Tag: Japa

Sunrise Or Sunset.


My fellow blogger and friend Chuck aka Shackman calls some of his sayings ‘Shackmanese’. This is an example of that. He did not provide an exclamation mark or a question mark at the end and has left fellow LBC writers to decide on how to approach the topic.

I have decided to oblige him by replacing the ‘or’ with ‘and’, just to try and rile him a bit.

When it is Sunrise time for Shackman, it is Sunset time for me in terms of actual daily events. Neither of us is in the Sunrise stage metaphorically any longer and so, I shall not dwelve on it and instead talk about the real ones in my life at this Sunset years of my life.

My home opens out in the front to the West and the two bedrooms at the rear have windows and a balcony opening out to the East. Sunrise cannot be seen from the bedrooms because of other buildings and trees at the back. Sunset however can be seen from our front verandah, but that is a pleasure that I can indulge in only in the winters as otherwise it will be too hot in the summers and it is usually overcast in the monsoons.

Every morning, I sit in our verandah facing the West first with my morning mug of tea and then for an hour of japa. It is a time when the sun rises from the rear of our home and starts to illumine the Western sky and some of the distant building facades. Very often the light reflects off some distant pane of glass. It is the time of slow coming to life in our neighbourhood with bird sounds, distant sounds of traffic and the occasional angry sound of a locomotive horn from the railway line a couple of kilo meters away from home.  The air is fresh and crisp. People walk, jog or just start leaving for work and other regulars like milkmen, newspaper delivery boys, breadwallah etc also ply.  By the time I get up, I am fully charged to face the rest of the day. I love the 75 minutes that I spend thus every morning in the verandah experiencing the sunrise, albeit not witnessing it directly.

Given the choice, I would like to see both the sunrise and the sunset every day,  but perforce have to be satisfied with the sunset in the winters. Indicative of the stage of my life too?

Shackman has suggested this topic for the weekly LBC blog posts. You can see what the other writers of the LBC have to say in their respective blogs.  Maria, Pravin, Ashok and Shackman.

Doing Something II.

Cheerful Monk while commenting on my post Doing Something asked – “So what are you choosing to do? How are you making that choice?” In the same post, Wisewebwoman commented – “You need to share, Ramana!”

My response is This. Please click on the images for larger resolutions.

And this.

My life has been like the clip below for quite some time now and I often throw the cup and the balls away just like the child in the clip does.

I hope that my responses have amused my readers enough to come to some serious stuff.

I don’t set an alarm clock to wake up in the mornings. My inner mechanism has a built-in alarm that wakes me up around 4.45 am every morning. Till 8.30 my morning is taken up by meditation, yoga, morning cup of tea, japa, prayers and breakfast. After those have been handled to my satisfaction, I read four news papers everyday and also solve four crossword puzzles that come in them. That takes me to around 1200 noon when I start reading whatever I am currently reading in the form of a book or one or more of the many magazines that I subscribe to. Lunch is around 1.00 pm and after lunch too I read till about 2.00 pm when I go off for my siesta till 3.30 pm. From then till 5.30 pm I am either at the computer catching up with my mail and attending to other matters like blogging / reading other blogs and reading the international news. I then go to a park nearby for a walk and meeting with my friends and return to my computer to end whatever has been left over for the day which will include a session or two with Facebook. I either watch a movie or some program on the TV or read till 10.00 pm when I go off to bed to sleep.

This routine is often changed to include going out to see movies or to lunch with family or friends but by and large it is unchanged except when visitors come calling.

I am sure that my readers will agree that all the above will come under the classification of doing ‘nothing’. I enjoy being in my comfort zone and am content with my life as it is.

Now to what earthshaking ‘thing’ that I do when I do do something. For some strange reason, I am treated like a sage by some people. Simply stated, I mentor some younger friends and allow my broad shoulders to be used to cry on by some friends and relatives of around my age.This can be in person, by mail, whatsApp or phone calls. Not a day passes when I don’t have to handle one or two of such interludes in my life.

There Monk and WWW, I have bared my soul!

Imagination.

“A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written.”
~ Isaac Asimov.

As I start writing this post, it occurs to me that it is the latter that will be applicable in my case.

A friend of Indian origin who lives overseas has a younger brother who suffers from dementia. He is lucid at times and not most of the time. He has been admitted to a home where other persons with dementia are boarded and looked after by a panel of psychiatrists and trained personnel. The brother’s immediate family has abandoned him and the only person in touch with him is his daughter from an earlier marriage, also living overseas. Whenever she talks to him she promises to come and take him away with her. This has been going for quite some time.

I was requested by my friend to visit the brother and find out how he is which I gladly did a few days ago. Before I could go to the home, we had to get an appointment and so the staff had told the brother that someone was coming to see him. When I landed up in his room, he was most disappointed because he had imagined that his daughter was coming to take him away. He had packed all his stuff and got ready to go and it was heart breaking for me to disappoint him. Imagination played havoc with him!

I spend about seventy five minutes every morning sitting in our veranda with my morning tea and japa. The mind being what it is, it often strays and goes off into tangents and while the mental chanting keeps mechanically going on, the mind usually goes off into a different realm altogether and I have to bring it back to the present with some effort.

This is normal as my teachers have repeatedly informed me and regular practice will eventually bring it under control which will be of benefit for both the japa exercise and meditation. Imagination playing spoilsport with me too!

I would like to close this post with a very powerful short film The Egg to demonstrate what human imagination can do with such a medium. Do please spend the 12 odd minutes that it will take to watch it till the end. You will like the message.

In the new year, an old LBC blogger will be rejoining us and I welcome Maria the gaelikaa to the group. This week’s topic for the LBC blog post has been suggested by me. You can see to the other three views at Maria, Pravin and Shackman at their respective blogs.