Tag: owning things

  • The space

    Last week I went to a salon to take a haircut. All this resulted in in lot of thoughts. The thoughts started from body, to space to the consciousness. For simplicity I believe until we end the contest of God let us call the God or consciousness as space. Coming back to the thoughts, the barber put a cloth around me and sprayed water on my head. In winters, water becomes cold. I was surprised by this sudden spray of water. A couple of thoughts ran my mind. Had I drunk this water, this water would have become part of me. In fact, for the world, it would have lost its existence; for the world, it would be simply Pravin no more water as an entity. At the same time, for me – or say my body – it would not have been the surprise experience of sprayed cold water.

    The barber started trimming my hair. Some hair fell on the cloth that was covering me. A thought struck me again – “my hair”. The moment I thought of my hair. I realized it is no more “my hair” it is just “hair”. We start identifying things with possession – my car, my mobile, his chair, and so on. In reality, this possession is very superficial.

    We breathe in and out every few seconds. The moment we inhale; the air becomes “my breath”; after we breathe out, it is again simply air! How ignorant we are about every tiny content, visible or invisible. We inherit it from the earth, and we will leave it here, but we start identifying it with ourselves and ownerships.

    The space

    Slowly, I have started looking at things differently. Last time, I wrote about science and spirituality. In that blog, I tried connecting the dots of space and consciousness. We have space within us and space is everywhere. Similarly, Consciousness is everywhere – some call it God.

    I was talking to my wife about it. When I told her about space within us – I went to the level of atoms. Every atom has space between the nucleus and the orbit of each electron. This space is bigger than the size of the nucleus and the electrons. I tried explaining consciousness and space relation to her. Let us say you go to the water purifier and fill your water bottle with water. Next, I go and do the same. We start saying this water in the bottle as “my water”. On one note, if someone takes water from the purifier and deep freeze it – the same water becomes ice. Our, body is like the ice, we see it separate from everything. It is part of the same whole as the ice is from the water purifier. We become from nothing and end in nothing. As I wrote in a previous blog – tender coconut. What remains with us? We start calling water “my water” or my body – in my analogy. Does it remain with us forever? No. It is the other way round – we leave the body here. We do not take anything with us. We end up in the space. When I say “we” – what is that we? It is not the body.

    The essence

    The haircut connected me to the consciousness once again. This haircut was very profound, it gave me a lot of thoughts and ways to connect multiple dots. We are not just this limited manifestation – as this Autumn leaf states. We are the past, present, and future of humankind. Every generation gain from the predecessors and leave for successors. Additionally, everything around us – the space – is conscious enough. We make an impact long after we have left a place. Our whole family has been reciting Bhojan Mantra twice daily, at mealtime. The meaning of the Mantra is very profound. The Bhojan mantra explains everything very profoundly – everything comes into existence from the Brahman and goes back to the Brahman.

  • Owning up things







    alien-house2Recently I got married. Before marriage, I always planned and lived with minimum stuff. I never owned even a wheel of a bicycle. The most surprising stuff started just two days before marriage. Somebody broke into my apartment. When I reached home, my first reaction was – “com’on you must be kidding! How can one think that I would have stuff at home to steal?” The only possession I owned until recently was – 1. consumables, my books & my degrees; everything else at home is from my landlord. My landlord has been kind to offer fully furnished apartment.

    Anyways, so this journey of conversion from being a nomad to settler started just some time back. When we – I and my wife – traveled from her home to my home we had 60KG of suitcase stuff. A lot is still at her parents home. My luggage weighs at least 3 times that much; that is besides the point. Let me qualify the stuff I am talking about – its everything I own.

    Now, as a settler I am planning to buy things, we have started with a scooter, planning washing machine, fridge, TV, car and home etc. The list is almost endless. I am sure the burden of these purchases going to be more tiring.

    Now, I am changing, I have learnt – from Mahavir and the Buddha – “no hoarding, no stealing etc we have forgotten… we will leave everything here but still we want to own stuff.” Now, I am calling all those things written above as – “convenience”, “required to make life easier”. That is being mean – defining everything at one’s “convenience” (bending the definitions).

    But who says one must become masochist in the name of being an ascetic?

    I know owning up things should not becoming things owning me. Reminds me of The book of Mirdad, more blogs on the book here 

    Less possession less possessed.

    Image source – http://www.maydolly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/alien-house2.jpg