Hindu Ramblings: Noble Intentions, Protecting the Earth, and the Optimistic Future

Guiyang, Guizhou, China

Is trying good enough? The answer is simply no. Is trying your best good enough? Maybe the answer is yes....and in a sad unfortunate amount of times, the answer is still a firm negative. When someone hurts you, and says "sorry it was not intentional", does that do anything to ease the suffering? Usually not. Yet when you are on the other side of the coin, you cannot comprehend why someone would not understand that you did not mean to hurt them. 

It feels that no matter what step we take, there is an imprint left on the Earth, whether it is a footprint in the soil, or an outline made of moisture that after leaving the shower. Sometimes without looking, our footsteps lead to destruction, lead to breaking something we did not see, lead to taking the life of an insect, a slug, or perhaps an even larger creature. Was that an intention? Yet the small amount of broken material or the loss of life is there all the same.

As we walk forward in life, let us always try to use each step as one toward kindness, awareness, and duty. However, sometimes things will break, and others will be hurt. Where does one go from there? It feels the answer is a little more complex. Some people need space and time to heal their emotional wounds. Others are more resilient and demanding, they will recover by removing you from their life all together. It is never easy to embrace rejection from someone, but you do not want the relationship to end. It does make you stronger, but there are ways to get stronger without destruction. 

Let's us try harder not to hurt anyone or anything. Let us walk forward with only the smallest amount of imprint on the Earth, for if our steps are too heavy, the ground, the grass, and the home will break with ease. 

Words are not enough. Actions are more valuable than words. Where is the effort in our words? We can say many things, but at the end of the season, what do we have to show for ourselves? Our works and efforts might not be enough. We do not need to fight. We need to nurture, but we also need education before we can become nurturers. The answers to all our questions seem so much more understandable in retrospect. Hindsight is 20/20, and the rear view mirror is often clearer than the windshield. 

Yet who are we to make mistakes and blame it on the past? Who are we to make mistakes, and say that we should have tried harder? Who are we to do harm and brush it off?  

Let us study the past. Let us plan for the future. Let us live in the present, but thoughts, ideas, and dreams will not be enough. For the medicine of the Earth is often in our actions. If we did wrong in the past, there is a way for us to do greatness next time...not just do better, but to achieve the highest possible form of greatness. 

Education. Kindness. Optimism. Planning and Preparation. The sharing of ideas and knowledge.Learning the way to care for all things. Learning the way to share love for the Earth without trampling a single blade of grass. How to love the oceans without dropping a single contaminant. How to show kindness to the stray animals on your street without any neglect. 

There are many things that one can say. There are many plans that one can make. There are many inspirational things that we can tell ourselves, but through the course of our actions, we will see the true examination of our love. 

Let each day be one of not only dreams, but also education, and show your education to what tomorrow will bring. 

The Spirit in the Afternoon: Magic and Mystics, Human Consciousness, and the Journey to the Abstract

Beijing, China.

Is there magic on a Summer's day afternoon? Is there a mystic nature to it all? There is that bittersweet moment when one gazes upon the Sunset, the mountains, the leaves blowing in the wind, and the grass under the coming twilight, and you can feel your lips almost utter the words.

"It is magical."

Then, as the years go by, and one withers onward into old age, a feeling of depth will live on the inside of the heart when that word is used. Was it really magical? Is there are any magic at all? Or is that beautiful sunset only the result of light waves and the neurology of the human brain? Did the magic ever exist?

Let us not forget that magic is a tool for the stories of long ago, but the spirit, now that is different. The connections of ideas from one to another. One human being with a mind on a plane of consciousness that is shared by all other minds. Each act of kindness can generate a form of positivism in another person's life.

Every time someone helps another human being out of selflessness, it is a drop in the ocean of goodness, and it is all part of a larger connection. Each idea is connected to all other ideas, for the abstract has no concrete limitations. Each possibility is an opportunity to share love with the word to put all of humanity in closer touch with the whole of the universe, in the physical and in the ideal.

This is not magic. This is not a miracle. This is the nature of humanity trying to align itself with the nature of the cosmos. To put the mind of the human in complete connection with the flow of water, the growing of the leaf, and the sharing of elements after a supernova. This is what human beings live for in our greatest depth. We have faith, but we also have fact. We have dreams, but we also have understanding. We have love, but we also have reasons for our love.

We want to know its origin. We want to know its value. We want to know it all. We want the far side of the universe to come to us and we want not to be down on our knees waiting, or with our hands in the air screaming.

We want to let our mind become one with all there is, material and formless. Every fiber of our being and every neurotransmitter that allows for us to have our imagination and fantasy can come together. For when all humans are together, as we always are, each idea leads us to a new one. All the collective ideas of humanity must not forget, that there were ideas before humans every walked on the Earth....existence, consciousness, omnipresence, limitlessness.

To call it magical is not enough. To call it mystical is not sufficient. Some call it the supreme. Some call it the divine. Some only call it love. When one gazes upon the sunset and the cool colors of the twilight, every idea of  goodness that has ever existed has brought you to that moment of joy...It is not magic. It is something stronger and more beautiful.

Hindu Musings: The End of Spring, Eliminating Rage, and Future Dreams

Dr. Jordan Peterson gave the suggestion of spending 15 minutes per day writing...as a form of practice. Well, here it goes. My first day.

Good Day to All 

Spring was never waiting for us. Can one let evening come? How much rage can be compacted into a nanosecond? 

Why does the flame symbolize love? I once had a professor that had too many questions, but my answers only led to more questions. I wish I had the courage at the time to tell her I was only writing questions into my work, so she could see the answers more clearly. She wouldn't have listened anyway. 

Some spend their lifetime trying to find the meaning of life. Maybe in that process the flame begins to run out or the spark never ignited to begin with anyway. It has always been somewhat mesmerizing to think that you can control your own destiny, but you cannot make the flame last forever. When you have shared your warmth with another person, perhaps they might find comfort in it for a year or two, but all of sudden your warmth is not a blanket large enough for them, and their minds begin to wander.

Maybe we cannot control our own destiny, but maybe the rage can dissolve and sublimate. Looking back on the past, there are many lessons of life, but I once asked someone, would you trade your old mistakes for anything? This is from a song lyric, and it refers to finding the value in the life lessons that come from making mistakes. The person I asked that question to said no, absolutely not. I, on the other hand, am a little different. I would trade my mistakes for the past. Perhaps there is a certain sense of wisdom that comes from life lessons, but I am still the same person. It is not the value of the life lesson that has so much personal importance for me, it is choosing the pathway that has the least destruction. No matter what the consequence on my personal character, I would choose for destruction to be the smallest. That is what I would say if I could change the past, but I cannot, so I digress.

As we evolve into the world of technology and global communications, we can share messages and our daily life with someone from any corner of the globe within seconds, but one of the largest challenges that the world of virtual relations has never surpassed has been...what is the other person doing on the other side of their electronic device? When you meet someone in a virtual sphere, you do not know what other sparks and flames they have already ignited in their life....Are you just one of many candles around the cake? Or perhaps you are another log on their fire....or maybe you are the only light in their tunnel. The unknown can be a sense of wonder, but it can also lead to personal destruction. Nonetheless, we should never fear it.

Like any fire, no matter how much you tend to it, it can go out. A person who once shared nothing but kindness and adoration with you, has nothing left to give or say, and only keeps you around because there is no conflict to justify ending the connection. Until one day when the knot will either untie itself or the string will be cut without warrant. In the younger years, this used to be a sign of pain. The flame going out, and the cold sweeping in. The string cut, and your life falling.

As one gets older. It is neither of the two things, for people are not drops of fire, nor are they knots tied into string. They are human lives. Some selfish. Some self-absorbed. Yet as we grow older, we always learn that there all traits positive and negative are also found in ourselves. We are not evil, but we can commit evil. We are not dark, but the darkness is real if you can envision it. We do not want to hurt and bring destruction forward, but there are times when we all bring the destruction all the same. 

If peace is the removal of destruction from both the mind and the external world, let us choose the pathways that will rid of destruction and push us toward peace and mental clarity. The warmth that comes from reading the words of a lover is not warmth at all. It is a preoccupation. Bitterness confounds the past. Warmth is in the present for a moment, but the future is that of bliss if we choose to find a way. We must always ask ourselves, which pathway will bring the smallest amount of destruction and bring peace, even for just a moment.