changes since meditation course

5 days exersice
food logging
meditation
waking up early
checking phone once an hour

After a month, you guys better still be with me!  

after 15 days
food logging
5 days exercise
meditation are with me, other 2 are gone :)

Arrrgh!

Oh shit oh shit! What all

Technological advances are being made in neurobiology. Inject a gene, so  brain areas can be switched on and off by using light (in a rat as of now). Infecting the brain with genes by using a virus. 

Studies about how hormones affect our decisions. (Oxytocin makes us really trusting). How certain gene can determine if you will be successful or not in the stock market ie gene determines how risky you will be. Scary scary scary !

There is an urgent need to develop ethics and morals and to basically get enlightened. Our science has reached such a level that there is serious chance of bad guys being able to screw us (means humanity) royally. Super Villian governments, super Villian organisations - controlling whole world. Distopia!!!! Marketing and advertising is already doing lot of such things but this can go to whole new levels of invasive ness. Paranoid? I think I've got a right to be!!  It is possible for this to happen in my lifetime. We are still stick in narrow greed mindsets and we are discovering tools like this. Enlightenment where are u? Un enlightened souls can't handle this much science? :O Consciousnesss WAKEUP!!!! NOW!!! TRinggggggggggg!!!!

 

Ok panic attack over :-) 

The teachings are teachings but different people see it differently.
One monk said, the teachings were not really assertion of reality but a tool used to direct the monks into enlightenment.  Another says we should not think about this but use it in meditative state to examine what self is.

The concept of atma - is different in Hindu and Buddhist ... These are all just concepts, theories - like trying to explain red to blind person. different people do it differently but there is no absolute way to do it? The concept is like a map or a finger pointing in a direction or something. its not the real thing.  self exists /doesnot exist may both make sense, may be different ways of looking at a reality. we will know what red means only when we actually get sight... now after all these lectures dont u feel - if you dont trust your self then waht is? then again self is perceptions emotions and thoughts are all misguiding and wrong :D It seems like a paradox intellectually but may be when we experience it , it isnt.

[Some maps are totally wrong -- Like you have a map of Delhi and you are actually in New york.  I think Kuran and Bible with angry Jealous punishing god are like that. :D ]

"This too shall pass!"  Loving this cliché :)

2 questions

Can I access the stillness? even in this?
What is causing this suffering?

Question 1- we(I) are always thinking, I need a vacation/ I need a break, does that break ever come? we need to relax now. because there is nothing else really. we have to vacation in the midst of whatever - calm, serenity may be, or confusion and stress, or pain and anguish, or excitement and happiness( Ironically most difficult to find the stillness when we are happy :) )  Seek stillness this moment, Its always there.

Question 2 - Buddha said life is suffering, I used to be offended by this statement, now I know - life is dis-satisfaction.  Attachments to past, to ego, to status, to status quo, to our happiness and to our suffering, is always causing some kind of Dukha. If we find ourselves unable
to access stillness - question 2 may help. Beware of attachment to stillness itself. Dissatisfaction due to lack of stillness, Ego can also attach shame and sense of failure to lack of stillness.  A good Tshirt would be "I m not ashamed of my Dukha" :)

These 2 questions will help in the path towards more mindfulness.

santa banta

A story by Antony Demello.
2 zen masters - Santa n Banta were friends. Santa was a poor man and Banta was the Zen master at the Kings court. Poor Santa always ate daal roti(lentils) , Banta ate chicken every day.
Banta tells Santa - You know, If you learnt to praise the king a little, you wont have to eat dal roti everyday like this,  you can also eat chicken like me.
Banta says - Psst! You know,If you learnt to like dal roti, you wont have to praise the king any more!!! :-) :-) :-)

This stuck a chord with me.. make contacts - talk to people, keep connections with "important" people.
May be you cant not praise the king and expect to eat chicken :)
I make the choice consciously - I'll like my dal roti thank u very much!

relax now

was thinking - I need a vacation to unwind, I am feeling so tired, so stressed, ah when will the weekend come? need the weekend to relax and unwind myself. Then I remembered this weekend I wont have free time, shifting karni hai! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!  Also how many vacations I have taken, as soon as vacation is over, the state is worse than before going to vacation. It takes a long time to stabilize after vacation. No unwinding happens after vacation...
The solution..
Gyan (seriously its not mine, it comes to me from some place else :-p) Relax, destress, unwind should happen at the current moment, learn to relax now, find the peace now, find the calm/silence now - in this moment, on the go...

my posts

I keep reading my blog.. a lot
I noticed, there are three kinds of posts
1) loving/compassionate heart felt posts - like everything has an after glow and warmth.
2) objective head posts - like pseudo science and analytical posts - very neutral, even if something nice/bad is said in these, they are mostly emotionless. I like these two, I enjoy them
3) hate filled posts/angry ... hmmm..
(mostly about the past and they are slowly resolving - anger about vegetarians is resolved, feminist anger is almost resolved, except in some cases, new angers are coming actually

The same person is writing them. How come? A person wise enough to write beautiful posts is stupid enough to indulge in hatred and anger? One day writing beautiful things about river and light shining on water and love and next day about effing america and all...

Aisa hi hota hai. To be human is like this only.

Benevolent sexism

http://www.prevention.com/health/emotional-health/both-women-and-men-display-attitudes-benevolent-sexism

I m proud to say that I m one of the very few people I know who are aware of this kind of sexism ( even tho I didnt know what it was called) and that it was damaging.
I find not only men but girls mostly are benevolently sexists.
This girl made this statement - we women are soooo lucky, we dont have the pressure to take up a job, men have to take a job and support their family. Err I can punch you and break your nose?
My brother is sooo caring and protective, He never lets me go out alone.
My uncle saying women of my family dont travel alone. ( What a row I created then! hahaha :-) being slightly socially dim is kind of nice at times )
Raksha bandhan - When a girl says protect me, clearly seeing herself as weak.
"Mom, You are getting old and You work too hard.! You should rest.. so (offcourse I wont help you but ... ) I will get married and get you a Daughter in law to do the work! :-D "
Sacrificing mother stereo type - Sacrificial goat is also worshipped, so is the mother. Nobody demands a mother to sacrifice for the family, but Its a subtle teaching passed on from mother to daughter, who believes that it is the best for her daughter.
Even in reasonably rich times like today, Do you know who eats the burnt pooris, rice sticking to the bottom of the pot, yesterdays palya?  my mum and yours. and do you argue they are happy doing it, so should continue? then you must also believe that terrorist who die in blast go to heaven and meet 40 virgins. :-P

There is a thin line between caring and benevolent sexism, When we make a case for benevolent sexism- people go to the other extreme. they say  I will punch a woman, but excuse me- punching anyone man woman child dog cat is all wrong no?
People dont give up seats to women on buses which is fine, but they dont give up seats to pregnant women or old women (or old men ) and blame it on feminists :) LOL!
Helping a woman carry her heavy bags up the stairs is not benevolent sexism! yeah may be women sometimes over compensate and refuse all help - that is kind of stupid. me is guilty of that.

Offcourse, There are many women who use benevolent sexism to their advantage. The clever women who get men to do their bidding, but then thats another story.

Heart breaks dont just happen when you break up, it can happen even when u lose a close friend as well.( not only to death!? can just lose friends ! :P ) Or move away from bro/sis/close parents or even a pet? May be when u leave a beloved place too?
Never recognised this, but the symptoms are the same and it takes about the same time to get over too!

Does this apply to everyone or is this just me?

breath is not enough

"use your breath to relax, use breath to go into meditation, use deep breaths to connect to present moment"
Its ok when things are normal, but edge case - there are times when u cant take a deep breath and Its precisely at this moment that u want to relax. You can only laugh at such moments.
When breath is laboured, need to  still find a way to relax. need to break the link between relaxing and breath. need to break the link between mental and physical relaxation. heart is beating hard, cant take deep breaths,head is hurting and u probably cant do anything about all this, still need to find a way to get to that peace which is always in us.
Attention is the only way.

paedophilia

Reading more about bonobos... They are fascinating. They believe in "make love not war" right? and that makes their society well oiled and smooth right? That and them being female dominated offcourse. In contrast humans view sex as something wrong.Sex is controlled as much as possible in all societies. There are all sorts of taboos on all sorts of sex.
Hmmm okay,  Bonobos engage in  paedophilia. They engage in sex even between adult and juvenile regularly, for all combinations and age n gender. This goes to show how anthropomorphising animals and making them good apes and bad apes can back fire eh?
I ve always felt paedophilia is the worst crime ever. The worstest ever ever, most disgusting ,horrid etc. It kinda screws up the child for life. It is psychologically very damaging.

Then why doesn't this damage Bonobo babies? You may ask how do I know that it doesn't damage them? But if it did - wouldn't each and every bonobo be damaged then? So safe assumption. (Well is it same as dogs don't get damaged by rape but humans do. BTW according to scientists dogs don't rape. again its mostly primates and some duck, goose and bottlenose dolphins that rape. most species dont).
Actually
1) Even closely related species are very very different cognitively. Each of the primates have very different social structure and sexual behaviour in nature. So what is bad for one may not be for another. you know good and bad is man made and not exactly universal.
2) We dont know nothing about animal psychology, we can never know what they feel, if they are sad/depressed/damaged, if they need prozac or a shrink.  ( unless we do MRI scans?)

Anyway I am wondering, controversially, may be the problem is human attitude towards sex -  poisoned by religion and society. Is paedophilia damage an artificial/societal reaction? are we teaching our youngsters to feel guilty violated , to feel self hatred and loathing?   Is it a cultural thing? We give artificial importance to innocence and purity, is this the root of the problem?
Animals do not hide sex from juveniles.

I hate our ads/TV shows becoming over sexed and in your face, I am always worried what effect this has on children and adults. but ... that may be some other kind of perversion and not the same as sex being open in a culture...

Bonobos use sex more like we use a hug or a cuddle. It is used to form deep bonds and is very different from the casual sex that is on the increase in the world today. It is the opposite of one night stands. It is the opposite of objectification of sex. Casual sex is used for anything but to form close bonds. I really cant understand todays movies and serials - how it is so ok to jump into bed with someone/anyone but saying I love you can be such a deal breaker!!
I think Bonobo sex is meaningful sex, even tho it happens very often and it happens between one and all. I think when ever they have sex they are saying I love you :D That may be their secret. That may be the difference between hippies of the 60s and the Bonobos?  ( Only speculating... I am kinda anthropomorphising and its always a trap).

And this video, it is strangely heart warming. Shouldn't it be gross and ewww? ( seeing all these school kids smooching IS ewww) but its not. Its touching. wonder why?

http://www.boredpanda.com/first-kiss-strangers-kissing-tatiana-pilieva/

Get rid of the men :D

( again its not the feminist speaking, promise)
This baboon gang had a very fortunate tragedy happen to them, They were foraging in a garbage dump of a hotel. As it happens with hierarchical societies, only the alpha males ( aka the jerks and the ass hole males) got to eat at the dump, they chased away all the females and the docile males. Unfortunately(?) The meat there was infected with TB, So this killed off half the males in that troupe. It killed off all the jerks basically. And what happened after that was magical. The group transformed into a peaceful egalitarian group, and remains so even after 20 years. Surprisingly, the new culture of the group was adopted by all the new males that came into the group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q-bB-qywJ0

So What do we do for world peace?  I would love a TB like that affecting the humans.
(To be fair, there are lot of bully jerk asshole women too. I guess they too need to go :)

Rant: Isnt in unfortunate that what we strive for, what we treat as ultimate success , What humanity wants their precious children to be, is to be a Type A(Alpha) asshole. Thats our ideal. We deserve to be doomed and die and turn into radioactive ash.

contraception

Good to hear confirmation of my ideas by Yale professors.
One of the greatest inventions of latest times? Contraception. The single important invention, the game changer when it comes to rights of women. The transformation is still going on, but having 1 or 2 children or even 4 instead of 10-18 makes a huge difference to the life expectancy health and therefore to the financial independence of women.
The question which was asked was - We are closer in behaviour to Chimps than Bonobos, which totally sucks. Bonobos are almost like an utopian society, with very low violence and high morality and loads of fun. They asked what will it take for humans to switch from Chimp like life to Bonobo like life. Professor said - Female dominated society and the first step towards that is contraception.

Like I have said before ( not as a feminist, mind!) The foundation of a male dominated society is insecurity of paternity. Hence all the evil in this world. Hence the importance of monogamy of the female, Hence all the honour and crap,Hence the hatred of femininity in men, Of Homosexuality, all the false bravado etc.
If the society does this critical turn and becomes female dominant, the first thing to go will be marriage. Bonobo society - free love rules. Not just between males and females, between females and  between males, Age/sex/probably relation-ship no bar and they also engage in all sorts of clearly not gonna make a baby type sex ( Oh yeah - being gay is not unnatural? and then again it wouldn't matter either ways ) and this surprisingly  makes the Bonono society much stronger and strongly bonded, less violent than chimps and not completely deranged and sex crazed like our completely sexually controlled,guilt ridden human society (Delhi rapists anyone?)

This is strangely in line with the new age/spiritual wisdom ( not the sex part, the female dominance part) that humans should turn to their Yin or feminine side, and start acknowledging the importance of women for our earth to survive. They predict that if everything goes right, Utopia is coming - the next step in our evolution - A female dominated society. Actually if it is female important society  There will be no dominance because there is no insecurity and it fits with the natural hierarchy. This transformation apparently started in 2012 :) good luck to us. 

taste dream

I just cant seem to get over it, . It was vile! It was just a very vile and horrible dream. There was nothing else to the dream, no audio, no visual, just taste, just a flash of vile vile taste. God! worst nightmare ever. people are talking about whether dreams or color or black and white. What nonsense! Dreams are exactly like real life, all colors! and sensations. more colours and more sensations than real life for sure. flying... and such taste I m sure Ive never tasted such vile stuff ever in my life! I had to eat an orange to convince myself that reality was still ok. There are still good tastes in this world. Thank god.
Being sick is really bad, dreams wise. More like fainting than sleeping and sick sick dreams. like I m going crazy, like the fabric of reality was wavering. Was it really bad dream? It was like u meditated so much, you want enlightenment, I will show you. God It was so scary. If you are not ready, knowing the secrets of this world, what is behind the virtual reality machine can make us go mad? atleast it felt like that.
I dream touch and feel sensations, temperature, I dont remember any smell dreams.

morality and disgust

This is from Moralities course on coursera.
We always mistake disgusting for morally wrong :D haha it was so hard for me to say it is not wrong as I was disgusted with it.
One man gets a chicken ( not live, meat) from super market has sex with it and then cooks it and eats it. Is it wrong? ewww ! its disgusting. But is it wrong! no... :D
same with the incest case.
like I said in another case - logically I may treat it as ok, but I am still disgusted. not so much with consensual incest, That horrid novel where a guy committed suicide cause his wife turned out to be his half sister..and I was outraged by the suicide. ( somehow its like women committing suicide after rape in hindi movies. it infuriated me even when I was little ( like 10/12) its surprising how much gets thru to young minds. may be my morality holds suicide as very wrong.  Like he said Most conservative people give lot of importance to honour and purity over harm . I actually got disgusted with honour and purity even as a lil kid, hold those values as very low compared to harm. so me an kinda natural liberal.

Also he talked about disgust scale. Some people are naturally more prone to disgust than others. so this sometimes determines ur attitude to homosexuality,inter-racial marriage  and whether u are in general conservative or liberal! ah! may be when I take so much pride in being liberal. it may be just because I am not that disgust sensitive. I was fundamentalist about a lot of things, I think that came from ideology and not disgust. So may be I m more libreral than many people because my nose isnt that sensitive. I think if u have a very sensitive nose u get disgusted very easily :-P that was a joke, but seriously may be I dont feel that strongly about incest at all like some other people would feel which may be directly related to me feeling relatively less disgusted with blood and pus and dirty toilets or a dead body.

Also he said most people answered all those questions as wrong because they were disgusting except for some very liberal students from elitist universities. do I see myself as elitist and so I say its all not wrong?

I noticed that disgust lingers. like he said in the example that people very less tolerant after being disgusted by fart smell. I felt that my disgust lingered after seeing one disgusting picture and I almost rated the next pictures as more gross that I would feel generally.

Wonder why cockroaches positively disgust me to death :D 

Momo

How come I have not written anything about Momo yet!
It was like reading a book at the most appropriate time for it. Its a children's book, but so profound, so beautiful, so poetic and magical! so lovely, so sensitive! God! It warmed my heart! and melted it! not to mention I cried. ( yes anything in my favourite list these days = I cried! I dono what it says about me)
Studio Ghilbli! yes! Its the same sensitivity about this world. Ende is just loveable. Oh its so sad that his books are all in German. not reprinted in English and now being sold for 100s of $$..
I connected so much with this book, this book put into words exactly what I was feeling but not able to express about life/world today. His ideas about toys, his ideas about children playing, his ideas about time saving bank and how everyone is saving time! and then goes crazy. Oh god! he stole words right out of my head or what? Exactly what I was feeling....I really resonated with this book and with Momo. Momo and her friend Beepo road sweeper, I just loved them. I loved the city in which she was and  I loved the turtle and Dr Horus or Dr Death. I loved the lillies! I m sure he - Ende had seen and felt those beautiful hour lillies in this own heart or he couldnt have writen about them. He is a lovely soul! yeah he is ! :) 

engage with life?

Are we moving away from living?  Its the cost of development and efficiency. I spend 8 hours in my day trying to fix minor bugs in peoples TV software and I hardly do any of the work that directly affects me -myself. except for cooking and shopping.
Reading early 1900s book - Anne of the green gables. They lived a little more "life" than us. They made their own cakes, decorated their houses,stitched  their clothes , grew their own good, cooked their food and enjoyed it all. Or may be its just an idealistic novel setting which just drew me in. Still...
Am I recommending being a "house wife" :-D huh! Anne is not a house wife - 16 year old  school maam and then a writer. Her adoptive parents are an old maid and a bachelor.  bro sister. :-P so no "wife" in picture! Huh! :-)
Question is - Why am I  doing something and all?  Having delegated most of the work in my life, have I started feeling more disengaged with living? should I start doing more things my-self? It is very efficient for an industry to do everything for me, but still.... it makes my life less meaningful, less engaging and less interesting.  in some way? may be? no?

Dehumanized

After reading Jonathan Haidt blog about how people reason about things which they are passionate about, I went over the discussion about morality of eating meat again. This time I went over with an open mind, trying to keep out my anger about narrow minded caste-ists out of my head.

I bought into some of the arguments. I think the way meat industry operates today is wrong. It is immoral. It is de-humanized. ( mostly de-humanized .There are farms which proclaim to be ethical in their treatment of animals, let us find out more about them)
Killing animals is not wrong - for an Eskimo, for Pigmy in Kalahari dessert. May be keeping your own chicken and killing them is not wrong. Free range farmed eggs is not wrong. but  for most part the factories which abuse the birth cycle of cows/sheep/chicken, feeding them hormones to grow them fat, keeping them in tin size coups. all wrong. Industrialised meat is wrong. Industrialised milk is also wrong :( Halal is more wrong than normal meat.

Meat farming is not the only place humans have gone de-humanised, Grain farming, huge forests are razed to grow coffee/tea/corn/rubber/tobacco. GM crops and trying to make people dependent on seed is pure evil. Banking, Oil, Real estate, Pharmacy - every industry which is looking at money and profit and not at the people angle of things.- De-humanized....
... and its not just them... its me too.... I m using so many things in my life, I take it for granted, how is it actually made? I m so disconnected from all that. I m quite happy enjoying the luxury of my life. Shouldnt I be connected? Shouldn't I know how it happens? shouldn't we all be interested and find out?  maybe It is time to take more seriously the question of who is making my clothes, my shoes, my watches, my TV, my petrol, my soup, my cheese... how is it happening? Its not all magic, Lets look behind the curtains. who is making them? at what cost? at what value?  We should all care, only then things will start getting human again - may be. I think its time we became more human, we have gone too far into being machines :(

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/dunnweb/rprnts.omelas.pdf

When I first read it,  I didnt understand it. Blank.  I read a few reviews of the story and only then I understood what she is alluding to. Who is the little girl in our omelas?  May be we should have the courage to look at the little girl and then ...walk away?

deterministic world

People given diagnoses of “antisocial personality disorder” or “psychopathy” show signs of morality blindness from the time they are children. They bully younger children, torture animals, habitually lie and seem incapable of empathy or remorse, often despite normal family backgrounds. Some of these children grow up into the monsters who bilk elderly people out of their savings, rape a succession of women or shoot convenience-store clerks lying on the floor during a robbery. 

from:
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/The%20Moral%20Instinct%20-%20New%20York%20Times.htm


Genes which determine behaviour is very scary to me.
I know they do, you can breed in friendliness and viciousness or cunningness in dogs - Its not about upbringing its very obviously about genes.
but that makes things very deterministic. Are genes that deterministic? they are not - we dont know much about genes, we know far less than we think we do. and We( the common people) have been fed a very very simplistic version of genetics.
so when someone says there is a gene for smartness and dumbness or gene for paedophilia Lets not go there! thats too complicated.  gene for being a socio-path. If a day comes when someone tests me for my genes to determine if I m smart or not? that would be a very sad day for mankind.
Even statistic is like that, can I deny the truth of it. like women have lower insurance rates then men because they cause fewer car accident! ( YES ASSHOLES! Women ARE BETTER DRIVERS) but I m uncomfortable with applying the statistic to an actual person. I feel it is morally wrong to do it. gene would be far worse thing.
because it makes something deterministic. Its almost like it takes away free will?(?) I m all for studying our brain/genes etc and how it affects behaviour, but I believe that there is far more to us than that. studying each of these areas in their isolation and making deterministic conclusions is wrong. same with disease genes.
I m definitely against capitalistic application of all this science. Like being against nuclear bombs is very different from being against particle physics?

Why dont I have a problem with a weather forecast which says there is 90% probability that it will rain today or that tsunami is going to come. but I have a problem with a prediction that if u have BRACC gene u will get breast cancer? Is it just a matter of time before the gene people start getting it right? then what Ms deeps?  are u only afraid of a immature technology?

I cant pinpoint exactly what is wrong but something is..  may be I am too right brained to like a world where everything is known and fixed and safe and there is no mystery and magic or something?
[Oh BTW magic reminds me - they are making fairy dolls which have a motor and which hover in air!!! Oh god! if we have every kind of toy will there be any scope of imagination at all. I was really disappointed by the idea of that doll! ]