Garden of 5 (non)Senses

Garden of 5 (non)Senses, originally uploaded by Dr Sanjay Dhawan.

कहीं पर पत्थर, कहीं पर झाढ़ , कहीं पर इमारते, कहीं पर ख़ाक और इन सब के ऊपर खुल्ला आसमान. बिलकुल नीला. और एकदम साफ़. सब को समेटता हुआ अम्बर इन पथरीली राहों को कहीं धूप  और कहीं छांव देता है.

ज़िन्दगी तो क्षण- भंगुर है. आज है, कल नहीं. इस छोटी सो ज़िन्दगी में लोग भीड़ में खो से जाते हैं और जब खुद नहीं भी खोते तो अपनों को ढूंढ नहीं पाते!

क्या आज को नज़र अंदाज़ कर, कल पर कदम जमाया जा सकता है? क्या बीते हुए कल के निशाँ अपनी ज़िन्दगी की राह से पूरी तरह मिटाए जा सकते हैं? क्या आने वाला कल इन्ही पथरीली राहों पर चलेगा? या... हुम, तुम, यह, और कोई और भी अपने अहम् को त्याग कर इन पत्थरों में भी फूल खिला सकेंगे?

क्या जीवन इन पत्थरों और काँटों के बिन भी इतना ही सार्थक हो पायेगा?

इन पत्थरों का, इन राहों का, सब का एक महत्त्व है हमारे जीवन में. इन सब को एक समान गले लगाना ही इस जीवन की सब से बड़ी शिक्षा है.

जब चलना ही इन राहों पर तो गिरने से क्या डरना?

In another life

In another life, originally uploaded by Just Jelena Jankovic.

Life is fragile. Fickle. And momentary.

The candle burns away- leaving blobs of wax, and smoke. The light does not outlast the candle. But it can.

One candle may light up one or ten or a hundred or several thousands of other candles. Each of these can then spread the same light. And spread the warmth that defines life.

A happy life is a meaningful life.

A happy life is a life of pleasure and pain, of engagement and of anticipation, of living- and dying each moment.

A happy life is a life of significance. Like the candle...

The energy of the Universe is finite, just as the entropy of the Universe is finite. When one life is extinguished another one sprouts up somewhere else.

The soil toils for the plant that grows and the leaves that fall finally return the elements to the soil that generated it. The life forms do the same at another plane... They are born, they grow and they die- merging finally in the pool that generates another being some place, some time.

Birth and death are simply means of cycling the energy in this vast Universe. We know but a figment of this vast firmament.

We may let out light die away and merge with the elements. Or we may consciously light up several others who feel life is a significant force and indeed make this life a significant force.

Headed for each other . . .

Headed for each other . . ., originally uploaded by Dr Sanjay Dhawan.

What would be the difference between hapiness and contentment?

One does not need millions to be happy.

One does not need a massive mansion to be happy.

One does not need a soft cushioned bed to be happy.

All that you need is to have the peace of mind that gives you the freedom to leave everything to God ( did you see the begging vessel?) and allow yourself to sleep. Sleep with not a worry to crease your forehead. Sleep with not a thought to what tomorrow will bring.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better. Perhaps it will be the same.But who the hell cares?

There are people who will live every day like they lived every yesterday. And every day prior to that.

They will pass their days as if nothing matters.

Then there are those who pass each day in wonder that the life is, the rewards it brings, they celebrate each little victory. And find their happiness in the air. They find their joy in their daughter's kiss and their son's hug. They find their joy in the cold when they breathe out smoke on cold cold ice creams, and in the heat when the first rain makes everything around them smell so wonderful that...

Yes... happiness is a funny thing. It alights on your shoulder if you only stop. And pause a moment. If you try to run after it and catch it- it will fly away, never to be caught.

You cannot find your happiness trying to run after it. You find your happiness in your own garden, in the dust and the grime of everyday living, and working and winning and... finally being able to sleep the moment you hit the pillow.

Happiness expands your brain!

Masti ki Paathshala !!!, originally uploaded by Dr Sanjay Dhawan.

Happiness expands your brain! Yes! It truly does.

An experiment was carried out with some simian creatures behind bars. To survive, these creatures from our evolutionary past were required to consume 240 pellets of food every hour. Unfortunately, these pellets are located outside the cage, in minute holes. In the beginning, it takes the monkey about thirty seconds to reach for the pellets through the bars and grab them, and another few seconds to actually bring the same pellets to your mouth. If the task cannot be completed faster, the monkeys would starve to death.

After about 500 tries, the monkeys actually became more expert at retrieving the pellets, and a much larger part of their brain lit up on scanning during the task. And this active part of the brain became progressively bigger, and bigger, and bigger!

And the study with the London cabbies proved beyond doubt that the spatial orientation areas opf the brain- the hippocampus- is much larger than an average hman's hippocampus.

It appears that practice does indeed ,ake you perfect! So if you practice being excellent, you expand the areas of ypour brain involved in being excellent and become more of it.

If you practice being happy, you expand the happiness areas of your brain, too!

Happiness seems to serve a bigger evolutionary purpose than just making it making it momentarily good, better best for us.

The negative emotions evoke a fight or flight response. Very limited options. And not very friendly for survival, let alone growth.

The positive emotions, on the other hand, expand our options, too. Happiness broadens our thinking and allows us to think more creatively, and build more intellectual, social and physical resources. These resources improve nopt only our chances of survival but actually help us thrive much better.

Happy people have a much bigger peripheral vision! So they are able to observe more in their surrounding. The visual cortex in the happy people is much bigger than normal people. A positive survival benefit.

And revisiting the Markonokoff''s rule- The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer still.

So happy becomes more happy.

And successful becomes more successful.

And...Happiness... makes... a lot of sense...

So- BE HAPPY!!!

Waiting for no one . . .

Waiting for no one . . ., originally uploaded by Dr Sanjay Dhawan.

I am old.

I am tired.

I wait.

I have waited since etrnity.

I shall wait till infinity.

Reaching for the sky, a tree tells its tale of holding an entire Universe in the grasp of a hand. One just has to reach out. And the Universe accepts us.

Our bodies model the macro cosmos with graceful fidelity.

Every cell is connected to every other cell. Each unit is independent and related...

The day dawns, and casts its shadows into the evening that drifts into the night. Nature moves relentlessly. untiringly.

Are we up to it?

Monarch effect...

SDhawan7655, originally uploaded by Dr Sanjay Dhawan.

A butterfly fluttering its tiny wings in the Sub-Sahara African forest can trigger a Cyclone in the Pacific Ocean.

Surprised?

This is the Monarch effect. The air envelope around our planet is a single continuum. It is almost like a pulling the edge of a sheet. It is bound to create creases at the far end.

It is not how tiny the butterfly is, it is how significant the connection is!

The Earth is like a gigantic creature... rumbling and breathing. Rolling and crying. And spinning. Anything that happens anywhere on the earth has its impact everywhere. We are just not vast enough to see it happen.

We need to step back from the insignificant, realise our role in the macro-cosmos that surrounds us and is pulsating with a life force that defies description.

We need to realise that we are as significant as the Monarch butterfly.

We need to realise that each small act of kindness ripples into a veritable wave of warmth that can change the way the winds blow. Anywhere on the globe!

We must also understand that each act of savagery has an impact in equal measure as that of kindness but can cause immeasurable damage. It can fracture Nature. And these fractures are not so easy to heal. They leave scars.

Can we make that choice with all our mind and awareness? Can we let anything else matter?

Theory of Relativity

This, too, will go ..., originally uploaded by Dr Sanjay Dhawan.

Time is relative... And it is not time that passes but we that move through time. Time is like another ordinate to define an event in the Universe. And appears to be a covenient frame of refrence for a short-lived momentary bubble in the vast ocean of the Universe.

Consider the paradox of Time. No one has been documented to travel at any speed faster than light. We have not been able to 'find' any sign of 'intelligent' life to the limits of our observable universe. The nearest galaxy is several hundred to thousands of light years away. So the light that reaches any intelligent life TODAY would have escaped the earth several thousand years ago. For any observer TODAY in that remote corner of the Universe, we would still be having dinosaurs roaming the earth's surface. Time would simply be a co-ordinate to depict the point in the Universe where the LIGHT originated!!

Given the vast scales involved this momentary bubble of life in space time is really insignificantly infinitsimally tiny. For us, a life time that is
a few decades is but a minute moment in the life of the Universe.

We are so full of ourselves that we use our frame of refrence for all comparisions and overlook the fact that were we to scale the Time line of the Universe to a day, we humans have been around for less than an hour!

So... each of us owes it to the tiny moments we are going to spend here to make each moment meaningful.

Let each moment defne just how much impact a single sentient being CAN have on the Universe.

Let each moment leave the world a better and brighter place...

What do you do when...?

There are times when everything seems to stand still.

There are times when every day is the same as if nothing really happened the day before- or the day after.

There are days when the sun rises and sets and the earth moves just the same and nothing really happens.

These are the days when you must stop. Breathe. Breathe deeply. Step back and watch like a spectator.

Can you make yourself expect the unexpected? Can you make the unexpected happen? Can you muster enough gumption and breath to make the unexpected happen?

Can things change? Will they change?

Things do change. It only takes a little bit of effort to stick to it. A little. Just a bit.
The sun will rise again. The day will dawn again. And as Scarlet O'Hara always said, "Tomorrow will be another day."

And tomorrow will be.