Vaanaprastha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanaprastha

Vaanaprastha is this the solution to the aging population problem?
better than this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa ;-)

This also gives a feeling of relief when thinking about the future which seems to extend for long time. How long will my old age be? Whether I will have money, meaning goal etc... these kind of questions are answered. atleast for me, Its good to put an end date to our pursuits.?

My thoughts were already running along these lines when I started thinking about how you would live if you knew u had an expiry date( hehe literally ;-) ).
We have technology and we can indeed live very long lives, but there is stress involved in that, you will live long but we may not be earning.  Save to save for indefinite old age, with indefinite set of health problems, who will take care? Burden on the younger generation etc etc. Old times people had children as support for old age and then now we have pension schemes. Its all not that grim really, but The idea of winding down life style and needs and going into spiritual pursuits is very attractive.

What is VanaPrastha? It means heading toward forest. In old days when any person had their first grand child, it was assumed that they had finished all their worldly responsibilities and they were eligible to go into spiritual pursuits. Go to the forest and live in an ashram, studying or worshiping etc. Some people chose this, some people stayed with families interpreting vanaprastha as handing over responsibility.
If we decide that at certain age - say 55 I will retire in the true sense, if I dont have any responsibilities. Then take up full time meditation. So we dont need a pension or money. If you fall sick in small ways you can get a cure , but if you need care - no care is available just like for wild animals, its The end.
Is it so bad?
Are we holding on too tight to life? Is it ok to let go? Is it even possible in this age - when cure is available for almost everything? Does it feel like suicide to not take advantage of this?
 In a world where Partners in firms who die as soon as they retire at 55 due to lack of purpose.  Is Vanaprastha like giving up?Vanaprashta is not giving up, Its more like change of focus. Climbing Everest and running marathon can be done as part of Vanaprastha no?
Will it be hard to give up on the current life style or wind down? If you are going to live to be 100 then can we live doing meditation for 40 years?

What is the difference between old age home and Vaanaprastha?

would you go to school if...

How hard parents try to train their children and craft their life, to make it better for them. So many classes and school and making their life hell :-D
And my cat? I just let him be, no school! no training, he is fed and he sleeps and chills out :D life is so much fun for him :-D
 I wonder if I am letting him do what I want  because he will live only 10 years... if  a kid was like that, life span of just 10 years would parents send him to school? or would the kid live like a pet? what if it was 25?would the priorities be same if they knew kid would live for only 40?

How would people bring up their kids if they knew for sure that the kid would live for 40 years only,  How would I live if I knew for certain that I would live only 40 years? Or 50? or only 10 more years?
How would I live if my death was decided and a certain event? I mean it is, but if I knew the time and date?


MaranaSati 
Buddhism has a meditation on contemplating death, that it can happen any moment, today or in another week or next year, not just ours but our loved ones as well.   It is so easy to forget this in this modern world, Also we avoid thoughts like this like plague.
I dont know the answers to the above questions? I can guess that if we had knowledge of shorter life we would probably spend time more enjoyably?  or not.

I should contemplate on that.

ps: Its not easy to contemplate death, we have some kind of firm belief that we will live for ever i think, I intellectually know and can think those things but I do not experience it. It feels like something that can happen to others but not me, like war, poverty etc :-O

priorities

This is how our priorities are. This is the information from 1998. Today I can only imagine that spending on materialistic things has gone up exponentially.  Time to rethink our spending - not money wise but in terms of actual cost to earth.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/764

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide reproductive health care for all women in developing countries	$12 billion
Amount of money spent annually on perfumes in Europe and the United States	$12 billion
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide water and sanitation for all people in developing nations	$9 billion
Amount of money spent annually on cosmetics in the United States	$8 billion
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide basic health an nutrition needs universally in the developing world	$13 billion
Amount of money spent each year on pet food in Europe and the United States	$17 billion
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures)  to provide basic education for all people in developing nations	$6 billion
Amount of money spent each year on militaries worldwide	$780 billion

health and safety

We are over cautious these days! The level of health and safety in current day western world almost feels like dystopia. "Mind the Gap"  "You are approaching the end of the escalator" ( Ok may be this is for blind (I am not calling them visually impaired! )  Caution written on plain plastic bag. People not planting flowers because bees will bite their baby. Children below 11 accompanied by adults at all times!

I feel like has the society lost faith in human common sense and intelligence? Or I wonder if this is a side effect of loss of belief in God?
Did belief is god allow people to live a free but ( may be slightly more risky) life?
Like They say in NLP, it does not matter if a belief is true, it just has to be beneficial to you. I kind of cant accept this I want the true truth :D but I see the merit in this. I have seen people live very stress free life, leaving the worrying to God.

When we believe in God, do we indirectly believe in our biology, genetics and evolution?  and is that what we have lost faith in , in recent times.

I was swimming in the river and my brother was tossing stones into it ;-) deadly combination, a stone hit me, right between my eyes , 1 mm and I would have been hit in the eye. I have seen a lot of near misses to the eye. Is that pure luck? or god?  I believe its our instincts. I must have seen the stone and jerked the head just a lil bit to miss the eye. Not soon enough to avoid the stone completely but just enough to avoid the eye?

Driving in Bangalore makes me feel the same, People turn into streets without looking, no one is using rear view mirrors. Still the number of accidents is low, the number of near misses is many times over the accidents. I joked that I started believing in god after driving here. Its not co-incidence is it ? Its again our instincts which are saving us?
Babies falling from high places and surviving, We do not appreciate our minds and bodies enough, its 3 billion years old technology with constant improvement! Its miraculous . We are insulting this by lame health and safety.

falling off the wagon

"Falling off the wagon is inevitable, Should just learn to get back up quickly!"
Gyan! very apt gyan  from yours truly after falling off the wagon and wallowing in guilt and regret upon gaining 3 kg in 1 month, out of which 1 kg was in one week :D

It is true isn't it? It will happen, after few days, few months or few years. More likely than not, may be after 11 years... even u will fall off. Its fine. Just Get back on it with out fuss as fast as possible.
So Slow, this is very hard, have to start from scratch etc etc thoughts will come , so what?
Is there any other option?

Experiment ;-)

Elementary

Line of duty

Body guard

True detective

Brooklyn 99

I didnt know it myself but my fav genre is Police dramas :)  Comedy, action, thriller, investigation, In everyform!  :) 

Be gone! Hesitation

1) Its perfectly ok to take an OK decision rather than a perfect Decision.
2) In most cases the cost of changing a decision is less than delaying the decision. ( provided we have done some ground work before, which I always do)
3) In many cases the lesson from mistakes pays for the cost of the mistake. ( Provided we have done the ground work ) Also mistake is like that first scratch on the car, it lets us relax.

my 100th painting will be wonderful.

Tell me a story

Audio books

I remember that day long ago 2011, when I was going in the tube and wanted to hear stories. I remembered by parents telling me stories in my childhood and wanted it again. I searched for stories and realised I can listen to audio books, Then came the London library and my first book Zahir by Paulo Coehlo!

How I loved it, Its been a long journey and 100s of audio books ( :-P May be 30 atleast? ) How I loved listening to Poisonwood bible in Kew Gardens. I walked the whole day listening to the book. 5-6 hours!  Slummy mummy - which made me laugh the most in the tube.

How I love them, Now I drive with audible .  There are lot of fillers for sure, Agatha Raisin and Alexander McCall Smith. Though I really like Alexander McCall Smith.  but then there are wonders. The Gene, That was enlightening and The Secret Garden,  I think I listen more than I read now...because its 2 hours a day dedicated to listening :-)

My love of listening to stories had definitely been satisfied :)

measure and display progress

This is one thing that is missing in my self development journey
Some people would say this is not required, you dont have to measure, you just go with the flow.
but at this point in my life I feel like I have tried and left everything half way. I am a magpie who is going after every new trend. like I have not really made any progress at all
May be this will help me stick to one thing and progress in that instead of being a jack of all, and master of none.
Reminder of this half year will be about measurement and tests and progress charts.
I did think about this before, that in school we achieved so much because we had a timetable a syllabus and tests ( I love tests ;-) I am like Harmoine! Okay :P )
so I guess some kind of discipline is required to actually show progress.
so it shall be.

know our future?

When you approach a fortune teller ( ;-) Like u do ) 
Dont ask, Will this happen?
Ask What aspect of me shud I change to achieve this!
Because Future is not a fixed path,  its an infinite field of possibilities.
  - Jessica Macbeth in Faery Oracle

Manifesting and affirmation

Okay okay u may think its woo woo and all but I think I figured how to do it!  Not that it worked so far ;-)

So the big kick was when I was listening to Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza. He gave two examples of  how doing things in the mind actually affects the body and our brain structure.

One physical example is experiments where olympic athletes practice in their mind and it helps in real world. Read this
https://www.businessinsider.com/olympic-athletes-and-power-of-visualization-2015-1?r=US&IR=T
I have done this when I had knee pain when I went to yoga.

Second example for other not physical outcome, such as having more money, better job or relationship or for emotions like to feel happy, feel gratitude etc.
Basically the same thing, basically told by every affirmation book. BUT ... difficult to digest isn't it? Somehow was never convinced about this before, even tho I was convinced about the first one since day one.
However when this guy said it clicked.
When u visualise the other life situation you want, you should make the energy of your body - match the thoughts. Its not just seeing your self in a situation but also feeling it.  When we think the new thoughts, we should make ourself  mind feel like the outcome has happened.
First we need to cut the connection to the default feeling how imagining a situation brings about
For example, talking to new people. you feel a dread.
If you say affirmations, I am good with people. 10,000 times but feel the dread, nothing is going to work.
but if you say I am good with people then notice the dread, feel it , cut it out and replace with good feeling ( which is hard part- may be do loving kindness meditation ?) then this will become reality.

This is also not new, but may be how he explained it, clicked.

Feelings are chemicals and hormones secreted when we think certain thoughts,  and we feel this in our body. Emotions are felt in the body at different locations.  So He says, when we think in a certain way, it makes our body feel in certain way, and because we are feeling like this, our brain scans for more similar kind of thoughts and these in turn reinforce the same feeling. In time, this link to thoughts and feelings becomes hard wired in our brain.  It becomes the default neural path. By the time we are 30-35 most of the situations are hard coded like this. So we do the same things with the same outcomes.
To change our situation we need to break this link. and create a new pathways in the brain, which makes our body feel differently with the same thoughts.
The situation we are in, is definitely what we have attracted, if we want to create a new situation we should feel in a new way, in our body, or we will convert any situation to the old way.

So manifesting will totally work, but done in the right way.
First step to my manifestation training, is training to feel gratitude and love. I am going 28 days of gratitude. then I will move to loving kindness meditation once a week ( twin hearts is also great ) That should give enough practice to elevate my feelings at will,
In the mean time also notice and pay attention to how certain things make my body feel , then once I am aware I can try to replace them.
wow!! this is really exciting, It will work, first visualisation is to visualise that this works! Its recursive as shit and amazing!!! 

Konmari our life?

What would happen if we Marie Kondo our life?
Marie Kondo is this lady who is kind of revolutionising cleaning up our homes and decluttering.  She, based on Japanese Shinto ideology advocates keeping at home only those things that you love and cherish and let go all the other things which u have but dont need/use etc. You hold on to each thing and then u ask yourself does this spark joy - If yes you keep it , if not u let it go.
So If you continued with this ideology and did the same to your life ...  your relationships ! your job! your tasks!! What would be left?

( I know, I know, this kind of ruthless thinking is why people are shocked and run away when I open my mouth and this is why this blog is secret ;-) ) 

About doubting brain

2013/2014 may be - thats when I tried Lumosity ( some brain games website )  to improve my brain, I am such a self development junkie. Now I can say it probably just taught new tricks, it didn't improve my brain as such.
Haha! Look what google found,  they were fraud. So my cynical instincts below seem to be right after all :)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35241778

    *  *  *
We have a cynical part in us and we need to accept it,
we also need to keep it in touch with it before it makes us too gullible.
When I do Lumosity, this part keeps asking me, is this actually developing ur brain or are u just learning new tricks? what u learn here? is it actually carried on to life or not?

First of all, I get irritated with this doubtful voice. I feel it is keeping me behind in so many aspects of my life I want to kick it :)
Its like annoying horrible person who keeps on doubting everything.

I trust life, it brings me things which I need at the right time. It may not be apparent at that point of time but later on it becomes apparent.
and when I have decided on something I hate to give explanations and this voice is forcing me to, I want to kick it even more.
Yes, its upto me to bring it into my life or not, u can just learn to play better games and not improve
but everything has an effect on other parts of life, everything u do with ur brain.
Like S and M had kannada first language in high school and that makes a huge difference to how they understand Bendre's songs, for me its foreign language even tho I know spoken kannada so well. I don't think people realise how things richen their lives when they do it. Like learning calligraphy helped Steve Jobs make sexy computer :)
So playing games does affect me, and how much depends on me too.
I m trying to use the different modes of consciousness for solving the problems, sometimes I am able to do things better than other times.. I just think I m focusing better. I m not sure it is left right brain etc.. need to learn more to recognise and get into the proper state for proper task.
Being cynical does not have any benefits, being inquisitive has.

The main thing is trust in ourselves. I trust myself to know that this is good for me and I do it. I don't care about statistics.

10 years

10 years of blogging! That milestone passed quietly :o) unnoticed for few months..
10 long years... Wow! It is a bit disconcerting ... lot disconcerting actually! That first blog I wrote was well over a decade ago... 800 posts since then, close to 600 published... wow! the passage of time! I am not prepared for this. I dont know if I have gone ahead in this 10 years or gone in circles..
probably a mix of both...spiral may be ? :-)  

Are nice people boring? ( Pseudo science)

Yes!
Unfortunately this is true. Our brains find nice people boring.
Its not that nice people Are boring, but our brains have evolved such that it finds nice people boring.
How? do u ask?
It is the side effect of our brain having evolved to make us not happy!
Yes! Our brains have evolved to keep us alive and reproducing. Our brains have evolved to keep us looking out for happiness, to keep chasing happiness but never finding it!
This is how we survive!
Brain does it by using carrot and stick. So you motivate the donkey(us) to move forward by showing it a carrot just out of reach. You move carrot forward, donkey movies forward.  Once u give the carrot what happens? The donkey is content and happy and ...stops! It wont move forward.
Exactly like that, If we found happiness, we would be content and we would stop. We would not  reproduce, evolve etc.  So we need to be kept seeking happiness, but not find it ( for long)
Our brains are designed such that, once u eat the carrot, u are happy but it digests - you are hungry and again looking for another carrot.
1) The satisfaction of any carrot ( i.e good things that happens to us ) has a timeout .
2) The timeout keeps reducing as you repeat the good thing.
For example first carrot made u happy for 2 days
second one 1 day
third half and so on.
So satisfaction is not only temporary it also has diminishing returns.
To get the same satisfaction as the first time, you have to eat more carrots each time.

 Then how is it possible to be happy at all? That is where the stick comes in.
Stick resets the counter for carrots! It resets the diminishing returns counter and stick also lowers the bar.
Stick or negative emotions also have the same rules as positive
1) First stick is the strongest, baddest. but its effect also fades
2) If you keep getting beaten, it wont feel so bad the next time and after some time u wont even notice it.

Nature/Evolution has figured that u cannot keep motivating a person by stick or carrot, so alternate between stick and carrot. This naturally happens when an animal lives n the world.  With just carrot or Just stick,  the animal would soon reach a level where it would become numb, not care for any outcome.  So we need both to keep the animal surviving, running from stick and chasing the carrot.
( Is it not possible to motivate an animal with only carrot? with the effect of carrot fading but without diminishing returns?  Probably sub optimal.  If same activity gave them same rewards, they would keep doing the same thing, survival requires diverse activities . So to motivate the animal to try different activities, diminishing returns is required?)

Unfortunately this is not good news for our nice person.
Nice guy( lets admit it!nice guys finish laster than nice girls ) is like carrot and only carrot, It is amazing for girl in reality. but our stupid brains are not smart enough to recognise this.
A bad guy Also is not good.
Unpredictable one however is like cocaine.  Actually this is also one of the techniques in The game. If you want someone to fall for you, treat them unpredictably, adore them and then ignore. They will be draw to u like moth to fire. Is the above the reason for that?  Similar to gambling addiction, the unpredictable nature of rewards keeps one hooked to even sub standard rewards.
https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/why-is-gambling-addictive/

I think I have written it before, also another reason for women ( especially women) nice guys may not have been the best choice genuinely  because in nature, among humans the aggressive guys survived more than the nice ones? so again as u want to live and reproduce rather than be happy, women had to choose ass holes?

In peaceful environments probably nice guys become more attractive, also nice persons become attractive to people who have been abused or in really bad relationships, As the nice ness keeps rewarding as their reward centers are already in the negative?

Being strong and Independent

Being strong and independent 

You follow ur own path, you make ur own path

Being Strong and independent 

You are unfazed by situations, you carry on like nothing happened

Being Strong and independent

You go if others walk by you or not

Being Strong and independent

You are magnificent and awesome, a force of nature

Being strong and independent

You also carry the scrapes scars and the unhealed wounds

Being strong and independent 

You stop and notice your back is sore with huge burden

Being strong and independent 

You are all alone :-) Its ok, but there is some pain

Being strong and independent 

You can do it all yourself but You dont have to

Being strong and independent

You can ask for help

Being strong and independent

You can let down the guard and put down the weapons 

Being strong and independent

You can be strong enough to be weak and vulnerable

Being strong and independent

You can rest among friends

Being strong and independent 

You can be free, you can be at peace, you can just be

Being strong and independent

To being strong and independent and seeing all aspects of it

Cheers!

I wrote about how the boys who were stuck in the cave in Thailand were treated differently from Grenfel Tower victims. How eastern and older culture think u become strong by facing adversity but the liberal western culture sees you as being fragile and in need of care after adversity.
I wonder if the strong kids still carry wounds, like me. I have been strong in the past when I look back I see I should have let my guard down and healed after the situation had passed,  It is healthier to accept it was hard, that it hurt you. Its ok. :-) Being strong is great and awesome, after the storm has passed its also ok to say it was tough. The boys in the cave can say it was hard, they were shit scared, and they still get nightmares.. its still ok, they are still the strong boys who made it out of the cave. 

ascents and subtitles

Related to this http://mystic-babe.blogspot.com/2011/11/subtitles.html

I love subtitles right, I love subtitles written by native speakers not very familiar with English, with wrong English, but its not wrong at all. The wrongness is the beauty of it, Its conveying the right translation. It is telling us the subtle context, the subtle difference, the thing which is untranslatable in  the native language, that wrong is so beautiful :-)  A perfect translation will never get this, A non native translator perfect in english may never get this. 

This is the beauty of ascents as well. I love ascents, not variants in a country but ascents of foreigners, It has the beauty of two languages. Also again love the wrong speaking of language, the mistakes in phrases. It shows the difference in thinking brought about by difference in the native languages. 

Celebrate the difference. 

This is when you realise living in India with 100s of languages,ascents and cultures opens your mind. The people who correct pronunciation or ridicule ascents, They are small people, Koopa mandukas who have lived in the same well all their lives and probably know only that one language. 

art

Art is what comes out of feeling and emotions, Thats is part of them, they give birth to it. When u experience it you feel what they felt.  This is what I felt when watching gully boy or listening to Milck. So the drawings that I do and painting , that is skill, I m naturally skilled and I m improving my skills, getting better. but its not art. because it doesnot represent a part of me, It is not an expression of myself. 

What is my art?  This blog! This is my child, child made of my thoughts emotions feelings, It is what is part of me. This is the realisation that struck me. Strange as I dont see myself as a writer at all. 

Perhaps, The art in my blog is not the writing but the thinking..