mind s a tool

I wish that I had known it early enough
That my mind is not me.
My mind is only a tool.
I should have used it as a tool.
And not become a slave to it.
I could have used it to enjoy.
I could have played with it.
I should have sympathized with it.
But I should have never obeyed its dictates
Identifying myself with a mere tool.
I am the master!
I struggled all along not knowing it early enough.

But it is true. Nothing matters! Absolutely nothing matters. Of course, nothing matters at the age of eighty plus. But that is not the point. Nothing actually mattered all along. From birth to this day everything happened as it should. Only I thought it otherwise, and unwittingly wished, had it been otherwise!
Bodily discomfort and pains had always been there. They taught me to endure. Mental discomforts made me think and look for the source. Things happened as it should.
When not enjoying and not in peace, endurance is the way.

artificial life and divinity

What is this, my life in this world that is about to end? Is it just a quality of material when arranged or ‘organized’ in a certain pattern? Physically it is called an organism. Can life be really created artificially?
There is the GENOME project. A complete genome of a bacterium Micoplasma Genitalium has been successfully constructed in the laboratory of J.Krait Wenter Institute, Rockville, US. It is reported that Daniel Gibson & group did this by chemically combining the required parts artificially created.
Now, the significance is that, it would clearly appear that life can be created from materials by correctly joining them. That would support and reinforce the materialist point of view.
We know that when an organism’s ‘organization’ is dismantled, life goes away from it. If re-organized, or re-fitted back, will life come back automatically? Magnetism in a piece of iron comes when its molecules are arranged in a pattern, unidirectional, and goes away when the arrangement is disturbed. Will life come in and go back similarly in an organism when materials are put together and dismantled?
Indeed it looks as if it would. They have now created an organism, howsoever rudimentary its life is, from inert materials! But is there an intelligence that makes life or magnetism jump into materials when its parts or ingredients are put together in the correct pattern? And it is not a simple quality that jumps into the human genome. It is a complex, complicated, intricate system that functions in plant, animal, or human life. Which super-intelligence makes it come about?

DIVINITY is still relevant!

devotion, rituals and meditation

I am walking along the river bank in the early morning fog. When I walk very fast swinging my hands vigorously, my mental processes are slowed down as if physical activity slows down the thought flow. Thoughts come back when I slow down my pace and the breathing also slows down. Although in brisk walk the mental process is less active, I can not say that the mind can be silent or still in physical activity. Surprisingly, it is when I sit down absolutely relaxed with no physical activity at all that the mind too is calm and can be really quiet. When the mind is thus quiet, thoughts do not interfere with my attention. I am then free to see, hear, feel and smell the surroundings with full clarity as they are in the present. What I see then is of course, real without distortion. But what has it to do with Absolute Reality?
I was brought up in a highly religious, although not orthodox, atmosphere. Head of the matriarchal family was an allopath doctor. Father was an educated and religious person. Temples, rituals, prayers, devotional chants with utmost reverence to deities were routine. We, the children of the house learned mantras to chant them with all the disciplines of connected symbols and correct gestures. I concentrated on the image of the deity in the temple, and also the conceptual images in my mind. We praised the deities in Sanskrit poems with utmost devotion. I do understand now that they helped to develop devotion and reverence in our minds. But in those days we did not know anything about the purposes. It was just because we believed that we will achieve material benefits, prosperity, learning and good health if we perform all the rites to please the gods. Any spiritual advancement, or approach to Reality was nowhere in the picture.
Is my present inquiry into the mind and self compatible with those practices? Prayer and devotion are clearly processes in the mind connected with imagery and thought, and therefore they are of the past. How can it reconcile with the activities to get into a silent mind in order to direct the attention towards the mind and its source? A lot of confusion arose in my mind when as a young man I slipped from chanting mantras into the practice of meditation, the technique of achieving a still, silent mind.
Now I do understand that I cannot ‘create’ a silent mind. I can only probe into the mind, understand it, and look further and further within. And in that process the mind may become still and silent. It is also true that discriminative thought and attention create the possibility of understanding the processes of the various states of the mind, making it possible to develop wisdom.
Then, I feel, that intelligence can be complete, filling devotion, reverence, and wisdom in a silent mind.

enjoyments at eighty

In old age I do not find any positive desire as such. Desire for enjoyments and pleasures are deliberately brought in or invoked for avoiding or counteracting discomforts and pains than for their own sake. There is nothing new in enjoyments and pleasures. Or it is just to go along with a habit.
But experiment with my own mind is a sort of pleasure or joy. Everything there is what I have not noticed or experienced so far.
Stillness of mind can not yet ward of physical pain or in full the mental discomfort arising from physical pain. Now at this age all my discomforts seem arise from physical imbalance. The mental ones are being slowly overcome automatically without much effort.

mental blocks, dormand disturbances

As an experiment to find out what could be the result, I do sometimes manage to keep my mind empty with no thought present. I notice then that the thoughts are laying dormant underneath in the subconscious although I don’t know what thoughts. Yet the mind as a whole is alert and attentive. Still, the mind is blank, and remains a clean slate with nothing interesting happening.
Unless some past memory, or projected future, surfaces with clarity, what is the point in keeping the mind quiet?
The reason for the blank mind is some mental block. My mind has developed a tendency not to allow thoughts to come up because any thought that come up of its own may be disturbing. And I have also a lingering belief that it is necessary to keep the mind free of thoughts for effectiveness of meditation. As a result nothing surfaces from the blank mind. The blockage has to be therefore broken. But not deliberately. Any compulsion is again the block. It has somehow to get broken of its own accord.
But even the blank mind has its value. When the mind is silent, I see myself, that is, I am aware of my ego or what I call my own image of myself, as an entity which is entirely fictitious. But it is a useful entity, and there is no need to get rid of it. Can I see something past it, something beyond? Or is there nothing beyond?

stomach agitates the mind

Most of the disturbing thoughts I have, almost all of them, have their origin in the STOMACH! Or so I am tempted to conclude. It is the irritation, the disturbance, however mild, that creates uncomfortable thoughts. Don’t we find that nightmares at night go away after a glass of cool water taken in? It is similar. Even in waking stage the position is the same although I may unconsciously divert my attention elsewhere to avoid uncomfortable thoughts. When I am attentive I am able to detect the phenomenon.
And it is now well known that agonizing thoughts and tensions of the mind can or do create stomach problems. It is therefore a two-way traffic. It is a vicious circle. Stomach trouble creating thought/mind disturbances, and disturbances of the mind creating stomach troubles!
For a lesser degree this may be true in respect of other organs also. May be for other people this may be more true in respect of some other organ in their body.
And, I have forgotten to say the obvious. I have been a heart patient, and any mental disturbance used to trigger palpitation of my heart, and any palpitation of my heart used to agitate my mind!
ARE THOUGHTS CONTOLLED BY MY BODY? Must be, normally, unless I am consciously attentive to be otherwise.