A Blessed Acknowledgement

My toddler boy’s ethereal psyche as my chariot of change each day pulls me inward to spiritual spunk. Listening to his innocent and enigmatic expressions often seems like divine recital. Such platonic relationship between a mother and her child is a route to bliss and benign emotions. My first born, whose plush gazes and fervent heart that has uniform feelings for birds, animals and all living beings, is my pioneer retreat to a conscious state. His playful and magical enchantments is realization that children as god’s cherubs are the hymns of nature. Their eternal kindle illuminates our life with love, hope, care and courage.

At a nascent age children have the capacity to sense parent’s changing colors. They are the midget stars of a celestial empire. They show us that enthusiasm and excitement are unique ways to subsist. Nurturing a child is like rearing an angel. Their magnificent innocence instills that surrendering to god is a mode of attuning to self. With their wish lists to celebrate life our children signify the ‘power of now’ as a distinctive hallmark of living mindfully. Their glee as the adornment of our joy and a veil for sorrow helps us steer through transitions in life. As our significant couplers they are a mirror to our solemn state. They are the best cohorts one can have. With their mesmerizing ways they help expound on the fact that God resides in all, irrespective of abilities. As parents honoring these angelic protégés is respecting righteousness to commune with god. 

Our children’s serenity has an invisible power to incapacitate any negativity or prejudice that could impair the aura of our home and the peace in familial relationships. As parents fostering devotion and karma through the principles of good and bad actions, early on, in our children can make their lives more meaningful as they grow older and independent. We parents are a child’s harbinger to this world. Through our spiritual chalk talk we can share chaste lessons that God is omnipresent and one. Among the poor, he is a destitute; among the rich he is opulent. Such teachings help imbibe transparency in faith and equal respect for all religion. Giving a boon to children’s apostolic self also advances their spontaneity and theological desires later in life. 

As parents, especially a mother who is a child’s first guide, such discourses with our children not only incite them to a new way of life but also awaken us to a new state of mind. Such precepts for our children become conscious alerts for us in turn. Charting a child’s life with honesty, truth and wisdom hence becomes a mother’s poise. Any deterrence of self from such tranquility and serenity that we want to blossom in our children hinders the opportunity to set ourselves as model of transcendental values and religious beliefs. Recognizing this altruism in a parent-child relationship is an inspiration to learn from a child’s immaculateness and clear conscience. As parents internalizing a child’s superego through these moral principles helps them to be positive change agents in community and society. Such incorporeal narrations between us and our children enable us to control our own ego and maintain a balance between our material and spiritual self. As revered Osho once said, “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The women existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” Thanks indeed to my son who made me one.  

Copyright (c) 2010 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot

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Becoming Socially Sentient Now

For centuries mankind has been culpable to a way of life through enormous contributions in augmenting the society’s potential to his best interest. From as is to as it should be, humanity’s disposition has characterized a constitution that we call society. On route to action, learning & development, ideation, communication and implementation in a sundry of subjects, man has revealed social behavior. In his lifespan of understanding the essentials for existence, man has consciously and willingly fevered social settings with an acceding eye or by fulfillment through belligerence. In his longing for satisfaction through a coconut of desires, peace has hardly been man’s drive to improve and sustain social camaraderie. Abuse and antagonism on the other hand have been his motivators to an uncanny change. Be it fallacy and extremism, transgression and despotism, befouling the nature for mercenary or modern day warfare and nuclear proliferation, all have been illustrations of an injurious mind.

Over the passage of time, in the darkness of night and through the shining sunlight, man has each day grown cruel to himself, only to get farther away from his inmost self, which is his sole identity. Someone has rightly said that time never stops for anyone. It only adjudicates man’s actions as vigilant pastor of the supernatural power. In hue and cry or happiness and joy, time conveys myriad meanings in its musical tick-tock. It is for man to gather time’s lessons and learn to decipher his actions and reactions to make reparations in himself and his surroundings. Evolving such astuteness now is being sensitive to social needs and trying to become sentient to blazing social issues. Today our society is not just an identity of a particular community but a global abode that is sending SOS each day to man to stop, save, sustain as a chamberlain of humanity. It is for man to use his mind’s wisdom and his heart’s benevolence and compassion to contribute incrementally to set forth an example for the entire fraternity to follow. 

The recent BP oil massacre in the Gulf of Mexico is a fresh example of how man is daunting his own soil. Not surprisingly enough this incident took place just few months later when United Nations declared the year 2010 as the year of Biodiversity. Affecting a large number of plant and animal species deep in the ocean, this episode is a reminder to man to be alert to the sensitivities of his habitat. This incident and many others over the years are stimulus for man to transform his behavior before it becomes overbearing for creation to nurture life. It is like the saying, if you give some, you get some. For some people such outlook becomes precept of life. The significance of contribution however differs from man to man. Ed Stafford, the British explorer who is currently walking the Amazon and is scheduled to finish his expedition this August is a unique example of human endeavor for conserving nature. Today he is a role model and an inspiration for thousands, many among them are young school children whom Stafford helps aware of the life in rainforests. His Amazon’s adventure blog for kids is part of the Prince of Wales Rainforests project for schools that is leading a social cause against tropical deforestation and climate change. With two most recent instances of how man can lead change through his actions and intentions shows his exceptional strength to cue social change. 

Also, in this process of being (what we really are) and becoming (our potential to be) socially conscious, man has the power to self-motivate or get inspired by good virtues to end this war against survival. He has the key to all those locks that fasten free passage for positive human relations, which are the building blocks of the society. Most importantly man has the gift to perceive through his senses that if he has to begin such transition, it has to be now. Leaving things for the future may only account to more problems; it wouldn’t fix the ones that we are facing today. Learning to act now and voluntarily contributing in crisis intervention at individual or group level, in family, community or national level can save mankind from further regression. It shall serve as a turning point in man’s nature for nature. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” 

Copyright (c) 2009-present Dharbarkha.blogspot

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The Great Socrates

A savant of western philosophy in ancient Greece, Socrates’ quest for life is beautifully versed as, “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves and the world around us”. Today such enlightenment is a treasure for those who believe perspicacity of the surroundings to be paragon of the self. Applying Socratic art of discernment is like an internal compass that can draw our true north, while awakening us to quandaries and solutions through reasoning and rendition. What Socrates always believed in, was questioning about things, what, how and why the way they happen. With an unfastened vision on life, Socratic teachings are like a phenomenon, that if observed can leverage life’s blueprint. As a philosopher he wandered for the unknown, which according to him could be derived from the known. He wasn’t a Management guru, relationship expert or diplomat but his back in the day social prognosis can be an invaluable diagnose to our apprehensions, perceptions and actions in the present day. Socrates’ idea of truth and knowledge was not hearsay but testimony of the actual. Realizing and implementing such insight into practice is one way we can ease our adaptation to change in our own life, lives of other people and the macrocosm. 

If we habituate to Socratic state of mind by putting ourselves to test through open-ended questions related to our thoughts, feelings and actions, or even engage in genesis for our problems and situations, we in a way initiate self-management. Being conscious through such SWOT, we liberate ourselves of fears and biases, attempt at unlearning old practices and learn to be part of a distinctive genre. Such avant-garde exploration of the unknown through self questioning and rumination for the way we are, the way we act, the influence of other’s behavior on us and the means by which we construe the creation around us, we can build acumen as a competitive advantage only to contribute mindfully and intently to the society. This Socratic love for wisdom and intellectualism in each of us can further shape our acuity to live life differently by learning to focus on cause rather than just the effect. So if we relied on grapevine communications more often at work or felt productively occupied with gossip in familial relationships, we will realize that such information spreads like fire, it may have good or bad effect because it’s just a rumor but its cause most of the time remains uncertain as such communication carries partial information, which only astounds problems and gaps and does not improve these.   

Elucidating admiration for Socratic logic and synthesis further, if we feel exhilarated and secured with material wealth, cash on over ambitions to prove our net worth, why do most of us feel stressed out and empty inside-out ? Possibly here too we emphasize on effect, forgetting the cause for such consequence. Why it is that ego, false prestige and greed makes one counterfeit themselves at the cost of sensitive relations? Why jealousy or one-upmanship among parent-child relation leads to clashes? Besides why do often people camouflage in public, while uncovering there real self privately? Also, are ethics and moral values precepts that only a few of us need to follow? Or is our society undergoing an intimidating phase of double standards? These are some questions that as direct dialogue can head start self examination and aid analysis of situations in one’s life. Settings, station and level of understanding of life, ourselves and of people around may differ though. However developing such sagacity is what Socrates called wisdom to answer the enigma of life. 

Copyright (c) 2009 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot  

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Adoption Is A Detour Of Love

As a little girl holding a newborn in my tiny arms was just as sufficing as playing with a new doll. Years later being a mother I felt the joy of million bucks to caress my son to feel his silk in my arms and his chaste in my heart. The weave of emotions that bonded us together was stronger and tighter than the umbilical chord that connected us for nine long months. Since then my home has the aura of my baby’s love and his soulful hugs. Parenting in my view is an enjoying endurance that enshrines us with blessedness. It's a developmental process that consecrates us with positive energy to rear children with love, no matter if they are birthed or adopted. Besides, motherhood being a poignant quality in parenting is like a divine endowment to every woman on this earth who can vent her maternal instincts to simulate colors through sweet lullabies. As a nectar of the spirit, motherhood is every woman’s yearn to cradle life in buoyant emotions, which in a way defines maternity as not just the joy of placenta but the state of motherliness in a woman. The eyes that see a child grow each day, the hands that imbibe faith in religion, peace for humanity, and the heart that seeks these values bud into strength of character, indeed is karma incomparable.

Maternity be it naturally or through fosterage is sharing fervor for raising a child with enriched opportunities. Maternity is also maturity to appreciate the inner wisdom and the power of expression that foments relationships irrespective of the ability to gestate. Like mother Mary who chose to rear Jesus as her own flesh and blood and Yashodha for whom Krishna’s pranks were more enchanting than the whole universe, there is cosmic momentum in any foster relationship. Besides a legal formality of entering into a new parent-child relationship, adoption is also celestial that unites souls across boundaries and beyond destinies. As a process of progression in nursing and nourishing a child, adoption facilitates felicity and fruition in the lineage of humanity. Couples who adopt children to raise them as their own express resilient emotions and rectitude of mind. Their adoptive effort goes a long way in contributing to a humane society where love is not bound by blood. Such unrelated yet unconditional involvement through adoption becomes an apostle of divinity in the society where thoughts and feelings are sometimes fabricated through superficial relationships. 

Adoption in a way is also karmic intervention that fills up vacuums in lives through spreading uncountable smiles. Such sensibility to embrace change in perception and action gives way to happiness over melancholy. In such elucidation, adoption becomes an endorsement of hope and feat that unfolds a child and an adoptive family to a distinctive semblance in life. With a nest of joy and serendipity that has familial security and happiness of home for a child shows the infinite power of adoption that accredits a couple  with compassion, abandons negativity and fears, and empowers a woman while making her capable of motherhood to save her from an emotional erosion. On opening up to such an ethereal vision, we adept ourselves to realize God’s ubiquitous power and his unique ways of making one a mom, ma, ‘la-madre’ or ‘amma’, an identity not through anatomy but the capacity to bestow love and honor a celebration called adoption. 

Copyright (c) 2009-present Dharbarkha.blogspot  

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Unveil The Blindfold Of Justice

To commemorate February, 20th as World day of Social Justice is an honor and an act to manifest the distinction between crime as a violent sin with kindness as a non violent mode of fairness and lawfulness. The visage of justice dates back to the origin of ‘good counsel’ from Themis, the ancient Greek goddess and an embodiment of divine law, who was blindfolded so that she could be an impartial apostle just like any judicial system is today. Nonetheless, our society intermittently contends with phlegmatic acts of terror, which in the eyes of law are poignant for the whole humanity. This ongoing tussle of law and order with transgression and encroachment is an inconspicuous bruising of emotions for the common man. The fact that any judicial system is neutral and works on the basis of evidence in the court of law is a testament that justice is not blind but blindfolded. However any testimony or proof of justice may be manipulated to put a veil on the blindfold. Such tenet of malpractice in the domain of justice is an outcry of moral values, scrupulous thinking and a sense of duty.    

The case of Ruchika Girhotra, a 14 year old girl who was molested by a Senior Cop SPS Rathore way back in the year 1990 in India is a burgeoning incident of judicial impediment. After she made the molestation complaint, Ruchika, her family and friends were tortured leading to Ruchika’s eventual suicide. Her case never saw a light until recently when the perpetrator Rathore was arrested in 2009 for an offense he committed 19 years ago. Ruchika’s case took 400 hearings and 40 adjournments to prove Rathore guilty. The court has now sentenced Rathore 6 months imprisonment with a meager fine of $20. This illustration is not just to raise eyebrows on the victimized and their ordeals or to judge the miscreants and their political power but to stop such persecutions against peace and injustice. Crime and corruption have been there always and perceiving a time when there would be no belligerence at all is like an injury to the conscience, a wound that shall never stop bleeding. It is important to understand that Justice is not judiciary alone but a credo of life, a blueprint of moral success and a modus operandi of a candid mind.

I could state innumerous cases of injustice across the globe while writing this post but that won’t serve any purpose. It won’t give rest to a savaged mind or vehement sensations. It would rather perforate humanity’s merciful saddle and its perspective for an effulgent tomorrow. It is for us to reinstate and internalize the power of honesty, integrity and fair play within and only then can we externalize the decree of justice as a societal charter.  Each one of us has to be an advocate of change to redress any kind of iniquity or misconduct. Just talking about cases like Ruchika Girhotra on facebook or among friends won’t help or show the strength of character.  All of us instead need to stand up to injustices even if they are happening in our families as I write this post. Only then would we be able to win over evil or else law makers shall keep thriving as law breakers to continue their mission of veiling the eyes of law.

Copyright (c) 2009 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
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Greed Is Contemptuous

On the Wall Street greed and fear may be the psychology behind an investment portfolio that helps analyze social, cognitive and emotional moves behind a financial decision but on the main street, greed is simply a social evil. As a ramification of a scornful mind, greed is a derisive act, which pushes us to an overwhelming desire for more and an unending hunger for money, temporal pleasures to faking relationships and hurting other’s emotions. Greed is not about acquiring wealth and getting richer. It actually is like entering a glittering passage to experience the darkness of ignorance and concealment that robs us of our moral values and good deeds to ultimately make us poor.

If King Siddhartha, more commonly known as the erstwhile Gautama Buddha had been greedy, this world would have been deprived of Buddhism’s spiritual teachings and awakenings. If Aristotle had been greedy, a comprehensive system of western philosophy of morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics and metaphysics would have remained obscure. Had avarice been the motive behind Wright brother’s gliders and jet plane inventions, long distance travel would still have been a mystery. Moreover, had Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and other revolutionists been grabby, freedom would have remained a word coined just in encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Greed is a negative emotion that has multiple hidden faces and can lead to pseudo-behaviors that spoil the harmony in relationships and sanctity in humanity. Power through unethical means, satisfying lust through extramarital affairs, breeding violence and extremism through terrorism, wealth maximization through stock scams and fraudulent practices, reaping higher profits margins through selling fake and defected products, are some common illustrations of greed. One of the fundamental principles of greed starts with ‘I, Me, and Myself’. Knowingly or unknowingly such feeling is the greed for control, the home of ego and the state of prejudice.

Like other negative emotions, greed too can take any form and slowly alienate us from valuable moments and small pleasures of life. Joy and gratification that we experience in love or a hearty laugh can be viciously eaten by greed. To illustrate further on this, trading educated and professionally competent sons for material wealth is a common practice that revolves around the concept of marriages in India. Unfortunately even if the girl is well educated, cultured and belongs to a respectable family, she still is weighed against money and material assets in a greedy trade-off. Predominance of such behavior in the form of greed in a sacred institution like marriage disturbs the theme and belief that marriages are made in heaven. More importantly, such behavior blots the initiation of new relationship between two individuals and two families that can otherwise begin with a positive note and on a leveled turf. If greed is the culture our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are made to breed, then our society is certainly heading fast towards an apocalypse of hope, optimism, trust and respect in human relationships. An educated and matured women once said to me, ‘Do you think dowry death cases that are reported in the press and media are really true? I don’t believe it.’ Her conscious statement perhaps had a subconscious message. She may have been sailing the same dowry boat when she married her son and her statement was a mode to conceal her emotions and greedy self.

Bitter, yet true, such is the veil of greed that superimposes the real us. It takes us to a no-return point in life and in relationships to ultimately distance us from our family and children. Greed also takes us to a mental and emotional level where genuine love, impartial actions, honesty and sincerity seem inferior to abounding wealth. Erich Fromm, a German social psychologist and humanistic philosopher rightly said, ‘Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction’. Some of the ways to get out of greedy shackles is to limit our desires so that aspirations today do not become over ambitions tomorrow. Also, valuing relationships more than material assets is yet another way to track greedy behavior as relationships may be broken just in seconds but it takes a life to mend them back. Most importantly, as parents we should be cautious of not deterring from our morality and ethics. If we have greed nesting in us today how would we stop our children from such an unhealthy contagion tomorrow?

Copyright (c) 2009-Present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
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A Conversation on Faith

The other day an interesting piece of dialogue on religion caught my attention in ‘letters to editor’ section in the Foreign policy magazine. An exchange of views on Islam and its perceived partake on fundamentalism seemed to be the debate between Sam Harris and Karen Armstrong. Both the writers shared their sagacity on the issue and in a way inspired me. An argument on religion, in my view, is particularly sensitive, be it Islam or any other form. This however does not mean that in order to discuss religion one needs to be a prophetic or an authoritarian on system of beliefs. Any religion, according to me, is a system of religiosity, a doctrine for oneness and communion not only with God or the Holy Scriptures but within us and with others. Such veneration for religion, Islam, Christianity or so many other forms is actually our faith or an allegiance with principles that we are born and brought up with. So how can any religion create an antagonistic pattern? But we people who represent different forms of religious identities sure can. It’s our thinking-feeling patterns and obviously our perceptions and sometimes social/community pressures that incite us to trespass creed. 

As for ‘fundamentalism’, it is a component that seems to be present in most religions. Such ideals sometimes act as foundations leading to fanatics, a state of extreme emotions. This extremism can be our ‘good or bad’ emotions and no religion in my perspective would motivate us to act against humanity or the ideals to preserve it. In my view, focal for any religion is faith, a foundation that inspires to love and be loved. Such zeal is always deep inside; it just needs to penetrate our heart and mind to see all human beings as unique, all religions as equal and all fundamental principles as single entity that respect dignity in humanitarian relationships. Also, human nature and the capability of our mind as a dense and dynamic characteristic, sometimes forges us to affliction in the name of religion. How deeply is it justified using God as an instrument of disharmony or associating devotion with emotionally charged movements that may benefit few in the society? Having an eye for faith, on the other hand, can seed our theological desires and help us to internalize happiness in whatever religious identity our destiny brought us into.

Copyright (c) 2009-present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
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Sarcasm is a Social Phenomenon

Time and again, sarcasm has been mankind’s behavioral predisposition as his tyranny on nature to unjustly abuse the powers of mind.  Such faculties have brutally pillaged us of fellow feelings to be our navigators in a social setup. A society is far deeper than just the evolution of humanity or a group of communities. As a structured system of human organization and communal conjugation, society means sustaining camaraderie to penetrate hearts with feelings like empathy and not cynicism or mockery. However, the amplitude of our mind like a magnet attracts the atrocious sooner than the admirable in any situation, which makes us susceptible to social impediments. 

As a spectacle of our identity and the jurisdiction of our mind, sarcasm is a parasite for co-existence that hurts most of us in the wrong place. It starts within families, extends to communities and wobbles societies. As a stubborn child, it is mulish on downgrading others through remarks, bitterness and derision to preserve the egotistic us. Sarcasm, as a habit grows on us and slowly separates us from our conscience. It routes us to a state where we find pleasure in criticizing, backbiting, fabricating truth, perjury and defaming others. Such infiltration of emotions and crossing over relationship territories disturbs alignments in kinship, co-worker efficacy, parent-child associations and familial accord, thereon pushing us to greater social imbalances like racism, gender discrimination and non-egalitarianism.

I remember somebody once invited me and my family over and while we were having lunch, the hostess ambushed me sarcastically. For a moment I let silence fill in. However, later on I could sense that somebody else’s nastiness as a motive to defame me was the basis for the hostess’s sarcasm. As a minute illustration therefore of how sarcasm works shows the ways we betray each other knowingly or unknowingly to scroll over pride and prejudices. Imagine our little children picking such damaging demeanor from us that could clog their positive personality development. Sometimes the whole idea behind sarcasm perturbs me for who knows that this may be the seed sown in young minds to instigate one’s fanatical character for terror and turmoil for humanity. As an anomaly from our inner identity, sarcasm secretly creates antagonistic pattern in a society to birth a phenomenon incurable for an ethical, impartial and equitable society. The decision to scion a new beginning hence is on us, now or never.

Copyright (c) 2009 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
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