Gleaning Grace

here is an excerpt from my story...

"...It was in the sixth year that I found out what made me stay on. I was standing on the top of the huge concrete building of the monastery, where hundreds of would-be monks stayed for the studies in philosophy and theology. The urbanized landscape of Bangalore city ticked with fast breathing before my eyes. That was the first time I noticed life-on-fast-track, others and my own. The reason that made me stay on was that I never wanted to stay out. Life had gained a fast momentum making it almost impossible to pause and stay out..."

I am back with my story...

Hi everyone,..
I am back in my blog again...
I haven't been writing much for I got little time to reflect as I was busy in just observing and feeling...However, things around me force deep thoughts on the meaning of my life........humm....looks like I am meditating?.......well, no wonder...I am in Rishikesh, a place considered to be an abode of Gods and Godess and more imporatantly the land of Ganga, the Holy River....You get to ask questions and find answers here.......Ganga takes you out of the world.......
...I am writing now.....not about Ganga....about myself.......that is one thing about Ganga....she reflects ourselves............
..So I thought I look back my life in the past and present and find grace in my way.....

I titled my story "gleaning grace".....I hope to post paragraphs from my story soon...

Inertia

If there is one intransmutable law of nature that defines my life, it must be a vindication of Newton's First Law of Motion. The Law of Inertia states that a body in motion will stay in motion and that a body at rest will stay at rest. For me it's all about change. While most people are afraid of change, I love to act as an agent or catalyst of change. It's what makes life so interesting to me, but I must admit it does have its fallout from time to time.

Claim of my Right to Silence

These days I was engaged too much with lot of things...busy and tiring...worries and anxieties....stress and tension......I got up this morning and remembered my RIGHT to silence...my RIGHT to be calm...my RIGHT to pause....when the world around me noises.....why should I too.....I have a right to silence.....I am reminded religious life is about claiming my right to walk my life in God......

Water

Water is the element I like most... It is shapeless... It is colorless... It is tasteless... It has no smell....yet it can gather everything...it can encompass almost anything...even the fire...

It can take the shape of rivers and oceans...It can get dirty...It can taste sweet and smell foul...yet when it goes up to the clouds it is pure water...

I thought about my soul looking like water...it has taken shape in me...the color, taste and smell and all my features it gathered in me...when it goes up to the clouds i got to make sure it is pure soul.

A Tiny Plant on a Hard Rock

I saw a tiny tender plant poking out of a crack on a hard rock...it may not live long...but it had a bunch of young buds..in a couple of days it could bloom...when the butterflies or bees see that, they are going to marvel at the challenge the tiny plant has met...it has poked out of a hard rock!!!

It tells of a struggle!!!

Be like a Lake

The old Master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. 'How does it taste?' the Master asked.'Awful,' spat the apprentice.The Master chuckled and then asked the young man to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and when the apprentice swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the old man said, 'Now drink from the lake.'As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the Master asked, 'How does it taste?' 'Good!' remarked the apprentice. 'Do you taste the salt?' asked the Master. 'No,' said the young man.The Master sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said,'The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste the 'pain' depends on the container we put it into.So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things..... Stop being a glass. Become a lake!'

Our Homeless Neighbour

Bhaktiyana, our village, had a regular visitor – a teenage boy who came daily to spend his entire day under a huge banyan tree by the way side. He was not a Buddha and obviously not meditating. But nobody could gather what his eyes meant and his thoughts passed. Everyday he came carrying a wet sack with a heavy bulge of nobody-knew inside and sat through out the whole day, endlessly talking to himself. He carried his load back in the evening to another banyan tree 2 Km away where he slept.

Raju, (it wasn’t his name. He didn’t need one. But the people needed) was one of the many homeless, kinless and thoughtless friends Srinagar (city of grace) owned from only-heaven-knows-where as speed-brakers in the highway traffic along with the highway settled cattle.

Raju needn’t had to worry about his meals while he was in our village. Most homes will have something in store which they used to offer him without Raju asking or even stopping at their doorsteps for it. Every one seemed to love Raju who befriended only the Banyan tree, the mark of our village. They loved him because he was homeless, kinless, thoughtless, voiceless and very particularly harmless.

On the day of festival Holi, Raju gathered some bright color dust on his shabby clothes. A pet dog in one of the homes wasn’t very much amused at this. It made a fury advance at him which he defended with his sack and challenged with a blow on the dog’s face. The owner, having learnt of his pet’s defeat was in rant and rave and more furious than the dog as he shouted at Raju.

That incident, obviously, was harmful to the sympathetic impression Raju was enjoying from the people. It was then the people in Bhaktiyana leant that Raju had the capacity to harm. With the changing impression of the people Raju’s visits turned frequent, occasional, rare and at last nil. It seemed his feeling-less mind discovered that the people loved him less or no more.

Recently, I saw him under the other banyan tree, 2 Km away from our village. He had the same dirty wet sack with him. His eyes were just as they were before, meaningless. But to me they seemed talking:
‘You can love anyone. But can you still love when you know the person you love has the capacity to harm you, to shame you, to betray you or even crucify you? If not, you don’t call it love.’