life's don'ts

26/02/2017

We humans seem to be very good at limiting ourselves and each other. From an early age our parents tell us not to do this and not to do that. All those don’ts embed themselves in our psychology to form the superego. And thereafter, we have that voice of suppression inside ourself, holding us back in so many ways.

We also often project our constraints outwardly onto other people, making rules which we expect others to abide by. I took this photo on a previous visit to Hampi. The sign reads ‘Don’t put vegetables in yellow box’. There was no yellow box, only a green plastic water urn. There weren’t any vegetables nearby either.

It might be that this cryptic message is a zen koan which I have yet to fathom. However, perhaps it is simply showing us the absurdity of our rule-loving superego!

returning to Hampi

17/02/2017

After travelling, there comes a necessity to sit still. That’s how I feel now, after 24 hours on the move by bicycle, rickshaw, motorbike, bus, metro, train, night train, walking, bus and ferry. Hampi is not the easiest place to get to.

Sitting here though, drinking a chai, I remember why I have come here so often, and why I continue to return. Looking out across the lush green padi fields, with their backdrop of boulder-strewn hills, I feel a timeless stillness seeping into me. I can sense it in the landscape here. It feels an ancient and mysterious land.

And the sense of stillness is only deepened when a gust of wind entices the rice to dance in waves and the fronds of the coconut palms to sway and fishtail.

When one feels the stillness in movement, the silence in sound, the unbounded space in a single point, then one is tasting the suchness of life.

Ah, it’s good to be back in Hampi!

a different approach

12/02/2017

Last month, during the period when I was offering satsang, I felt to maintain a balance by writing a piece of software. The arbitrary task I picked was to search for so-called narcissistic numbers (see footnote for the mathematical definition). I had heard that there are 88 such numbers and that the largest has 39 digits, making it a very big number indeed.

The first version of the software worked very nicely, trying every possible number starting at 1. After a few hours it had already tested the first million million numbers – good going was my first thought. Then I realised that at that rate of progress, the code would take at least a hundred million million times the remaining expected lifetime of the planet, to find all the numbers. Some small improvements (see footnote) would reduce the time by a factor of 20 or so. However, something more radical was needed.

I wrote a new version of the software which took a completely different approach. Instead of testing every possible number, it tested every distinct collection of digits (more detail in footnote). This was still a huge space to search through. However, I reckoned that it was a lot less huge than the space being searched by the first approach.  And so it transpired. The different approach worked a treat and in a few hours I was looking at a list of 88 narcissistic numbers.

I tell this story here because it struck me that the spiritual search can unfold in a similar way. Looking everywhere is a good approach but it can take many lifetimes. Sometimes a different approach can be equally effective and allow us to find something in this lifetime…

Footnotes for the mathematically minded:

A narcissistic number is a natural number whose value is equal to the sum of each digit in the number raised to the power of the number of digits in the number. For example, the 3 digit number 153 is narcissistic because:

1³ + 5³ + 3³  =  1 + 125 + 27  =  153

I spotted a couple of constraints allowing slight optimisation of the exhaustive search algorithm: Firstly, a number ending in zero is narcissistic if and only if its successor is narcissistic. Secondly, setting aside the least significant digit, a narcissistic number must have an even number of odd digits amongst the rest of its digits. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to prove each of these constraints. The other optimisation I made was simply to make use of all 8 processors in my laptop, rather than leaving all the work to one. At this point, the cooling fans were also working flat out!

The different approach was to generate all possible combinations of digits, ignoring their sequence. In other words, 444925 has the same digits as 944524 and therefore the same sum of the powers. The digits in that sum can then be ticked off against the collection of digits being considered. I didn’t get around to determining the complexity of this algorithm (the size of the space to be searched). It must have been much better than that of the first algorithm.

downhill all the way

02/02/2017

Cycling to breakfast this morning, along sandy tracks through the woods here at Auroville, it felt like it was downhill all the way.

In reality, it is very flat around here. Some days, though, cycling seems to require a lot of effort. It feels like there is a continuous headwind, even though there is almost no wind at ground level amongst the trees. It feels like the sand is soft, making for sluggish, heavy going, even though the sand is as firm as ever.

This morning, it felt quite the opposite. The bicycle was flying along without me making any effort. It was as if there were a continuous tailwind and the sand below the tyres offered no resistance at all.

Life is so strange. Nothing has changed in the gradient of the land, nor in the wind, nor in the sand. And yet the same journey that yesterday required so much effort, today is effortless…

moment of peace

26/01/2017

This afternoon I spent some time sitting by a lily pond. It was a tranquil spot, far from the bustle of busy people and noisy machines. Sitting there, the tranquility seeped into me. Without doing anything, I found myself at peace.

This peacefulness is so exquisite. It feels as delicate and beautiful as a butterfly. It is a joyfulness that does not need excitement. It has the warm relief of a homecoming. It is nuanced with an unspoken gratitude. It is an unearned gift.

In that timeless moment of peace, all was divine spirit.

Sunday meditators

22/01/2017

If you are a regular motorist, perhaps commuting to work by car, you might feel frustrated by ‘Sunday drivers’. They are not so used to driving and dawdle along with nothing to achieve and no place to go, slowing the rest of the traffic. Today I discovered that existence is maintaining a balance with the opposite phenomenon: Sunday meditators.

The morning meditation in the inner chamber of the Matrimandir, here at Auroville, is usually a profoundly silent affair. The attendees are mostly regulars, well used to sitting around with nothing to achieve and no place to go. On a Sunday morning, though, the chamber is packed with bloomin’ Sunday meditators. These people are accustomed to being busy and seem to be incapable of stillness or silence. One person will be swallowing repeatedly, another breathing loudly. Here and there someone will fidget. Worst of all, though, the place becomes full of thoughts, like there’s a tomorrow. What a cacophony!