Friday, 29 September 2023
Thursday, 28 September 2023
Truth
Absolute, untainted truth is
almost always unacceptable to the average human mind. It is like wearing
sunglasses to protect your eyes against the sun. Stark reality is like the
blazing sun.
This is why we find sugar coated
living bearable and even motivating. The fear of discovering who we really are
rules our lives. We don’t want to go there. There is an unconscious denial to
turn inwards.
Our comfort levels lie in overt,
sometimes superficial gregariousness, almost to divert our minds from our
intrinsic nature and our inability to isolate ourselves to find ourselves. For,
meditation is nothing but that. To eliminate the thought that works as a veil
between the divine and you. In other words, thoughts become an impediment
because they immediately combine with senses and pollute the mind which,
actually, needs to be purified to make headway into the spiritual realm.
All our lives, we exist like
this, until the end of our lives.
Surekha Kothari
surekhakothari.wordpress.com
Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari
Monday, 25 September 2023
Consciousness
On the occasion of Buddha Purnima, let me dwell on the only sermon given by Buddha, in which he didn’t utter a single word. When he held up a flower, the whole congregation was silent, not understanding it’s significance, except one. Mahakasyapa looked at it intently and smiled. Buddha handed over the flower to him and said, “I have said what can be said and what cannot be said.” From that day Mahakasyapa became his successor.
In this ‘Flower Sermon’, Buddha
drew our attention to the importance of direct experience, shorn of
intellectual analysis. Flowers embody both form and formlessness. They arise
from the earth and return to it, drawing attention to the formless
consciousness of Oneness.
The simple act of seeing a flower
can usher in a meditative state of intense awareness
William Blake said it
wonderfully:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your
hand
And eternity in an hour.
Surekha Kothari
surekhakothari.wordpress.com
Monday, 11 September 2023
Realization
It is a natural human tendency to look at the outside world and, according to our value systems, find others to be lacking or otherwise. The catch phrase here is” according to our values systems”.
The entire judgement factor stems
from this. We all build up our own value systems according to who we are and
what our experiences are. Different things work for different people. At
different times and we keep changing as wisdom dawns.
Each of us therefore, has to give
each one their due. There is really no need to invade someone else’s space with
analysis and criticism.
Anyway, criticism borders on “I
am better than you” aspect which is not quite right. And you will see the
evidence of this in the fact that people you criticize have their own friends
and followers. Evidently then, what they live with are not wrong principles but
different from yours. You may not agree but that’s ok. You don’t need to harbor
any feelings about that. Letting go of what is not compatible with your energy
is vital to growth.
At the end of the day, we need to
recognize that each one has a different journey and the universe has the
capacity to hold and protect all of us.
Yes, we do have to keep learning and evolving till we teach the truth about ourselves. But that is the extent and the ultimate for our journey, as it is for the others. How soon we will reach that point of realization, depends on our thinking, understanding and reflecting on ourselves. And then proceeding to work on ourselves as we go along.
“Live and let live”. Try and live
well and with awareness of our thoughts, our actions and what we need to
cleanse from our huge bank of memories.
Our memories spark our likes and
dislikes. We need to keep away from both.
Surekha Kothari
surekhakothari.wordpress.com
Thursday, 7 September 2023
Monday, 4 September 2023
Challenge
One of the main challenges to
fortitude is physical discomforts. Heat & cold, pleasure & pain arise
from the contact of sense organs. They come and go, being impermanent. Bear
with them patiently. Mental discomforts arise from the dualities of life like
pleasure & pain, praise & blame and gain & loss. Though we tend to
seek the pleasantness and detest the painful, we need to face both, since life
offers a package deal: you seek the one and the other comes uninvited. Braving
the forces of lust & anger is the greatest challenge. Under their grip man
forgets what he is and acts in a way he himself might not approve of in his
saner moments. He who is able to withstand the agitation caused by lust &
anger, is the self-controlled one and he is the happy man.
Surekha Kothari
surekhakothari.wordpress.com
Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari
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