Psychology and the great Buddha

For decades studies have tried to unravel the mysteries of the human mind. Psychology has come very close to opening it up, but never has it been able to completely unravel it. It might have found theories and understandings for the mind but it has never been able to understand the complexity of its working. Even though Buddha’s was a great spiritual leader but his teachings I feel are not appropriate to completely uncover the human mind. This I say is because his studies mainly concentrate on the human mind on two diverse extremes and that are pain and pleasure. His teachings tell us how to deal with grief and pain and how to control ourselves in pleasure but what I feel is that there is always a state that goes mid way. A feeling that is normative a person when is in equilibrium. A situation that gives him/her neither pain nor pleasure. It is here that the studies should be carried out, when the human stands on level ground. Buddha tries to answer all questions by spiritual attainment, but once someone has attained that level his mind becomes so in his control that the study becomes actually not applicable. A control mind does become a good study but not the correct answer to everything. Even though his teachings are subjective but still connections can be made. His theory on self seems correct but the example used of binge eating wasn’t able to do justice. Here also it seems that everything revolves around pain and pleasure which to me is not accurate. What I understood was that life is like a cycle of pain and pleasure from which u can only free your self is when one attains spiritual guidance. Spiritual guidance might be one branch to a complete tree on control but it certainly is not its root.

I believe that the human mind is a very vast subject. An attempt to try answering it with just one view or teaching is not appropriate. Its complexities, controls, questions and diversities can not be answered subjectively and even one subject only is not good enough to answer it all.

Through the Eyes of a Duck

My eyes burn with sleep. But I somehow cannot put my laptop away and treat myself to few hours of shuteye before I face this cruel world once again. The reason why eludes me.

I am not a philosopher, I am not an intellectual, hell, I’m not even a guy who knows the first thing about.....anything in fact. I am good at, however, reading people. People have always befuddled me. I yearn to delve behind their eyes and ascertain the intricate working of the brain myself. Why do they do what it is they do? Why must they resort to such lowly tactics in order just to say, "I told you so". Why must we not pride ourselves on being humans? Why must we resort to sheer brutality?

The pages of history are filled with blood splattered accounts of the sick ambitions of a few men. Adolf Hitler felt the need to impose Germany on Europe and began the rape of a continent. The repercussions of which we are still witnessing to this day in the Middle East. But do we raise our voices and beg and yearn and plead to our leaders to do something, anything, anything at all to make a difference and pass on the strained voices of the masses? No. We do not. We tune into News channel, listen to news about car bombs, IEDs, IDPs, national calamity this, terrorism that with a passive face and we switch over to the first movie channel we can think of. I know i do. I'm more interested in what’s coming over HBO than what going on in the Gaza Strip. I'm more eager to learn what has happened to Ted in How I Met Your Mother rather than educate myself on the evils of the current decade. I spend my days sleeping while i could be somewhere, anywhere, trying to do.....more.

I'm boring you, yes I am. But I need to let someone know that the world is finite. We are finite. Everything we do is finite. We bitch, we moan, we point our fingers to blame but we never do anything. We wish we could do something but we don’t. And that’s all we're good for. Wishing. I wonder what the emaciated mother in Nigeria is wishing for. The penniless father sitting outside his camp in Sukkur wishing for, the child nursing his bullet wound in Sarajevo wishing for. I wonder what you wish for.

Colonialism

Colonialism is the story of dominance. It is the theory of power of one race over the other.Colonialism is when one country invades another and colonializes it just like the British invaded the Sub- Continent.
 It shows us seven different types modalities of colonialism and then tried to tell us how the British implied these and what they did most efficiently. How the British were able to hoard as much as they could from the Golden sparrow and take it back to their homeland. Be it forcefully or by taxation. Be it by capturing or fooling the locals. They recognized the Mughal head but he only remained there as a sign of hope and then they used the emperor and either invaded his Lands or captured them by tricking the Nawabs. They misused the innocence of the people and twisted the ignorance of the leaders and were able to plug their flag over a land that had been ruled by the local rulers. They used their differences, differences that had been there but never arouse because of the mutual natural treaty that had developed amongst all mixed cultures and identities. They used their knowledge and bended it according to their needs and proved them selves as masters of those who had mastered lands for hundreds of years. They colonized a Land that was administered and ruled by the Great MUGHALS.

Stop The Bombs.

On May 11 and 13, 1998, India tested five nuclear weapons in the Rajasthan desert. By the end of the month, Pakistan had followed suit. With these tests, the governments in Islamabad and New Delhi loudly announced to the world community, and especially to each other, that they had proudly made their place on the list of nuclear armed nations. Nine years have passed since these tests shattered the nuclear-free haven of South Asia.

The bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan which dates to the partition of the sub-continent in 1947 remains the impetus behind the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles in the region. The security dynamics of the region are complicated by India’s perception of China as a threat. Furthermore the presence of Al Qaeda and Taliban further increases the instability of the region posing the ever growing threat of nuclear weapons falling in to the wrong hands.

Humans have only been wrangling with the nuclear question for more than 60 years but it is time now that real efforts are made. In order for the nuclear disarmament process to proceed, the nuclear-powers must clearly and immediately abandon their pursuit of developing nuclear weapons.They must refrain from any actions which could undermine the efforts of the international community towards nuclear disarmament.  We call upon them, and all other states that have not yet done so, to adhere to the Non-Proliferation treaty. We likewise call upon them to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty without delay and without conditions.

We must do all we can to turn back the tide of nuclear proliferation and to continue to work towards a world free of nuclear dangers, and ultimately, of nuclear weapons. The world’s nuclear powers have a duty to take the lead on non-proliferation. These weapons threaten the very existence of mankind.  Our children deserve to live in a world safe from the threat of nuclear war and of weapons of mass destruction. None of us should be seeing World War 3 anywhere in future!

There Are No New Beginnings

A blue morning sky is rent by the cries of mourning. A mother – for her 18 year old child, who died in a car accident. He was her oldest, her favorite son. She still remembered his birth. She remembered his first walk and his first lessons at school. She remembered his first crush – he shared his life with her, willing her to live it with him – and now he was gone… his life snuffed out, just like that, in an instant…

His entire life had been ahead of him; He had been accepted into one of the country’s most prestigious universities on a full sports scholarship and why not? He deserved it. His dreams were finally coming true. But, an accident that left him crippled for life changed all that. His once shining future now lay in shambles before him and as he lay on the hospital bed, he realized that that life would never be the same again.

My exceedingly optimistic fellow beings seem to be obsessed with the ‘a new sun dawning every theory’. Have they not heard of the genocide in Rwanda. Where an estimated 800,000 people were killed where the slaughtered people were seen floating down the Kigara River. Where neighbors were forced to kill each other and where people were forced to murder members of their own family. Do you actually expect the two warring parties to walk arm in arm with each other after such a catastrophe, in the name of a ‘new beginning’? You’ve got to be kidding me.

The Palestinians were forced to resort to suicide bombing against the Israelis. Men, women and children with bombs strapped to their bodies calmly walked into an enemy camp and blew themselves up into a million pieces. That’s how much they had suffered. That’s how desperate they were. Kashmiri children carry guns instead of books in their hands. Iraqis have lost their houses and families. Do you honestly expect parents who have buried their children with their own hands, or children who have witnessed their parents being butchered, to wake up one fine morning, see the sun all bright and shiny, and go: hey! I guess its time for a new beginning. 

Global warming is being shouted off the roof tops today. The ozone layer is depleting at a horrific rate. We can see the results first hand with dramatic climate changes never seen before. Hurricanes, Tsunamis, cyclones are becoming alarmingly common. And so now, people trying to take steps to curb this phenomenon. Mind you the word is curb, not REVERSE. Here specifically there is no new beginning, the ozone that is gone, is gone and whatever you do, it isn’t coming back.

It is nearly impossible to erase the experiences that have shaped one in to what they are. And so the fact remains, there never is a new beginning. Never!

History is a women's body

The article “History is a woman’s body” tell us about the post partition conditions and the sufferings that the female populace of both India and Pakistan had to go through. Never before had so many migrated to and fro. Around 2 million were killed and millions suffered. This article tries to dictate the real stories of the populace who actually suffered. It puts forward their stories and not those that have been written down in the history books. It doesn’t deliberately involve big names because history has been altered due to such names but the real history is what the people speak out. Thousands of females, married, unmarried, girls, mothers, wives, daughters were kidnapped and raped. They were abducted and taken away and were then used for pleasure or business. They exchanged hands and then were disrespected. Females from both side suffered a similar fate. This chapter tells us what the females really had to go through by their own wordings through either narratives or interviews. It then tells us that a treaty was signed between both the states to try recover as many abducted women as possible. Mridula Sarabhai was asked to head this recovery operation and she was successful in producing around 25000 inquiries and recovering 2500 of them. The greatest problem wasn’t finding those abducted that could be done by gaining the confidence of the locals or by rewarding those who brought information. The main problem was if the female wanted to be recovered, if yes would her family accept her. It was a given fact that the muslim community was better at accepting their daughters then the hindu’s who considered these females to have become unholy. One reason that she did not wish to be recovered was that after so many years she had now moved on and that the man who had saved her from being carried on from hand to hand had become her angel. Had given her respect, married her and fed her. One event also tells us about Liaquat Ali Khan’s involvement in this recovery process. After this Sarabhai was then appointed as the camp leader at a recovery camp Gujrat where first she was given a very deceiving sight of the camp telling her that the woman here earned around 300rs per month but when she took charge she realized all that they earned was not more then 10rs the whole month and were inefficient without their supervisors. This camp was set to help these females stand on their feet and face the world but the conditions here were worsening if they were let out they wouldn’t be able to survive so Sarabhai then turned towards some adult education and paid herself for all the stationary and books that was required asked the local staff if they would be willing to teach and on getting a positive response stepped onto it. She was able to produce a dozen or so females who were able to pass near to matriculation and then be able to step out into the world.

Of Random Memories

The college life is a complex and many layered thing. The good, the bad and the worst. The good is a farce. Do not trust it. Take an advice from someone who has gone through the motions of college life spending two years in the institution of what we call the college. For extreme survival what we need is a an average amount of good grade in each subject so that when facing trouble you can innocently gaze up in the teacher’s face and say “but miss, I got an A last year in your course!”, also it helps mollify your parents that you just might be learning something even though the physics goes high up from your head in a Boeing 747, chemistry flies by in a hot air balloon and maths decides to form arcs above your highest ponytail.

Also for basic survival, you need excuses. For instance, when you are late, make a face appropriately innocent for a hungry child in Ethiopia and say, “but miss, my car broke down and I had to come to college in a rickshaw”. There is absolutely no point in worrying teachers about how you woke up late and your beauty routine took up the extra ten minutes because then of course if you wont put on the black nail polish with your black bag how would the economic crisis be avoided. Next, you need to learn bunking. Now keep these tried and tested methods a secret. Always bunk in twos. Never in groups because then you end being caught. Spread your dupatta across formally so that no one can tell from which faculty you are. Also you might consider wearing an abayah and doing purdah as then no one can recognise you or may I suggest that you carry a make up kit which can help alter your face after five minutes required. Or maybe if your parents are really rich you can consider plastic surgery as a last resort. When caught plead sickness, or turn it into a complex matter of social issues. Racism might be a good excuse or you could say you are protesting against the riots in Gwader. Launch into an explanation. Never tell the truth. Teachers refuse to believe that anyone might not be interested in the Brescia solium (if this exists) or Newton’s 19^th Law of Cinderella, if there is any!

Also I learnt the place where you will gain the most knowledge is the cafeteria. Teachers will never tell you when there is a sale at Gul Ahmed for the fear that the good suits might be taken away as they would refuse to inform you that green is the new black this season. They will also not inform you that Nokia is out with a touch screen. You see, they are scared we might end up with all the good stuff so they have hatched a plan called as the Structure of Boredom 101 where they try to put fluff your brain. Sadly, they fail to realise that we still remain one step ahead of them. Also, your journals are made in the cafeteria. If there is a coke spill, name it as a complex chemical or plant excreta according to the subject and impress the teacher. If all else fails say,” Daagh tou achey hotey hain”.

Despite all of this, if you decide to sit in class and obviously end up getting punished because you were fantasising about John Abraham, try taking a friend with you. That way when you both stand you can play Paper, scissor, rock. It doesn’t matter what distance you stand at. Or exchange places when each other behind the teacher’s back. When called for explanations plead insanity. I am sure this one excuse will always work.

Having, appropriately spoiled your young minds with information I would like to point out that the college life will be one of your best you live. Learn to enjoy and gain knowledge and in the process you will make very precious memories. Trust me I did. And keep passing the legacy of bunking on. Happy college!