2 odia kabita's

Passitheism

Let me first revise my established idea on causality or the rule of karma. Precisely speaking, it says no cause no effect; i.e. all events are preceded by a long chain of cause-n-effect vents starting from the very beginning of time. Tomorrow is determined completely by today and today by yesterday. This means that all the events occurring are predetermined and nothing is out of blue or because of any "free-will". Free will is but an illusion.

Given the above mentioned thesis, what is the role of god in our own life or in this creation? If everything is determined then what is the use of praying a god? Indian scriptures say that even gods are not beyond the rule of karma! So should we pray god? At the outset it may seem that if god is also a follower of he karmic laws and can not change a cause-n-effect chain, then he also is helpless. But there is a very nice catch here. God is helpless if its only your karma that determines your future! I.e. you as an individual do good work, then you get good future and vice-verse. But this is no the case! Karmic rules are applicable for the creation as a whole; its a holistic rule. The creation as a whole follows the cause-n-effect chain. And that's the reason for so many anomalies to he local karmic rule! You never exactly know why you might have a good future tomorrow or a bad future the other day. It surely follows the karmic rule but you can no longer pin-point the cause. Its more or less like the chaos theory! A cat crossing the road in 200BC in Rome might be the reason for which you faced the accident yesterday! Hence, may be, a distant may-be, you had a good luck yesterday because you prayed a certain god a month back. Gods might also have some power. But that's again an illusion as our own supposedly free-will. The bottom line is pray god or whatever power you feel like. But there is no guarantee of any result. And the future is predetermined all the same. This I what to term as passive theism or passitheism. Neither do I deny the existence of god; nor do I accept the same. Its just part of the flow and with no extra power whatsoever to change any predetermined event.

An interesting allegory to this is reading a novel. When you are reading a novel, everyday you come across certain new happenings. To you the reader, its new and fresh. But actually its all written down already. Its just a matter of discovering the event by uncovering the pages of the novel. You may call god as the writer of the novel who has written it and hence knows it all. But once written and passed on to your hands, the writer has no control over the happenings in the novel. Its a god who is passive in our lives, thought he might have created us all!

Flight of a crow

From the very outset let me confess that this essay is inspired by an essay by J.D.Krishnamurthy, an essay named “Flight of an eagle”. During my last three years' of stay in one of the interior parts of the nation, I have seen a huge variety of birds starting from humble Indian Maina to some unique variety of migratory bird. I have seen them flying, dipping in water and praying on their food. Let me confess that I really found nothing special, attractive or grand about the flight of an eagle. Rather, I found the awkward flight of a house crow quite interesting. Crow is a menial bird with almost no extra or feature to attract your attention. Its light is awkward, clumsy and noisy. But so is ordinary life of yours and mine. Our lives are awkward, clumsy and noisy as well! This is not any high pitch thrilling sound attached to our lives, like that made by the eagle. Nor is there any magnificently smooth glide in our lives, unlike that of the flight of an eagle. But look at crow. How similar is our life to the flight of a crow: short spanned, erratic, unpredictable, jumpy and attached with cacophonous irritating sound! But this is what it is: our lives. And good or bad, our lives are our lives. There is no single justified logical point in trying the least to change it an iota. That will be like going against nature. I have never seen any crow trying to look, envy and then imitate the flight of an eagle. So just be what you are. Bad or good is a matter of perspective! Like is a drama where there are no audiences! So why toil to be somebody else There are no bouquets or brick-bats in store for you. Nothing gonna affect you. And even-if anything is affecting you, let it! Who care? As long as we are crows, we have a natural way of flight, I.e. the crow's flight. Lets stop being someone else. Lets embrace our very own crowness! Lets enjoy the crow's flight, and just remember that everything gonna change!

Pretending to be someone

Life is monotonous and mundane; its more so when you go on living the same life for ever. You never exactly come to realise when the life has just slipped off your grip. Not that I have any objection to life sliping off your sleeves. I just am a bit curious to see life from different points of views. But, its always been extremely difficult for ordinary human beings like you and me, to live different lives in the same life time. I have observed in UK that they particularly get this habit of experiencing different lives, or rather life in different set-ups, quite early in their lives. For example most of my British friends would go on vacation at least twice a year. And during that period they will not take their cell-phones with them, nor would they check their emails. Well, let me highlight these two luxuries of today, namely cell-phones and Internet, which have almost made it impossible for us to leave our lives aside even for a split of a second.

Tracking on the same trends, unintentionally of course, I am currently experiencing a new life today. Sitting in a lonely shabby tea-corner in a corner of the Science College of Kolkata University, I am experiencing a strange new life. Before I meet the professor, I am no body here. I know no one and no one knows me. For them I am a decent looking stranger with a particularly familiar broad smile. And for me, they are all my alter-egos. I have been in Kolkata for last two days, in a guest-house where again no one knows me! I have also hidden my identity to some extent , except for the extent which is needed to get some basic things done. Its nice. And I have been traveling in local town bus. More exciting and thrilling. My cell phone, luckily has no roaming facility and luckily again, there are no Internet parlours near the guest-house.

Big cities like Kolkata, London and Bombay have a life of their own! They have a certain strange mass psychology where you soon find your own psyche and ego engulfed. All the people, all the egos, all of them seem to have some strong similarity, similarity that is unique to that particular city. Hence, I find it very exciting to travel alone in such a big city, trying to soak in a bit of its personality. Its a nice feeling, feeling of stopping what you are and getting submerged in a unique personality pool. Its enlightening to live a different life. Its breathtaking and magnificent, to pretend to be someone else, who you can never be in your real life. Well, yes, you may say its self-deception; you may also say its blank pretension; or running away from reality. Say what you may, this is the type of break I would really look forward to again and again in my life. The joy of a vicarious life in real-life is a joy of its own kind!

Insignificant vs. Singnificant

In my last few blogs, I have been talking about how insignificantly insgnificant is life, creation and all that's here around. Yesterday I came across a wonderful notion. I was reading through an essay by Swami Vivekananda, where he was talking about how creation is created by the merger of Prana (energy) and Akasa (mater); how it comes into being, goes through a cycle and again vanishes, just to reappear again. Even modern astrophysics to some extent supports this view. I.e. the universe was created because of big bang and there are ultimately two possible ends to it, viz. it will expand for ever till it becomes energy less and hence dark; or it may contract again and merge into a black-hole yet again. Its the second possibility which has been supported by Advitik philosophy.
Anyway, my point was something different. Given that its a cycle and given that this world follows a strictly cause-n-effect rule, where is the notion of significant or insignificant? When I breath, I just do it subconsciously without counting and without thinking which breath is better or worse than which other one. Its childish to compare one breath with another. Simillarly its childish to put epithets against events. Events are just events. Lives are just lives. Creations and just creations! Neither significant nor insignificant. We are helplessly parts of it. Whatever we are doing, thinking or speaking, has no novelty to it, all these are just events with no adjectives whatsoever.