An evening at False Kiva

My old friend Pratyush and I spent a couple of evenings clambering around canyons in Utah. The trip was motivated somewhat suddenly and impetuously by the surreal landscape in the photo above, a panoramic view shot from a fiendishly inaccessible cave half-way up a fairly sheer cliff. We absolutely had to go there to see it for ourselves. We went, we saw, and we were wonder-struck. For those that doubt the authenticity of the image, the view was perhaps even more spectacular in person than it seems in the photo. The Universe continues to conspire to amuse, amaze and bemuse me.

Per aspera ad astra

(in our context, this means: over really rough roads to a really large number of stars)

Dropping down from a Utah sky
Thousands of shining
Pin-pricks of light below
Tracing in flights of geometry
Meaning into the desert rocks
`We shall overcome', they chant
In chorus

Playing cavemen in a lost eyrie
In a cleft unsought, untouched by Time
Billions of lamps fill an endless void
Silent. They have no stories to tell
The night resounds with their silent shrieking
`Forty-two', the stars are screaming
`Forty-two!'

Happy Birthday, John Galt

Every year, at around this time, some Left-leaning intellectual stands up, strokes his beard and proclaims annoyingly, `Gandhi was right. Small is beautiful.' It has become somewhat passe, in recent memory, to take Gandhi's socio-economic views too seriously. Even as globalization putatively improves the standards of living of vast swathes of the erstwhile rural population, it would be a foolish voice indeed that would call out materialism in both its capitalistic and dialectic forms for the canard that Gandhi saw it to be. The mad preacher's birthday takes on special poignancy this year in the wake of the carnage underway in the world's financial system. This panic, we must remember, has been caused for no other reason than bankers refusing to trust other bankers because other bankers were not trusting them because the tangled web of lies called leverage was getting too big to keep tossing around. Workers keep working, factories keep churning, the sun keeps shining, but the wheels of capitalism seem to have gone off the rails, as they seem to do once every decade.

And nowhere is the scene more poignant than in my present adopted land, the glorious land of the free and the home of the brave, who go about bombing people's countries to smithereens anytime they get frightened by monsters under their bed. Familiar monsters too - oil supply, the currency of oil-trade, the cost of sustaining economic growth indefinitely or appearing to do so. The American entrepreneurs' faith in the strength of capitalism is almost touching to observe. As the days of Peak Oil - the irreversible decline in the supply of oil worldwide - come upon us, and as the economy of the country that uses a fourth of the oil in the world sputters, the brave thinkers exclaim, `In every crisis there is an opportunity. We will set up new sectors in our economy - renewable energy, CO2 sequestering, bio-chemo-physico-artistico-nano-technology. The American dream will simply take on a newer shape, as it has always done.' And yet, for all the bravado of the maintainers of the status quo of economic productivity, a refreshing breath of change is sweeping through this land, for while the plutocracy is ever a slave to its own interests here, there are large sections of the general public in the US that constitute without a doubt the most open-minded and intelligent of all the cultures in the world.

Hence, there is a deepening interest in building up economic systems based on survivability and sustainability rather than economies of scale. The organic farming movement may be considered a vanguard in disguise for this change. As the standard of living in the US has reached a gentle asymptote and begun declining over the past couple of decades, the advent of the internet economy has broken the old paradigm of the necessity for hierarchy in production. Intellectuals and forward-thinkers here are increasingly pondering the future and finding that it lies in sustainable semi-rural communities, with a minimum of industrial production and great administrative autonomy. And even as my fellow NRIs flock into this golden land, eager to print professional degrees, mint money and date blonde women, there is a gradual but perceptible shift one finds in the American ethos: away from the alienation of a professional middle class existence and towards a richer and more meaningful life premised on community and small-scale industry. As the internet destroys physical and cultural barriers in communication, and becomes a viable medium for dissemination of creative output, programmers, artists, journalists, authors , musicians etc. no longer need hierarchies to eke out a comfortable existence. The old assumptions do not hold any more in an era that is gradually progressing towards post-scarcity; government and industry are no longer needed to maintain peace. The world's citizens are finally growing into their potential for harmonious co-existence.

There was a village where two factions once put up a wall midway through, because the grand gentlemen who stood in front of them and called themselves `leaders' decided that they were especially and solely chosen by the Great Big Chestnut Tree to lead their followers (and no others!) to a glorious future. Once the wall was put up, both sides had to try to raise it higher to keep the other side from looking over to see what they were doing. So, they told some of the people who had been quietly minding their own business to stop minding their own business and take shifts in building up the wall. While one faction decided to do so by promising to give them a lot of things they did not need, the other one persuaded them by preaching to them the value of honest self-subservience and submissive labor at the behest of authority. The walls have risen higher, but we are now running out of bricks. And even as we do, the villagers are realizing the wisdom of what an old fool had told them long ago. That there is no real need to build walls, only fences for corn-fields and ditches for water. That professionalism is but a euphemism for slavery and that individual freedom and symbolic group identities are incompatible.

That Gandhi was right. That small is beautiful.

Menaka

I see your form, O Tejaswini!
As a golden fawn sipping
From the stream of Life
That flows eternal
Through the Forest's heart

Ever I desire to pass lightly on
To see, smile and praise
The beauty of the Forest
That dances beneath
Your gently undulating feet

Yet all roads I take today lead me
Away from visions of eternity
In search of your shadow
An exquisite trap indeed
Spun with the very fabric of the Sun

Your face with its mantle of hair
Speaks of rain-laden clouds
Yet walking in the rain
Vainly I seek your face
In vain transports of longing

`Leave your arid cave, O sadhu!
Behold my graceful splendor
As I dance with my eyes
In youth's sunlight,
In deep and secret glades'

Menaka! Menaka! The Forest is aflame
In the throes of my passion
The winds of your beauty
Fan it to a mighty blaze
As it consumes all my tranquility

An exercise in brevity

A rather prosy haiku, but an efficient way of storing a nice memory. I never use cameras, pestilential contraptions.

Geneva, midnight
Surreptitious skinny-dip
Damn Swiss police

Prem Paash

My my, look at me go. Devanagari script thanks to this splendid applet.

प्रेम-पाश

ऐसे तो टकटकी लगा कर राह नहीं देखें हम तेरी
नहीं सोचते, याद न करते पूर्व प्रसंगों की हम बेड़ी
पर कुछ दिन दुष्वार जो लगते, पत्थर दिखती है जब मूरत
बहुत चाहने पर भी मिटती नहीं है मन से तेरी सूरत

विस्मयकारी वचन हैं तेरे, समझ-बूझ का नाम न जिनमें
मनो-बुद्धि-अहँकार को त्रप्ति पुनः पुनः मिलती पर उनमें
ब्रह्म-ज्ञान की आकाँक्षा में कहाँ तो पूजा-ध्यान करूं मैं
कहाँ तुझे प्रिय मान तेरी हठधर्मिता का गुणगान करूं मैं

मनः-स्थैर्य की महिमा ऐसी, नहीं विषम अवसाद हैं उठते
पर ऐसा नहीं झुरमुट यह कि प्रेम के सारे दीप ही बुझते
परिस्थितियाँ ऐसी कुछ बनतीं, देखते सारे देव हैं हँसते
अखंड-तपस् के उत्साही के मन में क्या-क्या स्वप्न हैं बसते

काम-रोग-आघात नहीं यह, नहीं कवि का दिवा-स्वप्न-रस
अग्नि-मार्ग पर चलने वालों का है कार्मिक असमंजस बस
कभी-कभी ही क्षीण है होती कल्प-माल के जाप की मेधा
ऐसे ही क्षण में उठती है सन्यासी के मन में दुविधा

प्रेम-पाश से मुक्ति कहाँ है, सर्वोपरि सी इसकी क्षमता
पर द्रढ़-निश्चय-प्रत्याहार पर नहीं है उसका सिक्का जमता
ज्ञानी वही जो ऐसी अपनी प्रेम-रुचि से नहीं है डरता
द्दंदों को आवर्णित कर इन कठिन क्षणों को पार है करता

Transliterated as:

Prem Pash

Aise to taktaki laga kar raah nahin dekhein hum teri
Nahin sochte, yaad na karte poorv prasango ki hum beri
Par kuchh din dushvar jo lagte, patthar dikhti hai jab murat
Bahut chahne par bhi mitti nahin hai man se teri soorat

Vismaykari vachan hain tere, samajh boojh ka naam na jinme
Mano buddhi ahamkara ko tripti punah punah par milti unme
Brahma gyan ki akanksha mein kahan to pooja path karoon main
Kahan tujhe priy maan teri hathdharmita ka gungaan karoon main

Manah sthairya ki mahima aisi, nahin visham avsad hain uthte
Par aisa nahi jhurmut yeh ki prem ke saare deep bhi bujhte
Paristhitiyan aisi kuchh banti, dekh ke saare dev hain haste
Akhand tapas ke utsaahi ke man me kya kya swapn hain baste

Kama rog aaghat nahin yeh, nahin kavi ka diwaswapn ras
Agni marga par chalne wale ka hai karmik asmanjas bas
Kabhi kabhi hi ksheen hai hoti kalpmal ke jaap ki medha
Aise hi kshan mein uthti hai sannyasi ke man mein duvidha

Prem paash se mukti kahan hai, sarvopari si uski kshamta
Par dridha nishchay pratyahara par nahin hai uska sikka jamta
Gyani wahi jo aisi apni prem ruchi se nahin hai darta
Chhandon ko aavaranit kar in kathin kshanon ko par hai karta

Maya

Whither your artifice tonight, O temptress!
In the deepest hour of night I have risen
To find you sprawled in torpid slumber
Hogging the sheets, as always

Voluptuous you are, for that is your Form
Skilled are your limbs in all arts of Love
Numberless evenings of sorrow turn to nights of delight
As deeply I have felt you, caressing your name

Came I to your boudoir when scarce a youth
Bare chance had I of eluding your lure
Not much I knew of the ways of the world
Knowing you, I sought to grow in wisdom

Grown have I in virility and power and strength
Our nights should have been lurid beyond reason
Yet I wake upon a stone floor at midnight and write
While you nestle in the cushions of your plush divan

No more do I love you, well you know this
But not through egregious folly on your part
Beyond you there is no pleasure, well I know this
Since you alone hold the keys to the doors of my heart

But we've been through this before
I fleeing, you pursuing, ever complacent
For wherever I flee, I end up seeking you out
In different clothes perhaps, a shade younger no doubt

And in the passage of time, in the dark watches of night
All my new lovers metamorphose as I sleep
Back into you, as rivers into the ocean
For you are all I have loved, and will ever love

Jealous you have been of our pleasant young son
Moksha his name, curly rings in his hair
Ever does he smile, and is gracious with all
Long hours I spend meditating on his thought

Fear not, my queen, not your rival is he
Though my waking hours seem at times
To be but endless soliloquies in his praise
I seek not to know him as I have known you

It is not in my nature to bear him that love
Or seek to find pleasure in knowing him well
Calm are his thoughts; with simple truth they are blessed
Happily in his company much time do I spend

Yet he is a mere stripling, innocent and naive
And often I must walk roads, with or without you
That he is too young and blissful to see
Or understand if he saw them, as sometimes he does

I know there is pleasure yet that waits at my call
Nudging you awake for drowsy love best of all
As arbiter of passions, you have no rivals to fear
It is simply that beyond passion some silence I crave

I am a creature of the forest, the scents and the trees
I rise to see the sun, and hear the birds and the breeze
Long have your charms convinced me to be where you are
Amidst curtains of gold and petticoats of plenitude

But ever my thought strains to break loose
And travel along strange roads to the stars
To grow out of old familiar forms and shapes
And to span the universe from end to end

No longer will I flee, as one who feels pain
Yet leave I must, lest my spirit slowly wane
This house of my body holds all that I held dear
And must cherish a while longer, while I prepare

The purpose flight serves is to stumble and fall
Draw up new steps and draw in ragged breath
Take up tenancy in halls new and bright
Find you sleeping beside me as I wake up one night

So now, I bide my time as I work on my plan
To nourish mind and body, with the ego withdrawn
I will not take my leave, till you bid me depart
When you see that our roads lie irretrievably apart

A wooden staff I am shaping to walk with me then
A begging bowl for provender the Spirit may cast
I dream every night of the road under stars
A small, upright figure upon it, blissful at last.

Love, romance and the sadhaka

I am sad today. Not sad in a bad way, mind you. Sad in a way, though, as I have not been in quite some time. My meditative practice is acquiring a desirable regularity to accompany the vigor that characterizes most things I do. My worldly affairs, insofar as they concern only me, are following a trajectory that should see most of my ambitions resolved and my questions unasked in a few more years. And now I find that the orientation of my spiritual axis mundi is not quite as perfect as I have been hoping it would be.

As children, before the discriminatory intellect becomes operational, we all acquire various desires through our dealings with physical and mental reality on a cost-benefit basis. These may be understood as individual voices in the symphony of one's existence. The purpose of the aspirant to self-realization is to gradually bring these voices to resolution in the appropriate tonic key. Thus, for example, there exists the voice of intellectual ambition which demands a certain level of dexterity in manipulating abstractions before it may be satiated. Similarly, there is the voice of social assimilation, which seeks a degree of parochial acclaim in various social contexts before it may be rendered quiescent. There are voices of envy, voices of hate, voices that plead and voices that resonate.

The greatest wisdom lies in not creating too many of these voices, so that shutting down the ones that exist may be accomplished facilely and at an early date, while the body and the mind of the sadhaka retain sufficient youth to be able to acquire the intense discipline and austerity that is required to walk the path of fire and light. However, once these voices have been created, attempting to ignore them, suppress them, or stamp them out inelegantly (resolving to the tonic too soon, for instance) will lead to instability of purpose which will manifest itself outwardly as hypocrisy and inconsistency. I think there is some reason to believe that intercession by the gurutattva might help matters somewhat, but I am not convinced that this is indeed the case.

Where this matter acquires a personal flavor for me is in the realization, which came to me yesterday, that one of the strongest voices in my own symphony of existence is the one that seeks to love a quiet, thoughtful and whimsical woman and have that love returned. It is moderately interesting to trace the source of this circumstance: a significantly passionate nature , exposure to all kinds of romantic literature as a child, growing up in a middle-class ethos far removed from any pretensions to detachment and spirituality, and strongly mutually affectionate parents.

However, this is not a happy situation for the humble sadhaka. As long as the music concerns oneself entirely, there is some measure of temporal control that the sadhaka believes he possesses in the evolution of his spiritual trajectory. But when a voice that forms part of the music, and a very strong and important one at that, requires the participation of another person, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle arises. It is hard enough to deal with the desires and motivations of one person and sublimate them. Add another cook to the mix, and the resulting broth does not seem to stand much of a chance of gastronomical success.

This obstacle is rendered even more intractable by various existing social mores that hold the relationship between a man and a woman - `love' for short - to be a desirable end in itself, and worthy of aspiration and preservation in perpetuity. It is difficult for me to empathize with this view. It is a set of subconscious urges that create the desire for love, not any intrinsic characteristics of the reality that is Brahman. It is disconcerting and somewhat nihilistic to espouse this view, since it just so happens that the very act of creation in humans correlates strongly with a manifestation of love, and the act of bearing children is premised entirely on the belief that the love is meaningful and will last as long as the bodies do. Nevertheless, realizing and understanding the epi-phenomenal nature of human aspirations motivated by love is a necessary component of a sadhaka's evolution.

Unless strong and sustained efforts at detachment are made in the aspirant's early childhood (which might be the case if the parents are puritanical, self-disciplined or religious in nature), these latent desires will exist and voice their dissatisfaction at the aspirant's continual efforts to disenfranchise them in the course of his mental and physical activity.

I have been feeling a mild sense of jubilation in the recent past through believing that I have finally acquired an appropriate level of control over my libido and have established myself in the practice of brahmacharya, which is so universally lauded as the foundation of spiritual attainment. And yet, it took little more than an unexpected dinner date, free-flowing intelligent conversation, the sight of ringlets of brown hair glistening in the sun, and some subsequent introspection for me to realize how deeply the song of love is embedded in my psyche, and how plaintive and yearning the current mood of its melody really is, notwithstanding my rather successful efforts to ignore it.

The yearning, I fear, is a consequence of the fact that I had the opportunity, some time ago, to resolve this melody, foolishly lost perspective and tried to perpetuate it meaninglessly, and ended up in a state of spiritual apathy and emotional agony as a result. Having replenished my spiritual reserves over the past year or so, I had consciously lost sight of this aspect of my personality, but am now confronted with this past spiritual failure of mine at a time when I feel that I am making substantial progress.

There can be no success in brahmacharya, while the desire for love remains unfulfilled. The physical desire may be controlled, perhaps even controlled in perpetuity, but it will not be extinguished save by great labor by persistently starving the subconscious mind by, in turn, shielding the conscious mind from stimuli that might set off thoughts of love. My sadness is in part a consequence of my realization of the long road that lies ahead, before the subconscious is completely purged, and the throbbing of Turiya is the only music that remains.

I shudder at the thought that the road to Silence of this identity might yet intersect with the karmic trajectory of another. I feel somewhat irritated, `Why must the road be so tortuous and loopy?' and I wonder at the strength of my commitment to the spiritual path, when such a strong desire for womanly affection burns untrammeled in the subconscious. Worse yet, I find that I am not categorically opposed to it. At this stage, I feel I have developed sufficient willpower to turn my mind away and retrieve my equanimity. That is indeed what I am doing in practice. Yet I see clearly that my repudiation of the desire for love is not as complete or honest as my repudiation of most other matters of worldly significance.

However, I take some consolation in the knowledge that the snake that is clearly perceived is a snake that may be safely dealt with, and I hope and pray that my desire for perceiving undifferentiated consciousness is as pure, intense and unalloyed as it appears to be when I don't have two bright gray eyes smiling at me across a table.

Kundalini Rising

Body heat and sweat right after 25 km run, none
Resemblance of mental state with that right after waking, substantial.
Difference between physical world and dream world, negligible.

Perceptive ability for flowers and wind, intense
Perceptive ability for everything else, ambiguous
Thought, emotion and endorphins, absent

Tingling sensation in middle of back
Ringing noises in crown of head.
Sole burning desire, silence.

The necessity of solitude in meditation

During the course of this summer, CWI having graciously provided me with spacious and commodious accommodation, I have been conducting an experiment of sorts on the effect of socializing on meditative practice. The problem is as follows: since the final state of meditative repose lies in a realization of the illusionary nature of physical and conceptual partitioning, and whereas progress in meditative awareness is measured quite accurately by the relative subjugation of the identifying principle - the Ego, there seems to be a logical inconsistency in requiring the aspirant to isolate his body and related appurtenances from the rest of perceived reality. The definition of solitude, in essence, seems rather arbitrary and ad hoc. Fundamentally, this problem arises as a consequence of a deeper question: what is the relationship between the Whole and the Individual. What is so special about the Individual? What properties of the Whole cause the Individual to exist in the Singular, not in the Dual, nor even in the Plural?

Philosophical answers to several of these statements appear to leap immediately to mind. However, today, I wish to collate the empirical evidence that my experiment has accumulated. We may be able to discuss their implications in the context of the metaphysical a priori answers that tradition and logic tend to present. A brief word regarding the methodology: being in possession of an apartment with a double bed and a spacious living room, I have, for the past month and a half, offered my living space freely to any and all travelers visiting Amsterdam and desiring to spend their hours of rest and leisure in less alien surroundings than the insides of hotels. My efforts are aided and abetted by a splendid social networking site called Couchsurfing which I joined a couple of years ago. Thus, it has so transpired that my little apartment has taken on the shape and form of a caravanserai of sorts, with lots of young artists, nomads and other self-actualizing individuals passing through the doorway in either direction each and every day. I don't think I've had the apartment to myself on more than five days, of all the time I have spent here.

My experiment has consisted of seeing how much or how little my practice and daily routine have to diverge in order to accommodate other people's wishes, people of various proclivities and temperaments, people of several desires and motivations. The results are quite striking, and quite distinctive. Setting the statistical question of sample size aside (though N ~ 40), I think it is fair to say that most people who reported positive experiences and enjoyed their stay were single young males, while most people who reported negative experiences were attached young males and/or their girlfriends. Single women appeared to not enjoy their time too much, but the sample size for this demographic group is not sufficiently large to draw statistically significant conclusions.

From a qualitative point of view, visitors who enjoyed their time here found the conversations interesting, the sense of calm around the place invigorating and refreshing, and the logistical freedom afforded by an unlatched door and open refrigerator extremely useful. Visitors who did not enjoy their stay found me rude and callous in conversation, the atmosphere in the flat boring and the open door policy annoying and creepy.

From my own perspective, it was refreshing for me to find that my practice proceeded quite smoothly independent of the identity of my guests and their sentiments towards their hosts. A couple of minor points that were of interest follow.

1. Regarding the question of fidelity of practice, it was found that prolonged conversation acts as a debilitating influence on pranayama. The breath seems much weaker and less inclined to fill the chest cavity as completely the morning after a long evening of philosophical discussion.
2. The Ego is as slippery and slithery a snake as one could ever hope to find. It is always an interesting exercise to exorcise elements of pleasure in hearing compliments paid to one's way of living. The discriminatory intellect gets lots of vigorous exercise in neutering the extremely creative feints of the Ego during the course of my conversations with my visitors.

This latter point, as a matter of fact, ties in with a more general observation in that positive social interactions seemed to affect meditative practice negatively while negative social interactions seemed to have no significant effect. From the point of view of social harmony and social utility theory, this is not an optimistic result. However, it is quite easy to see why this should indeed be the case. The mind seeks attachment, and attachment is generally a consequence of affirmative experience. Thus, positive social interaction results in the generation of large quantities of stimuli that the mind can attach itself to and grow in volume.

The yogi's task is to starve the mind and feed it deconstructionist versions of material reality, so that its moorings to the affairs of the physical universe may be detached gradually. Friendly conversations appear to proffer dangerous food for the mind to devour greedily and resume its noisy perturbations of the unconscious mind. Negative social interactions, on the other hand, cause the mind to flee inwards and gratefully accept the disassociativity that meditation provides. Thus, perversely from the perspective of the social contract, negative social interactions and social alienation appear to play into the yogi's strategy.

This brings us to the original problem. Can the practitioner be said to be correct in soliciting negative interactions with society to force the mind into subjugation? Intriguingly enough, this is precisely what aghoris and tantric practitioners recommend. An aghori will believe that the subjugation of the mind under control of his identity is worth the temporary discomfiture of the minds under control of other identities, minds which do not propose or desire to be starved at any rate. It is possible also, that the aghori believes that his behavior will stimulate thoughts of depersonalization and disassociation in his correspondents in the aftermath just as well, in which case, his behavior is actually extremely positive, since it motivates his social acquaintances to question the premises of physical existence too.

The greatest joy of writing is that there are times when clarity emerges as a consequence of the process. I did not see this aspect of the schizoid coldness that must naturally develop in a yogi's interactions with the world, but now I see that it is possibly of some social value. The archetype of the spiritual guru, with shining bright eyes and a benevolent message for all of humanity, seems extremely unreal and delusional to me. I am sure that that is precisely the mental posture that a therapist or a healer should adopt, since their mission is to bring psychological comfort to those who need it. But therapy ought not to be confused with the process of self-contemplation. There is always a tenuous link between meditative practice and social utility. Attempting to burnish it using tokens of religious or psychotherapeutic value might bring more social relevance to the system, but is a losing proposition in the longer term, since it will draw several into the practice in pursuit of tangential goals (freedom from stress, social welfare, peace and good will etc).

I now understand and appreciate better, accounts of the temper tantrums and socially unacceptable behavior in the lives of accomplished seekers. While I do not see myself succumbing to temper under any circumstance, I think that is primarily a consequence of my negligible spiritual standing. That is, I am not as yet firmly established in my practice enough to require anger towards infringers upon my daily routine to sustain it. For now, if one my guests is too noisy for me to keep track of the ticks of the clock during pranayama, I will simply stop and let him do what he is doing and start over. I can do so, because I merely have to count up to 48 seconds at any one time. More accomplished practitioners, who have to track thousands of seconds of breath suspension are unlikely to be as stoic if some ill-fated tresspasser broke in upon their silence.

In conclusion then, I find that my desire for solitude is understandable from the perspective of meditative practice. Solitude does not only mean the absence of other people, it also means absence from the desires and complaints of the body and mind. The performance of asanas is an effort at acquiring physical solitude, the performance of pranayama is a means towards acquiring freedom from the processes required in the ingress and egress of breathing, the performance of trataka and similar practices is aimed at sustaining mental solitude for long periods of time. And growing a long beard and ignoring basic social protocol is a good way of obtaining and sustaining social solitude and being free to contemplate Brahman and its manifestation (Hiranyagarbha) and the evolution of its manifestation (quantum mechanics) in peace.

Is progress in meditation P or NP?

In a whimsical sort of way, I have been evaluating my own progress in meditative self-awareness and attempting to generalize how the process proceeds for everybody else. While the pace of progress depends on several factors - intensity, geographical location, weather, existential circumstances being some of the more important ones - I am intrigued by the following question: is the computational process involved P or NP?

In this short note, I attempt to clarify what I mean by progress in meditative self-awareness. Also, I explain what I mean by computation in this context. This shall hopefully serve as a conceptual framework for future writings that attempt to describe subtler aspects of the spiritual journey. Taking up the question of progress first, it is necessary to define the ideal towards which progress may be made. It is quite evident to me now, in the light of recent developments, that the inner well of undifferentiated consciousness does exist, is as formidable and transcendent as the best descriptions that claim to do it no justice, and is attainable by any person of sound mind and body with a moderate amount of effort. To fine-tune the physical and mental body to be able to sustain the level of concentration necessary to sustain the awareness of this reality seems to be the purpose of all meditative practice.

This effort, however, has to be multi-pronged. Physical fitness is essential, since it is necessary to be able to sit in a compact, balanced position for long durations of time (three hours at least, is the traditional view). Mental calmness is necessary, since the activities of the mind must die down of their own accord when gently nudged to do so (this can take years of patient effort, but becomes second nature in time). Mental vigor is equally necessary, if hallucinatory experiences and auto-suggestive behavior are to be avoided. An intellectual life, a profession that deals with the manipulation of abstract symbols, is ideal to fulfil this purpose.

But it is not only these affirmative aspects of daily living that form part of the preparation. Had these been all, meditative progress would have been in P, since polynomially many trials in the number of relevant parameters (provided they had been identified), would guarantee a monotone approach to the solution (the more you practice, the closer you get). Unhappily, there are other, less stable aspects of the human personality that also need consideration.

The abnegation of passion is the most controversial and least likable aspect of spiritual practice. For me personally, since I have an intensely passionate nature, this has always been a great source of dissatisfaction and discomfiture, not to mention depression. There are several occasions upon which, the path of fire and light appears to be one of smoke and dust, with nothing to recommend it and no logical justification save masochistic self-delusion. Such thought, indeed, has occupied several debilitating hours of my time. Yet, the gradual removal of the fuel that fires the Ego is an extremely essential step on the road to the Godhead.

This process is two-pronged and can be excruciatingly long. The first stage, which some find easy, and some find impossible, consists of conscious mortification of the passionate aspects of one's personality. Austere living and regulation of food, sleep and libido, when inseparable parts of one's daily life, quickly bring about the consummation of this phase for those who are inclined towards the idea of self-awareness. There are, however, several reversions, and most of these are brought about by a revulsion towards the aridity that these austerities cultivate, and which contrasts in such an unflattering manner to the simple pleasures of material existence. This is because there still remains subtle unconscious fuel to feed the Ego - latent desire and inclinations that lie seated deep in the sub-conscious mind and shape an individual's personality. It might appear strange and, in fact, pathological, to speak of the dilution of one's personality, but that is precisely what the second stage of self-abnegation entails. The process here is not one of conscious flaw-detection and fixing; the sub-conscious, by definition lies outside the purview of the conscious mind, however nobly inclined.

One of the most wonderful inventions of the creative human intellect is the mathematical realm of optimization. The philosophical idea is simple: even if you do not know what to do to individual elements of a process domain, if it is possible to define a concept of `utility' in its space, and if this utility function is not completely random in its behavior, then it is possible, with a limited number of trials, to find a point (or trajectory) in the process space that has the greatest utility.

This diversion into mathematical jargon becomes meaningful when one realizes that this is precisely the mechanism whereby the conscious mind can exercise some measure of control over the sub-conscious, even if it cannot manipulate it directly. The sub-conscious trains itself by a process of Hebbian reinforcement - it hangs on to things it likes, and attempts to stay away from things it does not like. Since the definition of likes and dislikes changes over time, is activated at a very early age at which time it is often the dominant discriminatory framework, the sub-conscious mind is often somewhat infantile, anachronistic and chaotic in its operation and expression. Properly channeled, it is the seat of all creativity. Improperly channeled, it is the source of bipolar behavior, psychoses and other unpleasant mental states, descriptions of which litter the psychological literature.

To set this menagerie into some sort of order, the conscious mind can do nothing better than make repeated trials, bearing in mind the utility function it seeks to optimize - freedom from sub-conscious urges, liberation from imperfections of prior perceptions and tranquility and clarity in normal thought. In general, one would presume that this problem is NP, or worse. It seems unlikely, given the enormous variability of the conceptual space that may serve as an abstract model for the sub-conscious, that a polynomial number of trials will be sufficient to provably find the optimal solution. It is not even certain whether an exponential number of trials will suffice, although the finite depth of the branching tree process of perception suggests that this is likely to be the case.

We are now finally in a position to make our second definition, as promised earlier. Computation, in the context of spiritual practice, may be defined as trials that the conscious mind, which has no sense of utility, imposes upon the sub-conscious, which is the seat of perception and utility, but has no logical, or even probabilistic underpinnings. Strictly speaking, it is erroneous to speak of computation complexity in this context since this process is not Turing-emulable in real-time. This can be easily seen since multiple trials may proceed simultaneously, and no utility function values may be returned for long periods of time. However, the metaphor speaks powerfully to the underlying elegance of the task, so we cock a snook at tradition and persist with it.

I have thus described, as promised earlier, the two concepts that allow me to pose the somewhat silly question: is progress in meditation P or NP? I cannot claim that I have the answer yet. Subsequent writings will explore various aspects of the problem, and I have some hope that the answer will be found.

I feel the desire to describe the difference between unsupervised learning and learning from exemplars in this framework, but I feel the certitude of meditative tranquility fading, being replaced steadily by the doubt that characterizes (and should characterize, in my opinion) the aspirant's earthly existence. I conclude for the present then, and will take up this thread anon when the Gurutattva moves me again.

Joy! Joy! Eternal Bliss!

Fickle song, come back. Don't flee from me
Let all hear of the joy I feel

If the stripe of the great sky river were a string
It would sound shrill to this somber thrum
All worlds colliding with all worlds that have been
Pale to the sound of this Cosmic drum

The weakest harmonics of the Turiya state
Fill my heart with tremendous joy
The Guru fills my soul with bliss;
Like a balloon.

She fills and fills with a roguish smile
She laughs as I gaze at her resplendent face
Awareness swells, an anchored boat in the tide
Casts off moorings to reality, and roams

How I have sought you in life and in sleep
In hours of meditations I have chased you
In countless days of thought I have yearned
To see beyond the veil that you have ever drawn

I still see no more than I have ever seen
But the eye inside needs see no more
I hear, louder than the sounds of the world
The beating of Turiya, the Cosmic drum

Brighter than the splendor of a billion suns
Is the power that lies behind this Door
Once past, I shall no longer be
This coil, in bliss, shall tinker on

But happy fate, it falls to the mortal coil
To squirm in joy at the gates of Void
I thrill, my hair stands all on end
As I wait for Word from the voiceless Voice.

Andheri Madhushala - I

It generally is considered somewhat poor form for a poet to express satisfaction and joy at one of his creations, the ideal being one of stern service to one's muse and proferment of the fruits of one's toil to society in a detached and brooding manner. I must confess, though, that its been a long time (more than four years) since I have felt so pleased at having expressed my innermost feelings in such a facile and fluent manner.

Unfortunately, it might not mean much to audiences unfamiliar with the original `Madhushala' and the allegorical story it weaves of existential dilemmas and their resolution. The construction is also inspired , in a large part, by the beautiful `Dark Night of the Soul' by St John on the Cross.

At any rate, I am delighted to read and reread it, and I offer to the world the first part of `Andheri Madhushala' with a caper and a flourish. The cadence is the same as that in the recitation of the original by Bachchan.

Path the bahut visham par akhir aa madiralay hum baithe
`Saki, pila ek jaam, bahut hai pyaas', hum aise hee ainthe
Par na dikhe saki ki soorat, na laute goonj deewaron se
Madiralay me to hain, ab kya? poochein hum bicchadi rahon se

Hum madiralay mein baithe, soche the bas ab kya karna
Pahunch gaye madhu-dwar, to bheeshan dhoop se akhir kya darna
Khush the hum akhir dhoomil hoangie avsadit yaadein bhi
Madhu ke pyaalon mein tar hoange saare farz-o-vaade bhi

Rahe madiralay me kuchh din, par dikhi nahin saki humko
Hone lage hatash, ki madira mile nahin hum jaison ko
Saki ka deedar to chhorein, boond mili na madira ki
Hala nahin to pani pee, kahein baki peenewale bhi

Ha, pyale! Tu kya jaane, madira kya khel khilati hai
Tarpa jitna vihval kartee, utna hi pyaas badhaati hai
Mit gayein hain ab sab khwab, hoor si saki hala layegi
Baithein hain mala japte bas, kabhi to madhushala aayegi

Update (Sep 04, 2008)
To my deep satisfaction, I found a neat little applet that allows one to write in Devanagari on the screen. Transliterations are always sad ; they seem to lack an indefinable sense of vigor, as a plant would when transplanted from its native land. Here is the piece, the way it should be

अँधेरी मधुशाला

पथ थे बहुत विषम पर आखिर आ मदिरालय हम बैठे
`साकी! पिला एक जाम बहुत है प्यास', हम ऐसे ही ऐंठे
पर न दिखे साकी की सूरत, न लौटे गूँज दीवारों से
`मदिरालय में तो हैं, अब क्या?',पूछें हम बिछड़ी राहों से

हम मदिरालय में बैठे, सोचे थे बस अब क्या करना
पहुँच गये मधु-द्वार तो भीषण धूप से आखिर क्या डरना
खुश थे हम आखिर धूमिल होंगी अवसादित यादें भी
मधु के प्यालों में तर होंगे सारे फ़र्ज़-अो-वादे भी

रहे मदिरालय में कुछ दिन पर दिखी नहीं साकी हमको
होने लगे हताश कि मदिरा मिले नहीं हम जैसों को
साकी का दीदार तो छोड़ें, बूँद मिली न मदिरा की
हाला नहीं तो पानी पी, कहते सब पीनेवाले भी

हा प्याले! तू क्या जाने, मदिरा क्या खेल खिलाती है
तड़पा जितना विह्वल करती, उतना ही प्यास बढ़ाती है
मिट गये हैं अब सब ख़्वाब, हूर सी साकी हाला लायेगी
बैठे हैं माला जपते बस, कभी तो मधुशाला आयेगी

The Mississippi

The river flows and I run beside it
An unmoving witness to my motion
The river flows and I stand beside it
A moving witness to my silence

The river; she sings of vagabondage
Of finding love in distant lands
Of rounded pebbles and alluvial flows
And cycles of birth on either shore

The river sings with a cadence ineffable
Of the tranquility of a roving life
The river soothes this oft querulous child
And a rover I know sings back to her

`Vasudhaiva kutumbakam', she murmurs
`Vasudhaiva kutumbakam', I concur
I open my heart to the universe
The universe opens its mind to me.

Blues for Chennai

'thaalaattudhae vaanam'

This is a Tamil phrase that has stuck in my memory from the time a very dear friend of mine first translated it for me more than two years ago. On that day, I knew that I would write a song that drew on it some day. Two years on, it finally came to me.

The literal translation of the original phrase, of course, is `the sky is the cradle', and the actual context is some sort of sappy love song, but I don't let that bother me overmuch - a poet has the license to frill.

The ocean is my parchment
Here all my stories lie
This little boat serves as my quill
Scrawling letters swirling by

Zenith is my blue inkwell
Flecked with little tufts of cloud
The winds of muse and memory
Sing all my thoughts out loud

But there is something curious
In the songs that I can play
My pen will mark my paper only
If either is murky gray

When the shadows of time passing
Brood deep upon the swell
Or somber clouds of sorrow
Tinge the ink in my deep well

Then songs there are a-plenty
Of fortitude and strength
Perchance, of new wisdom found
On winding roads towards the end.

When the ocean, wellspring of action
Is pellucid, calm and clear
When the firmament, deep azure
Reflects a spirit free of fear

I rock my boat to sing quatrains
of Joy and tranquil staves
The words, they have no meaning
They vanish in the shifting waves

When blue meets blue serenity
And irrevocably unites
There is no thought, no word
To speak of that Delight

And that, my friend is the reason
Why my words are oft sad and bland
And songs, the ones that find those words
Walk on lonely beaches in the sand



In twilight
And under starlit skies.

Short Tales of the Giant Forest

When I was about eight, my grandparents brought me a gigantic and profusely illustrated book on `America's National Parks'. As a consequence, several of my childhood fantasies had for their setting the russet tinged backdrop of the Sierra Nevada. Also, one of my first general knowledge books was yet another large volume called `The Big Book of Questions and Answers'. The most intriguing image in this book was a photograph of two extremely large tree stems, with a man and a car underneath. It was captioned, `Do red giants really exist?'.

To go to the Sequoia forest and pay homage to the red giants, thus, is a task that I have looked forward to for more than 16 years. Since I am spending three weeks in Mountain View CA, it was a foregone conclusion that one of the weekends would be set aside for this excursion. However, this Thursday, I found that through the machinations of fate, the next couple of weekends would be unsuitable for the purpose. Friday was a deadline day at the company I am consulting, and I could not get away from work till 8 in the evening.

The scene shifts to Saturday morning, and the inevitable mental tussle. Is it better to brave the slings and arrows of 700 miles in a two day time frame? Or is it better to sleep, perchance to dream? Thankfully, the forces of ennui met with a temporary setback, allowing me to sally forth in pursuit of an appropriate steed for my journey.

As luck would have it, my corporate contacts carry some weight at the rental agency, which allowed me to upgrade for free to a Toyota Prius. I shall, at a later point in the narrative, gush exuberantly about the several excellent qualities of this marvel of engineering. For now, it should suffice to say that by noon on Saturday, no obstacles remained to impede my departure.

Setting out forthwith in the afternoon sun, I made good time on Hwy 101, heading towards San Jose. It was when I left the highway to venture upon the CA152 that the instructive portion of my journey can be said to have begun. Past Fresno, I headed east on the Kings Canyon Road. It was now that I realized that this trip was going to turn out to be rather more fulfilling than I had thought. The vista from the highway was absolutely stunning. In the distance the crags of the Sierra were beginning to make their presence known. The road was surrounded by orange groves on both sides, each tree laden down with its eponymous offspring. The road itself was far from dull, twisting and rolling capriciously, its undulations allowing the electric motor on my Prius to deliver more than its natural bang for my buck.

It pains me to confess that I was completely ignorant of the geography of the parks and their location while setting out. Therefore, I was surprised to find that the road was beginning to climb into the mountains, even as the daylight was beginning to fail. Driving in the mountains, however, is a great joy to me, and as the sunset came upon the day, and even as my ecologically superior conveyance bore me deeper into the heart of the Sierra Nevada, I was conscious of a great sense of pleasure stealing over me. Ahead of me lay the fulfillment of one of my childhood dreams. And even as I drove, I could not but feel pleased at the existential circumstances that were allowing me to make this journey. To be young and vigorous is a blessed state indeed!

As my car climbed into yet another turn, the trees that had heretofore obstructed my view dropped away, and I was confronted with a wondrous sight. I am certain that I have not seen many more bewitching views than the one that I now beheld. I know this, for it made me despair at not possessing a camera to capture it, a sentiment that occurs to me once in a violet moon. In the vaults of my memory, since the age of about 16, there are about a dozen images that I have consciously impressed as memories of a lifetime. My modus operandi for doing so is simply to stare at the vision until I know I will not forget it.

I spent nearly half an hour there, on top of a heap of boulders on the side of the road, staring intensely. Picture if you will, the sun setting into a sea of clouds. Those who travel by air must necessarily know what I mean by a sea of clouds - that turbulent symphony of air and water, so much more creative than its earth-bound cousin. Consider this immense sea of clouds moving and shifting around islands formed by the peaks of hills jutting out above. Lastly, allow yourself, as the observer, a vantage point far above this play of the elements and an almost hemispherical field of vision.

As I gazed intently upon this tapestry of light beams on puffs of vapor, I felt a strong meditative urge taking hold. I resisted it, and I found my mind formulating a question quite clearly, `What is so mystical about mountains? What is so cleansing about Nature? Why do man-made objects not evoke such deep emotion?' I tried to think of the answer, but could not find one that satisfied me. I left the rock in a deeply contemplative state.

I reached the entrance of Kings Canyon at about 6 in the evening, in deepening twilight. I had been keeping my eyes peeled for sequoia sightings, but none had as yet appeared. Now, as I passed into the Park, I saw my first one. I will try and recapitulate as honestly as possible, my mental processes at this juncture.

My first impulse was one of amused disbelief, a fleeting thought that my eyes had deceived me into imagining I had seen something I had wanted to see so much, and that sanity would be restored in short order. When that did not happen, the truth started dawning, in the form of the rhetorical question:"That is a TREE?" When I had slowed down and craned my neck to look at the object under consideration to my satisfaction (if not to that of my vertebrae and following drivers), this was replaced by the thought that has governed my mental botanical picture ever since: "THAT is a tree!". Other specimens of flora now appear ersatz to me in comparison with this godly apparition.

How do I describe a Giant Sequoia to you? Take the tallest, most regal of the eucalypti. Give it the ponderous girth of an old King Banyan tree. Shape its trunk with the geometrical precision typical of the coniferae and also impart to the branches and leaves an arboreal legerdemain characteristic of temperate vegetation. Lastly, impart to this fantastic creature that stolid respectability one would typically accord to a venerable old oak. That, I think, would be a fair approximation of a Giant Sequoia.

As I drove farther into the Park, and saw more Sequoia trees, I gradually became conscious of an uncanny fear. These entities do not belong in the same day and age as I. Looking at these trees made me want to look over my shoulder , lest a velociraptor lavish its attentions upon me. This unreasonable feeling stayed with me all of that evening and was never quite dispelled through the duration of my stay.

My first order of business upon entering this area was to fill up on gas. In hindsight, this was a prudent precaution, since the Park area itself does not have any pumps. At this point, it becomes necessary for me to acquaint you, gentle reader, with some of the topology of the region. Very briefly, there are two National Parks, adjoining each other, that are known for Giant Sequoia groves. One, the one where our story is situated right now, is called the Kings Canyon National Park. The other, which the story shall reach eventually, is called the Sequoia National Park. These two are connected by a road called the Generals Highway which runs for about 20 miles. However, as we shall soon see, this road is blocked up with snow during winter, and wayfarers seeking to get from one park to the other have to take a detour.

However, to return to our story, having filled up on gas, I decided to explore one of the Christian camps in the region, specifically near Hume Lake. My expedition however, rapidly assumed the appearance of an instructional lesson in ice-skating, my shoes, for all their admirable qualities, not finding any traction on the sheet ice. Rendered immobile by the inadequacy of my equipment, I was fortunate to find that the local grocery store provides for such situations in the form of excellent strap-on tracks. With a pair of these on my shoe soles, I was soon skipping around. Unfortunately, my visit with the people of the Book was not very pleasant. They looked with extreme suspicion upon my heathen person, and all the breezy insouciance that I could muster was barely sufficient to allow me some semblance of a dignified departure.

I decided to delay no further, and resolved to fulfill my primary motive of visiting Kings Canyon viz. seeing the General Grant Tree. To do this necessitated driving into the forest for a couple of miles into a clearing and then walking along a trail. I accomplished the first without much difficulty, but was stymied for want of a light source in the case of the second. There would not be much point in walking the trail in pitch darkness and coming home to the ignominy of failing to sight one of the largest living things in the world.

Some details are in order here. The General Grant tree is the second largest (by volume) tree in the world. It is also the thickest Giant Sequoia tree in the world, measuring about 40 feet in diameter at its base, and 124 feet in circumference. The largest tree in the world, the General Sherman, is in the other Park, which I would visit on the morrow. Thus, in this trip, I would have accomplished my purpose of seeing both the largest and the thickest living things in the world. The tallest, for matter of record, is a coast redwood tree called Hyperion, which I would also dearly wish to see. Its location, unfortunately, is kept a secret, to avoid the rush of stampeding tourists. Perhaps one day, I will see it.

For now, being at a bit of a loose end, I had to turn in early for want of something better to do. Having taken the precaution of packing in some of my work, I did some of it by the reading light in the car. Getting ready for bed in the back seat of the car, I checked off all the fascinating things about my situation one by one in my mind. Firstly, I was in a grove of Giant Sequoias, a couple of miles from civilization. Secondly, the night sky was bright with the Milky Way and countless stars. In fact, the last time I had seen so many stars was nearly an year ago, while camping in the Black Forest in Germany, a night that I also will cherish to my dying day. Lastly, squishing myself into the back seat of a Toyota Prius under a greatcoat, looking at the stars out of the window, with the view of the sky blocked at places by the looming hulks of three big Sequoia trees, I was feeling completely at home. All was serene, all was beautiful, sacchidananda.!

Well, I must confess, not completely. I remember that one of my last thoughts before nodding off was:"The sky tonight has a million eyes. What bliss it would be if there were a million and two." But that is a completely different story; one that is unlikely to ever be told.

It is difficult for me, given the lack of reference figures to identify with, to view my living habits with perspective. I think my nomadic existence in the past couple of years has accustomed me to living lawlessly, out of a suitcase and in complete isolation. For example, in Minneapolis, home is my lab cubicle, where I keep two pairs of clothes, a sleeping bag, an acoustic bass and a basketball. That is the span of my worldly possessions, and I intend to keep it that way. Here, in Silicon Valley, where I am working as a contractor for a month, I have a plush rented apartment on company's money, but prefer to just bed down in my office after work. Staying in an apartment, or any private place for that matter, is a skill that I find I now will have to gradually reacquaint myself with. I mention this in order to place my night's roost in the grove of sequoias some perspective. I did not go far from civilization and sleep in the back of a car driven by the spirit of adventure. I did so because that is the most natural thing for me to do.

The rest of the night was uneventful, apart from periodic adjustments of the car thermostat. Waking up at 6 in the morning, I made my way onto the Grant Tree Trail. Snow was six inches to a foot deep in most places, and my snow tracks proved to be worth their weight in gold. I found, to my regret, that I had passed up an opportunity for an adventuresome night's stay the previous night in the form of the Fallen Monarch.

The Fallen Monarch is a fallen Sequoia trunk of historic significance. It was used by Native Indians as a house, and later was used by the U.S. cavalry as a stable for their horses. Had I but known of its existence, I would not have spent the hours of the night twisted up like a pretzel in my car's back seat. Making a note of the fact for my next visit, I proceeded further. There were a couple of other notable trees on this trail, and they were all pretty substantial. Finally, I saw the General Grant.

To my surprise, I was not particularly impressed by the sight. The base was, of course, 40 feet in diameter, but somehow that did not register with me in a manner that would provoke a visceral response. I had been afraid of this - I have long known that the human eye is a poor judge of volume. I can still remember my eyes popping out in surprise in fourth grade, when I found that a cubic meter of water contains a 1000 liters. Still, this was undeniably a giant. He was about 250 feet tall as well, and one could tell that he was taller than his neighbors, because his was the only crest that was bathed in sunlight, while the others were still in shadow. Since I was the first (and only) person on the trail that day, I took the liberty of hopping over the trail fence and paying him a closer visit.

Feeling the warmth under the bark, I finally sensed the emotions that I had expected. The size of this entity was not particularly impressive by the standards of eyes long used to looking at skyscrapers and other large objects. It is with the realization that this gigantic structure is alive and probably conscious to a degree that true awe sets in. I closed my eyes as I felt the bark, and the first thoughts that came to me unbidden were in praise of Vishnu, the preserver.

Sequoia trees grow so big because their wood is resistant to decay. Even the trunks of the trees that have fallen in the last half a millennium or so still dot the landscape. The only way they die is through forest fires or from tipping over for one reason or another. In a world filled with decay and disease, here is one haven where life can smolder slowly and grow inexorably until it reaches the titanic proportions that evoke our awe now. Shiva, the destroyer, always has the last word. But with the skin of this gargantuan being under my fingers, I realized with a sense of tender affection, the incredible creativity of Vishnu - the Supreme Artist. When he is allowed to work his leela - his web of magic, the results are truly breath-taking to behold.

Nothing escapes the Destroyer's all-encompassing gaze. entropy conquers all. And yet, in the subtle gestures of the Preserver, in the hope that the fluctuation theorems bear, Life carries on indomitable. In its battle against such immense cosmic odds lies its splendor. In its persistently impudent refutation of the Universe's penchant towards senselessness lies its immense beauty. Praise for the Preserver flowed from my lips spontaneously and copiously (though I am quite sure not very melodiously!).

Walking around the circumference of the tree, I realized that I had taken all that I could meaningfully take from this place, and that it was time for me to wend my way to the other Park. Since the Generals highway, as mentioned earlier, was blocked up, it was recommended that I drive back to the entrance of Squaw valley 20 miles, then drive 40 more to hit the Hwy 198 and use that to get into Sequoia Park. However, looking at my own road map, I saw that I could use Route 245 from right outside Kings Canyon Park, and that it would save me some of the distance.

What I did not realize was that the Squaw valley route would have taken me along the plains, whereas this route would entail climbing down from the Kings Canyon ridge and then climbing back up to reach Sequoia Park. It was one of the most entertaining sessions of mountain driving that I have been blessed to encounter.

The first and most important component of what made this ride so special was, of course, the weather. It was a beautiful, balmy winter morning - absolutely clear blue skies and a benevolent sun shining down graciously. Secondly, there were absolutely no people on the road. As a matter of fact, in all that 40 mile stretch, I encountered precisely three other cars, two of them together near the end. For all practical purposes, I could have been the only person in the entire world, merrily whizzing along the twists and turns of that serpentine road as it wound down into some of the most idyllic pastoral country that I have ever seen.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The descent itself was orders of magnitude more enjoyable by virtue of the make of my car. Whereas in normal cars, going down grades is quite pleasurable, in a Prius, the experience is enhanced several-fold. Where normal cars will slow down in the occasional inclinations, causing the driver to have to pump the gas pedal a little bit, the Prius keeps accelerating through those stretches, thanks to its electric motor. For about a ten mile stretch, I did not need a drop of gas, just the occasional judicious application of brakes. Furthermore, on my way down, I was greeted by a drift of light fog, that added a surreal element to the experience until, in all honesty, it appeared to be more of a practice spin in the Need For Speed PC game than a real experience. The quietness of the car engine, combined with occasional stretches of extremely smooth road gave me on several occasions, a beautiful sense of gliding through the air that one typically feels in an aircraft right before it is about to land.

Meadows, green and pristine, dotted with cows, horses and sheep. Groves of orange trees more orange that green, tremendous fields of grain. Out of the fog, I descended into the heart of agrarian California. Years in the future, when I look back, I think there is a great probability that this will be the moment I will look back upon as the one where I accepted this country to be my own. I had thought I would never again experience the tranquility and joy that I had felt in the Himalayan foothills. I was wrong, and I rejoice beyond measure at having been proved wrong.

Rather than persist in annoying my faithful readers with further rhapsody, I think I will not describe in much greater detail my journey on 245 down to 198, thence to Sequoia Park and the last 20 miles of descent into the heart of the Giant Forest. Let me simply place on record that I truly felt like I was 2, that the whole world existed simply for my entertainment, and that it was doing a very good job of entertaining me. The tints of the Sierra Nevada, the unreality of the distant blue-hued snow-capped peaks, the solemn valley of the river Kaweah, the quaint, gabled homesteads and hand-written signboards - it was as if Nature was articulating all my deepest archetypes of beauty in one glorious sonata.

Arriving at Sequoia Park in this tranquil mood, I found that I had to, as stated earlier, drive 20 miles further to reach the famous Giant Forest. This is the largest Sequoia grove in the world, and is reputed to to contain more than 200 trees with a diameter greater than 10 feet. I was pleased to find that there was even fewer signs of commercial exploitation here than at Kings Canyon. About the only human structure in evidence was a small Giants Museum for children, and an information desk. Not finding much to excite my interest here, I drove the remaining few miles to the grove that harbors the largest living thing on Earth - the General Sherman tree.

In light of my rather composed reaction at the sight of the General Grant tree, I was expecting a similar situation to arise in the case of the Sherman tree too. It so happened that I misinterpreted a sign pointing me towards the Sherman tree and mistakenly assumed a nearer tree (at which some equally mistaken tourists were posing) to be the object in question. I was puzzled, since this tree, while quite imposing in stature, was nowhere near as imposing as the General Grant. ``What a rip-off'', I thought, ``Why even that big tree yonder is bigger than this one''.

Critics might accuse me of dramatizing my account, but this actually is how I came across the largest living thing on Earth. As soon as I had finished my mental comparison of the alleged Sherman tree with the tree in the background, I slowly realized that the tree in the background was much, much bigger than any of the others I had seen. Tramping across the snow towards it, my wits slowly realized what my eyes, falling on a signpost confirmed moments later. This was the General Sherman tree!

What a monster!

I repeated this phrase over and over again, as I attempted to come to terms with the magnitude of this vast creature. I think the fact that my expectations from the Sherman had been drastically lowered by my earlier error was largely responsible for the fact that the size of the General Sherman absolutely stunned me. Walking up to it, resting my chin against its trunk and gazing upwards, my most accessible thought was, ``This is not a tree, its a mountain.''

And thus it verily was. Its largest branch, sticking out at a height of about 150 feet, was itself much larger than most trees one would naturally expect to see. Standing a dizzy 270 feet tall, he was not as bulky at the base as the General Grant, but much more solidly built throughout. Even though the General Grant is not to be sneezed at, the difference between the two was viscerally enormous. While the General Grant impressed me no end, the Sherman tree left me giggling in stunned amazement.

I found that I was not alone in my merriment. The tree appeared to have a similar effect on several of the other onlookers. We were unanimous in the opinion that ``That is a big tree.'' The awestruck wonder in everyone's eyes was a joy to behold. I propounded my theory of Vishnu's link to the big trees to a woman nearby, who coincidentally turned out to be an erstwhile ISKCON follower.

I peregrinated gently in that magnificent grove, which houses about ten of the largest trees in the world. I returned to the Sherman, and in an extremely pretentious and vacuous gesture, tried to connect with his thoughts by placing my palm on him and removing conscious thought. Somewhat sheepishly, I withdrew. With my last sight of the Sherman tree, I summoned up all my ancestral reservoirs of animism and offered up a prayer to the Divine for the safe passage into the other life of my grandparents, who are both in frail health now, and to whom I owe as much affection as is usually due only to parents.

There was but one task left to attempt before driving back home - the ascent to Moro Rock. Having read and heard several rapturous descriptions of the view from on top, I had resolved to climb up to it. However, it turned out that the road up to the beginning of the climbing trail was blocked up with snow, and that it was not advisable to venture up.

However, a couple of snowshoers were at that very moment going up the trail, and moved by their spirit, I thought I would try it as well. Of course, I did not have snow shoes, only my pitiful basketball shoes with snow tracks on them. However, I cast caution to the winds and started following their footprints up the mountain.

It was easy going for a while, and I thought I would soon catch up with them. However, soon the snow became softer, and I got my first and extremely arduous lesson in trying to walk on snow. Clumping along as I was originally, I found that by repeatedly sinking my heels into the snow to depths of half a foot and more, I was gravely risking the structural integrity of my ankles. Thus, my first snow-walking lesson was to try and land on the balls of my feet as opposed to my heels, an action more natural while running than walking.

I made steady progress for a while, and then found that the intrepid duo who had preceded me up the mountain were returning. This worried me, since I did not know the way to Moro Rock, and I had been hoping that their footsteps would be adequate guidance for me. At this point, prudence counseled me to follow their lead and return. I tried to place my foolhardy spirit of adventure in the counter-balance, but it could not be bothered to make the effort. Then, interestingly, I thought of you, my readers.

I thought of the gutless story my ill-conceived hike would make if I were to give in at that point, and my Ego demanded that I make some efforts to prolong my struggle. So, I rested for a bit on a rock and then stepped out into pristine, unmarked snow, trying to strike out in the general direction of Moro Rock. I went along for about half a mile and then found a heartening sight - some sort of satellite dish installation. Notwithstanding my assertions to the contrary earlier in the narrative, I must confess that these signs of civilization were extremely welcome to me.

However, on consulting a signpost half-buried in the snow nearby, my worst suspicions were confirmed. I was farther from Moro Rock than at the beginning of my journey, and I had been, at least for a while, been taking a direction almost orthogonal to the real one. This stark condemnation of my orienteering skill gave me further pause, and I wondered if I should turn back.

At this point, the remnants of the foolish, feral part of my nature asserted themselves. ``What nonsense! On we go!''. So, on we went, and it was interesting going for a while. Climbing on slopes populated by sequoia trees, I was able to get a closer view of their upper sections and branch and leaf arrangements. I labored on upwards, feet sinking in the snow at every step, heart pounding with the exercise, and mind calculating the probability of my survival should I lose sight of my footprints on the way back.

Unhappily, my story does not have a heroic ending. Having labored upwards for half an hour, I found myself on top of a hill, and completely disoriented with respect to my own bearings, to say nothing of Moro Rock. At several times during my time in India, I would carry a compass with me, and pride myself of extracting myself from similar situations using elementary sky-reading. In this case, I had no compass, and thus no recourse to trigonometric salvation. I scanned the foliate slopes of the hill for possible traces of a trail, but could not find any. The rush of adrenaline subsided, I retraced my footsteps and arrived back at the Museum uneventfully. I will return to Sequoia Park in summer, and I will climb up to Moro Rock then.

With the afternoon gradually subsiding, I had to choose between idling in the Park and looking at some more trees and driving home on Monday morning, or making a dash for home, hoping to clear the mountains by the time the light failed and arrive home by 9 in the evening. The latter suggestion won out, since it would allow me to finish up this piece before the rush and tumult of the week drew me in again. So, I bid the Park and its out-sized inhabitants farewell and set out.

The return journey was as equally satisfying as the one coming in that I have rapturously detailed elsewhere. Instead of driving down Hwy 198 back to civilization, I chose to drive up the mountain road, Rte 245 once more and to return home via the Kings Canyon Road by which I had arrived. This made the trip 40 miles longer, but that was a small price to pay for the privilege of rolling up that exquisite stretch of countryside again.

One last incident occurred in the mountains, before I bid them farewell for the nonce. Driving out of Sequoia Park, while still high up, I parked my car in a turnout at a bend in the road and paused to gaze out at the Sierra Nevada in all its glory one last time. Sitting on the rock boundary at the outer edge of the road, I finally gave in to my urge and meditated. I sat there with the cool breeze and the hot sun as my sole companions, oblivious to the passage of time and cars. And here, unbidden, I received insight into the questions that had come to me the previous day.

Looking at distant mountains has always triggered odd sentiments for me. It always seems to me that they are calling me. I am quite certain that others have heard their plaint too. The one that calls you to drop what you're doing and come up higher into the mountains, deeper into the forests. I have now realized that this `call' results as a consequence of two sequential actions. First, when the human mind is confronted with existence far beyond its own length- and time-scale, it becomes aware of its mortality. That is what causes the sadness that I feel. Secondly, with the Ego thus shaken in its throne, the Spirit takes the opportunity to assert itself, and reminds the discriminative intellect that It always remains, and that the Ego's mortality is not a cause for concern, since it does not affect the true essence of Being. This results in that sense of cleansing and fulfillment that follows the pang of sadness.

Thus results the music of the mountains, a song that I have heard so clearly since I was ten years' old. Thus, indeed results all music, for is not all music a reminder of the fact that timeless beauty can be evoked in a short span of time? Thus, in its essence, results meaning out of meaninglessness, Life out of thermodynamics, Love out of Death, Being out of Un-Being. The whole story of the Universe is so simply told as a tale of two motifs - the sadness that comes of the finitude of a substructure, and its resolution through synthesis with others of its own ilk.

Hence, as epilogue to this narrative of my little journey: he meditated on a rock wall in the Sierra Nevada on a sunny afternoon, and lived happily ever after.

Of course, but you need to get up first

Draw the arrows of sorrows from your wounds,
Sharpen them on the anvil of quiet reflection,
And let them fly at the demons that daunt you.

Draw these strings of gloomy thought together
Knot them and coil them in labor and sweat
Take this rope and climb up above your fears

Draw those bitter words and promises broken
In the gentle heat of your tapas let them lie
Anon, press the wine to your lips and laugh


For you will have conquered through submission


The path of fire and light is a daunting one
Be bold, and step forth

An amoral basis for being good

Perhaps the most iniquitous contribution of post-modern and liberal thought has been the deprecation of Sattva as self-righteous conservatism. The case in support of this hypothesis, however, is strong. Most seekers after spiritual enlightenment appear to have lived decidedly unconventional lives, and there are several extremely pious citizens who can't see wood for their incense sticks.

The question acquires a personal dimension for me when I try to be amoral. On the one hand, I worry about how justified I am in breaking with this traditional wisdom and indulging in proscribed activities (non-vegetarianism, music). On the other hand, I also worry about how justified I am in using this traditional wisdom as a moral basis for rejecting and mocking other proscribed activities that I do not partake in (gossip, frivolity).

Since Sattva is for me, both the fly and the ointment, I have often thought about how it really is related to the search for self-awareness. Today, during meditation, I thought I figured some part of it out. I will try and capture it here, before it fades away into the extra-logical Tumbolia it came from.

Sattva is desirable because it offers the least resistance to my mental conditioning with respect to self-awareness. The phenomenon of conditioning is a manifestation of reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning operates on the principle of changing priors over possible actions hoping to maximize an expected 'reward'. That is, one is more likely to perform an action (or an action viewed as similar) in anticipation of a reward. At this point, there are dozens of examples from the psychology literature that I could quote to support my point. Instead, let us just cut to the chase and talk about how this impacts the relationship between Sattva and self-awareness.

Insofar as my own experience goes, once circumstantial distractions have been dealt with, the two most significant obstacles to tranquility in meditation are excitement and guilt at being excited. While meditating, I will think of various things, and on realizing this, will try and shut them down as viciously as the guilt associated with the thought will recommend. And it is an oft-quoted suggestion that seekers not clamp down on their thought processes, but let them flit about and die harmlessly.

Given this, I am far more likely to let a mental audition of a bhajan wind itself down than to allow a vision of a pornographic movie to continue. That has nothing to do with their relative moral merits, it has everything to do with the mental conditioning that modulates my personality. If I were brought up in an environment where watching porn was an incentive towards spiritual practice, I would probably feel extreme tranquility imagining Tera Patrick's sensual undulations.

Also, my thoughts are more than likely to be derived from my own experiences and actions. Therefore, thought harmless to my conditioning will likely only result from experiences and actions that my conditioning judges to be likewise. If I wish to preserve a mental sanctum of tranquility, it will be rather difficult to sustain if I do things contradictory to my essential nature.

Shallow ambition and the associated apathy, loud noises and the associated emotions - none of these are inferior in principle. For a child brought up to believe, somehow, that worldly noise and confusion is strongly correlated with inner peace, they would in fact be desirable. The story of Angulimal, a mythical Indian dacoit, is a case in point. To him, killing and maiming was a blissful experience, by virtue of his upbringing and worldly experience. Meditating while focusing on his desire for murder, he attained a high state of self-awareness and was henceforth known as Vishwamitra.

I, alas, have had more conventional conditioning. To be calm under stress, to be active and resourceful: these are ideals that I have grown up with. Therefore, the Sattvic life recommends itself, not by virtue of some objective morality, but as a choice of least mental resistance.

I admit that this sounds like an exceptionally Freudian view, in the sense that I appear powerless to change my conditioning and accept other influences as being equally healthy and rewarding. To me, at least, struggling to escape my conditioning was excruciatingly important at one point, but in its active form simply led to one guilt trip after another, and a lot of time wasted. That was one of the main reasons for me to take up spiritual practice, as an orthogonal and passive alternative.

For the sake of completeness and scholarly reference, I have suggested here that Ken Wilber's distinction between transformation, which to him is analogous to deepening self-awareness - and translation, which he defines as different ways of explaining the lack of transformation to ourselves, is correct but fails to take into account the fact that all translations are not equally distant from inducing transformation. Based on personal landscapes, and I will take the Kantian view and claim that they have a universal template, some translations will be less deleterious towards transformation.

That does not make them transformative in any sense. In the familiar terminology of Christian theology, the spirit seeks to know itself, but the mind-body needs stimulation. If that stimulation gives it strength and endorses its belief in its reality (through exalting sensory perception), then the spirit's task becomes much harder. If, on the other hand, the stimulation is abstract and intellectual (e.g. mathematical), the mind-body's belief in its reality is weakened, and the spirit has an easier task.

I am afraid I have not been as concise with my logic here as I would have liked, and I will certainly revisit this and make changes when my perspective on the issue deepens further. In the meantime, this is what I think, and this is how I seek to construct an amoral basis for being 'good'.

The 'Why-am-I-doing-this' feeling

Its the warrior's pride, isn't it? To banish the demons of old questions unanswered with gusts of wind through tousled hair.

Its the war against entropy, isn't it? To know that every day I'm somewhere I wasn't yesterday; to know that every day, I have grown by experiencing newer spaces.

Its love, isn't it? And it is the purest love because it seeks to find fulfillment not in the sameness of bondage but in the stillness that comes of freedom.

Its the will of the River, isn't it? To keep on flowing -with the never-ending, ever-tender, sonorously throbbing, joyously sobbing, all-encompassing River.

Bathtub musings

Yes, I know. Horribly crude. I might end up reworking this sometime. But I'll put it up here lest I lose it.

Hit the start button on the morning shower
A turbulent start to a turbulent day
Today though, I'm feeling lazy
Pull the plug on the schedule; fill up the tub

Imperfections, stress, broken promises
Swept under a glowing tranquil sheet
The ripples soothe, the tensions loosen
Ears throbbing; safe in the womb

Toy ducks, boats and action figures
Dinosaurs and bowls rich in nomenclature
Loch Ness, armadas, occasional maelstroms
The daring adventures of simpler days

Bottle the angst and pull the plug
The mirror is misted, can't see myself
Towel the rivulets from another time off
Back in the saddle, away we go

Epilogue

I have floated a long way in my little boat
Have struggled much to go my own way.
As time makes the futility of those battles clearer
Those moments of the journey turn ever dearer

A minor wrangle

As a teenager, I was avidly fond of a book called "The Adventures of Captain Wrungel", which documents the fictional fictional (if you catch my drift) adventures of a boastful old sea-dog. In a telling sequence, his beloved boat called "Courage" is mistakenly christened "Rage" when the first three letters are knocked off by the shock of the launching.

At this point in his narrative, Wrungel digresses to expound upon the importance of names and the qualities that they appear to bestow upon their bearers. As a case in point, he recalls the sad case of a schooner called "Tub" that overturned and sank in a very moderate gale.

The reason I bring this up is that I am somewhat irritated by purported authorities on the Web suggesting that the name 'Nisheeth' derives its etymology from Nish + sheet, implying 'coolness of the night'. This unholy conjunction violates all known rules of sandhi AND the tranquility of my Ego. I wish to place a strong rebuttal on behalf of me and all my namesakes.

The name "Nishith" is derived from Nish + ith and means 'the end of the night', or, more precisely, dawn. "Nisheeth" may be considered a variant of the same, but I am reliably informed that this is quite possibly not so.

'Nisheeth', if my authorities, who trace their lineage in the Benarasi Hindi heartland, are to be believed, is a conjunction of Nish + eeth and implies 'the darkest part of the night'. This little nugget of etymological wisdom is my gift to all who bear the name of Nisheeth (I instinctively imagine them to be brilliant, socially inept geeks).

While Nature (and parental whimsy) might have ordained for you a name that simply begs to be rhymed with a scatological term that I will not explicate, the odds are evened here by virtue of the quite dashing metaphor you may associate with it. The next time you're out on a first date, the thing to do is to glower and brood and bring the conversation around to the point where you may break out the "It means MIDNIGHT" line and look properly deep and forbidding.

Peace be