,

What left is just a relic for decoration of the Constitution, 
In a society where the order of the day is the exploitation of the weak!©

Lockdown Perspectives

Sourced from Twitter

Lockdown has lifted centuries of restrictions,

As the inhabitants claim their lands,

Someone had got their world to shrink,

Exploiting, causing many to extinct!

The exploiter multiplied like a virus,

Mutating at the cost of symbiotic interactions,

The Age of Man violated Mother Earth’s Right,

 He turned everything into an exploitation site.

The egoistic Man was blinded, in his desire to rule the world,

He disrespected what he worshipped once as ‘Sacred Grove’.

Deforestation, global warming, and pollution,

Man’s existence was looking like autophagy in action

Mother Earth, ‘Gaia’ faced a crisis of existence,

To see the flora and fauna it breeds gasping for even subsistence,

Gaia had to fight, to set the imbalance right.

To see it is a fair play for all her living tribes.

Now, all of a sudden, Man is in his own prison, out of fear for his existence,

Man, armed with every possible technology is perplexed in his reaction.

Gaia has given an indication of what could possibly be the repercussions,

Of mindless acts of plundering and not recognizing her existence.

A virus has set in motion, the long lost freedom of plant and animal life,

Man is witnessing a long lost site, which he himself had destroyed.

He needs to realize, as is his right, so do the other inhabitants have their right.

And that it was not the virus but humans that caused the suffering of every living kind.  ©

The Modern Contagion.

Sourced from internet

The rituals of purity and pollution,

Have always been in operation,

A shade or sight of an unclean,

Called for a ritualized bath, ensuring a virtue intact.

This pandemic seems so familiar,

Like the untouchability contagion of yesteryear,

Hardwired and inculcated too deep,

The privileged are keeping the distance with unnatural ease.

The obsession of handwashing, sanitizing,

And avoiding the strangers,

Everything so unnatural and unsocial,

Comfortably adopted by the ritual followers.

Some blinded, others not ready to recognize,

The casteist underbelly of the society,

This disease although of a Chinese origin,

It is so much Indian, with its feature of social distancing.

                    

Now the times have changed,

Digitally empowered, are working from home,

With the street vendors, farmers and the blue collared,

Left lurching in the quarantined zones.

New technologies seem hand in hand with old rituals,

Differentiating against those toiling physically on roads.

The capitalist modernity favors the privileged and empowered,  

Modern Contagion is playing along with the age-old discrimination.  ©

                                                                                                                       

The Wait

 sourced from internet

Out of the desperate looks around,

An eerie confusion grips me,

Nobody around is sure enough,

Life has become just a ritual in waiting.

The hollowness of the time,

Seems never-ending,

But still, I peep out of the window,

As if forcing the Sun into fading.

With no more sirens and breaks and a timetable shunted,

Already an informal life now seems even discounted.

In a fragile market system with a fragile body,

Life has become mired in an endless wait.   

I get to hear Markets, economy and business,

Is there no society of humans in this age?

Lockdown for some was leisure and boredom,

While I lost my purpose and means of subsistence.

But I wait, making silver of hopes,

Expecting, anticipating dawn,

But to witness its collapse every night,

I wait, just wait to return to my normal life!©