Spirituality by Numbers

Tags

mathematics, numbers, oneness, spirituality

The Big Numbers

If some of you are like me, then the month of April probably felt like it had much more than the normal thirty days. Some days  seemed like to run into another, and we would sometimes forget what day of the week it was. Some days even seemed to last longer or shorter than the usual twenty four hours depending on our frame of mind. 

So, it was a bit of welcome relief to actually see the calendar roll over from April to May. There was a sense of freshness about seeing the single digit, 1, in the calendar icon on my phone’s home screen. It felt like the universe was nudging me to begin anew and re-establish some sort of a normal schedule — whatever ‘normal’ even means or will mean any more. As I looked back at April, I couldn’t help but think about some numbers.

We dealt with a lot of really big numbers in April. Trillions, billions, millions, hundred thousands, tens of thousands. In various different contexts, these numbers with lots of zeroes attached to them, came into our awareness. Some of these large numbers  will perhaps remain in our awareness for a while, if not permanently. We may rarely ever again treat them as mere numbers, because they attempt to quantify the impact of Covid19 on our collective consciousness. 

However, numbers big or small, did not always a role, or any role in human life of the past. Humans only invented numbers a few thousand years ago. Before that, humanity led a life on Earth for a fairly long time without numbers. This doesn’t mean that the ancient humans did not know how to count – they probably didn’t use numbers in the way that we use them. Some of us humans like me, even get obsessed with numbers occasionally. 

Learning Small Numbers

One of the very first things we want to teach toddlers is the skill of counting. As parents, it is often a great moment of accomplishment and pride when our child can learn how to count from one to ten. It’s a milestone of sorts. If they didn’t learn  how to count, children would be greatly impaired to function in this world. The parents and teachers would be deemed downright failures. And yet, I would posit that counting, numbers and the ability to eventually learn mathematics is mostly a mental skill. 

So, I reflected on the question – how do we remove ourselves from our dependence on numbers, if only for a moment? Nature provides the immediate answer. Walking the forest trail, I have never counted the number or trees. I have never even thought about counting as I walk across a bridge, marvel at the river’s flow, watch the woodpeckers tap on the trees, get blinded by the sunlight streaking through the trees or watch new flowers springing before my very eyes. When the storm starts to build up over the lake and the clouds do their dance, numbers are erased from my consciousness. You get the idea.

To quote Shakespeare — “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. I would take some liberty and replace ‘philosophy’ with ‘numbers’ — particularly the really large numbers. The ones with all those zeroes, particularly those which quantify pain, suffering and death, tend to overwhelm the heart and mind. It isn’t that every single person’s grief and healing isn’t important. It’s that when we look at suffering in mass aggregates, we run the risk of losing empathy for the individual.

Spirituality and Significant Numbers

And yet, there are some numbers which are very important from the heart’s perspective, from the spiritual perspective. In the vein of ‘paint by numbers’, let us be creative and look at them as ‘spirituality by numbers’. I was going to list a countdown from twelve, but for the sake of brevity, I will limit it to five. So, let us begin. 

Five. The number five represents the elements, and our senses. Our body is considered to have ten (a multiple of five) doorways, through which we receive sensory input. It is the tenth, the invisible space between the eyes, the third eye, which is the most significant from a spiritual perspective. It is used by many as the doorway to travel within, and as also the seat of awakening. 

Four. The four quadrants of the heart space and the cardinal points come to mind with the number four. In spirituality, there are the familiar three — the heart, the mind and the body — and also an additional fourth, unexplored, unearthed dimension. Can you think of any more spiritual interpretations of the number four?

The number three immediately evokes the Trinity of Christianity. In Sanatana Dharma (hinduism), three represents the powers of creation, sustenance and destruction that govern the cycle of life. The notion of word, thought and action, all interconnected, represent the number three. There is no thought without word, and thoughtless action notwithstanding, there is no action without first being impelled by thought. 

What about the number two? The philosophy of duality follows from the notion of two. Man is created in the image of the divine. Man eventually merges into the divine. These flow from the ideas of duality, which are often the creators of the ego, which can be the cause of great pain and suffering. One proposed solution is to discard the notion of duality. 

Finally, we arrive at the number One. The idea of Oneness is very appealing to many, because it represents our Universal nature. If we can remember to constantly embrace our fundamental nature of Oneness, then the world would be one of infinite love. And yet, the practice of Oneness is a work in progress. It is a seemingly huge task and yet it can be accomplished if we begin by recognizing and experiencing our own Oneness with the divine. The heart is our instrument, our flute to the experience of Oneness — if we let the divine breathe the breath of love through it. 

The lesson for me from April has been that it is easier to focus on the small tractable numbers. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Learning to count, all over again. Not to be outdone or ignored, zero is possibly the most powerful number of all. Zero can take any number, no matter how big or small, and by multiplication. reduce it to itself. Zero can also take any number, big or small, and by division by itself, create infinity.

From zero to infinity. That is all the spirituality by numbers we will ever need in our new present, won’t we?

Kumud

P.S. Longest blog post ever, isn’t this? I get carried away by numbers. Thanks for reading. And join us for our weekly gathering of folks in #SpiritChat on Sunday, May 3 at 9am ET / 1pm UTC / 630pm India. We will talk about some small numbers over tea, coffee, fruit, cookies, and a few questions. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunset – Spirituality, beyond the Numbers

Our Spiritual Reserves

Tags

covid19, preparedness, reserves, resilience, resolve

The sound of distant rolling thunder woke me up from my deep sleep. It felt like a freight train was headed in our direction, and I tried to go back to sleep but to no avail. The storm grew louder and louder until it was close enough to pelt the windows with a driving downpour. It was determined to be heard, demanding an awakening. And then, just like that (or so it seemed), there was silence as it must have quickly moved east. Even though the eye of the storm had passed, I could hear the distant rumblings, but from a different direction.

And yet, using my relaxation technique, I managed to go back to sleep again.But this felt like a different kind of sleep. Thunderstorms are known to charge the atmosphere with ions as they pass through. The severity of this one in the pre-dawn hour must have done the same. This new sleep felt like I had one eye open in uncertainty, in a kind of raised awareness. An awareness of a low intensity electric current running through the heart. A current that was asking questions like — what is truly essential in my life, what am I certain of amid this uncertainty, what is my readiness level for the next storm?

My Isshin-ryū sensei often used to say, a large part of preparedness is about knowing your strengths. He was also a proponent of practicing the basics, over and over and over again — even for, and particularly for, the black belts. “If you forget the basics, your foundation will weaken, and your mental reserves will eventually dwindle to the point where even a weak storm (opponent) will knock you over.” Good self-defense is a combination of awareness of our strengths, of the potential and intensity of the threat(s), and of our reserves.

Some storms come our way without warning or grow quickly upon us. They are like the hit that we don’t expect and they  hurts the most. There are other storms which can be seen coming our way from a distance. The early warning systems are flashing yellow, and the ones who have had their sleep broken before, know that it’s time to awaken. They know that this isn’t time to choose to ignore the warnings or to believe that they are somehow immune. They take action to check on their preparedness, to build up their physical, mental and spiritual reserves. 

What may our spiritual reserves look, sound and feel like? They may look like select passages of our faith’s texts or the essays and writings of spiritual luminaries who inspire and enlighten us. They may sound like the saying of our childhood prayers, the singing of our favorite soothing songs, the poetry recitations of hope, or the re-reading of stories read to us by our parents and teachers. They may feel like the remembrance of moments that gave us courage when we felt that we were deeply loved.

How do we build up our spiritual reserves? We build our reserves every time that we read a little bit more of the inspirational, sing a little bit more of the devotional, share a little bit more of the emotional. We can also build our reserves when we do regular check-ins with how we’re feeling, become more aware about how we let others’ actions influence our feelings, and clean our receptivity filters. Engaging the mundane can help us build our reserves too.

As I was walking the dog yesterday evening with my daughter, we got into a conversation about who expends more energy per body weight in a walk around the block – dogs or humans? Does it make a difference that humans have to only use two legs and dogs have to use four? This led to other mundane questions. How is it that the dog, in the middle of a deep sleep on a couch in the back of the house, can spring awake and bolt to the front of the house because he has sensed another dog walking by?  

Yes. Sometimes, asking the mundane questions of life is a good distraction because it shifts our awareness from the impending storm to the present moment. It gives us time to pause, to breathe, to let our guard down and let the nervous system resume its normal flow.

So, what are we to do with all this preparedness? What is the best use our spiritual reserves? We can use them to support those who are leading community preparedness, to spread awareness about the need to prepare, to perform small acts of kindness, to dissipate our fear and to boost our spiritual immunity. We can use are reserves to create more empathy for the suffering, deepen our friendships and even form new ones, and learn anew to find joy in the small things.

We are all in this together. Now, more than ever, our connectedness is essential. Of that, I am certain.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly conversation on twitter in #SpiritChat – Sunday, March 29 at 9am ET / 1pm GMT / 630pm India. We will try and boost each other spiritual reserves through (mundane) questions over tea and cookies. It isn’t the end of the world, and yet it may be the beginning of the creation of a new, more empathetic one. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunrise on the beach in Riveria Maya (March 2016) 

Raising Community Spirit

Tags

community, connection, healing, health

As I sat at my writing window observing the community dynamics of the variety of birds in the backyard on a chilly spring Saturday morning, there was much to learn. The blackbirds take their positions on the fence and the cattails. The robins take position in the thrush and the grass. The hawks have their nest at the highest point in a nook among the trees. The chickadees sing in the pine trees along the fence line. So much diversity, and yet they have figured out how to mostly live in harmony as a community. They seem to live in a manner where all of them can make nests, grow families, and thrive for the season. On more than one occasion, I have even seen blackbirds sounding the alarm and escorting the hawks back into their nests when they get too close for comfort.

The community in my backyard reminds me of one of my grandmother’s favorite expression, with which she would end every prayer session… sarve bhavantU sukhinAH – it simply means, may we act in a way so as to spread peace and prosperity to all. On the face of it, this seems like a fairly easy way for us to live our lives. However, when faced with tough choices which negatively impact our lifestyle, our livelihood or the health of our immediate family, we may tend towards making decisions which may negatively impact our communities. 

She was so looking forward to this weekend, to playing back to back volleyball tournaments on Saturday and  Sunday. She loves the sport, her team, her coaches and everything about the community that surrounds it. On Wednesday, her coach texted that the tournaments may be cancelled because the venue (a local community college) was being shut down. The initial disappointment was quickly reversed as a following text said that they would be allowed to play (as they are not a college team). Confusion led to uncertainty and some anxiety. However, on Thursday, the state’s Governor gave clarity by banning all gatherings of a hundred of all more people. Game over. 

Schools closed for three weeks. Science centers, museums, nature centers, local libraries. All closed till further notice. At first glance, it all  seemed a bit ‘over the top’. And yet, once we talked as a family about how ‘flatten the curve’ works, we understood. By  limiting person to person contact, we slow the exponential spread. In turn, this gives the health system and its workers a fighting chance to treat those who are most at risk. In my three decades of living in the USA, other than the ‘coming together’ after 9/11, this is perhaps the widest action of community solidarity that I have seen.

So, as we adjust to our new ‘home boundedness’, what we can do to mitigate the sense of isolation we may eventually feel? I thought back to grandma’s invocation of sarve bhavantU sukhinAH. In times of crisis, she often would choose to do less, rather than more. This was her way of creating space for others, for community. She would have advised:

Eat less, drink more (water). 

Stream less. Read more.

Frown less. Smile more. 

Hoard less. Share more.

Talk less. Listen more.

Sit less. Walk more.

Less is more. 

It is the wisdom of our elders, our mentors and those whom we trust to speak truth to us that can raise our spirit. When our spirit is that of calm, instead of that of anxiety, we become conduits of spreading calm instead of anxiety. So, how do we bring calm to our heart, mind, body and spirit? The answer depends on the individual. What brings you calm? Regardless of the answer, the health of the community depends on the health of each one of us. As long as we radiate higher purpose, our actions will be  infused with the power to virtually hold on to each other, and keep our spirits soaring through any crisis.

Our true power is in the current that flows through us, and our community. Our power directs our actions towards a greater purpose. Our selfless actions inspire our spirits, and the result is the health and well-being of all.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat, Sunday March 15 at 9amET / 1pm GMT / 630pm India in #SpiritChat – we will raise each other spirits over tea, coffee, fruit and cookies as we gather online and engage in some Q & A – just like we’ve been doing for so many years 🙂 – @AjmaniK

 

Flowers – holding on to each other – raising each other up!

The Heart’s Unknowns

Tags

collaboration, heartmonth, mathematics, uncertainty, unknown

To say that I have a particular affinity, if not an outright life-long love-affair with Mathematics, would not be too far from the truth. And yet it didn’t always used to be that way. I think it was my fourth or fifth grade Math teacher, a fire-cracker of a lady named Mrs. Das, who lit the spark within me. She had such a passion and energy for the subject that I still remember the spark in her eyes all these decades later. 

Once a week, my daughter brings home a “problem of the week” (POW)  as part of her ‘honors geometry’ homework. Their teacher encourages them to work the POW with a parent ‘at the dinner table’. I think it’s a brilliant idea as it encourages parent-teenager conversation and collaboration. It also gives me an opportunity to find out how much of my middle-school math I actually remember! More often than not, we sink our teeth into the POW by transforming it into equations consisting of unknowns like x’s, y’s, and if absolutely necessary, even z’s.

Once the transformation is complete, it’s time to solve for the unknowns. Yay. Algebra. The first question we ask is if we have at least as many equations as there are unknowns. Why do we ask this question? If we have more unknowns than equations, we are stuck. No exact solution is possible unless we reformulate the equations and unknowns. This is akin to where our heart is looking for a solution to a life challenge, and yet the unknowns far exceed our own knowledge of the problem. Now what? 

In life, one step towards a solution would be to make some assumptions about the relationship between one or more of the unknowns. Say that we need to buy a new car or a house, choose a spot for our next vacation, help our kids decide which sport to play or which college to attend, and so on. From a financial perspective, one could assume that the choice of the  car would directly impact the choice of college. By creating this relationship between our choices, we eliminate an unknown. We can also reduce unknowns in decision-making by evaluating our tolerance for risk-taking.

In some cases, our perceived risk of the unknowns is so great, that it binds our heart to insurmountable fear. What if we sign a mortgage on the house and our financial situation changes? What if we don’t like the new neighborhood or our neighbors? When fear takes over, it ensures that no amount of guidance or reframing of the challenge will get us closer to a solution. Fear can also make our decision for us by magnifying the risk of the hearts unknowns. 

In other cases, the risk may be low enough, and we may even have more than enough information to make a decision. And yet, there is a nagging unknown in our heart which is informed by our intuition, our past experience, or some higher guidance. Unlike the x’s and y’s of algebra and geometry, we are now engaged in the POW of life’s mathematics. We have two job offers in hand. They are both financially great for us, but the heart’s knowing leads us to the lower paying one with the low-stress lifestyle.

The heart’s knowing may thus lead to seemingly inexact or even irrational solutions. And that’s okay, because joy isn’t always found in finding the exact solution to the problem. Joy is in the simple sitting down at the kitchen counter and playing with the unknowns. Joy is in the knowing that there will soon be another opportunity to collaborate on life’s new POW with an open heart. 

Maybe it’s time to open our heart and re-kindle our love-affair with more unknowns — what does your heart think? 

Kumud

P.S. Join our weekly twitter chat, Sunday Feb 23 at 9amET in #SpiritChat – we will explore some new unknowns, and learn a bit more about life’s mathematics and may even attempt to solve a POW together. Of course, no group activity would be complete without tea and cookies…. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Bridges – old and new – can serve as invitations to explore the unknown – meditation is one such bridge…

It was a brilliant walk beyond that bridge…

Last autumn’s leaves, waiting for a new spring’s unknowns

The Spirit of the Game

Tags

chess, coaches, equality, play, sports

Growing up in India, I was never much of a sports-playing kid in school. The emphasis was purely on academics, and any activity that distracted from “studies” was considered superfluous. It was even suggested that those who excelled in sports only did so because they were “poor” students and were probably not much interested in studying anyway!

This isn’t to say that I did not enjoy playing football (i.e. soccer), basketball, volleyball or even softball (without the gloves)  at every opportunity that I got during the daily P.T. (“physical training”) class. I even signed up to play “goalkeeper” during an inter-school tournament one year. However, my stint was short-lived because the after-school practices interfered with my “studies”. So, I decided to bide my time to play “real sports” until I got to college. 

However, all was not lost on the high-school “sports” front for me. In the ninth grade, my new brother-in-law started to teach me how to play chess. A combination of “plus points” about chess made it “acceptable” to my parents to allow me to spend untold number of hours playing the game. Firstly, I was viewed as being a good host to my brother-in-law, every time that we played when he visited us. In Indian culture, family members of the sister’s or daughter’s in-laws were always  treated with great respect and accommodation. So, this was strike one in my favor. Secondly, chess is a cerebral game, and this aligned well with the focus on “academic” activities. Thirdly, unlike football, there was no chance of getting physically hurt playing ‘chess’!

After playing diligently for a few years, studying books about chess openings, spending hours trying to solve the chess puzzles that appeared in the Sunday sports section of the newspaper, I actually started winning once in a while when I played with my “teacher”. I even started playing with my brother-in-law’s father, which was always a special occasion for me. This did land me in a bit of a dilemma as I was now finding myself in a position of asking a question. Should I be showing “disrespect” to the “in-laws” by playing “all out” and to the best of my abilities? Or should I be playing with integrity, in the “spirit of the game”, and let the pawns and rooks and knights and bishops sort it out on the board? (The dilemma sorted itself out once I graduated high-school and the opportunities to play became very rare).

Just when I thought I was getting really good at the game, an “International Master (IM)” from the USSR visited our high-school for a demonstration. He agreed to play “simultaneous chess” with thirty-two students and teachers. We all sat, sixteen apiece, in two long rows, and he moved from one board to the next, making one move at a time against each player. One by one we were defeated, and I was totally awed by the surgical precision with which he dismantled all but one student’s carefully crafted defenses. At the end of it that day, I wasn’t sure if I was awed by the IM’s thirty-one wins or the student who escaped with a draw! In those three short hours, I learnt a lot from the IM about the “spirit of the game”, and how much more I still had to learn about playing chess itself.

During my college and graduate school years, there was an unexpected hiatus of about ten years in active chess-playing for me. Fortunately, the love of the game did not die. In the mid-nineties, the advent of the internet and “international chess servers” opened up a lot more opportunities to play with players of different “ratings” (levels) from across the world. I even made a few friends with whom I would play fairly regularly – “friends” who I never even talked with, let alone meet in real life. Perhaps this experience was a precursor to what was to come a few years later on twitter in the form of #SpiritChat!

But what does chess, or sports at large, teach me about life and spirituality?

Chess taught me that the “spirit of the game” goes beyond winning and losing. It allows for the possibility of a well-contested, thoroughly enjoyable draw! I learnt that regardless of how “powerful” they were at the start of the game, every single piece was subject to being “humbled”. Any of the “lowly” pawns could not only humble the “mighty” king but also  become “all powerful” by being “queened”. All a pawn had to do was take one small step at a time until it reached the other end of the board! The bishops taught me about the discipline of “staying in our lane”, for they were only allowed to move diagonally on squares of assigned colors. The knights taught the power of flexibility in movement – the only pieces that can attack without being in line-of-sight of the pieces that they are attacking. The rooks taught me that long-range thinking, even if it is only limited to straight lines, conveys power only second to that of the all-powerful Queen.

One great lesson of playing chess perhaps came from learning that “the center” is all-important. A strong grasp of the center of the board, just like a powerful awareness of our heart, is essential to success in chess and life. Who is it that  controls the center? More often than not, the center is established by the “lowly” pawns, with their one or two small steps at the very start of the game. Similarly, it is with our small, pawn-like moves in our daily spiritual practice, that awakens awareness of our center. Our daily spiritual steps may seem small, even insignificant. Yet, with every heart-based move we make, we are setting up space for our center to prevail.

Looking back on all those years of chess-playing and all the games I must have played, one common conclusion stands out. At the end of every game, all of the pieces – whether they were black or white, winners or losers or participants in a draw,  pawns or queens or kings – all were put back in the box from which they were brought out, to await yet again for  their opportunity to take center-stage again.

The game taught me that winning and losing are often forgotten, but the spirit of those who taught us how to play with purity, fairness and dignity leaves an imprint on our heart. Remembrance of the game’s spirit is perhaps the best way to honor our coaches, and to be grateful for those who choose to be on life’s playgrounds with us! 

Kumud 

P.S. What is your favorite sport to watch or to play? What has your favorite ‘game’ taught you about life and living? If you were to play a position in your favorite game, what would it be? I invite you to share the spirit of the game with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday, Feb 2nd at 9amET on twitter. Maybe we can even play chess one of these days…  Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Alan Light – Own work by the original uploader, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20299

On Loving Discipline

Tags

awareness, freedom, spiritual practice, spirituality

Have you ever thought that “discipline” was invented to put you in a “box”, restrict your freedom(s), prevent you from living the life that you were meant to live? Have you ever met someone who is allergic to, inherently resists the idea of “discipline”?

In my younger (read ‘teenage’) years, discipline was perhaps the last thing that I wanted to be subject to. The very notion that I was expected to make my bed before I went to school seemed like an injustice. And the bus came at 6:30am! In high school, there was no ‘sleeping in’ on weekends. Saturday morning discipline included going shopping for milk, vegetables and groceries. Then there was the choice of dusting the furniture and bookcases, folding the laundry, putting away the washed dishes, setting the table for lunch or dinner, clearing the table after the meals, and much more. There was no escape from the seeming prison of chores and discipline. And I haven’t even talked about the take- no-prisoners attitude of discipline of some of the teachers at school!

But little was I to know that it was all preparation for what was to come my way a few years later. On my arrival as a graduate student in the USA, I realized that the ‘prison of discipline’ in my aunt’s home in India had taught me self-awareness. I was pleasantly surprised that I knew exactly what it would take to thrive on my own in a foreign land. I was able to work out chore-sharing with my roommates, just like I chore-shared with my cousins growing up. I quickly became aware that grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, cleaning, and even cooking, were all things that I was already good at. I actually began to fall in love with the idea of discipline!

After the self-awareness, I began to realize that freedom from the ‘prison of discipline’ had led me to the practice of self-discipline. The more I practiced it, the more my self-respect and self-image grew. With this growth, I found that I was comfortable in reaching out and making friends with all sorts of nationalities, and particularly the Americans. The land that I considered foreign, adopted me over time.

I believe that this two-way adoption happened because self-respect grew into self-love. It took self-love to keep an open mind to learning about western customs and culture, and harmonizing them with my eastern foundations.

As a parent and teacher, I began to consider that most of our parents’ (and teachers’) discipline is perhaps borne out of love for us. By by ‘drawing lines’ for us, they are teaching us self-awareness, self-respect, and self-love. Theirs, and now mine, is evolving into a loving discipline indeed.

Loving discipline manifests because true love takes some discipline, and true discipline takes a lot of love. What’s your take on ‘loving discipline’?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. join us for our weekly #SpiritChat gathering – Sunday, Aug 11 at 9amET – I will bring some questions on discipline – with love 🙂 – Namaste. Kumud.

Nature’s discipline takes many forms – mostly of a loving nature!

The Heart’s Mystical Music

Tags

freedom, healing, music, spirituality

My very first deep friendship on Twitter was with Wayne Mcevilly. A fascinating gentleman who was as comfortable talking about Sanskrit and chanting SamaVeda shlokas, as he was fluid in playing Bach and Beethoven. It was his direct, honest, authentic as it gets approach to life that kept me around on Twitter when I was barely sure about what I was even doing on the medium. I finally got a hold of his “Bach Preludes and Fugues” on piano, and classical music entered my awareness. Among many phone conversations, I have learnt much from the journey of this musical mystic. (my interview with Wayne)

In his own unique way, Wayne taught me that we are all have a bit of the musical mystic within us. From the very dawn of our awareness in our mother’s wombs, sound is an integral part of our being. When sound find arrangement in pitch, tone, meter and such, it can become music. What are some of your earliest memories of sound or music?

The line between music and noise is often as fine as the tuning of our ears, the state of our mind, and the station of our heart. Indian classical music thus has different classes of musical compositions (called ragas), each of which are best suited to a particular time of the day, or even a particular season. Are there particular genres of music that you tune into, are attuned towards, depending on your mood or the state of your life?

One gift of music that has words attached to it is that we can be influenced by the words as much as we can be moved by the instruments. Some of the earliest mantras and shlokas (Sanskrit collections of syllables, words and hymns) were set to music in the form of meters – the most famous being the eight-step Gayatri. The rhythm of meters enabled for smriti (memorization) , and hence the ancient ‘scriptures’ were preserved through generations. What are some songs, prayers or hymns that were ‘passed on’ to you and have perhaps become an integral part of your life?

Beyond the external sound of music, of nature and the noise of our daily living, there is the incessant internal rhythm within us.

“Within ourselves is this eternal voice speaking of eternal freedom; its music is always going on!” – Vivekananda in ‘Practical Vedanta’

Our spiritual work, if we so choose to do it, is perhaps to take time, make time, to create a space of silence and stillness so that we can hear the musical rhythm that leads us to freedom. It is often in the company of fellow seekers (satsang) that we can find this space where we can do a ‘group sing-along’ (kirtan) in the presence of sound and light, embracing joy and bliss in our harmonious energies that contribute to the orchestra of community.

And who knows, someday, we may even learn, through sustained (inner) musical practice, we may discover anew some music, and even learn to sing some of the most difficult songs of life. And in the singing, we shall laugh and love life deeply again, as the healing spreads through our heart, and radiates to all who connect with us, in new radiant connections.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat – Sunday Aug 4 at 9amET in #SpiritChat – bring your favorite music to the kirtan and I will bring the tea and questions – Namaste – Kumud

A location, where my heart often tunes into its inner music…

On Being Irrational

Tags

irrational, mathematics, spiritual path

At 3:14pm on March 14th (3/14), two astronauts and one cosmonaut launched on a Soyuz rocket from a Russian cosmodrome, and began a roughly six hour trip to chase down the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting the earth. On the face of it, this was like many previous Soyuz launches over the past years on which US astronauts have been transported to the ISS.

However, this launch was unique in one particular way. Two of the three folks on this flight had been part of a virtually identical rocket launch five months or so ago. On that launch, things did not go as planned, and the launch abort safety system had to be activated a few minutes after liftoff. The abort system worked as planned, and both made a hard but safe landing back to earth.

Let me ask you a question. If you had been part of a “successful launch abort” (an euphemism for a ‘failure’ to reach orbit) five months ago, would you strap yourself into the very same launch system and be willing to be rocketed back into space? The rational being would evaluate the odds and say – heck no – or at least hesitate. However, human beings, and particularly space-faring cadets are not exactly known for being the most rational of beings.

In fact, most of us, even though we may not admit it, are largely irrational. It is perhaps this very irrationality, and the number PI, that NASA/RosCosmos were celebrating, when they picked 3:14pm on 3/14 for the launch date and time. The space-cadets probably did some probability theory mathematics and figured – what are the odds that they would be involved in two launch failures within five months? Probably zero. Sounds rational, doesn’t it?

Enough about space. Let’s get back to earth for a minute. We have all, at some point or another in our lives, made some very irrational choices. They might have seemed very rational in the moment, but in hindsight, not so logical. How many times have we (irrationally) told ourselves that the stock that we are holding on to, or the investment that is currently half its original value, will recover? Or that the book that we are lending out, the money that we are loaning to a family member or friend, will be returned to us? And so on.

We want to believe that we are rational beings, and that (more often than not) we make rational choices. We want to believe that we don’t have confirmation bias or proximity bias or survivorship bias. We want to believe that our beliefs are all of our own discovery, and that they will somehow lead us to truth. I believe all of those things, although I do often wonder – can truth and irrationality coexist?

The truth is that we are better at being irrational than being rational. I posit that irrationality is what becomes us more, and serves us better. Yes. We need the fuel of irrationality – some call it belief turning into faith. How else does a parent or teacher or coach, in the midst of the state of our world, hold out hope that they are working towards creating a better world? How else does a first-responder risk their own life to try and save the life of a total stranger?

Yes. We need irrationality to launch us out of analysis paralysis. We need to believe in the infinite, non-repeatable beauty of every moment of life. Just like all the infinite, non-repeating decimals of the irrational number that we science and math and life loving folks celebrate on pi(e) day. I can’t wait to see what 3.14.2020 will bring.

My irrational hope is that it will bring a lot of chocolate silk pie, and another successful rocket launch. How about you? What’s your hope?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S1. Yes. The Soyuz MS-12 capsule caught up to the ISS and docked with it at 9:01pm on 3/14. Expedition 59 was ten minutes ahead of schedule.

P.S2. Why is PI irrational? It is because it cannot be expressed as a fraction. Yes, 22/7 is the common representation. But mathematically, it isn’t so. PI is actually equal to (four times the inverse tangent of 1 radian).

P.S3. Yes. We will be gathering in #spiritchat on Sunday, March 17th at 9amET on twitter. I look forward to asking some questions of all you irrational beings. And yes. There will be pie. Join us. And much gratitude to @Kalsekhar for the topic idea!

The Pi(e) Day Storm – is nature irrational?

The Heart’s Graduations

Tags

commencement, graduation, heart, heart matters

The end of May and the beginning of June is ‘graduation season’ in the USA. With the end of the school year, and the beginning of ‘summer break’, it is a long-standing tradition that celebrates the accomplishment of students, a felicitation of their teachers, and the support of family and friends. From kindergarteneners to post-graduates, beaming students march across stages across America in the finest of caps, gowns, tassels and other finery, as they are handed rolled-up diplomas that proclaim them as ‘graduates’.

The first ever graduation that I attended for myself, was for my doctorate degree. I had somehow managed to skip (or avoid!) every single one before then. In this case, having graduated in the December of the previous year, I was already working full-time. My thesis advisor called, and jokingly suggested that I would not receive that piece of sheepskin (is it really made of that?) if I did not show up for the ceremony. I am glad that I went, because it was a wonderful celebration indeed. I do not remember who the commencement speaker was, or what they said, but I will never forget the look of joy in my advisor’s eyes when I came off the stage with degree in hand.

He was always Dr. Ng to me. A young superstar professor from MIT, Presidential Rank Young Professor awardee, often chosen Professor of the Year by his students, and much more. In that moment, all I could say to him was, Thank you, Dr. Ng. But that day, he immediately corrected me and said – you can call me “Wing” from now on. You earned that right. He must have seen the reluctance in my eyes at this suggestion. So he quickly added – it’s okay. I insist.

For some reason, with that simple statement, I realized that four years of an academic-centric relationship (that began with him being my Master’s degree advisor), had now graduated to a heart-centric relationship. His attendance at the graduation parties thrown by my friends, an invitation to his home to have a special dinner with his family, and many other small and not-so-small touches were proof of that. He knew that I did not have any family (other than my younger cousin) present that week, so he turned from mere advisor to filling the role of proud-parent.

Now that I think about those events of twenty-five years ago, I ask myself. How do we know when our heart has graduated from kindergarten to the next grade? How do we discern when a relationship has transformed from a business- or academic- or task-centric to a heart-centric one? How do we measure the heart’s progress on the ‘education’ ladder, or can we? What would a high-school graduation in the heart’s curriculum entail for us? How about an undergraduate or graduate degree, or even a ‘doctorate’ in heart-centric education?

Perhaps all these questions are moot, for they all point to a single answer. Perhaps there are no discrete graduations in the heart, for the flow within it is more of a continuum. Perhaps the heart is beyond space and time, for it is on its journey of continuous involution.

In closing, I have to say thank you. To my parents who supported my coming here for graduate studies. To the community of Virginia Tech who held me gently. To my friends and teachers who believed in me despite all my flaws. And to the thesis advisor who took a gamble on a ‘fresh-off-of-the-boat’ graduate student from India after a five minute conversation, and provided and protected for him with all the resources at his disposal to make sure that he stayed the course.

Thank you, Wing for being a shining-heart example of the spirit of Ut Prosim.

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Please join us Sunday, June 3rd at 9amET on twitter in #SpiritChat – we will explore the topic of “The Heart’s Graduation”. I look forward to your sharing of some graduation thoughts with the community. Thank you!

The heart’s graduation perhaps happens in the willingness to cross bridges…