Incomplete Experiences, Shallow Happiness..

I thought the title was enough to describe what I want to write. However I will go on and fill in this space. I found myself chatting with my friend about my take on happiness. During the conversation I felt that the whole experience of life for me has been very superficial and shallow.

In an effort to expand on the above, I just tried writing how I have been leading my life and how I feel about it, Alas! I could not. Let me cut it short, All my life have been a series of incomplete experiences where each experience created a sky high expectation but almost each of the experience left me with a reality hardly matching half of the original expectation.

And then I watched the movie American Beauty yesterday. I watched it because of the reviews on the movie and for unconventionality of a father falling for beauty of daughter's friend. The movie was great, however what caught me napping was the ending of the movie. It was so profound that I had to play it over and over and over. It beautifully explained the way the hero eventually saw life as a series of moments, but only just before death. Finally he goes on to say ..

'You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. Don't worry ... you will someday'

(Luckily the same ending of the movie is in Youtube.. Check this and read on..)
Note: this part is should not be watched if you have not seen the movie and want to see it.


Yes, very true. I have no idea on how life can be lived in moments. Every time I played this above video, it used to question me, Question the way I lead my life, the way I experience life, The way I cling on past or future for 'being happy'. How Present just acted like a video player which either played my past events or futures aspirations to gratify the mind. I had no answers to any of the questions.

So here I am waiting for that some day in life where ..
There is completeness in each experience, each moment,
A state of continuous contentment,
A state where life is cherished as moments and not memories,
A state where life is lived with contentment and not hopes,
A state where life is in the present and not of past or future

This wait has been for some time now and now, I am just afraid that this someday will not keep me waiting for too long. But what I can only do is to wait. So I wait.
But what is that wait? .. Just a hope? :-)

Survival Vs Selfishness

I found myself commenting to one of the blogs that Survival is an act of selfishness. I felt that comment of mine lacked depth and clarity and hence this blog . Yes, I can see that its not completely black and white and one can get some interesting arguments supporting the above statement (survival = selfishness) as well. Even after that it’s not correct to say survival as selfishness because it would be contradicting the model around which sustenance of life is based.

Every organism needs to fight for survival and I wonder if we can say it is its basic right? Probably Yes. However what do you call as survival and what is not? It’s very clear-cut for animals. There survival is only physical so they either fight for food and for a mate in the breeding season. Some carnivorous animals like tiger, lion might fight for territory which is again linked to the first two. If we notice these acts of survival (first two basic ones at least), they are momentary by which I mean is the struggle is for Now and not for tomorrow or any time in the future. So it’s pretty clear.

Unfortunately it’s not the same for us humans. We have two levels of survival. One Physical and the other being Psychological. Just like animals if the survival was limited to physical it would have been far simpler but for most of us survival is psychological. Will I pass the exam? Will I be able to get a new job? Will I get my promotion? Will she accept my love? And the list is never ending..
if you see these questions all have the same characteristics - All questions are to be answered some time in future and there is nothing much you can do to answer them in black and white right now. However these questions will be there long before the d-day and raise every now and then and you can do pretty much nothing about answering it (completely).

What we end up doing? - We try to survive beyond survival.
What do I mean by that? OK, Lets take an example of one such classic question.
Will I have enough money for tomorrow?.. (ha ha..what a question?). I don’t think anyone will ever be able to answer this question but never stop an effort towards answering it. How? - Accumulate. When ever you get that question you stop, think and find a new way to accumulate.
Corruption is one such way to accumulate and there are much more. So in this quest to answer the never answerable psychological question of survival we continue to accumulate selfishly, for life. In the end it ends up being an act of survival beyond survival - call it Selfishness.

So what is the conclusion?
Conclusion is humans are miscible creatures who live surviving all life. Its a pit/mine set up by the mind and we fall for it every time. I don’t know if there is a way out of it for us. Many saints say there is but I have my doubts but there is Hope and I hope there is a way out. I hope ..

Discipline .. divergent Views!

I am a person who was never disciplined and I had my own theory to it.
Here it is..
Discipline was always seen by me as against freedom. Discipline cuts all freedom into pieces. You need to stop this and do that, stop that and do something else and so on. Discipline is something that stops you from being yourself. And it is also .. blah blah ... You can add to this better, I guess!

This conflict (if you want to call it so) was more when it is a weekend as weekdays has a structure of its own and hence an unconscious discipline. But the weekend in which I had ample amount of time to kill as there was ('is' applies well too) no plan in mind (all in the name of freedom). Any plan being made or proposed by others (forget others, even strict rules laid by me) gets squandered away by some unknown but very forceful thought with in (No, I wont call it Laziness).

During weekends I don't do much. Some part of my time will go in chatting with friends, call parents and relatives back in India, Playing cricket (not now, unfortunately). This I would call the most easily spent time of my weekend without any incompletion or resistance. but rest of the day I do not do much except aimlessly surf the net, see some crap videos and just kill the time. when doing these things they don't bring any pain but at the end of each exercise the feeling of incompleteness crops up and grows. But we all know mind gets habituated to what it does over and over. So I was (/am habituated) to this way of spending weekends, I like(d) it or not. And the meaning of the word freedom the way I used earlier was may be a trick of my mind. It never wanted/want me to do anything new which will in turn discomfort it. Like planning something new or doing more stuff.

This week was yet another such weekend. when there was a plan in place put by others I declined it. but with no plans for rest of the 2 days I was really free to do anything I wanted which I think I did so to great extent. But as in my other weekends after the end of 2 days I felt incomplete. I was clueless, wonder why? But I just thought on this incompleteness for a while. There was such a level of discomfort I cannot describe. It seems to stem from lack action according to a plan for the weekend. The river will not be in the state of rest till it reaches the sea so is my mind. And conclusion was that only way out of this incomplete rest or aimless action is to be in another type of action, a planned action, a Disciplined action. But my mind had a justification not to be Disciplined, so how can I contrdict my own theory? But there was another rational thought somewhere in the same mind which came up with a view where I saw discipline in a completely different point altogether. There was a great shift in this view to that of the previous. I was able to see discipline leading me to freedom I was/am craving for.

How? read on..
Discipline is nothing but having a plan in place and doing it religiously. So there will some task X planned for time T1 and task Y for time T2. I am expected to do these as planned. As usual there will be numerous things cropping up to obstruct this plan. It can be an inviting sleep, an interesting movie, a cricket match, an outing or something else. But all these distracting thoughts are driving me towards the same old way of living, which is doing nothing and at the end feel completely incomplete. But I think what one can get being disciplined is detachment. As in a disciplined action I cannot get stuck to a task just because I like it (and justify the same in the name of freedom). I need to move on to the next according to the plan there by detaching myself from the attached comforting action. Thus this very discipline which I was against gives me the Freedom I was after..

Does this make sense to you?
If it did not I am sorry and if it did Lucky you! :-)

Who Am I?

Who I am? Is it not 'The Question'?......

Am I my face?

or this body I am moving with?

or my body and shadow together?

Am I that past where I witnessed some actions in and around me?

Am I my experience?

Am I my likes and dislikes, beliefs and disbeliefs or should I say my views on life?

or Am I this Thought?

Or is it that I Am who I think I am...(Wait! but is what I think is not just another thought of mine)..

Millions died answering this question, and millions will..

And I might be one among those who die clueless about the answer and the question,

And as I see, this Question continues to remain unanswered..

From Eternity, may be for Eternity..