To the best of times!
07 September, 2020
On fame
02 September, 2020
A brief and simple excuse
27 August, 2020
Growth and contentment
It's tough trying to be a strict adherent of a philosophical way of life in these modern times, especially the school of Stoicism, but I'm never giving up on the journey. I can confidently say that every day is a betterment. But it's almost like I need an alter-ego to embrace the principles of a stoic way of life on the one hand, and trying to gel with the society, trying to play the role of an active social animal with all the likes/dislikes, differences, opinions and so on, on the other hand. But there is a purpose and a set of moral principles and guidelines I try to follow in every thing I do and in the way I try to live. Getting better at those never stops, it's a journey with scope for continuous betterment. I strive to keep that in check as much as I can so that the compromise between my stoic self and the social animal is a peaceful acceptance and a pleasant co-existence. As always, there is Seneca to the rescue and guidance:
One's life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular morality. People should admire our way of life but they should at the same time find it understandable - Letter V, Letters from a Stoic
This is how I learn and strive to strike a balance between being humbled & contented with what life throws at me (as a proper stoic disciple should) and working to grow as a better social animal. The alter-egos will eventually merge at some point when I will have surrounded myself with like social animals and we don't have a veil of compromise between us
24 August, 2020
The intentional skip
What sticks as a habit, a good habit, is a curious longing to get back to doing what is an irresistible act of practice that shapes us to be a better person by the day. The best way I have found to test the stickiness and urge to develop a good habit is to intentionally skip practising it for a couple of days in the peak of the development process. To me, it's a good yardstick for what I believe matters to me as a good habit worth developing. As my Stoic learnings develop more roots upon which to stand my soul firmly, I often remind myself of Seneca's lesson - cultivate an asset which the passing of time itself improves. I'm putting it into practice day by day to make it a personal test I assess myself on often. A true liking to develop an asset urges me to resume the specific practice, unable to hold off any longer. So far so good.
22 August, 2020
The pivot called soul
I believe in soul. My faith, lineage, religious upbringing and a
resurgent personal spiritual realignment all aside, I believe the
concept of soul is a major life-critique. The idea of a
soul, in my opinion, gives us the ability to project our life out of the
physical realm of the body it inhabits and makes us reflect on our
inner self with a critical lens. And when we examine our lives that way,
the good and the bad are easily discernible. We cannot escape our own
critique. We cannot force the mirror called soul to reflect what is not
in us. From those innumerable reflections of all our actions, qualities
and character, we are able to chisel away our imperfections to bring out
the best of the goodness in us, step by step. Truth is the only source of life for the
soul. Anything done in accordance with the eternal truth of the natural laws is the pivot that holds the individual self on its course without deviating from its path to the supreme truth. It is the only way to guide the soul effortlessly on to its merger with the supreme, to the individual jeevāthma to merge with the paramāthma, to the path of the adhvaitin
06 August, 2020
The hand sanitizer man
30 July, 2020
A friend in need
24 July, 2020
The exercise called gratitude
Gratitude is an exercise for the soul that's just as important as physical exercise is for the body. Just as training against gravity strengthens the body, training gratitude daily against the gravity of life strengthens the soul
18 July, 2020
Of common man's clichés and truth
Is it because the common man's life is a journey of clichés that the clichés become his truth, or is it because his many paths to the truth in life are so clichéd that the truth itself becomes a cliché?
14 July, 2020
Of struggle & strengths
On fame
What is fame but a vice traversing between two restless minds, the one that seeks what itself cannot generate in its own moral mirror, and t...
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More than a year after I introduced the struggle of the educated minds , things have hardly changed. (To understand what follows, you need ...
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I should admit that for quite some time now, I've been a bit too ambitious about taking this space further, by stopping to write here an...
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I think of this on every 'national day' we celebrate. Why is it that a great majority of us have only a passionate yet fleeting cons...