Category: Perspective (Page 18 of 20)

Food, Love and Energy

April 8, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Exhausted after a long bicycle ride, I stopped at a snack shop in a busy lane in Nakhon Sawan. I was hoping the lady cooking inside would understand English. I showed her my phone which had a translation of vegetarian in Thai written for her.
‘Mangsawirati? (Vegetarian in Thai)’ I asked
‘Ok Ok, yes!’ she said.
‎
She quickly cooked up a vegetarian fried rice for me.
We exchanged words as I ate. It was a pleasant 15 minute conversation.
As I left, I felt more energised.
‘I wish you good luck, strong man!’ she said.
We shared a laugh as I pedalled on.

That morning, I had also gotten a bowl of rice and egg as breakfast from one of the monks. We shared a great conversation as I ate. I clicked him a Polaroid picture as a token of appreciation for his kindness.
As I left, I felt I had great energy.

At the moment I am in another temple, supposedly one of the more famous ones since it has a big pagoda on top of a hill in Nakhon Sawan. I have a place to set up my tent in a corner.
But I have absolutely no one around me.
I went out and ate the same meal as I had for lunch and breakfast, this time, all alone.
I had fried rice and eggs. It tasted much how like breakfast and lunch did.
But I don’t feel energized after the meal.

I realize that energy comes from the person who prepares and serves the food,
From the one who shares a conversation with you as you eat.

No wonder kids have such exuberant energy. They’re fed by the most pristine source, with the most heartfelt conversation that can ever exist.
One in the company of their mother!

What do you think ?

Infinite Inspiration

April 7, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

In all of the world I have seen,
I have never seen a tree that’s being lazy.
Not once.

I look around and there are trees wherever I see.
And I wonder,
How can I ever fall short,
Of Inspiration.

Giving and Growing

April 5, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

As creative beings , we all get good ideas through our existence. And they come at unexpected quarters. Often we feel they are such good ideas that we try to hoard them. We think we will apply/use this idea when the time is right. We prize the idea too much to use it casually.
As a writer I experience this quite often. I have a good metaphor and I try to save it for an opportune moment to add zing to piece of writing I deem fit.
But today, as I cycled through a rustic village in central Thailand, I got to questioning this method.
All along the way there were mango trees lining the streets for miles and miles. Since it is the season for mangoes, all tress had abundant fruit hanging off of them. The trees exhibited an exuberant spirit of sharing their very best . They did not wait for the next season to blossom. They bear fruit the moment they’re ready and did so without inhibition. Watching such unbridled creative output was a spiritual awakening of sorts.
I got wondering as I witnessed this.
No tree waits for the next season to bear fruit. It express its life force as soon as the time is right. Because deep inside it has the belief that it can never run out of creative energy. It is a law of nature, the more you create and share, the more you mature. And you are in a position to be even more creative down the years.

Hoarding ideas takes up the mindspace that could be vacated for new ideas to blossom. Looking at the mango trees today, I realized, it is only natural to express your best ideas, your highest creative energy, now.
Only if you do that, you will have bigger and better ideas the following season.
It just takes trusting the subliminal law of nature,
Of giving and growing.

Earning Sleep

April 4, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

I’ve been on a bicycle trip for the past 8 days now. One of the most adventurous parts of this mode of travel is the mystery about where you will sleep at night.
For the last seven days I had some kind of an arrangement of my stay beforehand. I either had a couch surfing host or I would book a bed in a hostel in advance. But today, I set out quite late in the day towards a national park, 150 kms away. I was sure I would only be able to cover 100 km in a day at my very best. So I knew that I would have to sleep somewhere in between. It was the first day I wasn’t sure of my bed.

Towards evening as I finished close to 80 kilometers, it kept getting darker by the minute. I’d heard that you can stay at Thai Buddhist temples at night. Luckily I found a temple and went inside.
After failing to communicate with three monks due to my language issue ,I was asked to meet the head monk. I wrote in google translate ‘Can I stay in the temple tonight?’
The monk read the Thai translation and said ‘Chai'(yes in Thai)
Oh the relief !
I was escorted into an open hall and given a mosquito net. Soon after, a thunderstorm struck that lasted for two hours. Secured under a ceiling, I felt fortunate to have decided to not cycle further.
As I lay on my Yoga mat and write,
I cannot help but smile and wonder,
It doesn’t matter where my body lay,
As long as I’ve worked hard enough to earn my sleep.
Grateful for the kindness of strangers and content with the hard work of the day,
Sleep is only moments away.

Being Nature

April 3, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

It was a fine summer morning. Aiden and I were sitting in our little hut overlooking the open forest. We balked in the warm sun filtering through the growing canopy of young trees. Quite the nature lover, Aiden was lost in observing things around him. His lips arched in a wondrous smile as he shared,

‘It’s fascinating!’

‘Just how there is so much life happening right within a hand-span of earth! There’s all these tiny creatures busy with their own lives. Things we would never notice if chose to not pay attention. And then there are creatures we can’t even see with our naked eyes, but as alive as anything else around.’

‘Fascinating indeed! Awareness is such a gift’ I replied.

‘And the possibility of raising our awareness even further. Another gift in itself!’ he said feeling the earth with his fingers.

As his eyes scanned further, he spotted an injured worm struggling to crawl to safety. He sat meditatively, wondering…

He turned to me and asked, ‘Sometimes you wonder what to do in such situations. Whether to interfere with nature or just let it be.’

His hands still caressing the earth around the injured worm.

There was silence.

I poured a couple of glasses of hot tea from my flask and proffered one to him.

‘Aiden, WE ARE nature. And so is our decision to act.’

He smiled as he accepted the cup. He picked up the worm gently with his fingers and left it at a safe spot to recover.

With cups in our hands and smiles on our faces, we, two beings of nature, savoured nature…

The tale of three friends

April 2, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Once upon a time, three close friends visited a historical town. They roamed about all the day looking at remnants of a once thriving civilization. All around the town there was rubble and bricks holding together the form of old houses, castles and temples. Towards evening, each of them sat at a nice spot overlooking an old temple as the sun drew closer to the horizon.

One of them thought to himself,
‘How glorious this town would have been in its heydays. Even if only disintegrated parts of the civilization remain, it commands such glory and respect. I would like to build something like this!’
Later on in life he went on to become a great builder who engineered a state of the art township. Glorious on all fronts in his lifetime.

The second one of them was ambitious as well but wanted success quick. He thought to himself,
‘What is the point of building something that stands for long if it is going to become rubble anyway. And I can see remnants of old towns are celebrated by all. I should make something that turns into rubble fast so that I can be alive to see how my achievements are lauded.’
He went on to make a town with inferior quality material. It was sure to turn to dust within his lifespan.

The third friend was an observant man. He looked at the remnants of an old temple and saw a little tree growing out of the crevices. Then he saw around and almost everywhere, he saw little plants trying to grow in between bricks. There was a statue of the Buddha in a temple that was completely entwined in tree roots. It was the most famous place in the city.
He had an epiphany.
He went back and started planting trees all around his country. He did it all through his life happily.

In a couple of centuries their civilization was wiped off by a natural calamity.
A few centuries further into the future, people came to see the once glorious town from far away places.

The first friend’s construction drew a lot of crowd. People studied the remnants of the architecture. Even if most buildings didn’t hold on to their functional use, they still represented a glorious past.

The second friend’s construction turned into rubble within a few years of building. Nothing remained of it after a few decades. The land where the buildings stood was left barren, bereft of life.

What happened to the third friend’s work?
All around the country, there is thriving flora and fauna that is going to last for centuries for everyone to enjoy.
He only planted a few thousand trees in his life. But he invested his time and energy in something that would self replicate and flourish even after his demise.

No one remembers the name of any of these three friends today. Their karmic footprint is in the quality of their work.

Today, in this ancient town,
I’m writing under the shade of a resplendent tree in springtime. I have a feeling about what I should do with my time, life and work.

Fruit and Family

April 1, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Just about a week ago, we had a send off party at our community. One of my friends was leaving on a journey to Israel in a few days and I was leaving for Thailand. We had a gleeful time at a swimming pool with all our friends. After much merriment, we sat down to have snacks. As I upturned the bag full of snacks, out came rolling among other things,
Passion Fruit!

My sister’s gaping eyes couldn’t contain the joy of this sight. She loves this fruit dearly, as do my other friends. Who doesn’t love Passion fruit !
Everyone grabbed a fruit and savored it as if it were to disappear in moments!

Over the course of time, as the energy got a bit mellow, we all found different places around the pool to sit and relax.

I went to my sister lazing in a hammock.

‘How come you have two passion fruit?’ I asked.

She just giggled teasingly.

‘It might be the last passion fruit you have this year. It’s March, end of season!’

‘Oh yes’ she affirmed with an air of disappointment.

‘But don’t worry, soon we will have mango season no?’

‘Oh yes, in just one month we will have so many Mangoes! But you will be in Thailand. You will miss out on it !’

‘Well, I have a surprise for you’ I said and took out a Mango from my bag.

‘Where did you find this?’ she asked excitedly.

‘On a tree, during my visit to Kerala couple of days ago. It’s ready to eat!’

So there we sat, my sister and I, sharing the last Passion Fruit of the season, the first Mango of the year.

‘This is heavenly’ she said.

I could only agree.

Right now I am at a night market in Ayutthaya, Thailand. I see a fruit stand selling Passion Fruit smoothie and Mango with sticky rice.

And I can only wish to have my sister with me to share this. Without her, the pleasure seems unseasonal.

It certainly wouldn’t be as sweet to my heart if not shared with family.

‘

If life is not going anywhere

March 30, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Deep in our hearts, we all have that little dream of an adventure. But we are guilty of postponing it forever. We think that life is not going away anywhere and we will fulfill our dream of that adventure someday along the way. We do this because we are too afraid to stray from the constancy of life. Since an adventure asks for a tectonic shift in our lifestyle and outlook, we postpone it.
‘Life isn’t going away anywhere,’ we rationalize. ‘One day we will embark’.

However, there is another perspective which might serve one better.

Life truly is not going away anywhere.

Yes, an adventure asks for time and mindspace. But if we give it what it takes, our life will only be further enriched through the experience. We can always come back to the constancy, the mundane daily life. And it is best to come back to it enriched.
As we return to our previous lifestyle after the adventure we’ll discover that we’ve evolved. And we are ready to imagine a life that’s true to who we are deep inside.

So if you feel your life is going nowhere, remember that life is not going away anywhere. Make time, be brave and fulfill the adventure you’ve always wanted to.
In the interest of the evolution of your soul.

Episode or Advertisement?

March 29, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Quite often we postpone what could be done right now to a point in near future. It’s not that we cannot do what needs to be done right now. We just give ourselves the leisure to indulge in something that could rather wait.
Relate this to how a TV serial is telecast. There’s the episode and then there’s the ads. If it were upto us, we would surely do away with the ads. They merely fill up time in between the slots we really want to watch.
If our life were a TV serial telecast, we quite often choose to live in the ‘ad space’ and not the ‘episode phase’.
If we choose to live like that then our life would carry no message at all, would it?
In the age of Netflix, when TV programming has moved past the old paradigm of ads, we should follow suit in the way we lead our lives.
We should always be mindful,
That a meaningful episode is much more memorable than a passing ad.

It’s best to do what truly matters,
what really needs to be done,
now !

What do you think ?

Beautiful Inside.

March 28, 2018 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

On my Bicycle ride from Auroville to Chennai I stopped at a coconut shop I used to frequent years ago. The shop looked a bit run down as compared to how it looked like earlier. I approached the unmanned coconut stand and called out the owner’s name.
‘Saviraj?’ I enquired.
Slowly, an elderly man made his way from his house.
‘Saviraj, do you remember me? I used to come to drink coconuts 5 years ago.’
He nodded smilingly.
In an adorable mix of Tamil and pidgin English he started talking to me.
‘Now enge(where)?’
‘I am cycling from Auroville to Chennai Saviraj’
Meanwhile his wife Sarada came out hearing her husband speak in English.
They both offered me a place to sit. I had a big coconut proffered to me instantly.
They saw my Bicycle loaded up with my luggage and gasped in surprise.
I asked them if I could rest for sometime in the temple across te street.
‘Sleeping here’ said Saviraj pointing to his house.
I laid out my Yoga mat and had a nice nap. In half an hour I awoke to the smell of homemade Dosas. Sarada brought me four thick dosas with the most unique coconut chutney I’ve tasted in my life.

I smiled and accepted the food. It was a delicious feast.
I felt humbled by their spirit of caring. As I was leaving I asked if I could click a Polaroid picture with her.
She blushed and said, ‘Shower no, not look good!’
‘But you’re beautiful. Sooper(Tamil-English slang for remarkable) I said.

Reluctantly she posed and we took a picture.
As the polaroid film developed we waited anxiously. The picture came out great.
‘ Sooper no?’ I asked.
‘Aama(yes)’ she blushed.
I left her with the picture and loaded up my Bicycle to head onward. I was bid goodbye lovingly.

On the way I wondered,
‘She took care of fact that I’d been cycling for 4 hours in the sun and did the best she could to support me. To have such compassion and empathy is the most beautiful asset. It shines through in her eyes. And even if she looked a bit disheveled in the picture because of her household chores, the camera captured the beauty in her spirit.
We often fail to cultivate and realize our own inner beauty. While we are born with the fate of a fixed physical appearance, we also have the opportunity to foster a thriving inner world full of love and compassion. And it is the latter that makes for our true identity.

I hope the picture I left Sarada with keeps reminding her what a caring heart she has. And she realizes the beauty in herself beyond the physical.