Flotsam and Jetsam

The sixties flower power poet Allan Ginsberg talks of his first experience of attending a meditation retreat in one of the Tibetan traditions. He had managed to smuggle in a sheet of paper and some pencils, and, as the teacher was going round at the start of the course, the teacher saw the contraband items. With a smile he walked up to Allan and asked him to hand them over. When Allan hesitated the teacher asked him, eyes brimming with compassion, as Allan says, "Why do you need them, my son ?" Allan replied, "To note down a beautiful thought that comes..." Pulling the pencils out of his hands and breaking them into two, the teacher said, "...and it is the flotsam and jetsam of these thoughts that will keep dragging you back into the whirlpool...just focus on your breath..."

So, as I sat this morning, the flotsam and jetsam of thoughts surfaced creating their frothy attractiveness...like the froth on the top of a cup of Madras coffee...attractive yet devoid of flavour or anything...

Thinking of Allan Ginsberg my mind went back to the senior citizen who had helped me at the library yesterday. I could imagine her at one of Allan's rock concerts of the mid '60s, perhaps with a flower garland around her neck...what struck me about her was that she had not coloured her hair, and, as I looked around the library which is staffed largely by women who are in their golden years, I noticed that none of them had coloured their hair. Made me wonder whether it was a conditon of employment...

Now, I have tremendous regard, bordering on reverence, for a woman who does not colour her hair. The male world is somewhat different, and, we guys can let it all hang out since there isn't much to show in any case. (Actually, men have different issues. The success of erectile dysfunction drugs on the pretext of creating a better quality of life should give you an indicator.) At one time I attended a course for hospice workers, and, one of our 'field trips' was to a funeral parlour where they showed us how bodies were 'dressed' up before a funeral. I remember one of my co-volunteers, a woman in her fifties saying, "I must make sure in my will to clearly state that they should colour my hair before the visitation..." That sort of indicates the criticality of hair colouring to women. So, when you see a woman somewhere around the sixty mark not colouring her hair you say, "Wow, that requires some courage...for what you see is what you get..."

And then the mind wandered further.

Swami Chinmayananda was a religious teacher of some note in the '60s, '70s and '80s in India. The same attraction that would take me to watch the Washington Redskin cheerleaders took me to Swamiji's meetings in the '60s. I used to be fascinated by the attractive women who sang the invocatory prayers at his meetings. I remember Swamiji once opening a Bhagavad Gita class with the opening dhyana (invocatory) verse, "...parthaya prati bodhitaam bhagavatam narayanena swayam..." And then the chant would be taken up by this bevy of attractive women in white blouses and saris. There was a strange wild attraction that the ascetic Swamiji held for them that bordered on the erotic.

Anyway, in those days I had just been introduced to the thought or lack thereof of some atheists. And, in a free question and answer session, I decided to confront the Swamiji. "If all bodily and mental activity is caused by electrical impulses that emerges from the brain, and, death is defined as the cessation of such electrical activity, how can there be a life after death ?" I asked the question in one breath...Swamiji did not answer my question at that point...I was thrilled. I had scored a point...

As we were having lunch, Swamiji actually made his way to me. "What is your name ?" he asked, adding, "You asked a good question. I did not reply to you because I wanted to talk to you..." And then he sat down next to me and said, "Your question is very logical and perhaps correct. However, you cannot understand these matters with logic. It is a matter of experiencing it. When you were just a day old, all you could see was a mass of light with some sounds emerging from this mass of light. Then slowly some figures started becoming clear...one of those figures fed you, made you go to sleep and rocked you when you cried...and as your pupils started functioning better you gave a name and shape to that being...your mother...your brilliant logic is the all enveloping light that you see, nothing is clear...slowly, your pupils will start digesting all that light and clarity will emerge...let it be...someday the clarity that is not born of logic will emerge..." Swamiji did not wait for my response, he just continued on.

The clarity has not emerged, some forty years later. I still struggle with logic and purposiveness. Some years ago, I asked a Vipassana teacher, "If you say that nothing is permanent and that everything just arises and dissolves what is it that reincarnates, if there is no soul..." In the mould of Swami Chinmayananda she looked at me and said, "Just continue your practice. It will all become clear..."

And, as I struggle with maintaining my fledgling practice in the midst of all these non-issues that thought creates, the reality of what the teacher told Allan Ginsberg comes through loud and clear, "...and this is the flotsam and jetsam that will keep pulling you back into the whirlpool..." For, as Krishna says at the end of Chapter 10 in the Bhagavad Gita

athava bahunai tena
kim jnatena tav'a'rjuna
vishtabhyaham idam sarvam
ekam sena's stitho jagat

Of what use is all this (intellectual) knowledge to you Arjuna ? All you need to know is that in a fraction of Myself I sustain the whole Universe...

Happy Mother's Day

When my mother was born, in India, it was before birth records were maintained. Somewhere in 1949 or so when she had to make her first trip outside India, they needed to get her a passport, and, so the question of assigning her a date of birth came up. My grandfather was consulted on this important question and after some head scratching he came up with the memory that the Great War (World War I) broke out about two weeks after she was born. So, June 22, 1914, was assigned as her date of birth.

I mention this story about her date of birth because when I was little, she instituted the practice that my birthday would be celebrated twice every year, once as per the Gregorian calendar and once as per the Hindu calendar. Since I was growing up in England, she thought that would be a good way of ensuring that I stayed in touch with ‘our traditions.’ So, till the age of eight, I had cake and Jello on my birthday as per the English calendar and payasam (calling payasam rice pudding would be a bit of a travesty, however, it belongs to the genre of rice puddings) on my ‘star’ or Hindu calendar birthday. Needless to add, I also got two sets of birthday presents. This practice, I regret to state, was discontinued soon after we returned to India, in 1958. My mother did not see the need for me to keep in touch with practices, ‘back home, in Old Blightey…’

A mother is the huggable, soft being who has shielded you from imaginary ghosts as thunder crashes and lights streaks across the Indian monsoon sky. Notwithstanding her own fears she will deal with the ugly cockroach that comes out of the washroom as her eighteen year old son shrieks in terror. Though she is now gone for nearly twenty five years I still remember the warm feeling as a three or four year old, hugging her and going to sleep.

Motherhood is fiercely protective. See soccer moms arguing with the coach and the way a mother goose bursts into a fierce shriek when you approach the little goslings, and, you will know what that means.

Interestingly, the Buddha recognized this quality in his Metta Sutta. Defining the quality of Metta, or loving kindness he said,

mata yata niyam puttam
ayusa eka puttam anurakke
evam pi sabba buthesu
manasam bhavaye apparimanam

Just as a mother protects her child,
Her only son,
So should we protect all beings…
Such is the quality of loving kindness, fiercely protective, fiercely protective of the whole Universe, not, just one’s biological children...

Today, with diaper changing tables as common in men’s washrooms as in those for women, the quality of being a mother in some way goes beyond gender. This morning as Lakshmi and I went biking we saw a young man in his late twenties, teaching an eight year old to ride a bike on the trail while holding a second child his arms as the infant finished its bottle feed. Multi tasking which twenty years ago only a female mom would have been able to do.

And so, to all those who nurture and protect, this beautiful rendering of India’s national song, Vande Mataram, (Homage to Mother) rendered by one of the best Indian classical singers still alive, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OviaeN38F_0&feature=related

Politically incorrect thoughts at an unearthly hour

It is five thirty in the morning on a Saturday and I am up and chirpy. Tried to wake up the bharya priyaa,bp,sr, and beti priyaa,bp,jr, to ask them out for a walk, and, never realized that tam-brahm women could swear so well. They booted me out of the bedroom and asked me to make myself scarce (said in much more colourful language).

Actually I lied when I said it is five thirty in the morning and I am up and chirpy…I have been up and chirpy for the last two hours…You see these days very often, bp,sr, and I spend the weekend at bp,jr’s place. So, we landed up here last night. bp,sr and bp,jr went to the roof top of bp,jr’s condo for a roof top barbecue, and, I watched the comedy channel for ten minutes and was blissfully asleep by 8.00pm The net result of that early blissful sleep was that I was up and chirping around at 3.30am, much like a swallow that has returned early from Florida in mid winter and finds that everyone else does not share her enthusiastic world view.

So, I sat and meditated for an hour. As I finished I opened my eyes and saw the Rosedale Valley enveloped in a beautiful fog, a fog that did not cover everything, a fog that just left you remembering the beautiful colours of gold, red and orange as the valley sank into autumn a few months ago, and, the beautiful sunlight that will soon pierce through the fog and bring everything back into clarity.

Coming back to this mundane world, I realized that there was no milk for my morning cuppa, and, so I put on my jacket (still a tad cold out here in TO) and strode out into the streets of downtown TO to find a 7/11 shop for some milk.

The best time to get to know the downtown part of any metro is before it wakes up. Actually, cities like Toronto, Mumbai and London never go to sleep so that is not correct. What I mean are those wee hours of the morning when the ‘bhadralok’ (gentry in Bengali) have finished their merry making for the night and the denizens of the dark have come out to clear up.

Walk around any metro at this time and you will be able to get a clear picture of the social order of things. In Toronto, at that hour you will very rarely see a ‘mainstream’ Canadian (politically correct expression for ‘white’, though in Toronto it may not be statistically correct to classify ‘white’ as mainstream anymore…) out and about earning a livelihood. Every single person, awake and working, that I ran into was an immigrant, fresh off the boat as they would say. Even the one male hooker who offered his services to me sounded from Eastern Europe (audible minority, referring to their unfamiliarity with English, as opposed to brownies, from the former British colonies, like me who are the visible minority). The girls working the back shift at Tim Hortons were Filipina; the taxi drivers were ophthalmologists, cardiac surgeons and paediatricians from India, Pakistan and the sub contintent; the street cleaners were, I think, Mexican or Cuban. The next time an Indian tells me that he or she left India to get away from the caste system, I will wake him or her up and make them walk along Bloor Street at 4.00am in the morning, and, say, ‘…kya hai bachhu, idhar ka caste system dekha ?...’ “So, man do you see the caste system of this world ?”

I am not a social scientist who can analyze the phenomenon of immigrants doing the back shift. However, one thing seems to be sure, if you can make the 9 to 5 shift at work, that seems to be one sign that you have arrived.

My early morning search for milk was not without its brighter side, and, that came in the form of King Palace restaurant just behind the Metro Toronto Reference Library. There used to be a dingy looking Coffee Time there, and, I was a little surprised to see a very brightly lit restaurant which looked as if it had been transported out of Bombay’s Bhendi Bazar in the middle of Id. I have often walked down Mohamad Ali Road (btw, is it still known as Mohamad Ali Road ?) and Bhindi Bazar in the wee hours of the morning, during Ramzan, with Muslim friends as they enjoyed their repast of ‘bheja fry’ (fried brains of pigeon, I think) before embarking on the next day’s fast. Being a conditioned vegetarian I could not enjoy the food, but, like my friend Siddharta Gautama taught, practised ‘mudhita’ or the enjoyment of happiness through the happiness of others.

Coming back to King Palace restaurant, I first admired the place from outside. For a homesick Indian it is manna from heaven…they offer around the clock a choice of Indian favourites, Channa Masala (chick peas cooked in spices), Butter Chicken, Bhindi Masala (okra, sautéed with spices) et al…but, what was authentic was the bright lights with the TV showing a buxom Indian Bollywood star gyrating her voluptuous hips to good Hindi phillum mujic…I wasn’t ready at 4.30am to try any of their offerings, but, walked in, and, struck up a conversation with the owner…he is from Lahore, and, like all sub continenters who meet outside of the sub-continent, we got to talking of cricket…though he realized I wasn’t buying anything, he offered me a cup of chai…”Assalam walai’kum, dost” “Peace to you, my friend” we said to each other as I continued my search for milk at 4am…