The divine, magical sound of gurbani

 

I have been listening to bhajans since early childhood but it is only in the past couple of years that I fell under the divine spell of shabad gurbani.

And once I began listening to the heavenly voices of ragis such as Bhai Harjinder Singh Ji, Bhai Satvinder Singh Ji, Bhai Joginder Singh Ji Riar, and other blessed souls, I just couldn’t stop. 

It is as if amrit (nectar) in the form of sound is flowing into the very core of my being. No wonder gurbani is also known as amritbani.

“Tohi mohi, mohi tohi, antar kaisa?…” (You are me and I am you—what’s the difference?)

“Sawal sunder Ramaiya, mera mann laga tohe…” (My dark and beautiful Lord, my heart belongs to you)

“Aao sakhi har mel kareha…” (Come my friend, let’s experience union with the divine)

“Aisa naam niranjan hoye, je ko mann jane mann koye…” (The name of the Spotless One is enshrined truly within a devotee’s heart)

These and many more soul-stirring shabads have filled my life ever since. They are the words of saint-poets and gurus like Kabir and Guru Ram Das and mainly taken from Guru Granth Sahib.

Sometimes, I’m unable to decipher the meaning of individual words but the whole composition, often playing on loop, makes perfect sense. 

Before long, feelings of harmonious balance, abiding peace, and deep gratitude take root in my heart. The mind’s petty objections give way to a more exalted existence. Compassion and understanding flow freely.

I come away drenched in bliss.

Here are some YouTube links you may want to try or share with your loved ones: Mera mann laga tohe, Aisa naam niranjan, Bhinni rainarhiye chamkan taare, Tumri sharan tumhari aasa, Kabir tu tu karta tu hua

The many joys of doing ‘walking meditation’

 

The image of Buddha sitting in meditation is etched in our hearts. But there’s another way the Enlightened One practiced meditation, and he enjoyed it greatly: Walking meditation.

After tens of thousands of mindful steps, I realize why it’s such a lovely thing. You are doing two of the best things a human being can possibly do: walking as well as meditating.

How can it be? Aren’t you supposed to sit still while doing meditation?

True, that’s the usual way meditation is practiced. But walking meditation is a bit different. Let me share a few observations from my own experience.

There are different ways and purposes of walking. You could be walking because your car broke down and you didn’t get a ride. You might be walking to school, which is not far away. Or maybe you are just hurrying to the market to pick up groceries.

In such routine acts of walking, our focus is mainly on the task at hand: to reach our destination, to get something from a place, to fulfill an objective.

There are some other reasons to walk as well, like when you are hiking. That’s like a sporting or outdoor activity you enjoy.

So, what does it mean to walk and meditate?

It means infusing your walk with the ease, simplicity, and bliss of meditation. It means to practice mindfulness while walking.

How you do that is by taking quiet, slow steps and observing your breath.

By not being in a hurry to reach anywhere but enjoying the very act of walking.

By looking around you in peace, even if you happen to be in an otherwise chaotic city.

By keeping this in your mind even as you take the next step: we are all connected to each other and to objects and phenomena in the universe. By seeing some of these connections happen or transform into another connection.

By being full of gratitude for the life you have been given, for your ability to walk, for the wonder of observing things that are nothing short of miracles: a bird singing, a flower in bloom, a tree swaying in the wind, a star-spangled sky, a horizon full of possibilities.

By simply walking at a pace that’s in harmony with your soul’s yearning.

By observing the joy rising inside you as you keep walking, not keeping track of time.

By smiling at the thought of having the better sense to have left your smartwatch back at home.

By wishing all sentient beings the same peace and happiness you are feeling right now.

That, my dear, is how you do walking meditation, IMHO.

Happy walking.

Happy meditating.

Happy doing walking meditation.

Totally useless reflections of a somewhat useful man

Image by Amariei Mihai on Unsplash

 

Where does time go? 

And what have you done in all that time?

Could you have done more?

After thousands of years of civilization and centuries of creating clocks, we still haven’t figured out “time”.

So, why do we allow this ungraspable beast to be one of the most defining measures of our life?

As I look back on my years on Earth, the fabric of time appears tattered, full of visible stitches.

“Mujhko bhi tarkeeb sikha koi yaar julahe,” Gulzar’s soulful yearning for the weaver’s ability to stitch the warp and weft of life as if it was never torn echoes in my mind as I embark upon these musings.

I had a thousand reasons to do the things I did, to take the decisions I ended up taking—landing exactly where I am today. Some of them were logical, most now seem illogical, driven primarily by the need of the moment or the less-than-perfect context we all operate with.

But there’s one single reason to rule them all: destiny. 

“Aakhir destiny bhi koi cheez hai,” I recall the words of Dhirubhai Ambani spoken for an occasion I forget. (Translation: After all, there’s something called destiny.)

I used to have many regrets but, ever since I started on my meditative journey a few years back, they have more or less melted away in the sea of existence. Waves come and go, come and go…until all I see is a tranquil ocean of happy peace.

Happy peace? What’s that? (Let's keep it for some other time, dear.)

Well, what perhaps still riles or amuses some of my friends is the innumerable number of job-switches I made in my career.

Career. What a funny word, loaded with effort, time, and tricks of fate.

There you go: time to face “time” again. Sometime back, I had written a post on “a quarter century” of my career and the lessons I learned along the way.

This time around, I’ve got news for you. There’s no longer any career as far as I’m concerned.

While you could attribute some of that to ChatGPT and its ilk, it’s mostly about reaching an age (and a stage) where you want to pick a few things out of the many thrown your way—and see what gives.

For me, one clear benefit of all those frequent “career moves” is that I’ve made lots of friends (In fact, I’m notorious for turning my bosses as well juniors into friends over time). 

Thankfully, they all throw something or the other to me every once in a while: “Catch, Sanjay!”

So, I catch some of those opps and let others bounce off.

But isn’t that an unpredictable, risky way to earn a living, you ask?

In reply, I would just say, from experience as well as some foresight, “Well, have you heard of the best laid plans of mice and men?” (The phrase is courtesy of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.)

All in all, people and most gods have been kind to me. Why, I have lived a fairly good, interesting life—and continue to look forward to the full-tosses and googlies in equal measure.

By monetary yardsticks, I have been moderately successful. Which is perfect for a guy who never ran after money and possibly never will (In retaliation, money didn’t run after me either, which is okay, for we both took a little walk together nonetheless.)

Besides, how much money would anyone need if they want to spend it on books, chai, and music?

Now, coming back to time, I don’t know how much of it is left—in absolute terms or for me per se. 

And, by the way, what happens to time when our crazy ways have brought apocalypse to the human race? (I have this hunch that not all species will go extinct before we do.)

Will the insects and the birds and the horses worry about where the hell did all the time go?

No, time will not tell!

Neither can I.

Let’s “circle back” in a few years, shall we?

Buh-bye for now.

AIs Have Patterns; Humans Have Memories

 

Image by Claire on Unsplash

“Nostalgia is a sweet, incurable disease,” I remember posting this on one of my social feeds sometime back.

Now, why did this particular thought—and not anything else—surface as I began writing this post?

My best guess is that this post is about memories and AI, and because I’m generally a nostalgic creature, that’s what my brain came up with. But we would never know for sure.

These days, the increasingly capable AIs remember a lot of things, including from past conversations with you. And they are getting better at providing more relevant or contextual answers to your prompts.

But…but…

For all their monstrous computational prowess and the supposed ‘smarts’ of remembering, the AIs do not have memories—certainly not in the way humans have.

What the AIs have is a vast pool of data and the blazing-fast ability to pick out a matching pattern. It’s all statistics, mathematics, algorithms…and yes, the brute force of hundreds or thousands of CPUs and GPUs.

They can do all of that pattern-matching ad infinitum. But they have zero memories. None whatsoever.

It’s humans who have memories.

It’s humans who are transported back to a joyous moment in childhood at the touch of a scent from a favorite savory. 

It’s humans who zip across time to relive their crazy youth when a song from their college days turns up on the playlist.

And it’s humans again when a blurry video—stored somewhere in the AI cloud—of their wedding makes it vivid like it was yesterday, even when it’s played thirty or forty or fifty years later. 

The sounds, sights, and smells associated with each memory come calling to the doorstep of our mind as well.

AI can mimic (read ‘steal’) our art, our stories, our music. But it can never stop us from creativity and imagination (unless all you choose to do is watch reels and give bad prompts). 

And, of course, no AI can make and cherish memories like we humans do. Thankfully.

Why The Hitchhiker’s Guide continues to make you laugh after all these years

 

There’s science fiction and there’s science fiction. 

 

And then there’s the adorable, zany, laugh-out-loud fictional world created by Douglas Adams.

 

I recently re-read the late author’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—after more than 30 years. Not only did I find it fresh as ever, I liked it even more this time around. You can say I’ve grown up—or maybe down—a bit, I don’t know.

 

What I know for sure is that the crazy characters conjured up by Adams immediately cast their spell on you and wouldn’t let go without tickling you senseless. Merely reading the wacky names can send ripples of laughter down your spine.

 

Let’s try out a few:

 

Zaphod Beeblebrox.

 

Slartibartfast.

 

Vroomfondel.

 

Lunkwill and Fook.

 

Oh my dog, what a book!

 

I do not intend to make this post into a book review—there must be gazillions of them out there already.

 

What I’m doing here, instead, is picking out some of the most delicious excerpts and serving them up for your linguistic taste buds.

 

Now, this Zaphod guy is the President of the Galactic Government. Adams describes him as “roughly humanoid except for the extra head and third arm.” There’s a scene in which he is addressing a press conference to unveil a new starship. One particularly comic sentence about Zaphod’s peculiar body stands out:

 

“The robot camera homed in for a close-up on the more popular of his two heads and he waved again.” 

 

The more popular of his two heads…hahaha!

 

The Vogons from the planet Vogsphere depicted in the book are a weird lot. This passage about Vogon and other galactic poetry will have you in splits:

 

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

 

In case you are wondering about the worst poetry, Adams conferred that honor on a human:

 

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth. 

 

At one point, the protagonist of the book, Arthur Dent, is talking with Ford Prefect, his co-traveler from another planet, just before the duo is about to be thrown out from a Vogon spacecraft:

 

"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."

 

"Why, what did she tell you?"

 

"I don't know, I didn't listen.”

 

As you can see, Douglas Adams’s ability to create humor out of thin air is nothing less than stellar—pun intended.

 

And it’s not all mindless humor (though you wouldn’t mind it for the fun element): Adams sometimes takes digs at issues afflicting earthlings in the real world. Sample the satire about over-tourism spoiling the environment:

 

The introduction [to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] begins like this:

 

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..." and so on.

 

(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.)

 

Brilliantly imagined satire, isn’t it?

 

This one is an absolute favorite of mine. The scene is that Slartibartfast, a designer of planets, is met by Arthur Dent at a crater on the surface of Magrathea (where new planets are made on demand). A robot by the name of Marvin is also with Arthur but it is a bit far and Slartibartfast is not sure if the two of them are together.

 

He [Slartibartfast] pointed down into the crater.

 

"Is that robot yours?" he said.

 

"No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine."

 

Imagine a robot saying: “I’m mine”!

 

(For all you know, ChatGPT might soon disown being owned by Sam Altman or OpenAI!)

 

In the same scene, old Slartibartfast, too, delivers a snarky punch that will make you chuckle with delight.

 

“Come,” called the old man, “come now or you will be late.”

 

"Late?" said Arthur. "What for?"

 

"What is your name, human?"

 

"Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur.

 

"Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly. 

 

Besides the humor, you also marvel at how Adams describes certain things in his own unique way. The concept of bigness and infinity, for instance.

 

"I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too ... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you."

 

Arthur made nervous noises.

 

Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly, "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight." The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

 

It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.

 

And here’s the last one for this post—another gem from Marvin, the robot aptly described as an “electronic sulking machine”:

 

Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust.

 

"Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing?"

 

"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came a muffled drone.

 

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.

 

"Very depressed."

 

"What's up?"

 

"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

 

I didn’t get this one on first reading, but then it dawned on me and I couldn’t help but smile.

 

That’s it for now, fellow earthlings. Do keep smiling and laughing.

 

Thank you for reading!