From Khalil Gibran

Here it goes......

THE OLD, OLD WINE : from THE MADMAN written by Khalil Gibran

Once there lived a rich man who was justly proud of his cellar and the wine therein. And there was one jug of ancient vintage kept for some occasion known only to himself.

The governor of the state visited him, and he bethought him and said, "That jug shall not be opened for a mere governor."

And a bishop of the diocese visited him, but he said to himself, "Nay, I will not open that jug. He would not know its value, nor would its aroma reach his nostrils."
The prince of the realm came and supped with him. But he thought, "It is too royal a wine for a mere princeling."
And even on the day when his own nephew was married, he said to himself, "No, not to these guests shall that jug be brought forth."
And the years passed by, and he died, an old man, and he was buried like unto every seed and acorn.
And upon the day that he was buried the ancient jug was brought out together with other jugs of wine, and it was shared by the peasants of the neighborhood. And none knew its great age.
To them, all that is poured into a cup is only wine.

letter from Rama

Hi all I am Rama, yap the same lord Rama as you all say, I have come for a direct one to one conversation because I could not bear my image as propagated in this country by those who call themselves as my followers. It is a pity that they are my followers because I never wanted any. I lived a fulfilling life according to my own convictions and wanted that everyone should live according to his. But alas I have got followers and they are the one who hurts most. I should admit, it is rightly said that lord returns on earth whenever there is a crisis on dharma. I have come back to save dharma from my own so called followers who have so much polluted the environ of this planet that dharma has been nearly obliterated. You will be wondering what I am saying, let me clarify.

I will put before you life of an average follower of mine. An average devotee of mine visits the temple in morning after this daily ablution. His morning offerings last an hour or so when he keeps repeating my name a thousand times. Now he goes to his work (say he works as a head clerk in the PWD department) , he puts a large framed picture of mine (with my wife, brother and of course Hanuman) on the wall behind me and after paying me homage for thousand and oneth time , he starts his daily chores. Sorry to say the daily work has not yet started because the tea has not yet come. Though the files are piling on his desk he wastes an hour or so in drinking tea and now opens the first file, hardly few mins would have passed he gets up to find how much India has scored against Pakistan in the ongoing one day series. After which his far off relative arrives from his village and he spends another hour with him. When his senior asks about the files he hurriedly completes the job (only I know how) and handles it to his boss who is also one of my devotees. If there is any public dealing of these devotees of mine they do not hesitate to take bribe. And before leaving office they don’t even forget to pay me their homage.

I never needed people to worship me. Can’t they see that repeating my name a thousand time has not made any difference in their character, they continue to remain the same rugged lazy idiots as they were. In reality they do not know anything about me. In fact they do not worship me but they worship there own fears and dogmas .They worship there own securities.

These people will never understand me and my life .How I lived with freedom and for what my life stood for. They tell their children to obey elders as lord Rama did. My obedience to my parents was spontaneous. It was out of my own convictions; my own freedom .My obedience is the epitome of my liveliness where as there obedience is the result of their blindness. My character was a result of my understanding.

My life stands for the understanding which I obtained from my own experiences. I never followed anyone because following anyone can’t lead to anywhere. By being a follower a man becomes blind, blind to his own experiences and a blind man can only live a borrowed life which does not yield anything.

I today pronounce to all of you not to follow me. Tore all my pictures and posters you have, raze all my statutes and temples from the surface of this planet, so that in future man has no guidance except his own wisdom except his own heart.

short story : Standing on ones own conviction

Keshav was wondering what he wants from life. He was nineteen when he entered the monastery .It has been seven years now. He has led the most disciplined life in the brotherhood and all his fellow monks respect him. Keshav has got control over the his breaths, he eats once in two days, once he sat for three days in meditation. It is not that this austerity has not paid him off. Nature has opened many secrets before him; he knew how air operates in a human body, how by controlling it one can remain active and healthy.

No one in the monastery has attained so much control which Keshav had, but there was something which kept him disturbed. He could not sleep whole night. Is this life he wanted for himself, though all monks revere him but he knew that the feat he has attained can be achieved by anyone through practice. It is only that other monks are slow that they take so much time. Now Keshav needed something more out of his life, but he didn’t knew what.

He went to the head monk and told” sir, I have made some progress according to the instructions given in the scriptures. I have trained myself on the lines of the sacred books of monastery but I still feel empty, I feel that all this is leading me nowhere, as if I am stuck. On the one hand there is the appreciation which I get from the follow monks and on the other hand is the emptiness and lie which I feel in my achievement. I don’t know what to do.

The head replied “Keshav, the problem with you is not of achievement but of doubt. You doubt the scriptures, you doubt the methods therein, don’t you know that our monastery is 200 years old and we have a heritage of monks which are revered by monasteries all over Asia. Don’t you know that from the same methods our monastery has produced monks which are world admires, and still you doubt the inscriptions and procedures.”

“sir, for seven years I have followed the inscriptions by word , I never had any element of doubt in me but I never felt satisfied. I thought may be I will get the result later. But things are not working for me. May be the methods of the monastery do not fit on me or they need some change. May be that they worked for the great monks you mentioned, but they are not working now. I have not met a single monk in the monastery who has benefited from the procedures. Sir I humbly ask you that have you attained in life what you wanted to. Are you satisfied with yourself?

“Shut up Keshav you are insulting the monastery. Off course I am satisfied with myself and the progress of all the monks. If you have to be here you have to follow the ancient norms and procedures. Now retire into your cell.”

Keshav went to his cell but he could not sleep. How are the head and other monks so satisfied with themselves? Do they not realize the uselessness of their entire endeavourers. How can they rely on the procedures which do not bring about any change? What could be the reason for this all? He contemplated for a long time and came to conclusion that these monks do not have enough courage to deify the old scripture even if they do not get benefitted from it. They have renounced there homes to get something worth in there lives but actually they have not renounced anything, they just changed the objects they were clinging to. Before they were clinging to there family now they are attached to the monastery and the scriptures. He decided to leave the monastery at once.

When keshav stepped out of monastery it was too dark but he felt a new moon of his life taking birth. He had mixed feelings, he has been in the monastery for seven years, all monks respect him, and what he will get on leaving this monastery he did not knew. But he can also not remain static whole his life here. He has to go. Now keshav was realizing why other monks were still attached to the monastery. To step into this world on ones own is tougher than following the scriptures. For the first time keshav was experiencing what it takes to stand on ones own convictions. Till now it was very easy for him to follow the rules of monastery but now on he is responsible for all his steps. This was the beginning of a new learning for him, which he could not have undergone hath he remained in the monastery. This experience filled his heart with a very strange sensation which keshav himself has never felt before. He felt such peace and calmness which he never had in his seven years of sojourn in the monastery.

Though he was alone but he realized that he has begun his journey in the right direction.

A real Practical Man

I feel that there are two type of people who inherit this planets the theorists and the practicalists. The theorist live in there own world, they derive there notions from the experience of others. They believe in logic and cause and effect principal. A perfect theorist is a man who is living happily in the condition life has offered to him or even if he tries to change his position ,he tries only in theory that is he logically tries to find out the cause of this present condition and then he thinks what he can do for the change. He continually thinks what he can do , but never has the grit to take that step. Some how either through logical conclusions or through the experiences of others he keep on convincing himself that what he is doing is the maximum he can do. Thus theoreticals continue there life. Many die without persevering any substantial change in themselves.

Now consider a man who is theoretical in the aforesaid manner but is a bit different, he is fully theoretical......I mean that he follows every thing which is available to him by the society in theory. If he is fully follows all the norms of the society than he will also follow truthfulness which society preaches. Now ones he starts practicing that truthfulness a great change will happen in his life .Infact I will say that a revolution will come about. He will see that entire his life he has been fooling himself . The social norms on which he pursued his life are not really worthwhile.

from hereon we will see the birth of a practical man.Man who does not take anything for granted and believes in his experiences more than anything else. For such a man experiences are the only key. He will take all the risks for the sake of continuing his experiences. Such a man I beieve is the real man , there is nothing which is artificial in him . He is the product of his own experiments.

Past present and future are-one

We know that every motion in space is accompanied by that which we call
motion in time. Moreover, we know that everything existing, even if not moving in
space, moves eternally in time.
And equally in all cases, whether speaking of motion or absence of motion, we
have in mind an idea of what was before, what now becomes, and what will
follow after. In other words, we have in mind the idea of time. The idea of motion
of any kind, also the idea of absence of motion, is indissolubly bound up with the
idea of time. Any motion or absence of motion proceeds in time and
cannot proceed out of time. Consequently, before speaking of what motion is, we
must answer the question, what is time?
Time is the most formidable and difficult problem which confronts humanity.
Kant regards time as he does space: as a subjective form of our receptivity; i.e.,
he says that we create time ourselves, as a function of our receptive apparatus,
for convenience in perceiving the outside world. Reality is continuous and
constant, but in order to make possible the perception of it, we must dissever it
into separate moments; imagine it as an infinite series of separate moments out
of which there exists for us only one. In other words, we perceive reality as if
through a narrow slit, and what we are seeing through this slit we call the
present; what we did see and now do not see--the past; and what we do not quite
see but are expecting--the future.
Regarding each phenomenon as an effect of another, or others, and this in its
turn as a cause of a third; that is, regarding all phenomena in functional
interdependence one upon another, by this very act we are contemplating them
in time, because we picture to ourselves quite clearly and precisely first a cause,
then an effect; first an action, then its function; and cannot contemplate them
otherwise. Thus we may say that the idea of time is bound up with the idea of
causation and functional interdependence. Without time, causation cannot exist,
just as without time, motion or the absence of motion cannot exist.
But our perception concerning our "being in time" is entangled and misty up to
improbability.
First of all let us analyze our relation toward the past, present and future. Usually
we think that the past already does not exist. It has passed, disappeared, altered,
transformed itself into something else. The future also does not exist--it does not
exist as yet. It has not arrived, has not formed. By the present we mean the
moment of transition of the future into the past, i.e., the moment of transition of a
phenomenon from one non-existence into another non-existence. For that
moment only does the phenomenon exist for us in reality; before, it existed in
potentiality, afterward it will exist in remembrance. But this short moment is after
all only a fiction: it has no measurement. We have a full right to say that
the present does not exist. We can never catch it. That which we did catch is
always the past!
If we are to stop at that we must admit that the world does not exist, or exists
only in some phantasmagoria of illusions, flashing and disappearing.
Usually we take no account of this, and do not reflect that our customary view of
time leads to utter absurdity.
Let us imagine a stupid traveller going from one city to another and half way
between these two cities. A stupid traveller thinks that the city from which he has
departed last week does not exist now: only the memory of it is left; the walls are
ruined, the towers fallen, the inhabitants have either died or gone away. Also,
that city at which he is destined to arrive in several days does not exist now
either, but is being hurriedly built for his arrival, and on the day of that arrival will
be ready, populated, and set in order, and on the day after his departure will be
destroyed just as was the first one.
We are thinking of things in time exactly in this way--everything passes away,
nothing returns! The spring has passed, it does not exist still . The autumn has
not come, it does not exist as yet.
But what does exist?
The present.
But the present is not a seizable moment, it is continuously transitory into the
past.
So, strictly speaking, neither the past, nor the present, nor the future exists for
us. Nothing exists! And yet we are living, feeling, thinking--and something
surrounds us. Consequently, in our usual attitude toward time there exists some
mistake. This error we shall endeavor to detect.
We accepted at the very beginning that something exists. We called that
something the world. How then can the world exist if it is not existing in the past,
in the present and in the future?
That conception of the world which we deduced from our usual view of time
makes the world appear like a continuously gushing out igneous fountain of
fireworks, each spark of which flashes for a moment and disappears, never to
appear any more. Flashes are going on continuously, following one after another,
there are an infinite number of sparks, and everything together produces the impression of a
flame, though it does not exist in reality.
The autumn has not yet come. It will be, but it does not exist now. And we give
no thought to how that can appear which is not.
We are moving upon a plane, and recognize as really existing only the small
circle lighted by our consciousness. Everything out of this circle, which we do not
see, we negate; we do not like to admit that it exists. We are moving upon the
plane in one direction. This direction we consider as eternal and infinite. But the
direction at right angles to it, those lines which we are intersecting, we do not like
to recognize as eternal and infinite. We imagine them as going into nonexistence
at once, as soon as we, have passed them, and that the lines before
us have not as yet risen out of non-existence. If, presupposing that we are
moving upon a sphere, upon its equator or one of its parallels, then it will appear
that we recognize as really existing only one meridian: those which are behind us
have disappeared and those ahead of us have not appeared as yet. .
We are going forward like a blind man, who feels paving stones and lanterns and
walls of houses with his stick and believes in the real existence of only that which
he touches now, which he feels now. That which has passed has disappeared
and will never return! That which has not as yet been does not exist. The blind
man remembers the route which he has traversed; he expects that ahead the
way will continue, but he sees neither forward nor backward because he does
not see anything; because his instrument of knowledge--the stick--has a definite,
and not very great length, and beyond the reach of his stick non-existence
begins.

Let us imagine a consciousness that is not bound by the conditions of sensuous
receptivity. Such a consciousness can rise above the plane upon which we are
moving; it can see far beyond the limits of the circle enlightened by our usual
consciousness; it can see that not only does the line upon which we are moving
exist, but also all lines perpendicular to it which we are intersecting, which we
have ever intersected, and which we shall intersect. After rising above the plane
this consciousness can see the plane, can convince itself that it is really a plane,
and not a single line. Then it can see the past and the future, lying together and
existing simultaneously.
That consciousness which is not bound by the conditions of sensuous receptivity
can outrun the stupid traveller, ascend the mountain to see in the distance the
town to which he is going, and be convinced that this town is not being built anew
for his arrival, but exists quite independently of the stupid traveller. And that
consciousness can look off and see on the horizon the towers of that city where
that traveller had been, and be convinced that those towers have not fallen, that
the city continues to stay and live just as it stayed and lived before the traveller's
advent.
It can rise above the plane of time and see the spring behind and the autumn
ahead, see simultaneously the budding flowers and ripening fruits. It can make
the blind man recover his sight and see the road along which he passed and that
which still lies before him.
The past and the future cannot not exist, because if they do not exist then neither
does the present exist. Unquestionably they exist somewhere together, but we
do not see them.
The present, compared with the past and the future, is the most unreal of all
unrealities.
We are forced to admit that the past, the present and the future do not differ in
anything, one from another; there exists just one present-- the Eternal Now of
Hindu philosophy. But we do not perceive this, because in every given moment
we experience just a little bit of that present, and this alone we count as existent,
denying a real existence to everything else.
If we admit this, then our view of everything with which we are surrounded will
change very considerably.

Stop and watch

When I tried to analyze why things are not the way we want them to be. Why we are at constant state of uneasiness? Why is it so that though we have acquired much but still we do not have something which is worthwhile? The problem I feel is the sense of acquiring something. We have to leave that sense and then work and only then we can be at ease . Today all our action are to acquire something or the other and that is the reason we acquire nothing. We have never in our life done anything intensely. I will ask you to be clear of what I am trying to say. We have never done things intensely on the other hand we have done things excitedly. Actually there is a huge difference between intensity and excitation. Excitation is a product of fear and intensity is a product of understanding, and we always take our excitation as our intensity and therefore we can’t reach anywhere worthwhile. Our excitation can make us the king of the world but it can never make us the king of ourselves. We will always remain a slave of conditions. This is what is happening with us.

Now what we have to do for this? How to get rid of this devastating situation? A situation that keeps us busy without any outcome (I mean worthwhile outcome).

Actually the key is that we have to do nothing. We have to just see the problem .We have to stop what all we have continued to do so far .We have to pause and watch and only through active watching we can get rid of our excited state. It is a bit difficult to “not do” than doing. And it is a bit more difficult to watch because we have never in our life practice watching and not doing. But to get rid of our excitation it is a must. And then there will evolve an understanding, a maturity of mind which will lead to intensity of actions. And only through his intensity we can gain anything worthwhile. This intensity is our lifelong companion as it has evolved through understanding of life and not like excitation which evolve through reaction.

The key is that we have to replace reactions from actions .Till now our all actions are not genuine actions but they are mere reactions, something that is byproduct of situation .We have to replace them through actions (genuine actions) which is the product of understanding and the most interesting thing is that for this we have to do nothing, we have to just become witness and see actively. Only this much is sufficient.

Actually we have in our life done nothing with intensity .Actually all our life we have divided our personality into many and applied our energy to opposite directions. We claim that we love but we have never been a passionate lover .We claim that we are social but in reality we have never been social in true sense of word. Our sociality as our love is mere an excitement a product of situations. It is our necessity and compulsion not a result of understanding that we put mask of being social.

This is the reason we are a failure in every walk of life, neither we are social nor we are individualistic, neither we are a lover of mankind nor we are an abhorrer (in true sense) neither we are “this” nor we are “that”.

Actually in our life we try to add qualities with different signs. And continue doing so whole our life but by bringing together positives and negatives we can only waste their respective energies.

Now it is the time either to become “this” or “that” either to become positive or negative than only we can gain anything worthwhile.

Yes a thing which seems negative to world when done with passion can work wonders. It is only intensity which counts not the nature of work. We have to only become intense this is the key, whether you become a lover of mankind or hater it does not matters but become one.

Take e.g. of Valmiki he entered into path which world will call evil but the one who can enter evil with full intensity ( understanding) can also be courageous to enter the realm of goodness with full intensity. Actually we are unable to become Devil with full intensity then how can we become God with full intensity.

So replace excitement with understanding and reactions with actions this is the only key.

Peace

It is quite illogical that people talk of the absence of peace from their life while their every action is meant to create more and more chaos. They continue to produce more variables in their life and thus creating dependence on the externalities. How a man who is under some authority can be peaceful? This is the most common paradox I observe.

To understand this let me first logically build up the definition of peace. Peace is a state of being when you are most natural .A state when you are just what you are. There is nothing imposed. To get an idea of this just remember a moment in your life when you were happy. At that moment all that what is imposed in you would have vanished and only your true being would have left. You would have forgotten that weather you are an engineer or a doctor or a scientist or a businessman or a rikshaw puller you were just happy. At that moment there would have been no past no future but only a present. Peace can not be in future or in past it is possible only in this very moment. So to state in one line peace is a state of being when one is totally natural without anything imposed remaining in him.

Now how can it help us in understanding the paradox I mentioned earlier and solving it.
Going with this definition of peace you need yourself to be unimposed and natural. Now observe the action of people around you. How busy they are in creating more and more dependence on externalities. How busy they are in fantasying the future and lamenting the past while they forget about the moment that is passing. They are simply ignorant to the fact that they can only be happy in the present.

Have you ever thought when last you live in the present moment? We never live in the present moment. It will sound hard and absurd to hear but just think and you will realize that it has been ages you lived in the present moment. You continue to vacillate between past and future. Every action of yours to amass resources for your future continues to elude peace for you. It is as if you are running after gold and forgetting that the bag on your back has enough of it. You can never earn peace if you will not stop believing that anything external can earn it for you. No position , no power , no resource on earth is capable of earning it for you because as I have discussed earlier peace is the product of your unimposed nature, while in the process of generating resources you stop being your natural self and acts artificially. You think of yourself as engineers or doctors or damm anything and in the process you loose your unimposed self and thus peace slips from your hand. You continue to impose authorities on yourself. You make yourself artificial. When you are in office you impose a mask of an obedient employee of your firm. When with an acquaintance you act as you are his/her best friend though you detest him/her in heart. When with your husband/wife you act as if you love them from base of your heart where as you love only your desires.

Just perform a simple experiment. Close your eyes and think do I exist? What I am? If you will go on thinking what am I? What am I?.. then you will realize that you simply do not exist .you are nothing but the summations of your desires . You have so much perverted yourself that you have lost yourself, and how can you think to gain peace when infect you have lost yourself.

So what we have to do to gain peace. I feel that it is the simplest and most courageous thing one can do in his/her life. Simple because peace is your basic nature and courageous because it requires grit to defile the conditioning and remove the imposed externalities which have been laid upon you for centuries. And yet more courageous because no one else but you yourself are the one who has imposed them. You have to basically fight yourself in this whole process. You have to fight conventions, you have to fight dogmas, and you have to fight every authority that is laid on you. This is what I feel is the most courageous step a human being can take because these conventions however big an impediment they are in the process of attaining peace have their own temptations. These conventions have created a comfort zone around us, security for us and as we proceed to break all these conventions the comfort zone also breaks away and we find our self in the middle without any security all alone and this is very fearful for any conditioned human being.

So we are left with two choices either to continue living in our securities as we have always been and continue craving for peace in life or just become a bit courageous and change the direction of our life by breaking all the imposed conventions and gaining our true nature and peace….Choice is yours because life is yours…….