The churning of my ocean

I live in the ocean of life,
deep refreshing blue waters of life.
On a steady hill of order,
resting on the back of society,
of culture, tradition and faith.
I stay here and try to find
My complete truth i call within myself
while my demons and my angels
fight a deadly tug of war within my very mind.

I pray to you O Lord Vishnu
give me the stability i need
within my sphere of my people,
my feelings, my role in life
He protects me like a giant tortoise
giving me nothing more to fear.
I try hard to go within myself,
while my emotions swing like a serpent
As i perform within my life
my wheel of karma.

I grow, i churn, i evolve
extracting myself from myself
as i pour forth all poison
and negate all negative thoughts
within my being.
i suffer, i writhe in pain
as my emotions and my thought torment
while the world outside complains
on me being really me.

And while i grow and churn myself
O Lord Shiva help me so
Let not my poison affect
these beautiful waters of life.
He comes and takes my poison,
swallows it within Himself to help me grow,
to help me see while he saves the world from me

I dive deep into thought
i dive deep into action
i dive deep into myself
to extract the beauty within.
I glow, i am blessed
with the grace of the Lord
as i shine forth to all around me.
giving them in sweet words
the true nectar of life.

and to that very society i return
with true faith and virtue in sweet words i recite
the beauty of the Lord within.
I might live on, i might die
it does not matter no more
for i have seen my beauty within hidden,
deep within my being.

My ocean of nectar flows to the Mother
who gave me this new birth.
I worship you O Mother
You who protect me all through
You have brought me to myself face to face,
you have shown me who i am
i no not exist i do not live
i am but a speck of dust
forever at your lotus feet.

Death - the most over whelming experience.

Death is an interesting concept, in my mind its too interesting so much so that i consider it the greatest reality, the gateway to the greatest truth which we are all looking for. Yet interestingly it brings fear with it, unfamiliarity and a forbidding void in our hearts and mind and is most often considered to be unspeakably negative.

It has been our obsession, to be remembered in history, to be revered and also maybe to leave a legacy behind - for what purpose, I wouldn't know, maybe to pamper our own ego that the world can't do without us. We want to leave impressions behind either in thought or in action. By action i mean propcreation. This brings the need more often than not,to spread our genes and in some remote sense feel good that we managed to add to the hope of our immortality.

So all in all where are we really fooling ourselves? Why do we want to be remembered? Isn't it the biggest ego hassle we really have. The want to remain in a familiar environment because you cannot digest what is ahead? I mean people dont even want to talk death, if i talk death they think i am going through problems in life. "Life is a celebration"... well so is death.

My aunt died last night. She was a very nice lady. When I heard about it, i didnt feel sad, I was watching the times, the older generation was giving way to the younger, she was the 2nd to go. We were all growing old. Somewhere in all the barrage of calls I felt she was the only one who knew the real truth while the rest of us still look for it. I envied her. She possessed a peice of knowledge i didnt have. Hmm... interesting.

The best compliment i have received is from a dying lady who told me that i had been a wonderful person during her last days on earth - our reality. That was her parting message to me . I felt she would remember me in the next world.

When we hear someone has just passed away, its a reminder that that reality will come to our doorstep some day soon. It is a reminder that it is the next truth after birth and all that is inbetween is an illusion we get sucked into and hate to get out of. I just hope when my time really comes, i am completely equipped to handle it with my mind and my heart and do not run away from it like an ignorant fool.

The moment of void - the moment of truth

Have you felt that moment of void when you suddenly feel silence around you.
That moment when you dont connect with anyone in the same room,
when you sit back and wonder what the hell you are doing there?

I felt that a lot of times,
when i simply felt i owed nothing to nobody and belonged no where.
When i felt detatched from the things i did every day.
When i asked if there was anything beyond going to school and coming home.
When i felt that i didnt fit into the world i was supposedly part of.
When i felt that my world was else where, a make belief world within my head.
When the world looked like a bunch of vague dead bodies walking around me.
when their worlds didnt seem to have anything to do with mine.
when they had their own problems and didnt want to share them with me.
when i realized all of us had the same problems and didnt handle them too well.
when i wondered what the big deal with all these problems was.
when i didnt understand why people were so overwhelmed with their emotions
when i questioned emotions that sprank up within me
when i wondered why the expression on my face didnt match the feeling within
when i contradicted my own self
when i realized the mechanics of being human
when i looked into the mirror and asked "is that really me"
when i felt i was looking at someone else altogether
when i felt my body was just a mechanical object subjected to functional problems
when i wanted to just be alone and not talk to anyone
when i felt i was just plain wierd
when i couldnt explain the intensity of my being to anybody
when i dug up the past and read all the books
when i wondered why ancients built so many temples and decorated them
when i realized the actual value of ritual that we call superstition
when i realized the trivial things that people call important
when i realized my curiosity to know death, the end
when i realized i will not exist anymore to anyone.
when i realized my mom will go one day and will she ever be my mom again
when i wondered whether the roles i play in life have a lesson to teach.
when i realized i am NOT all that important.
when i felt happy that i AM nobody, nothing.
when i felt i could do without outside attention from other people
when i felt i didnt need appreciation nor did i need approval
when i realized this is ME and you have no choice in the matter
when i wondered if this was all there was to life.
when i know i am just waiting for time to pass and drop me my pearls of wisdom.

while i wait for the final day when i die, to know what death is all about.

Durga - her attributes and iconography

Durga: Also known as Mahishasuramardhini, she is the personification of all male energy, and she sure has a lot to hold. She is most often depicted in a standing posture, with one leg over the Buffalo demon mahishasura, while her vahana - the lion- is seen devouring the demon. She is one of the forms of Kali and is worshipped widely across the country as the potent female energy. She often appears eight handed or more, each hand carrying a weapon that belongs to the Gods Here is a glimpse of what her weapons are.

Sculpted most often as a Goddess with many arms, she carries the following weapons:

cakra (disc), pa_s'a (noose), an:kus'a, bow, arrow, mu_s.ala (club), s'akti (spear), axe, khe_taka, vajra, staff or sceptre (yaks.am), bhusundi_ (missile), mudgara. Her hands may also carry a flag, a lotus, a plough, a mirror, a kaman.d.alu (water-pot), honey-cup, rosary (aks.ama_la_)

She is also sculpted with only two hands, one of the hands may hold a s'u_la or pa_s'a weapon.

Her mudras: Mudras are very interesting mediums of expression of emotion and attitude. Each finger is an energy center within itself. The energies are both positive and negative. Depiction of mudras is a sort of sign language, very evolved in nature. Mudras are most often used during ritual and dance, and popularly depicted on sculpture and painting.

Here the goddess is depicted in four mudra (hand-postures); these express attributes of protection, benediction; they also inspire terror or affection.

The time and faith relationship.

Is time the most important thing in our lives?

This is a question i asked myself this morning and i was quite startled with my thought process. I have taken to believe a few things after observing how our community reacts to various situations. This is one example. I went to the temple early monday morning to see the face of Lord Ganesha in the light of the rising sun. (been doing a few of these crazy things).

It was the day of the eclipse, and everyone was aware it was going to commence around 5.10 pm and go on till about 6pm. It was said to be the most auspitious time, as it fell on a no moon day and had a few more complicated features with respect to our age old panchangam. At the temple, there was a massive gathering, at 6.30am, and a whole lot of people had come by to perform their ritual toward ancestral worship. They also said that certain constellations would be affected because of this, mine being one of them. Hence the trip to the temple.

My mind just dwelled on this for a while. The eclipse was fixed, it was scheduled and everyone's life revolved around it. The over all population of chennai city went down on the road during the time of the eclipse. If i have to go the traditional thinking way, time appears to be the soul most important thing in our lives.

Most importantly the present. We seem to live in every other sphere of time except NOW. My thoughts are about what happened in the past and my attempts to relive them if they were good. Or my thoughts are completely about what has to be done in the future. But i miss out the vital moment of NOW.

Now let me look at it from another perspective. There are lots of things i used to consider important which are not that way anymore. There was a time when my job was the place where all my passions flowed out but now, i think otherwise. Its not mine to worry so much. Then my passions rolled out on my life and the people around me, but they scarcely even began to understand me. It didnt make that difference when i wanted to burst out to tell them the most amazing thing i had discovered and as i yelled with joy i just saw it boomerang back to me!

It took me too less time to realise i live in a lone world of my own and everything around me just exists in a lone world of its own. Leave alone that, there also seemed to be a lot of elements of shall i say "Rahu and Ketu" that seemed to add trouble to my life. The only way i chose to answer it was to see it through, disconnected instead of getting overwhelmed with my emoitonal reactions towards it.

It made me wonder, this is life, when all goes well or does not, and we have all these Godly elements adding fuel to the fire depending on our so called past karmas. But if i didnt let them have their due, and didnt let the situation affect me and let it pass like all events do, i noticed a strange peace within myself which seemed to reduce even the events of my life to almost insignificance. This left just one thing in my life to worry about, the unanswered passion within me that causes the unrest in my mind and heart.

There had to be a solution to the passions welling up inside me, someplace to let it lose. I knew it was beyond anyone to understand and it was too precious to waste on anyone beyond myself and a few people I really adoured. But largely given my nature of being by myself led me to turned to Lord Shiva, concentrating on His form every time i felt excited about something. It has since been an amazing experience.

Simple peace, where time comes to a halt, where i simply sit back in the bliss of imagining the Lord dance in a moon lit night with the Ganas by the fire as he raises his graceful body in the pose of Tandava Nataraja. I just stop to keep seeing that picture of him in my mind constantly hoping that moment will never end. I came to realize i was completely in the Present. Every moment, an experience within itself, powerful, silent and ever constant.

My mind is at rest. There is nothing called time. I am and i will always be. Ever in the present.