Thriving Mindfully

Tag: The Art and Science of Learning (Page 3 of 3)

The Mother Asks

The air that the Buddha exhaled
When he realised enlightenment

The molecules that plankton infused
In the air since genesis

The final gush of breath of hunted gazelle

Is the air that you and I breathe
At this moment.


The bead of sweat on a farmer’s brow
The ever-dancing droplet on a lotus leaf

The wayward clans of vapour
that ride on the wind

Have reached our glass as water,
at some point in time


Each grain, each sediment,
Each fossil, each stone,
Every discovered gem
Was born
Out of degrees of temprament
Of Magma,
That Mother earth shelters in her womb

The water,
the earth,
the wind,
the fire
the sky

Have been the same
On Earth
Across ages

Humans have only tainted them
With the rationale of a greater good
Across generations

The water tastes of humankind’s
Cluttered chemistry
The sky coughs from the gathering haze
The Earth chokes under concrete
The wind and fire
Have gone haywire

Our collective derangement
Our spirited defilement
Is perhaps
A fleeting moment of discomfort
To the wholesome, ever-complete Earth

She can cure herself
She’s been through worse

The question she asks is,

Do we want to be the generation
Of hostile antigens
That she must fight against

Or are we ready
To be a remedy?

The Mother will do just fine

She asks us still,
Witholding a teardrop with patience,

Can we be worthy children
And aspire to live another
sliver of a sliver
of time
To dwell on the miracle
Life is.

The highs and lows of being a Crow

We have always imagined birds to embody a debonair charm. Being capable of elegant flights, birds have access to an aerial view of the world, a vantage we earth-bound bipeds deem to be divinely endowed. The lightness in their swooping motions, their aerodynamic group acrobatics, bring an uplifting feeling to every patient spectator.

Life on earth is blessed with a breathtaking diversity of these dinosaur descendants.

Tiny swallows, sailing swifts, hummingbirds, weaver birds, pastel-colored parakeet, ogling owls, saintly swans, flamingos, the flightless ostrich, emu, penguins…the diversity is immense.

Even the most mundane of feathered creatures, the ubiquitous pigeon, are accepted as one among the bird folk.
The classification of birds might seem like an open, all-encompassing idea at first thought.

But there’s one class among them that we have been subconsciously ostracizing for ages.

The crow.

The crow is seen as, well, a crow.
It feels weird to associate any avian attributes to it. Now that it’s been brought to our attention, one wonders why it is the case!

Perhaps it’s a function of the reputation they’ve built for themselves over the years.

They aren’t exactly the neighbours you’d pray to have. If you despise a rooster’s call in the morning, well, wait until you hear the auditory atrocity the crows inflict at daybreak.
Their rousing cacophony at the crack of dawn can awaken even the deepest of sleepers.
Perhaps it was due to the persistence in its cawing that we, in India, have named it after the sound of its call. In Hindi, it’s called the Cau-wa (The one who caws). It’s called a Kaak in Sanskrit, Kaagdo in Gujarati, and Kaka in most South Indian languages.

Unsurprisingly, it’s presence has permeated into our language and culture.

We’ve been tainting its physical attributes since childhood. Haven’t we grown up teasing a dark-skinned peer form the neighbourhood as a Kaala Cauwa, black as a crow?
And how about the way we discouraged people from singing in their Cauwe Jaisi awaaz. (You sing like a crow!) We’ve quashed the confidence of so many people with such slanderous simile.

But beyond the physical aspect, crows are known to exhibit remarkably sophisticated group behaviour. These gregarious beings in their jet black attire look much like a council of advocates perched high up on a towering tree. Why they haven’t sued us for defamation yet is a point in question.

Shifting between clamouring speculation and meditative reflection, they certainly seem like evolved thinkers.
In fact, crows are known to gather around a dead comrade and investigate the cause behind its demise.
Perhaps that influenced a philologist to name the collective noun for a group of crows as ‘murder’.
A murder of crows investigates the murder of a crow – a neat mnemonic device to remember that fact!

Crows have a noxious way of demarcating their dominion. They mark their territory not by aggression but by inducing a repulsion to the stench in their collective droppings. Early-morning-joggers are known to run a bit faster underneath trees colonised by crows, always with a prayer on the lip, wishing to be spared being an unlucky target.

Blackness envelops a crow to the extent that even its eyes are completely black.
It’s this pervading blackness and the negative white space that together fashion the poetic, yin-yang nature of its life.

There’s an inherent dichotomy in the way the mind of a crow works. Kids across the globe have grown up with stories of the clever crow who managed to drink water out of that pot that had too little water by dropping stones into it. We’ve been introduced to the potential in a crow’s intellect fairly early on in life.
And experiments have proven the amazing ability of a crow for logical thinking.

Yet, we all know how, for generations, it’s been fooled by the koel into bringing up its offspring. How such a sophisticated mind can be fooled in broad daylight is a deep mystery of nature.
Whether there is a connection between this congenital emotional folly and the fact that we always assume a crow to be male is up for debate!

Elaborating further on the dichotomy, crows have been traditionally seen as a bad omen in India, yet, we also see them as the reincarnation of our beloved ancestors and offer them the first morsel of food cooked at home.

But that tradition is slowly disappearing in cities as we disrespectfully drive our reincarnated ancestors to the outskirts of the city, where they scavenge in squalor at the landfill.
With the broad range of foods they can stomach, they still provide a vital service of consuming much of the organic matter that would otherwise rot.

The other day, I had the opportunity of witnessing the genius of a crow first hand. We had placed a bowl full of water in our garden for birds to quench their thirst in the summers. While many birds came and enjoyed the oasis in our garden, a crow-couple kept coming back to the bowl of water for an interesting reason. They’d been soaking parts of their nest one by one in the bowl until it became saturated with cool water. Then, they would take it back to the nest, place it there, and come back with another few elements of their nest. This way, they managed to keep their nest cool, humid, and habitable.
In another instance, I saw them soak dried up rotis in the water to make them chewy and digestible again.
How creative are these beings!

Having witnessed their wit first hand, I’ve begun to see crows in a different light. There’s so much we could learn from them.

Apart from their harsh-toned singing (which a majority of us learn quite naturally), we could also learn a lot more from these birds.

We could learn to sing our heart out despite the harshness in our voice. We could learn from their enterprise, inventiveness, and creative thinking. We could develop an immunity to disapproval and believe in our ability that’s beyond the apparent appraisal.
We could learn to be entirely comfortable in our skin (feathers in their case!). And most importantly, we could accept our capacity for blind emotional folly.

Dear crow, notwithstanding your annoying cawing, I do strive to be like you in many ways. I am not writing this for amusement or taking a dig at you.
I really mean it.
And dare I lie, for I know that if I do, I’ll get a fitting punishment from you.
As they say ‘Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaatey’. (If you lie, you’ll be bitten by a crow!)

The Art and Science of Learning- Semester 1

Syllabus for Semester 1 : Duration : 21 June 2020 to 21 December 2020


Domain 1 – Developing Existential Awareness

Subject chosen – The study of Vedantic Literature

Reason of choosing the subject:

To understand the philosophical concepts on Vedanta and develop a world view, a raison d’être, with the awareness of the timeless wisdom contained in the scriptures.


SYLLABUS – Scriptures to study in the semester

The Bhagvad Geeta

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Isha Upanishad

Kena Upanishad

Kathopnishad

Mandukya Upanishad

Mundaka Upanishad


SUBMISSIONS

1) A series of essays about the vedantic philosophy
2) Two videos outlining the concepts developed through the course

STUDY PLAN – 30 mins of study of the scriptures everyday




DOMAIN 2 – Developing Linguistic Aptitude

Subjects chosen

1) Better Writer 101

This will be a recurring subject every semester since I wish to develop my writing skills and that is an ongoing endeavor.


SYLLABUS:

a) Read one essay, one short-story, one poem everyday (create a publically accessible archive of the same)
 
b) Write and Publish one essay, one short-story, one poem every week (follow a sacred weekly publishing schedule)


SUBMISSIONS (Weekly)

Friday – Poetry
Saturday – Short-story
Sunday – Essay

2) Study of Malayalam Language


SYLLABUS : Half hour study everyday

INSTRUCTOR: Rema Sreenivasan

SUBMISSIONS : A video featuring the progress in language ability across 6 months.



DOMAIN 3 – Developing Musical Aptitude


SUBJECT CHOSEN : Learn to play the bass

INSTRUCTOR: Vishal Singh

SUBMISSIONS: 10 bass covers uploaded on IGTV/ Youtube by December 21, 2020

STUDY PLAN: 1 hour study everyday and weekly lessons with the instructor



DOMAIN 4 – Developing Naturalist Aptitude

SYLLABUS : Study Home-Science with my mother

INSTRUCTOR: Rema Sreenivasan

STUDY PLAN: Learn and document home science skills (cooking, essential life-skills, learning to run a household, wisdom of an Indian mother) in video and written format in an intimate and shareable way

SUBMISSIONS: A PDF document of recipes



SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THIS SEMESTER

1) Practicing – A musician’s return to music – Glenn Kurtz

2) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century – Howard Gardner

3) Out of our minds – Ken Robinson

4) Writing for your life – Deena Metzger

5) Zen Mind, Beginner’s mind – Shunryu Suzuki

6) Mahatma Gandhi on the Bhagawat Geeta – M.K. Gandhi


Semester ending report: Create Abstract for each subject to discuss methods used, results, outcomes.


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