Clouds are a great place to start mindfulness It really is. Haven't you looked at the sky lately? Clouds are everywhere. I am sure if you are in UK, you yern for a cloudless sky. And if you are in UAE you will pray for a cloudy sky. Some of us are fortunate to get the better of the two worlds. Like us in tropics. Today it is cloudy the sky. It is about to rain. And I was looking at those dark clouds about to weep. And then Mind took a journey on clouds. Clouds : https://unsplash.com/@guibusted Story of clouds. Little bambinis were looking at the sky from the window of the car. They have learned about different clouds just the other day. Cirrus, cumulus, stratus. They were shouting in the back pointing at the clouds. It just reminded me of the past when I used to watch clouds, either on the ground lying down with an uninterrupted view or from a tree, a little bit closer to the sky. Just the other day I wrote why beach is my favourite place, as you do not have to strain your neck to look at the clouds. But it made me realise truly, what do I know about clouds? Looking at clouds scientifically. After looking at clouds, naturally we learned how to look at clouds scientifically. Initially we learned about water cycle, in cartoon diagrams. And learned that if it wasn't for the clouds man would not survive planet earth. We didn't stop at the level of cirrus and cumulus. We combined them to make cirrocumulus or cumulonimbus clouds. Now its children's turn to learn them and my turn to unlearn what I have learned to know that I know nothing about clouds. Looking at clouds lexically Even before, knowing clouds we learned the lexical logic of clouds. Initially it was monosyllabic, we just blabbered as toddlers. Then bisyllables, and within few years we combined our C+L+O+U+D to make a cloud. Now sitting on the bank of the lagoon, looking at the sky I dissect syllables and see. I see no cloud In C, No cloud in L neither in O U or D. Yet combined there is a cloud. Just like magic. Clouds from above: https://unsplash.com/@thomasrichter Looking at the clouds, microscopically Or we can call it scientifically. I read a story about a man who made an artificial cloud inside a room. We can harvest rain of a cloud forcibly for good or bad intentions. We can predict weather weeks ahead. That much we know about clouds. Yet, do I really? I can remember travelling 30000 feet above the ground. The mighty clouds which looked majestic from below were just formed of mist up there. I couldn't feel it. Yet from the ten inch window I could see them. If you see them microscopically there would be nothing but water vapours. Like on this really cold winter we all breath clouds with our exhalation air. And the space X rocket builds instantaneous clouds on its launch vaporising water.The fact is even when looked at microscopically the cloud dissappear, for the second time. Looking at clouds, macroscopically. I look up at the sky again. With my scientific eyes I see water vapors but no clouds. With my lexical ears I hear them syllables but no clouds. And for a brief second I close my eyes and I see them dissappear for a third time. When I look at the sky long enough I see a cirrus crashing into a nimbus and become another big one. Then I take all the clouds ever been on the sky from the point of view of a geological rock. And arrange them in order from East to west on the sky. And I see no demarcation of cirrus or nimbus. It is a true spectrum . And the artificial names dissapear again. Then I let my mind forget everything. Everything I have learned about cloud and try to look at with empty mind. And I know I should see nothing. Yet clouds are there as true as the sky, as true as myself relatively. I apply the logic of looking at a cloud to look at myself to see the magic in action. Would you do that or are you afraid you will break the illusion and dissappear?

Being content Being content is not easy. As it feels like being content is the opposite of being successful. Sometimes it feels like the lazy philosopher's tactic to make proud of a losing battle. But is it really? Let's hear some Jim Carry philosophy. I love him as a character and as a comedian. He could be the Charlie Chaplin of his era. But what's with comedians are fond of philosophy? Maybe they have a different view than us about life as they always see the comedy in it. I just listened to it again. 👌 wow, he is full of philosophy. In his speech in Golden Globe awards 2016 he said the following. "I am two times Golden Globe winner Jim Carry. When I sleep at night, I'm not just a guy going to sleep. I'm two times Golden Globe winner Jim Carry going to get some well needed shut eye. And when I dream, I don't dream ordinary dreams, no sir, I dream about being three times Golden globe winner, because then it would be enough. To end this terrible search". Award : https://unsplash.com/@omilaev Jim Carrey Philosophy That there is a summary of most of our lives. All our lives we are in search of something. For some it is success. For some it is peace. And when it is not there, we call them dreams. And we forget how why and where these dreams came from. At what point we became obsessed with them and most of the time when we ask these questions, we are too old to comprehend. And there is no choice but to carry it until death. For Jim it was about Golden globes. I am sure for Elon it is about multiplanetary consciousness. For me and you and for the ordinary it maybe about a happy family. But the information doesn't allow us to stop at the level of happiness. Information just keeps on building another layer. When we try to be content in our one storied home, it shows us two storied one with a pool. When we try to break ourselves achieving that dream in five years of hard work, they just build a cutting-edge Tesla. And my Neighbour starts laughing at me looking at my antique junk tuck. Finally, when someone becomes a good writer, they want a series of novels from you and when I wrote just one post about being content, everyone gets into a fight to outrank this. Ha 😁 ha ha. It's the Rat 🐀 race which keeps us from enjoying life and being content. On this lovely afternoon, sitting by the lagoon, I ask myself. What do I want to be happy? When would it be enough? And the answers are clear. You don't need anything other than what you already have as when you are aware you become detached from the film which is called life. I look at little bit of hunger and let it be. I feel the wind and let it be. I look at the couple who walk past me and let it be. Everything the uneasiness, the happiness, and sadness, the clouds and the trees, they all deserve to be, without my conscious awareness, they would just do that. How selfish am I if I needed more than what the nature offered. magician : https://unsplash.com/@juliusdrost How to be content? Being content is difficult rather impossible unless we see the magician in our minds. Like a Gene of the Aladin's lamp he creates a story of Arabian nights each and every day and makes us forget the Deamon of death. Let's look at how Jim concluded his speech to get more wisdom. "These awards are important. If we blew up the solar system into dust although we would not find us or our entire human history in naked eye, yet these awards are important, from our perspective." That there is the answer to our problem of being content. When we look at from perspective from the society we live in, it would never be enough. Yet, if we see ourselves in the perspective of life, it is already perfect. As we all are just marbles hiding perfect statues of David inside of us. We just have to find it.

I spoke with a WallStreet Shark once, in a remote resort in an isolated island In his seventies with luxury guaranteed, he was walking towards the beach with a rush with Glistening eyes of a greedy mouse, he looked at the drowning sun made a remark " What a beautiful sight" and joined me with a chat in turn https://unsplash.com/@grafixgurl247 I came here fast, not before last, to catch the golden hour it was a rush. Glad I did, now I can relax, collecting those colorful shells, ashore fresh And he walked away in exploring sandy bay, while I remained still and mute Saw the final light disappeared in the sky, taking a dip in the sea when he left. What is Golden hour in photography? Golden hour can mean different things to different people. I am sure the most common meaning is just after sunrise and before sunset. As  this is the hour the sky becomes golden in color with sunlight. If you are a photograpger, or a nature lover, I am sure you would be out watching the sky and earth. Taking photographs, otherwise impossible. There is no rush in golden hour. Not naturally. These moments are quite and calm. Golden hour in Medicine As a person with medical rarther surgical background golden hour means different for me. It means the period when a trauma victim comes to the ETU. Now that is a real golden hour. A real rush. As the ETU team resuscitate the patient sometimes surgery is necessary to save the life. Which has to be done so quickly that patient should be on an operation table within one hour. And golden hour is a golden opportunity to save some lives which otherwise is not salvageble. Other meanings of Golden hour If it is the black friday, golden hour can mean the first hour when the store is open. When it is a writer it may mean the hour you are maximally creative and focussed like a razor blade. For a soldier it may be time to kill, for a fisherman its time to fish. As you can see golden hour represent most productive and creative times of our lives. So generally everyone is in a rush to reach the peak at these times. Golden hour in Mindfulness However we should ask ourselves what is the golden hour of mindfulness? Is it the time when your mind is most calm and at peace? Is it the time when the enviornment is so quiet? If you are true to the practise and open to the wisdom I suggest otherwise. Someone can say there is no golden hour in mindfulness. But I like to view it as every hour is a golden hour in mindfulness. The problem is we are not open to the lessons which life tries to teach us. A drifting leaf on the water, a jelly fish or a mangrove is there to teach us lessons of life. Question is are you willing to listen? If you keep a blind eye to the nature and try to rush yourself looking to catch the golden hour according to your yardstick, I am sure you will lose the every golden hour till you finish your last breath. Let's be mindful friend. Its the golden hour now. Thank you for reading You would also, will enjoy reading my little story on waves of the sea.

Shackles of an elephant Elephants are majestic animals. And this is not the first time I have something to talk about them. I will give some links to all the elephant articles at the end. But first let's talk about their training. Shackled elephant: https://unsplash.com/@nirnawa It is hard to train an elephant. Especially wild ones freshly captured. But as you can understand training a seven-foot young one is harder than training four-foot calf. So often it would be a calf. I know what they have to undergo in this domestication process is not pleasant at all. Maybe it is shackles on all four legs, keep them from kicking and running away. Ankus to inflict the pain, and food and water as a reward. And at the end of this tiring painful period, they will learn to obey the command of mahout. And most likely they will remain calm for the rest of their lives. I am sure you have seen a couple of elephants walking on the road. Sometimes they have no shackles. Sometimes tiny one on one leg. Sometimes they carry their own shackles. Why do they not run away? Answer is its their memory. Although they are not shackled now. They were in the past. And all the elephants can remember is what it had gone through when it tried to escape for freedom. They have strong memory which last decades. If you think about this, it is exactly like the horse who did not run away when tied to a plastic chair. It is a no knot! This phenomenon brings us to the main point of our discussion. Freedom. Shackles of freedom Freedom can be physical and mental. In physical freedom you are allowed to walk free. Do anything you like and feel anything you like. This is fundamentally a principle in democracy and not in dictatorship. So, we are lucky most of the time to be born with this freedom as a right, more than we appreciate it. We can compare physical freedom like the wild elephant, and the one who is trained. Except when the elephant is in training it is physically free most of the day. But the elephant as you can see is not mentally free. Maybe it is taken care of, yet it doesn't want to run away meaning, its shackles are in the mind now. Someone can argue it is like the fish in the tank and fish in the wild. Fish in the tank is free from disease and sudden death from predators but with compromised freedom to swim. But swim in the wild is freer physically yet not free from dangers. As we can see this is going to be never ending argument, unless fish could talk and tell exactly it prefer. Mind you still this can wary according to individual 🐟 🐠. To understand mental freedom better we need to go back to how it is restricted. What is mental freedom? What are we trying to free ourselves from? What are the shackles of mental freedom are made of. I think at this point you might need to look at previous articles on prisoners of mind and who build mental prisons. Sometimes you may think it is freedom of thinking and expressing yourself in writing painting and speech of what you think. But I think this is also a Suttle form of physical freedom as these all are actions. Then what is true freedom? And what are the shackles which prevents us from achieving that. To understand this, we need to find out how mind works. But there is a problem. No matter how many pages would write here about workings of the mind, your mind would understand it in a different way. But that is basically the problem. There is no objective truth which we all we see similar. We all would see according to our knowledge and capacity. When we look at our own minds long enough, we will understand how mental objects are formed. Basically, these are reflections of our own environment but within us. It includes everything you ever heard of and going to see in the future. Mathematics language, living, non-living, good and evil, truth and false. These mental objects are our own shackles which keeps us trapped. And more importantly we are also a creation of same process, hence a mental object. This is the wisdom you can gain while looking at a lump of clay. Here I can give you another example. Imagine a prank where a group of people fight on the street. They will mimic a gunfight and play havoc on the road. For them and the camera crew this is a joke. Yet for the people who are on the street this is a first-hand experience of a gunfight. I am sure they will start to run away and even injure themselves. They would not enjoy it like the camera crew or even the actors. So, we can say, not knowing the truth is the suffering for the people on the street. They are with their own mental shackles. And only way to break them and become free is to empower them with knowledge, and each one of them have to understand it. Yet this is hard to do in real life as of the previous problem of subjectiveness of the world. I am not claiming I am free. Rather there is a way, and you have to see it yourself with mindfulness. Pink elephant philosophy Why I cannot see elephant in the pen First thing you have to know is yourself Dumb ways to die

Story of two parrots Once upon a time there lived a parrot family on a tree. Two parrot siblings lived in a hollow of a tree. While their parents were out looking for food a thunderstorm hit the forest. The old tree was violently shaken with wind and the two parrots were thrown away. One fell to a forest monastery where some old monks lived. The other fell to a place where a group of thieves lived. Separated from their parents and each other each parrot grew with humans. Two parrots: https://unsplash.com/@caproche One day a man walked into the forest, looking for some herbs. And deep inside the jungle he heard a voice. Violent voice shouting at him to catch and kill him. Man frightened to the core hid behind a tree and looked around. There was nobody except a talking parrot. And after staying silent for a while he, got out and examined. There was none to be seen, except an abandoned cave of the thieves. He chased the parrot away and continued to walk. And then he heard another voice. "Hello friend. Where are you going? Come and rest with us" And the man was looking around saw another parrot. And he was inviting him to the monastery of old monks. He walked into the monastery and met the monks. And after explaining his purpose of the visit he inquired about the 🦜. Monks explained they found it injured in the backyard of the monastery on a stormy day. Just beyond the trees there is another parrot. Do you anything about it? The man inquired. And monks told the man there are some thieves live in that part of the jungle, and they do not harm us as long as we do not disturb them. After all monks have nothing to rob. So, the man understood what happened. As the parrots 🦜 looked the same he knew they must be siblings or related. The only difference for them to behave differently is there up bringing. That is the end of the little story of two parrots. I am sure you must have read or heard similar story before. But it highlights the face that what effects our environment has on us. Let's understand this. Environment control keystone habit Environment control is a keystone habit. As it will influence many other habits in our lives. At least in parrots 🦜 case it led to polite manner and behavior. And if you looked at the fact carefully, we might see the conduct of two parrots are different in many ways, from their food habits to daily routines. Similarly, if we look at siblings who were separated from early life or even your own life, we change and adapt to the changes of our environment. Changing environment can positively or negatively affect your life. And it does markedly. As an example, if you are trying to get away from a bad food habit. Maybe environmental adjustments can help you just do that. You can hang out with people with good food habits or join a club. Sell your fridge or fill it with fruits instead. If you lived your whole life in a dark alley with criminals, maybe it is time to break away from the vicious cycle of doom and look for a better environment. As you can see progression or change is impossible if you are stuck in a pool. Difficult situations. Difficult situations: https://unsplash.com/@7ndy Sometimes we cannot change our environment. It can be relative such as you are stuck with your old parents or taking care of a loved one, yet you feel stuck. Or it can be absolutely like you are stuck in a bed unable to move like in the case of Alexandre the man with iron lungs . However, there are ways to improve if you are just creative. You can change your environment temporarily if you cannot do it permanently. You can visit the local library or take a walk in the park on your way home, to bring a little freshness calm and clarity. You can paint the house if you think its gloomy, with white paint of course. Why not! Or you can change the mental environment. Take a dopamine detox from endless scrolling and you can do some meditation. After all, we all are prisoners of our minds , hence from time to time we have to clean our own prison cell to keep it clean otherwise it can surely stink. I am sure 😌 you know how to. Because you crave that change, the light, the peace after all. Let's be thankful to the 🦜 🦜 s who taught us the lesson hard way.

The picture of Dorian Gray is a great masterpiece novel by Oscar Wild, which I had my hands on when I was in school. I loved the character of Dorian Gray so much, that when he destroyed his valuable picture and himself at the end, it left and empty sadness, which I can still remember. Is it the sad truth about all of us pictured here by Oscar Wild? If it is not Hedonism , which we should follow, then what is it? Is it Abstinence? https://unsplash.com/@farreal Let me give you a background to the novel, to the reader, who has read the novel a long time ago. So, you can follow the thought process. For others, who are fresh with memory, you can skip the plot. Plot It is a story of a young man named Dorian Gray, whose portrait was painted by artist Basil Hallward. Dorian becomes obsessed with his own beauty and youth and wishes that he could remain young forever, while the portrait ages in his place. As Dorian indulges in a life of disinhibited pleasures, he becomes increasingly cruel and corrupt, although he doesn't represent it from outside, his picture shows his horrible self, by changing its appearance over time. And finally, after years, Dorian decides to restore the picture but, ending up his own life in doing so... https://unsplash.com/@sijmen89 Message of the Picture of Dorian Gray What is the message Oscar Wild wanted to give us in the picture of Dorian Gray? We can argue that he was just telling a story and there is no message in it. In which case we should stop arguing and thinking about the novel. But that is not our nature. Hence, we will look at Dorians' in our society and within ourselves. It is true that Pleasure, whether we like it or not, controls our lives. Remember when we cried asking for more candy when we were little? From that time onwards we were in a never-ending struggle to keep a steady income, to travel, to feel the pleasure of food and wine, and relationships. How can we be so sure, when we are greedy, when we act angry, that our picture is not painted with our actions? Is it what Mr. Wild is suggesting? That we all have a picture of our own drawn somewhere hidden in an empty room, re-painted with our every action? https://unsplash.com/@sheldonliu If it is not hedonism (Pleasure determines what we should or not do) we should follow, Is it the opposite? Is it the abstinence from pleasures that we should follow? If so, to what extent should we follow that? Can we make our picture better if we donate all our wealth to the poor and live just with minimal necessary things needed for living. Should we really buy an expensive car, even if we had plenty of money to do, even after donating. Or should we avoid cars and use public transport instead, and is there a limit for being good? There are some insights for this question, we can get from the famous argument, which was put forward by Peter Singer in 1971, some 80 years after the publication of the Picture of Dorian Grey. In his essay "Famine Affluence and Morality" he argues that affluent people are morally obliged far more to donate resources to humanitarian deeds than what is considered normal. So, if you buy and expensive car instead of a normal one which is obviously needed for transport, you are helping to the death of some children somewhere in the world by not donating that money which we could have saved. So, we make our pictures dirtier by nature even something simple as not donating money. ( Singer’s ‘famine relief argument’ and vegans. ) Boundary between traditional good and evil is stretched nowadays more than ever when, bad is represented as good in disguise and even accepted by the society as norm. So we can question as is there a boundary at all. As an example, it is bad to watch someone's hands to be chopped in ISIS video- it is snuff, but it is not bad to watch a SAW movie. Latter is more accepted by the society but represent the same, killing someone for some reason. Horror is a genre on its own. Does it mean our insides get rotten, when we appear doing good from outside, even when is not obvious? https://unsplash.com/@marckleen So, it is true individually up to us to do whatever we desire with our resources. But I think the message from Oscar Wild is very clear that we should go back to our Attic from time to time and look at our picture and adjust our course of action before it becomes uncorrectable. Thank you for reading "Picture of Dorian Grey- what is the message" You may also like : Singers famine relief argument and vegans What is time - a novel understanding.

Mindful eating This article is about mindful eating. Do not be cross when I talk about cows and eating grass. That is just to make the discussion interesting. If you would want to skip the details, you can go to the discussion. Or if you need to take another approach, I suggest you read about How to eat a mango Mindfully. Let's look at cows. Buffalo eating grass Why do cows eat grass? I used to watch cows graze in the nearby field from top of a tree . Later I learnt that cows could digest grass, but not humans. Cows and for that matter animals who eat grass, or herbivorous have stomach filled with bacteria, which are capable of breaking down cellulose. Hence, the Cow stomach is so called " Sweet Home " to large number of bacteria. And cow absorb carbohydrate. That is easily understood. Yet, if you look at a cow, they not only eat grass. But they build a massive muscle mass. How do they get their protein from? Cows, get their protein by digesting the bacteria. Essentially for the bacteria, the intestinal tract of the cow is the place of the home and place of the doom. When they go down with food into the lower parts of the digestive tract, bacteria themselves become the victim to chemicals and enzymes, being killed after getting used. They become the source of "Protein" for the cow. So, let's leave the science behind and ask the question again. Why do cows eat grass? There are several answers. One simple explanation is that they get hungry, and they have taste for grass. Digestible or not, cows would not eat grass if they do not get hungry and they do not have a taste for the grass. So, if we look carefully both hunger and the taste are essential survival tools for the cow. Being animals, they do not overthink about these things, like we do. They just get hunger, and they eat what tastes them. Why do we not eat grass? mindful eating. That there is a simple wisdom, for our mindful eating. Although we do not think about this we do eat for the same reasons as cows. We eat because we feel hungry, and we do have taste for food. Imagine we do not feel hunger, no ghrelin (hunger hormone) in your system. I am sure we will be so busy that we would die, without any food. Same goes to the taste. But this is something which have evolved for us to better understand what is good for us. Just when humans lived in jungles, they did not have a food hygiene. They relied on their smell and taste to identify what is good to eat. So essentially taste is also a survival tool. Only in modern supermarket era that taste have become a five-star luxury that costs hundreds of dollars. Where is the taste? Is it in the Ice-cream? Mindful eating - Binge eating and obesity. Get to know about hunger and taste is essential to mindful eating. As an example, let's assume you have a habit of binge eating. If you look at your eating pattern, you will understand, that you start eating, because you are hungry. Get to know your hunger. Know exactly where it feels. And if you do not have the hunger, do not eat! And while eating you will know the feeling of hunger goes away. Not suddenly, but gradually. And anything you eat after your hunger is gone is going to add onto your extra weight. And that is better left alone in the plate or even thrown away than eaten. As anything beyond this is a reason to make you sick, diabetes hypertension or MI. As you can see, you cannot do or even think about controlling your eating habits without getting to know your hunger. Same goes to the taste. However, taste is tricky. Taste is something we wrongly attribute to be in the Ice cream. However, it is never in the food. And we can think it is in the tongue. But it is not true either, as dead person's tongue would not feel anything. You can read more on this in eating a mango article. So , the taste we can assume is in the mind. But what is mind? What is mind, is a discussion for another day. Maybe you can have look at the consciousness article or for that matter even a lump of clay to understand the mind. However, what is mind is a deep subject which can only be explained to someone who has been thinking about it for a long time. I would not do that mistake here. After all this is just to explain why we cannot eat grass, and simply it is because we do not feel taste for it. Not by our choice but by nature. As you can understand, we would be eating any dung, if we had taste for it. As pictured in the film Jacky in Women's Kingdom.

On a couch Jacob was happy, after an honest day's work. He was in charge of the presentation today, in front of all the stakeholders. The company he is working is trying to expand their operations. And they needed to capture the progress they have made last year into a half an hour speech, to impress the investors. And as the project manager Jacob felt good about what he has done today. Now it is time to relax, finally when his company makes more fortune, he will be able to move closer to a better apartment in suburbs, than current shaggy one. He needed to better breath. He ordered dinner online and relaxed on to the couch, until midnight sleepozing watching who wants to be a millionaire. A good one. Lake Driving Jacob was driving his car. Beside him was his lovely wife with a big belly of nine months. They just discovered she was in labor when water broke out and started to rush to the hospital. She seems to be in severe pain, crying now, and Jacob in panic. Why and who built those stupid red lights every corner of the block. What if the baby starts to come out even before he reached the hospital? He hit the gas once again and in the corners of his eyes he saw the hospital finally at last! And soon as they arrived at ED his wife was taken away to labor room. He was waiting outside, anxiously waiting to try to keep his calm, taking deep breaths. Is she OK? Is my baby girl, OK? Rowing The evening sky is orange today. Few clouds on the horizon. The sun is nowhere to be found, disappeared behind the tree line and the hill above the lake. Jacob stopped paddling and let the boat float slowly on the water. The fish were not afraid of his boat as there were no fishermen at this part of the jungle. Not lot of hikers come here as well. He had been living in the hut on the bank of the lake for some time now Then he realized something. He wanted to remember how did he start to live in a hut by the lake? His memory was blurred. He remembered he was driving just before he started rowing the boat. He was driving with his wife in his car! Where is she now? How is she doing? Am I dreaming? Jacob remembered how can I be married? I just came back from work, and I live alone. I was doing a presentation just this afternoon, to a half a dozen of people. Where am I exactly? In a boat in the middle of the lake? Or in the hospital? or on a couch? Rowing boat in the lake The dream Jacob remembered watching Inception, movie just the other day on Netflix. A dream within a dream. I must be dreaming but what is the reality? All he can remember was what happened since he started to become conscious about the current dream. What was there before is doubtful. Maybe I am "The guy" in a film. Stuck in a virtual reality. Maybe the lack of coherence in his dreams is the fact that I am dreaming. More than anything Jacob wanted to wake up to the reality. But how? He could not access the reality from inside the dream All he could do is to move to another dream from the current one. And that even was not under his control. But within his dream he was in control. Jacob closed his eyes and started listening to the sounds. Sounds of the birds were real. The move of the wind over the mountain brushing trees was real. He could feel the water on his hands which felt really cold. He relaxed into the fact that everything feels real. But he knew it's all a dream. Just one alternative reality from thousand possibilities. He could not wake himself up from the inside of the dream, as he was part of the dream. It did not matter. Maybe there is no other dream, just this one. He did not know how where and why he felt like he was living. All he knew was he was part of it. Maybe it is the fear of losing the dream and himself, which drives it. He can imagine a reality, but as he is in the dream it would be just a false one. Maybe there is nothing to wake up. As dream about the reality is also part of the dream. End. You can read more about dreams on following articles. Dream vs Reality -> Duality of the nature. Cannot access reality from the dream -> subjective reality. Philosophy of dreams Living in a dream. Its time to dream

What is success? If "A" is success in life, A = X + Y + Z Work is X, Play is Y, and Z is keeping your mouth shut. Albert Einstein In this article I am going to critically analyze success according to Albert Einstein's definition. And then look at success in the mindfulness eyes. Why? Because without knowing where to go, you cannot make a complete journey. Albert Einstein is a successful person, right? According to story, he was chased away from his kindergarten class because he was too slow. And I think the reason being, he is a diffuse thinker , that often dream about things he had felt and heard, more often than necessary. Guess what, he has come up with equations, that even less than 0.1% of the population would understand that given a whole life to study. Isn't it a remarkable achievement, and if you would believe that it is, we should clearly dissect his definition of success, to understand how he did it. Albert Einstein https://unsplash.com/@moyse Albert Einstein definition of success A = X + Y + Z X So, to achieve success we need to combine three factors, according to Einstein's equation. First one being A, is work. Working is necessary. And it is obvious factor. If you do nothing, nothing will happen. And there would be no success at all. You can have dreams, but if you keep sleeping on a couch sitting on them, dreams will never come true. Luck is there in universe but for you to attract luck we need to have some forces working toward us, which is the work. Maybe hard work in some cases, maybe smart work in the other. More importantly the relevant work. As you can see there are so many pseudo-works out there which can distract us. In fact, nobody can do nothing. Have you ever tried to do nothing? It is really hard to stay doing nothing. Hence, most of the time we do irrelevant tasks. That is enough for the work. Shake your procrastination and start working is his advice on this. Y Y is play. What is play? Play is being creative in your work. Innovation comes when you are in creative state. Apart from doing old boring routine, even if it is old boring routine you have to start playing. There is no other way. Yes, you can forget play and enjoy 8-5-hour job. But as we all are humans, we will start to get exhausted soon enough and unless there is novelty in your work inherently, you will start to lose your enthusiasm and give up to boredom. More than this to push Forword as a society and individually creativity is a must. This is why I have created some articles in this blog for promoting just this, America is the dream land of creativity and creativity gives you wings. Z Z is keeping your mouth shut. I am sure Albert Einstein meant silence. Why? I have previously written great deal about making friends with silence . This doesn't mean physically not talking. It does mean mentally you are ready to listen. You accept the world as it is and more focus on listening, seeing and feeling things. Guess what, creativity is inherently tied to the silence. When you are silent you will start to notice patterns in the environment and your own mind. These ideas would have never come to your mind unless you are silent. This is why taking a walk matters, relaxing in the silence matters and diffuse thinking matters. Silence https://unsplash.com/@annawangler That concludes Einsteins equation for success. Work + Play + silence. Simple elegant and true. As this blog is about mindfulness, we will look at success from mindful eyes to understand it better. Definition of success from mindfulness. Success is a mental object. Like everything else. When we consider this as a mental object we can notice its properties. Following are few examples to define success. Successful lawyer. Imagine a kid wanted to become a successful lawyer. First, he did not even know about lawyer, as few years back he was a toddler. Then after hearing all the adult stories, and seeing some lawyers, driving near the court, and seeing them in the news in court rooms, he has built a mental object of a "Lawyer" then he adds "Successful lawyer" to his picture. Once this image is fixed in his mind the target is there. Now he has to work and be creative and silent. He goes through everything he has to go through hardships. Work towards the university and become a successful graduate. And join a law firm, and once he become a lawyer, we label him as a successful lawyer. There are many things which have happened during this long process of "successful lawyer" story. His "Successful Lawyer" image also has changed day after day. Sometimes he may never reach this. Although he is successful to the society, in Lawyer society he may be a pretty average lawyer. If his image matches his achievement of course he may be happy too. But most likely he also has some other success images, like healthy relationships, healthy body etc. He may be pretty happy about the path he has taken to become the successful lawyer himself is now. He may have mastered the Einsteins Equation to achieve the Success in his case. But when I look at this scenario from a distance, I also see the absurdity of it. It is all due to information he received when he was young. That of a "Successful Lawyer". If it happened to be a "Successful football player" he would be per-suiting this all his life. And even be successful at this. If he was in a village in Vietnam, he would become a "Successful Monk". It does not mean that we should not pursuit something. It just means that we should be aware of what is happening inside our brains, so we do not get carried away from the imaginary play , which we call life. Rodeo Bull riding - most dangerous 8 seconds of the world. Bull riding https://unsplash.com/@gilleyaguilar In the sports world, Rodeo bull riding considered the most dangerous 8 seconds in the world. These bull riders try to stay on top of the bull holding with one hand and survive 8 seconds. If they do that, they are given marks according to the difficulty and ranked to find the winner. Now, this is not a child's play if you have seen a video. From the moment released to the arena, bulls buck and kick, and most of them would not ride 8 seconds. Some would even never ride again after serious fall, or for even that matter walk. What drives these brave men and women to such a risk? If you look at the process of the "Successful Lawyer". You may understand now, the "Successful Bull rider" philosophy as well. It is all due to the information received by an innocent kid who lived in a ranch. And he saw adults doing this thing called "Bull riding" and became excited about it. Guess what after 15 more years he would become a successful bull rider. We all talk about how he achieved thing, but we never go back the timeline enough to understand what happened in the first place. I think we even might blame him if he seriously injured in the sport. So much so for a mental object. Mindfulness let us observe your own mental objects and understand them. Still, you can be a successful lawyer and be a bull rider. But this time with a great wisdom of how it happened and happening. Let's look back at the Albert Einstein equation to understand what he missed in the first place. Look at the equation again. A = X + Y + Z Can you the error? A, X, Y and Z everything is imaginary. To achieve success, you first have to imagine that there is a thing called "Success" in the first place. I am sure we will get to know this once our wisdom is shining enough in the prison of itself.

Background . I was talking with one of my relatives the other day. And He was in his latter part of life, in retirement. Having saved some money, living a comfortable life, now he is keen on travel. He wanted to visit America, for the second time. To see everything that he had not seen. And we were comparing two perspectives to life. As for myself, being middle aged, I am more focused on not travel, but in saving, as well as understanding what is going in our lives and the purpose of everything. That there was the heart of our problems. You may not understand it but I will elaborate more. As that is truly a million dollar question. Which I think nobody have ever answered with a reliable accuracy, and would change a lives of all eight billion lives of humans on earth if they know the answer. So what is the question? Money : https://unsplash.com/@giorgiotrovato A million Dollar question. Compare two kids were born on the same day at same time, but two different places on earth. Obviously, they has to be two places, as if it is one place, there will be no two humans but one. One, in a well to do, the wealthiest nation on the planet, America, the nation of dreamers. The other one in an average family in India. The American inherited a fortune from his parents and had a good education, became the CEO of his family company and he is at his pinnacle of his career. The Indian, worked hard for a scholarship, Got his degree from university and started his own business, built an emperor himself. Hard work but, now he is as wealthy as the American. Obviously now they are at the same age. Now, let's discuss what are the ambitions of these two people. As we cannot look at every aspect of life, we will look at their travel ambitions. American, wants to travel all around the world. He has been to several countries on business and on vacation. But his ambition on his retirement is to travel every nook and corner of the world where he has not been, and he has a plan laid out by his personal assistant just for this purpose. Indian, wants to travel all around the world, and he is keener to travel to America. Likewise, he has been there on few occasions, and he thinks that he had not seen it all. There seems to be plenty of places which he did not visit. So, that is his ambition. But the American would not even dream of spending most of his retirement in America. It is his country where he has all been. He knows all the news from past few decades. Nothing is there to see. Let's stop there, to find out the million-dollar question. I think I have done a fair job comparing two minds of different people from two different countries. As you can see their status are similar. But their travel ambitions are different. If we look at all the reasons which shaped their travel ambitions, we can point out to some. As an example, the American, one major reason is he is in America, so he wants to travel to the rest of the world. Amount of money he has saved, will decide whether he can travel in a jet, or have to take commercial airliner. And many more. Even magazines he read when he was a child, previous places he had been, advertisements, his personal assistants likes and dislikes. All these have played their part in his future travel plans. Similarly, we can put forward some reasons for Indian's travel plans. Great destination for a vacation: https://unsplash.com/@sotti But what is the common to all of these reasons. It's about their timing. All the reasons which made their current state of affairs in travel ambitions, happened after they were born! that there is the million-dollar question. Their birth has determined the trajectory of their lives. Not in slight, but in great margins this had a bearing on their lives. The question now is "What are the factors which determine their birth?" Million-dollar question - What factors determine circumstances of our birth? This question applies to everything. As every thought which comes to our minds are shaped by our experiences which occurred after our birth. It is important to recognize what determines our place of birth. No matter how much our modern science is advanced, we currently do not have the experimental methods to determine this. This is where philosophy and religion matters . Both of these disciplines try to answer these million-dollar questions with imagination. Which is far from truth. I think this is the hardest question to answer from all the difficult philosophical questions. Even mindfulness cannot answer such questions. But more and more we are mindful in everyday we would be more and more aware such simple unanswered questions exists even in a world where everything is automated. We have never taken a leap from nature, not for a second, we are detached from it. What we think is artificial, is truly born from the natural. Hence, no matter how many stars are replaced by satellites in the night sky, a million-dollar question would remain. And on the day such questions are answered humanity will reach to its true potential pinnacle. Maybe we already knew the answers, but they are hidden among the lies of our own stupidity and greed.

I was walking in the garden When I stumbled upon a rock. Shouting in pain and anger I Picked the rock in a shock Before throwing it away, I took Another closer look. This is what it had to say, In silence I could hear I was mocked. Little boy, little boy I'm sorry to hurt your pinky toe But watch where you are going, let this be a lesson for you although I have seen you watch and grow, since ever I know I can't imagine why you are angry with me, you are same as the people before. You are same as who came before, you are same as before. I have seen your uncles, parents and more I have seen your fathers of fathers ages ago I have seen your ancestors and knocked them also Once you are gone, I will live on to knock your pinky toe of generations to come. Story of a rock. Let's Imagine a small rock, you picked up in your garden. How long do you think it had been here on earth? If you are a geologist, you would know that it is in thousands of years. If you are not, let me explain it to you. If it is not a sedimented rock freshly from the bottom of the sea, or your house is on a volcanic site, it is most likely the rock you picked up is at least 500 million years old. (correct me if I am wrong, geologists are welcome :)) So, it means, the rock you just picked up have seen things, that you can't even imagine, if it had eyes! (Read about rock cycle - wiki link) Things a rock in your garden have probably seen and gone through. (geological time scale of a rock backwards) All your family tree, even untraceable ones Ice age. Birth of mammals Age of dinosaurs, roaming freely in your garden All five great extinctions (" Big five ") Earth with no animals but with only microbes Earth before microbes. So, as one of my friends' words it. "We are just a blip in geological time." It is time for us to think seriously about our existence. We are just in no position to be proud of ourselves. Even when we look at our garden, we can see, nature which outlives our lives. Even as a human race we cannot be proud of ourselves, if we could speak to a simple rock, who would know better than us. I am quite aware that this is an exaggeration mixed with a sense of dramatic, poetic argument. Yet, it is quite a thought. Imagine yourself a hundred years into the future. The rocks in your garden will still be there. And your grandkids will be there to witness it. Or will they be? How sure are you there is no extended killer variant of covid is not there between you and 100 years into the future. Maybe next time some humans see a rock in your garden maybe it's beyond another billion years. So, let's be humble and pay the respect to nature, as we are just children, no more valued than a rock. Let's pay respect to rocks like they deserve it. Thank you for reading: Mocked by a rock - geological time. You may also like to read Story of a gentle giant What will happen if I am immortal?

Sometimes you need to back up to move forward, sometimes you need to slow down. - (From the movie "Happy feet") Can you remember you started to write, or walk or cycle? We were slow, right? But quickly we caught up and fast enough, there was no need to be slow anymore. Nowadays we are so much used to the fast speeds we never think about doing something slow, only faster! We need faster and faster trains, and airplanes, which breaks the barrier of sound. We need seven habits of successful people to be faster in success, we need gigabytes of data to be downloaded in seconds. And we need an umbrella of starlight satellites to do just that. We need that package delivered Now! not tomorrow, Now, just when I think about buying that it should appear on my hand and will file a complaint to Amazon Prime Now. Faster speeds- Tour de France Slow is new fast examples How ridicules to ride a bicycle slowly? You will off balance and fall. Have you ever tried to drive a car slowly? Mind you, it is more difficult than you think, going slow is more difficult than going fast. How about walking? What is the slowest can you run in the park? What is the slowest can you walk? If you haven't tried that trick before I suggest you try today. Select something you often do. Something fast, something monotonous and try slowing down. Try slowing down and you will see things you have not noticed before. The most fascinating thing about slowing down by choice is you start to notice things. If you are walking in the park you will start to see, nice shadows on the path laid there by the sun. Swaying leaves and twigs here and there. You will notice ferns, with dew on them, even the grass will look nice. You will start to notice small flowers in them, tiny ones and even you will stop to bend down to investigate tiny flying insects attracted to them. Grass flowers Do you think that will happen if you were running? Mindful eating example Try eating slowly. 0.5 x speed you do normally. You will smell, and crunch. Your salivary glands will be angry, they will flood the mouth. Tongue will ask you to hurry up and swallow, but do not let in. And you will feel it taste better, or awful. Either way, it is interesting. And I think this will even let you answers to your binge eating habit which made you overweight in the first place. You will find out where the taste is , that it is not in the mouthful in your hand or in the heap on your plate, but only in the mouthful on your tongue Rabbit and tortoise race I am sure there are many more examples. It is unfortunate that we forgot the Rabbit and the Tortoise race. Which otherwise would have been example of real success. But more wonderful would be if the rabbit could also take a journey like a tortoise to see the insights it provides. If you would not believe me, I can add some more credibility to the quote slow is new fast by adding following quote from Confucius. "It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop" I will stop there. Try reading the article slower this time. Find out more meanings you did not understand or skimmed through the first time. Make a list of things you would try do slowly. Make a comment on your new insights on ordinary things. Thank you for reading - slow is the new fast, a mindfulness trick. You may also like reading: What is mindfulness - a simple complete definition For all the birds who can't fly (poem)