My Too (Many) Cents

 Another late night, spent alone in a lab. Another sleepy evening spent grinding iron, and kicking against the cobalt. Another average day spent sleepwalking through class. Another deadline forcing my brain to move from its sluggish slumber. Conversations with people that drag on as we are never quite able to say what we want to say. As we put unhealthy food down our throats, talk about how much suffering has been put on our plate in the chatter of a dishonest bourgeosie acquaintance, my mind grasps for something deeper. And in that grasping it gets submerged again, in limerent fantasies of someone's beauty, of the desire of being posesesed or possessing - reducing ourselves and others to playthings or objectifying them in our pedestalization.  Just commit to someone, to something, to some cause, to some greater purpose. Let this sisyphian struggle be over - with all the rationalizations bolstered by the chatter from an unserious world.  And then, when the game is up, whe...

 The limits of thought is a series of conversations between Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm. I remember being fascinated by this book two years ago, which made me stay up all night trying my hardest to grasp at the esoteric concepts being talked about.  The topics of conversation seemed reachable, because of K's simplistic language, yet subtly out of reach. Like my mind had to be very attentive to try and grasp at what was being talked about. This desperation to grasp these forms of knowledge has guided me on my journey uptill this point, and perhaps will continue to guide it further, but today I realised while reading a passage from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo that this is still incomplete.  Reminiscent of Kierkegard's question or anxiety about having faith, this question was encountered but at a much more subtle, much more real level. Our thought starts from epistemic axioms, lines so basic that without them you could not even begin parsing the content of your perception...

 The archetype of a rogue, a subtle, dandy mysterious thief - moving through life with a certain poise and lightness is what I wish to talk about here. This is a selfish excercise in the exposition of beauty I see. Life is suffering. We try to forget it often with our societal numbing mechanisms or with plain denial but the fact remains true. The beauty of one's life is in their reaction to this information. Like viktor frankl would say (echoing the thoughts of the stoics), even if everything is taken away from you, how you react to a situation is a slave's freedom that can never be taken. In a recent interview, I really enjoyed the analogy Ido Portal gave of conceptualizing this suffering as an ether almost, that we move through literally and figuratively. Small things like how we walk, talk, breathe and relate to others determine our experience of life to a great degree.  An 'intelligent' (I use this term in the way Krishnamurti would use it) engagment with life is th...

The only question that matters in my life is understanding the mystery and wonder of consciousness. Over the past few years, everything that I have learnt and experienced has been in the background of this question. I have acquired practical knowledge sure, but only to be able to continue pursuing this question skillfully. However, I have realised that the practicality and superficiality have gotten to me in some aspects.  Some crevices of the catacombs this question uncovers require more than a superficial exploration. Perhaps every one does. There are lifetimes worth of knowledge in these treasure troves. Perhaps these valleys of the mind are the only places where humanity has ever been. Paths of movement through a manifold of resistance.  Time may be an illusion - all the knowledge is here for me this instant. It is only in expressing its truth that time comes about in the physical dimension. I had in my haughtiness considered myself to be better than a seeker now. Someone ...

 Wherever you might be in life, there are a lot of things that are being thrown at you. But what you can realise is that a lot of it is really garbage. Societal expectations, projections, judgements. Your own conditioning of liking certain experiences. If you really look through the veil, freedom is always within your grasp. It is simply a matter of realising the current framing of your experience, figuring out the goals that come with that framing, finding an appropriately abstract way of acheving these goals and dedicating all the rest of the time to also engendering an internal place of love and freedom.  As a student and a researcher in a very intellectually rigorous course, I have a tendency to get overwhelmed often by assignments and readings. However, it is not an issue with how smart I am, rather I am just not allocating time efficiently when I do fall behind. Doing the readings before class and treating your class as a revision, doing all your assignments on your own ...

 The best way to learn something is to create something with it. Every interaction in life is an oppurtunity to learn. I have let these thoughts ruminate in my head for way to long, I wonder if they have gotten stale in the process or just fermented to a more careful, beautiful potpourri. Sloppiness with your thought prevents the deeper flowering of something you hold in your mind. It disallows you from going through the process of solving more difficult problems that require more thinking through. Sure, writing down your claims for each problem also slow down the process of your thought, your intution yet at the same time, the ability to disentangle a web of observations about a problem and look at it objectively, slowly through them is essential.  In the pure state of perfection where I am pulling each next word out of the ether. In that tremendous clarity, perhaps this slow process of proving everything I know is meaningless and slows down the unfolding of truth, but other ...

 Why are there aspects of my life in which I continue to be apathetic and indifferent? I know that movement is life and stagnation is death, not as an intellectual observation, but as a fact. Then what is it that allows me to continue to be deluded about these aspects? Is it because the pain is too much to bear? Since the human organism has a tendency to adjust to any stimulus, one can condition themselves to the bitter truth - the croaking of the ugly frog from Mandukya Upanishad. In the pleasure of violation by the sheer bitterness of truth, there is no reprieve though.  Even though I tell you, that I am open to any truth you may tell me about. That I shall accept it with gratitude if it aligns with my sense of viveka - the process is brutish. Like maximizing for an extremely simple objective instead of the high dimensional masterpiece we inhabit. No, the pursuit is still insincere. There is still much further to go. It is a seduction of your own ego into the Brilliance of B...

 What is the relation between collective knowledge and personal ingenuity? In a recent interview Ido Portal said that there is immense power in collective knowledge. A fighter could train by himself in perfection for 20 years today and not even come close to today's modern MMA fighters.  What we are driven by, are goals. Sports aren't really competitions, they are potpourris of human potential. Given certain constraints, which organisms creativity is able to reach further, and develop more brilliantly. The goal is constraint.  While there is a saying that says constraints drive creativity - I would go further and claim that perhaps the constraint is creativity. Without a container for pure potentiality it is just meaningless perfection. How is that discussion relevant to my life as an ordinary human? I realise that we are molten perfection molding ourselves through how we move through life. Not as a romanticization or abstraction, but as fact. What is it that shapes how I...