A noisier route to salvation!

Dear Sri
That story of Narada is a great favourite of mine which has a lot of significance viv-a-vis our stress filled modern life. That God does not go by pomp and show alone is also told in another story. When Arjuna takes a stroll along the heavens, he sees a number of carts carrying flowers. When he asks one of them whence these flowers have come, he is told that it is all Bhima's. Arjun is surprised because he knows that Bhima never indulged in extensive poojas like him but offered only one rose to the Lord daily. A few moments later he sees an old man carrying a small basket of withered flowers on his head. He comes to know from the old man that it is Arjuna's own offering to the Lord. Arjuna realises that flowers do not make a pooja nor loud chanting of mantras and the Lord values only prayers from the bottom of the heart!
Sri

 

Dear Malathi
Once my Guru told me that Ambal doing penance standing on Her toe on the tip of a needle in the middle of a raging fire is emulated day in and day out by many of our middle class housewives! When we laughed, he admonished us saying he was not joking but telling us the story of our own mothers and how they raised us.
Sri

 

Dear AC
A good point well made! The entire universe came into being with a Big Bang and noise has been part of our life eversince. You are aware that our planet is revolving on its own axis at over 1000 miles per hour and imagine the noise it would make considering the racket our mixies create in our kitchen! We have heard this noise for millions of years and have become immune to it!
If you are used to noise of any kind , living without it can be a veritable hell. Similarly if you are used to absolute silence, even a little noise made by a liberally endowed person going up and down the stairs can be quite disconcerting!
Nice to know you are a noisy person. I feel more drawn to you now than ever before!
Sri

 

Dear Chithra
That is a stout defence of all the noise you make!
Nice to know that you are a fan of Mayilvahanan. An entire generation grew on his voice and that of Ameen Sayani!
Lullabies sung in the lilting voices of Vani Jayaram, Asha or Latha may have a soothing and benevolent effect on the infants but what of people like Paravai Muniyamma?
Too much noise in our worship whip up a kind of frenzy which I personally think does not bring much credit to us. And when we see how such frenzied acts affect our gullible people, we feel sad indeed!
Thanks for letting us know what causes such a craving for noise in you. Would be interesting to know what his craving will be!
Sri

 

Dear AC
You beat Sherlock Holmes hollow by your deducing capabilities!
Sri

 

Dear Shanthi
A very useful value addition to my thread from you as usual. Both sound and light have all the characteristics that you have mentined. Sound can be both beneficial and harmful as light can be.
I remember that in one of Peter Sellers' Pink Panther series, the villain makes the victim to speak by scraching a nail on a large piece of tin sheet!
The 1000 wala while a new born is sleeping is a very cruel example! My grand daughter was born on Diwali morning and the amount of precaution that we had to take to protect her from the noise!
As a child I used to get frightened by thunder and my mother made me chant Arjuna's name to overcome the fright!
I have gone through that horrible MRI experience a few months back and I entirely agree with you. We have to put up with it for our own good!
I used to get irritated by the pounding of my own heart at times as result of a bad stomach or indigestion. But I never want it to stop because its noise disturbs me at times!
Sri

 

Dear Vidya
Like the famed Kurinji flower, your FBs bloom at long intervals and when they bloom, they take the center stage! I love the para 3 particularly. It is a poem expressed in prose! The infant sleeping peacefully and the old man adjusting his hearing aid through all the din present a vivid picture of whatever I try to convey through my laboured essay.

You are right about that Kamal Hassan scene in Pushpak where he stresses the value of noise through silence! That and the Bombay boys show that if you grow up in noise, then noise is a must for your growth.

Shanvy is growing in stature day by day as an ace Feedbacker! Just this evening, I was trying to gather some vital info from the net in order to post my comments on a serious thread but before posting it, I went through other FBs and found that Shanvy had covered all the points I was trying to convey! I quietly withdrew from the scene!
Sri

 

Dear Nivedi
Traditionally all knowledge is supposed to flow from elders to youngsters but there have been a few exceptions to this accepted belief. Lord Siva is known to have learnt His lesson from His younger Son, Lord Subramanya. Adi Sankara was hardly out of his teens when he propounded the Advaitha Philosophy. Swami Vivekananda made Hinduism a globally admired religion through His lectures when men of his age were prospecting for brides!
When I read your fb, I could align you with the young teachers of yore. I bow to you for opening my mind to yet another dimension of inner peace vis a vis outer chaos. In writing my thread, I had confined myself only to a mindset conditioned by a long association with a particular living condition. That an allowance must also be given to our mood swings is yet another dimension indeed.
In fact, I too can readily relate to it. When I am in a highly pleasant mood, all the din that my grandchildren cause is music to my ears but the same din makes me give them a bit of my mind when I am in a foul mood! Fortunately these mood swings are purely a passing phenomenon.
The quietude that we seek outside is going to be increasingly elusive. We have no option but to seek it from within!
Sri