Watching Tsongo and Djokvic play was a fulfillment of sorts. I have been watching Tennis since I was a little boy and never after the era of Bjorn Borg and John Mecenroe have I seen a match played with such intensity and talent as the one played yesterday. It was mesmerizing to say the least. I have always loved this sport. My brother still plays it. What impressed me about this game was the gay abandon with which Tsongo played. The Serbian may have won, but the honors still goes to the unseeded Frenchman who danced around the court and entered the finals of a Grand slam open in only his fifth appearance. It took Roger Federer seventeenth such game to to reach the Grand slam final. One only wonders about his future. I personally hope that this augurs well for the game. I surely would want want to see more of instinct rather than reasoning in playing the game of life.

What Tsongo achieved is not unique to Tennis. The same can be extrapolated to any profession. When Knowledge is subservient to living in the moment., then life becomes an exercise in reality. One has to be equipped with knowledge, but if its not digested and cannot come in handy to live in the moment—-Its worthless. Its better to let go rather than hold on to a false sense of importance. Ultimately, there is nothing to gain or lose.

cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Once again a good Joke to start with:

“A college student needed a small two-month course to fill his schedule and the only one available was wildlife Zoology. So he joined in and after one week of study, a test was held. The professor passed out a sheet of small paper where in each square was a carefully drawn picture of a bird’s legs. No bodies, no feet, just legs.

The test asked each student to identify the birds from their legs. Our student sat and stared at the test getting angrier every minute. Finally he stomped up to the front of the classroom and threw the test on the teacher’s desk. “This is the worst test I have ever written.”

The teacher looked up and said: “Young man, you have not filled in anything and you definitely have failed the test. Tell me, what’s your name?”

The student pulled up his pant to the knee showing his legs and said, “You tell me…”

There is a book named ” Everything I know I learnt in my Kindergarten”. Its a beautiful book that talks of all the irrelevant things that we impose on young minds in the name of education. Frankly, I have never been a great admirer of formal education. If one were to look back in time, one would realize that most of what we learnt during school or college have hardly been of any use to us. Our education system only prepares candidates to pigeon-hole things leading to an atrophy of the innate sense of holistic perception. The sense of wonder is lost in the process. As we age, we become opinionated and rigid. A new born child is a phenomenon in the universe.Everything is spontaneous to it. It would laugh, cry, speak in the rhythm of the cosmos. But once formal education starts, everything becomes knowledge based. Right,wrong;good,bad- takes a deep root in the psyche. The fun that was life is lost and one becomes a machine that functions based on set instructions. Truly blessed are ones who can live carefree like the lilies of the field. Knowledge is required to live in a functional world, but once it creeps into the psychological territory, it dims the light of living. As Osho would say - “If one has lived life fully, then death should be the ultimate orgasm”.

Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is an anecdote that was shared by a person who is my God father. A beautiful attitude in life. Read it. you will recognize why?

Here it is :

A gentleman was once visiting a temple under construction.
In the temple premises, he saw a sculptor making an idol of God.
Suddenly he saw, just a few meters away, another identical idol was lying.

Surprised he asked the sculptor, do you need two statutes of the same idol.
No said the sculptor. We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.

The gentleman examined the statue.
No apparent damage was visible.

Where the damage is? asked the gentleman.
There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.

Where are you going to keep the idol?
The sculptor replied that it will be installed on a pillar 20 feet high.

When the idol will be 20 feet away from the eyes of the beholder, who is going to know that there is scratch on the nose? The gentleman asked.

The sculptor looked at the gentleman, smiled and said, “The God knows it and I know it “.

The desire to excel should be exclusive of the fact whether someone appreciates it or not.

Excellence is a drive from Inside not Outside.

Cheers!!!!!!!!!

Bala

As i was surfing the net today, I read this joke.At the outset, I had a good laugh at it and then realized that it had a more deeper message to convey. Read the joke:

“So let me get this straight,” the prosecutor says to the defendant. “You came home from work early and found your wife in bed with a strange man.”
“That’s correct,” replies the defendant.
“Upon which,” continues the prosecutor, “you took out a pistol and shot your wife, killing her.”
“That’s correct,” replies the defendant.
“Then my question to you is,” demands the prosecutor, “why did you shoot your wife and not her lover?”
“It seemed easier,” the defendant says, “than shooting a different man every day!”

It seems so simple isnt it. Shoot the root cause rather then than the peripheries. When i read this joke i was reminded of J Krishnamurti’s teachings. Jk as he was called was a renowned existential philosopher who broke away from the Theosophical society because he realized that truth is a pathless land and there can be no method to it. I was deeply influenced by his speeckes and writings during my college days. For those of us who have not read him I recommend his Book “Commentaries on Living” (three volumes). Even if you are not interested in discourses, read them for the sheer beauty of his language. In fact, in some schools in England they are prescribed textbooks for English.

Well coming to my point. Many times in our lives we seek to avoid the root cause of unhappiness. This is a fact. We keep finding reasons to either subvert our problem or try and justify it to ourselves. For instance, we are angry with somebody, we never observe this feeling of anger completely to understand it ,but would rather distract ourselves by doing other things hoping that the anger would pass away. But on reflection, we will understand that we have only allowed the feeling to take deep root in ourselves and we keep nurturing it on every possible occasion. By and by, we become victims to it. JK used to say that every thought has to have a beginning and an end and it is between the gaps that arise across thoughts we could experience the true continuity of life. True silence is possible only when we begin to observe the thought structure that we have painfully built over years. An impartial observation. No pigeon-holing, no Justification, no opinions - just allowing every thought to arise and subside. This requires real courage because it completely belies the entire value system that our society is built around. But it needs to be done. All the mystics and saints that we revere across religions are ones who have broken the shackles of thought and touched something within themselves that is refreshing and everlasting and have tried to communicate it to the world. but unfortunately, words can mislead or misconstrued. Words cannot lead us to the wordless. When words dissolve like salt in water, the wordless emerges -unannounced,silent and refreshes our body and soul.

So let’s experiment with root causes or otherwise we will keep shooting more strangers than the wife who is the actual problem. Cheers!!!