The title is a song by Sant Shishunaala Sharif, a 19th century spiritual poet of North Karnataka, South India. This song urges the listener to smoke a Hookah (a smoking pipe) to understand how one should lead life! Open the small cloth bag called mind, pull out the hash called greed/lust, crush it in a chillum called faith and light it with a fire called intelligence, Smoke that Hookah, he says.
I listened to the rendition at Raghudixit Project from where the above paragraph is also taken. Theirs is an upcoming innovative band making news in Bangalore and other parts of India.
The saint is beautifully bringing out the topic I've written about many times in the blog - light up the mind and destroy it. Then will end Maya this illusion that makes up our so called universe, life and everything that goes with the limited existence.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
An inspiring visit
Recently due to various circumstances created by my employer and the apathetic Indian Govt., I had the opportunity to visit the great city of London for a few days. I traveled quite a bit around the city during which I visited a few museums - National (art) gallery, British museum, Natural history museum, Royal observatory, National maritime museum! That is a lot of Science, culture, arts and History packed in the limited space of a few days! Being an avid fan of Discovery, National Geographic and such documentary channels this was an intense experience for me, to absorb the knowledge of 1000s of years of research by some of the brightest human beings. Obviously I only skimmed the surface for the most part due to limited time and patience. Yet, I completely felt mesmerized, like a kid watching the night sky for the first time. It was overwhelming many times during this visit... when I felt so out of depth, like a small drop of water gazing at the zillions of rain droplets. I felt I should be a Scientist, working on some abstruse research problem with no care for money or the other aspects of life. Those dreams I once had as a kid resurfaced! I'd often wished to be endowed with super intelligence, to be an ultra genius!
I am truly amazed at the contributions of the human race. More importantly, I'm all the more fascinated by the PRESERVATION and showcasing of these mammoth achievements, something that rarely if ever happens in India. It has taken immense discipline and collective efforts to build such a collection of artifacts over the course of decades, or even centuries. Truly the British are a great race (atleast in this sense) and in some aspects Indians need to be grateful to them for ruling over the country and bequeathing a few useful systems (railways, postal system, ...). However, this is not to say the Indians or any other countrymen are any less, nor does it detract from condoning imperial suppression of cultures.
There is an incredible amount of greatness that comes out of discipline and collective effort, when will powers rarely transgress boundaries. This is the only lesson for India and the rest of the ancient civilizations that were once upon a time the envy of all, but have since fallen way back in terms of 'progress'. Look at the Greek, Indian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and such civilizations and its clear as vanilla to draw this conclusion. 'Progress' here refers mainly to Scientific and materialistic levels. As for spiritual evolution, nobody knows even about their closest friend, so what can be said about countries? (Religion is not to be mistaken for spirituality).
Anyway, these sort of changes are cyclical. Just like the seasons, the stock market, the tides and all natural phenomenon. So, there will be, like in a sinusoidal wave, a peak point at which the greatness of these other countries will slide down, and like the cosine wave India and other nations will regain their glory. About the period, it might range from centuries to millenniums or more. So, you and me should stop waiting for improvements and simply live life!
I am truly amazed at the contributions of the human race. More importantly, I'm all the more fascinated by the PRESERVATION and showcasing of these mammoth achievements, something that rarely if ever happens in India. It has taken immense discipline and collective efforts to build such a collection of artifacts over the course of decades, or even centuries. Truly the British are a great race (atleast in this sense) and in some aspects Indians need to be grateful to them for ruling over the country and bequeathing a few useful systems (railways, postal system, ...). However, this is not to say the Indians or any other countrymen are any less, nor does it detract from condoning imperial suppression of cultures.
There is an incredible amount of greatness that comes out of discipline and collective effort, when will powers rarely transgress boundaries. This is the only lesson for India and the rest of the ancient civilizations that were once upon a time the envy of all, but have since fallen way back in terms of 'progress'. Look at the Greek, Indian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and such civilizations and its clear as vanilla to draw this conclusion. 'Progress' here refers mainly to Scientific and materialistic levels. As for spiritual evolution, nobody knows even about their closest friend, so what can be said about countries? (Religion is not to be mistaken for spirituality).
Anyway, these sort of changes are cyclical. Just like the seasons, the stock market, the tides and all natural phenomenon. So, there will be, like in a sinusoidal wave, a peak point at which the greatness of these other countries will slide down, and like the cosine wave India and other nations will regain their glory. About the period, it might range from centuries to millenniums or more. So, you and me should stop waiting for improvements and simply live life!
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