Celebration of Being Alive: Happy New Year

(This poem is dedicated to those who have fire in their heart.

The fire..the passion to know "why am I living in the world''..

I wish may the coming year bring the fruits of their pursuit.)

After the long restless nights of enigmatic dreams

After the drowsy hours of the slumbering mind

Yet to decide “am I still dreaming or awakened?”

There was herald I sensed…

Before I was aware that was not dream

I saw the existence revived all around

In wildness of chirping birds

In the blooming petal of the dewed flower

In the wonderful smell of the wet earth

In the scintillating coolness of still air

When wondering eyes focused on the distant

There was ruby sky on the remote east

And wandering clouds in the far horizon

My heart brightened gradually with remote sky

Getting colored slowly with rambling clouds

Dancing wildly with the blooming rose in subtle breeze

Such a synchronicity everywhere!!

My heart had yet to collect those esoteric feelings

My body yet to receive the awesome sensations

Ah! There was the apex of romance

Between the rising sun and the silent Himalaya

.

When I noticed the rays kissing the white Himalaya

My heart became Himalaya

Dissolving gradually and gradually

Radiating slowly and slowly with golden blush

With the caressing of the loving rays

And dancing in the rhythm of soundless music

(courtesy: www.spiritofthehimalayas.com)

I said to myself

Wait! Wait!!

I have yet to notice

The hardness vanishing in my heart

The questions dissolving in my mind

The curiosity diluting in the sentiments

With the charisma of blushing Himalaya?

Or the overwhelming emotion of the dancing heart??

In the mean time

I found...

There were my eyes

Bursting with rapture of the overflowing tears

Flooded with joy of unknown emotions

Then I understood the first time..

Why am still living in the world?

Divine Romance - II

After long restless search for his guru in his teen age time, Yogananda met his guru in an implausible circumstance at the narrow street of Banaras. When I went through at first time, I couldnot continue anymore without letting my emotion to subside. Everytime I read these paragraphs, I feel wonderful sensation in me. The following paragraphs discribe the glimses of thier first union. ( from book: An Autobiography of a Yogi)
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...Another day I might have replied impatiently; now I wiped my tear- swollen face and meekly obeyed the summons. Together Habu and I set out for a distant market place in the Bengali section of Benares. The ungentle Indian sun was not yet at zenith as we made our purchases in the bazaars. We pushed our way through the colorful medley of housewives, guides, priests, simply-clad widows, dignified Brahmins, and the ubiquitous holy bulls. Passing an inconspicuous lane, I turned my head and surveyed the narrow length.
A Christlike man in the ocher robes of a swami stood motionless at the end of the road. Instantly and anciently familiar he seemed; my gaze fed hungrily for a trice. Then doubt assailed me. "You are confusing this wandering monk with someone known to you," I thought.

"Dreamer, walk on." After ten minutes, I felt heavy numbness in my feet. As though turned to stone, they were unable to carry me farther. Laboriously I turned around; my feet regained normalcy. I faced the opposite direction; again the curious weight oppressed me. "The saint is magnetically drawing me to him!" With this thought, I heaped my parcels into the arms of Habu. He had been observing my erratic footwork with amazement, and now burst into laughter. "What ails you? Are you crazy?" My tumultuous emotion prevented any retort; I sped silently away. Retracing my steps as though wing-shod, I reached the narrow lane. My quick glance revealed the quiet figure, steadily gazing in my direction. A few eager steps and .....I was at his feet.

"Gurudeva!"

The divine face was none other than he of my thousand visions. These halcyon eyes, in leonine head with pointed beard and flowing locks, had oft peered through gloom of my nocturnal reveries, holding a promise I had not fully understood.
"O my own, you have come to me!" My guru uttered the words again and again in Bengali, his voice tremulous with joy. "How many years I have waited for you!"
We entered a oneness of silence; words seemed the rankest superfluities. Eloquence flowed in soundless chant from heart of master to disciple. With an antenna of irrefragable insight I sensed that my guru knew God, and would lead me to Him. The obscuration of this life disappeared in a fragile dawn of prenatal memories. Dramatic time! Past, present, and future are its cycling scenes. This was not the first sun to find me at these holy feet!
My hand in his, my guru led me to his temporary residence in the Rana Mahal section of the city. His athletic figure moved with firm tread. Tall, erect, about fifty-five at this time, he was active and vigorous as a young man. His dark eyes were large, beautiful with plumbless wisdom. Slightly curly hair softened a face of striking power. Strength mingled subtly with gentleness. As we made our way to the stone balcony of a house overlooking the Ganges, he said affectionately: "I will give you my hermitages and all I possess."

"Sir, I come for wisdom and God-contact. Those are your treasure- troves I am after!" The swift Indian twilight had dropped its half-curtain before my master spoke again. His eyes held unfathomable tenderness. "I give you my unconditional love." Precious words! A quarter-century elapsed before I had another auricular proof of his love. His lips were strange to ardor; silence became his oceanic heart.

"Will you give me the same unconditional love?" He gazed at me with childlike trust.

"I will love you eternally, Gurudeva!"

"Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love." He added humbly, "If ever you find me falling from a state of God-realization, please promise to put my head on your lap and help to bring me back to the Cosmic Beloved we both worship."………………………

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Divine Romance

Love is the ingredient of life, romance is its active expression and the longing is the realization of its importance. I was always thrilled and fascinated while reading the love　stories during my earlier college time. It was beautiful experience where I could observe my emotional appeared in my heart in the course of reading them. During those times, I learned the another dimension of love- quite different from the one I used to get from my parents- where the pain and happiness merges in one; more the pain of longing, more the out-coming happiness. From the diverse literature I went through, be it Munamadan to Mukund-Indira, or Women in Love to Anna Karenina, the quality of newly discovered love is same; more the sense of giving and understanding, sweeter becomes the story. All of these writers unanimously identified the quality of love in devotion and unconditional nature. By and by, I encountered yet another dimension of love through some ‘intoxicated’ writers/poems like Tagore, Rumi, Umar Khayyam, Khalil Gibran, where the heart longs for their undiscovered beloved; another quality of love in which the ‘self’ intends to dissolve totally with beloved. Their stories were awesome and incredible. The same quality of love, more graspable yet, was also discovered between the seeker, in the quest of self realization and the Master who inspires and accelerates his journey. Their stories were heart-blowing. Because of the avalanche of the surprising emotional, my eyes used to overflow by the tears and it was impossible to read the next episode. And ah! I like to admit that these stories ignited the esoteric fire in me.

Here, I like share few paragraphs from such story. It is the portion of the story when a seeker (Yogananda) was in search of his guru, wandered everywhere and finally　met him (Yukteshwor) at the street of Banaras in an implausible circumstance. .

To be continued....

तलास जारी है...

(यि पङ्तियाँ मेरी यात्राकी मरुस्थलमे मिली पहली मरुद्यानकी प्रतिविम्ब हैँ। )

मुझे तलाश थी-ऐसी पवनकी, जिसकी एक स्पर्शसे खिले पत्थरभी।
तलाश थी- प्रेमनगरकी ऐसी बादशाहकी, जो एकबार झाँके और बस रुलादे।
खोज थी- उस सागरकी, जो डुबा सके सब गहिराइयाँ ध्यानकी।
तलाश थी- उस साकीकी, जिसकी शराब मैं पिउँ और रहु प्यासा भी,
और ऐसा नशा, जो दे होश भी और मस्ती भी।
तलाश थी- ऐसे आखोँकी, जो पढ् सके मेरी आखोँकी नमी।
तलाश थी-ऐसे नाविककी, जो अगर डुबादे तो भी सही,
और खोज थी- ऐसी वाणी, जो दे होठ्को हंसी और आँखोको नमी ,
तलाश थी- ऐसी चरणकी जिसे भिगा सके मेरी गम अनकही,

और आज जो मैंने पाया सोचके बढकर पाया।

(उही मरूद्यान-ओशो सिद्धार्थको समर्पित)

Battle at Kruger: YouTube's Best Eyewitness Video

Art of Emotional Mastery: Part II

Remaining of the earlier section proceeds as follow.

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STEP TWO
Acknowledge and Appreciate Your Emotions, Knowing They Support You
You never want to make your emotions wrong. The idea that anything you feel is "wrong" is a great way to destroy honest communication with yourself as well as with others. Be thankful that there's a part of your brain that is sending you a signal of support, a call to action to make a change in either your perception of some aspect of your life or in your actions. If you're willing to trust your emotions, knowing that even though you don't understand them at the moment, each and every one you experience is there to support you in making a positive change, you will immediately stop the war you once had with yourself. Instead, you'll feel yourself moving toward simple solutions. Making an emotion "wrong" will rarely cause it to become less intense. Whatever you resist tends to persist.

Cultivate the feeling of appreciation for all emotions, and like a child that needs attention, you'll find your emotions "calming down" almost immediately.

STEP THREE
Get Curious about the Message This Emotion Is Offering You
Remember the power of changing emotional states? If you put yourself in a state of mind where you truly are feeling curious about learning something, this is an immediate pattern interrupt to any emotion and enables you to learn a great deal about yourself. Getting curious helps you master your emotion, solve the challenge, and prevent the same problem from occurring in the future. As you begin to feel the emotion, get curious about what it really has to offer you. What do you need to do right now to make things better? If you're feeling lonely, for example, get curious and ask, "Is it possible that I'm just misinterpreting the situation to mean that I'm alone, when in reality I have all kinds of friends? If I just let them know I want to visit with them, wouldn't they love to visit with me as well? Is my loneliness giving me a message that I need to take action, reach out more and connect with people?" Here are four questions to ask yourself to become curious about your emotions:

What do I really want to feel?

What would I have to believe in order to feel the way I've been feeling?

What am I willing to do to create a solution and handle this right now?

What can I learn from this?

As you get curious about your emotions, you'll learn important distinctions about them, not only today, but in the future as well.

STEP FOUR
Get Confident.
Get confident that you can handle this emotion immediately. The quickest, simplest, and most powerful way I know to handle any emotion is to remember a time when you felt a similar emotion and realize that you've successfully handled this emotion before. Since you handled it in the past, surely you can handle it again today. The truth is, if you've ever had this Action Signal before and gotten through it, you already have a strategy of how to change your emotional sates.

So stop right now and think about that time when you felt the same emotions and how you dealt with them in a positive way. Use this as the role model or checklist for what you can do right now to change how you feel. What did you do back then? Did you change what you were focusing on, the questions you asked yourself, your perceptions? Or did you take some kind of new action? Decide to do the same right now, with the confidence that it will work just as it did before. If you're feeling depressed, for example, and you've been able to turn it around before, ask yourself, "What did I do then?" Did you take some new action like going for a run or making some phone calls? Once you've made some distinctions about what you've done in the past, do the same things now, and you'll find that you'll get similar results.

STEP FIVE
Get Certain You Can Handle This Not Only Today, But in the Future as Well
You want to feel certain that you can handle this emotion easily in the future by having a great plan to do so. One way to do this is to simply remember the ways you've handled it in the past, and rehearse handling situations where this Action Signal would come up in the future. See, hear, and feel yourself handling the situation easily. Repetitions of this with emotional intensity will create within you a neural pathway of certainty that you can easily deal with such challenges. In addition, jot down on a piece of paper three or four other ways that you could change your perception when an Action Signal comes up, or ways that you could change how you were communicating your feelings or needs, or ways that you could change the actions you were taking in this particular situation.

STEP SIX
Get Excited, and Take Action
Now that you've finished the first five steps—identified what you were really feeling, appreciated the emotion instead of fighting it, gotten curious about what it really meant and the lesson it was offering you, learned from it, figured out how to turn things around by modeling your successful past strategies for handling the emotion, and rehearsed dealing with it in future situations and installed a sense of certainty—the final step is obvious: Get excited, and take action! Get excited about the fact that you can easily handle this emotion, and take some action right away to prove that you've handled it. Don't stay stuck in the limiting emotions you're having. Express yourself by using what you rehearsed internally to create a change in your perceptions or your actions. Remember that the new distinctions you've just made will change the way you feel not only today, but how you deal with this emotion in the future. With these six simple steps, you can master virtually any emotion that comes up in your life. If you find yourself dealing with the same emotion again and again, this six-step method will help you identify the pattern and change it in a very short period of time. So practice using this system. Like anything else that's brand-new, at first this may seem cumbersome. But the more you do it, the easier it will become to use, and pretty soon you'll find yourself being able to navigate your way through what you used to think were emotional minefields.
What you'll see instead will be a field of personal coaches guiding you each step of the way, showing you where you need to go to achieve your goals. Remember, the best time to handle an emotion is when you first begin to feel it. It's much more difficult to interrupt an emotional pattern once it's full-blown. My philosophy is, "Kill the monster while it's little." Use this system quickly, as soon as the Action Signal makes itself known, and you'll find yourself being able to quickly handle virtually any emotion.

From the Book: Awaken the Giant Within.

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Art of Emotional Mastery

Emotions are the wonderful gift to us what demarcate human being with a potential robot, however complex program and sophistication are imagined and implemented with it. If we believe happiness is within us, in our way of reacting the present states, then the emotion is the grosser entity within us to work with. No one in this world has become happy and be in peace without mastering the emotions that arise and diminishe according to their own causes. Unfortunately, there are no schools and universities which teach us the way of mastering them. Hence, this branch always has become very subjective, fuzzy and the travel to unknown land. Even more puzzling aspect is that the people who seem to be teaching this art, many-times lack the essence in their own living, thus creating controversy of teaching in the earnest seeker.

Knowingly or unknowingly we are all constantly searching the emotion that brings us the pleasure and avoiding those emotions which bring the pains, be it in bodily or mental form. That means our mind-body state is either in craving state or in the state of aversion. Then, a natural question arises whether we are program or the programmer. Unfortunately, we seems to be a network of program written by our society, upbringing, religions and our so-called education, and naturally the switch of our emotional states- happiness, pain, anger, boring etc - are outside us. If someone scolds ME, without actually knowing to the true ME, the program in ME starts to create the psychosomatic reactions to produce the emotion that we called ANGER. When someone praises ME, the program in ME creates bio-chemical reaction to produce the effect that we label PLEASANT MOOD. If we are programmer of our being, we could laugh wholeheartedly to whatever negative expression is released to us. And equally, when needed, I could be angry against all the positive feeling being presented. Thus to understand, accept and live harmoniously with the emotions consciously, is one of the most wonderful art; and perhaps, most difficult too. The only way to master the emotions is by understanding their true nature, the way they are, without preoccupied judgment of good or bad. The emotions- including those we label them BAD- are our ally not enemy and constantly serving us by delivering the signals which can be used to create the result for the greater meaning of WHO AM I. In the following paragraphs I like to share some secrets I found from the books I went through.

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Part I. Dealing with Negative Emotion

Realize that the emotions you are feeling at this very moment are a gift, a guideline, a support system, a call to action. If you suppress your emotions and try to drive them out of your life, or if you magnify them and allow them to take over everything, then you're squandering one of life's most precious resources.

So what is the source of emotions? You are the source of all your emotions; you are the one who creates them. So many people feel that they have to wait for certain experiences in order to feel the emotions they desire. For instance, they don't give themselves permission to feel loved or happy or confident unless a particular set of expectations is met. ……….You don't have to wait for anything or anyone! You don't need any special reason to feel good—you can just decide to feel good right now, simply because you're alive, simply because you want to. So if you're the source of all your emotions, why don't you feel good all the time? Again, it's because your so-called negative emotions are giving you a message. What is the message of these Action Signals (Negative signals)? They're telling you that what you're currently doing is not working, that the reason you have pain is either the way you're perceiving things or the procedures you're using: specifically, the way you're communicating your needs and desires to people, or the actions you're taking. What you're doing is not producing the result you want, and you have to change your approach. Remember that your perceptions are controlled by what you focus on and the meanings you interpret from things. And you can change your perception in a moment, just by changing the way you're using your physiology or by asking yourself a better question. Your procedures include your style of communication. Maybe you're being too harsh in the way you communicate, or maybe your procedure is not even communicating your needs, and you're expecting other people to know what you need. This could create a lot of frustration, anger, and hurt in your life. Maybe this Action Signal of feeling hurt is trying to tell you that you need to change your way of communicating so you don't feel hurt again in the future. Feeling depressed is another call to action, telling you that you need to change your perception that the problems you're dealing with are permanent or out of control. Or, you need to take some kind of physical action to handle one area of your life so that once again you remember that you are in control.

This is the true message of all your Action Signals. They're merely trying to support you in taking action to change the way you think, change the way you're perceiving things, or change your procedures for communicating or behaving. These calls to action are there to remind you that you don't want to be like the fly who keeps banging himself against the window, trying to get through the glass—if you don't change your approach, all the persistence in the world will never pay off. Your Action Signals are whispering to you (perhaps screaming!), through the experience of pain, that you need to change what you're doing.

SIX STEPS TO EMOTIONAL MASTERY

I've found that whenever I feel a painful emotion, there are six steps I can take very quickly to break my limiting patterns, find the benefit of that emotion, and set myself up so that in the future I can get the lesson from the emotion and eliminate the pain more quickly. Let's examine them briefly.

STEP ONE

Identify What You're Really Feeling

So often people feel so overloaded they don't even know what they're feeling. All they know is that they're being "attacked" by all these negative emotions and feelings. Instead of feeling overloaded, step back for a moment and ask yourself, "What am I really feeling right now?" If you think at first, "I'm feeling angry," begin to ask yourself, "Am I really feeling angry? Or is it something else? Maybe what I'm really feeling is hurt. Or I feel like I've lost out on something." Realize that a feeling of hurt or a feeling of loss is not as intense as the feeling of anger. Just in taking a moment to identify what you're really feeling, and beginning to question your emotions, you may be able to lower the emotional intensity you're experiencing, and therefore deal with the situation much more quickly and easily. If, for example, you say, "Right now I feel rejected," you might ask yourself, "Am I feeling rejected, or am I feeling a sense of separation from a person I love? Am I feeling rejected, or am I feeling disappointed! Am I feeling rejected, or am I feeling a little uncomfortable?" Remember the power of Transformational Vocabulary to immediately lower your intensity. Again, as you identify what you're really feeling, you can lower the intensity even more, which makes it much easier to learn from the emotion…..

From the book Awaken the Giant within

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To be continued……

Spiritual Reality

(Informative video on the scientific aspect of meditation)

My favorite you tube video

(Have a good day and enjoy this video)

मृत्‍यु एक रहस्य

मृत्‍यु एक रहस्य

(यि हरफहरु समाजमा अर्थपूर्ण प्रभाव पर्ने केही मनिसहरुको मृत्‍यु पछी यस ब्लगरको हृदयमा गुज्रेको भाव सँग सम्बन्धित छन। )

हरेक जीवन सँगै मृत्‍यु जन्मन्छ। मृत्‍युले प्रयोग र अनुभवले सम्हाल्न नसकेको ज्ञानको अपवादलाई स्रिजना गरेको हुन्छ। मानव जीवनको सर्वमान्य तर कसैले स्विकार गर्न नसकेको गुरुत्वको सघन केन्द्र हो मृत्‍यु, जहाँ हरेक जीवन सरिता विसर्जन हुन्छ। परिवर्तनको नियमले र समयको क्षितिजले बह्रमाण्डका हरेक वस्तुलाई मात्रै होइन, जैबिक सम्बेदना, मानव मन र चेतनालाई पनि छोपेको सत्य मृत्‍युले हरेक पटक उजागर गर्न खोजिरहन्छ। प्रयोग, अनुभव र बुद्धिको दायरामा अटन नसक्नुको विशिष्टताले गर्दा नै, यो सधैं कव्यात्मक आकर्षण र अध्यात्मिक खोजको प्रेरणा र बिषय बनेको हुन्छ। मानविय चेतनाको अद्वितिय उचाइ चुमेको जीवनको उपसंहार मात्रै होइन, जडता, मुढता र निक्रिष्ट बेहोशिमा धकेलिएको जीवनको निछोड पनि हो भनी मृत्‍युले प्राकृतिक नियमको पूर्णताको सधैं उद्घोष गररहेकै हुन्छ।

Glimpse of Middle Age Zen Spirit in Kyoto

Kyoto city has many similarities with Kathmandu; surrounded by the mountains, has three famous rivers (Kamo, Katsura, Uji), many temples (around 2000)and castles including the thirteen of them registered in the World Heritage Sites. The glimpse of the zen temples in every nook and corner of the city tells the story, the story how the city enjoyed the apex of zen spirit at those times. The famous zen schools, which manily are the braches from the Rinzai tradition, had many learnt masters who used to have their student practise the intensive zen meditation(zazen and sesshin) in very strict environment leading to quiet mind, no-mind to satori (enlightment) stage. More interestingly, there were schools even for post-satori stage which used to focus on how to preserve the satori wisdom in day to day activities. Please go through the glimse of the past through these pictures.

1) Kodo sawaki, a famous Zen master showing the posture of zazen (courtesy: wikipedia.org).

2) Ginkaku-ji (golden temple), a converted zen school from retirement villa, containing relics of the buddha. The Kinkaku-ji area has many small kutis around lakes, which no doubt are the wonderful place for meditation even today.

3) Tenryu-ji temple, the main temple of Rinzai sect in Arashiyama, Kyoto.

4) Famous Zen garden, The main elements of karesansui (zen garden) are rocks and sand, with the sea symbolized by sand raked in patterns that suggest rippling water. They are often designed to view it in single seated position and believed to provide calmness to human mind.