I AM ALIVE!

When "Nothing" Happens.

I had always this confusion.

From the very beginning, when I was admitted in the school.

Now at 72, I think, maybe, this happens to everyone. Most of us just don't know that we don't know! We are even quite unaware also that we were not aware.

This is going a bit messy. 

So let me come straight to the point.

The title could either mean - 

Nothing important happens, 

Or,

Anything whatever, that is expected or likely to happen doesn't take place.

For example you do some experiment, and you know nothing about what you want to do or find out by doing this.

Or, you're in a new situation you never had been before now.

A single example may help in what I want to say. 

My elder brother took me to the school where there were boys of my age and only a few of them were acquainted with any other. All were just alone, new and no one knew what to talk about another. So all we were sitting silent. Then the teacher gave us an exercise to do. It was simple for me, because I had been doing it at home since a week ago.

Simply I had to write down the alphabet. Some of them had never done this before coming in the class. They too were just silent, may be waiting for when the class is over and they return to home.

Fortunately for me, soon the class was concluded and we rushed to go back to home.

This was to go on like this the next few days. But from the next day we started to know one another by name. We opened up by and by and started to play and talk with others. Soon we formed groups of 2 or more, of our own. We soon knew who lives where and who can we come with.

We finished a week and then there was a holiday. Occasionally there would be so many school days and a few holidays in between. Summarily, we got accustomed to the regime.

In the end of the year, there was exam. We didn't have any idea about what it meant. But later on it turned out it was but an exercise in writing the alphabet, a few words and small sentences, giving answer to simple questions about our day to day life. There was a oral session and we all passed the exam.

Then we used to utter the phrase -

Nothing happened! 

In this way I passed the school and had to join the college. Then there I passed the graduation but Nothing happened. 

Then I tried hard to get some suitable  employment but Nothing happened.

Finally I got a clerical job. I learned the practices I had to perform in the office.

But nothing happened!

I was but flowing in the stream, trying to somehow survive and return to home in the evening. This went on like this for a few years, but Nothing happened. I was not even aware what I was expecting to happen. In comparison, all my friends knew well and were certain about what they wanted to do and had been working cleverly to attain their immediate goal. They were living in the "Now" howsoever small or long interval of their own time. They may have been successful, failed or frustrated, happy or unhappy. They knew what is meant by achievement. I, on the other hand was just waiting and passing the time. I couldn't see what worthwhile may "happen"  and what I should expect. Then I realized, everyone in life keeps on dreaming all the time in the life. Either about the past or about the future.. I, on the other hand never knew about what exactly I have to achieve in the imagined future that would not be "Nothing".

Really, Nothing whatsoever happened.

My well-wishers, friends and others who knew me began to tell me that I was just useless and disgruntled and don't know 

What Life / World is all about.

Be serious, get married, run the life if a normal person.

You are just wasting away your precious life and opportunities to achieve success. Maybe you are going to end up your life in aimless pursuations and making out yourself a laughing stock for all those others who are concerned of you.

I was really so, I attended only all those immediate things like my job and how to make myself happy all the times. It's not that I was a kind of a stoic, an ascetic or one inclined to find out about God or the one who aspired to become a religious or spiritual teacher -vwhatever this means. Now I see I was just driven by the flow of life and not even I was curious enough to find out answers to those questions like -

What Life / World is all about,

If really there is someone a person or an agency be whatever its name and form that might have built / created all this existence around myself and  the world where I find myself day to day.

It never occurred to me that I really need such a God at all. It was just a superficial idea that I felt a useless and irrelevant one.

But just as I told you in the earlier lines, I was somehow just flowing in and along the stream of life that was not "my" or of "others" but was there just because of some coincidence or a chance I had fallen into.

Till now "Nothing Happened!"

Then my attention was drawn to the reality, the situation that I was, and then this question arose in me that had been really forcing me so for all the time. It was like the undercurrent and I was just floating in the surface. Then for the first time I was serious. The question causing a deep gorge in me where I had to go through a free fall within it. But I wasn't scared at all. Not a bit. This free fall took me to meditation. The aimless purposeless following the force that was drawing me within myself. Involuntarily all my mental wanderings came to stop.  I was in a vacuum. This vacuum was indeed splendid, literally gorgeous.

So, there was a deep gorge that was swallowing me,  and I had no control over the situation.

This was a fantastic silence, full of wonderment, tranquility, stillness and Peace.

Still I survived but all my recognition and recognization of myself was just lost, vanished irretrievably.

In the beginning, initially there was also a great consternation because I didn't know what was really going to "happen". However the Silence, the vacuum and the Peace prevailed and I was drenched and soaked into it. I became the very thing, merged into, dissolved into it that had swallowed me alive

I AM ALIVE. 

Still "Nothing Happened!"

Life continues though.

I am alive.

(UNEDITED and VERBATIM)

***

 

In the Plant-kingdom

Silent Dialogues 333

This series of silent dialogues started in 1995, when I used to go on my morning and evening walks in a locality near and around Mahanandanagar, UJJAIN (MP). At that time I was living at the address :

LIG II A 18/15.

This address was published there in my Hindi Translation : अहं ब्रह्मास्मि 

of the English original I AM THAT,  :

The Talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, compiled and translated from Marathi.

After that much waters have flown in the Ganges and the Kumbha 2025 has told this all over the whole world.

After about 25 years I once again got in touch with my Ashwattha near a small village in Ujjain, while I was living in the Sethinagar area.

The same duo was there in the :

Hathi-Park,

Earlier in 1989-1994 also I was there.

This was the place where I had time to go through this world-renowned work of Maurice Frydmann - I AM THAT.

There was an inner impulse that I felt "This book needs to be translated into Hindi." 

This was indeed the inevitable internal urge that forced me to do this myself.

However after a short while I left the place and went to Omkareshwar where I started this great enterprise.

Within 10 years this happened and the first edition was published by Chetana in 2001.

It's a bit strange coincidence that at that time in the year 2000, I was thinking of living at Kashi and had a chance-visit to :

Krishnamurti Foundation, situated at - Rajaghat Varanasi. 

If my memory is correct, Kashi Railway-Station was at a walking distance from there.

Mentally I was in a state of leaving out the world and living in that area where old people often to pass their last days on the earth.

Providence / Destiny had something else for me in store. 

Now, after those days in 2000, have gone away, I find myself again in the same old situation.

In the Hathi-Park when I approached the Ashwattha, he was greatly pleased and as in the old days expressed His wish to hug me. I went to Him and clasped Him in my grasp.

Seeing me The Little was also overjoyed.

When the few long moments ultimately passed away, He asked me :

"Why did you returned  from Kashi? You could have taken a plunge into Ganges and passed the rest of the days there, leaving all concerns of your life at the hands of Shiva, Who always looks after you anyway, even if you forget or doubt Him.

I was taken aback.

He was a bit cruel - I felt.

Cruel but Kind too.

I realized.

This means He is hinting me to go again there. Instead I took my old devotion and passion for the Mother Narmada River and She too arranged my visit at a place where I can have a darshana everyday,  any time in Her shelter.

Ashwattha however reminded me of the following stanzas from the Gita :

आरुरुक्षोर्मुनेर्योगं कर्म कारणमुच्यते। 

योगारूढस्य तस्यैव शमः कारणमुच्यते।।३।।

यदा हि नेन्द्रियार्थेषु न कर्मस्वनुषज्जते। 

सर्वसंकल्पसन्न्यासी योगारूढस्तदोच्यते।।४।।

(अध्याय ६)

अश्वत्थः सर्ववृक्षाणां देवर्षिणां च नारद।

गन्धर्वाणां चित्ररथः सिद्धानां कपिलो मुनिः।।२६।।

(अध्याय १०)

अनपेक्षः शुचिर्दक्षः उदासीनो गतव्यथः। 

सर्वारम्भपरित्यागी यो मद्भक्तः स मे प्रियः।।२७।।

(अध्याय १२)

Sitting on a bench some 15-20 feet away from Him, I was listening to His words when my memory translated them in the above verses of Gita.

I've nothing to do now.

Watching the River flow before my eyes, I am now just passing my days in silence.

***

 

Walking in the Dark

Ignorance, Doubt, Sceptic,

अज्ञश्च अश्रद्दधानश्च संशयात्मा

-------------------©-------------------

Light on the path.

--

Through the dense woods,

Walking in the Dark,

I was ignorant of my self,

I was doubtful of my self,

I was sceptic of my self.

Though I knew : I am, 

Yet didn't exactly :

Who or What I am / was / is. 

The sprawling dense dark woods,

Were a challenge and an urgency, 

An emergency, evoking in me the urge, 

To explore, discover and find out:

Who or What exactly, 

Is / Was / Am, 

The thing named 'I'.

That was the spirit behind the journey,

I took up and went through, seeking out, 

In my endeavor, in enthusiasm.

I clinged to the mere, bare thread of "I",

Remembered and recalled the same. 

I never let it slip away from my clinch,

Through the dark dense far-flung woods,

I never cared for the dread of the sounds, 

That kept haunting me from behind, 

Neither was allured by those calls,

That tried to catch my attention ahead,

Undaunted, unwavering, bit adamant too, 

Stubborn, obstinate, and haughty,

I kept on walking like the blindfold.

The remembrance, the call from the within,

Was the thread that I never let loose,

I never let it slip away from my grip.

Through the dark dense woods, 

Finally and ultimately, 

I discovered the very source of the light, 

Where-from came out this ray of I am. 

I discovered I was / is / am, 

The ray, the source and the light, 

That illuminated me, the world, 

And the deep, dense, dark woods, 

Yet is utterly calm, cool, detached as well, 

From everything else, 

Yet is also all and everything.

--

I AM THAT, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

My Hindi Translation of 

I AM THAT.

अहं ब्रह्मास्मि
श्री निसर्गदत्त महाराज.
--
Vinay Kumar Vaidya,
L/161, Maha-Shakti-Nagar,
Ujjain (M.P.)
I N D I A.
vinayvaidya111@yahoo.com
vinayvaidya111@gmail.com
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