The competition is always with yourself. You are your biggest foe. Hence the wars we should wage should be against ourselves. Junk food, distractions, lazying around, dopamine addictions, plan B’s, etc, unite to play with your mind and intentions. This is the fight that matters to us and not the social status games.
Flow
To enter the flow state, an idea should completely infect your mind. And that idea should be something that you strongly desire and yearn for. The half-hearted wishes do not let you fall into immersion and experience the joy that effortless action brings. At that moment, one truly understands what the right action is.
Verschlimmbesserung
It’s a german word and in English, it is loosely translated to bad improvement.
It is the process of spoiling something by overdoing it. The artist does it by giving a few extra unnecessary strokes to the painting. The musician does it by adding more notes, the chef by mixing needless spices, and so on.
The eagerness to perfect something and the will to go above and beyond sometimes is detrimental.
At times, the good is the thing to settle for and not hunt for the best one.
As I climb (Poem)
Cricket on the granite steps
in
a Yoga asana
or a Kung fu move
hard to stop
in the spy-movie lights.
Folk music and dog barks
in the cosmic background
as the lizard near the light
is interrogating and shadowing
the migration of insects
like Sherlock along with its Watson.
Chinese clothes on the nylon rope
suspicious of getting dried
in the dark-American winds.
One crazy cat has loosened its fur anarchy
onto the world with night king eyes
and convicted paws.
The ice-chipped
winds and the shadows
of unknown lights
erect silent goosebumps
on deforested body
as the legs pass the stanzas
of concrete.
Slow
Go slow. Reduce the pace.
The only thing you are rushing towards is death. Nothing will change that.
The speedy showers, hasty dressing up, and the gulping down of coffee to save microseconds won’t matter in the end. Take a chill pill.
India, Undefined. (Poem)
All scholarly tongues are silent,
And all the well-read pass the buck
if asked to define India.
Cultures are made anew every morning
Religions redefined again in the afternoon
And spirituality altered for every new moon.
Every street has a fresh social norm
and it’s own intricacies.
Every bystander a philosopher.
And every cow is holy in some sense.
Rivers, trees, stones,
snakes, eagles, dogs,
earth, water, soil, air
all worshipped and none left
in this land.
Snowy Himalayas try to offer truth,
Monasteries, a bit of solitude
and a Gandhi statue non-violence
amidst a billion-plus population.
Modern men and women
carry ancient tags of caste
and millennial identities
in the same bodies.
The threads of
Past, present and the future
bind together
to create a land of no time.
Fate aligned to karma.
Justice tied to power.
and liberty hand in glove
with money.
Politics performing sorcery.
Economy doing yoga.
Science flirting with customs.
Technology with Jugaad.
Administration to connections.
And sports — running between the wickets.
but this is just
one India,
in so many other Indias
in India.
A forever plural nation.
The
What-ness
Why-ness
Where-ness
How-ness
of it all
is breathtakingly
unusual.
Problems
The problems that you encounter more or less define where you are in life. If the delay of Amazon delivery is your biggest problem to worry then it shows our priorities and the state of our living. Bigger problems put you in a different plane which in turn puts us in a different direction and path. Petty problems, petty life. It’s that simple.
The Plant that refused to die (Poem)
The sun asked the little petals
to surrender.
Winds were ready
to write the obituary column.
Roots too tired
to venture in the desert soils.
Rain —
it’s been 3 years.
Fellow pals
gave up a long time.
The sky and the earth thought
another day, another death.
there’s little hope
in the bony stem
if you ask me.
Yet
the lad
was laughing.
and taught me
more than any wise book
or the enlightened mystic.
When the rain
finally fell,
the plant
cried in silence
and told the flower —
I knew it.
Thoughts
The more we live in our heads, the more reality gets twisted and frightens us. Practicing presence and mindfulness helps us witness a less scary and terrifying world. We feel much lighter if we can leave the mind world for a bit. Treat your mind like a gym where you need to go to do some work and after that leave it and lock the damn door.
Mind chatter and your pampering of it trap you and create problems that never existed in the first place.
Time
One, time corrupts memory. When recalled, we often exaggerate or understate what exactly happened. This was seen clearly when 9/11 survivors told the things that never happened to the media, that’s why so many rumors and gossip have cropped up. Second, we are poor long-term decision-makers. The brain has a ‘Now bias’, that is only to think of short-term consequences and effects and nudge us to do things that give fruits at this moment. The serious long-term effects are thrown away and never shown to us in the fullest sense, hence we often procrastinate or ignore important tasks and do silly things that usually won’t matter down the line.
Thy Vox 