"...bhumaiva sukham." Part II

Love is related to what and who one values. If one asks oneself whether knowledge or creative work or spouse or family or friend or child or others or lover or Self or God is what is most valuable – then one also knows who and/or what one loves. It normally could be and is a combination. And along with love and the being-ness that comes with every human being (the being-ness being what a human being contains and is like and as s/he appears to us: what we normally like or dislike or love or are repulsed by, and sometimes on first sight) – there is the matter of doing. This, I believe, is set early on in life. Of what and who matter and of who and what make life meaningful and what sort of work can make life a joy. Or conversely, of what does not matter and what cannot make life meaningful in and of themselves. If one also feels strongly, early on in life that life must have a meaning and a purpose for being; that one’s life must make an absolute difference somehow to the world (by leaving a creation or an invention or a discovery in the widest sense) or to someone – otherwise one wouldn’t be here – then one keeps working and searching until one finds one’s reason.

For some, it might be one or the other - here relations can come and go and even one’s husband can die – but one’s work remains: Marie Curie was of this sort. For Joan, it was her work as a warrior and her inner voice. For some it is one’s God, no holds barred – as it was for Meera. For William, it was working and living and fighting and competing and laughing and jousting and loving and being with Phillipa; when Phillipa was gone – there was no life; ‘love was done’. For some it is a combination thereof. Other examples come to mind – but these will do for now.

Maybe some people are blessed to find their reason very early on and maybe many people are not. Sometimes, one is rather old before one gets to know (and especially if one has an awkwardness and contradictoriness about one’s character) what one can do in concrete terms. But if one persists in and with love, one can act on that knowing if one hasn’t become too senile or too deranged to act or think or be a human being and one then finds and is ‘given’ different ways (through what feel like miracles - and for those who might find that peculiar - well, there is something called serendipity no matter if some numbskulls find that stuff airy-fairy) such that a few of one’s deeply felt ‘desires [can be] coordinated in the light of knowledge’ (that’s another quote that’s been wandering around with me for awhile). One can’t go back in time to fix anything and one doesn’t become utterly fault free or even all-knowing and knows not much more than what one felt in the soul at 11, but as in terms of acting upon what one knows - one can indeed try with everything one has got.

If one lives life by one principle of what one can let go of and what doesn’t matter and what is inconsequential – and if death isn’t too keen on paying one a call and through time as one sees death in different ways - one is left with who and what one values and loves. This may not entail cutting off everything and everyone else certainly – it simply makes one very clearly and consciously and rather dispassionately make certain choices - and it doesn’t force anyone to live like a hermit, but it does entail a clear hierarchy in one’s mind and within. At some point in time, one finds oneself echoing Khshana, “naalpey sukhamasti, bhumaiva sukham.” And sometimes adds, to the universe, when one is being cross-questioned by one’s deepest friend - “but, but, and but - how can it now be otherwise?!”

**About the header quote and of what it means - and for those who don't know what it is about - this is what Suvro da had told me quite some time ago: the sage Khshana had been asked by the king, who was impressed by her wisdom, of what she would like as a gift. She answered with those lines: ‘naalpey sukhamasti, bhumaiva sukham.’ ‘Trifles don’t interest me – so let me be. Nothing barring the universe in entirety will make me happy.’ I don’t know whether Khshana indeed did get what she desired but I have the feeling that she must have. And different people would have different ideas as to what comprises of one’s universe and the matter of happiness, cheer, joy and suchlike. This post is connected to Einstein's words as well as Vivekananda's and more - but so much for this very long post which I split up in two.

"**...bhumaiva sukham" Part I

Said the ancient sage. It has been a part of a sentence that has stayed around and about for quite some time. No prizes for guessing who told me about the quote. The title of this post is connected to a question, which barring a few months of my life and very early years has stayed with me – ‘why is one not dead?’. Some weeks ago when I visited a dentist to get my teeth cleaned for the first time in my life, and the dentist was telling me that if I did not take care of my teeth – they would rot and fall out, I couldn’t help but say (while having funny memories of Florentino Ariza among some other images tickling me) that I was hoping not to be around for that long, and she shushed me. Back in my college days, I used to say that I didn’t know why I didn’t kick the bucket instead of kicking the stone on the road – and nobody much cared for that line.

The question that floats around or comes barging in sometimes is, “why is [one] not dead?”. It is connected to the question - “why, on earth…is one alive?”. Sometimes while walking and feeling strangely disconsolate and discombobulated – the same thought strums in “well you’re not dead – so, there's a reason.” Through the rushing of time and the dripping of time in the hourglass and the motionless of time, if one looks at life – one can see patterns if one is old enough (and feels much through sometimes faultless intuition when one is very young). One can observe patterns – no matter how impossible – and one can take note of many mundane and not-so-mundane incidents: people encountered, people remembered, off-beat experiences, a person remembered, career choices not made, relationships which suddenly caught spring showers and came alive, relationships which died sudden and sometimes slow deaths, professional awards, places seen, career setbacks, realizations which stayed, roads taken and not taken, risks taken and avoided, knowledge growing like a dream and meeting sometimes with realizations, fate tempted, fragrances forgotten which on their return shoot out jumbled (and sometimes maybe conjured memories), songs that send a pang, writings and stories which send a jolt through one’s being, poems re-read, waking and sleep dream-images remembered, coincidences repeated, love encountered... If one threads through and very insidiously and watches the pattern as best as one can while being a part of it and sometimes from a laughing and sometimes dispassionate distance, one can find an answer to why one isn’t dead as yet. One goes through a steady process of ‘not this, not this, not this…’ as one subconsciously and consciously and sometimes even rather desperately and in despair searches for reasons that one is not dead. It is in the eye of the storm that one sees what one needs to.

How one chances upon the ‘this…?’ this…?’ ‘Is it really this?’ ‘Can this be the reason?..’ ‘this has to be it’ - is probably a unique experience for different individuals – but I am convinced that most people can find out their reason/s for living  – whether by digging into the reason that they are not in the grave or by asking themselves: ‘what makes life worth living?’ ‘What makes overarching sense in life - no matter the pain and the heartache and the greyness and the loneliness and looniness and incomprehensibility that linger like a fog as one walks…?’ – One would have to make a list then. One would have to see what makes life feel like an almost completed jigsaw puzzle or like a steadily clearer one and what are mere flirtations or in fact silly distractions or simply choices that go only thus far and no further, no matter how one tries. One would have to make a list of all that makes life meaningful for one – indeed all that comprises Life. One would have to think of the sparks of joy that one feels and when that is ignited and why...

It could be a delusion. But if it is a delusion which cannot be knocked out no matter how hard one has tried and in spite of how hard one has resisted and doubted and despite all tradition and convention and established knowledge – even unconventional but established knowledge – it is not a delusion then. If in the deepest part of one’s Self there is an incessant call which is backed every now and then by an external knowing of what/who matters (and does not matter) and of what/who is important (and unimportant) or of what makes sense only in a particular context – it can’t be a delusion. It is a personal journey and it can be a terribly lonely journey too sometimes – when everything and almost everyone in the outer world says that one is wrong and deluded - and one cannot sometimes make sense of what is real or merely imagined or is a mix of both and one makes horrible errors but one can keep walking, knowing that for whatever one is –  one does indeed walk with one’s God within and for crystal clear bits of time in this world as well, and even if one does not know or understand all as how one would like to, one senses in an unshakeable way that there is a reason that one is walking along. When one stays close to one’s deepest and highest love/s – one knows that for better or worse and no matter how strange or unusual or lonely or dark or plain puzzling the going seems sometimes, one is walking the path that one is meant to…