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.
9 comments:
Extract from the Introduction of the bookThe Oxford Book of Dreams, by Stephen Brook reads, “Because dreaming is a ubiquitous activity, dreams have always been ascribed the greatest significance. Dreams, the cryptic underside of our conscious waking existence, fleetingly revealed while our critical faculties and our grip on reality are numbed, are seen to contain messages of various kinds, whether portents or warnings or allegories. From earliest times dreams have been trnscribed and interpreted, and numerous examples can be found in such very different works as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, and the Bible. Side by side with these early accounts of dreams we find volumes of dream interpretation. Artemidorous… whose Oneirocriticon (The interpretation of Dreams)… compiled his comprehensive guide in the 2nd century AD and in the course of his book he refers to a number of earlier books of the same kind, thus making it clear that his own volume was merely the latest in a long tradition of dream interpretation…”
The ‘Truth’ reached in ‘India’ by ancient Yogis - or in other words communicated through certain technically advanced characters - however indicates the entire physical universe or ‘Brahmand’, (literally the egg of the Creator, meaning universe, in just one word, as the essence, i.e., ‘Satva’ or ‘Satya’), the apparent infinity as a dream of the formless Creator, a dot or Naadbindu, who alone exists such that time and space in reality are zero!
Thus, we come back to the eternal question: Who am I? and its answer, “I am Him!”
beautiful piece Joshi uncle
A lot of soul-stirring! Fantastic piece. keep revealing your innerself thus.
Kavi,
Was waiting for something like this from you since a long long time... enough of scholarly writing on your blog ;-)
This was really really soul-stirring as revathi said.
man, was i blown away or what... I understand every word you have written... may be because it is poetry...
maybe, you wrote about yourself in utter honesty (one reason why it is poetry...)
maybe, i could relate to it... and most importantly, you came closer to knowing yourself through this post.
Keep stirring your passion for Shiva. I am sure, one fine day, he'll dance with you!
Revati!!! been a loooong time. am happy you are still visiting my blog!
good to have you back with your comments!!
Time is funny: It appears longer when one is passing through a ‘bad phase in life’ – tending towards infinity in some cases. But, passes in no time when one is ‘enjoying life’ - perhaps indicative of believable relationship between ‘real time’, i.e., zero, and ‘eternal bliss’...
Only a child in its contended mother’s womb, relatively, is the happiest person on earth…
Also, extracted from the above referred book, I give below two sample quotations, which, perhaps, generally reflect the effects of apparent time...
“The poet and the dreamer are distinct,
Diverse, sheer opposites, antipodes,
The one pours out a balm upon the world,
The other vexes it.”
- John Keats, ‘The fall of Hyperion’, I, 1819.
“Since he weighs nothing,
Even the stoutest dreamer
Can fly without wings”
- WH Auden, ‘Thanksgiving for a habitat’, 1966.
Everyone has a poet cum dreamer, or, rather the ‘Siddha’, the multi-faceted personality, within oneself. However, the majority passes by, like drops in the rivers that drain into the ocean, or, merge with the sands like flowers that bloom in the desert and remain unseen and unheard of by the humanity at large (that is given a feeling that the creation is only for human exploitation!)
What is its real purpose then? Any guess, particularly from Abhi the poet?
Dear Joshi and all,
I am too small a person to erudite upon the purpose of dreams and poetry...
But, as far as I know, they are recollections of our immortality. Recollection of paradise where we come from and where we go. No matter what we experience here on earth.
Wordsworth has written wonderfully on it in a poem.
I feel, it is the same reason why most of our lives are spent wondering why childhoods don't last longer.
Baby language is also part of our recollections of immortality and past lives.
Hope that answers your question, Joshi uncle...
And Kavi, have you got anything to say?
Very good!
When one undertakes the study of any continued system, one considers it the first logical thing to find the background history of the subject under consideration…
Abhi’s thoughts explain the exclamation of the realized, “I am Him!” That is to say that I am the ‘unborn and the unending’. That is, in reality I am still in the ‘womb of the Creator’, or rather as one of the characters in His dream who believably has already had over 8.4 million mothers, although physically conscious of only one in this life!
The ancients talked of universal brotherhood on the basis of the ‘Hindu’ philosophy… And, Christians consider Mother Mary a Virgin, and Jesus ‘The son of God’, as perhaps everyone as per ‘Hindu’ thoughts also is...
There is also a saying, “The art of growing old is to remain a child.”
If the present is not tied to the past and the future, it has no value.
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