Letting go…

Last evening I went to a funeral of an acquaintances who happens to be an activist/militant/intellectual/environmentalist and above all a seasoned womanizer. A tamil man in his 50s who broke many young women’s heart died few days ago succumbing to cancer. Few spoke at the funeral about his political activism, militancy and his days as a young adult….

His three children all in early 20s…What struck all of us was the way the children remembered him which made even the pretensions ones weep genuinely… Both parents are/were activists… probably didn’t have a lot of time to spend with the kids but they remembered there appa as being there when they really needed him especially the 2nd daughter…when she was in Bangalore two months ago, she called her dad saying she was very depressed. He got into the next flight to see her even though he was very sick. Walked with her all over the town to cheer her up…and the other daughter spoke about the school bag when she was only six… There was a flash of silence not loneliness… it was only for a moment. Then into the trap of attachment. Sorrow…….beginning of it..

Coming back from the funeral in the late evening my head is/was spinning around not knowing “what is worse… the fear of death or the death itself”. Love and sorrow seem to go hand in hand. Each taking turn to dominate our lives at a given time. Always in a battle. In between, something called passion.. that ruthless intensity for things, for idea or for a person.. Is this a triangle? - this love, sorrow and passion… I don’t know but there seems to be a connection. I haven’t gone that far to make sense of this then again, should I even want to go there… I guess when passion has a cause it becomes lust.. a fulfillment.. and comes this contradiction. You strive to achieve or maintain a status quo or recapture something that is gone. Can there be a simple urge to understand and can we call that urge passion. The true essence of passion.. will this have a cause… I don’t know..

It seems like we are longing for something, lustful and wanting to escape from something/someone/some idea. In my case, even though at some level I could relate to the urge to understand-most of the time I want to escape.. At the moment, I want to escape from the memories of a relationship. Soon after ending- a physical ending of this relationship- it was easy, since I concentrated only on the negatives of the union but when time passes the pendulum is going towards the good times. I thought it was a phase as well, but the pendulum doesn’t seem to come to a stand still… This takes me to a state of sorrow.. but this sorrow seems to stem from a cause… I want to lessen this intensity.. I am trying to rationalize the fact that we escape the fact that we suffer, like I go to church to worship the symbol of sorrow in trying to rationalize the sorrow away… The psychological pain that prevents me from enjoying everything around me…I could do this only when there is an absolute absence of thought- the thought of the past, memory- and move into self-abandonment…. Not being in a cause state of mind… I must be going mad and that is what who ever reads will think…. Could I ever transcend all of this..

I think for one to understand love one must feel the enormity of sorrow and this means we ought to face the loneliness.. one’s attachment.. ones demand for fame.. the hunger to be loved.. Can I ever reject all explanations and understand the total abandonment of oneself….

Letting go….

I never thought letting go was going to be this excruciating….The implications of attachment.. A tragedy…Abandonment.. None understood my innate fear of abandonment. How can one completely negate jealousy, attachment and every form of possessiveness? Can one be free of all and can I be free of all? Can compassion exist if you belong to something or someone…

I am watching this beautiful tree and the valley through my door.. An absolute joy but at the same time it also transport to times of the past which unleashes many emotions. This in turn impedes from enjoying this beautiful tree and the valley fully. Thought sustain the pleasure of yesterday and continuity today and tomorrow.. This same thought in revolt…. results in aggression, hate and many other forms of emotions and the unleashed energy of hate which is again another form of pleasure. The pursuit to pleasure and the aggression when it is thwarted. We build on it and our values, judgments, relationships are based on this essential principle pleasure and self expression.

Mmhh I shall continue my state of confusion…

Still I dust I raise

Sitting on my verandah- amazed at every drop of rain, my favorite thing to do, unpacking my thoughts or should I say letting it flow the way it wants to. The way every plant receives the drop is a pleasure to watch. My boundary wall wrapped with ivies across a house that is waiting to be completed and to become a home…. I don’t think it will see completion until I depart which reflects my state of mind or the war that seems to be claiming an end but will never see the day- A constant state of illusion which I seem to be oscillating in.

Then my thoughts ( very problematic phenomenon) are circulating around relationships this morning and for obvious reasons I presume. Can the mind ever cease to record an insult or flattery. I look back of to my 20 years of adult life… I question as usual, will I ever be able to step out of this stream of disorder resulting from conformity and find love/compassion/empathy in its true essence.

Should one know the ways of mind- to understand love. Mind/thought seems to destroy love. I am surrounded by clever people and I myself once boasted for being clever and what do you mean by clever. Is that being cunning- the ones with sharp minds- I can speak for myself and when I am/was in a clever state of mind where I became so superficial- doing everything on the surface.. will say I care and I love to those around me but I clearly knew it didn’t come from where it should have come naturally.. when I said those words I was the right thing to say.. It is so clear that there was no love/compassion/empathy there. Love does not exist on a surface.

Today I am revisiting a particular relationship in my life. It stated off with speaking about non-conformity in the wee hours of the morning not knowing and realizing that one needs to go to bed and wake up to face the chaotic world in the morning however, it didn’t matter since those discussions were energizing and genuine… It was beautiful but one fine day- on this day some years back- decided to fall into the trap of conformity.. A relationship was formulated and got trapped in expectations and needs and forgot why we enjoyed each other’s company in the beginning… Didn’t realize what it is not .. what love is not.. Not theoretically and not verbally.. Not to have a mind that is ambitious, thriving, a mind that is comparing, imitating but unfortunately that is the stream of conflict that I am floating and hope I will be able to get out of there soon to understand the essence of passion and feel it.. passion for everyone-compassion…

Passion is sorrow. We know what is sorrow. Death of someone you love or losing someone you consider you have loved. When we remain with that sorrow totally without trying to rationalize or to escape in any other form and remain with it completely, sans movement of thought, then there is a possibility to find out that sorrow comes from passion. That passion is love for me and that love has no sorrow.

Where ever you are I wish you love in it’s true essence…

The outsourced war...

Few minutes ago I met with this sweet young girl, barely 16 who witnessed her father being shot in front of her on the 20th of May 2008 and her mother being killed(same fate) on the 28th of May. She buried her mom and got in the bus and came to Colombo with nothing other than what she was wearing and her school ID.

Her piercing eyes tells you the agony and I could not help but to look into those sad eyes, and she is as old as my daughter and the same innocence. Their realities are so different. Then- a crude- thought in my head … A suicide bomber in the making or if she leaves the country we have an ardent fund raiser. The war is outsourced and extra-judicial killing is an every day reality in this part of the world…

This girl can’t be in the country and she will be killed since she can identify the killers of her parents. When the motorbike passed their house she knew her mother was going to be killed and she asked her mom to go inside but the mother said to her “ they killed your father to teach us a lesson and they are not going to do anything to me”… The girl will live with her mother’s last words and her desperate plea with the killers “please don’t kill my mom and don’t make me an orphan”.

Gone to the unseen...

April 30th, a day I will remember for a long time. A day I felt yet another loss that will haunt me for a long time. An incredible sadness will continue to shadow...

What marvelous route did you take from this world?
Beating your wings and feathers, you broke free from this cage.
Rising up to the sky you attained the world of the soul.

You were a prized falcon trapped by an Old Womyn.
Then you heard the call and flew beyond space and time.
The wine of this fleeting world caused your head to ache.
Finally you joined the tavern of Eternity.

Like an arrow, you sped from the bow and went straight for the bull's eye of bliss.
This phantom world gave you false signs
But you turned from the illusion and journeyed to the land of truth.

I've heard that you can barely see your soul.
But why look at all? -
yours is now the Soul of Souls!

Pouring down like the rain of heaven you fell upon the rooftop of this world.
Then you ran in every direction and escaped through the drain spout . . .
Now the words are over and the pain they bring is gone.
Now you have gone to rest in the arms of your sibling….

My journey continues………..

What are we running after since we knew how to put two sentences together… I could speak for me and myself only … Was brought up in a culture glorifies ambition and achievement, and consequently feel the need to strive for some thing better than what I have at present. But this constant want and desire to become something else always ends in disappointment or emptiness. This means one will be always unhappy with the present, captured by envy and endless unsatisfied desires. I feel the need to safe the world since I can’t save me from myself… and marred in the desire to be something where I am no longer free.

This ambition of mine puts me in a constant state living in the future, a future that, if it does arrive, may still leave me empty. Have experienced so many times…But can I do something that I enjoy which is detached from the anxiety of achieving certain results. Nothing lasts forever, anyway, and I am entangled in a culture built on competition, and even fighting for our rights have become competitive where you feel utter meaningless in everything and everyone around you. I have forgotten that the treasure that I am fighting for is not 'out there' but to be found within my own abilities and interests. Is this what we call intelligence?

Immortality seems to be something we are striving for, but in doing so we go against nature, and there lies our pain. Only the mind which is always moving, without resting places and fixed ideas, can be in tune with life and therefore joyful. In most cases, all of us dig a little pool for ourselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool we stagnate, die; and this stagnation, this decay we call existence.

Harsh words, but could it be true that the life we make for ourselves, a little pool of family, work, fears, ambition, religion and so on, is an attempt to avoid experiencing larger reality? The more I believe that this place beside the river of life is secure, the less I become aware of the real nature of life - constant change. We cling to the known, but in this clinging we become a person of fear. If the object of living is to find truth, and if we are not actively engaged in trying to get closer to the heart of things, then what are we doing? Dying quickly than we should be…

Can a mind solve problems when it is occupied with them? It is only the unoccupied mind that can be fresh to understand a problem. I guess if one can create a space between thoughts, then the mind will regain a freshness and creativity that the normal mind, weighed down with one thought and worry after another, can ever experience.

Guilt

I haven’t done justice to myself means, I haven’t penned down my thoughts- in the present day language- haven’t blogged. The reason, been supper busy getting entangled in more trouble and creating more problems.

Why are we so used to calling everything under the planet- a(the) problem? Categorizing anything that requires a bit more energy to deal with is understood as a problem by many of us and especially I can speak for myself with authority. Then I ask myself how is this related to GUILT? The first memory of guilt comes with my grandma saying “ she is going to love me less if I didn’t eat all what was served on my plate”. It starts with making you eat the vegetables and moves on to Sunday schools where they confuse us with the mere concept of me- the conception of me- the original sin. Then it goes on to take all kinds of forms. The whole life and its teachings revolve around this feeling of guilt.

Then comes this mad rush to start schooling where we are then conditioned and trained to have problems. The brain is schooled to continue to have problems through comparisons, rewards, examinations and especially punishments. Then the brain starts to own these problems which will never be solved because the brain/mind is conditioned not to solve but to own it. When you don’t solve the problem you are consumed with this feeling of guilt. Then the others come to assist us and they start owning our problems too, which becomes a cycle.

So what is this horrible feeling called guilt? How is it related to ego which is part of me! If it is part of me then it is not separate. It is like you have a problem and you go to the other to solve it but the other has it’s own problem and gets upset, depressed and feels helpless that s/he can’t help and creates another problem. Here if you take the You(I) and the Other(me) to be the same- in many cases it is the truth, you will never solve any problem and it accumulates. Feel guilty along the stream of self-centered activities. If you are not so fragmented can you feel guilty? One part is trying to be noble and other part is corrupt and one part is ambitious and ruthless and the other part wants peace! And then we feel guilty.. don’t you think this feeling of guilt is our own making? The mind that is caught in contradiction can never find what is real!

Can I observe this feeling without naming it??? When you don’t name something it no longer exits. I do understand the mind is so afraid to live in the state of nothingness. Don’t you think so? Who am I? Am not something made up of images and words? My mind is so afraid of being empty, therefore it latches onto “ I must be” constantly want to be occupied..

Can we observe the present without the knowledge (memory) of the past.. May be, that is when we will be rid of “guilt”

Faith breeds violence

Mmh I haven’t posted anything in the last couple of days. This means I am supper busy or I am happy. Last week had been a real rollercoaster ride both at personal and professional ( mmhh my choice of word!!) level. The issue I highlighted is gotten such a momentum which is definitely been hijacked from me. I am unlearning to be content with it and accept my role in this circus of demand for greater fuller sensation-politically, economically and socially- which destroys the self.

I was told couple of days ago that 54 women had been sexually violated by the military in one of the occupied territories in my homeland. My comrades from that area were petrified and shared this information with me. I shared this with my new found rent seeking acquaintances (I am one of them too) and the word got out. The military had gone into the villages and terrorized people for outing them. My dilemma now is how to deal with this. Should I take responsibility for making the villagers life worse? I am responsible for this chaos.

Some say faith breeds violence. The faith that my acquaintances and I share “to protect and promote human rights”. We want to protect this idea and protect the concept and ideology with a projection of us. We have identified with it and want to protect it at any cost. At the cost of the very women’s lives we are trying to protect. I have become so violently committed to the concept where I had failed to see the truth around who is the agent. My deterioration of mind has contributed to this.

Ending and beginnings…….Point of no return

I was told yesterday “understanding that neither love nor luv nor any other icing to top the mess of the cake beneath it does no good at this point”. I don’t want to analyze it as I who knows what it means. then comes the triad of truth, simplicity and love… All centers on relationships…

Truth! How would one define this? A self’s reflections.. One’s experience limits the functioning of mind. The centre which is our essence, walled by our experiences…And this wall limits the mind to function to the fullest.. When layers of experiences that we seek through our ambitions and egos barrage the centre which is our mind, how can we talk about truth or even comprehend. The essence of the mind.

In this context lets take our so called brain and one knows very well from the day we learn to respond we are being asked to learn. Nothing but, to learn about patterns- a process of acquiring knowledge- which conditions the brain to a pattern. Acquiring knowledge which becomes memory…. Can there be learning not in the context of knowledge sans perception-action? Can we observe sans a drop of prejudice? Any form of prejudice will prevent perception what we need is demand to see clearly. What we are encountered in our present life is repetition of the same process of accruing knowledge and acting from it which is limited. Therefore the brain has become so used to solving problems which knowledge has repeatedly created. Pattern…. Which will never in any circumstance solve our human problem… To have non- accumulative perception is not have prejudice. Move away from the old pattern of obedience and acceptance.

Space is essential to have silence, for a mind that is struggling to be silent is never silent. However, silence is necessary, not the silence forced by thought, not the silence between chaos, between noises, between wars but the feeling of nothingness/ silence- the truth- which has no path to it, exists!

Chill of tomorrow's fears

I knew exactly what was going to happen… It happened…Clash of egos and clash of values or am I feeling that everyone is out to get each other……. I am suppose to write about integrity of the person when the integrity of my race is in disarray…..

Had a great evening yesterday… caught up with someone who shares my ideology, understands and relates to my essence of militancy.. The forbidden word in my area of work and I might be forced into solitary confinement by the others who speaks for me…and the others who have authority over me and my race.

Exhausted by the colorlessness’ of today’s moment, saddened by remembrance of the past, paralyzed by fear of tomorrow and my thirsty thoughts that find no relief- burning tears do not come into the eyes anymore….Will one hard pain take the mould of song? Escaping from the dark crannies of the heart.... And a tangled, confused search for a remedy … What can I say other than----- Longing for desert and dungeon, a search for the rented garment………

Hope you understand and the days are such mixing in the bitterness of yesterday the prison of today…

Wondering through a pathless land…

Worked very hard for today! A report that calls a spade a spade, the theme and the analysis- my sarcasm written all over it- but couldn't say it.. watched others present it and why… I am a minority .. always had been and always be… Others spoke about me and my experience and about my work….. Am I happy that someone spoke about me or am I angry that I can’t speak about me…

What is the legitimate authority to speak for/about “The Other”? What I would like to stress upon is not the intention of Self who is speaking for “The Other” but rather Self taking away the agency of “The Other” speaking for where Self, as a result of the privilege of dominance tend to be often treated as authenticating presences that confer legitimacy and credibility on the demands of subjugated speakers. Then again if Self, the dominant and privileged don’t speak for “The other”, is Self abandoning his/her responsibility of speaking against discrimination which is the result of Self’s own privilege? The reality is when Self is engaged in this s/he is representing “The other's” needs, goals, situation, and in fact, who they are, based on Self’s own situated interpretation. The Self speaking for “The Other” makes “The Other” a victim rather than an agent to speak for there own.

Hence I ask, when” The Other” is navigating through the complex set of identities within the ideological constrains, it- “the Other” , is persuaded to the formation of an ethnical persona based on a set of actions mobilized by the law and/or contaminated historiography to produce a new norm of the to the understanding of Self. This form of mobilization forces “The Other” to consent to the Self’s hegemony. Therefore the interpellation of “subalterness” is reinforced where agency is denied. This leads to “The Other’s” constant encoding and decoding of ethnical- persona. . Here “The Other” goes though the process of de-ethnization in dress, appearance, behavior etc. This disguise is apparent both in the “The’other's” conformity and resistance...

More questioning and another day on my Yathiri..... I rather break than bend...

Shattered

Last evening, what can i say- walked into something i should not have... so many memories revisited! My disappointment, anger and a state of helplessness... All the hard work shattered right before me in a second... Another turning point in my relationship with others... I can't say too much... The question is can there be an ending of this sorrow. There is a limit to what one can endure..

I can very well comprehend, without the understanding of sorrow there can't be wisdom. I was told ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Mmh, i know, i am a total failure as a parent... I don't know how to meet this sorrow. What is love? All the conditions around how i love my children and my expectations mounds to this sorrow.. Can i be free of this? The wisdom i seek- no fear, no illusions, no self-deceptions and no anxieties. The inevitable shadow of frustration…. I am caught up in this self contradiction like a .......Can I feel the love and not this pain. I want to be aware of my reaction(s). Can i do this with my superficial mind? I am desperately looking for a refuge. Then again am i trying to avoid and dreadfully looking for explanations to lock my mind? But my wound of sorrow is quite deep. I am finding it hard to take that bandage which is my inheritance. What is the motive of/for my sorrow...

Yet another day on my Yathiri... I love you baba and i have failed you...

Fragmentation of Thoughts

Is the experiencer different from the experience.. is a thinker different from thought(s)… I am an embodiment of being conflicted by the fragmentation of thoughts..

If I go on the premises of thought and the thinker to be the same and the experiencer and the experience to be the same, the question comes to mind is what separates the two. Is it the illusion of time? Take me for example, last nite, I was happily making dinner for the one I love the most, and the one who keeps me grounded, she is tired of others cooking.. The phone rang, a friend- who I haven’t seen for a long time… almost begged to see me… I know the reason… Of course I agreed and hurried through my dinner…

He came and I fixed us drinks- local alcohol( I am terribly broke and saving the wine for once a week)- and I must say I am beginning to like this Arrack, it is obviously growing on me.. We were sitting there sipping arrack and rolling something to smoke… I had timed this evening and I had only given an hour to this friend of mine since I had many other things to do and one among those- feeling sorry for myself…

I sat there and watched him roll and moved to the rooftop to smoke… The sky was clear and the starts were bright… The smoke was quite strong and no inhibitions and no fear.. I asked my fried to leave and reluctantly he left.. I hope he will never read this… He did roll another one for me so that I wouldn’t need him this evening.. I was glad to see him go as we had nothing in common… I went to my room… felt great… state of togetherness-mind body soul- wouldn’t have known what is right and what is wrong or pain from pleasure… a state of unconsciousness… a great feeling… lasted only for a little while..

However, then came the feeling of pain and pleasure, the dichotomy … to my dismay I typed a message to the one I am breaking up with… for the life of me I can’t remember what I wrote… probably a sappy one… I guess the time is the divide to pain and pleasure…

Woke up in the morning and felt good… May be it was good that I sent a sappy message… Felt relieved.. I don’t feel guilty anymore… Don’t want to get lost in the drama and I want to be the observer and not the thinker.. Yet another day on my yathiri…

Day 1 of this Journey

My dilemma in life is, putting the cart before the horse.... I woke up this morning, decided to go against my own thinking, my constant struggle against blogging and i decided to leap... a first step on this new road i have taken to travel... I ask myself why now........

Mmh why now, i recently ended or in the process of ending a relationship that was a bit bizarre at the same time was full of life.. a living.. full of conflicting emotions... a true sense of relationship. One more to qualify my patterns and one more to wound my heart... I wanted to reflect on this one, with out any inhibitions sans fear or fad..

What is most important in our lives? I , without blink of a lash, could say relationship/s. I am engaged in so many forms of relationships... nuclear family, extended family, my team that i spend almost every meaning full day of my existence and with rest of the humanity..

I try very had to be a bystander to observe my role in all these relationships but i fail.. over and over again.. My inability to become both the observed and the observer and dichotomy i have engraved and my inability to quash..

All my life, at least in my adulthood, i have tried to give meaning to my life intellectually, an artificial creation.. every day I diverge from using the natural intelligence... so many years of conditioning to wander from natural intelligence... One has no time to reflect on the knowledge that comes with experience/s... that is my journey... my reflection of a journey that i embarked five years ago, March of 2003……… and wanting to reflect on that journey through embarking on another journey taking a new ROAD..........