THOUSAND ARROWS IN A BROKEN SMILE...

This article is inspired from Veronika , the central character of Paulo Coelho's novel 'Veronika Decides To Die.' But I dedicate this article to My Veronika who is standing on the verge of destuction but still can manage to thrive for thousands of years more. Paulo Coelho's Veronika has everything in her life a girl can ever dream of. Her life consists of loving parents, attractive boyfriends, and all means to fulfill her dreams. Sometimes you just can’t expect more from a life. But still she is discontented, still her heart is empty, still her heart craves for something missing from her life, still she wants to end up everything and die. Ultimately she decides to embrace death in hope to find the treasure after her existence comes to an end. But the struggle doesn’t end here. She utterly fails in her attempt and reaches a mental asylum where she realizes the fact that there is a difference between living and being alive.

Now, I would like to tell you about My Veronika. Her life is entirely different from the life of Paulo’s Veronika. Her life is full of miseries. She is an orphan. She is not beautiful. Her face is half burnt with acid. She doesn't even know if she would be able to have her next meal. In short her life is a hell, anybody would like to get rid of. But still she is contented, still she has embraced life like a treasure, still she wants to live and face what life wants her to face, still she enjoys every moment of her life and tries to give a meaning to it, still she wants to cross the river and reach its other end and dive in the innermost depths of the invincible oceans, still she manages to smile, no matter there are thousand arrows in her broken smile. Her smile is without any ego. It is as pure as the smile of an infant. It is filled with the entirety of life. It seems to have imbibed the sweetness of honey. It is filled the sacredness of thousands of temples. It is a source of inspiration to all those who are standing on the cliff of a mountain waiting for the right moment. Life has tried to rip it open with full force but still it has managed to preserve its structure and form. Her fight with life starts the moment she wakes up in the morning unlike Paulo’s Veronika who wants to run away from her fight by ending up the things. She extracts happiness out of the small things she does in her life. She hasn't learnt to stop. She moves ahead and ahead into the darkness of the road in hope to find the dying spark which would enlighten her life. She is just invincible. She is life in its accomplished form. She is My Veronika and I simply love her.

This proves that happiness is subjective. It comes to those who search for it. It may not be a bouquet of accomplishments but still it can be the one. It is the contentment of soul which makes you happy and draws a smile on your face. My Veronika searches for it. She has found it too. She has found it entangled in the bushes of dark jungles where even light fails to penetrate. She has found it in her deeds. She has found it in her efforts and the little success she achieves through these. She is the most successful person existing on this earth. She is mine and I simply love her.................

INTERPRETATION OF PHILOSOPHY

It is often said that a philosophy has many interpretations. Everybody can interpret a philosophy in his or her own manner. But in my view philosophy has only one interpretation; one that is eternal, one that is truth and one that is ETERNAL TRUTH. All other interpretations are nothing but beautiful illusions, always trying to allure you, always trying to embrace you, always trying to put you on an easy but the wrong path. But there is only one interpretation which emanates from the essence of a philosophy. It can’t be described in words and understood by mind. There is no language which can describe the meaning of philosophy because words have a language and philosophy has no language of its own. Its comprehension lies beyond the level of mind. It is similar to enlightenment. A moment comes and everything seems to be clear, beautiful and consequential. The path to its interpretation is illuminated by thousand lights. You don’t need a candle to explore its path. You just need to get rid of all the predeterminations. You need to be free, free from all the illusions, free from all the pre-determinations and free from all the beliefs. As Buddha says

“Belief as such is a barrier; it does not matter what belief it is, true or false.”

Be free and just follow the light. Surely you would be able to interpret the philosophy and understand the profundities that lie beneath.

LIVING THE 'ILLUSION'

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

This famous Einsteinian quote perturbs me a lot and puts me in a dilemma. Dilemma of existence of this very being, dilemma of futility of the fourth dimension of space i.e. time in which everything is so intertwined and submerged that it will take a whole lot of humanity to destroy and reincarnate itself to abolish its significance, dilemma of the very purpose of this life, dilemma of the boundaries existing between us and the Forces that tend to unite us all, dilemma of the presence of atoms, molecules and the protons and the neutrons within. If everything according to Einstein gets narrowed down to an illusion (a stubbornly persistent one), an illusion which being persistent is not stable, it continually moves with us, it breathes with us, lives with us, eats with us, mourns with us, laughs with us (rather laughs at us) and dies with us in this illustrious soil; then everything becomes so simple, completely uncomplicated and completely comprehensible. Ahhhh! At last the problem is solved. What a relieving and exhilarating moment! A wait has finally ended and moksha has been attained. Now no problems seem to sneak and trouble the mind. The answer seems to have been present with us since ages. We should have looked for it and it would have been ours a long time ago. We would have been the masters of this universe and this world would have been our baby. We would have conquered the invincible and plundered the nature of its splendor and glory. We would have been gods, gods in disguise of an illusion, gods in search of an illusion, gods in fight with an illusion and gods in love with an illusion. But is it so easy to believe this so called fact and reduce everything to an illusion and be a part of this illusionary world and the illusionary glamour? Does our search for the answer ends here, here in this illusion? If everything is an illusion, then why are we deceiving ourselves every moment, trying to ignore the existence of this very illusion? Why are we struggling every second and dividing the illusion into past, present and the future? Why are we always busy in drawing the lines between you and me? Why are we always making comparisons between the things that don’t really exist? If Everything is an illusion, then all the distinctions, distinction between good and bad, man and animal, reality and idealism, virtue and sin, knowledge and ignorance, holy and profane, cryptic and candid, benign and sinister, seem to become redundant and lose their meaning. All differences seem to have hugged and accepted each other in their indifferent form and being. But does masking everything with a veil of illusion solves the mystery of our existence and struggle in this illustrious world? A question has been answered but a part of it still remains unanswered.

Herman Hesse in his masterpiece novel Siddhartha tries to make to make the things simpler and uncomplicated when Siddhartha, the central character of the novel, explains his friend Govinda ;
“Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. Time is not real, Govinda. I have realized this repeatedly. And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion. The potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people - eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.
Accepting the fact and living with it are two different things. If today I accept the fact that I am an illusion and time, in which everything finds its measure, is nothing, but an illusion, then will this acceptance make the things simpler or more difficult for me, blocks my mind with ambiguity. Siddhartha answered many unanswered questions but it has given me more questions to ponder over. A traveler on a long and arduous journey in search for his destination finally attains it but when he reaches there, he finds to his surprise that path which he took to reach his destination never existed and what he has attained in the end is nothing but a betrayal. It’s like waking up from a fulfilling dream and then repenting over. It’s like robbing you of your entire wealth when you have finally earned it. It’s like arriving at an orgasm and then finally withdrawing from its inexplicable pleasure. It’s like stripping the mother of her smile when she finally sees her baby after the pain she went through during the delivery. But there can be a another side to the coin also if I find that whatever I wanted to attain, fulfill, earn, arrive or smile at never actually existed for me. It was never meant for me or if it was meant for me then it was always with me. The fault existed within me. I never endeavored to look for it. I never tried to feel it. I never struggled to comprehend it. It had always lived with me, always, throughout my trifles and my failures. It used to laugh at my disappointments. It used to ridicule mehttp://l.yimg.com/www.flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif throughout my expedition. But I never felt its existence. In both the situations I will attain nothing but restlessness and disappointment. Does that mean I should continue living the way I have been living till now or should I accept the fact and make my life more complicated, more onerous, more incomprehensible? The answer remains to be found. May be its possible that the answer itself is an illusion but following it remains the only answer to the puzzle…