hermit's chronicles

When what-you-desire coincides with what-Existence-desires, you call it Happiness. When the two are at variance you call it Unhappiness.

James Hadley Chase books had some of the cheekiest titles. One of them was also philosophically profound: There’s Always A Price Tag . Nature ensures that every desire carries within itself its own poison sting. Greater the desire, deadlier the sting. The desire for Enlightenment is also a desire. But just look at the magnitude, the sheer audacity, of this particular desire: notionally, nothing less than eternal bliss will do. No wonder these fellows are referred to as “miserable” seekers.

I have lived on the lip Of insanity, wanting to know reasons, Knocking on a door. It opens, I’ve been knocking from the inside! -- Rumi Do you think I know what I’m doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it’s writing, Or the ball can guess where it’s going next. --Rumi Beyond our ideas of Wrongdoing and rightdoing There lies a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn’t make any sense. --Rumi Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: This place made from our love for that emptiness! Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes. Praise to that happening, over and over! For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now moun...

Come to think of it, what’s a flute? No fancy mechanics, merely a hollow reed. You can see right through it. When sublime music flows out from it, the Flute says: I created the music. And you shake your head and explain compassionately: No flautist, no music. The breath of consciousness, the reed of body. Sublime potential.

MORPHEUS: What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain. - from the film The Matrix

An eight year old child was sitting on the grass lawns of the Indian Gymkhana in King's Circle, Mumbai. He had accompanied his father to a discourse by Advaita teacher Swami Chinmayananda. And in the cool winter night scented with the heady fragrance of green grass, this is what he heard Swamiji say: Unhappiness is Desires divided by Desires Fulfilled.

If you think about it, there are just four possible states for you and me to be in. There is the waking state. That’s you awake during the day. Working, loving, hating, happy, sad. And there is the dream state. Mountains and springs and forests arising instantaneously. Old men and infants, births and deaths. Everything and everyone seeming so real in time and space that if I were to enter your dream and say, hey, wake up, this is unreal, you would fight me - in the dream - saying, “No, dammit, this is real!” And then, of course, there is deep sleep. Sleep so deep that you - as a name and form, as John, Mary, Ramesh or whatever - don’t exist. In fact, the entire manifestation doesn’t exist. The fourth state is what the Indian sages call turiya - the awakened state when you see the living dream for what it is. You know what they say: you wake up from the personal dream into this living dream; and it is only when you wake up from the living dream that finally Reality is witnessed…in the ...

My name is Mr. Anderson. I'm just some computer code in the computer left over from the movie called The Matrix. And when the computer is turned off I am the Reality of dreamless-sleep called Samadhi until the computer is turned on again. And then I wake up to be Mr. Anderson, again. - posted by Gene Polotas at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rameshbalsekar

Picture this: it’s a cool morning and I am traveling to work in an auto-rickshaw. I have my rucksack next to me and I am blissfully chanting, with my eyes shut. In the midst of the chanting, a thought suddenly pops up: what if somebody was to walk away with my rucksack at a traffic signal? Now this isn’t as simple as it sounds. You know what they say: Trust in God but tie your camel. So does that mean I must thread my arm round the strap, even as I chant, to prevent the rucksack from being stolen? What about my trust in Existence? This leads to the thought that I can only go with one of two possibilities: If my trust in Existence or God is complete it really won’t matter if the rucksack is stolen or not; both will be accepted as the What Is at the moment. However, if my trust is semi-baked, I had better cling tight to my belonging. Wisdom dictates that if you are shaky on trust, shore up on pragmatism. Psst: What do you think I did?

It is a beautiful day and you are standing by the shore watching the ocean. You see a wave arise, arise, arise and then…it dissolves back into ocean. As it arises, the Wave says, “I Am, I Am, I AM”. Then the Wave melts back into the ocean, its identity merged back into the ocean where it came from in the first place. Then, once again, the wind of Cause affects the ocean, making another wave to arise. And the nascent Wave says, “I Am, I Am, I Am”. There goes the whole game all over again. Existence has ordained this: The ‘Me’ of the Wave shall always return to the ‘I’ of the Ocean.

… the Buddha had no background to seeking, no guiding hand, no Guru, no one at all to tell him what to do, where to go to seek the answers he sought. So he wandered like a mendicant, making his own path. The prevailing trend among fellow seekers laid great store by denial, on austerities. On denying comforts and courting pain. Hardening the soul as it were. So the Buddha put himself through the greatest austerities, courted extreme pain. Then, one day something happened that changed his entire life. He was in a forest, exhausted by his austerities. Broken in his body, weary in his spirit. He had done everything he had been told to do but he was nowhere near his goal. Then, a couple of musicians walked into that part of the forest. They settled down a distance away, unaware of the Buddha’s presence. The older musician said to his younger companion, "If you haven’t understood one thing, you will get nowhere. Leave the strings loose and there’s no music. Tighten them too much and the...

They said: Stand up, take a stand Sign up, join now Coin a slogan, wave a flag Fight, set right all wrongs Oh the world’s doing so horribly And, you… You’re too easy Speak your mind, make a choice This isn’t okay, that is fine Pink and blue aren’t the same Take your pick, leave a print On the sands of time Oh God… You’re too easy Stand out, leave a mark Make a name, blaze a trail Stir up, work up froth Don’t you want to bequeath A legacy? How will you get anywhere If you’re too easy He sighed and said: I concede, I accept I am bother-less, I am choiceless I have been terribly spoilt By the ease of being easy What do I tell you How do I begin to explain Life’s been teaching me A whole new game The middle path is wisdom, not compromise Flexibility is strength, not frailty Acceptance takes more grit than kneejerk action And, believe it or not Resilience comes naturally To those who truly understand So I let life live me And as I weather those storms I never let myself forget The bamboo t...

Man is a programmed instrument. An intrinsic part of his programming creates the delusion that he is an individual entity and the doer of his actions. It so happens that some of the programmed instruments are programmed to seek power, some others to seek glory and yet others to seek pleasure. Some of the programmed instruments are programmed to seek their source code.