Monday we saw many rhinos, some up pretty close, and some elephants. We also saw a family of elephants cross in front of us on Tuesday afternoon. Here are the movies.
Report from Kaziranga
This is my home page now!
Rhinos in Assam
Back in India, I am doing something different. I’m in Assam. That’s part of the little bit of India that sticks out to the east, running along the north of Bangladesh. I flew from Grand Rapids to Guwahati on a single ticket. It was a long ride. The week before I left, an Indian friend told me he had just come back from Guwahati. (Pronounciation: The u isn’t exactly silent, but it’s exceedingly short. It’s a long u sound, so you have to round your lips like you are going to make a long u as in food, but don’t say it. Just go on to the “wahati” part!) And that his sister in law lives there. And that she would invite us to visit. Which we did.
After visiting the handicrafts museum, which sells a camera pass for 100 Rupees, but then won’t let you take photos inside the museum, and won’t sell you postcards of the artifacts either, many of which were pretty cool, but too bad, I guess they don’t want free advertising in all the places their visitors come from, so you only get these two outside photos.
Assam is off the beaten past for tourists in India, even though it is a beautiful area and the people who go generally loved the visit. I was really surprised to find such a mess of horrible traffic ALMOST similar to Delhi, in Guwahati. But there are, I am told, 12 million people in the area of the city. BUT CORRECTION- Wikipedia says around 1 million. So maybe the bottom line is that this city was never designed for so many cars! We left at 6:30 in the evening to visit my friend’s sister-in-law, as it was only 4.6 km away. It took us an HOUR to get there! But she, like me, grows a lot of her own vegetables, and she is a retired physician, and unlike the rest of the country, uses very little salt. It may well have been the best meal I have ever had in India. And the company was very charming!
The next morning, we set off on our adventure to Kaziranga National Park. The tour agency sent us a different driver from the one they had said was coming, but he arrived early and we were ready, so we set off in high spirits. 15 minutes away from the hotel we stayed at the night before, we had a flat tire. Luckily, we had a flat tire fairly close to a tire fixing store. That’s a fixing store. They don’t have new tires. Twenty minutes later we were on our way. But we didn’t find a tire sale shop, so we kept going on the bad tire, which was also almost completely bald, which was also the condition of two of the other tires. In the mean time, two older Indian women pulled up behind us for some reason, being conveyed in the exact same type of tourist taxi with the exact same type of bald tires. So it was nothing personal to give the gringo bald tires. No. And I should have remembered all the bald tires my sister took pictures of on our family trip in 2008.
Half an hour later, our fixed tire blew out, and, the driver decided to put the spare on. We made it the rest of the way….. Hoping against hope that two flat tire events and a wild goose chase for the River Boat Cruise meant that we had used up all of our bad luck for the rest of the trip!
Yes, we did make it the rest of the way, including a two hour detour to Tezpur, where we were supposed to have a cruise on the Brahmaputra River, but only found a sad looking beach…after making our way past the mental hospital, and the city jail, which happened to be right next door to a Montessori school. Huh! That would not go over well in the good old USA.
The tour operator finally returned our calls, but we had given up, having found out it was our driver’s first day of work for this tour company, although he had worked for other local tour companies, and we have since decided he knows what he’s about. He even got us a NEW USED tire to replace the spare that had a busted sidewall.
And finally, here at the Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I found myself in paradise. Sitting on my balcony in a nice hotel room with all functioning items (there could be a few more electrical outlets, and the bed is, as all beds in Asia, exceedingly hard), listening to the night sounds in February, that I hear at home only in August, watching Jupiter, and a beautiful golden sunset….
Monday am we (I and my tourguide friend Dharmendra, who I asked to come as regular Indian tourguides are reliably mediocre….and he basically considers me family…) got up to have breakfast at 7, so we could be off in the jeep to see the Unicorn White Rhinoceri!!!!!! The moment I had been planning for since March of last year had finally arrived!
Well, it’s late. Tomorrow we’re going to the tea garden, so I am going to wrap this up with a photo.
Choose Confidence over Humility
We act humble when those motivated by lower chakra energy impose their will on us. Usually, the imposers work categorically NOT for our own true good. Our own true good comes when we experience the consequences of our own decisions, and can thereby learn from them. In order to do this, we must work to overcome the “humility programming” we are given. How else may we remove the obstacles to confidence? I can find no other way to take the bushel out of the way of my shining light.
Embracing confidence over humility allows us to store up our treasures in heaven. Treasures of a spiritual nature (social capital) are no easier to earn (and maybe harder to earn) than financial treasures. But the interest accumulates automatically. We don’t have to waste our time seeking out the best 401k.
This little piece was written in E Prime. It avoids use of forms of the verb “to be.” Humility does not serve as the opposite of arrogance. Rather confidence does so. Confidence is deserved when earned through study, practice, or experience!
Don’t try too hard to understand. Just listen and enjoy the artwork. The audio is a different version that is not E-prime. I had missed 5 ises.
Next Incarnation: A Clam
The vague longing drifted past in random waves. Reach out. Pull in. Reach out. Pull in. Reach out. Pull in. Ad infinitum. A protist was drawn toward the barnacle’s feathery legs, and was pulled in to be digested. This one was a paramecium. The last one had been an amoeba. So had the six prior to it. But finally, the content of the current had varied.
Not that it mattered. Barnacles experience taste and texture differently from any species able to write about them. Besides, who would listen to a barnacle’s complaint that the amoebas were not crunchy enough? No, Barney would not be taken seriously even had she been able to.
What did she have to complain about, anyway? Even as stuck to this rock as she was, she had the ability to act as a female or a male, in the latter case sending her second chakra organ out for fun, to a distance as much as eight times the diameter of (now his!) body. But for now, she was configured as a female.
Suddenly, the consciousness within realized that the sperm was drifting away from a passing structure. Freedom, at least of a sort.
Next time, she’d choose some clams as her parents!
Thanksgiving
Being somewhat of a grouch, even though recently I had several dreams about my teeth falling out, which I finally decided were not a warning to go to the dentist, but rather a message from my subconscious that I was losing my bite, and maybe some of my perceived bark, gratitude is something that I have to cultivate. I am truly filled with gratitude for being able to live a very comfortable life compared to most of the people in the world. We middle class Americans, as much as we disappear, still have it pretty good. I am really grateful that I have managed to work for my own company for 25 years. I really am grateful for not having to be in at 8 or even 7 am, as most working people do. It’s not that I am a shirker. I rarely leave before 7 pm when the work-load is normal. But I like the flexibility to pamper my night-personhood.
But grateful as I am for the privilege of living in the good old USA, it is truly depressing to watch so many people apparently veering off into a mindset so divorced from reality. What do Americans still agree on?
Well, traveling years ago in Europe, getting to know pit toilets for the first time at a fairly tender age, and then getting to study in Switzerland for a year in college, I had the opportunity to know what Europeans thought of Americans…
Americans are the people who have nice plumbing.
So here we go. Whether Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, or Alt Right of some type, we all (well almost all) wake up in the morning, pee in a nice porcelain toilet, on which we can sit comfortably if desired. We can then take a nice hot shower, brush our teeth with water that is mostly not contaminated with deadly bacteria (even if it is increasingly contaminated with harmful industrial and agricultural chemicals, and heavy metals), dry ourselves off with a nice fluffy towel, and get dressed.
So, to all of my fellow Americans, let’s remember to be grateful for the plumbing we have. We live in a country where almost everyone has a toilet in their living space. India has recently almost completed a national campaign to reach that goal, and apparently Nigeria is just starting to do something about the 4.7 million people without toilets.
Let’s be grateful, this Thanksgiving, for the basic things. Not just the food we all commonly say we are thankful for, but a place to put it when we’re done digesting it. And the fact that we don’t have to watch anyone else getting rid of theirs. And that it rarely ends back up in our drinking water.
Tarot Koans
THE MAJOR ARCANA
You may see the classical images for the Rider Waite deck at Wikipedia. Scroll down to Major Arcana. Arcana means secrets. The major arcana are meant to represent the entire human experience in an abbreviated, symbolic way.
Story Number 1: The Magician
After the thought, manifestation.
Story Number 2: The High Priestess
Before the thought, knowledge.
Story Number 3: The Empress
She glowed.
The fields flowered wherever she walked.
Bringing fruit out of season.
Story Number 4: The Emperor
His authority radiated from every pore.
He no longer required the uniform.
Story Number 5: The Heirophant
The attention rejuvenated his soul.
His sister had claimed it was his ego, but he knew better.
The eyes had followed his every move.
But now, he was tired of it all.
Performing the same rituals day after day.
Only the thoughtless cared.
Story Number 6: The Lovers
Loving lovers loved lengthily.
Do you remember?
Always remember.
Remember.
Story Number 7: The Chariot
Your chariot awaits.
The work you have done has its own reward.
Enjoy the ride.
Story Number 8: Strength
The Goddess radiated light.
The lion lay down in submission.
Truth and goodness flood the thought field.
Justice has become mercy.
Story Number 9: The Hermit
The old woman closed the door of her house behind her, and latched it.
Her cloak fastened at the neck, she headed up the mountain, holding nothing but a lantern.
She would go up as far as she could. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other. She knew how to struggle toward the heavens. She had done it all of her life.
There, she would breathe her last. Her knees would never let her return to lower earth, and that was just fine with her.
Story Number 10: The Wheel of Fortune
The monkey raced around the mulberry bush.
So did the weasel.
Which was chasing which?
Story Number 11: Justice
Jane bowed her head. Justice was slow in coming. Very slow.
A thousand times now, the sun had risen and set.
Jane lifted her head. Now she understood.
Story Number 12: The Hanged Man
Everything is upside down now.
The hummingbird has consumed the eagle. Ganesh rides a mouse.
Mist obscures the ground,
above the hard black bowl of the sky.
Story Number 13: Death
Ring around the rosie,
pocket full of posie.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Story Number 14: Temperance
Silver wings fluttering in the breeze,
the angel plodded on,
toward the approaching dawn.
Story Number 15: The Devil
The image stared back at him
from the depths of the blackness.
The sin looked out at the sinner.
Story Number 16: The Tower
Ground shaking, tower leaning.
Maybe this was not such a good idea.
We’d better jump now.
Story Number 17: The Star
She dipped her big right toe in
the river of time, while chewing
a blade of grass.
Story Number 18: The Moon
Over and over and over again, they had endured the
reign of terror.
Once, the wings of mercy had shielded them.
What goes around comes around.
The moon waxes and wanes.
Story Number 19: The Sun
Bright shining as the sun, the child’s smile.
Crickets start to chirp in the heat.
Story Number 20: Judgement
Dem bones gonna rise again, Ezekiel eventually proclaimed.
But is that really what you want?
The streets of heaven are paved with gold.
The alchemists’ stuff, not the end result of
two neutron stars colliding in
far away galaxies.
Story Number 21: The World
No longer at my fingertips.
Where are my fingertips?
Who am I?
What is I?
Boundaries dissolve.
The world is.
Is.
Isness.
Isness is.
A Story: The Master
I watch the lord comb the lady’s hair.
The rest is untold.
Story Number Zero: The Fool
Innocence and isness
make no claims.
I hope you liked these little poetic reflections. If you have an artistic bent, and would like to collaborate on illustrations, please let me know by the comment feature.
Osho and Patanjali
I have read Osho’s book about Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras probably around four times now. It’s called The Science of the Soul. A lot of real and metaphorical ink has been spilled over the Yoga Sutras. Osho says that Patanjali was the Einstein of the spiritual path. Yet today, scholars dispute the time of his life by plus of minus 500 years! (400 BCE to 600 CE). Patanjali, as I see him, lies squarely in the river of the thought of the sages of the Indian culture.
They were so logical. They did not have all of the different developed modern scientific tools of epistemological analysis, so they were limited in what they could achieve, and sometimes mistaken about what was natural law versus cultural habit, but many of the areas where they turned their gaze were revealed in a way that increased accessibility for whole new groups of people.
For example, our alphabet, based on the one supposedly developed by the Phoenicians, has a random order. The Devanagiri script, descendent of that used for Sanscrit, is completely logically ordered. The first letter is the one whose sound is furthest back in the throat, and it moves forward from there.
Patanjali, like the modern scientists of the mind, used introspection as his main tool to create his science of liberation. Despite the work of Freud, Jung, Adler and their colleagues and professional descendants, Western culture has no communally shared answers to the big questions and problems of personal loss. Patanjali however, in the spirit of the Rishis of the earliest Vedic culture (1500 – 500 BCE) gave simple instruction on how to attain liberation from the feelings of loss and failure that accompany most thoughtful people who are subject to the human condition.
The instructions, Patanjali noted in his first sentence, are not for everyone. Osho says that Patanjali acknowledged that if you were not completely fed up with your mental state, completely devoid of hope that things would ever improve, you would not likely be interested in his method of liberation. I reached this state, or at least close enough to think that I know what it means, about a year ago. That’s why I keep rereading Osho’s book, and have also sought out other commentators on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
So, once you come to terms with the fact that you don’t have and never will have hope for peace of mind by any method based on logic, science, psychology, love, or money, open the Yoga Sutras. There you will read: Now, the discipline of yoga.
Grr. Discipline. I have never had any. People think I do, but I don’t. Or at least I never did. The arthritis attack forced me to get a little. I actually make my bed now, almost every day. Why not? I’m going to have to straighten the blankets before I lie down to sleep. Why not just do it in the morning? That’s discipline for it’s own sake. I live alone, so it’s very rare that anyone will see my messy bed. This, believe it or not, is a huge step forward in my personal practice of discipline.
Now, the discipline of yoga. Osho says that you have to have basic discipline in your life, eating and sleeping at regular times, or you will never get anywhere with your yoga practice. OK. Again, the arthritis forced me to change some of my ways.
I’m certainly not disciplined in any complete sense. If I were, my Failure Analysis book would be much further along than it is. Oh well. Maybe as I study and meditate more and more times on the second sutra, I will want more discipline so that I can proceed along the path to liberation from my own permanently troubled mind. The second sutra? Yoga is the cessation of mind.
This has always been problematic. The mind is kindof necessary, like the ego, to get through life. So what does this really mean? My current understanding is that it means that the mind, and ego for that matter, get demoted to servant, so that the true self can be the master.
The rest of Patanjali’s masterpiece is about how to make that happen. The bottom line is that we move our sense of who we are from our feelings, thoughts, and sensory input to the witness, the seer, the personal soul whose real existence is embedded in and inseparable from the consciousness of the eternal divine essence.
A Voice from The Grave
A voice from the grave. That’s the origin of all religion, according to Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, the man credited with starting the modern science of anthropology. Specifically, Tylor speculated that religion, as distinct from totems and their associated specific dietary taboos, arose when peoples ran into major difficulties or obstacles, and became open to listening to advice from respected lost elders currently residing in spiritual domains. The disembodied voices of dead ancestors were the original gods.
Of course in Asia, many still worship their ancestors. That’s part of why the Ten Commandments conveyed to a small group in the Sinai Peninsula should still, today, be considered revolutionary. The Ten Commandments instructed “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
We, the descendants, culturally if not from the specific haplo group, were told to HONOR, not to worship. It was intended to be a liberating commandment.
And, the reasoning was provided. Now, we may ask how honoring our PARENTS equates with long life for the ones doing the honoring, as opposed to the ones being honored. To answer this conundrum, we need only realize that as we live, we set an example. If we honor our parents, our offspring, or other people’s offspring, will see us doing so. If the entire community honors their parents, that will be the way life proceeds in that community. Then, the children will learn to honor their parents. They won’t even need the commandment.
Many people think that the reasoning is stating a different reality. A carrot and stick type approach. That God is sitting up in the sky counting the times we honor our parents, and adding days to our life in proportion. No. That’s not how it works.
The Fifth Commandment is a simple commandment followed by a statement of the consequences of the natural laws of human behavior. We learn by example.
That is the major reason why social change takes so long. That’s part of why the Pound Me Too movement is evoking a backlash, as innocent and thoughtless people alike are surprised that someone is trying to overturn the oldest rule of all, and not even in a single generation. In a single week, it seems, we’re seeing many question the millennia long truth that power and wealth are the ticket to doing whatever one likes. Within a week, it seems, the Pound Me Tooers claimed that every human has been cleared of all their subconscious conflicts that broadcast yes or maybe when the voice says no.
This is being followed in the national conversation by teenage girls claiming the right to go to school mostly naked, and claim it’s for their comfort, and that those who find their uncoverings sexually inviting need to ignore their bodily promptings. I really don’t see how this is going to end well. Unless the new generation has truly evolved to something other than Homo Sapiens.
The 2019 Bhagwat: In Chronological Order
My sister made a pdf of all the posts, in order, with most of the photos, but not the videos. So you can read it and save it this way to share if you like!
Giants in our midst
We’re all bigger than we realize. We usually think of our size in relation to the clothes that we require to cover ourselves. But the reverend minister at the church I attend is always reminding us that our spiritual auras extend far beyond our bodies.
This can be understood in many ways, at different levels. Even the most mundane aspects of our activities in the world involve interactions with others. If we displace a certain volume of air, and occupy a certain position on the face of the earth, nobody else can simultaneously occupy the same position and displace the same volume of air.
That, in any given situation, may or may not have obvious and immediate consequences.
Was our purchase of an orange from the Ionia Meijer what made the difference in the produce manager not getting fired? You never know. You just never know.
What size are we now? As big as the Meijer store?
Was the fact that we were trapped in position 12 in the traffic jam, which was what made the obstruction visible over the top of the hill, what gave the distracted father enough time to hit his brakes? You never know. You just never can know.
What size are we now? As big as the intersection that didn’t have an accident? As big as the area that contains all the lives of the people who helped to not allow the accident? As big as the lives of all the people who were able to carry on their activities because there was no accident at the intersection?
What size are we, NOW?
We sit at the coffee shop, writing away about Giants in our midst. We are the giants. We are the giants in our midst. Well, there is only one our, and just one giant. Just like the light that we see coming from Proxima Centauri, that took 4.244 years to get here, our size extends in both space and time, our actions, both intentional and unintentional by-products of our intentional actions, extend far beyond our specific knowledge.
What size are we now, that someone on the other side of the world has read our blog entry? Now, that we have seen the light of not only Proxima Centauri, but many other stars from far away galaxies.