The Great Void

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While you were having a siesta, I was having a fiesta.

After a day-long struggle to get the Samsung washing machine installed, i had a siesta late in the evening.

When i got up at 7:30 PM, i was feeling very refreshed.  That bliss is a great mystery.  Sleep for around an hour and wake up in a totally-different world.  Thoughts come slowly, one is at peace with what's going on around, one is just a witness to phenomena.

What happened in the space of that one hour?  That never ceases to intrigue me.

The reason for the deep bliss is because the mind is sucked into the Abyss and gets washed (away).

The Master explains this in His Visit to Vidyasagar:

"Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean.  (All laugh.) It wanted to tell others how deep the water was.  But this it could never do, for no sooner did it get into the water than it melted.  Now who was there to report the ocean's depth?"

The Ken of Zen

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WiFi was reading Nine Minutes Twenty Seconds, and was saying that it was quite similar to the Airport book written in the 1960s.  But the author's name went missing in both our heads.

I had just had a good siesta and the cobwebs were sort of dusted; i went all quite and started the search proc.  Of course, it would have been easy to google but i decided to pass on this one.

After a while, i got the dude's first name: Arthur, and, after a few more seconds, the surname came up from the deep: Hailey.  So it was Arthur Hailey.

It was very interesting, just watching the entire thing unravel itself.  Just give in the search query and wait for the answer to emerge.  I could almost feel the consciousness on this one!

Holy Mother used to say that there was no need to prove the existence of God; that It was a self-evident truth.  We only have to realize It.  I could feel the full force of that statement in this incident.

It also reminded me of this amusing one between Feynman and the abacus worker, when they both set out to find the cube root of 1729.03, with Feynman using just his head: (Lucky Numbers)

I realized something: he doesn't know numbers. With the abacus, you don't have to memorize a lot of arithmetic combinations; all you have to do is to learn to push the little beads up and down. You don't have to memorize 9+7=16; you just know that when you add 9, you push a ten's bead up and pull a one's bead down. So we're slower at basic arithmetic, but we know numbers.
Furthermore, the whole idea of an approximate method was beyond him, even though a cubic root often cannot be computed exactly by any method. So I never could teach him how I did cube roots or explain how lucky I was that he happened to choose 1729.03.

Related: Why Expert Systems Must Fail

Marvelous MahaSamadhi Day

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Shirdi Sai Baba San attained MahaSamadhi on October 15, 1918

As i slept early on 14th night, i woke up around 2:35 AM.  Couldn't go back to sleep so i got up around 3 AM and did the morning routine till 3:15 AM.

Surfed for a while and found that very amusing Mathematrix from my elder bro.  It kept me in great spirits for quite a while.

Then made some milk for the kids.  This is a great restart with the kids, in case you goof up in your interaction with them the previous day :-)  They love it, as i do it "I want 10' of that" manner; they love all that froth, who wouldn't?

Niki had to leave for a football tournament so everyone was up by 6:45 AM.  I had a headtstart on the morning baddy.  Whenever i get up early, i find that i play in the zone.  All that tiredness due to lack of sleep simply doesn't come into play :-)  It turned out to be one more of those crazy days; i was at like 95% of that sublime date: 9/10/11.

Marty had a PTM so i went to his school, just before the scheduled close at 12:30 PM.  The class teacher was sweet, but he had already parked the report card in the staff room, which was now locked.  I spoke of kids hitting their potential and how we should do all we can to achieve that.  He's a LeOx, like those stalwarts, Obama and Sergey Brin.  With a Leonage like that, i am going to push him just that bit more.

While coming back, a truck was trying to turn off the main road near the mesmerizing Mariamman temple in Varthur, so i held back and let him turn, thinking of NRN's Public Good before Private Good funda.  But, very soon, i was reminded of Ramana's more incisive comment in Who Am I?:

All that one gives to others one gives to one's self. If this truth is understood who will not give to others?

A viewpoint like that will cut through all the fluff of thinking; it's tremendously liberating and, additionally, there's hardly much thought of taking credit for such an action.

The painters were doing their second day at our place and they were all over the place.  I even broached the topic of painting a huge house number on our roof so that it's visible when the satellites take their next shot! While the leader of the group didn't get it, his sidekick did and pretty fast.  He's their geek.

I was pretty tired by now and hit the bed.  There was a moment of distraction when i had to go outside the house without the keys and, very thankfully, the main door didn't close behind me.  The Old Man was watching.  I had a good laugh over it and, that was more or less the last thought before i hit the deep end of the ocean.

I was very refreshed when i got up around 5:30 PM.  With the puja yet to be done, i was getting into the mood.  Folks normally go for their exercise/walk around this time so the house was silent and it jelled with my blissful mood much.

I read chapters 31 and 32 of the Shri Sai Satcharita, the extra one to take care of the Sunday, my day of rest.

Read this interesting snippet in The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi: (page 277, top)

Concerning the practice of nAmajapa, it is worthwhile to quote a passage from a dialogue between a devotee of Sai Baba and Ramana Maharshi:

Devotee: "My practice has been continuous invocation of the names of God while breathing in, and of the name of Sai Baba while breathing out.  Simultaneously with this I see the form of Baba always.  Even in Bhagavan I see Baba.  The external appearances are also much alike.  Bhagavan is thin.  Baba was a little stout.  Should I continue this method or change it?  Something within tells me that if I stick to name and form I shall never get beyond them but I can't understand what further to do if I give them up.  Will Bhagavan please enlighten me?"

Bhagavan: "You may continue with your present method.  When the japa becomes continuous all other thoughts cease and one is in one's real nature which is invocation or absorption.  We turn our minds outwards to things of the world and are therefore not aware that our real nature is always invocation.  When with conscious effort, or invocation, or meditation as we call it, we prevent our minds from thinking of other things, then what remains is our real nature, which is invocation…. There is no difference between God and His name."

Repeating Ramana Sadguru in the night is so much more mysterious.  I think of the Sea Sands quarters to keep count and imagine myself as a bairagi in front of each house as i go about it.  The numbers in my head are stored in the same manner as the layout of Sea Sands, and, IMHO, this is the reason why i rarely forget a b'day.


The serene mood lingered over the dinner.

eXtreme Rallies

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When you want to smash, smash, don't drop.—Prakash Easwaran

While checking out a baddy tip last night, saw this: (check out the score!)

Danger Badminton, Longest Exreme Men's Double Rally

Explosive as it is, it can't be the longest one as i have seen this 90+ shot rally at AEO 07:

Amazing badminton rally at AEO 07

At our morning baddy, we have rallies up to 25-30 shots every once in a while.  Just last morning, Manish played out of his skin right at the start of an intense game against Naren & Navneet.

The one i cherish the most is one when, down match-point and staring down the (baddy?) barrel, Naren and i rallied back in an inter-club match in DEC.2007:

Once there was a rally

Neither of us refused to give up, somehow pulling off returns for the opponent's pushes from close to the net. The home team didn't want to take the risk of hitting out or into the net, but still they pushed us to the limit. Finally they capitulated, though i can't recall how it ended. When i pinged Naren about it, he also couldn't recollect that :-)

Bay of Fundy: Where the Fun Never Dies

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Felt very nice to see this in a Google Alert.

Bay of Fundy one of 28 'Wonders of Nature' finalists
Canada's Bay of Fundy is one of 28 finalists in a bid to be named one of the world's new seven "Wonders of Nature."
The 270 kilometre-long ocean bay stretches between the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and is home to the highest tides in the world -- and dozens of species of whales.
"The tides here are 53 feet, or 17 metres high. Most of the world's tides are around five feet," said Bay of Fundy Tourism's Terri McCullough.
Locals think it's a natural wonder -- and are hoping it will be designated a contest winner.

From Wikipedia:

The Bay of Fundy (French: Baie de Fundy) is a bay on the Atlantic coast of North America, on the northeast end of the Gulf of Maine between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. Some sources believe the name "Fundy" is a corruption of the French word "Fendu", meaning "split", while others believe it comes from the Portuguese fondo, meaning "funnel".

I first read about it in the late 1980s in RD's Marvels and Mysteries of the World Around Us.  Here's the page (#186) from the same:

The text in the image at the top right goes:

High tide in Canada's Bay of Fundy (above) almost covers a large weir used to trap salmon.  The scene changes dramatically at low tide (below), and a truck can be driven out to retrieve the catch.

while the one in the bottom reads:

Fundy Tides—Why So High?
The world's most spectacular tides are a matter of daily routine in the Bay of Fundy, an inlet of sea that cuts about 170 miles into Canada's Atlantic coast between the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.  The main reason for the gargantuan tides—which rise to 53 feet at some points—is the Bay's unusual funnel shape.  Not only do its shorelines converge sharply from mouth to head, but its bottom also slopes upwards.  There is no outlet to the sea at the head of the Bay; thus when the tide sweeps in, its waters converge and build up as the Bay gets narrower.  At low tide, broad, reddish mud flats lie bare beneath vertical cliffs that stand high and dry.  Then twice each day the sea comes rushing in to fill this immense natural funnel, and the landscape is transformed into a seascape.

Here's a short video of that exquisite transformation:

Bay of Fundy

కడుపా, చెరువా?—Trois

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If you want to eat an elephant, eat it piece by piece.

—Balki at IIM-A

After the puja and vehicle puja this Dasara morning, kids were in the mood for a bit of experimentation for dinner.

They got the stuff from the nearby Sorbet (love that word).  Niki made a nice salad and Marty went for some Oreo truffles.  Gosh, the sort of words that we hear, thanks to our kids!  That:

From the mouths of babes came words we shouldn't have uttered in the first place,

isn't necessarily true ;-)

Then Marty and i watched McOz, what we call MasterChef Australia.  This is easily the best of the lot, with the copy cats such as McIndia and McUS coming nowhere close.

After that, there was a bit of a shock when i went into the utility.  The sink was chock-a-block with all sorts of slurry stuff, a tough job for any maid to clean up.  Felt that's how we are treating Mother Earth: phucking Her up with our cr@ppy stuff and expecting Her to clean up.  I guess She would, by throwing the baby out with the bathwater!  As John Ross said:

Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back.

Somehow, got some semblance back and turned my attention to the job on hand: dinner at 11 PM.  There was a bowlful of beans and another of rice and everyone else fast asleep.

The beans was good for three to four people.  So i prayed to my elder brother: (from Ramakrishna As We Saw Him, page 491, middle)

Trigunatita had a strange capacity for food. He could eat an enormous amount of food, and again, he could fast for days at a stretch. About his eating habits, Premananda said: "He had an occult power. Once I thickened seven and a half seers of milk [two gallons approximately] and served him the whole quantity. He ate it all without stopping. On another occasion, he stayed under the bel tree of Belur Math for several days, eating only one banana a day." Once Premananda's mother invited three of the Master's disciples to Balaram Bose's house. She cooked various dishes, but because of unavoidable circumstances only Trigunatita was able to go there. She was unhappy that much food would be wasted. However, Trigunatita began to eat and gradually finished the entire quantity. Premananda's mother was frightened, thinking that the swami would be sick. The next day, when she saw the swami well, she remarked: "It is amazing how Sarada (Trigunatita) eats! he has traveled over many mountains and learned many mantras so he can make any amount of food vanish. Otherwise it is not possible for a human being to eat so much."

Slowly i went about the task.  For some protein (good in the night), i knocked off some daal as well.  My blood sugar would have been shot to hell, were it not for that basmati rice, the glycemic index of which is at the higher end (69) of the medium range.

Later on, it reminded me of this amusing riposte from that peerless Tortilla Flat:

Teacher: "You mean to stand there and tell me that all you eat is beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?!"
Paisano Kid: "Well, what else do we need?"

Only one portion of rice was left at the end, but that would serve as a nice hors d'oeuvre for kakabali.

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Three-pronged App

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On a private email thread on the birthday of our dear Advaitin (& dancer!) Sudesh and rafter Divakar, i had mentioned that, for me, spirituality was philosophy in action and the only philosophy that made any sense to me was the "actionable" type.

Asked to elaborate on that [w/o referring to another web link :-)], i put together some thoughts that i have been "mule"ing over for a while.  This is what came out:

After reading various books, and esp. the Shri Sai Satcharita the last five years, i have the following superstructure of the world:

• There's something in the background.  Call it Love, Truth, Allah, Brahman, Christ Consciousness, Formless, Wakan Tanka, whatever.
• This something is in our (spiritual) hearts as well, and is our prime-mover and animator.  It's the One that's giving rise to our thoughts, actions, etc.
• This One, which is "out there" as well as "in here", is recording everything.  It's a witness to phenomena.
• Due to this background One, we are all connected.

With this superstructure in mind, i would like to interface with the world, because the world that we XP (experience) is a reflection (might be delayed) of how we interface with it.

For me, the three main points of living are in this succinct quote by the Master (Sri Ramakrishna), who observed in His Visit to Vidyasagar:

Compassion, Love of God, and renunciation are the glories of true knowledge.

క్లుప్తంగా ఎంత బాగా చెప్పారు!

I feel that the secret of life can be derived from the following quote:
| You like because, you love in spite of
as:
You're happy because, you're joyous in spite of.

Love is the secret. Of course, whether you want to limit it to your family or extend it to the world is up to you.

Compassion is the glue that binds you to the world.  The other person's pain is your pain.  Can i do something to alleviate it?  The more your love for the world and all its denizens increases, the greater your compassion.

~~~*-*~@~

Love of God will result in tears that will wash away mental impurities.  As Swami Shivananda writes in God Lived with Them: (page 136, middle)

When I first started visiting the Master, I often felt inclined to cry. One night I was crying uncontrollably by the riverside near the bakul tree. The Master was in his room, and he inquired where I had gone. When I returned he asked me to sit down and said: "The Lord is greatly pleased if one cries to him. Tears of love wash away the mental impurities accumulated through the ages. It is very good to cry to God."

~~~*-*~@~

Renunciation is not only giving up the results of your actions.  It:

… is not the negation of something positive; it is quite the opposite, that is, the abandonment of what, being ultimately unreal, is not worthy of our attention.

This is what i sincerely feel.  How much one is able to apply in one's life is, of course, the test :-)

Thankfully, Life is analog and not digital.  Can i increase my spirituality (=philosophy in action) from 70% (one σ) to 95% (two σ), and then to 99.5% (three σ).

Don't give up, stay the course, and, who knows what will happen.  The grace of the Great Infinite Spirit might descend on you!