Sunday 31 August 2014

THE PERSON WHO GENERATES THE SEASONS OF HIS OWN HEART

"Death and life, survival and ruin, success and failure, poverty and riches, competence and incompetence, slander and praise, hunger and thirst, these are the mutations of affairs, the course of destiny. They alternate before us day and night. Consequently there is no point in letting them disturb one's peace, they are not to be admitted into the Magic Storehouse. To maintain our store in peace and joy, and let none of it be lost though the senses though the channels to are cleared, to ensure that day and night there are no fissures and it makes a springtime it shares with everything, this is to be a man who at every encounter generates the season in his own heart. This is what I mean by his stuff being whole."

"IF YOUR MIRROR IS BRIGHT THE DUST

will not settle, if the dust settles it's that your mirror isn't bright."

"WHEN THERE ARE NO DOORS FOR YOU,

no outlets, and treating all abodes as one you find your lodgings in which is the inevitable, you will be nearly there."

"GOING RAMBLING WITHOUT A DESTINATION"

"Escape the routes to worldly success and fame, defy all reproaches that you are useless, selfish, and a perspective opens from which all ordinary ambitions are seen as negligible, the journey of life becomes and effortless ramble."

THE HEART IS LIKE A MIRROR

"The Utmost Man uses the heart like a mirror; he does not escort things as they go or welcome them as they come, he responds but does not store." Chuang Tzu

Friday 29 August 2014

IMPROVING MEMORY, KNOWING THAT YOU KNOW

You know how it is, and I don't need to recite the Ferlinghetti poem about forgetting -- I wish I had it, though, because it is so excellent. But preparing for the third life involves A KNOW THAT YOU KNOW approach. I place something important -- phone, keys -- in a place, and instead of just throwing them somewhere unconsciously, I make a mental note of it. Words like the following reinforce the knowing: I have put them here. I know that I have put them here.

AN IMPORTANT LESSON ON LOVING

I arrived after a long and tiring journey from our mountain home to be with my mother, and in the evening she went on and on about how she was dying, only waiting for me to arrive, and telling some old stories over and over. As usual, unable to handle it, I just turned to my smartphone and started to play backgammon, and feel dreadful that I wasn't being a good daughter, maybe this time, after a thousand times of threatening to, she was really going to die? I turned to her and stroked her hair and face and she calmed down instantly. In situations like this you can't go into regret, or fear of her passing, or suffer with her suffering, or become hard hearted, but just stop, be present, and love. That is all that is needed.

LINK TO A GOOD REVIEW OF MY PLAY




WE ARE WIRED TO CRAVE FAME, OR WE HAVE MUCH TO LEARN FROM THAT WHICH DISTURBS US THE MOST

We are social beings, we see ourselves through other people's eyes, or we want to do so, want to be admired, 'loved', praised. This subject is on my mind because of Robbin Williams' Suicide, coming as it did around Donald's suicide anniversary. I have, for reasons I must parse, been very disturbed by it.  A long bout of insomnia had me going through the TIME issue on Williams last night, and this morning I have some insights, many of which I am reluctant to share. They are so very personal, so crucial to my own state of mind. My reluctance is one of the reasons -- we feel the things we go through are entirely personal, that we cannot share them with others because they would sound so 'small' and embarrassing, because they make us less of what we think we need to be, or rather, appear to be to those whose approval and love we seek. This disjunct between the personal and the public is the disease. It is not the disjunct itself. It is so very necessary, no, essential that we keep it in mind, know the borders of the private and the public, give preference to the former, and perform the latter to the best of our abilities and limits and when it comes to a choice between the two, sacrifice the latter with a cold knife, kill it, if need be.

My first small step in this direction is to not get too hung up with sentence structure, its reflection and evidence of 'reasoning,' coherence, which is for others' eyes, as I write this blog;

My second, not to be too concerned about whether people read it or not, or how many.

Thursday 28 August 2014

PREPARING FOR THE THIRD LIFE

This is both my long term and immediate goal. You see how there is no distinction between long and immediate, future and present. Each serves and informs the other. How I do this will be the subject of a few more posts.

ROAMING FREELY IN THE CAGE

Cages there must be in life. Love is the greatest of them all. Freedom means nothing without its opposite, bounds. As a character in MOBY DICK says, 'who ain't a slave?' King Lear at the end of his life says to Cordelia, 'we two will live like birds in a cage:' Hamlet's desire is to be 'King of infinite space in a nutshell.'

Our bodies, our brains, are such nuts, such cages. Our essential obligations and duties, which must be fulfilled in a committed, engaged sort of way, are also cages. Once this is understood, one can roam freely within one's limits. This is true Freedom.

SHIFTING GOALS HAVE THEIR PLACE IN LONG TERM GOALS

Once the importance of Long Term Goals are understood and undertaken, one can allow them to shift, to be fluid. Not rigidity, which the description of death, but fluidity. No, I don't want to do this now; yes, I want to get in that stretch but not that walk. Yes, I am going to indulge in that ice cream now!

UNDERSTANDING, REALLY UNDERSTANDING LONG TERM GOALS

The first step is to recognize the importance of long term goals. The second is to understand that one has to begin now; the third is that small steps, really tiny, baby steps in that direction begins the process. Financially, no, don't buy that right now, save it, etc. I can't tell you how grateful I am at the age of 66 that both Payson and I were frugal and careful with finances all our lives. The retired life -- and who doesn't want one -- should be free of trouble in the mind as far as finances are concerned. It is when we withdraw from the market place of consumption and turn to the market place of service, in all its meanings. The same holds true for physical goals -- and by this I mean nurturance of the body. Don't eat this, it will upset your stomach; get in that walk and that stretching, lift some weights so as to be strong as to move into the AGE OF WEAKNESS.

GOALS MUST BE, AND HOW TO 'ROAM FREELY IN THE CAGE'

Goals are necessary -- there's no getting around that. There are many types of goals. Since 'Goals' are time bound, we mainly think of long term goals when we speak about them. Long term goals, financial, physical, emotional, spiritual are imperative if you want to live life well, in a satisfied, productive, fulfilling way. Without intention and attention, without first understanding their importance, these goals cannot be achieved. For example, one of my main long term goals -- in addition to all my writing ones, finishing this or that project, and there are many -- I have what I think is the most important of all: PREPARING FOR THE THIRD LIFE. The following posts will outline that and how to roam freely in the cage.

SHIFTING GOALS AND THE DISCOVERY OF CHUANG TZU, 4TH CENTURY BC

I have been unable to articulate this thought till I came across it in CHUANG-TZU, A Classic of Tao, excellently translated and explicated by AC Graham. Graham's phrase that started me going was: "the sage's fluid and temporarily emerging goals are the ones to which he spontaneously tends when he mirrors heaven and earth with perfect clarity, and that is sufficient reason for preferring them to any goals to which he might incline in ignorance."

TWO THINGS: First, I am so very happy to discover Chuang Tzu, am tremendously grateful to AC Graham for making him available, and adore the subtitle of the book: The Inner Chapters. The book was given to us by a wandering English Man, Simon, who unexpectedly showed up at our mountain home door with two or three boxes of books, just the kind I read and love to own. This is a story in itself, not to be told here. Chuang Tzu was among them, and I have Payson to thank for pulling it out of the stack a few months ago. I started reading as an exercise -- I go through periods where I'm quite lazy and don't want my brain taxed in any way -- and then I have to set myself tasks/goals: I'll read just one chapter of this or this article. I have been reading bits and pieces of it here and there. Though I have always been drawn to Taoism, I had never heard of him.

Second, it articulated for me one of the ways in which I want to live in the last third of my life, with fluid and temporarily shifting goals. What does this mean to me? In a simple sense, listening to my body and brain and acting accordingly. Now I want to do this, don't to want to do that, that feels like too much work, this is the perfect thing to do now. Is is a great, the greatest way to be. It is, in Chuang Tzu phrase, "Roaming Freely in the Cage."

Friday 22 August 2014

REMEMBERING BAD TIMES DURING GOOD ONES

Most of us spend our lives chasing good times, quelling and glorying in them. But the Chinese Emperor who told his jeweler to make him a ring that would make him happy when he was sad, and sad when he was happy, was a very wise king. He knew he needed to remember sadness when he was happy to balance himself by remembering that THIS TOO SHALL PASS (the inscription on the ring by the wise jeweler).

Yin waits in the wings in Yang times and vice versa. Why not remember both instead of being short sighted if not blind?

MY CHILD, KAAMIYA, OUT ON HER OWN IN THE WORLD

Another performance for a festival in Mumbai in September, and traveling to Bhopal in October. I never thought a year ago that I would live to see the day that my plays would be produced. Interest now in another one or two to be produced within the year. It is a relief to see your children out of the dark closet and free of you.

Tuesday 19 August 2014

MY PLAY KAAMIYA HAVING FOUR MORE SHOWS AT THE PRITHVI THEATRE STARTING TODAY

And I am sitting here in Behta Pani in my study, far, far away from it. I had debated going again, but you know, the playwright is the most extraneous of people once the production is mounted. Irrelevant. Behind the scenes. Anonymous. I keep thinking of Shakespeare (without comparing myself to him, however! I wouldn't have the temerity!) who was so anonymous that nothing of him but his plays survive. I think of God -- evidence of him or her everywhere without his presence or even his name upon our tongues. Of course, there are names we have invented; and the presence is palpable once we become aware of it.

AMBITION THERE MUST BE BUT THERE IS A CORRECT WAY OF BEING AMBITOUS

True ambition has to do with working, doing, dedication, discipline, not with getting rewards for our work. The Bhagawat Geeta is the prime example of this message. If you haven't read it lately, do so. Krishna hits us on the head with the way to live in the world. Work, do, enjoy the doing, but do not get hung up on the rewards of it. This is easier said than done. But working at doing this must be the task of our life.

FAME, WEALTH, SUCCESS ARE NO MEASURE OF HAPPINESS

Every time a celebrity like Robin Williams takes his or her life (I think of Philip Seymour Hoffman, too, a recent example) we are reminded of this. Most of us spend our entire lives chasing these so called 'desirables' or feeling terrible because we don't have them. Here is the most glaring example of how false this thought is. Some blame his suicide on alcohol or drug abuse, but what leads to this is rarely questioned. Yeah, sure, creativity and madness, creativity and drugs are connected in some deep and pernicious way. But unless we see how our ambitions and desires and cravings can lead us astray, that their fulfillment has nothing at all to do peace and love and connection, quite the opposite, we will continue to put ourselves and our life in harm's way.

BEING ONE'S OWN MISTRESS OR MASTER

I have been swamped by work, and it is all my own doing. I am like the Sorcerer's Apprentice that has summoned energies that can no longer be controlled! Instead of finishing what I was working on, I had the temerity and ambition to send off more work to publishers, work that hasn't been completed, and they all expressed interest. This had put me under enormous stress till I had to withdraw from all deadlines and remember that I am my own Mistress. I had to chase everyone out of my private house, send them packing, so to speak, so that I could regain my peace, the most precious of all things. The fact that Robin Williams committed suicide the past week, and yesterday being Donald's 21st death anniversary (from suicide) has been very sobering. Being in the world is dangerous business. You become a showman, a public person, and you have to continue to be one because of the demands put on you by your success. You are no longer your own person with your own needs and pace. You have to hide who you are in favor of who you seem or appear to be. What a horrible way to live! What a squandering of the precious, precious gift of life!

so, in my withdrawal , I resume my blog. It's not that I'm not working on my books -- I am; but in an unstressed, I am my own mistress, sort of way.

Friday 1 August 2014

A PHOTO OF A PHOTO OF PAYSON AND ME

I call this the Devta Photo. It was taken sometime in our early years in our Indian home in Himachal. We are standing with the gold masks of the local gods and goddesses.

THE NECESSITY OF HAVING ALLIES: THIS POST FOR MY DARLING HUSBAND, PAYSON

. . . who faithfully reads my blogs and is the sole commentator! Really, in life one needs only one solid ally to proceed with faith and hope. I recently read a quote somewhere that an abyss separates being lonely and having one ally. Payson is  'faithful' in every sense of the word. I can have faith that we won't abandon me for someone else; that he will stand by me, and support me in all the areas I need support: emotional, intellectual, physical, financial, spiritual. His support is not in the spirit of MY COUNTRY (OR WIFE, OR RELIGION) RIGHT OR WRONG, but in the spirit of truth, honestly. Without this important caveat, without an ally who will point out to you where you go wrong, what good is an ally?