Trees, smoke: An optical illusion

One drowsy morning, with the sky overcast but showing no signs for a shower of drizzle, I got up earlier than usual, for I had an appointment concerning my search for a 'job', namely to be within the tide of the fray, to present myself as 'doing' something or something more than myself, the norm now. But it turned out to be a 'collective' reunion or meeting, with some eight heads like myself and a presenter or an instructor, who was all set for touting to us what she had been instructed, to let us follow the pattern of how we should present ourselves before a recruiter and so on... Within not more than half an hour, except the pre-rites of setting oneself as stilted and knowing among us and the presenter's own fusses before getting into her business, the reunion happened to be animated with some sort of mutually shared catharsis being taken advantage of marked by issuing strange cries and hissing and slackening into oneself. And at such a point, when I was sort of jaded but receptive so far, I had an optical illusion. Through the wide glass of the window just before me, as it was on the third floor, my tired eyes, always eager to identify a plant or a tree, happened to roam beyond the dancing leaves of acacia trees presenting themselves before me. The topography being a vale with a range of low wooded eminences on its either side, the land undulates here and there creating an abrupt bump before one’s eyes. And in a comparatively far distance within my ken, with a row of planted trees alongside a track, I found something gray or whitish with a wide strip of bright green moving one after another, like a snaking trail of something. And, in no time, I somehow took it for a RER train running on its track to Chessy. So I assured myself that it was. But, as my tired eyes happened to roam a bit to one corner of the view framed by the window, to my surprise, I found a rising shaft of a shiny steel chimney, maybe of a factory of the sort, with a grayish trail of smoke issuing from its top. The languidly undulating trail of it like blown by a zephyr of balanced force, its wavy form and motion kept in a steady horizontal position just at the level of trees heads, my tired eyes, the distance, the noises around me, the chimney edged away to one corner of my view, the resemblance of colors, etc. facilitated in my having such a pleasant optical illusion that was itself so soothing even after its having been debunked by myself. So, rather unsuccessfully, I made an attempt or twice to reconstruct the first illusion.  

Wishing His Holiness the great 14th Dalai Lama a very Happy 88th Birthday

 

"Oh no, it's almost certain that I will die, but what will happen to my fellow Tibetans?" (The majority in Tibet, without even the basic human or individual rights that we take for granted in a free state; the minority in exile, without a doing beacon who does what he or she says or thinks.) 

Can even one of our parents think so for the rest of the family in such a situation, when the vehicle that Science has ventured to make it airborne has begun to rattle and shake and careen wildly? Who is our only one in such a situation? Don't underestimate him, when you think that you're well fed so far in a free state. 

My personal way of wishing His Holiness the great fourteenth Dalai Lama on his 88th Birthday. 

Dear the budding mind

Dear, I do apologize as well for not texting and that for a long while. So pleased to learn about you all being hale and in harmony that matter the most. Well, like your words 'aging in the same flow with me' and that we do ignore very so often in our life that's more or less hectic, like we're going to live forever. So great dear that you've been doing much as to let yourself grow with your creative means and by giving your hands in their domestic chore. I do also wish that you've been reading as well, for you're going to major in it. Marcel Proust is really pedantically hard reading so far, but I have already done it, his seven books in sequels, said as done in 'stream of consciousness' medium of the sort. Well, I have done the learning and training. I have got the diploma. I have got my residential ID postponed for yet another ten long year. Now, I've been searching for a job. I had a meeting today on it at the concerned government office. And I have to hunt for it from tomorrow onward. I will have one.

Dear take good care yourself and of your parents as well. Well, what kind of part time job is it? If your dad sees it as not safe, then don't do it dear. Yes, do let me know in advance when you need funding for your enrolment in that college. Well, don't think about your success as a means of expressing your gratitude to your parents but your own person, the living one now, and your genuine sense of love and prayers and gratefulness until you can maintain this tread of reminiscence, namely till the end of this life of yours. Don't think about debts and such, which, I think or believe, you will repay through any means later on and that like how a mother takes it as her sole responsibility to bring up her child or children. As you know, parents take it for granted, rather ironically or magically, the task of upbringing their child or children as their sole responsibilities. And when you come to be a responsibility taker, do it well with your whole heart and that's enough. In this cyclic way of living known as samsara, we are there sort of in a relay by maintaining this subtle thread of 'taken and given' related relationship or law of causality that arches onto a prime motive. So don't take anything for granted, but don't also think that you're indebted dear. For me, you're angelic. I am always there for you. As I age myself, I need more time for reflection. But funny people think I am. Loves and prayers to you all.

We can't be lured by such worldliness: We are Tibetans

My comment on the post of a YouTube channel named as Tibet Travel (Tibet Vista), a Chinese propaganda portal, the post, almost one year old, titled as: Fastest Train in Tibet: My Awesome Lhasa to Nyingchi Bullet Train Experience 

And I had to read again such shallow comments by philistines, worldlings and that means, so pathetically, the idea of almost 95 percent of the fellow human being existing on this life-supporting planet, who have this privilege of being a natural citizen of a nation state (as new worlds are theirs now and we, the rest, believe or take so), and who have thus nothing other to concern about than ones' petty self-interests to shallow this life related or sensorial pleasure-gains at any costs, despite their claiming themselves as a human being with this unique talent of being able to 'ratiocinate' rather than just 'parroting' or 'copying after' or 'degrading oneself to the lowest level of a flunky'. But, in practice, who doesn't want to be such a loyal flunky in the prospect of such huge, sensorially massaging, gains, when your own country is independent more or less? Why you have to care other than your shallow desires, you idiots!

And, practically, I am not lured in the least by your 'bullet train' or 'science fiction'. I find just profound, everlasting potentials in mental developments to transformations to such degrees of self-command and rejoicing and dedicating, despite being there as in a dream that, too, in reality, comes to pass only by the complex doings of the core lucid, cognitive entity of a mind to its subtle, ineffable level. And remember about the dreaminess like of your yesterday's life no matter how it had been, which none of us care to relate with what we observe now before us, taken as so concretely out there before us, which none of us dare to propose or think or imagine how they will have appeared to us by then, like after a lapse of some time, as so distant and aloof, when we will be preoccupied with the same infinitesimally collapsing but seen as grossly extant appearances to chase after, with the same illusion of concreteness that we have now over what we observe before us. 

Racial discrimination against a young Tibetan girl, a student in Belgium by a woman teacher

"To err is human, but to forgive is unusual." ~ Anonymous Yes, the person, the perpetrator, but not her actions and that of a teacher in a Western civilized country like Belgium. I hold that taking legal actions against such isn't to ruin her or her career but to enlighten her in her life journey as a 'teacher', an educator, a master. She isn't qualified as a teacher yet but a discriminator, a bully. Can she do so to those of other races with their strong lot in Belgium? Why to a demure young Tibetan girl? The next one can be someone else's daughter or son, if not a Tibetan, an Asian one. Yes, great is peace, forgiveness but there should be some genuine sense of regret, remorse to enlightening or correcting herself, and can she have such? For me, the young Tibetan girl is really brave for having been able to sound off thus, for we very often tend to be timidly silent in such cases wronged by an outsider. But if done by a fellow Tibetan, then we can gang attack like happened in Belgium a few years back to stabbing to death like happened in France and that for petty, personal issues. I know commenting here thus doesn't make any sense, but how long we can pretend to be someone else. I am hitting on the point of the need of the convergence of moral enlightenments of both the forgiver and the one forgiven. And it isn't just for the young Tibetan girl but for her voicing against that edited, sensationalized footage (now more or less proved to be masterminded by CCP's nexus zeroing in on defaming His Holiness the great 14th Dalai Lama and dividing fellow Tibetan by arousing regional and sectarian jingoism among us) telecasted by certain medias and hyped by a few senseless 'celebrities' or greed or cupidity slaves. 

And, more surprisingly, how that teacher of a discriminator doesn't have the sense to make some personal research before treating the young Tibetan girl thus before her classmates. Like who, where this manipulated clip was first published (YouTube to Twitter by whom to by certain media outlets in India to by Celebrities of the sort to by Chinese ex-official to by Chinese official to by Global Times, the CCP's mouthpiece) and why? I think she is like the majority of Westerners is, a diehard believer of what any  portal of media says, but we believe them to be eclectic, maverick, educated. 

Long live His Holiness the great 14th Dalai Lama: My root-guru

So I stand still like a tree, as per Acharya Shantideva's words in his chef d'oeuvre, A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, when one's, here my own, root-guru (or guru) is being groundlessly defamed by someone or more in the name of 'speaking up' or 'concern' like for 'animals' rights', 'women's rights', 'children's rights', 'sexual harassment', etc.--those catchy, attractive wordings so innocently vulnerable. But the question is can the media, so biased and sensationalism-starved by now, uphold its own principles practically as being taught academically in the stream of journalism before a luring candy (life-changing it can be but individually and worldly) posed by a sinner zeroing in on obstructing human flourishment in terms of freedom of expression, faith, gathering and determining one's own course of life? Can it be possible of living out, freely despite being just worldly, and that out of propagating just 'sensationalism' for the majority of a human mass so unfamiliar with 'ratiocinating', 'self-inspection', 'self-discovery' in this digital or internet era? I am so sure,  however, those sensationalism-starved Indian media outlets are destined to burst at last out of being over-inflated, biasedly self-interested. And so, by and large, an unbiased human sense reigns ever like one's true inner sense so subtle, so unfamiliar with our being familiar with just grossness or coarseness or crude self-interests of ours.

We have such treasures: Tibetan ladies who shine

Really, both of the ladies are great, and, here, the speaking one is sort of unbelievably unique. And, in essence, we have such Tibetan ladies, so eclectically educated mavericks. The main speaking one has really encompassed the essence of Tibetan Buddhist Studies, the direct products of Nalanda University, the two truths: conventional and unconventional, like the two sides of a coin, the means and the product, the relativity (so dreamy and infinitesimally collapsing but there...) and the emptiness of absoluteness or inherent origination. And, yes, thereby getting that each of the two sides forms the great co-relative truth, the one being the only means of  getting the other... Really, I do respect such Tibetan ladies and such ladies in general, who can pursue something of such grandeur, absolutely not related with superficial, earthly glitters and glamours arching just on 'money' and no more. And, yes, such a one treats money just as a minor or secondary means.