We have always seen the type of kickass Chinese movies in which the hero leaps into the weaving of his body into boy scout knots, apparently forgetting that there is a concept called rigidity. It is in these movies that we hear dialogues thrown at us that are deeper than Shah Rukh Khan's cheeks. To be honest, we see them first, because of the dubbing delay, but that's not the point. These dialogues are usually thrown with a flourish by the Master of the hero, usually called the Prancing Peacock of the Eastern Shrub Meadow or something of the sort. Now these dialogues bring about an epiphany in the life of the hero, and he immediately gains immense strength and proceeds to give the movie an oriental fairy tale ending.
I have often wondered if those things made any sense, because half the time they fell on my ears, I was engrossed in eating pizza. I have said before that someone with nothing better to do can find philosophy in the most mundane of things. Now I'd be a liar if I said I was busy at the time, and a hypocrite if I didn't try.
One of the lines I seem to recall was, "You see, but you do not see." That got me thinking a bit. Mutual contradictions have no logical starting point, people who have arguments with their mothers and/or girlfriends know this predicament very well, so its rather difficult to analyse this rationally. So, for a person who was at a point where life got interesting when he changed his brand of cornflakes, what was better than to try it out?
Let's begin at the obvious. What do we see? Well, at the moment, I see tiny pixels appearing on the white background of my laptop screen, I see my hands typing, I see my dog sleeping peacefully and I am overcome with a sudden urge to pop a plastic bag behind her. What, you might say is so deep about that? When you boil it down to the basics, what I'm essentially doing is labeling things according what I've been taught or conditioned to believe before I could even drink my baby formula, let alone formulate my own concepts. But here I am, thinking to myself, that what if, I had had no conditioning whatsoever in the last 20 something years of my life? What if every step I took led me to something new? What would I do? Now it is at this point that one would expect a life changing epiphany of sorts. But you'd be wrong. Being humans, all of us are painfully prone to doing the stupidest things possible in any given situation. And hence, what I would have started doing was that I'd start labeling things.
All of us have an internal co ordinate system that enables us to comprehend our surroundings by placing it at a certain point in this system.This is the epicenter of labeling. If we look at Megan Fox, she's immediately assigned a high value on the hot axis, a puppy would be found on the cute axis, whereas if one looks at, say, Bappi Lahiri, he'd be found at the apex of the awesome axis. Chuck Norris would just destroy the entire co ordinate system for fun. Either way, labeling is an instinctive reaction to any human being when faced with something new.
What's wrong with that? You might ask while sipping your evening tea. A lot, as it turns out. There is a concept called "living in the moment", which you may have heard in a rather 60's context along with words like "groovy" or "rad". There is
some weight to the idea, in my opinion. Living in the moment would mean taking leave of all your senses.(in a VERY literal way, otherwise you might end up splattered up a tree trunk.) Now one might imagine it to be easy. Why, I can close my eyes, muff up my ears, pinch my nose, wear a thick sweater and track pants, and not open my mouth. Voila! Total sensory deprivation! But there's another obstacle in your way. Thought.
Ceaseless, continuous thought. To simply put how it prevents you from being in the moment, consider this.
How easy is it to stop thinking? Just close your eyes, and try not to think about anything. you might consider yourselves lazy bums, like me, but our brains beg to differ. A continuous feed of thought is what our brains demand, and inevitably get. And in the process of comprehending any thought, the moment passes.
You look at a rose. You see that it is pretty, you think it smells nice, you find it pricks. The time required by our nervous system to send the message to our brain, however infinitesimal it may be, is enough for the moment to pass. For the ones unfortunate enough to be learning DSP, let me put it this way. the moment is an impulse signal. It tends to zero. you can't pinpoint its temporal location because of the simple fact that in the time taken to pinpoint it, it passes. It needs to be experienced, it needs to be passed through, not searched for. And the most effective way to do that, in my experience, is to let loose. To let go of all your inhibitions, conditions, doubts, or any other mental manifestations your brain might create to validate it's existence.
To be in the moment, in one simple sentence, one must be willing to be brainless. And that, ironically is what all of us are most afraid of.
I have often wondered if those things made any sense, because half the time they fell on my ears, I was engrossed in eating pizza. I have said before that someone with nothing better to do can find philosophy in the most mundane of things. Now I'd be a liar if I said I was busy at the time, and a hypocrite if I didn't try.
One of the lines I seem to recall was, "You see, but you do not see." That got me thinking a bit. Mutual contradictions have no logical starting point, people who have arguments with their mothers and/or girlfriends know this predicament very well, so its rather difficult to analyse this rationally. So, for a person who was at a point where life got interesting when he changed his brand of cornflakes, what was better than to try it out?
Let's begin at the obvious. What do we see? Well, at the moment, I see tiny pixels appearing on the white background of my laptop screen, I see my hands typing, I see my dog sleeping peacefully and I am overcome with a sudden urge to pop a plastic bag behind her. What, you might say is so deep about that? When you boil it down to the basics, what I'm essentially doing is labeling things according what I've been taught or conditioned to believe before I could even drink my baby formula, let alone formulate my own concepts. But here I am, thinking to myself, that what if, I had had no conditioning whatsoever in the last 20 something years of my life? What if every step I took led me to something new? What would I do? Now it is at this point that one would expect a life changing epiphany of sorts. But you'd be wrong. Being humans, all of us are painfully prone to doing the stupidest things possible in any given situation. And hence, what I would have started doing was that I'd start labeling things.
What's wrong with that? You might ask while sipping your evening tea. A lot, as it turns out. There is a concept called "living in the moment", which you may have heard in a rather 60's context along with words like "groovy" or "rad". There is
Ceaseless, continuous thought. To simply put how it prevents you from being in the moment, consider this.
How easy is it to stop thinking? Just close your eyes, and try not to think about anything. you might consider yourselves lazy bums, like me, but our brains beg to differ. A continuous feed of thought is what our brains demand, and inevitably get. And in the process of comprehending any thought, the moment passes.
You look at a rose. You see that it is pretty, you think it smells nice, you find it pricks. The time required by our nervous system to send the message to our brain, however infinitesimal it may be, is enough for the moment to pass. For the ones unfortunate enough to be learning DSP, let me put it this way. the moment is an impulse signal. It tends to zero. you can't pinpoint its temporal location because of the simple fact that in the time taken to pinpoint it, it passes. It needs to be experienced, it needs to be passed through, not searched for. And the most effective way to do that, in my experience, is to let loose. To let go of all your inhibitions, conditions, doubts, or any other mental manifestations your brain might create to validate it's existence.
To be in the moment, in one simple sentence, one must be willing to be brainless. And that, ironically is what all of us are most afraid of.
| I would rather watch this without subtitles, |
 |
| Than this. |
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