EKAANTANANDA

I took the cab from the domestic terminal. It was Mumbai again. The city that never sleeps.The city of dreams and desires. The financial capital of India.Hundreds of vehicles buzzing past each other hoping to reach somewhere, anxious faces blaming the humidity and the congestion, roadside vada-pav sellers adding to the color,and faces brimming with energy ,hoping to make it big in life .This city has everything.
Ah!The Arabian Sea was visible now. It was everywhere.Vast and infinite.Unblemished.Engulfing the city of Mumbai from three sides.Half way through the journey , I was hit by a strange revelation.

What if the city wasn’t there? What if we didn’t exist or ceased to exist right then? Forget about the people and the concrete , what if even the land was not there ? Who will bother? No one . Because we are gone . Or someone will , may be the sea ? It still exists . It is still infinite and observant . But does it bother if we are not there ? Not really. It will continue to exist , unperturbed by something which is puny compared to its existence. And why should it bother ? It existed before us and will continue to exist way beyond us . It is not dependent on human fancies. It exists independently , oblivious to the tremors and transformations of human life. It is infinite. Complete.Self sufficient . But hold on . I am again attributing my own understanding to it . My senses are suggesting that I should treat it as a water body . But who knows what it is . If we are not there ? Who is there then to notice the sea? Who will acknowledge the vastness,the emptiness and the nothingness?
What if we only exist to accept and acknowledge the sea’s presence ? Are we only here as the knower and the observer of the sea? Does the sea allow us to play on its lap only for its self serving purpose ? The need of self recognition ? Self realization ?And does the sea know itself ? Doesn’t matter. Because it is the only thing left when we are gone. How can it know itself in the absence of any “other” entity?The knowing is irrelevant then. It is not the “thing” deciphered by human senses then. It is nothing. Beyond duality. Beyond the traps and concepts of knower and knowledge . It is the only thing. The only role played by the land and “us” , the humans is to give credence to the existence of the sea. No matter how we judge it , it will stay true to its form and nature.
Beyond the earth and the solar systems and the universes , within and without , there is only nothingness.There is only observation. Consciousness. Just the acknowledgement of the existence of the material world is its only trait. What else there is to fathom ? The relationship between the observed and the observer is eternal. And who knows? If both are the same ? Who knows , if it is only the degree of the power of observation that differentiates the observer from the observed. The difference between the manifested states of consciousness.

A snake cannot observe what humans can and the humans can’t hear what the dogs can. But that hardly makes any difference , only the actions of various beings get dictated by their depths of perception and observation. That is what separates the various forms of life . But who/what is the diffrentiator ? The sea remains a sea, whether viewed by a human , or an animal ( who is free to perceive it differently).
Coming to the material world , it also struck me that the existence of the dualities is an essential component of human existence . Just as the presence of land is needed to acknowledge the existence of the sea , miseries are needed in life to acknowledge the presence of happiness. The good exists with the bad , the pain with the pleasure and so on . Everything is intertwined in various degrees . But the existence of this duality ( or the perception of its existence) creates various conflicts in human minds , forcing them into thoughts and actions . When the duality disappears , there will be only one state . There will be no conflict.No differentiation. No judgement. But that is “the” only state . That is nothing. Who knows what that is ? We only have five senses sadly.The journey ended at a South Indian restaurant and I decided to feed my senses.The ever satiated sea smiled from a distance.

The memories are vivid and fresh. I was playing with both of them. One was on my lap. The other was made to sit on my forearm. They were bluish pink. I was caressing their heads and muttering something which I do not remember now. I am told that I was about three years old then. Those pigeons were my new found sources of joy.The location and the setting – well it is tough to recollect clearly, but I was sitting on a charpai (a traditional Indian cot). In front of me, there was another cot on which two men were sitting. One of them was my paternal uncle. Their discussions are not part of my memory now. It was a semi rural setting; with many noises in the background (I can still hear them).Suddenly, my uncle took one of the pigeon (the one who was sitting on my forearm) away and gave it to the man seated next to him on the cot. That man held the pigeon by its neck and twisted it in such a manner that it made a very unpleasing and cracking sound. The other companion of him, at this sight probably, tried to break free and away, from my lap. But his feet were probably tied. My uncle then took him away as well and the same procedure was repeated by the other man. I can still vividly recall the sudden burning sensation that I had in my body then. My hands and feet were trembling and I wanted to run away but could not. I can still feel those sweat drops and that “vomit” feeling. I had witnessed the most cruel murder of my friends that day , those horrific sights shook me so much so that even till this day, it haunts me and upsets me terribly. I am told that I caught severe fever after that event and my uncle had reported to my mother that I had pooped my pants on the way back home. As I grew up, I always felt that I had a certain, very strong stand against animal cruelty and cruelty in general. I do not know if that event had any role in how I feel about compassion today, but when I see chicken stacked as raw material in small carriages and carried everyday to their sites of death, it is a very unpleasant feeling. Same trauma awaits me when I pass through bigger and more sophisticated sites, where “bigger bodies” are processed for human needs.As I contemplate on the phenomenon of compassion, it is clear to me that at least in my case it is not driven by ideology or religion or tradition. It seems to me as the most basic thing I was born with. I do not care if the scriptures sanction animal killing or not. Although some “learned” beings falsely interpret the Vedas and justify cow killing, but I still remain unmoved (even though as per my understanding, the texts of most religions have been deliberately misinterpreted to justify the killings). Even if it was plainly and blatantly sanctioned, I would have still refused to follow that sanction, because I choose to be driven by my innermost instincts, than external diktats. Why do I remain unmoved? Because, the most primitive things, those raw archetypal emotions and values are not taught or learnt. They are not supposed to be taught. A child of three years is not yet conditioned or programmed by the material world. He is not yet blemished and indoctrinated into the religions and the ideologies and the socially suitable/acceptable customs. He is what he is then. A bundle of consciousness. Pure. Aware. So are his reactions. He is not supposed to ignore the pain of others and treat it as justifiable at that age, he is not supposed to differentiate between you and me, your grief and my grief, they and us. At that age, he is malleable only by himself. He is not yet blinded by the past or dazzled by the future. That is why the experiences at that age are so much full of awareness and the memories vivid.I have always found a link between violent personalities and tolerance towards animal cruelty. If you are tolerant towards one kind of violence, it will brush off on other areas of your life too. You will gradually become agreeable to acts of aggression, towards animals or humans. At least when the violence is towards those who are not in your group ( of race , culture , religion , ideology ) , you will be OK with it , since you are used to such cruelty on “others” , because you believe that “others” – be it animals or those humans undergoing suffering , are separate and distinct from you , and you as a superior creature are meant or destined or privileged to use “others” the way you want . You will often use ornate vocabulary and logic to justify your stand and the sanctions available in your favor.The only long term solution for ending this cycle of cruelty and to make the world a more compassionate place is to allow our children to be compassionate. Left to themselves, they will automatically grow up as they are, i.e. pure LOVE, pure consciousness. Our children are our only hope, if at all there is, to prevent further violence in our minds and countries. No amount of protest and demonstration, persuasion or prayer can turn a violent human being to a compassionate one, unless he/she is transformed by one’s own experience.Those pigeon memories are still vivid and fresh.