New Sense

One day Two Buddhist Monks who were on a long journey approached a raging river. On the river bank stood a beautiful young lady. She approached them asking for help to cross the river as she feared drowning. The first monk walked ignored her and crossed the river. The second monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river. He placed her down, they parted ways with woman and on they went with their journey.

As the journey went on, the second monk could see some concern on the other monk’s mind, he asked what was wrong. The monk replied, “how could you carry her like that? You know we can’t touch women, it’s against our way of life”. The second monk answered, “I left the woman at the rivers edge a long way back, why are you still carrying her?”

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This has to be one of my favorite zen stories. I have narrated this story so many times that I have lost count and each time I narrate it, I appreciate it a little more…

What I have realised is that its very easy in life to get carried away with the flow of information. I have always been vary of the thoughts I was carrying with me and the disadvantages of their burden.

Very often we carry with us just a singular opinion of an incident and with that come assumptions and prejudice. Things change over time, the perpetrators forget the incident and yet we continue holding onto the assumptions and prejudice. I think it was Buddha who once said “Being angry at someone is like holding onto a burning piece of coal to throw it at them, we are the only ones getting burnt”

One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn in life is that no matter how good you are, no matter how well planned you execute a task it will never make everyone happy. And that sometimes the only way to get the peace of mind you seek is to simply let go.

I believe in jinxes. I am generally not a very superstitious person but there are somethings I cant get myself to do. I believe at in some level doing one act will jinx doing something else or ruin its progress.

For one, if I ever have to do something that I believe is very important to me… I don’t like to talk about it before hand. I always fear that when someone hears about it and exclaims “Wow you are doing that… Cool”(I get that sometimes), I am jinxed to either give up on doing it or something else randomly happens that takes all the fun out of doing whatever.

I know its a mental block and the pattern has happened too few times to even make it a proper pattern but the thought is always there.

Another jinx I believe in has got to do with birthday wishes(few of my friends know this one). I believe that what ever I wish on my birthday I will definitely get it, just that I will never get it in the way I originally wanted. This is a odd funny jinx but has been coming true for the last three years. The odd thing is that for two of the three years when I made the wish I believed I had wished for something I would never have. By the next birthday the wish had come true and turned sour… This year I made a wish after my friends insisted I make it, that came true within just two weeks but dammit not the way I wanted!

The reason I talk about all this today is I believe I finally broke another jinx I had… With that I now believe I can get my mind over fate and conquer my other jinxes.

This jinx was a part of me for over a decade. It started one day when I told my friend a story I was planning to write. He was a close friend and after listening to the story said he thought it was average… Average from a close friend mean a little better than pathetic. I never wrote that story.

It happened a couple of times later when I told someone a story/blog/concept before writing it and never wrote it. Sometimes they loved it too much that I felt too satisfied to write it…

But last week something odd happened. I sat down and told a story to my teacher and a couple of close friends, this story had been lingering in my mind for a year now and I never got around to write it. They listened to it intently for over 45 minutes… During that time their rapt attention to my story telling convinced me it was time to get a move on things. I got valuable feedback about parts that created a doubt in my mind but most important of all they made me feel alive with a zest to finish this.

I believe in jinxes but now I also believe that they disappear one day.

In the words of House:

Ah, my birthday. Normally I’d put on a festive hat and celebrate the fact that the Earth has circled the Sun one more time; I really didn’t think it was going to make it this year, but darn it if it wasn’t the little planet that could all over again

Honestly, Im not as cynical of celebrating birthdays as House but I am very critical of it coming just once a year. I believe everyone should celebrate their birth every day of their life… Actually its not crazy as it sounds, whats the whole point of celebrating every 365.25 days anyway? (Im just saying)

Actually I think birthdays are more for moms, I dont think all the struggle I have done thru my life is even a small faction of what I caused her while I was in her womb…

So while i receive wishes from ppl all day; with every wish, I remember my mom once more

You can pay back someone who gives you something you need,
But you can never payback someone who makes you realize, when you are most in need…

Today marks the 5th anniversary of my blog. Its amazing looking back at the time I first created this space, I wouldn’t have ever imagined being where I am today… Thru the many phases of life in these years this space has always been and will hopefully remain a little sacred to me.

According to my profile page of the blog, it turns out that I had crossed my 1000th post a couple of posts back Well here are some stats from that page:
Created on 2005-05-20 10:45:17
1001 posts. 3,926 comments received, 2,954 comments posted

A special thank you to all my readers, its you who has kept me motivated to eventually see this day. Hope have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy my little space on the Internet