A Sleeping Pup & I

Sleeping pup & I

Since the past few months, I sometimes find myself waking up quite earlier than normal. One such morning was today.
When I woke up, I realized it was still quite dark and so I tried to go back to sleep but sleep, simply eluded me. About an hour or so later, I decided it would be best to drop this pursuit and sit up in dhyan, instead.
The weather was comfortable and the hour was silent and calm. Under the given conditions, it was not long before I managed to settle down into peaceful, calm and focused atman vichara.
Before I proceed any further, I must narrate an incident that happened a few days ago on a very busy city street.
As I was walking along this street, my eyes happened to fall upon a small stray dog that was blissfully fast asleep alongside the sidewalk in broad daylight, amidst the rubble, dust and chaotic noise of traffic, both human, as well as vehicular.
“Surely a remarkable sight!” I said to myself, as I walked on.
Coming back to my internally directed vichara during this morning’s dhyan, I found myself thinking about this animal, blissfully asleep amidst all the chaos and noise.
In a blink of an eye, it came to me that here was a lesson to learn from this experience. What I learnt from this was that all our thoughts, desires, emotions, difficulties etc. were nothing else but subtler forms of the gross noise, traffic, rubble, dust and chaos of the worldly streets. And the blissfully unaffected pup was the gross example of the subtle and highest One Truth that remains undisturbed, unperturbed, peaceful, eternal joy and consciousness within each one of us.
If I would only sincerely endevour to tap into and remain focused into this One Truth, I should then find it quite easy to be able to view all the dust, noise and chaos of our minds in the light of proper awareness and succeed in obtaining the state of Sat – Chit – Ananda.

Epicurean reflections

It has indeed been my good fortune to have experienced myriad epicurean delights, right from the home based to French, Greek, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Tibetan - served from the humble to the multi "starred" establishments. Needless to say the experiences have ranged from satiating to fair enough, to unsatisfactory and on the odd occasion pretty much worthless and a waste of time and money.

I have also eaten free meals at a cross section of religious places, including the simple parshad after the Ardas at the holy Sikh shrine Hemkund Sahib at an elavation of 15200 ft in the Himalayas (langar is not served here, perhaps for this reason). All the meals at these religious places have mostly been simple to lavish in case of festivities and, always free. But as far as i can possibly remember, be it a meal at the temple, dargah or gurdwara, not a single such meal has ever left me feeling unsatisfied or unfulfilled in any manner whatsoever. An act of faith?......divine grace? ... I don't know :)

Arrival of the rains

Intermittent light showers through the night and continuing are indeed a two fold blessing for me. Along with the hope that for temperatures to come down, i am also thankful for the light showers since they seem to be perfect for my newly sown backyard vegetable beds that are not even a week old now. Indeed a good omen :)

The Heart

In Sanskrit, the heart means 'hrdayam'.
It consists of two syllables, 'hrt' and 'ayam', (centre - this).
I wonder if the English term 'heart', originated in the Sanskrit 'hrt', (centre), since we do tend to say "the heart of the matter is.....", if we mean to convey the 'crux' or 'essence' of something?
Hmm.....

Back again with a new veg patch

Been a while now since my last post. I think social sites like 'Facebook' et al are virtually eating into the time people may want to spend with writing as well as reading blogs.
Maybe it's the attention span that seems to be getting shorter with everyone around the world and in turn harbouring in, a 'quick fix' syndrome.
But if that were to be the case then it would surely mean an end for writing and reading books!
Judging by the continuous plethora of books populating the shelves in bookstores, such a 'doomsday' seems to be quite unlikely.
So i guess writers across the board shall have to sharpen their skills and their contents in order to hold the interest of readers, thereby enabling the survival of the written word extending beyond the limits set by 'twitter'.
Hopefully, i will be able to hold the interest of readers of my blog.
It's been 2 years now since gardening has become the single most significant and sustained activity in my daily life.
A year ago, i ventured with a vegetable patch in a small way, which sadly, did not yield much positive results.
The crop bore flowers and blossoms but the same did not convert into fruit/vegetable. Perhaps there were cross pollination issues or perhaps i did not cut back sufficiently enough on the surrounding weed growth.
Well life is always a learning curve and one must try and learn and adapt accordingly.
I have made a note of what may have been shortcomings on my part with last year's veg patch and made suitable amendments in the recently sowed fresh patch.
I have sufficiently tilled, aerated the soil, sifted out all the rubble and stones therein and enriched the soil with a proper mix of cow dung manure and some coco peat.
Also, made sure to sow some sun flower seeds to attract and increase the butterflies and bees to help with cross pollination, along with sowing the boundary with 'Tur', Pigeon Pea, a pulse crop which will help by acting as a wind break for the vegetables as also fix nitrogen in the soil.
Last but not the least, shall keep a hawk eye on the surrounding weed and 'other' vegetative growth and do the needful cutback.
Needless to say, this new hobby apart from being an attempt towards self reliance for our kitchen needs, is also complimentary to my other hobby of photography.
Accordingly i have taken photographs in order to document the progress of the current veg patch and i shall be happy to post the same once the patch has made significant progress.
Till then.......
Some Big Time Cheers!