Wednesday, July 14, 2010

‘The Money Maker and the Machine’

To merely say that ‘An organization serves multiple purposes’ is not going to impress any genuine thinker. Now, come on! This is a fact that we are familiar with. But to give an appraisal for the sake of giving an appraisal is pathetic. I know of times when an individual does his job well but the management is seldom satisfied. The concept of work not only needs redefining but the exploitation that was initially disguised now appears too blatant. Work is viewed as more difficult than studies and naturally because it is highly intrusive. There are organizations (whose names I will not mention) that expect not just professional output but also personal gimmicks. It is not their business to be taken in by style and interpersonal skills that they can use to their advantage. Now such caprice sidelines work and gives way to extraneous aspects of human life in the wake of the professional one.
Coming back to the so called ‘appraisal’ if you are creative they complain that you are not disciplined. If you are disciplined they level the charge against you that you are too rigid. Working as you can see in such stifling conditions extracts from the slave not just slavery but also ‘life’. This is clearly not a delightful experience. Working as you can see under such unreasonable demands drains you of your self-esteem. This is not what you were meant for. There are opportunities, plenty of them but how many of them are enjoyable. How many of them are worth your time? You may argue that most people work for a living and not for pleasure but that is what slavery is all about. The question then is – do you wish to be a slave or do you wish to become one with what you relish doing?
You may be wondering what the purpose of this article is. Is it to debunk work or is it a justification of personal choice? Mine is a justification of personal choice. Everything you do professionally seems to need a formal sanction and an approval. This is true even in academics. You’re ability to survive creatively lies in your ability to convince your superiors and not necessarily through a clear explanation. This is where the problem is. First, you are encouraged to have a passion. It is not enough if you say that you want to do what you choose to do because you have to do it but you need to have a passion for it which is why you choose to do it and of course. This has become a ready-made answer for many candidates. The employer or the superior is well aware of it but plays along and then it is no longer a lie because it is acceptable. When for personal reasons someone lies, the lie retains its identity.
My point is that there is an issue of expectations. On the one hand through self-righteousness they urge you not to have expectations as that has become a popular philosophy. On the other they say that they sack people who are not result-oriented. Now isn’t this self-contradictory? The philosophy has its place in the order of things purely for its glamour value. It serves the function of a two-edged sword. The user is the man in power. The one who bleeds is the overpowered. There is no legitimate translation of hard work and sincerity in a transaction that is quite self-defeating. The only motive behind such transactions is wealth but what’s the use in wealth if it is only going to kill your mental health? What’s the use in generating money when life itself is made to look funny? The original motive behind making money is obviously that without money you will be miserable. Then you may say take the middle of the road view. But the appraisal will say, you need to freak out more. You need to be more open and free.
This is the mask of the market at the moment. It is a mask that shows itself to be a mask but does not want you to identify it as a mask for then you will not be hired. What is one to do in such a situation? Probably now is the time to look at this problem and see how it can be bypassed to seek other means that will give you happiness that money and skill no longer seem to guarantee.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Concept Of Significance

Hands can touch not only what the eyes can see. Where there are bread crumbs, ants are bound to come together. Supposing you pick each crumb and keep reducing it, the ants will retreat as the crumbs gradually fade away into nothingness. A Physicist may argue that you are left with atoms, sub atomic particles ad infinitum and that you can never do away with existence. But then those ants are not after atoms. They are after a biological significance. The body like the mind signifies what it can see only and what satiates it acquires a significance of necessity. What it can't notice, its impulse denies. The ants themselves are minute yet complex. A man relative to the cosmos is minute but is also as complex to himself as the ant is to itself. When his presence is lost, other beings deny him because the ties have vanished along with their consciousness of him. What he does may never affect them and what others do may never affect him.

Going by the established fact of the physicist, there is the infinity in the finite. The ants' finite survival of their infinity depends on the crumbs that are significant to the extent of guaranteeing their survival. Man too follows suit. Suppose I see a dark cave. I notice its darkness. My consciousness depends on my sense perception for I notice nothing there. But it is possible that there may be a creature there. Significance is intangible matter. When it disintegrates you can't measure it.

Nothingness too is as immeasurable as infinity. A glass full of air is as full as a glass full of water. The one who drinks it makes it different. This is because he can only drink water. He can't drink air the same way. From the point of view of thirst air cannot quench his thirst and is for this purpose biologically insignificant. The body depends on sensation. The mind depends on measurement. There is only a gross difference between the two. Body is not conscious of an object that does not fulfil its sensation. The mind cannot assess what it cannot measure to the effect of plain judgement. Neither is self reliant.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A Frozen Clock

If to and fro motions were likely to be still,
Would time lose gravity?
Planets last only in their orbit,
So swift hours of a day live to die in one way!
But who can speak for bright stars?
In dwindling nights all we care about are tube lights
No wonder midnight hours are quiet.
If to and fro motions were likely to begin
Is there no way of stepping out?
Why go through these circular motions
When no pendulum has any momentum?
Look and observe - secrets of chaos
Caused by an oscillation of a cosmic pendulum!
Even if destroyed it vacillates
Even when glorified it oscillates
Time being adamant in its presence
Vanishes when devoid of value
So vanishes all consciousness
Where then is a still pendulum?

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Container in the Contained

Knowledge is love's own desire
You don't know what you're learning
You just feel it worth the attention
To touch your wild thoughts
As you would crazy children.

Path keeps you in a container
But you're not in a wine glass
So you will have to flow out
To ebb the curbs on your shapes.

Wisdom is like that but you lose it
Each time you try to grab it
For it is liquid in thought's shape
But you cannot freeze it.

Concrete learner must be an architect
He knows how to design his learning
Who rebuilds from the base new designs
Wisdom preserves draped constructions.

Choka

An island is lost
Don't forget a human soul;
Not the last is lost
Retrieve you can the submerged.
Gone is the spirit,
Hides behind your memory.
Soul is a statue
You live without your body
Do I know you did exist?

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Zen

Bustle in the streets
Blazing sun's heat
Find shades of silence.

Senryo

Mirage not just seen,
Boy thinks it's his love ringing;
It's the fax machine!

Haiku

Give the moon its space,
Eclipse means a holiday;
Time to bleach its face!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Haiku

Let not force define
Your life in linear time;
Eyes don't fall in line!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Nomad in the Noon

Blazing heat penetrates my skin from open windows, but the sun's heat is insignificant when compared to the mind's. The birds sleep and I notice their soporific effects on me. They seem to have the trees to protect them and I observe them all silent even in their sleep. Like an eternity, inner peace remains even if it may be for a succinct spell of time. In five minutes, man may experience peace even while awake, rarely do I find such moments; I just know they are there, fleeting but never in vain.

Rays bleach the skin and one can feel it even without being exposed. When conversations follow the atmosphere there are arguments, then there are quarrels and finally broken transactions. Surprisingly, birds remain asleep without flying away. The tiresome arguments have left the scene quaking from the conflict. Trees have no choice but to remain still. The birds are probably not aware of the impact the situation has on them. Or maybe I am wrong and it may be that I am not aware of the impact the situation has on them.

A flower falls down to the ground as though to distract me. I cannot hear a single word spoken but in that space of silence a bee hums so as to tell me that music exists when no conversations take place. If I have to find it, I cannot choose to be overly disturbed by conversations that motion cause. The motion of speech brings about subject and object. What language may I speak to avoid conflict? What language may I speak to surpass motion? While in muse, the heat enters the room but the heat in the mind has escaped and man cannot help but possess his contradictions. If he wishes to avoid speech, he can do to await quiet afternoons with a notion that speech and motion are in the end, transient.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

An Esoteric Connection (Over Tungabhadra)

The view from this bridge feeds the pupils of my eyes with thrill. This time, I see the waterways below stare back at the viewer as the bubbles float in charged currents. Winds blow with immense strength to the extent that I simply can't be sedate. The pleasant circumference breathes life into my adrenalin. At the same time, there is no unpleasant feeling. The skies shine through the water surface below and the blue above that is lost to the sun tan is preserved in diluted creams. From them I am shielded by the magnificent bridge.

The experience scintillates my veins, but to merely allow the flow of this scenic body to attack my intellect would leave my experience incomplete. A hollow breeze will not carry you with it but over the bridge its power gets in volumes overwhelming. You fear that you may be lifted of the bridge by the wind and dropped in a flash. There is a gap of infinity between the bridge and the waterways, but you know you are above a thick water bed and it doesn't seem like too much effort would be needed to push you into its arms.

To think that this is no miserable feeling of fear is the recovering feature of its thrill. A landscape is delightful when the whole open space gives room for the laws of Physics to care. The chemistry is stable yet the picture uncanny and the Zen feeling that was described verbally in books freezes at the force of the wind's tenacity. The eyes are too small to capture the whole landscape on the other side of the river but numerous steps will take you away from this feeling as the bridge leads you to a more urban landscape. Past the river; the bridge and the steep height with its charming thrills finish as photographs that are preserved only by the manipulation of light and film.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Another Leaf in a Tree

Man is cold to natural beauty as he is forced into the habit of compulsory behaviour. He is unable to appreciate a maple leaf and note its dark shades of green. If it's not about needing a microscope it is that its shades are figuratively too insignificant for him to notice. In the trapped demise of feeling rushed, he finds it difficult to enjoy the pristine calmness that would otherwise be available. In a sorry state he complains of what holds him imprisoned in the cribs. Will a maple leaf draw him out? Can the roses relieve him from the clutches of high handed expectations? Can the rain shadowed clouds teach the aggressors and cultural authorities not to propel his barges that they have identified without his consent? He is right in asking.

Man, if he is the origin of society has been made a prisoner of order. A prisoner does not notice the variety of surplus forces for he is behind bars. There is a gap between him and other living beings. In this gap he feels separate from the rivers for he does not flow like them; he feels separate from the winds for he does not feel them, he feels he is separate from freedom for he is barred from too much of it. This separateness starts with a maple leaf and builds to a confrontation with his conscience. Green is not the colour that feeds his senses for they are closed. The only senses that are open to him are the senses that aid in his survival.

If a leaf can invoke this personal confrontation then it can surely bring him closer to the creation that he is, if not open up senses needed to please over natural beings. It can invoke it, but by no means does it attempt to provoke it. The tree that feels blessed to have such leaves may or may not be conscious of the fact that it has them. Man is conscious of its leaves. He may not be sure if the tree is sentient but the thought of it being so, can make him more sentient.

In the instant notice he looks at the maple leaf once again, at the flowing rivers he feels the winds again and at his freedom he looks again; he realizes how alive and sentient he really is. The wonders that he once let pass off, he now preserves, and believes for a minute that he can never experience boredom. He then stops being a machine. He stops listening to the clamour of his elders and his peers and starts listening to the mysterious cosmic emotion that keeps him composed in his freedom. He thanks the skies and realizes that there are no limits to his euphoric experiences. He quits his earlier preoccupations and lets the leaf tickle him to new depths of heaven.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Haiku

Expect reception?
Warmth in distant honesty
Invites deception!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Toy to Play With

To you my boy
Life is a game
To be enjoyed
In ice or flame.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Awakening of New Metaphors

Actually, both sunrise and sunset are metaphors of perception. Sensory perception is only programmed perception. It is because of the determined programming, a being experiences exalted sensation on seeing and feeling everything around, usually for the first time only! The same sunrise is no wonder when observed every day. Why is that the case? It's possible that sensation once experienced is exhausted by the senses of passion. To recover the thrill would demand a novelty in perception.

Sensory perceptions are fixed. You see snow for the first time. You are enchanted. You visit scarcely populated spots in hill stations or the country side and you experience a self sufficiency that you would be ready to pay a heavy price to buy. Music gives that exalted sensation. It is possible that the same song or scenic beauty may supply you with euphoria consistently if you listen to the same song with fresh ears or look at the breathtaking sight with fresh eyes. That’s not the only point.

There is programming in perception and if this programming were to be disrupted then even your gross sensory perception will be challenged. What you see, hear and feel maybe a lot different from what is usually perceived by the determined program. You are used to seeing the sunrise. It doesn't strike you as novel and you don't enjoy it anymore. But if you see the same sunrise in a new light you may certainly marvel at it. How is that possible? It is a new sensation.

Whatever happens is a response to some stimuli. In physics as in psychology this is inevitable as reason will have you believe. If you respond to stimuli that others do not then you have experiences that are not thought to be real just because others don't see what you see.

It is one point to experience a novelty in perception which means a unique sensation but it is quite another to have a radically different sensory perception where you do not respond to stimuli that is for all living beings to see. Starting with the sunset and moving on to sunrise may not be the only new life, but the existence of new metaphors in your sensory perception may take you away from the world of the known. Finding a metaphor in perception is like waking up from sleep. Your awareness moves from one sleep to another as you no longer need light to see depending on where you sleep.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Tanka

Child keeps playing keys
To unlock free symphonies;
Obsessions to please
Liberation from disease
Forces! Join hands, dance daisies!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Haiku(on a starlit night)

Star amidst countless,
Earns a visibility;
Felicitations!

Haiku

When mind is present
There can be no nothingness;
Nothing is absent.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Took Me by Surprise

What if I threw no reflection
On the plain glass of any mirror
I'd spend my life time not knowing me
I'd stop seeing me as my body
It stuns me to say:I have a reflection
I wish I could see through it
So that I see me as I am
And not what the light makes me see.

The road bends

Many a road takes you home
But not the one in conceit
It bends as though at cross roads
With travelled ones to deceit.

Tanka

Anger puts on garbs,
The dress of tamed honesty;
Speak for themselves scars
In moments of confession,
Diaries of expression.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Utopian Personality

There is a preoccupation with developing a personality. This focus itself converts it into a problem. In my opinion, it is not a problem to be a subject of focus at all. What plays on is not personality enhancement in any case but adjustment to existing trends. Personality development is only a euphemistic phrase used to get everyone to fit into patterns that are considered to be appropriate at a given point in time. If you adjust with manageable ease and leverage your ability to throw off pretensions that appear to be absolutely natural, you are branded as a developed personality.

Any misplaced mannerism is an object of focus and gets immediately mistaken for maladjustment. If you throw off pretensions all too obviously, you will be ignored not for an artificial reaction necessarily but for imperfect acting skills. This is not always the case in real life situations when you do run into understanding company now and then.

In a development programme where the objective is to be in perfect poise all the time, every posture is analyzed threadbare. Now this gets crippling. You will not be able to rid someone of his defense mechanisms on the pretext of wanting to transform his ego. You can at the most only improve his acting skills.

There is a problem here. The role that is assumed and internalized would be the only role that the individual may play throughout his life. Transformation, if it is to be believed, cannot be determined by practice. There are changes as much as there is growth and if allowed to take its natural course, will certainly appear genuine.

The word ‘personality’ seems to be the doing of power; the power to captivate as in the power to encapsulate. This is just a subtle form of domination. But the argument poses as an idealistic one that claims to forestall anarchy. One may observe that even the trainer gives in to the inevitability of spontaneous gestures. Acceptability of these spontaneous gestures is largely in variance. Change is not at all the monopoly of trend but a phenomenon that occurs at its own pace.