The rain is pouring down gathering in the sails and slowly dripping on my raingear. It’s summertime and I’m on a sailboat up north on one of the Frisian lakes. The wind is pretty impressive but after 20 minutes on the lake we see lightning strike shortly followed by thunder, and decide to turn around.
One week ago, the water was also flying all over the wooden sailing boat when I was visiting the Finnish archipelago. My host and I were on a four- hour boat ride from a little island to their home in Porvoo, a nice Finnish town. The sky was clear but the wind had clearly picked up and was causing some big waves. We were returning from a yearly retreat where we delved into a world of Gaudiya Vedanta.
As other years, Swami BV Tripurari was the lecturer of this 5-day event.
He spoke among other issues on how Descartes’ doubt has lead to a postmodern unlimited doubt and how we, as a result, have turned everything besides human life into dead matter. In this way, animal life and the earth became tools for exploitation. He asked the question couldn’t we say that animal life is aware and that awareness and self-awareness (consciousness) are closely linked? One could even question how dead a table is as it is representing the aesthetics of its designer. The old sages used to see everything as consciousness, so a mountain would be consciousness too, having had to pass through the consciousness of its designer. Being alive or dead is so a matter of perspective.
On a lighter note, I recognized Descartes’ doubt when I spoke to an ex-colleague this week. While sitting outside on one of the many beautiful Amsterdam canals, she was telling me how she was looking to make the switch from private banking to perhaps public planning. She wasn’t the first one who mentioned a career change to me. It appears a whole generation is caught in a quarter life crisis. I told someone facing his midlife crisis about the quarter life crisis and he burst out in laughter. That’s what they call a generation gap. My generation has too much freedom and is anxious to make the wrong decisions so refrains from making any at all. And besides we have led ourselves to believe that no choice is necessary as this world is designable.
One just picks and chooses along the way to create a unique blend of life. How striking though that many still end up with the same flavor in the end. However, it is not so much about choosing a flavor, but more how to lead a happy life and one week a year will get me closer along that way. Like on the sailboat, bumpy waves are expected and some refreshing water in my face as the waves fly over the deck will not hold me back from pursuing my choice.
“Nee, of je nu gelukkiger bent.
‘Ja, mijn nieuwe leefstijl begint nu normaler te worden. Er is een enorme last van mijn schouders gevallen. Ik ben nog steeds erg met reclames bezig. Jij hebt bijvoorbeeld een mooi jasje aan en ik vraag mezelf voortdurend af welk merk het is (Sissy Boy; red.). Maar ik kan er meer afstand van nemen en vergelijk de spullen van anderen minder met mijn eigen kleding. Ik vergelijk mezelf veel minder met de ideaalbeelden die we voortdurend in reclames voorgespiegeld krijgen. Al die mooie lijven, de auto’s, de vrouwen, de dure kleding.‘Ik heb mezelf afgesneden van de tijdgeest. Ik lees de glossy’s niet meer, kijk geen tv, ik probeer advertenties zoveel mogelijk te vermijden. Ik leef langzamer en dat heeft zowel positieve als negatieve gevolgen. Ik heb het gevoel dat ik achterloop en dat maakt me onzeker. Het was mijn baan om van alle trends op de hoogte te zijn en nu kan ik daar niet meer over meepraten.” - Neil Boorman in Intermediair
This is why I threw out my TV.
“While sacred and authoritative, adjustments
that are made in consideration of time and circumstance are not viewed
as deviant. The Puranas, after all, are literature that seeks to
present the essence of the Veda in an easily understandable format. To
accomplish this task, the Puranic literature must be fluid. Such
fluidity, however, does not amount to interpolation, but rather attests
to the ongoing nature of revelation. This also explains why it is
particularly difficult to assign a date to the authorship of the
Bhagavatam. When was it written? The correct answer is perhaps that it
is not finished yet.” - Swami BV Tripurari
The difference between living scripture and static. Quite a revelation.
“Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. With all this stuff piling up and never quite getting put away, we’re no longer huddled masses yearning to breathe free; we’re huddled masses yearning to free up space on a countertop. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.” TIME.com
Interesting concept. I recognize that oppression when I came back from spending 6 months living at Audarya. I had gotten used to living with about a backpack of stuff and then I realized how much I owned myself. 100 things is a nice concept, but I do not believe clutter is quantifiable in such a sense.
It has been relatively quit on my personal blog for a while and that has partly to do with focus. I’m contemplating starting a new blog with more economic, investment and personal development issues and keeping this as my personal blog where I would like to share more insights in column-like posts.
I’ll keep you updated.
I walked out of the office having made too many sarcastic jokes again. I sat down in the train, in time as usual to find a spot. Trains fill up quite easily around six o’clock. I was thinking it had been a while since a conductor had come to check my ticket. The man entering the train 20 minutes later must have thought the same thing. When the conductor arrived, he just tried to explain as best as possible that he had been in a hurry and forgot to date his ticket, one of the deadly sins in train riding. The conductor caught him quite easily asking him if the same had happened on his way here as the man was on his return. Of course, he did not have a proper reply and the conductor gave him an extra highly priced ticket.
More or less, he knew he was wrong and the conductor right. However, he chose to play the game like an Italian soccer player meeting the Netherlands at the European Championships. First, he did his best to get around it, second he demanded empathy and thirdly he issued cold threats.
He let fate take care of him. Eventhough, he had much control of the situation.
Why he couldn’t admit being wrong still baffles me. “Suck it up!” I heard someone say in my head. “Die in the harness.” It is better to admit defeat in honor and dignity than to run away from truth while pointing at others. I think they call the first “a gentleman” and the latter… Not sure.
In the train, yesterday, before getting out, the man in the same cabin all of sudden spoke to me: “the world is small.” After a few seconds he continued, “all our lives we are looking for someone or something else, while we haven’t found ourselves. How can we look for someone else when we don’t know who we are?.”
A few seconds before the following paragraph had popped up on my iphone:
“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population had abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that only ended with the dawn of space exploration.” via Kottke
I remember one early morning at Audarya last year when I stopped while walking to the bathhouse and looked up. Hundreds or thousands of stars lit the sky. Very little light pollution. Years ago I was on a school excursion and we looked at the stars too and picked out a few well know stars, like the pole stars. Years later as well, I was sitting on a veranda at the Mediterranean and looked up to the stars. Magnitude. That’s what I thought. And it forced me to think and be humble.
And so I believe introspection leads to a better quality of life, and a less random one too.
A good friend of mine recently uploaded his bamboo flooring business website. Since all businessman are looking for customers, I would love to direct you to his new website. Bamboo floors are a good green alternative to standard wooden floors.
After moving into an apartment and emptying out all the boxes, I realized the place was still very empty. Since I always have a research appetite, this proved to be an interesting experience into the world of interior design. Having falling in love with Swami’s design of Audarya and always having liked the Japanese and Scandinavian interior style, I went out searching on the internet. If you ever need to do some interior design and are looking for inspiration, these are some of my favorite blogs:
Apartment Therapy
Design Sponge
Emma’s Blog
Purple Area
Style Files
Just a little diversion, back to more on topic issues hopefully soon.
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