Thursday, February 16, 2006
Similar sounds
Similar sounds erupt these days. They come through window sills, vents, ventilators, the closed door and in agitated tones seek respites. I have none to offer. To understand is not to assuage. Other sounds make their difficult way through morning mists which overlap with smog until the clear and the unclear, the pure and impure, the clean and the sullied, is all one. These sounds seek love. I dont have that too and he who has nothing can give nothing and eventually forgets to take. To understand is not to requite. I have nothing to give but they keep coming, these sounds and their soundbearers, like mendicants who know all the secrets of worlds and worlds, but yet beg for little alms and yesterday's rice.
Monday, February 13, 2006
shadows
When day disgusted quit, man and woman recognised the other through shadows. Shadows with no features, only form – tall, short, wide, narrow and their many mixes. He saw her through the veil of black and she saw him through night’s grief. Their eyes sought each other but in the land of shadows only shadows met.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
to whom every shade is darkness inviting
to whom every shade is darkness inviting
who sees not the solace that comes with it
whose every utterance is a cry
but who denies this
and silently prays for reprieve, any reprieve
but is too proud to speak, to voice it
and too much in pain to listen
how can anyone not see her blinding ache
how can anyone not hear her silent clamour
and yet no one does
except me
who takes all to be affront
and on chariots of hurt
spurns every hand that reaches out
imagines slights where smiles are
and strikes at the arrogance of compassion
who persists in this drama of doom
this drama self-willed, abhorred but played
how does anyone get through this wall
even the happy gods, those tireless ones, give up here
not me, i do not
who sees not the solace that comes with it
whose every utterance is a cry
but who denies this
and silently prays for reprieve, any reprieve
but is too proud to speak, to voice it
and too much in pain to listen
how can anyone not see her blinding ache
how can anyone not hear her silent clamour
and yet no one does
except me
who takes all to be affront
and on chariots of hurt
spurns every hand that reaches out
imagines slights where smiles are
and strikes at the arrogance of compassion
who persists in this drama of doom
this drama self-willed, abhorred but played
how does anyone get through this wall
even the happy gods, those tireless ones, give up here
not me, i do not
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Madness, meditation: an essay
My father's younger brother, M P Parameswaran Nair died recently, having lived as a schizophrenic for at least the last 25 years of his life. For the most part of that period he smoked beedis in a room in the house at Pulluvazhi, near Perumbavoor in Kerala. Before, he had studied engineering at Benaras Hindu University and later at Patrick Lumumba University in Moscow. He was also for a short while in the army, recruited out of turn for his knowledge of Russian. In short, he was well traveled, intelligent and productive till he gradually lost control over the mind. I remember the fragment of a conversation I once had with him which went something like this:
He: "I am going to Delhi"
I: "Why?"
He: "To meet the director of the CIA"
I: "Who is the director of the CIA?"
He: "Me"
Unlike my uncle who died of a heart attack, Chandramohan died after being run over by a truck in a suburb called Dahisar which is very near Borivali, , a northern suburb of Mumbai. Before Chandramohan died, his body was literally going into pieces. We used to see him sitting in the parapet of a bus depot hours on end staring at particularly nothing. He was usually very clean, always coming early in the morning his hair slicked back, which meant that he had had a bath or at least washed his hair. He also wore a denim jacket over his shirt and jeans. He claimed to be a poet and constantly kept writing on some pieces of paper. I looked at it once or twice and there is only one line which struck me and it went something like this: The whole U in your eyes. There was a circle on the U, which signified, if I remember correctly, Universe. I do not remember any of the other lines, which means either it was meaningless or I have a poor memory.
The first sign of Chandramohan's disintegration came when he lost three of his front teeth, I forget how. He used to sit as before in the depot but somehow, with three teeth missing, that dignity or elegance of the artist was missing. Also his denim jacket went missing and his hearing slowly faded. When we said anything to him, he would bend his ears towards us and we would shout. He refused the idea of ear plugs using a twisted logic which said that with ear plugs you have to concentrate on the particular direction from which the sounds came. I have no idea what he meant by that. One day, when we were sitting as usual at the depot, a friend came and said that Chandrmohan has died. He had not heard the truck coming behind him, was how his death was explained. Anyhow, I don't think anybody cried.
I will also tell you about another person, a gold medallist in, I think, engineering from Benaras Hindu University, who lives in the same colony as me. This man wants to make movies. Before I quit smoking, I used to run into him at the paanwallah and he would tell me about scripts he is writing for movies, of wanting to write articles about what was wrong with our society and how it could be changed. I do not know whether he ever wrote them, certainly none got printed. I don’t think he ever completed any script. Consequently he is yet to make a movie. He had been brilliant once and he could do nothing now, it was as simple as that. But at least he was coherent in speech and decent in attire unlike the man in a place called Saibaba Nagar, which is in Borivali. This man, usually nude, often gets on to the divider and thinking himself to be a traffic constable, directs the traffic. Very few take notice of him and understandably so. That is the character of insanity; this turning of the mind within itself, a turning away from the world. Consequently the world turns away from the insane, both have nothing to give to each other. There are therefore no CIA directors, no scripts, no poems, no traffic to stop, there is nothing in those minds which must have once thought like you and I do.
My father, M P Narayana Pillai, a writer, would pace up and down talking to himself. He did this so often that we thought nothing strange about it. In fact, we joked that the only difference between him and his brother was that he was socially productive – as in, he could earn money by bartering a set of skills. He would agree and was almost proud of it. However, I have come to believe that it was a bad joke. Not because it was insulting to my father (he, as I said, took pride in the sobriquet). I think it was a complete travesty of madness, a romanticisation, much like the assumption that the mad man is happy within a particular universe of his own or that courting madness is in some ways necessary for the pursuit of creativity. I came to this view after going to a meditation course for the second time in my life.
The first time I went for the ten-day course was in July 2002 at a place called Igatpuri which is on the Mumbai-Nashik route. It was a Buddhist meditation technique called Vipassana. For ten days, all you do there is meditate. You cannot speak, read newspapers or novels, write anything, watch TV, communicate using signs or anything. You can only meditate at Dhamma Giri, the name of the place where this course was conducted. The first time I had no extraordinary experiences, but at the conclusion of the course felt a serenity which was obviously due to the complete insulation of the senses.
To describe the technique -- for the first three-and-a-half days, from morning 4 am to night 9 pm, you observe the breath, without in any manner trying to control it. Then on, till the end of the tenth day, you observe sensations in the body. The sensation is defined as anything that is present at a particular spot of the body. It could be heat, cold, heaviness, dryness, etc, whatever you feel is sensation. By the end of the tenth day, your mind becomes so sharp that you feel subtle vibrations all over the body. But the rule is to just observe it without becoming happy at a pleasurable sensation or sad at a painful sensation. This, in brief, is Vipassana meditation. As you advance, it is claimed that all the mind-matter phenomena reveal themselves as vibrations. Beyond this is the stage of Nirvana or Nibbana as they call it, which cannot be described precisely because it is beyond the field of mind and matter.
The next August, I therefore went expecting a much better experience. By the end of the fifth day, I was terrified at what my mind was churning out. It came to a stage that it was not the thought or thoughts that terrified me but the fear that those thought or thoughts will arise. Which then is a surefire formula for the mind to get directed to those thought/thoughts. The trick is to focus completely on the sensations in your body. Every aversion (and fear is of course one) you harbour will then make itself apparent as an unpleasant sensation or sensations. I developed a toothache on the sixth day. You are warned that the most important thing in meditation is not to experience the sensations but to remain equanimous no matter how pleasant or painful the sensation. In my case, the hint of a toothache was enough to bury my equanimity. I say it with no especial feeling of shame – I completely lost it. In retrospect the toothache appeared very trifle and it is a very trifle thing but remember, in that silence, that there is nobody there except you and the tooth ache. It is the only thing that exists and there is no ailment in the world that you will not associate with that ache, from tongue cancer to psychosis. After I returned home…aching, I went to a dentist who apart from relieving me of 300 rupees, helped in no way whatsoever. As time passed and the mind returned to its ordinary pattern with the usual contents that fill it, the toothache gradually passed away.
I was hardly the first to go through this experience. In fact, I first heard about this reaction to meditation when I must have been 13 or 14 and went for a Chinmaya Mission retreat in Lonavala. I remember the Sanyasi who was conducting the retreat remarking that students often come to him and tell him that during meditation terrifying thoughts arise. This particular question is inevitably one which is asked to almost every person whose teaching involves meditation, from Chinmayananda to Ramana Maharshi. The answer is always the same -- unless the filth of the mind comes out, how will it become pure. But only when you experience it, does the import of the question strike.
Therefore, and this is the point I am making, your mind is hardly a friend. It hits back as soon as you explore your way through it. The minute you try to tame it, it will lead you through a fiery path. And it has enough ammunition because nothing you have done, thought, seen, heard, desired, abhorred, craved, etc, from your mother’s womb to the present minute and second, is hidden from it. This terrifying character of the mind has to be experienced to be believed. And it will not take much effort. Just lock yourself up for two days in a room and try to concentrate on your breath or try to just observe your thoughts. You will understand what I am talking about. Which is why, when I think of a Chandramohan or my father’s brother, who has witnessed the gradual erosion of control, the loss of equanimity, reason, logic and continuity of thought, I think of my toothache and multiply it by infinity. That must be the situation of a person who has lost his value as a human being, a value built over millions of years of evolution from the first single celled amoeba to mankind.
He: "I am going to Delhi"
I: "Why?"
He: "To meet the director of the CIA"
I: "Who is the director of the CIA?"
He: "Me"
Unlike my uncle who died of a heart attack, Chandramohan died after being run over by a truck in a suburb called Dahisar which is very near Borivali, , a northern suburb of Mumbai. Before Chandramohan died, his body was literally going into pieces. We used to see him sitting in the parapet of a bus depot hours on end staring at particularly nothing. He was usually very clean, always coming early in the morning his hair slicked back, which meant that he had had a bath or at least washed his hair. He also wore a denim jacket over his shirt and jeans. He claimed to be a poet and constantly kept writing on some pieces of paper. I looked at it once or twice and there is only one line which struck me and it went something like this: The whole U in your eyes. There was a circle on the U, which signified, if I remember correctly, Universe. I do not remember any of the other lines, which means either it was meaningless or I have a poor memory.
The first sign of Chandramohan's disintegration came when he lost three of his front teeth, I forget how. He used to sit as before in the depot but somehow, with three teeth missing, that dignity or elegance of the artist was missing. Also his denim jacket went missing and his hearing slowly faded. When we said anything to him, he would bend his ears towards us and we would shout. He refused the idea of ear plugs using a twisted logic which said that with ear plugs you have to concentrate on the particular direction from which the sounds came. I have no idea what he meant by that. One day, when we were sitting as usual at the depot, a friend came and said that Chandrmohan has died. He had not heard the truck coming behind him, was how his death was explained. Anyhow, I don't think anybody cried.
I will also tell you about another person, a gold medallist in, I think, engineering from Benaras Hindu University, who lives in the same colony as me. This man wants to make movies. Before I quit smoking, I used to run into him at the paanwallah and he would tell me about scripts he is writing for movies, of wanting to write articles about what was wrong with our society and how it could be changed. I do not know whether he ever wrote them, certainly none got printed. I don’t think he ever completed any script. Consequently he is yet to make a movie. He had been brilliant once and he could do nothing now, it was as simple as that. But at least he was coherent in speech and decent in attire unlike the man in a place called Saibaba Nagar, which is in Borivali. This man, usually nude, often gets on to the divider and thinking himself to be a traffic constable, directs the traffic. Very few take notice of him and understandably so. That is the character of insanity; this turning of the mind within itself, a turning away from the world. Consequently the world turns away from the insane, both have nothing to give to each other. There are therefore no CIA directors, no scripts, no poems, no traffic to stop, there is nothing in those minds which must have once thought like you and I do.
My father, M P Narayana Pillai, a writer, would pace up and down talking to himself. He did this so often that we thought nothing strange about it. In fact, we joked that the only difference between him and his brother was that he was socially productive – as in, he could earn money by bartering a set of skills. He would agree and was almost proud of it. However, I have come to believe that it was a bad joke. Not because it was insulting to my father (he, as I said, took pride in the sobriquet). I think it was a complete travesty of madness, a romanticisation, much like the assumption that the mad man is happy within a particular universe of his own or that courting madness is in some ways necessary for the pursuit of creativity. I came to this view after going to a meditation course for the second time in my life.
The first time I went for the ten-day course was in July 2002 at a place called Igatpuri which is on the Mumbai-Nashik route. It was a Buddhist meditation technique called Vipassana. For ten days, all you do there is meditate. You cannot speak, read newspapers or novels, write anything, watch TV, communicate using signs or anything. You can only meditate at Dhamma Giri, the name of the place where this course was conducted. The first time I had no extraordinary experiences, but at the conclusion of the course felt a serenity which was obviously due to the complete insulation of the senses.
To describe the technique -- for the first three-and-a-half days, from morning 4 am to night 9 pm, you observe the breath, without in any manner trying to control it. Then on, till the end of the tenth day, you observe sensations in the body. The sensation is defined as anything that is present at a particular spot of the body. It could be heat, cold, heaviness, dryness, etc, whatever you feel is sensation. By the end of the tenth day, your mind becomes so sharp that you feel subtle vibrations all over the body. But the rule is to just observe it without becoming happy at a pleasurable sensation or sad at a painful sensation. This, in brief, is Vipassana meditation. As you advance, it is claimed that all the mind-matter phenomena reveal themselves as vibrations. Beyond this is the stage of Nirvana or Nibbana as they call it, which cannot be described precisely because it is beyond the field of mind and matter.
The next August, I therefore went expecting a much better experience. By the end of the fifth day, I was terrified at what my mind was churning out. It came to a stage that it was not the thought or thoughts that terrified me but the fear that those thought or thoughts will arise. Which then is a surefire formula for the mind to get directed to those thought/thoughts. The trick is to focus completely on the sensations in your body. Every aversion (and fear is of course one) you harbour will then make itself apparent as an unpleasant sensation or sensations. I developed a toothache on the sixth day. You are warned that the most important thing in meditation is not to experience the sensations but to remain equanimous no matter how pleasant or painful the sensation. In my case, the hint of a toothache was enough to bury my equanimity. I say it with no especial feeling of shame – I completely lost it. In retrospect the toothache appeared very trifle and it is a very trifle thing but remember, in that silence, that there is nobody there except you and the tooth ache. It is the only thing that exists and there is no ailment in the world that you will not associate with that ache, from tongue cancer to psychosis. After I returned home…aching, I went to a dentist who apart from relieving me of 300 rupees, helped in no way whatsoever. As time passed and the mind returned to its ordinary pattern with the usual contents that fill it, the toothache gradually passed away.
I was hardly the first to go through this experience. In fact, I first heard about this reaction to meditation when I must have been 13 or 14 and went for a Chinmaya Mission retreat in Lonavala. I remember the Sanyasi who was conducting the retreat remarking that students often come to him and tell him that during meditation terrifying thoughts arise. This particular question is inevitably one which is asked to almost every person whose teaching involves meditation, from Chinmayananda to Ramana Maharshi. The answer is always the same -- unless the filth of the mind comes out, how will it become pure. But only when you experience it, does the import of the question strike.
Therefore, and this is the point I am making, your mind is hardly a friend. It hits back as soon as you explore your way through it. The minute you try to tame it, it will lead you through a fiery path. And it has enough ammunition because nothing you have done, thought, seen, heard, desired, abhorred, craved, etc, from your mother’s womb to the present minute and second, is hidden from it. This terrifying character of the mind has to be experienced to be believed. And it will not take much effort. Just lock yourself up for two days in a room and try to concentrate on your breath or try to just observe your thoughts. You will understand what I am talking about. Which is why, when I think of a Chandramohan or my father’s brother, who has witnessed the gradual erosion of control, the loss of equanimity, reason, logic and continuity of thought, I think of my toothache and multiply it by infinity. That must be the situation of a person who has lost his value as a human being, a value built over millions of years of evolution from the first single celled amoeba to mankind.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
bleak
bleak is the will
bleak the black sky
bleak the brown earth
bleak the night
bleak the day
and its daily rebirth
bleak is the silence
bleak the silent wind
which carries this silence
bleak the dead
bleak the living
bleak is this running sorrow
bleak is today
bleak is tomorrow
bleak is you
bleak is me
bleak are the colours
bleak the seasons
bleak is the yellow evening
bleak the red morning
bleak is the brown earth
and the dark matter of the black sky
bleak the black sky
bleak the brown earth
bleak the night
bleak the day
and its daily rebirth
bleak is the silence
bleak the silent wind
which carries this silence
bleak the dead
bleak the living
bleak is this running sorrow
bleak is today
bleak is tomorrow
bleak is you
bleak is me
bleak are the colours
bleak the seasons
bleak is the yellow evening
bleak the red morning
bleak is the brown earth
and the dark matter of the black sky
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