December 2020 – Ramana's Musings

Synchronicity Again.

This story has its beginning a few weeks ago. I had asked my cousin who now lives in Tamil Nadu, the length of a South Indian dhoti to compare it with what we get here in Maharashtra where I live.

Instead of answering, he simply ordered me to accept two dhoties as gifts from him and that he will arrange to procure them and send to me. Naturally, I was delighted and gratefully accepted his gift which duly arrived.

During the same conversation, he asked me if I had an image of our Kuladeivam (family deity) in my puja alcove. I responded with a no. He did not mention anything further but, I felt that now being the head of my rather dispersed family, I should have the same in my puja alcove and found a studio in Tamil Nadu who was capable of making one to my liking.

I ordered four of them to be sent to me, another cousin now resident of Maharashtra, my sister in Bengaluru and for the cousin who had asked me the question which led me to this activity. On being advised about this, the last on the list regretted that he would not be able to accept the gift as he already had one and had limited space in his retirement home. I therefore got left with one extra to my need.

Yesterday, I was in one of my periodic streamlining exercises and decided to part with a rare PDF spiral bound printed version of a very popular prayer. I offered it to a Vedanta classmate of mine who can read Tamil and she promptly accepted it. While I was getting it ready it occurred to me to ask her if she would like the spare deity too and she was overwhelmed. It turned out that we shared the same family deity and she too did not have the image in her puja alcove.

I sent both the PDF and the image to her earlier this morning and she is simply ecstatic.

I have been left wondering about the sequence of events that led to this development and can only come back to my favourite explanation “synchronicity”.

I Am Blessed.

For sometime now, I had been searching book shops in India and online sellers, for a book “The Path of Purification: Visuddhimagga”. I had not succeeded as it has been out of print for near 12 years.

I even found an online pdf version which was duly downloaded by a friend who got it printed, spiral bound and delivered to me. I was happy till I discovered that it was too unwieldy for me to hold and read, and in a moment of inspiration, I approached my friend and Vipassana teacher HG if he could help me get a copy. Like the very resourceful man that he is, he promptly sought help from a friend of his in Sri Lanka and was able to get me a copy which was sent by post from Sri Lanka and which reached me today.

This post is not about finally getting the book that I had been wanting to study for so long but, to express my gratitude to two remarkable people.

The fist is of course HG who had earlier featured in my post on Tragic Optimism and the other, that wonderful Buddhist in Sri Lanka, IDS, who took great pains to procure the book, pack it for overseas despatch and sent to me. And most important, practicing a Buddhist tenet of Dana, gifted it to me, a total stranger.

I am indeed blessed to have such people in my life.

Degrowth.

I draw my readers’ attention to the comments by Nick and Mike in my post “Do You Believe In The Great Reset?”

These two comments reminded me of a very significant book Degrowth by Giorgos Kallis which I read before Covid hit us early this year. Covid has brought in focus many worries that had occupied thinking minds about our world and the book sounds in retrospect almost prophetic.

I was reminded of the book by another reminder in the form of an interview that Georgos Kallis gave to our Economic times three days ago.

Some of my other recent posts have been trying to convey to my readers that living a simple life with few wants can be very satisfactory and more important, possible.

I urge my readers to read the book.

Do You Believe In The Great Reset?

Definition of reset
transitive verb

1: to set again or anew
reset type
reset a diamond
reset a circuit breaker
2: to change the reading of often to zero
reset an odometer.

Do I believe in the Great Reset? I do not know about the “great” in that question but, I do believe in RESET.

When I look back at my life, I see that I have been resetting my life every so often that I never even noticed that I was resetting my life. Relocations, new schools, new friends, new relationships, new jobs, promotions, again relocations, marriage, parenthood, illnesses and recovery, death and coming to grips with separations, and so on and so forth.

Then came retirement and its own resets. I had just got used to that and settled down to a sedate and contented lifestyle when Covid hit the world and while everyone had to adjust, the only difference that it made to me was to curtail my regular meetings with my friends once a month and a reunion twice a year. I could not go to my barber and pedicurist and had to make do with long hair and toe nails till the latter got trimmed by my very considerate son. For a while my daily quota of newspapers stopped and I was lost but made do with books and online news.

All those have now been pushed back and life is more or less back to normal except that I still hesitate to go out as I am vulnerable due to my preexisting conditions.

When and if life returns to the pre Covid ways, I will have to do very little to reset.

“Sleep is our recharge function and our reset button…and we all need a reset button sometimes.”
― Sam Owen.

I sleep soundly twice every 24 hours and that natural reset keeps me going.

This is my contribution to this week’s Friday 8 On 1 blog post topic. The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Maria. Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman , Srinivas and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Maria. Please do go over to their respective blogs to see what they have to say on the topic. Thank you.

Winter.

Pune where I live is experiencing cold wave conditions and my home being on the ground level and surrounded by trees hardly gets any sunlight. As a result it can be 2 to 4 degrees colder than outside.

As it happens so often in my life, synchronicity struck and I came across this image in WhatsApp sent by a friend who knows how much I love to read.