Another year passes by...

Today was three of my friend's birthday. Actually four.
One was my junior at college.
Two are my classmates here and
The fourth was my classmate in 11-12 but we never spoke.

Its another year that has passed by for them .. and pretty soon it will be the same for me.
After every year that passes by I often wonder what all i achieved, what all i lost, what i could have achieved and what all I could have lost, what all I have, what all I could have.... I ts just a small introspection that is done once a year.

I dont say that i end up doing all things that I plan for the next year, but atleast I try. And thats what matters. In the end its all about whether I was "Happy" in the past year. Happiness comes only in bits and happiness will always be followed by sadness in some way. The sooner we get out of this, the better and the more beneficial for us.

There is just so much to explore that I often wished I had done more in the past year... but on the other hand its saying that what I did was perhaps the best for that particular situation!

There is this small poem I wrote for my friends whose birthday it was today and it goes like this with this photograph.



The entire earth is your canvas..
Paint it with the colors of bliss..
Let the shapes confuse you..
Let the shadows amuse you..

Go paint the world green..
Go paint like it has never been...

Go Paint the world with your colors!

Meditation...

Is it necessary to close eyes to meditate?

Do designers meditate? Do we have our ideas come in complete silence or in a crowded place. At a serene location or at a place buzzing with activities? Can someone meditate in a crowded place? Ok , so basic question.. What is meditation? I am no saint, neither do I evangelize anything on this, but this small piece from the book “The Tibetan book of Living and Dying” by Sogyal Rinpoche, did make lot of sense . As we all embark on our journey towards another projects and another after that, I found this will definitely help.

The purpose of meditation is to awaken us in the sky-like nature of the mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death.
In the stillness and silence of meditation, we glimpse and return to that deep inner nature that we have so long ago lost sight of amid the busyness and distractions of our minds. Isn’t it extraordinary that our minds cannot stay long for longer than a few moments without grasping after distraction; they are so restless and preoccupied that sometimes I think that, living in a city in the modern world, we are already like the tormented beings in the intermediate state after death, where the consciousness is said to be agonizingly restless.
We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions leaving nobody at home.

Meditation, then is the bringing the mind home.

If your mind is able to settle naturally of its own accord, and if you are inspired simply to rest in its pure awareness, then you do not need any method of meditation. In fact it might even be unskillful when you’re in such a state to tray and emply one. However, the vast majority of us find it difficult to arrive at that state straight away.

I feel that meditation has a lot to do with letting things go, being just able to relax, of being to be in a fresh state f mind before starting onto another project. Doing whatever please the soul is perhaps the best way to relax.
In his book Emotional Design, Don Norman mentions, “We have long known that when people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentrating upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem. Results from experiments show that when people are relaxed and happy, their thought processes expand, becoming more creative, more imaginative.”

Whom do I fear ?

I just read another blog post and I often ask myself this question. Why do i Fear? And do i fear? Its a natural instinct and everyone faces in in some form or the other at some point in Life. You love someone, there is the fear of loosing him/her. You put in a lot of hard work in something and there is the fear of failing. You aspire to reach a goal and there is the fear of loosing track and reaching somewhere else…You want to learn swimming, but there is the fear of drowning even in three feet of water.. You are out in the woods and fear the trees would eat you up or the cliffs engulf you… There is fear all around.

I remember this description about Fear in one of my favorite book “The life of Pi” by Yann Martel. It is definitely worth pondering over the words here.

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

Oh lord, help me remove all the fear and be a brave soul that I have always been.

The only I fear is you.

Missing you ...

... i saw the moon
...how beautifully it shown.

... i saw the stars and the sky..
...and wished for the wings to fly..

... i saw the trickling rains..
... i felt the receding pains..

...i saw the flowers blue...
... and just how much i missed you.