The flute unites ..

O! Krishna! 

Your flute unites all the beings 

Into one divine worship of music; 

But the bamboos divide, 

The bamboo becomes the palanquin 

The bamboo becomes the stretcher pall-bearing 

The bamboo becomes the pillars of wanton pandals 

The bamboo by friction burns into ashes 

But your flute unites all the beings in eternal living; 

How you chose and when 

The tender bamboo shoot 

and made it a seven tongued fire of music 

calling the souls to you 

and cajoling their egos to submission!

Bamboos divide and burn in waste; 

But a tender bamboo shoot 

picked by a cowherd lad 

unites all into one eternal religion 

of meditative celebration! 

It has been all in this waste of woods 

that some bamboos divide and burn 

and perhaps a tender shoot 

becoming a flute in thine hands 

unite all the souls 

into one religion of love. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Book in my heart..

O! Krishna! 

It is better I read 

Your book in my heart 

What you have written there 

Through my cries and joys 

Through my darkness and light 

In the blood of my experience. 

I somehow close that book 

And begin to believe all the books outside. 

At last what you have written in my heart 

Surfaces and stands true the tests of time. 

Scriptures outside pass through 

times, hands and moods. 

We have to do a lot of hermeneutics 

To arrive at what you said at first; 

There again we blurr and lead astray 

Our pen of decipher. 

we are too good in losing; 

we are too fragile in facing the truth; 

we believe in falsehoods 

and try to tutor the truth to follow suit; 

again, again we crash down 

to our barest minimum 

only to smuggle up afresh; 

Ignorance is our happy game; 

but it has become our sorry bane. 

Ignorance keeps us thrilled 

lurking in endless waste; 

But ignorance! that is one thing you cannot; 

somehow that gives me a kick to think of. 

You were waiting for me to give up all nonsense 

But I have come to you with all my stock of it. 

I do not know how to do my homework; 

you have to take me up in your hands. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Your smile, a parallax?

O! Krishna! 

Sometimes I feel 

I should have pitched my goal 

Somewhere visibly 

Rather than up there beyond 

in some unspecified reach. 

Mathematics was growing in my love; 

Physics theory was catching me once; 

Visible goals give you pep 

When reached and after; 

But this beyond is always a non-starter 

In your backyard 

But all the time bewitches you to get in 

And gives you illusions of super-reaches; 

Sort of a drug? who knows? 

Even now if I get in 

I forget all these grievings 

And bless me for the choice and perseverance. 

But, one has to see somethings tangible you know! 

Sowing in the unseen, reaping in the beyond, 

Tasting the transcendent, 

But the being's stomach is resolutely stoic. 

Either the transcendent becomes tangible 

Or the concrete becomes the abstract, 

If neither is possible, 

Then is your smile just a parallax ? 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Mysticism of my ignorance ...

O! Krishna! 

Every day the life moves on. 

What all I did till yesterday 

Is now thrusting forward. 

Karma is having its momentum. 

But I am craving for your grace. 

For what? Is it to escape 

this accumulated force edging from inside out, 

back towards future? 

Is it to escape from what I did? 

I do not know, just like 

I did not know fully 

What I was doing when I was doing. 

I am now in ignorance when I pray 

As I was in ignorance when I was doing 

Many things; 

Ignorance is not that I was not aware 

But aware and unaware, 

Knowing a bit 

Knowing not other things; 

From ignorance to ignorance 

I creep through time, just as a reptile. 

But I do not tell you all these 

To justify or plead my case; 

This is what has been, 

What is happening 

And perhaps what may be continuing; 

I call you Krishna. 

Do I know who are you fully? 

No. Except for some stories and ideas 

Picked up while growing; 

You may perhaps laugh 

when I tell you all those things; 

But the comprehensive whole, 

conscious and caring and forgiving 

is how I think about you, 

when I call you Krishna. 

You may not be having 

any peacock feather 

any flute, any blue colour, 

Or you may be all colours 

or beyond any colour; 

But you are the all comprehensive whole 

conscious and caring and forgiving 

is all that I know. 

This knowledge I got 

through my ignorance, 

necessity of my imperfections, 

and the unknown fate hanging 

as death and beyond; 

My ignorance has taught me; 

My hopes have assured me; 

My fates have authorised 

This knowledge about you. 

Not through Vedanta I have come to know you 

But through my own ignorance 

and hope and fate. 

Myths may change 

beliefs may go 

But the mysticism of my ignorance, 

Hope and fate can never falsify me. 

This mysticism - is the offshoot of the same earth 

which has given birth to me,

an ignorant being of earth. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

A problem ..

O! Krishna! 

I have a problem with people 

Who say that silence is better than the word. 

If somebody says that 

I hear animals, plants and stones and stellar dust 

Having a hearty laugh at them. 

Silence is silence, that too 

If thinking is running through it all. 

Unthinking, mute and clipped-mind frozen - 

I don't see anything great in that. 

Just a regression sad, self-chosen. 

Consciousness made word is the first incarnation; 

Unincarnated transcendence, what is it to whom? 

Even transcendence presumes 

Something available and tangible to transcend. 

But you may say: word fails the thought. 

To succeed is the chase 

And failing is happy when the chase is not closed. 

And the great secret is : 

All transcendence, super-natural and cosmic beyond - 

All things are just habitations of meanings 

Structured in the word, of the word and by the word. 

So give me a word! 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Space or the object?

O! Krishna!

Am I the space which contains? 

Or the object contained in? 

Am I a bundle of matter? 

Or the spiritual principle which inhabits? 

Am I the log running from the birth? 

Or anything prior, running through 

The event of life and surviving 

To revert back to the original? 

An old question asked of death, 

Asked of you and many more sages. 

Every time every one of you 

Did the same ceremony of an answer 

Leaving the mystery, fifty fifty both ways. 

You may be the cosmos and transcending that 

The super and the ultimate. 

But I am just this local, this domestic person 

In this moment, in  this place. 

Why do you blush, 

Why do you rush hiding 

When the finite tries to meet you, 

The Infinite, face to face? 

If it is a contradiction that can never happen 

Then what are you to me? 

Just an hypothesis? 

A happy dream? 

Or an idle thought? 

Or just a run of the comics wild? 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Obedient? Me? ..

O! Krishna! 

May be I am irritating you; 

Or may be not. 

I am not disobedient; 

But again I am not obedient also. 

May be I should have faith. 

But when I think of faith, 

I grow more intellectual. 

And when I go deep in intellectual, 

I pull back myself into faith. 

I will not say, 'neither here nor there' 

But 'also here and also there'. 

When I float in water I see the land; 

When I walk in the land, I see rivers and seas. 

Which is right? Fluid-vision or terra-view? 

May be you want to give me up. 

But then how will you be omnipresent 

Or even omnipotent then? 

You are all-knowing. 

How then can you say 

You do not know the agonies of the ignorant, 

That is me.? 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

The dust ...

O! Krishna! 

Once upon a time 

I thought I was a hurricane. 

Sweeping the face of earth, 

Swapping things about, 

I felt so proud, so powerful! 

But when the wind was gone, 

I came to see that I was but the dust, 

Shed down, settling on chance things. 

Just a dust .. that was me. 

But you received me into your hand 

And by your own fingers 

Placed me on your cheeks; 

In what ethereal colours I began to shine ! 

Me, the dust, on thine cheeks! 

When Radha kissed you on the other cheek, 

In the blush, on my side of Thine cheek 

I reached eternal life! 

Me, the falling dust, 

Fondly placed by Thee, 

On Thy cheek. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

A bird..

O! Krishna! 

I was a bird puffing up 

With ego's wings 

Spatting loud my niche; 

But chasing and being chased 

I thought I was the bird of freedom. 

But when Time blew my wings 

I fell down forlorn 

On a bush I hoped. 

But your feet stood there 

To make my fall a surrender; 

You took me into your hands 

And placed me on your shoulder; 

I was captive in your love; 

Then alone I understood 

What is real freedom! 

Me, a falling bird, 

wings blown by Time. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

O! Krishna!

O! Krishna! 

When I was just a bamboo shouting in the forest 

I was so proud and swayed in the winds; 

But the chance hole made by the bird or bee 

Became the mouth of crying winds 

And lo! all that came out of me was noise and howling. 

But the time passed and I lost all my aggrandizing ego 

And fell at your feet realising that I was just a bamboo. 

But you took me in your hands 

And made a flute out of what was remaining as me, 

A just bamboo stick fallen flat; 

But what a miracle you did! 

Not the flute, but how such a flute out of what was me !

And when you played the flute that was once me, a fallen stick, 

What cosmic melody! and what subtle worlds of meaning! 

Music sublime, how was it possible? 

What a miracle you did out of me, 

A fallen stick! 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Upanishads' guide for living 06

When we are talking about guide for living where comes the talk of death? It is an unalterable fact of life. So just leave it at that and better don't think about it. This thought will come naturally to anybody. And it is commonsense also not to break one's head on unalterable things in life. This avoidance comes handy in day to day living. So people who want to stop at that can very well do like that. But our mental activity which has been geared towards finding meanings in what is surrounding us and what is happening in us and about us, will be always hitting at this mute point. Every time the avoidance should be done consciously, withdrawing from any serious enquiry. May be, there comes a time, when we change our resolve from avoidance to clarifying. At that moment we can remember that thinkers have been seriously engaging themselves for millennia to pursue this topic. One of the earliest records is our Kata Upanishad. The pursuit continues even now with thinkers but additional methods of science have made this topic more a topic of science than conjecture. There is now a whole field of Near-Death Experience studies or NDE studies or Out-of-Body Experience studies or OBE studies carried out meticulously throughout the world. The accumulated logs or videos so far got from persons who have gone through NDE or OBE experiences show some common features, which are interesting and when understood underline the great efficacy of living. It seems ironic that life is better understood by the records of death. 

We were talking about 'the uninvited guest of death'. Metaphorically and philosophically this carries a different meaning. Instead of trying to avoid the subject of death, when human beings boldly begin to study and understand this phenomenon or un-phenomenon  of death, we may say they are in one way 'the uninvited guests of death'. As William Shakespeare writes in one of his Sonnets: 

'Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.'

Swami Vivekananda used to define renunciation as love of death. Sanyasa is making love to death. 

But in our days, in the records of NDE and OBE experiences we see a literal meaning of this phrase, 'the uninvited guests of death'. What these guests, even though they did not have any inkling about the sudden catastrophes that they underwent, have recorded unique experiences they had before coming back into life. Modern Kata Upanishad is all scientific and experimental, with all measurements of vitals and revivals. A singular message that we read across these various NDE records of various persons in various places and various times is this: 'come out of your atomic corner and reach the divine or universal corner or center, diligently work for it and  make sure the fellow human beings also wake up to this innate call and enjoy life in a sublime way.' 

Even the template of Namavali contains this great message. Om indicates the Universal Spirit. The ending 'namaha' indicates 'I have come out of my atomic corner'. In between is the name and form in which one wants to meditate on the Universal Spirit. So the namavali is structured like this : 'The Universal Spirit' + one's own chosen name and form of that Universal Spirit + I have come out of my atomic corner'. Namaha means not mine. So we are blossoming towards the Divine. That is the basic nature of living. Let us make our living meaningful, in tune with its basic nature. Let us not jeopardize it. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Upanishads' guide for living 05

The guidance of Kata Upanishad is on a different level. Isavasya and Kena ask us to look into the structural aspects of life and experience of the world out there. Both the Upanishads try to make us realise how we are conniving against us by leading  ourselves into our own atomic corner. Kena Upanishad reminds us to be ourself. But Kata Upanishad is taking us to the end questions of life. It knocks at the door of our atomic corner and comes straight into it much to our shock to take us out of the hole. Already we are in the heart of our hearts shivering at the idea of death. Whereas Kata Upanishad asks us to go and encounter death right at its face. To become the uninvited guest of death is not so bewitching a theme to us. Our wrong identification is like a virus. Anything that will stop it, it will abhor. And create a fear and anxiety in us so that we will never go for anything that will remedy the virus from us. Kata Upanishad is the best anti-virus available. This virus of misidentity has to disappear when Kata approaches. But the virus can tweet into your head various alarm messages, 'don't read.. don't understand... thinking about death is abominable,, don't do it.. rather do some pleasant things instead..' But just remember, the virus is desperate to sustain itself. Apply the anti-virus cool and see for yourself what happens afterwards. So much energy, so much wide and panavision, so much universal reach that was all yours all the while, deprived just because, by mistake you lent yourself to the shrinking virus. 

And Kata Upanishad does apply the anti-virus in a poetical way or a cinematic way rather. Just like a beautiful Malayalam film, it settles down into your personality, alters the jammed coordinates back to originals. The uninvited guest at the door of death, Nachiketas asks Yama the question, 'Hi Death! you know well whether there is any soul after the point of death. Tell me what is the truth.' The dodging death finally has to come around to reveal the eternal truth. Of course Nachiketas took the first step of coming out of his atomic corner. Coming out of it, it was but natural to him to interrogate any hidden truth, anywhere. Death pleads with him to return back to his cubby hole. But no. Once you wake up there is no deluding you again. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Upanishads' guide for living 04

Kena Upanishad tells us to study the basic structure of our own self, that is the physical self, our identity in the world. This word Kena means 'by what'. By what our identity is structured. What constitutes us? We see. hear, feel, taste and smell. Basic data that we get about the world outside. We think and decide. We imagine. We have our inner subjective field, about which only we have the authentic experience. Kena Upanishad asks just basic questions regarding this system. 

You are saying that you see what is out there. By what do you see anything? Why ? by eyes. Of course by eyes. But the seeing actually does not happen in the eyes. The optical data is received through the eyes and that data is processed in the brain. Ultimately when seeing happens, when you say this is that object, some seeing thing or some seeing point or the 'seer' must be there. Only to the 'seer' or 'the seeing point', the phenomenon of sight happens. Till then the data is only optical pulses. In the same way, for the other senses also. 

In short Kena asks us to check our motor. We have a car. Some problem is there. We raise the hood and check the connections and wires. We just check where the flow of function is blocked. Kena Upanishad asks us a simple question. 'What is that which makes you see ultimately? feel ultimately? taste, hear and so on.?' Eyes are just instruments in use. The cognition 'sight' happens by what? Can you see that 'what' by these eyes, which see all things? Can you feel that 'what'? smell that 'what'? taste that 'what'? hear that 'what'? No. So, that something, that 'what' makes your sensations possible in you but is not available to these very senses. That 'what' makes you think, but your thinking does not grasp that 'what'. So that 'what' transcends this system of senses and mind. But it is very much there in us, making it possible, all our sensations, our thinking. So it is there but just transcends this system. All these data produce 'meaning' only in its presence and also for its sake. 

Kena Upanishad says that 'what' is the real you. Only for your sake this whole system functions and you 'see', making it possible. You are inhabiting this system. But mostly you begin to believe that you are this system. Instead of seeing this system as your machine, you are so tied up with believing that the machine is you. Once that happens, your angle becomes atomic. The divine becomes just a dream, a lazy dream perhaps, whereas you become the busiest person of this world. You, the machine, has no meaning. How can it be? Only for you, in your presence, the machine will present data, so that the meaning happens because of you. When you have fallen into your own trap, hallucinating that you are this machine, then what meaning can happen for whom? You have deserted yourself. 

Kena Upanishad just says 'be just the owner of the car, driving it, using the machine. Don't make this car your world or more wretchedly, you yourself. You are the operator. Come out of this self-inflicted delusion. Assume your post. The divine angle is yours ever and ever'. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Upanishads' guide for living 03

There is a wonderful  line in Isavasya, the literal reading of which is 'gold covers the face of Truth'. Even the literal reading is so meaningful in our present day world. Money blinds our vision. 'Hiranmayena patrena satyasyabhihitam mukham'. But when we think deeply on the phenomenon, it comes to mean what we have been saying. Seeing from our own atomic angle we lose sight of the divine angle. Seeing from the divine angle is seeing 360 degrees. But our own atomic view becomes so precious like gold to us. And we miss our real claim, the greatest treasure from the divine. 

But we are locked as if in our own situation. Is it not? May be it is atomic. But once we crouch into it, it seems quite convenient. It becomes our comfort couch. We would rather like to drag the Divine also into it. But the Divine beats us into it. Knowing well all the tricks of the tiny, the Divine has gone already immanent into our soul. Long before the start of everything, it has hid itself into us, goading us unseen from the inside, to go and claim our real inheritance, the constant voice driving us from within. 

How it does this, how we can cooperate in this divine plan imbedded in us from the start, is the guidance which Kena Upanishad is going to give us. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Upanishads' guide for living 02

How can one see from the Divine point of view? Is it possible to see from an angle other than our own? Why not? In our daily life we do see from many others' angles rather than our own. In fact our success depends on that. A person appearing for an interview does see his or her manners, answers and personality from the angle of the person who is going to interview him or her. A good teacher is one who sees from the students' angle. A good leader is one who sees from the peoples' angle. The mother sees her own life from the angle of the child in her womb. So seeing from an angle other than our own is what practical life is about. Just we have to push it a little to see from the angle of the Divine. 

Isavasya gives you another thought. You begin to know so many things. We gather data. We become well informed. We attain knowledge and scholarship. But do we know the art of being and becoming? Being totally in a context, becoming others in empathy is an art. Without that, just being knowledgeable is mere dryness of the soul. Isavasya explains this beautifully. Being merely a person of knowledge is inadequate in itself. And being just a person of empathy also is not complete. A human being crosses death as it were by empathy, by being a person of awareness but to enjoy immortality calls for great knowing. Of course the Upanishad employs a lot of parallel terms to bring out the efficacy of possessing this twin capacity - the capacity of knowing and the capacity of being and becoming or the capacity of empathy. We can understand this in short as - being a person of the head and also being a person of the heart make a complete personality. An authentic person is one who knows vast and also feels deep about the human life. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Upanishads' guide for living 01

Upanishads form an important part of Vedanta and a unique guide for spiritual living. A wonderful record of discussions among Rishis, who were intensely aware of the fundamentals and the universals of human life. Basically they saw the human being in its total make up. A human being of hunger and natural needs is also a being of emotions. And a human being is rational in its core activity. Not only that, a human being is also literary in its attitudes. A human being is intensely analytic and at the same time frivolously playful. A human being can achieve beyond limits. Also a human being can fail miserably in unexpected ways. A human being can love madly and also a human being can hate fiercely. A human being can meticulously plan for centuries and also a human being can be blinded by the range-of-the-moment likes and dislikes. And more so, a human being can transcend its own organic identity and structure and realise moments of pure spiritual essence. Any good prescription for human living must be aware and encompass all these features and facets, failures and excellences. Denying any part of the reality of human being will not do full justice as a guide. It is here that the Upanishads fulfill being such a guide for living. 

Let us take for instance, Isavasya Upanishad. The name is just after the first word with which the Upanishad starts. It simply means 'Being included into God'. Yea everything that is, everything that face us, everything that links with our living, the Upanishad says just include it into God. See yourself, with all your imperfections, achievements and failures, predicaments and chances, everything be included into God. Transact with anything, enjoy or suffer your experiences, after seeing them from the Divine angle. Give up the habit of seeing from where you are situated and start seeing even yourself from the viewpoint of the Divine. A human being is born with the default habit of seeing everything from its own atomic angle. But you have solved the great riddle of life once you start seeing even yourself from the point of the Divine. This is in short the message of the upanishad Isavasya. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Know Your Heritage - 08

We of the modern world are in one sense, people of the Book. This may sound theological to some but no, not in that sense. But we are the people of the Printed Book. The printed book is something which keeps you engaged with yourself by what is within its two covers. If you know the language and if you are interested in the subject, the book opened may be closing for you, many of the things around. But what you are able to take from the book is mainly dependent on you and your reading. Unless some professional or academic consequence is there for your reading, mostly your reading remains unchallenged and untested. Hence reading, by and by, degenerates into mere going through pages or browsing or picking at random or just getting at a sense of what is written. Approximation over approximation makes you ultimately a proud owner of undigested books. Yea you have gone through, seen through, got it roughly and you have some opinion. That is how we are as people of the printed book, mostly. Our busy life justifies it. And not only that, many books are written based on such opinions 'arrived at'. 

But in our heritage they were thinking in terms of 'the study'. It is not the book that counts but your study of it. They have a beautiful word for it. 'Adhyayana'. Adhyayana means studying. Adhyaya means study. Yea. we are using it, the word in the sense of 'chapter'. By contrast, in our heritage, they were people of the study. It is studying which makes you learned. The printed book can just make you an owner. 

When the stress is laid on the studying, you cannot duplicate, you cannot just form an opinion and you cannot be just going through. You have to encounter the whole body of thought that comes in the shape of a book. 

So in our days we can do slight changes in this concept of Adhyaya, study and bring in a culture of reading. In other words becoming 'people of reading' will empower us more as human beings. Not being mere people of books, counting how many books we happen to possess, we can choose to measure our enthusiasm by how many books we have processed in by active reading. Here again we can read through words and pages, while picking up some snippets here and there and call it reading. But active reading is facing the arguments, para by para, withe an eye to the key words and phrases that underline the development. Just beginning by doing one book, makes our process more facile afterwards. And becoming people of the reading is creative in its function. 

***

Know Your Heritage - 07

Progress is a big word in our modern world. If you say 'progress' you can justify anything as it were. But in our heritage there is a balanced view. The so called 'Progress' is put in its place. In our modern world 'Progress' is self-authentic. But in our heritage 'Progress' needs to be authenticated by something larger. Because the whole human life itself is seen in its cosmic context rather than as the exploiting core of the dull world around. 

The artifice by which they keep up this dynamic balance between the progress of the parts and the stasis of the whole is itself interesting. Every individual life is understood as the development of stages. A human being born is unfinished and becomes finished human being only after the completion of education. That is the basic stage of the human life. After that, the human being must progress, multiply whatever is at his hand, whatever he has acquired by way of skills or knowledge while learning. He is expected to excel in whatever he chooses. He must create money not grab it. He marries and brings forth children. And he must vouchsafe their education. 

While engaged in progress he must take care of five important things. He must take care of his forefathers by raising good children. He must take care of the masters of wisdom by preserving and strengthening the great books and the education on such books. He must take care of the piety, the social understanding of the divine. He must take care of helpless human beings. And last but not least, he must take care of the animals, birds and other beings around. Even our understanding of progress is detailed in this way. Mindless exploitation and frantic grabbing have never been our concept of progress and will never be. 

Even this concept of 'progress' is not endless. The human being who engages in this stage of life is reminded of more important things and much broader concerns. His involvement with 'progress' is only time-bound. He must yield to the next generations and take up more important tasks in life. This scheme is not something imposed on him from outside. It is something deeply inlaid in the very living itself. After you have gone all speed in external life you are expected to slow down and reverse your aims. You must now begin trekking in the internal explorations. You were reveling in the world of things. Now you are expected to learn and master in the world of concepts, values and ideas. You were driving through avenues of reality out there. But now you must go uphill in the reaches of your inner reality. You were speeding through roads. Now you are trekking through forests. The symbolic name of this stage of life is 'Vanaprasta'. 'starting into the forests'. 

You were chasing progress outside before. Now you have to chasten down by progressing in the inside. You were contributing to the society by way of things and more things. Now you are contributing to the same society by way of values and wisdom. This thermostat you have to keep up, this system of checks and balances. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

***

Know Your Heritage - 06

When do you call a thing 'heritage'? Something coming as a tradition may become or may not become 'heritage'. That means, heritage involves a process of 'stop, look and think'. A revisionary outlook which identifies the good and abiding aspects to be preserved in contradistinction to anything not constructive and hence not worth preserving. Heritage involves a positive approach towards future based on revisions of reading the past. 

Tapas is one of the concepts in our heritage which needs understanding. Again a misunderstood concept, which may kindle in us pictures of long beards and forest huts and being immobile for long periods of time. But if we look into it deeply, it is a great concept and a skill never to be missed. 

Tapas is looking into a thing afresh. To become aware of a thing in all its aspects. To overcome one's own prejudices, to give up one's own preconceptions about the thing concerned - all these form part of tapas. Tapas is a highly sensible way of understanding. In tapas you begin to scientifically handle the mind as an effective instrument, whereas before, mind was a field of distractions. 

Tapas sharpens your perception not only regarding what you understand but also regarding the areas and issues that you have not understood. Of course 'tapas' has a root meaning of 'being heated' or 'burning'. But in usage it has become a way of being cool and attentive without conditions. After an initial practice, tapas becomes a jolly way of being totally receptive and perceptive, being closely at an issue or subject in awareness tending towards becoming full. It is an unconditional way of being attentive to the object or the subject concerned. With no anxiety or exploitation in mind being attentive takes one deeper and closer to the reality instanced right before us. We have paid too much interest in symbolisms and lost sight of the real principles behind. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan 

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Know Your Heritage - 05

Respect towards nature doesn't stop with water, light and wind. Trees are very important. They bridge the earth and the atmosphere. Atmosphere is called in our culture as 'antariksha'. In between earth and sky, antariksha forms an important place of exchange. Trees strengthen the soil, purify the air and please the atmosphere in one stroke. Trees by becoming habitations of birds propagate themselves across lands. 

Rivers form another important part of our ecosystem. When the trees make the atmosphere yield their water content to the soil as rains from clouds, the water as rivers flow across the landscape, enriching the soil and giving life. Flora and fauna are but siblings nourished by the flowing life before reaching the great deposits of seas. 

All these cycles of nature are considered facets of divinity in our culture. They are not there as commodities for human beings to exploit. They form part of the great chain of being which houses human beings also. What part these play as natural functions, human beings should play knowingly and in full awareness. What was added to the human being as knowledge is compensated by the lack of automaticity in the discharge of nature. The human being born is not automatically human being in function. For that the human being must choose to reach upto its own nature and function. Intelligence is a great thing given to the human being but not as automatic. The human being must choose to be intelligent and choose to stay intelligent. 

A place of divinity should be a topos where all these elements of nature are held in deep consideration. That is why in our temples, the sthalavruksha play an important part. Sthalavruksha is 'the tree of the place'. Rivers or bodies of water form the Tirtha attached to the temple. Tirtha is 'what is purifying'. In our concept the divine not only resides in the sanctum but also in the form of all these elements of nature. You cannot be cruel to the trees and say you are devoted to the God inside. You cannot desecrate the rivers and say you are a bhakta of the divine form inside. Our worship starts from our conscience. 

Srirangam Mohanarangan

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