To Blog or Not to Blog is the Question

Referring to my earlier post, Teddy , the author JD Salinger was not only knowledgeable about Hinduism but also about Zen Buddhism, an amalgam of Indian Buddhism and the Chinese Taoism, from which he extracted a great story for his book, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. I am reproducing the story below.

The story Seymour read to Franny that night, by flashlight, was a favorite of his, a Taoist tale. To this day, Franny swears that she remembers Seymour reading it to her:

Duke Mu of Chin said to Po Lo: “You are now advanced in years. Is there any member of your family whom I could employ to look for horses in your stead?” Po Lo replied: “A good horse can be picked out by its general build and appearance. But the superlative horse — one that raises no dust and leaves no tracks — is something evanescent and fleeting, elusive as thin air. The talents of my sons lie on a lower plane altogether; they can tell a good horse when they see one, but they cannot tell a superlative horse. I have a friend, however, one Chiu-fang Kao, a hawker of fuel and vegetables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior. Pray see him.”

Duke Mu did so, and subsequently dispatched him on the quest for a steed. Three months later, he returned with the news that he had found one. “It is now in Shach’iu” he added. “What kind of a horse is it?” asked the Duke. “Oh, it is a dun-colored mare,” was the reply. However, someone being sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. “That friend of yours,” he said, “whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has made a fine mess of it. Why, he cannot even distinguish a beast’s color or sex! What on earth can he know about horses?” Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “Has he really got as far as that?” he cried. “Ah, then he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses.”

When the horse arrived, it turned out indeed to be a superlative animal.

I encountered some brickbats for my first “Atheist letters to God”, but hey I should be free to express my opinions. Anyway I was checking it this morning and I came across the line where I wrote I am not scared of death, I was reminded of Socrates and how he encountered death.

Socrates, the greatest philosopher of the Greek civilisation, is condemned to death for showing “impiety” and “neglect of Gods whom the city worships and practice of religious novelties” and “corruption of the young”. The sentence, Socrates is supposed to embrace death by drinking a cup of hemlock. The circumstances leading to the death of Socrates is very well recounted by Plato in his books.

To cut to the chase, Crito and all his disciples are concerned that Socrates is going to leave them at dusk.

Socrates, who is least concerned that he is going to die, reprimands his disciples for thinking that death is evil and gives the following reasons for not fearing death.

Death is either a state of utter unconsciousness or transfer of soul from this world to another.

Now suppose it is the first, a state of utter unconsciousness, which can be considered a sleep undisturbed by dreams, then it must be great as eternity is then only a single night.

If it is the second, a journey to another far better place, then it is wonderful, for he can converse with great people, who are already dead, and can continue our search of the true knowledge.

In similiar tradition, the great Indian Sufi saint, Kabir once said

jaa marne se jag daren mere mann aanand
kab marhu kab paau puran Paramanand.

(Kabir says, the whole world fears death but I await it as I know I will meet God when I die)

Remember these people were not pessimists nor were they afraid or tired of life but they considered Death as a new begining rather than an end.

So the chinese are already plotting to replace the Dalai Lama

The Questions are

1. What will be the world reaction ?
2. Will Dalai Lama choose his own successor ?
3. Will the post of Dalai Lama be abolished ?

Tea, one of the most loved beverages in India, first originated in China and found its way to England and came to India during its colonisation by the English. The Indians, as is their wont ,decided to add spices like cardamom , black pepper, cloves, ginger and of course some milk from the holy cow and to satiate their sweet tooth lots of sugar and finally came up with a concoction called Chai, which is now available in every coffee house in the US.

But what made it even more interesting is tea’s religious origins, yes religious. I guess this has not yet reached the religious elite else I see the holy Chai being offered to the gazallion Godheads all over the country.

So here goes the legend of the origin of Tea. After Buddha’s death somewhere around 450 B.C. and the efforts during the 2nd century BC of King Ashoka , the Constantine of Buddhism , Buddhism spread to most of Asia including China. A Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma, born around 400 AD in Southern Indian state of Kerala, the Venice of India, on the insistence of his Guru , decided to go over to China to overlook the progress of Buddhism and to correct them just in case the Chinese digressed from the core concepts. Bodhidharma was a big martial arts fighter too . Did that make his Guru send him to China is a matter of speculation

Anyway so our Bodhidharma makes his way to China and sees that the Chinese have become book-worms and are trying to achieve good karma by doing favorable actions, which should be anathema to a Buddhist. So he starts using the cane method to correct them and the Chinese surprisingly listen. So our Bodhidharma then introduces an Indian meditation technique called ‘dhyaan’ , which the Chinese could not pronounce correctly and deformed it to Chu’an ,which the Japanese pick up trying to imitate their bigger neighbors and deformed it again to Zen , which now the Americans have picked up and thank God the deformation buck stops here. Anyway our Bodhidharma also introduces martial arts he learnt in India to these monks for their self-protection and strictly forbade them from hurting anyone needlessly. Now you know why the martial arts teachers tell you that it is for self-defense and not for hurting someone else. Anyway so the Chinese call it Kung-fu , not sure if the Chinese deformed the name, but thanks to the Chinese for keeping the knowledge of martial arts alive, which has almost become defunct in India.

OK ok we are coming to the origin of tea. Hold on. So the Chinese Emperor Wu, who has done many bad(read fun) things early in his life and now reforming himself in his old age through the building of monasteries and supporting monks , invites our Bodhidharma to the palace to get his esteemed opinion on how much merit did all this endow him.

So our Bodhidharma replied ” Nothing”
Wu, stunned at this answer asked “What is the teaching of Buddhism?”
Our Bodhidharma replied “Vast emptiness”
Wu , now showing no respect to our Bodhidharma asked him “Who do you think you are? ”
Our Bodhidharma replied “I dont know”.

Obviously, our Bodhidharma was rather unceremoniously thrown out of the court . Dont know if Emperor Wu ,now returned to his old behavior, which atleast gave him pleasure or continued doing good things, which gave him nothing.

Anyway so now our frustrated Bodhidharma, having further denied entry to a shaolin temple, decided to do some deep meditation in a cave for some nine years staring at a wall ,sitting inches away from it. Well ,disgusted that he was falling asleep he cut off his eyelids (dont try this at home) and threw them away. Lo and behold from his eyelids sprung some bushes, which were nothing but our tea plants. And hence drinking tea has become a religious rite in China and Japan.

Well some more legends , his best student and successor Huiko decided to cut his arm while our Bodhidharma was doing meditation in the cave, to prove his credentials and also to show his devotion to him. OK now that is taking it too far and also my post is becoming too big . So ciao.

I called up a very cheerful, good friend of mine and suddenly I saw a very different picture of her. She recently broke-up with her boyfriend of 5 years and she now feels horrible and cheated. And it got me thinking.

I asked myself isn’t betrayal first nature to a human being? Everyone betrays and everyone gets betrayed. One who betrays never thinks that he/she is betraying someone, may be as an afterthought when he/she goes through similiar circumstances.

There is no way one can be immune to it, even if one is the most powerful person on earth or even if one is son of God. I am talking of the two biggest betrayals in the history of mankind which most of us know. One was the betrayal of Jesus Christ, the son of God and the other was that of Julius Ceasar , probably the most powerful person humanity has ever known.

Betrayal is usually done by someone whom you trust (duh ???) very well and these two cases show it in all its gory colors.

Jesus christ was betrayed by Judas, one of his twelve discipiles. Of all the people in the world He chose twelve and one of them betrays Him.
Julius Ceasar was betrayed by his Senate and his adopted son, Brutus. Ceasar chose and adopted Brutus to be his successor and the senate was composed of members whom the Ceasar almost chose himself. These people brutally stabbed Julius Ceasar to death in his very own seat of power, the senate ,where he should be safest. The whole episode is so well recounted by Shakespeare in his famous book ‘Julius Ceasar’. And who can forget one of the most tragic statements in literary history when Julius Ceasar says “What, you too, brutus” when he is stabbed by his own son,Brutus.

Had no school this weekend . Hurrah . Had the whole weekend all to myself for the first time in more than a year. Decided not to tell any of my friends that I dont have school this weekend, so escaped their calls Saturday .Moreover had no CPU at home so no internet , thanks to the robber(see earlier posts). So decided why not have a no-technology weekend no cellphone calls, no internet and no TV. Didnt pick up any calls over the weekend. All in all had the best weekend in over a couple of years. Read a book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Yogananda Paramahansa, played guitar and soccer.

‘Autobiography of Yogi’ has been long due on my list of books. I rememeber one of my old flames suggesting it to me, and I mocked her on what would an atheist like me do with a book like this? Then one of the days in a bar in my drunken state, one of the chicks asked me if I read this book. I was so piqued that I told her that the only Indian book I have ever read is the Kamasutra, and went so far as to suggest that it was one of my ancestors who wrote it . Needless to say the only position I was in was a BAD one. Then one of my good friends suggested it to me saying that there is a lot of stuff in it and some of the chicks dig it. Now it all made some sense to me .

So I finally decided that this weekend is the weekend. The story started off in a very lovey-dovey-and-ah-so-happy-family and oh-I-am-such-a-rebel and I was like please dont do the David-Copperfield type of crap(ala Salinger in Catcher in the Rye). Still decided to slug it out as it was raining outside and my skating plans were not materialising anytime soon. Amazingly, the story took off with his meeting various saints and His description of how they were able to perform all the cool stuff that they were doing and story of each saint had some kind of philosophy in it. The story then goes into His search for a guru, which takes him to various places and how He finds His guru. The story now focuses on His studies with His Guru, Sri Yukteshwar and his studies at school , the accounts of both I found to be very uninteresting.

The story goes well where He is not talking about Himself but about other saints. The stories of Babaji, the immortal Yogi-Christ of India and His teaching of the long lost Kriya Yoga to his famous disciple Lahiri Mahasya are amazing. The back-bone of the whole book seems to be the Kriya-Yoga which Yogananda Paramahansa took to the masses both in the east and west. His mastery of Bible and various religious Indian texts, his ability to draw parallels between the two religions, and scientific explanations of the various phenomenon kept me hooked onto the book. But the best part of the book is His explanation of the science of Kriya Yoga .

His fascination of the West has perplexed me throughout the book and some of His accounts didnt exactly seem credible. I skipped the last 10 chapters of the book as I figured out (all by myself) that there is nothing more He has to say which I want to listen to.

What this book did do for me was

1. Renewed interest in Hinduism and Yoga. For me Hinduism was the gazallion Gods and superstitions, the utterly materialistic priests and the fanatics .This book has completely changed my blasphemic attitude towards Hinduism.

2. Gave a scientific explanation of the lives of saints and Yogis.

3. Somehow showed me that Hinduism is more atheist and scientific than I am (sad but true)

With this renewed interest and a week before my classes begin , I plan to read ‘Idiots Guide to Hinduism’ to know more about Hinduism.

My Inner voice says ‘Shame on you Rock you were a born Hindu and have lived in that country for better part of your life and now you have to read Idiots Guide. I guess it is for people like you ’

The full book can be read on the net at
http://www.thenazareneway.com/Autobiography_of_a_Yogi/