How can we know that life isn’t just a dream?

Five year old Evie had a great question for the illusionist Derren Brown: ‘How can we be sure that life isn’t just a dream?’ Brown’s reply is fantastic: ‘Often we have dreams and they feel so real that we might wonder whether we’re dreaming right now too. It feels like you’re wide awake now, but doesn’t it feel like you’re wide awake in dreams too? How on earth can you tell the difference….Well, at least you know you’re probably real?  Because even if you were having a dream right now there would have to be a you somewhere who was having that dream about yourself…we only ever really know about the stuff we see and hear and feel …so even though you’re probably not dreaming, it’s worth remembering that you’re only aware of a small part of what’s real too. ‘Grand Philosophy condensed into a tiny capsule! Amazing…

Excerpt from: ‘Does my Goldfish know who I am? Scientists and Writers Answer  Little Kids’ Big Questions about how Life Works.’

Artist: Nino Chakvetadze

Pic re shared courtesy: www.facebook.com

Compassion as a radical 21st Century Movement:Compassion as a universal ethic

Compassion is a core value in almost all major religions. Regardless of whether we’re atheists or believers, a commitment to human decency and compassion is critical to our survival as a species. And what do we mean by ‘humanity’ anyway? It’s just you and me! Please share your views on compassion. Is it possible to be spiritual without being kind? Does sincere scholarship, a faithful following of rituals, a conscientious reading of scriptures make compassion redundant? I don’t think so! To quote Rumi: “With life as short as a half taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.”

 Rumi has a word of advice: 

"In generosity and helping others, be like the river,
In compassion and grace be like the sun."

Pc re shared courtesy: ‘Paw, paw, paw,’ www.facebook.com

Compassion as a radical 21st Century Movement: The Barber’s Song

The Buddha was all heart. His compassion embraced everyone who crossed his path including the infamous Angulimala who terrorized the citizens of the kingdom. Swami Vivekananda has done a sublime translation of a gem from the ‘Dhammapada,’ ‘The Barber’s Song.’

Ref: Sr. Nivedita; The Master As I saw Him

Pic re shared courtesy: bodhipress.wordpress.com

Compassion as a radical 21st Century Movement: Compassion heals violence and suffering

Zen master Thich Naht Hahn lived through the horrors of the Vietnam War. His compassion is rooted in the suffering caused by war: ‘In my morning coffee there is a drop of blood…let me weep through your eyes//because I no longer have eyes.//Let me walk on your feet, //because I have no feet.//With my hands/I am touching your nightmare….(‘Mudra’)  Can such deep wounds be healed? Yes, says Thay; “Compassion springs from the heart, as pure, refreshing water, healing the wounds of life.” It’s been said that God is a verb. All things big and small are made up of love and light.  The rain falls through our hearts and dissolves the crumbling ruins of our universal dark night of the soul. It restores us to life.

Ref: Thich Naht Hahn; ‘Mudra,’ call me by my true names

Artist: Pablo Picasso

Pic re shared courtesy: www.wallsave.com

Compassion as a radical 21st Century Movement:A four point plan to heal the world and make it a better place

The Dalai Lama has come up with a 4 point plan to increase love and compassion in the world:

1. Spend 5 minutes at the beginning of each day remembering that we all want the same things (to be happy, to be loved) and we are all connected to one another.

2. Spend 5 minutes - breathing in – cherishing yourself, and breathing out – cherishing others. If you think about people you have difficulty cherishing, extend your cherishing to them anyway.

3. During the day extend that attitude to everyone you meet. Practice cherishing the simplest person (clerks, attendants etc as well as the “important” people in your life, cherish the people you love and the people you dislike).

4. Continue this practice no matter what happens or what anyone does to you.

Ref: www.katikahesselink.net

Pic re shared courtesy: www.riverbankoftruth.com

Compassion as a radical 21st Century Movement: What is a compassionate city?

 

 

I can’t do better than let Karen Armstrong describe compassionate cities and communities in her own emotionally charged words:

“A compassionate city is an uncomfortable city. A city that is uncomfortable when anyone is homeless or hungry. Uncomfortable if every child isn’t loved and given rich opportunities to grow and thrive. Uncomfortable when as a community we don’t treat our neighbors as we would wish to be treated.”

Ref: https://charterforcompassion.org

Pic re shared courtesy: www.grupopunarbhav.com

Compassion as a radical 21st century movement:The Golden Rule - Compassion

Karen Armstrong, who won the 2008 Ted prize and dreamed up the Charter for Compassion, sums up  the golden rule of compassion: “Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstances whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.” The Charter for Compassion has grown into a movement for compassionate communities and cities across the globe. We are one world. We behave as if we’re separate, autonomous entities.  Our affection and concern is limited to a small circle of family, friends and ‘others.’  This is our mental and emotional prison, our ‘Maya jaal.’ Loving our children and families is right and natural but we need to broaden our circle of sympathy and open our hearts to the broader community. We need to make the 21st century a century of   dialogue and peace.

(https://www.charterforcompassion.org)

Pic re shared courtesy: www.etsy.com

Compassion as a radical 21st Century Movement

Linking compassion with radicalism sounds odd. But we live in a world where violence is used to settle conflicts. Rampant exploitation has destroyed freedom and justice in many parts of the world.  Hunger, poverty, suppression of the weak, gender inequality, child abuse, racial profiling and mindless destruction of natural resources are commonplace….greed; fear and narcissism rule the roost. And what are the values we are committed to in our day to day lives? Do we feel anything when we see children in rags wandering the streets because they have no homes? Do we suffer with our neighbors? Can we empathize with a young girl who has been raped or violated? Are we consistently altruistic?  If the answer to these questions is a ‘No,’ we lack compassion. The word ‘compassion’ derives from the Latin ‘patiri’ and the Greek ‘pathein’ meaning “to suffer with” another person, to empathize, become one with another’s experience.  Compassion is essential for our survival and sanity.

Artist: Berkeley, age 10.

Pic re shared courtesy: www.wikimedia.com

Linking compassion with radicalism sounds odd. But we live in a world where violence is used to settle conflicts. Rampant exploitation has destroyed freedom and justice in many parts of the world.  Hunger, poverty, suppression of the weak, gender inequality, child abuse, racial profiling and mindless destruction of natural resources are commonplace….greed; fear and narcissism rule the roost. And what are the values we are committed to in our day to day lives? Do we feel anything when we see children in rags wandering the streets because they have no homes? Do we suffer with our neighbors? Can we empathize with a young girl who has been raped or violated? Are we consistently altruistic?  If the answer to these questions is a ‘No,’ we lack compassion. The word ‘compassion’ derives from the Latin ‘patiri’ and the Greek ‘pathein’ meaning “to suffer with” another person, to empathize, become one with another’s experience.  Compassion is essential for our survival and sanity.

Artist: Berkeley, age 10.

Pic re shared courtesy: www.wikimedia.com

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our lives?The purpose of life is to find God and nothing else

 

 Vedanta teaches that we need to turn to our own innermost self to find the meaning of life. No words can describe this better than these lines from Tagore: “One day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded./ Only now and again a sadness fell upon me and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind./ That  vague sweetness made my head ache with longing and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion./ I knew  not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.”  Sri Ramakrishna said once: The purpose of life is to find God, nothing else…Please share life lessons on how to make our lives meaningful. What do you see as the true purpose of our lives? Your wisdom will enrich all of us.

Pic re shared courtesy: tunesoftheflute.blogspot.com, Rabindra Nath Tagore:’Gitanjali: v.50)

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our lives?I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life

 Frankl tells the simple tale of a young woman’s death at Auschwitz as an example of inner greatness: “This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of the knowledge.”I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard. In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishment seriously. “Pointing to the window of the hut, she said, ‘This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through the window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious…Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, “I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.’ ” (pp. 77-78)

(Pic re shared courtesy: www.washingtonchestnut.com,)

Victore Frankl; ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’pp77-78)

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our Lives? Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire

As Frankl trudges through snow for miles with his fellow prisoners, his mind turns to his wife, a prisoner at another camp at Auschwitz.  In spite of her absence, she is more real and luminous than the people around him: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire…The salvation of man is through love and in love…It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all,  ceases somehow to be of importance.,,.”Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death” (pp 49-50)

(Pic re shared courtesy: www.adikanda.com,

 Viktor Frankl; ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ pp 49-50) 

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our lives? Attitudinal Heroism

 No discussion on the meaning of life is complete without turning to Dr. Viktor Frankl. A distinguished psychiatrist by profession, he spent three  horrendous years  at the  Auschwitz concentration camp in Germany during World War II. Name, fame, wealth, social status, education, family background etc fell into a dust heap at Auschwitz. A prisoner was just a ‘number’ in rags surviving on watery soup and a piece of stale bread. A bag of bones shackled to dehumanizing work until the inmate was too weak to be useful at which point he was sent to the gas chambers. Is there any meaning or purpose in such a wretched existence? Is there any virtue in ‘getting through’ such suffering? Frankl says there is, because unavoidable suffering is ‘attitudinal heroism.’ A condemned man trapped in terrible circumstances can turn his suffering into an achievement by refusing to compromise on  his dignity, decency and compassion. A man who refuses to be brutalized by circumstances is a hero. What we become when faced with suffering is an inner decision. We can either sink to the level of animals or rise above our situation to grow spiritually and give a deeper meaning to our lives.

(Pic re shared courtesy: www.wherenow.com,

Viktor E. Frankl; ‘Man’s search for Meaning’)

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our lives? What will come of what I’m doing today or shall do tomorrow?

Stanley Kubrick gave an interview in 1968 which has become a classic: “If man really sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? ” Vedanta answers these questions by asserting that none of us is a dust mote. We are all part of one indivisible, eternal life.  We redeem ourselves through self transcendence that is by our connection with others.

Source: www.brainpickings.com,

Artist: Nino Chakvetadze

Pic re shared courtesy: Art & Painting, www.facebook,com

Is here any Purpose or Meaning in our lives? There is no sun without shadow and it is essential to know the night

Once upon a time there lived in Greece a man called Sisyphus. Like many of us, he was

passionately fond of life. Albert Camus tells us that he defied the gods by trying to chain death. The gods punished him for his rebellion and sentenced him to an eternal life of futile labor. He was condemned to roll a huge rock to the top of a mountain.  Was there a moment of triumph and accomplishment when he conquered the peak? Alas, no. As soon as he reached the peak, the stone rolled down under its own weight.   He had struggled and worked so hard only to see his labor wasted. As Sisyphus watched the rock tumble, he paused for a moment. He became conscious of his terrible destiny: His work had accomplished nothing. He was aware of the full extent of his wretched fate but decided to follow the rock down to the bottom and start rolling it up all over again. Camus sees this as a triumph: ‘At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.’ Sisyphus  is powerless to change his terrible fate but he endures it with dignity, fully conscious that the future holds no hope or relief: ‘There is no sun without shadow and it is essential to know the night… Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’

(Pic: www.en.wikipedia.org),

 (Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus, www.sccs.swarthmore.edu)

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our Lives?

The lines of an old Sahir Ludhianvi song from ‘Hum Dono’ keep ringing in my mind:

“किस लिये जीते हैं हम

किसके लिये जीते हैं

बारहा ऐसे सवालात पे रोना आया

कभी खुद पे

कभी हालत पे रोना आया ....”

Every last one of us needs someone or something to live for. For too many of us a comfortable home, a good job, a reasonable bank balance, good health are all valuable, essential even but somehow not quite enough. We need the laughter of a child or the caring presence of friends, family – people we love  in our lives. For a lucky few, creative or challenging work  provides a purpose. The scientist in his lab, the artist in his studio, the writer struggling with words, the activist fighting for a cause are happy because their lives mean something to them and are going somewhere. But what about a man dying of cancer, a mother struggling with a handicapped child, an abandoned, poverty stricken old man waiting for death… people trapped in the iron grip of terrible circumstances from which there is no escape?

 (Artist: Berit Hildre

Pic re shared courtesy: http:tatucya.com, Art & Painting, www.facebook.com)