GOD AND EVIL

CEM Joad (author of "God and Evil", was an active, crusading atheist who changed after experiencing the “evil at large in the world” during World War II. He has explained the change thus, in his own words:

".... the conclusions of the intellect deny that the orthodox God of the religious hypothesis - omnipotent and benevolent, could have been the creator of the world; and deny it precisely because of the fact of evil. But if the intellect denies what the heart demands, what then? [...] perhaps the deadlock is a sign of, perhaps it is even a punishment for, intellectual arrogance...

The considerations which have set my mind working again on the problems of religion are of an emotional order [...].the emotions are those connected with inadequacy. The life that lacks religion lacks, so I have come to feel, fullness and roundness, and the desire to find that true which I have always believed to be false, to know something of that which I have thought to be unknowable grows as the years pass by. One is dismayed by the evil at large in the world and in oneself, depressed and humiliated by the inadequacy of one's efforts to cope with it, humiliated then by the inadequacy of one's own self.

It is from precisely such a feeling of humiliation that, religious writers have often urged, the search for and need of God, take their rise. What is more, the seeker who is inspired by such a mood may not be wholly without hope of succeeding in his quest. For alienated by intellectual pride , they have assured us, God draws nearer to those who approach Him in humbleness of spirit."
***
My own change from disbelief in my younger days to starting on the path of self-enquiry was aided by a reading of this book and later, other writings and attending discourses. At the root of the problem is the hard fact that if one does not become aware of the limitations of the logical mind and allows it to have dominance over oneself, it will never be possible to reconcile the existence of God with the prevalence of evil and develop Faith. This same ever-questioning mind is also capable of changing into a silent one with deeper and different perception of the world, through contemplation and meditation.
I have only made a beginning in this life - much later than present day youngsters who commence the walk on the spiritual path much earlier. I hope that these late efforts will carry me through to the next life as assured by Shri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita and as envisaged in the following statement about re-birth by John D Barrow: "Perhaps, the end of life in the universe is really just like turning off your computer, and then turning it on later on — the same information stored. But, I don't know."
Seems similar to the Hindu Vasana theory, of tendencies carried over from one birth to the next. We are free to delete, modify, add, erase and start afresh every time and any time.

Oprah, Elie Wiesel, problem of God Evil
Oprah's interview with Elie Weisel, is published at: http://www2.oprah.com/omagazine/200011/omag_200011_elie_b.jhtml.
An extract, in which Wiesel reiterates his acceptance of God, inspite of his traumatic experience:

Oprah: Where are you and God with each other these days?

Elie Wiesel: We still have a few problems! But even in the camps, I never divorced God. After the war, I went on praying to God. I was angry. I protested.
I'm still protesting—and occasionally, I'm still angry. But it's not because of the past, but the present. When I see victims of a tragedy—and especially children— I say to God,
"Don't tell me that you have nothing to do with this. You are everywhere—you are God."
************
If we read our Puranic stories, we notice that God took avatars (literally - came down to earth) *after* atrocities by evil tyrants had happened. In the famous Gita Slokam "*yadaa yadaa hi dharmasya glaanir bhavati*" Krishna assures only that whenever Adharma prevails over Dharma, He comes down to restore the balance in favour of Dharma. There is no explanation as to why adharma was allowed to prevail, in the first instance.
The problem baffling all genuine seekers (not those who merely question to satisfy their intelligent ego), is the obtrusiveness of evil and the absence of a logical explanation for its power and its existence in an universe that owes its origin and existence to God, who is portrayed/ postulated as omnipotent and benevolent. If Elie Weisel could accept God's presence with Faith, why can't we too?

**************************************************************************
A few relevant Quotes:
We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.-A. W. Tozer

Whatever be our conception of the universe we must, it is obvious, start somehow; we must begin with something; and the something with which we begin, from the very fact that we do begin with it, must itself be without explanation, since, if something else were invoked to explain it, then the "something else" must needs be logically prior to that which it is invoked to explain. Thus the "something" being explained by a logically prior "something else" could not have been ultimate. -- C. E. M. Joad, in God and Evil

Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal -- a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever. ... Dwight Lyman Moody

If we consider the lives of people who believe in God, we so often find that they make good sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, employers, and employees -- they have many individual virtues; but they have no way of life other than that which has been imposed upon them by their environment. It is their sociological conditions, their social class, their neighbourhood, their national characteristics, rather than their spiritual faith, which determine their outlook and values: they are an overwhelming demonstration that it is the economic conditions and background of one's life which determine what one is and what one will think. This is an intolerable condition, and so long as it persists we shall not be able to make any impact on the world, because it will be abundantly clear that it is the world which is making its impact upon us. ... Douglas Rhymes, in "The Place of the Laity in the Parish"

When anger enters the mind, wisdom departs. -- Thomas à Kempis

When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you'll find something solid to stand on
Or you'll be taught how to fly!” -- Richard Bach

IGNORANCE IS BLISS?

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise" - Thomas Gray

The oft-quoted mantra of 'Ignorance is bliss' is a clever but specious quip. It has raised the status of Ignorance to a pseudo-virtue. Many are quite fond of quoting it to justify to themselves their general indifference to all things religious/scriptural. But the quote is actually a statement of sad and profound irony. It appears at the end of a poem by Thomas Gray titled "Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College":

• To each his sufferings: all are men,
  Condemned alike to groan;
  The tender for another's pain,
  Th' unfeeling for his own.
  Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
  Since sorrow never comes too late,
  And happiness too swiftly flies?
  Thought would destroy their Paradise.
  No more; where ignorance is bliss,
  'Tis folly to be wise.

The "Ode" by Thomas Gray is a poem of great moral despair and it ends with those famous lines on a deeply ironical note. It was written at a time when England was in the throes of great economic and social turmoil caused by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The poet was reflecting upon the many ills and injustices that were bedeviling his country but of which his countrymen, the silent and thoughtless, seemed utterly ignorant. The line "Where Ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise" actually was meant to describe the attitude of the young but ignorant English masses of those times. They had really "no sense of ills to come"; they didn't seem to know "their fate". They busied themselves only with the humdrum, day-to-day cares of personal life and livelihood. They did not seem to "care beyond today", believing that any thought of the Beyond would only "destroy their (petty, private) paradise" (an apt description, perhaps, of the non-voting population every where).

From the Unreal to Real - Upanishad

ASATO MAA SADGAMAYA
Thanks to: http://archives.amritapuri.org/bharat/mantra/asatoma.php

asato maa sadgamaya
tamaso maa jyotir gamaya
mrtyormaa amrtam gamaya

Lead me from the asat to the sat.
Lead me from darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad — I.iii.28)

This is true prayer—the seeker’s admission of his sense of limited-ness and his heartfelt cry for assistance in transcendence. It is not a prayer for the things of the world. It is not a prayer for food, shelter, health, partnership, riches, success, fame, glory or even for heaven. One who recites these three mantras has realized that such things are full of holes, soaked in pain and, even in abundance, will forever leave him wanting. It is in this full understanding that one turns to this prayer.
The essence of each of these three mantras is the same: "O, Guru, help me free myself from my sundry misunderstandings regarding myself, the universe and God, and bless me with true knowledge." It is in this spirit that devotees regularly chant these mantras twice daily, both at the conclusion of the morning archana and after the evening aarati.

The first mantra, asato maa sadgamaya means, "Lead me from the asat to the sat." In fact, it is best to not translate sat (nor its negative counterpart asat) for, as with many Sanskrit words, sat has many meanings; not only are most of them applicable here, their deliberate combined import provides a depth that no one of them could hold independently. These co-applicable meanings include: existence, reality and truth. (Co-applicable meanings for asat being: non-existence, non-reality and untruth.) We often speak of religion or philosophy as a search for Truth. But only in India’s philosophy of Advaita-Vedanta has the concept of "truth" been so meticulously and successfully dissected.
According to Advaita, for something to be considered true in the ultimate sense, it must be true not just at one given moment, but always be true — true in all three periods of time: the past, present and future.
In fact, Advaita goes one step further. It says: if something does not exist in all three periods of time then it does not truly exist, it is not ultimately real. Thus, truth, existence and reality are one and the same. That reality, Vedanta says, is what we call God.

The universe and its things are in a constant state of change. The planets are in constant motion, their positions in relation to each other and the other astral bodies are in continuous flux. The seasons similarly are ever-shifting. Scientifically, we can easily understand that our bodies (and the cells within them) come into existence, are born and then go through periods of growth, sustenance, deterioration and death. In fact these six modifications are part-and-parcel of everything in creation. On the level of emotions, we move back and forth between happiness, sorrow and anger. Even our intellectual convictions rarely stay fixed for very long. Therefore, according to Vedanta, we cannot call this world ultimately real. It is not ultimately true. Ultimately, it does not exist. It seems real etc. but it is not. Such a thing is called asat.

The seeker giving voice to this prayer has come to understand the finite nature of all the objects of the world, and he wants the Guru to guide him from the asat to the sat. He is fed up with depending on things that are not real. Why? Because just as the sandcastle is always washed away by the tide, dependence on the asat always ends in pain. sat is our True Self— the blissful consciousness that ever was, is and ever will be. Being beyond time, this consciousness can never be washed away by time’s tides. In fact, sat is there as the essential part of all of the asat objects. It is a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were. When speaking about the ultimate reality, Sages say it is of the nature of sat-cit-ananda: pure existence, pure consciousness and pure bliss.

The second mantra — tamaso maa jyotirgamaya — means "Lead me from darkness to light." When the Vedas refer to darkness and light, they mean ignorance and knowledge, because ignorance, like darkness, obscures true understanding. And in the same way that the only remedy for darkness is light, the only remedy for ignorance is knowledge. The knowledge spoken of here is again the knowledge of one’s true nature. Currently, in the darkness of our ignorance, we believe ourselves to be bound and limited. But the Guru and the scriptures are telling us that, in truth, we are not, never will be and never have been bound. Eternally we are sat-cit-ananda. The only thing that can remove our ignorance regarding our true nature is spiritual education at the hands of a True Master. At the culmination of such an education, light floods the room, as it were; darkness vanishes.

The final mantra mrtyormaa amrtam gamaya — means: "Lead me from death to immortality." This should not be taken as a prayer to live endless years in heaven or on earth. It is a prayer to the Guru for assistance in realizing the truth that "I was never born, nor can I ever die, as I am not the body, mind and intellect, but the eternal, blissful consciousness that serves as the substratum of all creation."
It is important to remember that, with all these mantras, the leading is not a physical leading. The Atma is not something far away that we have to make a pilgrimage to, nor is it something we need to transform ourselves into. Atma means "self". We do not need to transform our self into our self. Nor do we need to travel to it. We are it. The journey is a journey of knowledge. It is journey from what we misunderstood to be our self to what truly is our self. What the mantras really mean is "Lead me to the understanding that I am not the limited body, mind and intellect, but am, was and always will be that eternal, absolute, blissful consciousness that serves as their substratum."

The first step in attaining the knowledge for which one is praying when one chants these mantras is satsang: listening to spiritual talks, reading spiritual books and being in the company of spiritual seekers and, most importantly, spiritual masters. We need to continuously be fed the knowledge that our true nature is the Atma and not the body, mind and intellect. Through satsang, our attachment to the asat gradually lessens. Slowly as we understand that everything in the world — all worldly relationships, all worldly things — are ever-changing and impermanent, our attitude towards the world changes. We gain detachment. As we become more and more detached, our desires also naturally decrease, because we know that the things of the world are impermanent and cannot bring us lasting happiness. As the desires decrease, the mind becomes less and less agitated. It obtains serenity, stillness, peace. Then, with this stilled, subtle, penetrating mind we can finally come to realize our true nature.

In Vedanta, heaven—or rather heavens—are accepted as part of the lower reality. Unlike in other religions, going to heaven is not professed to be the ultimate goal of life. According to Vedanta, heaven can be likened to a vacation resort. After death, if one has done enough good deeds in life, one can go to heaven for a very long time. But eventually he will have to return to the earthly plane. Thus even though one may be in heaven, he is still bound and mired of ignorance to his true nature.

As it says in the Bhagavad-Gita:
From Brahma Loka to the lowest world,
all are places of misery wherein
repeated birth and death take place O Arjuna.
But one who comes to me, O son of Kunti,
never takes birth again. (Gita 8:16)

The human goal according Vedanta is Self-realization. The Atma is the ultimate reality. When one realizes one's true nature, one attains spiritual fulfillment in this life itself. Then, upon death, one does not go to any heavenly abode but simply merges into the supreme reality.

THE KALPATARU TREE

May I share with the readers, Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya's excellent essay on
"Desire under the Kalpataru Tree" in which he quotes extensively from the Mahabharata: http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/076.htm and explains how we in our wish-fulfillment efforts, have to pay a high unanticipated future-cost and why we have to be wise in wishing for anything.

At the end of this very well-written article, the author concludes:
"This, then, is the picture of 'Desire under the Kalpataru': Desire, if powerful, does get fulfilled, but brings in its wake a price to be paid which, more often than not, outweighs the gratification experienced through fulfillment of the desire. [....] It is Yayati who sums it up in words of deceptive simplicity that go straight to the mark:

Desire never ends,
Desire grows with feeding,
Like sacrificial flames
Lapping up ghee.
Become the sole lord of
The world's paddy fields, wheat-fields,
Precious stones, beasts, women...
Still not enough.
Discard desire.
This disease kills. The wicked
Cannot give it up, old age
Cannot lessen it. True happiness
Lies in controlling it. (Mahabharata Adi parva, 85.12-14)

The experience of Vyasa's Yayati is echoed by a great epic poet of the occident John Milton, in 'Paradise Lost':

...They, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with lust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes.

This is the existential experience which pervades the Mahabharata and which Vyasa, the oriental seer-poet, envisions as an outcome of man's fascination with the Kalpataru. Vyasa creates a marvelously eidetic picture of this symbol in the words of Krsna in the Gita (15.1-3):

Mention is made of a cosmic fig-tree
Rooted above,
whose leaves are said to be the Vedas;
the knower of this fig-tree
is the knower of the Vedas.
Its branches reach out below and above,
its flowers are the objects of the senses;
below the ground flourish more roots,
giving birth to action.
You may not see its real shape,
nor its end, birth and existence.
Slice this fig-tree with non-attachment".

=============================
My Note:
For an illustration of Yayati's statement: "Discard desire. This disease kills" and Oscal Wilde's ironical observation:."When the Gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers" , you may like to read the strange, scary story of "The Monkey's Paw" "

Miscellaneous:

The Kalpataru had kindled in us a spark of fire by granting our first wish and this has now grown into a blazing fire which consumes us and we are unable to control or extinguish it.
We generally do not know what is ultimately good for ourselves. Instead of leaving it to the Lord to grant our needs, we demand from God the granting of our desires, like a petulant child not knowing: "Mother knows best". The result, according to Oscal Wilde:
     When the Gods choose to punish us,
     they merely answer our prayers!
     To have all our prayers answered might be a curse!
Therefore, the Wise surrender to the Lord's Will, believe with great faith that He best knows what we need and accept what we receive from Him as Prasadam.
Krishnaswamy
============
The Kalpataru Story as told by Sri Ramakrishna, retold by Pradip Bhattacharya:

The Wish-Fulfilling Tree

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Hinduism/2000/08/The-Wish-Fulfilling-Tree.aspx# 

BY: Pradip Bhattacharya  (Reprinted from Indianest.com with permission.)

One way of gaining insight into the cosmic doctrine of karma is through the parable of the Kalpataru, the wish-fulfilling tree, narrated by Sri Ramakrishna:

Into a room full of children at play walks their uncle, who, of course, knows better. Laughing at their preoccupation with make-believe games, he asks them to go out to the massive banyan tree, which will grant them whatever they wish! The children rush out, stand under the branches of this huge tree that cover the sky, and ask for what all children crave: toys and candy. In a flash they get what they want, but along with an unexpected bonus: the built-in opposite of what they wished for. With toys they get boredom; with candy, tummy aches.

Sure that something has gone wrong with their wishing, the children ask for bigger toys and sweeter candy. The tree grants them their wishes, and along with them bigger boredom and bigger tummy aches. Time passes. They are now young men and women and their wishes change, for they know more. They ask for wealth, power, fame, sexual pleasure--and they get these, but also cupidity, insomnia, anxiety, and frustration/disease.

Time passes. The wishers are now old and gather in three groups under the all-encompassing branches. The first group exclaims, "All this is an illusion!" Fools, they have learnt nothing. The second group says, "We are wiser and will wish better next time." Greater fools, they have learnt less than nothing. The third group, disgusted with everything, decides to cop out and asks for death. They are the most foolish of all. The tree grants them their desire, and with it its opposite: rebirth, under the same tree. For, where can one be born, or reborn, but within this cosmos!

All this while one child has been unable to move out of the room. Being lame, he was pushed down in the scramble and when he dragged himself to the window, he was transfixed watching his friends make their wishes, get them with their built-in opposites and suffer, yet compulsively continue to make more wishes. Riveted by this utterly engrossing  lila of desire and its fruits, a profound swell of compassion welled up in the heart of this lame child, reaching out to his companions. 

In that process, he forgot to wish for anything for himself. In that moment of spontaneous compassion for others, he sliced through the roots of the cosmic tree with the sword of non-attachment, of nishkama karma. He is the liberated one, the mukta -purusha.

WHAT IS GOODNESS? - by TAGORE

The question will be asked, "What is goodness? What does our moral nature mean?"
My answer is that when a man begins to have an extended vision of his self, when he realizes that he is much more than at present he seems to be, he begins to get conscious of his moral nature. Then he grows aware of that which he is yet to be, and the state not yet experienced by him becomes more real than that under his direct experience.
Necessarily, his perspective of life changes, and his will takes the place of his wishes. For will is the supreme wish of the larger life, the life whose greater portion is out of our present reach, most of whose objects are not before our sight.
Then comes the conflict of our lesser man with our greater man, of our wishes with our will, of the desire for things affecting our sense with the purpose that is within our heart. Then we begin to distinguish between what we immediately desire and what is good. For good is that which is desirable for our greater self. Thus, the sense of goodness comes out of a truer view of our life, which is connected view of the wholeness of the field of life, and which takes into account not only what is present before us but what is not, and perhaps never humanly can be.
--Rabindranath Tagore, in Sadhan

ON CONSOLING

Over the years, I’ve tried to find simple ways to help ordinary people know what to do and remember how to be when in the company of someone in sorrow. A simple acronym, SALT— as in the salt of tears—emerged as a teaching tool to help learn by heart four basic premises for support. Four chapters in the book, a chapter for each letter, are dedicated to illustrating each skill:

• See them.
• Allow them.
• Listen to them.
• Trust them.

If you can simply See those in grief without acting on the urge to do something right away, you have taken the first step toward helping them to heal. Your unconditional compassion, without criticism and without your own projection, will Allow them to do what they need to. They may need to talk; your best response would be to Listen generously, without interruption, without asking questions or telling your own story. And finally, Trust that within them is everything they need to traverse this difficult path. They do not need your rescue. They need your quiet, steady faith in their resilience. -Marianna Cacciatore http://mariannacacciatore.com/introduction.htm

Let us welcome Change, the essence of life.

When we stand still in space,
we part the air and,
as we move,
air moves in to make it whole.
We have other reasons for moving;
but the wise ones move
to make things whole.
Movement is the essence of time;
the whole world moves with it
in one direction -- forward.
Our physical body moves with time --
growing, ageing, decaying.
Our mental image of our 'Self'
should grow with time, not decay,
maturing like the fruit on a tree.
It is then harvested by the creator
not to be born again.
In our every day life,
we shall be happy if
we move to integrate. For,
move, we have to.
Let us not get attached to the space
of power, pelf, position that
we temporarily occupy, and always
remember that we have to move on.
A movement with resentment
brings in bitterness, division and misery.
Moving willingly to integrate,
leaving the space we occupy,
brings in fullness - Ananda, Bliss-eternal,
Sat-chit-ananda.

Pancha Kanyah - Ahalya

The “Magic Suggestiveness” of Pancha Kanya
An exploration into some aspects of classical Indian feminism
http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/175.html
by: Dr (Mrs.) Ralla Guha Niyogi

(Original article on Pancha Kanya by Pradip Bhattacharya is at: http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/panchkanya/pk01.htm )

Extract from Dr.(Mrs.) Niyogi's article:

The author’s independent research reveals that Ahalya being turned to stone is the Katha-Sarit-Sagara version, expressing the male backlash of a largely patriarchal society [PK, p.23]. Valmiki’s Ahalya, like the heroine of Aparna Sen’s remarkable twentieth century Bengali film, Paroma undergoes, “not an actual physical transformation, but “a psychological trauma [involving a] ‘freezing’[of] the emotions… making her socially into a non-person”. When Rama and Lakshmana socially recognize her by touching her feet in salutation, her “self-respect and status in society [is restored] so that she truly live[s] again”, [PK., p. 23].[19] The fact that she is regarded by the Prince of Ayodhya as “blameless and inviolate” shows that the ancient concepts of virginity or morality were quite different from that of subsequent ages. Thus, the goddesses Ishtar and Aphrodite, too, were regarded as virgins, though later they were considered ‘immoral’. Ahalya, the foremost of the five Kanyas projects the essence of feminism by independently and willingly undertaking a daring act by yielding to her kutuhala or curiosity and thereby she transcends the limits or confines of her gender, asserting in the process, her strong individuality. It is this “dangerous” power of self-assertion in Ahalya that is sought to be curbed by her husband, Gautama.
Ahalya’s consequent acceptance of Gautama’s wrath and her acquiescence to his sentence of temporary segregation from society may be regarded as her awareness and acceptance of existing societal norms and traditions. Thus, she may not be regarded as a “failed Kanya” as the author asks – on the contrary, she exhibits the equivocal position of women in India, portraying “a more complex and perpetual negotiation taking place between women’s culture and general culture”.
As Gerda Lerner states :
Women live their social existence within the general culture and, whenever they are confined by patriarchal restraint or segregation into separateness (which always has subordination as its purpose), they transform this restraint into complementarity (asserting the importance of woman’s function, even its ‘superiority’) and redefine it. Thus, women live a duality – as members of the general culture and as partakers of women’s culture.
Ahalya is perhaps one of the earliest known exponents of “women’s culture” in a largely patriarchal society. Her kutuhala also leads to a partial fulfillment of the feminine jouissance, a word which to Helene Cixous denotes intense, rapturous pleasure present in women, and which Luce Irigaray interprets as a combination of the corporeal and the celestial. Significantly, Ahalya’s act differs from Irigaray’s interpretation as she seeks merely a corporeal union with a celestial being, but she nevertheless displays a variation of Irigaray’s concept of jouissance, for her union with Indra excludes any yearning for motherhood. Jouissance or ananda, in this case, reinstates a woman’s existence as an individual, feminine entity, and she is looked upon as such by her lover :
The female jouissance would [ascribe] to women freedom and a kind of mobility or fluidity … It would be possible only if women have their …. own jouissance, which they could feel …. , and undertake the upward journey necessary for their survival.
Ahalya’s independence of spirit and her desire for union with Indra may be regarded as an instance of women’s need “ to move freely [around] … an axis which grounds them in the earth and connects them to the heavens”. Gautama’s wrath at his wife’s transgression reiterates women’s “lingering status” as the “secondary sex” in Indian society which prevails even today, prompting modern intellectuals to “figure out a way to change [this] dominant [patriarchal] culture”. Ahalya thus emerges as “a metaphor for patriarchy, exploitation and society’s double standards. In the trap of modernity – science and progress … women… are expected to be superwomen.”25 Rabindranath Tagore’s poem on Ahalya, short stories, television programmes, various Bharatnatyam performances on Ahalya’s life and Dr. Pratibha Ray’s Oriya novel Mahamoha which won the Sahitya Academy Award, describing Ahalya’s journey from transgression to transcendence, continue to reinforce the essence of dynamic femininity that this first Kanya represents, which makes her pratah-smaraniya.

LIFE-PATH AS ELLIPSE

In the sixteenth century, most people believed in the ideas of the ancient astronomer Ptolemy, that all the planets, Moon, and Sun orbited around the Earth. Then in 1543, Copernicus proposed the idea that the planets and the Earth orbited around the Sun. Half a century later, Johannes Kepler sought to refine the Copernican system and truly understand how the planets move around the Sun. He studied observations of Mars recorded by his mentor, Tycho Brahe. Kepler used Tycho's observations to guide the creation of his theories. This was a radical departure from the thought processes of his era. In 1609, he published his Law of Ellipses and The Equal-Areas Law. He had succeeded in using a scientific method to create a simple, elegant, and accurate model to describe the motion of planets around the Sun.
Previous theories of the Solar System, including those of Ptolemy and Copernicus, believed that the orbits of the planets were perfect circles. Kepler was unable, however, to fit Tycho's observations with circular orbits. He rejected the ancient idea of circular orbits and discovered that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. An ellipse is a closed, curved shape that is defined by two foci. It is a like a flattened circle ; if both of the foci of an ellipse are at the same point, an ellipse becomes a circle! If you think about it, the relationship between an ellipse and a circle is like that between a rectangle and square.

An ellipse has two axes. The long one is called the major axis, and the short one is called the minor axis. (Astronomers often use the term "semimajor axis" for this). That's just half the length of the major axis!
The shape of an ellipse is measured by its eccentricity, a mathematically determined property. The "flatter" the ellipse, the greater the eccentricity. A circle, for example, has an eccentricity of zero since both foci are at the center and the distance between them is equal to zero.
As the ellipse becomes flatter and flatter, the foci get farther from the center, the distance between them larger and the eccentricity will approach, but never equal, one.
In the picture alongside, the first (top) ellipse has an eccentricity of 0.7 and the second one has an eccentricity of 0.5
Our individual life-paths may also be visualized as ellipses with the individual Ego at one focus and the divine soul at the other focus. Our aim in life should be to move towards the center and shorten the distance between the two foci, so that the eccentricity is reduced considerably and the Ego comes very near to and under the influence of the One who created and sustains all life.
(Pictures: from http://www.astro.illinois.edu/projects/data/KeplersLaws/ )

When the ellipse is considered as depicting our life-path, its two foci are: our Ego deriving its energy from the mind and the Lord who is ever-present as the Soul at the heart center. An ellipse can be drawn with two pins at the foci, a loop of string, and a pencil. The pins are fixed at the foci and a loose string is passed around them. A pencil is placed on the paper inside the string and the string is made taut. If the pencil is moved around so with the string kept taut, its tip draws the figure of an ellipse since the sum of the distances from the pencil to the pins remains constant, which is the property of the ellipse. The nearer the two pins are to each other, the greater the ellipse will be like a circle. When the two foci coincide, the ellipse becomes a circle.

Our philosophy states a similar truth. Due to agnyana (ignorance), not knowing our true connection with the supreme soul's constant presence within us, we depend wholly on knowledge derived from the Ego. We thus move farther away from our spiritual center wandering about wildly in an ever-widening orbit, increasing our eccentricity. Our life becomes erratic like that of a comet and we get burnt out.
With developing awareness of the true picture, we can move nearer to the other divine centre within us, avoid this fate and create a life-path that has progressively less eccentricity and approaches a perfect circle – a wholeness which the Upanishads proclaim as Poornam.

In this context, we may note that Gita Slokam Ch.18-61 speaks about the heart centre:

ईश्वरः सर्वभूतानां हृद्देशेऽर्जुन तिष्ठति।
भ्रामयन्सर्वभूतानि यन्त्रारूढानि मायया।।18.61।।
Ishvaraḥ sarvabhutaanaam hṛddeshe arjuna tiṣThati.
bhraamayan sarvabhhutaani yantraaruDhaani maayayaa..18.61..
61. The Lord dwells in the hearts of all beings, O Arjuna, causing all beings, by His illusive power, to revolve, as if mounted on a machine.
In his sanskrit commentary, Sri Ramanuja explains (English translation by Swami Adidevananda):

Lord Vasudeva, who is the ruler over all, lives in 'the heart of all beings,' i.e., in the region from which arises all knowledge which is at the root of all secular and spiritual activities. How and doing what does He exist? He exists enabling, by His Maya (power), 'all beings who are mounted, as it were, on the machine Prakrti' in the form of body and senses created by Himself, to act in accordance with their Gunas of Sattva and others. It was already expressed in 'And I am seated in the hearts of all. From Me are memory, knowledge and their removal also' (15.15) and in 'From Me proceed everything' (10.8). The Srutis also proclaim 'He who, dwelling in the self' (Br. U. Madh., 3.7.22).He now explains the way to get rid of the Maya
[in the next sloka: “Take refuge with all your heart, by every disposition of your body, senses and mind in Him - the ruler of all, who has become your charioteer out of compassion for dependents, and who orders you, 'Act thus' and so on.]

AHALYA EPISODE in RAMAYANA

By Rajaji

After a day's stay in the City of Visala, Viswamitra and his party left for Mithila. On the way, not far from Mithila, they saw a beautiful ashrama which seemed untenanted. Rama asked Viswamitra: "Whose is this ashrama with ancient trees? Why does such a beautiful abode stand deserted?"
Viswamitra replied: "This ashrama is subject to a curse. Sage Gautama lived here with his wife Ahalya, spending his days in peace and holy meditation. One day during the sage's absence from the ashrama, Indra, filled with unholy desire for the beautiful Ahalya, entered it disguised as Gautama and approached the lady with urgent solicitation. She was not deceived by the impersonation, but vain of her beauty and proud that it had won her the love of the lord of the celestials, she lost her judgment and yielded to his desire. When the sin had been sinned, realising its heinousness and the fierce spiritual energy of her betrayed husband, she warned Indra of his terrible peril and begged him to be gone in the instant.
Indra was fleeing in guilty panic; but unfortunately for him he almost bumped into the rishi who was just returning from his ablutions, clad in wet garments and radiating spiritual lustre. Pretence was hopeless before that all seeing wisdom and Indra bowed in abject supplication, and threw himself on the mercy of the rishi. The sage looked at him with wrath and loathing and cursed him: 'Lustful beast as you are, dead to all truth and righteousness, may your manhood fall away from you.' Indra at once became an eunuch and went back to the Devas in ignominious shame.
Then the sage turned to his erring wife and prescribed a long penance for her. He said: 'Living on air, you shall stay here, unseen by anyone. After a long time, Dasaratha's son will pass this way. When he sets foot in this ashrama, you will be freed from the curse. Welcome him as a guest. You will then recover your lost virtue and get back your own beauty.' The sage then left his violated ashrama for Himalayas to engage himself in austerities there."
Viswamitra said to Rama: "Let us enter the ashrama. You will bring redemption to Ahalya and rekindle the light in her as the sage promised." And they went into the ashrama. As Rama set foot in the ashrama, the curse was lifted and Ahalya stood before them in all her beauty. Having lain concealed behind leaves and creepers and kept her vow for many years, she now shone, says the poet, in Rama's presence, like the moon emerging from the clouds, like a flame issuing from smoke and like the sun's reflection in rippling water. Rama and Lakshmana touched the feet of the sage's wife made pure by penance. She welcomed the divine princes with all the customary rites of hospitality. A shower of flowers descended from the heavens as Ahalya, cleansed of sin, shone like a goddess. Simultaneously the sage Gautama returned to the ashrama and received his repentant and purified wife back to his affection.
…………………………………………………….
The lesson of the Ahalya episode is that, however deadly one's sin, one may hope to be freed from its consequence by penitence and punishment. Instead of condemning others for their sins, we should look within our own hearts and try to purify them of every evil thought. The best of us have need for eternal vigilance, if we would escape sin. This is the moral of Ahalya's error.

The Guru's Role

om ajnaana-timiraandhasya / jnanaanjana-shalaakaya
caksur-unmilitam yena / tasmai shri-gurave namah


Salutation (namah) to that (tasmai) Guru (gurave) by whom (yena) the eyes (cakshur) blinded (andhasya)
by the darkness (timira) of ignorance (agnyana) were opened (unmilitam) with the collyrium (anjana)-
(applied with the) sharp pencil (shalakaya) of knowledge (gnyana).
Salutations to that Guru who applies the collyrium of knowledge with a sharp needle
to open the eyes blinded due to ignorance (lack of spiritual knowledge).

The purpose of approaching the Master is explained beautifully in this second verse of the Guru Stotram - ajnaana- timiraandhasya jnaananjana shalaakayaa.

We act to achieve certain end-results; we are happy when we are successful and unhappy when fail to achieve the intended result. Life consists of a series of transactions intended for our sukha praapti ; but many times, there is only dukha and we feel disappointed and dissatisfied. Ramana Maharishi in his Upadesa Saram has compared this sorry state of affairs to falling repeatedly into the ocean of samsara and has suggested self-inquiry as a way out to derive permanent satisfaction in our lives.

By middle age, when this dissatisfaction grows and we feel lost like one blinded due to absence of the light of relevant knowledge, we approach a Guru and seek his guidance to gain gnyana drishti for leading life in a manner conducive to yield a steady, happy state of the mind which will not be easily affected by set-backs and failures.. In other words, every effort that we make is for sukha-praapti, to reach a state of satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment, but the goal is not always achieved despite our best efforts. It is then that we approach the Master and seek his help to identify for us the steps that we should take for removing the obstacles which prevent us from being happy, which stop us from being contented. We realize that due to lack of knowledge in this matter, due to our agnyana, we are presently mired in this condition of dissatisfaction with life, seeing no way out.

The Guru is the Master who can remove the disease of ajnana. But it is not as simple as removing a something that is covering what is underneath. It is a very tricky process since there is nothing really to be taken out; what is required is a transformation in us that is necessary. The Guru-doctor applies the ointment (anjana) of knowledge to our affected eye and restores the sight – he grants us the gift of gnyana drishti.

But this Guru-doctor might sometimes speak harshly, making us uncomfortable and wanting to reject him. Why? A famous teacher has given a humorous definition of Guru that really hits home: —Jo shishya ko dekhte hi gurrata hai, woh Guru hai! His purpose in doing this is to disentangle us from our entanglements. But when this happens, our tendency is to react vehemently. Our sharanagati bhaava will be sorely tested!

The Master’s role is similar to that of a sculptor, who uses his hammer and chisel to unlock the hidden potential in a stone. If the stone could communicate with us in words, it will describe the great pain it suffers with every stroke, every blow of the chisel and hammer. Finally, it seems that the torture has come to an end. The sculptor leaves the stone alone for many days. Then one day he returns and starts rubbing the surface of the stone with sand-paper to get rid of even the smallest of imperfections. The stone starts feeling, “I thought everything was done. Why is he torturing me like this again?”

But after having undergone this tortuous process, a beautiful murti emerges from the stone; the real glory of the stone is finally expressed. It is then installed in a temple. It becomes elated because it starts receiving flower garlands, it starts receiving alankara. The sculptor’s vision created from a piece of shapeless stone a beautiful art-piece that is worthy of being worshipped. But to reach that state the stone had to undergo the process of chiseling, and fine refinements. The stone acknowledges to the sculptor: “What a great opportunity you have given me to bring out the best in me!" And in all humility the sculptor replies: “I have done nothing. The potential always existed in you. All I have done is to remove that which was blocking the expression of your potential". If we substitute the words Master for the sculptor and disciple for the stone, we can fully understand the roles of the Master and his disciple.

The relationship between the Master and the student is beyond human understanding or expression in words. When we talk of the highest in love, we talk of the natural love of a mother for the children she has given birth to. The love and care of the Master for the student is born out of a deep sense of duty and responsibility that he has voluntarily accepted so that the student may reach the spiritual state in which he himself revels. His efforts to remove the ajnana, which are so painful for the disciple in the beginning, are intended for the purpose that the student can reach and enjoy the same kind of bliss that the Master is enjoying - nothing less. For, in the field of spirituality, either there is perfection or there is nothing - nothing in the middle. The Master directs all his efforts to help his disciple reach that state of perfection.

The Master is not going to change our lives, the Master is not going to change our environment; he is not going to change the world that we live in. The Master is only changing our vision, our perception. It is not the srishti that has to be changed, it is the drishti that has to change, and the Guru is the person who takes pains in changing that drishti. Here is a person who, with all love and concern, tries to tune our body, mind and intellect and dispel the darkness that we are living in so that we can understand the truth. He blesses us with that vision, drishti, so that, staying in the same srishti, we can enjoy the bliss and glory which is an expression of the Lord. In order to do this, the Guru has to wipe the slate of our mind clean and create a disciple out of us. Guru is thus Brahma, Guru is Vishnu, and Guru Himself is Mahesvara. Guru is nothing but that absolute truth and happiness which we are searching for. Why is the Guru called Brahma? Why is the Guru called Vishnu? Why is the Guru called Maheshvara? Because in spite of who we are, it is the Guru’s mission to create a disciple out us. That is no easy task. It requires total surrender by the sishya to the Guru.

Sishya is defined as —Saasanaat sisyate yah sah sishya - the one who remains in disciplined mode, who is ready for any kind of discipline that is expected by the Master. Or, to put it in very simple words, the one who has accepted the fact that he is going to be disciplined and changed. This is where the concept of sharanagati comes into play. When the Master tells the student to do something, there should be no resistance from the student like, -- "but Sir"…absolutely no choice. It took the Lord Himself eleven chapters in the Gita to create a disciple out of Arjuna whom He knew very well. It is the Master’s responsibility to create that discipleship in us. He is Brahma creating that disciple in us. He is Vishnu, who sustains us as a disciple to reach the state of perfection. How does he do this? He does it by assuming the form of Rudra, destroying, removing the ignorance that we are holding on to and which is an obstacle to our progress.

This is also the cause of confusion in the minds of people because they see a contradiction in some of the characters depicted in the Puranas. The sages are called maharishis, but the puranic accounts depict them as if they cannot control their anger. For instance, we have the oft-quoted example of Durvasa, who was a maharishi well-known for his anger. In our ignorance, we question: - if he was a Master, a maharishi, how could he get angry? We forget that our anger and the anger foof the maharishi are worlds apart. We get carried away by our anger, whereas the Master uses it so that he can correct his students. The anger of the Master is born out of love. The purpose is the betterment of the disciple so that he can grow from his present state of limited existence to that unlimited blissful existence that the Master himself has reached. It is like a mother forcing her child to take bitter medicine despite its resistance and protests. Is the mother being harsh out of love and duty or a desire merely to hurt her child? The relationship of the Guru and the disciple is similar.

The grace of the Guru expresses itself in every seeker’s life as jnana and sakti - the knowledge as well as the capacity to use that knowledge at the right moment at the right time. Jnana-sakti-samaarudah, tattva-maalaa-vibhushitah. A very beautiful picture of the Master has been painted here. Jnana-sakti-samaarudhah, he is samaarudah, he enters our life integrating these two things; he bestows upon us, he blesses us with these two things - jnanam ca saktim ca. He blesses us with knowledge and also the capacity to use that knowledge in the correct place, in the correct environment; he builds in us the awareness of the knowledge.

When we listen to Vedanta discourses, we tend to feel that we already know these principles. But knowledge lies not merely in knowing, but also in applying that knowledge, or having the sakti, the saamarthya, the capacity to do so in the right place and at the right moment.


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Reproduced above (in parts)are extracts from the article "tasmai shri gurave namah" by Br Uddhav Chaitanya; the complete, original article is at: http://www.chinmayasaaket.org/articles/uddhav/tasmai_sri_gurave_namah.pdf.

Life Eternal

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush,
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
- Mary Elizabeth Frye

Boundaries in relationships

"I (mention) Arthur Schopenhauer's well known fable, a story Freud liked enough to cite in his book on group psychology (and) I paraphrase the fable as follows:
" 'A troop of porcupines is milling about on a cold winter's day. In order to keep from freezing, the animals move closer together. Just as they are close enough to huddle, however, they start to poke each other with their quills. In order to stop the pain, they spread out, lose the advantage of commingling, and begin to shiver. This sends them back in search of each other, and the cycle repeats as they struggle to find a comfortable distance between entanglement and freezing.'
The story spoke to Freud as a lesson about boundaries. ("No one can tolerate a too intimate approach to his neighbor.") It also spoke to his belief that love is everywhere a thorny affair. Freud wrote: 'The evidence ... shows that almost every intimate emotional relation between two people which lasts for some time--marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and children--contains a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which only escapes perception as a result of repression'...
"All relationships ... require us to contain contradictory feelings for the same person. As the poet Molly Peacock observed: "There must be room in love for hate."
-- Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines.

A Burden that is No Burden

A troubled man named Wo could not figure out how to live. So he began meditating to find some answers. After many months he felt no progress, so he asked the temple priest for help.
The priest said, "Go see old Jah."
So he hiked to old Jah's village and came upon the happy-looking old man coming from the forest under a heavy load of firewood.
"Excuse me, honored Jah," he said. "But can you teach me the secret of life?"
Jah raised his eyebrows and gazed at Wo. Then with some effort he twisted out from beneath his great bundle of firewood and let it crash to the ground.
"There, that is enlightenment," he said, straightening up with relief and smiling.
The troubled man looked on in shock at the prickly firewood scattered over the ground. "Is that all there is to it?" he said.
"Oh, no," said Jah. Then he bent down, collected all the scattered sticks, hoisted them carefully up on his back and made ready to walk on.
"This is enlightenment, too. Come. Let's go together for tea."
So Wo walked along with Jah.
"What is old Jah showing me?" he asked.
Jah replied, "First, yes, you are suffering a heavy burden. Many do. But, much of your burden and much of your joylessness is your craving for what you can't have and your clinging to what you can't keep.
"See the nature of your burden and of the chafing you experience as you try to cling to it: useless, unnecessary, damaging - and you can let it go.
"In doing so, you find relief, and you are freer to see the blessings of life and to choose wisely to receive them."
"Thank you, old Jah," said Wo. "And why did you call picking up the burden of firewood again enlightenment as well?"
"One understanding is that some burden in life is unavoidable and even beneficial, like firewood. With occasional rest it can be managed, and with freedom from undue anxiety about it, it will not cause chafe.
"Once the undue burden is dropped, we straighten up and see and feel the wonder and power of being. Seeing others suffering without that freedom and blissful experience, we willingly and knowingly pick up their burdens out of compassion -- joining and aiding others in their various struggles for liberation, enlightenment and fulfillment."
"Thank you, Old Jah," said the exhilarated Wo. "You have enlightened me."
"Ah-so," said Jah. "Your understanding is enlightened. Now to make it part of your living and your spirit, you must go follow the practice and meditate. Then you will learn to detach yourself from your useless burden of cravings and to attach yourself to the profound source of being out of which life, creativity, joy and compassion form and flow."

"You give birth to that on which you fix your mind." -- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Compare:
यत् भावं तत् भवति yat bhavam tat bhavati

ON DEATH

It is not death that one should fear.
One should fear never beginning to live. ~Marcus Aurelius

In this world
nothing can be said to be certain,
except death and taxes. ~Benjamin Franklin

When the day's work is ended,
night brings the blessings of sleep.
So too, death is the ending of a larger day
and, in the night that follows,
every person finds rest until, of one's own volition,
one returns to fresh endeavor and to labors anew.
So has it been with this our friend,
so will it be for all of us. ~Buddhist funeral service

Death is never far away in one's eighth decade of life, and going quickly isn't that bad.
The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson said it gently:
"God's finger touched him and he slept." No heavy pain, no long goodbyes.
~Alfred Tennyson

To anyone who listened to us, we are prepared to maintain
that death is the necessary outcome of life.
In reality, however, we show an unmistakable tendency
to put death to one side, to eliminate it from life.
The complement to this cultural and conventional attitude towards death
is provided by our complete collapse
when death has struck down someone whom we love. ~Freud, Sigmund

Death on a grand scale does not bother us.
We can sit around a dinner table and discuss war,
involving sixty million volatilized human deaths,
as though we were talking about bad weather;
we can watch abrupt bloody death every day,
in color, on films and television, without blinking back a tear.
It is when the numbers of dead are very small, and very close,
that we begin to think in scurrying circles.
At the very center of the problem
is the pending naked coldness of one's own self,
the only reality in nature of which we can have absolute certainty,
and it is unmentionable, unthinkable. ~Thomas, Lewis

Death is not just a matter of fact,
like what doctors are trained to feel;
it is a matter of Fate, intimately connected with life.

Normally, in a patient’s final hours, doctors close the curtain around the bed and disappear,
leaving family members alone with their dying relative. But one doctor, trying to console an elderly woman whose husband is dying,
stayed with her by the side of the bed. As she holds her husband’s hand, he tells her what the strange sights and sounds on the monitors are saying,
and what her husband is experiencing as life ebbs away. That scene of compassion and communication, in the midst of high-tech beepings and buzzings,
shows what doctors can do when nothing can be done.

To wish to see the dearest ones as long as possible in the flesh
is a selfish desire and it comes out of weakness or want of faith
in the survival of the soul after dissolution of the body...
The more I observe and study things, the more convinced I become
that sorrow over separation and death is perhaps the greatest delusion.
To realize that it is a delusion is to become free.
There is no death, no separation of the real substance.
And yet the tragedy of it is that although we love friends
for the substance we recognize in them,
we deplore the destruction of the insubstantial
that covers the substance, for the time being. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Everyone who is being overtaken by death asks for more time,
while everyone who still has time makes excuses for procrastination! ~Hadrat Ali

No man is an island, entirely of himself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends
or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore,
never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; --
it tolls for thee. John Donne

In his 'Meditations' John Donne wrote further:

Tribulation is Treasure in the nature of it,
but it is not current money in the use of it,
except we get nearer and nearer our home - Heaven, by it.
Another man may be sick too, and sick to death,
and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine,
and be of no use to him;
but this bell, that tells me of his affliction,
digs out, and applies that gold to me;
if by this consideration of another's danger,
I take my own into contemplation, and so secure my self,
by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Now, this Bell tolling softly for another,
said to me, Thou must die

Premature death may come as a result of sickness;
but, like birth, death as such is not a sickness at all.
It is the natural and necessary end of human life,
as natural as leaves falling in the autumn.
Physicians should therefore,
explore the possibility of treating death and its pangs
as they have treated labor and its 'pains'.
Death is, after all, a great event.
So long as it is not imminent,
we cling to ourselves and our lives
in chronic anxiety pushed into the back of the mind.
But when the time comes
when clinging is no longer of the least avail,
the circumstances are ideal for letting go of oneself completely.
When this happens,
the individual is released from his ego-prison.
In the normal course of events this is the golden opportunity
for awakening into the knowledge
that one's actual self is the Self which plays the universe,
an occasion for great rejoicing. ~Alan B. Watts

How does one find out about this strange thing that we all have to meet one day or another?
Can you die psychologically today, die to everything that you have known? For instance:
to die to your pleasure, to your attachment, your dependence, to end it without arguing, without rationalizing,
without trying to find ways and means of avoiding it. Do you know what it means to die, not physically,
but psychologically, inwardly? Which means to put an end to that which has continuity; to put an end to your ambition,
because that’s what’s going to happen when you die, isn’t it? You can’t carry it over and sit next to God!

When you actually die, you have to end so many things without any argument. You can’t say to death:
"Let me finish my job, let me finish my book, all the things I have not done, let me heal the hurts which I have given others"
— you have no time. So can you find out how to live a life now, today, in which there is always an ending to everything that you began?
Not in your office of course, but inwardly to end all the knowledge that you have gathered — knowledge being your experiences,
your memories, your hurts, the comparative way of living, comparing yourself always with somebody else. To end all that every day,
so that the next day your mind is fresh and young. Such a mind can never be hurt, and that is innocence.
One has to find out for oneself what it means to die; then there is no fear, therefore every day is a new day
— and I really mean this, one can do this — so that your mind and your eyes see life as something totally new.
That is eternity. That is the quality of the mind that has come upon this timeless state, because it has known
what it means to die every day to everything it has collected during the day. ~J Krishnamurti

There's no cure for birth and death
save to enjoy the interval. ~George Santayana

This is the turning of life's wheel--one of those constants that unites all of us as the fragile yet surprisingly strong human beings that we are.
The one thing that connects us--presidents, celebrities, waitresses, office workers, homeless people --is our mortality.
It's the winding down of years, the inevitability we can't get away from, no matter what we do, or how much money we have,
or how famous we might be. It's a parent getting older, changing before our eyes, slipping and falling, slipping away from us in other ways,
leaving us to wonder how the years could have gone by so fast, how we could have been so reckless with time, with words, with our hearts.
~ Patti Davis, daughter of President Reagan

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Thomas Gray's "ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD"