Being a winner
Give up. Please. Your life has been an endless struggle. Fighting not just for survival but for various luxuries that you never really enjoyed. This world has become a boiling cauldron where humans are racing towards unknown and unwanted goals. You have always been taught never to give up but consider first, the results of your struggle. What aims are you going to achieve that will possibly be worth this mad rush. The wheel of the world has started spinning very fast recently. You are an insect caught in its trap. Your goals and ambitions are not your own but a part of this wheel. As you work tirelessly for goals so far beyond food and shelter that you are unsure of their need, you speak of progress. Progress towards angina and diabetes. This is not just your destruction but the destruction of this entire planet. That is a big price to pay for this intangible progress which nobody needs. We are burning ourselves out and burning this planet at a very rapid pace. Let there be more time for thought. Work less, do less, think more. Above all, relax. Relaxation is important not just for your soul or your health but even for the survival of this species. Hard work is killing you. You don’t want to work. Hardly anyone wants to work (and for those who do, there are always demented souls, aberrations in nature). You are doing something you don’t want to do, for goals that scare everyone. What are you doing?
You have been taught to keep fighting, to never give up. Fight then and spill the blood of your brothers. Kill everyone who stands in your path because you like being victorious. Victory may belong to people like you but in the end it will be hollow. This is world is run by the so called dynamic people who keep struggling and are never ones to shy away from a fight. To be victorious, you have to be a fighter. If you were to follow the philosophy outlined here, you could never be successful in this world. You would always lose. That is the point of this essay. We want you to lose. Our aim is to glorify laziness, to celebrate tardiness. This is bad for the health of large corporations but good for this living, breathing planet. We have lost our humanity, our spirituality, and now we stand to lose our lives.
The corporations that control your lives are greedy. They will never be satisfied. You have to keep running with whiplashes on your back and legs. The whip threatens your survival sometimes. If you lose your job, you may starve. We must all do the minimum possible work needed for survival. This world can change. Slowly as people begin to work less and less, the corporations will have no choice but to hire you. This is not about trade unions and communism. This is not a call for workers of the world to unite. Be deceptive and wily and be as lazy as possible. In the natural world, animals that have a slower metabolism live far longer than faster ones. The earth will live longer and we will get a new lease of life.
On the other hand, you can work hard, fuel the engines of this world, contribute to our progress and generate wealth. You will contribute towards the poison in our water, air and soil. Your contribution will be to deforestation and green house gases. The engines that you are putting fuel into, generate filth that covers the entire planet. Breathe, drink and eat poisons and destroy all life forms upon this planet. What wealth is this filth generating? A portable music player? Do you want to choose between one year of vacation and a portable music player? Do you want to choose between ingesting poisons and listening to mp3 players? Who wants this progress? Has true wealth been generated by these engines of civilization? I am not just saying that this civilization has not increased our peace and happiness. That is a given and there is no need to argue about that. But even the things which it HAS given, the wealth it has generated is unwanted. Given the proper circumstances and given a true choice, no one would really want this wealth. This progress and this civilization has given us nothing and has merely taken from us to feed itself. The more this demon is fed, the bigger it will grow and bigger will be its appetite.
The time has come to follow your heart. To slip from the grasp of your masters. This is the time to sleep and relax. Now is the time to shirk work. Be lazy. Be a loser. It is good for your planet and your species. Do not be selfish. Do not throw away a planet for petty personal victories. Do not throw away your life, health and happiness for petty and insignificant desires. This is the path to happiness and survival.
The allure of the woods
The woods are lovely, dark and deep and no promise in the world is more important than they are. A chance of some respite from a mad rush. Sleep then , a peaceful slumber, forget your worries and stop running all those extra miles that lead nowhere.
What is it about the woods that attracts us ? I think it is life. Life in all its myriad forms. Forms so appealing and diverse that the mind can hardly contemplate the staggering beauty of the conglomerate. Things so complex and yet seem to be so simple. Things that defy our science and rational thinking. Confronted with so much beauty, the mind breaks into song. Peace to some and excitement to others. Fear and calmness co-exist here. This is the spring from which all our emotions flow. Some say this is merely the memory of an ancient home. I disagree. The ancient ways are long forgotten and we have strayed far from nature. Yet all our science and technology could never create things of such perfection, complexity and diversity. That is why the forests and the wild places of the earth would be so stimulating to the scientific mind. The artistic mind would be impressed by the beauty of this source of all creation. All cities are very nearly the same while the wild places are vastly different.
Fear too, is resident in the forest and perhaps that is the reason why we chose to stay together in each other’s company rather than face the unknown. When we chose to be limited by our fear, we also chose a sterile, canned environment. We still have fears but we seek happiness and joy in the unlikeliest of places. Wild places created by unknown powers and mind boggling in magnitude give way to dreary brick and mortar. We are losing the one sure way of communing with God, a way of being in touch with infinity. Who knows what hand crafted these myriad creatures. They are truly our brethren and we shed their blood so we can die under cars and trucks.
Death will not leave us, nor will fear. We are, however, bereft of wonder and beauty has fled, taking many joys with it. We can no longer see wild places and the smog of our cities shuts out the stars. We are cut-off from God’s creations and surround ourselves with things made by ourselves in an incestuous relationship. This would be a great blow to philosophy and the arts and even to science. Creativity would take a beating.
What do we want in our lives? For whom do we toil in man’s cities? We toil and work the engines that blast the lands and fill the air with smoke. This is the land of Mordor. If only we could stop this mad struggle for material gains. If only we could learn to be losers rather than continuously trying to “better our condition”. What is this better condition then? Better for a man and devastating for this world. If we could stop and rest for a while it might save this planet of God.
Set aside you fears then and step with me into this last stronghold of God. Look upon this world with a child’s eyes, glowing with wonder. This is the true world, as it was meant to be. See the plants that blow in the breeze, the birds that flit merrily and sing joyously upon their branches. You know not their names, not yet. But you do know that each one of them is special. They were all created for a special purpose and their very existence is the beauty of this world. This world is beautiful because the creatures living here make it beautiful. Or would you be so vain and even naïve as to claim that things created by man are more beautiful.
Feel then, the warm caress of God upon your back. Each one of these creatures is a blessing of God, a blessing upon this world. Be in harmony with God and keep this world a blessed place. As the hand of God is withdrawn from the land and poisons seep into its veins, nature will watch man shrivel and die.
You keep working then, while you have no future worth working for, no promise worth keeping. Leave aside this mundane existence and enter a place where every breath is a novelty. Every turn brings a new surprise. At every instance, the chance to see something new, living in harmony with this world. Feel the heartbeat of this world. Feel it, before it sputters and dies out.
Ancient India
Ancient India is rife with examples of people who sought solitude in nature. People who devoted most of their time to thinking about life and its purpose. They did not