I am sitting in the German Bakery. Shortly after I came here a heavy rain shower began. Now it’s still raining off and on, and a wonderfully cool wind is blowing in through the open window at my side. The window overlooks the fastly moving river and Lakshmanjhula Bridge, which is currently crowded with pedestrians.

Earlier I confided with Ahmad my thoughts about how we might continue in the C and D office, and I have been continuing to think about this since, while reading The Stone Woman.

An Indian family are sitting in front of me. While walking to the restaurant I had a feeling of love for these people, their simple devotion. How they bow to the statues of Ganesha and Devi while passing by the 13 story temple People who are very poor, hoping that their dreams will be fulfilled by the Gods. On the bridge you notice how they come in waves. There will be a group of white-clad turbanned men, then a group of colourfully clad women carrying bags and luggage on their heads. They are groups of people on pilgrimage, often from distant parts of India.

One thing about this country is that it is a nation on the move, aware of itself. The country is a world of its own in so many ways, and has been so for a long time.

29 8 Evening

‘In the Discourse on the Many Realms (Bahudhatuka Sutta), the Buddha taught that all our anxieties and difficulties come from our inability to see the true face, or the true sign of things, which means that although we see their appearance, we fai to recognize their impermanence and interbeing nature. If we are afraid or insecure, at the root of our fear or insecurity is that we have not yet seen the true face of all dharmas. If we investigate and look deeply into the 18 Elements, we can transform our ignorance and overcome fear and insecurity.’ p.77

Beggars

I have resisted almost every beggar in India so far. The couple of times I gave something, they asked for more, so I give nothing. Not every beggar directly asks for money. Sometimes they just rattle their tin, sometimes they just say a word of greeting. These, I have been ignoring too, or usually not ignoring, but responding with a smile or an acknowledgment. Sometimes I have patiently listened to their story or spiel, and still not given anything. Today a crippled man, driving a cart that was driven by a chair peddled by his left arm, asked me to push him, and that too I ignored, Eventually I saw an Indian man pushing him. It was near Sivanandashram. One day a man in orange said that he was a disciple of Swami Sivananda and needed money for medicines, or for an operation. I listened but did not give him any money.

I am not completely sure why I ignore these people. After all I am grateful that they are asking for money and not stealing it from me. Maybe it is lazyness, or a lack of feeling of responsibility, or a wish not to be involved or implicated in the reality that they face, or a feeling that I am an outsider and therefore exempt. If it is the latter I have a question mark. It is the same excuse I give in Israel. Either I am always an outsider, or I am always an insider – I have to decide. Some people are natural outsiders, whereas others are natural insiders. They become involved wherever they are at the moment, sometimes erroniously, because they misread the reality – but maybe this feeling of responsibility is preferable. Obviously what is preferable is an informed and intelligent involvement, rather than the two extremes that I have presented. The sense of being an alien is erronious, a fallacy.

Since writing the above, I haven’t enjoyed any other inspiration. Simply bided my time. Read a little from my two books, the one by Thich Nhat Hanh and the other by Tariq Ali (The Stone Woman), studied some Hindi, talked a little with the people in the Surya Guest House, gone for walks, visited the Ashram. Yesterday I heard that Swami Chidananda had become unconscious due to a blood clot in the neck. It seems that his days will not be long. It’s an end of an era for Sivanandashram. Odd to be here at this time – I wonder what it means that I am here at this time? Anything or nothing for me? I already feel more distant from the ashram and the Divine Life Society than I did previously. But there is a respect still there. I know that Swami Chidananda is one of the holiest persons I have ever had the fortune to meet. There is the matter of the internal politics of the organization that I have never understood, but knowing organizations, it is clear how these could develop.

Looking at my life lately, I see a kind of emptiness. A lack of direction. I am functioning, but don’t seem to be making much progress in any direction. I would have liked to express more creativity, but don’t really know how to go about that. Yet I always feel on the verge of something. Maybe what I am missing is a bit of courage.

I have always been better at promoting causes other than my own. That’s true of the Sivananda organization and is also true of Neve Shalom. The reason is probably because I tend to believe in people and am a good apologist. Whereas I have less belief in myself and an ego that refuses to develop or conflate.

But lately I have been doing more towards developing my individual point of view, through the internet. Perhaps I should work more on that aspect, find my niche. With my tendency towards being abstruce, I don’t suppose I will ever gain acknowledgment in any way.

India

impressions: 454 million people described as poor, by the United Nations. Half of the women feel their husbands are justified in beating them. Diseases, corruption, violence, organized crime, bad movies, cow shit, poor hygiene, inability to face reality, complacency, rudeness, blaring horns, unscrupulous merchants, overpopulation, abortion of females, dowries, expensive weddings, obsession with the more gross aspects of western materialism, superficiality of middle classes, lingering caste and class consciousness, religious divisions, religious charletans. beggars, handicapped people, nationalism. It is much easier to think of India in negative terms than in positive ones. The delights of Indian music, cooking, literature, are all there, as is its lofty spirituality, and the warmness of its people and their ingenuity. It’s just that these things tend to fade into the background when one is confronted with the everyday realities of present day India.

Back to me. I don’t think I have any kind of future in fiction writing, and it is time to admit that to myself. I might fancy myself as a writer, but definitely not in that. I don’t have sufficient interest or understanding in people in order to invent them, and I don’t have enough human experience in order to contrive situations. I think I can be a good enough writer of non-fiction, but I have to make up for the holes in my education. Perhaps I should pursue further my education in the field of peace education or some similar field. I don’t think my interest in conventional academic topics – such as in the behavioural sciences or education – is sufficiently strong to pursue that, but softer subjects, such as the humanities, holds more interest for me. There’s no doubt that I have a penchant for learning and furthering my education and knowledge, but I need to channel it better. Maybe even journalistic or media studies could hold my interest, and I need to develop somewhat my confidence in interviewing people. Perhaps I need to develop video skills.

If I am thinking of developing any further skills or furthering my career in the village, I should think in terms of what can help me personally. Up till now, in the last few years, my thinking has been that I should master all of the skills that are required for presentation of information, such as web design, writing, photography, etc. and I have succeeded partly with this goal. I have been less successful at some areas, such as working with print shops, and the more technical aspects of web development, like java script and flash. I have not even tried video. I’m also not great at getting people to pose for cameras.

I might further develop my communications skills, but perhaps what I need is to develop my analytic and organizational skills I mean my ability to interpret what I am reporting or writing about, and my ability to organize the product. I think I was not far wrong, whenI thought about this a few months ago. Perhaps I did not yet identify a proper direction for development. But I should press on with this in some way.

So there is Galtung – I am not sure whether or not this is the most promising approach. Perhaps there is some Buddhist methodology that would appeal to me? I’m a little afraid of approaches that attempt to read the hard realities of the Middle East according to some glossy western approach. Maybe what I need is a way to improve perception that does not impose any cognitive approach, but which allows one to develop one’s natural ability to see things as they are, or even better, helps to reveal the inner, hidden relationships between things.

For action:

take Galtung’s peace journalism course

look for new age style vision and writing courses that emphasize holistic vision and the way things connect to one another.

Look for books on the subject of how the world works. Capra, others. Permaculture, ecology, interrelationship. I ching, interbeing. Apply all this to understanding how the Israeli – Palestinian conflict has become so intractible, and why Palestinians and Israelis hurt each others’ and their own interests. Study what interests lie behind the conflict. Study if and how it may be possible to change the situation towards peace.

Read the chapter in Thich Nhat Hanh on mindfulness and this is very impressive and touching. It made me think about my mysterious relationship with Dorit – so poorly defined or understood. There was also a passage in the other book I am reading, The Stone Woman, by Tariq Ali, which made me think of that too today. Perhaps the real question is how much I am present to anyone around me, and how it is that I am somehow so distant, while feeling that I am present, patient and all the rest. I always feel that about myself at least, that I am open and friendly and patient as a listener. But perhaps there is something missing in the quality of my listening, such as a lack or responsiveness, or empathy, or insufficient reciprocation, or lack of emotional intelligence. The latter is in any case beyond my control. I can only try to be truly present for the other person, and to be willing to reciprocate confidence.

Let me summarize the miracles of mindfulness here:

1. to be present, to touch deeply the other.

2. to make the other present also

3. To nourish the object of our attention

4. To relieve the other’s suffering.

5. To look deeply.

6. Understanding.

7. Transformation.

I have a tendency to exclude myself in my relationships with other people, and, in my relationship with Dorit, to act as if it is outside the bounds of a usual married relationship, as if I were never truly married. Sexually, it was never a very strong match. Maybe it could not be otherwise between us, and fortunately, I did not insist with that. What I probably missed in life was a better sexual relationship with someone, although I think that healthy, long-lasting sexual relationships are probably harder to find than successful marriages. Marriages have more to keep them together, whereas longterm healthy sexual relationships depend upon the ardency of desire in both partners, which is not an easy feat.

Anyway I need to keep these mindfulness trainings in mind. And they relate to what I was earlier saying about learning how to see and understand the world in an integrative way.

In seeing the world I need to develop a tool kit. I have been thinking, while reading about Buddhism, also of Frawley, and his view that in an earlier age, the way that people saw the world was imbued with spirituality, that in the age of the vedas and the early upanishads, the view of the world, by these ancient people was so deeply spiritual that it resisted formulation. The philosophy of Sankara and Buddha was more of an attempt to recuperate something that had been lost, which only half worked. But, be that as it may, they were writing for the world that in which we now lived, and they no doubt understood what had been lost better than we do today. I had better study Frawley more deeply before commenting more. However, my view is one of integration, or reintegration. I think that in our present stage of evolution we need to reintegrate the knowledge and the wisdom of the past, and the wisdom and knowledge of all present day cultures, since we are at a kind of junction and juncture. All things now. We cannot afford to exclude anything. We are a kind of seedbank. What we fail to incorporate now may be lost, what we do incorporate can enrich us.

These sannyasins who walk half naked along the banks of the Ganges carry with them an old knowledge, even if it is imperfectly understood, even if their behaviour is a kind of show. I should spend some time and sit with them, quietly.

The thing about Rishikesh, unlike many another place, is that it is okay here, legit, to do what I am doing here; thinking. reading, meditating, writing. That’s what people do here. It is the natural thing.

I spent the morning walking around Rishikesh. I found a tailor and got her to shorten my white pyjama pants, as well as to make me a new natural cotton colour kurta, to match a pair of pants I had purchased. Then I went up to look at the Swiss cottage complex – looked at about 3 hotels. Then I walked all the way along the high road behind Sivanand Ashram, and at the bottom checked on Omkarananda guest house (expensive) and Yogananda guest house, less expensive, but not especially attractive. Then I walked across the bridge, turned right and kept walking till the end, reaching the old Maharishi Ashram, I guess. On the way I had stops for food and drink. Afterwards I walked all the way up the eastern shore, back to my hotel.

At one of the bookshops on the way I stopped and bought a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching’. I had been intending to get a Thich Nhat Hanh book. This seems to be a good one.

I think I will stay here at Aadi Badri – it is comfortable enough, and quite a good deal, actually, compared with what is around. And I think I will stay in Rishikesh. My main purpose and responsibility, since I have made this such a long vacation, should be to do something spiritual, for my soul, to recharge my batteries, and so forth. Rishikesh is a suitable place for this. But I am not so inspired these days by contemporary Indian spiritual culture (as mentioned). I feel like I am getting a grip on what is necessary. I have realized that whereas Indian philosophical systems point to an escape from mundane consciousness, Thich Nhat Hanh is talking about a transformation of it. Whereas others are talking of a way out, he is talking of a way through. And this is more attractive to me, at this stage of my development.

Is my desire to study TNH now just a way of justifying my time, and convincing myself that I am doing something useful? It could be if I do not attempt, at the same time, to put what I am learning into practice, and live mindfully during this period. It’s a little hard without relatng to others, and there are not so many opportunities for that here. But I should try to do what I do do in a mindful way while here, practice slow walking, mindful eating, etc. Perhaps to take a long walk each day along the river, in one direction or the other.

There is one aspect to my relation to spirituality which I can’t get away from. My existence on this earth is fairly two-dimensional. Or it seems to be that way to me. I am monkish and reclusive in my disposition, even if I am not completely reconciled to that. I do not so easily find company. The examples and paradigms offered by TNH do not always apply well to me because I do not have a well developed sociability.

Later

There are different ways of viewing the same situation. I said earlier that maybe I am using the reading of spiritual books to justify my long stay here. but it would be more accurate to say that, having found that I had assigned too much time to this vacation, and having discovered that I am not so interested in visiting more Indian towns, I am simply trying to make the best of my time here. And, who knows, maybe something good will come of it.

When there is not enough time I feel pressured, and when there is too much time, I don’t know how to appreciate it or use it well. I mean I am doing a little Hindi and other reading. But I’m not going to the heart of Rishikesh, and not bothering to explore other places either.

I like the stretch between Lakshman Jhula and Ram Jhula along the river, where there are many sadhus. Of course they do not speak to people like me. Why should they? There are too many foreigners. Yesterday a boy of around 18 perhaps looked into my face and began to walk with me.. He walked next to me all the way back to Lakshman Jhula, occasionally looking round at me with a beaming expression that wasn’t exactly a smile. When the opportunity arose I shook him off my trail.

This morning there is some blue sky and the sun is shining. Yesterday there was hardly any rain. I think the monsoon is ending.

What makes sense

in any situation in which one finds oneself.

Slowly learn the language, as I am doing here. Back home I should be spending a little time each day to learn arabic. Do a little spiritual practice. Keep the body and the mind fit. Avoid wasting time. Be open and friendly with people, one’s neighbours. Spend the minimum time working, earning money – just enough to cover one’s needs. Minimize one’s needs. Keep things simple as possible. Spend little time in traveling, making purchases. It’s all unnecessary. The main thing is to enjoy a peaceful, full, rewarding life that is gentle upon the earth’s resources. Even the beggars of Rishikesh live lives that are more moral than the average Westerner. They beg a little, but they do not steal. We are stealing the earth’s resources, while thinking we are morally superior. Most of what we earn we use to support our egos. Our needs are much more simple than we assume.

UG Krishnamurti would probably say that it is the effort of peacemaking that is creating the war. In the Middle East, this would be true on the political level, since peacemaking is part of the same game. The question is whether this would also be true of the grassroots peacemaking efforts. Are they part of the same process? Do the same thought processes give rise both to war and to peace efforts? Is there a point that one would reach in which the whole negative and positive process ought to be equally shunned?

Again, I come back to the conclusion that the only way to make peace is to be peace, and the only way to work for peace is to create it in the here and now. I have been through these thought processes in the past.

If thinking could change anything in my perception of the problems, maybe it would have done so by now.

I need to look at the system of Thich Nhat Hanh and see in what way it is transformational. Is there a difference between mindfulness on the level that a beginner practices it, and the level that an advanced person practices it? Are there levels at all? Does the practice lead anywhere? I am not all that sure that it matters. I sort of reject UG’s one pointed zeal to reach a transformational experience and his declaration that only that can change anything. It seems to me that people who are living with some spiritual consciousness in their lives are in fact better off for it. That those who have an awareness of interbeing have made an important adjustment. The vedanta system has the concept of adopting concepts intellectually in the beginning – the process of affirmation – and later expanding these from the level of concept to integrative experience, and beyond. An idea like ~interbeing~ is false in so far as it is a concept, but works within the conceptual system for as long as the world of concepts exists. In other words, it does not fail to make sense at any level.

Yes I have been feeling a kind of revulsion of the system of denial, in the Indian system, of reality as we know it, and suspect that it is linked with a similar distancing in Indian culture from many of the distasteful sides of Indian life; the ability to make blatantly unrealistic statements about Indian civilization, etc. I think maybe there is a basic inability to accept things as they are. This makes a lot that is said here suspect ; wishful thinking, the big lie, etc. A better way of dealing with reality may have been to look with a critical eye, but since I am not Indian, and do not have to deal with their culture, it is probably better to leave it all up to them.

So I am rejecting transcendentalism to the extent that it tries to deny or supplant normal perception without offerng anything in return. And I am embracing the concept of mindfulness, linked to the idea of interbeing.

Picked up a book by U.G.. Krishnamurti, a man who, in his life, knew both Sivananda and Krishnamurti, and rejected them both. He rejected them because he thought that they did not give him the enlightenment that he sought from them.

He eventually did have an experience which transformed his life, which he describes as something completely physical, and which left him with a condition that he calls ‘the natural state’ , in which there is the experience of ‘not knowing’.

His ideas and the way that he expresses them, make sense (though the physical experience he describes can only be accepted or rejected on his testimony). In particular, the logic that he sets against J Krishnamurti makes sense. However I find myself rejecting the man, because he is not able to offer me anything useful. If I would be a person similar to himself, perhaps this would be different. I mean his message serves as an antedode who approach spiritual teachers with a greed for nothing less than the ultimate experience. But the teachers who I have approached in life were able to give something from first exposure to their teachings. They already made me feel a little better right from the beginning. In the case of Swami Vishnu, this was a healthier approach to life. In the case of J Krishnamurti, it was the understanding of the need to decondition myself and accept diversity in a humble way, in the case of Thich Nhat Hanh, it was the value of mindfulness, and a vision of a spirituality that touched everything in the now, without waiting for some distant goal. I feel fortunate for having encountered my teachers, rather than cheated by any of them. Still, I think that the best way to learn from our teachers is to implement their teachings in our lives, rather than place ourselves in the teacher’s permanent custody.

Maybe the test of a teacher, for the common man, is whether his influence upon our lives appears to be good from the very beginning.

One interesting but often unspoken thing is the way in which teachers suit their messages to the times, reflecting the knowledge that is available in the real world. Thus Sivananda’s message does not seem as timely and relevant today, and this is true of Krishnamurti, Swami Vishnu, and most other teachers whose teachings came a little earlier than today. Perhaps somehow the prophets of earlier periods managed to speak in such a way that their messages carried across the centuries. But it is the job of most teachers to fill out the details, and one is aware when their ideas and insructions do not suit the wisdom that continues to accumulate in the world.

Maybe there isn’t a direct link between the cosmology and practice. Directly trying to connect these may not be the most efficient way to express a spiritual vision of the universe. But I started this discussion with the question of how to tap into the flow of energy that overcomes physical disabilities and limitations. The question is not of eliminating such disabilities but making sure that they do not conquer the spirit. According to some teachers, physical disabilities may even be an expression of mental or spiritual weaknesses, and we certainly see a correlation between one’s mental and spiritual state and one’s degree of immunity to disease, and one’s ability to surmount disease.

As mentioned, what does not appeal to me is development of will power, as something individuated from the cosmic. I would rather draw from the cosmic, align myself with it, and in the terms of Indian spirituality this is known as bhakti. Bhakti is usually towards ishwara, or God with attributes. There is also bhakti towards the cosmic without attributes, though this is conceived of as more difficult. It can also easily take on an intellectual veneer. I wonder if I can find in India a school that practices bhakti towards the absolute without attributes, with which I can feel comfortable? or maybe I should look elsewhere? In Buddhism, the Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh, there is the concept of interbeing, of non-separation, the idea that all beings are related to each other in their essence. This isn’t a theism, but an ecological view of the universe. A view that things do not have a separate existence. In Buddhism, and other spiritual perspectives, without theism, the field of interest is shifted away from the egoistic context to awareness of the whole. Rather than a judgmental and critical view of the world, there is direct awareness, which includes within its vision also the interrelation of all things.

The above worldview is not one of bhakti, exactly, but of appreciation. It is not the worship of the God-spirit in all things, but mindfulness of the interdependence of all things. No thing can exist independantly, but requires the presence of other things for its existence. Not only does the divine essence exist in all things, it also binds them together.

The urge is to ask how can I link myself to this energy, join this union, and usually I think we attempt that by joining some spiritual movement or sangha – but these are only surrogates. Joining oneself to the divine essence, or rather reaffirming the existing connection, is probably not something that offers security, a membership card, the sense of belonging to an elite group. However, if one truly succeeds, a feeling of fellowship, dissolving individual ego, should follow from it.

You are because I am

I am because you are

We are linked

Because of your poverty

I am rich

Because of your weakness

I am strong

Because of your crookedness

I am straight

Because of my health

You are diseased

And sometimes the tables are turned

Weakness and strength are two positions on the same dial.

We are all brothers, brother.

Suffering heavily from my cold today, in its phase when it has moved mainly to the chest. My temperature is up to 37.6

On the other hand, after not eating Indian style food for 24 hours, I haven’t had a bowel movement.

I ate at lunch time in the German Bakery – a paneer burger. It came with salad, but I risked this anyway.

At my table I was joined by two German women but that made me uncomfortable since I had to try to hide my coughs a little.

Then I took a long slow walk along the river towards Sivananda Jhula, since I wanted to take a picture of S. Sivananda’s Swargashram sadhana kutir. I discovered that just next to the kutir there is a way down to the river, where there is a wide expanse of grey sand and large boulders where it would be possible to sit and spend a pleasant afternoon. All the mugginess of the Rishikesh air leaves you when you go down directly to the river itself. Sitting there I thought that Sivananda may have once sat upon the same rock.

Then there was the long slow walk back, which took all my energy. I stopped at a chai wallah’s booth for a chai. He told me how he offers cool water for free also to pilgrims along the way.

The water was kept in pots that he surrounded with cool wet cloths.

I stopped at J’s hostel o say hello, then stayed to drink a bottle of Mazaa mango juice – I drank it down disappointingly quickly. There was another girl at the hostel who seems to have the same symptoms as me, though she says that the fever has come more recently than the cough.

I came back upto the room and lay down for a while. It took a long time to calm my breathing so I wasn’t coughng all the time. But then I slept for a while. Now a slight burning sensation in my mouth is evidence of the slightly higher temperature that has come on this afternoon.

I wonder about disease and the fighting of it. Men like Sivananda lived under impossibly difficult conditions, despite all kinds of physical problems. Sivananda used to rise and do japa in the icy cold river before dawn in winter, and lived almost without food. The only explanation for it is the power of spiritual force or mental energy – the power of will. I wonder at this applicttion of will power. Sivananda’s books are all about the development of will power, and somehow this has never appealed to me, at least, in the way that I have understood it. I would much rather imagine connecting myself to the flow of energy in the whole universe, than imagine myself struggling in an individual way, to develop my will power. That approach is given legitimacy under Sivananda’s system, under the auspices of bhakti. But then, I have not sufficiently developed my approach to bhakti, since I no longer, if ever, felt truly comfortable with a deity, Ishwara, or whatever. It seems to me that if I want to connect myself to the cosmic force, I have to develop a better familiarity with it. I think Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings may hold a key to that.

In Shantaram I encountered the philosophy which he called Resolution Theory, which seemed to me like a poorer version of a similar philosophy that one encounters in yoga, perhaps in Krishnananda’s writings, according to which the universe began in a single vibration, where power in potential gave expression to itself and began a process of individuation, division and separation. A widening complexity, where particles divide and re-unite with particles to form new structures. Each particle carries within it the seed of its essential nature, which is the primary, unindividuated essence. As the products of creation grow more complex, there is a rise in individuated intelligence, reaching through the plant and animal kingdoms towards man. Man is the only entity capable of perceiving himself as an entity that is individuated from the whole. This carries the danger that he will act in an egoistic way that will bring about the destruction of other species and ultimately himself. But man carries also the ability to understand and reunite with his essence, the unindividuated whole. And, in as much as the universe is becoming ever more complex and separating further from its origin, it is, at the same time, striving to reach back to its point of origin. The understanding of this process is the school through which all of kife is being self educated, and it is the school that human beings are intended to travel. One of the chief classrooms or subjects for learning is that of suffering, since suffering is always the expression of an individual who has not understood his place in the universe: has not understood that he is in fact united with all beings, or rather, his true identity is the common seed that exists in all beings. That common seed is not subject to disease, death or destruction.

Another subject for learning is love, since in love we come to give more value to the welfare of other creatures than we do to our selves, and the urge towards self-preservation is one of the strongest forces and instincts that all creatures possess. The upanishads say that we love others on account of the self. That is, because of the seed or essence that is within us, we are able to reach out to the seed or essence that is in another being.

In making choices in life, we should choose the paths that bring us closer to learning our true identity and reuniting with it. It is not, as Khaderbhai says in Shantaram, the movement towards greater complexity that it is important to emulate and encourage, but the parallel movement in all creation towards understanding the underlying essence of that complexity. The universe wants to reunite with itself. In man, it finally has an opportunity. In all of creation, only man has the ability to reintegrate. Spiritual masters, prophets and saints have managed this, and are the inspiration for us. Their statements on the subject are not without problems, paradoxes and contradictions, but we must understand that the attempt that they are making is by definition super-human – they are attempting to transcend their human nature and reach a level of conscious being that is at the essence of all life and its evolutionary process. So we should forgive the saints and sages sometimes for their arrogance, mutual rivalry, delusions of grandeur and the rest.

My challenge, after having affirmed this cosmology, is how to move within it. And this has been my primary stumbling block. It seems to me that I have not made significant progress, and I really need to do so, otherwise, by my own thinking, my life will have been a waste. How to put this cosmology into practice? or at least make its realization stronger?

Finished Shantaram, a very good book, with a Bollywood style ability to invoke every possible emotion, but also full of profound reflections upon life and our position in the universe. I think it deserves to be taken in a non-judgmental way, as the reflection of one man’s experience.

Before surrendering the book to the next reader – someone at J’s hostel – I thought to copy out a few key passages. I wonder whether this has a real purpose. If I don’t get everything the first time, is there a reason to hope that there is a chance to learn more? Still, when reading a novel, one doesn’t always read with a close attention to detail, and there are plenty of opportunities to glide over important points, so here goes:

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fae keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.

Resolution theory – about how the universe is always moving towards complexity – Idriss

You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and comletely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it’s a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.

The fully mature man or woman, he said, has about two seconds left to live.

Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves. And I used to be that optimistic once. I used to believe and think like that. ut I don’t any more. So no – I guess I’m not an anarchist now.

The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men, he said. It is the deeds that that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and bad deeds. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The tuth is that we are al, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving towards God.

There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabaker told it to me, just as I’m telling it to you now.

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

The night passed restlessly with many dreams, from which I kept awaking in confusion. This is often the case when there is a fever. It’s not a high fever, 37.4, but was enough to disturb my sleep. Today my cold came on stronger, just as I expected it to do. I think the runny nose will give up tomorrow or the next day and I will be left with an annoying cough. I hope the cold does not slip too deeply onto my chest.

So, dealing with the cold, I have spent the day reading, after doing email for an hour in mid morning. That was mostly reading through and responding to Dorit’s long letter about the changes in the village, her developing connection with Making the Impossible Possible and other things. I still have to write to my parents.

Occasionally my thoughts stray to the meaning of my stay here in Rishikesh and whether to depart from here, when I am better, to some other town. Or maybe I will just move to another hotel in Rishikesh itself. Here, I have been meeting mostly Israelis, which don’t really interest me, and I don’t really interest them – especially since most of them are young. What’s for sure is that after J departs from here I will be pretty much by myself. Anyway, for now, I think I am right in taking it easy and letting my cold settle.

I am feeling a vague antagonism to the Indian street scene: the filth in the road, the boisterous taxi drivers, the untrustworthy food, and all the raucous sounds and friendly-rudeness of Indians. Perhaps the only way to accept all this is through the rose-tinted eyes of foreign tourists and pilgrims, or the callous familiarity of those who are native to this country. Despite my long interest in all things Indian, and respect for the country’s spiritual culture, I don’t fit into either category. I cannot help but look critically on what I see. On the other hand I appreciate the people too.

I suppose the aim of a stranger should be to treat people with respect, and awaken empathy, where that is possible. I have to work on my Hindi.