Aunt Agony and A-jnani me.

:wowInteresting read and :hatsoff for your patience in sharing it with us in detail. I suspect, even though she didn't acknowledge it explicitly, Auntie B must have surely learnt something from you too and I won't be surprised if she came back to learn more :2thumbsup: just kidding, hope that doesn't happen. Your DH missed all of that?

 

Dear Manju,

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your humorous yet educational post. Who can convince any of us that the only way to pursue Bliss is to be serious? Your narration is hilarious but made me think a lot about the message you were communicating through this post.

I am still laughing visualizing this scene.

JK in a polycot saree? What a thought to make us understand Aunt Agony.

How can I read these lines without bursting into laughter?

But your following questions made my grey cells work harder:

I for one even struggle to understand "What is called Mind?" A portion of that is called "Manas" that is responsible for our love and emotions with fellow beings, another called Buddhi that has the power of discrimination, yet another that has the encryption of Samskara and releases thoughts associated with it from time to time, Chiththa that stores all information for us to analyze and interpret. When we experience Sushupti, we call that as higher mind as we feel surprisingly relaxed after a good night sleep. A few years back, I read a book that classified the mind as Super Mind, Higher Mind, Illuminated Mind and Over Mind. While Super Mind is related to body consciousness, the Higher Mind is thought consciousness and can travel with no time and space restrictions. Illuminated Mind is like a live wire in our body that is achieved after Sadhanas. Over Mind is when a man achieves totality or self-realization.

I am still struggling to understand it completely but I think it is not what we have in the form of mind but what we do with it that makes the difference in our lives.

It is true that loving God is very easy as it is equivalent to loving ourselves if we understand who we really are. I am not a believer that God lives in only Temples and Alters set up by families. It is a reciprocation of a man showing his gratitude for his creator, just like, you scratch my back and I scratch yours attitude. You created me in flesh and blood and gave me a home and I will also keep you in a best place, drench you with honey, milk, bananas, sugar, sandhanam, etc., give you best of clothes and worship you, is the attitude. This is a perfect way to delve in dualism. The fact we feel a Sanctum Sanctorum is pure and creates positive energy itself is created by our mind. If we so choose, we can make it feel pure all the time by our thoughts and actions.

Is becoming one with the Universal Absolute considered physical or emotional or intellectual? I used to ponder on this subject a lot. What is the true meaning of many becoming one with the Universal Absolute? Does it mean there will be one physical form in the world? I don't think so. If one became many in physical form, so be it. As long as we can work towards establishing unity in diversity, we will be fine. If we understand our true Self and that of others, we are united. Most importantly, we need to get out of dualism and that is what is becoming one with Universal Absolute.

Let me stop at this. Having recovered from your Aunt Agony's visit, I don't want to give you more of the same. But your questions are true indications of how much introspection you do on a regular basis. Please share that with us always and someone like me will gain out of it.

Viswa

 

Dear Manju,

What a clever snippet! Made a delicious read, but that is no surprise neither to me nor anyone else here as it comes from the powerhouse MReddy!

The title in itself is a give away...A-jnani. I see I see ma'm. A 'jnani' you certainly are...Reeling off words like atma-bodha, sathya, mithya...only if you had stopped there. You go on and on with tvagatita ghatana pateeyasi maya, kalisantara muktika, shambavi mudra etc etc....'Hmmm', sighed I. Thanks to the other young and hip IL'ites here, I now have learnt to use not just the Merriam, but also the Urban dictionary. Not being a Cheeniya or Viswa, now I have to seek out a Sanskrit dictionary too...:shock: But what's the use of just a dictionary, it will only give me the meaning. I may need to borrow your agony Aunt B, or was it Aunt A , nah, Aunt S...erious?!? Too much on my mind, trying to solve too many problems concerning my presence on this earth and the all the moha maya creating articles and affections around me. So please excuse the confusion...:roll: I am in dire need of meditation and may be some yoga to gain a wee bit of realization and steadiness of mind I guess to handle topics of such aunts with composure?!

Besides, you do not make it easy on poor mortals like me. Just as I am trying to grasp what your Agony Aunt is counseling and your queries posed to her, for no reason at all I seem to giggle and laugh! Very distracting you know Manju!

Well well. After going through the whole account, I was consoled by only one thought. I think I can relate to your husband, he surely must have been my blood brother in some janam...provided we do believe in other births ?? :roll: I too for some reason think of those big tyres when someone says chakra!

Any wonder Viswamitra has hurried to FP forum to nominate this piece of Hi-Phi jnana? My thanks goes to him!

To say I enjoyed this snippet will be an understatement!

L, Kamla ( humming 'Manasa sancharare, Bramhani manasa sancharare.......')

 

Hahahaha Manju, you are an absolute riot. Or are you? I mean ARE you? Now I am not even sure I am not talking to myself, because you, I, Viswa, Kamla, Aunt JK ..... huh!!!!! There you go, you have not only made me do an imitation of a hyena (sorry, I am being myself, no difference between hyena and me, you see?) and some pranayama, but you have tied my mind up in knots. Whether that mind and the subsequent knots are real or mithya ..... oh, well, never mind!!!!! Sigh!!!

 

Dear Manju,
As ever, your posts are a treat to the soul! Just like you, I too have revisited this home after a lo...ng break. Of course, occasionally I do visit here to give myself a treat. This is the first feedback after my self-exile.

What a narration! Cheeniya sir and yourself will ever remain the King and queen in humour!

Your poor innocent hubby!!!!

Are not LOVE and GOD synonymous?

........and you have summed up life so beautifully!!!

 

Dear Manju,
What a beautiful, humorous as well as thought provoking write up! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but at some corner of my heart I was feeling sorry for you as you have to take the onslaught of your Aunt Agony. Poor lady, I can't blame her also. Perhaps for a a long time she might not have got anyone to solemnize and so she tried it over you.
As you have said loving God is very easy for love is God, 'Anbe Sivam.'

A delicious write up interspersed with ingredients of fun and frolic and also agony aunt's preaching which also will help those who seek enlightenment.

I am now listening to Sudha Raghunathan's ' Brahmam Okate.'

PS

 

Haha, I am sure your aastha channel aunt is better than my Hare Krishna relatives who have been trying to convince me for years that onions and garlic grew out of cow's blood. When they launch their next attack I am going to tell them that I have eaten even beef so somethingout of bovine blood doesn't matter to me. Other pious poppycocks have threatened me with hell. *I have told them that if heaven is the kind of place where I would find guys like them, I am perfectly happy with hell. .After all I expect quite a few of bollywood beauties and playboy bunnies to land in hell. So hell must be fun than moksha or swarga and what not.

 

Dear M,

Decided to address you this way after some deliberation. Neither of us, I tend to believe, bear the slightest resemblance to characters out of Ian Fleming's works, or works spawned by his works, or those spawned by works spawned by his works. Yet, M having mutated into a woman now (one with a face in fact, from a man presumably with no more to offer than the back of his head as his claim to win the Oscar), you might well prefer to identify yourself as Bond's boss. Not being Bond, not by any stretch of imagination, I am not particularly worried about this possibility. Alternatively, you might simply retain the woman part, asking 007 to retire. And I do not discount the possibility either that you could wish as well to hold on to your right to remain totally cyber-obscure.

So read it as Madam if you wish, or Monsieur, if you don't. How I shall pronounce it will remain a mystery. But it's not Macburger, I assure you. I tried it out and rejected it.

They have a saying in Bengali, which translated into somewhat crappy English would run -- Worshipping Ganges with Ganges water. As I was reading through your fascinating composition, I couldn't avoid reminding myself of a piece of information that you had recently left at IL for my consumption. As well as for others I suppose, but primarily for me. It carried an aura of an admonition in it too I think.

I read it once more, then once more again, then again and yet again, till I lost count of the number of times I read it. That was my way of chanting the mantras as I worshipped M. M, the social-networker, M who comes here to banter and to bond. M the litterateur par excellence whose own creations constitute chanting in her praise. No, the "her" was not a typo.

M caught in Aunt Agony's trap, couldn't but conjure up images for me of yet another Aunt, not Agony but Agatha, Bertie Wooster's infamous "nephew-crusher", or whom someone or the other had described as "the best image of the dialoguing philosopher". Both names start with Ag as I see, the resemblance therefore is pretty strong, isn't it? Not that Aunt Agony would approve the Ag part, since it's a symbol chemists use for silver. And any allusion to silver, or even lead perhaps might make the shudh shakahari raise several of her eyebrows! There are other parallels too, a favourite being Carroll's My Fairy. Actually, Aunt Agony resembles the Fairy more than Aunt Agatha, for the latter was not particularly well-known as a "saintly seeker". She appeared to possess a single track mind, a mind obsessed with a desire to marry off Bertie to the least suitable of nubile girls hidden in her closet.

Yet I have to admit that I detected a shade of Aunt Dahlia too (Bertie's benign aunt as opposed to the malign Aunt Agatha) in your Aunt A. And here is the clue:

Well not Aunt Dahlia really, but her chef extraordinaire Anatole. Bertie, as you will recall, found it literally impossible to refuse Aunt Dahlia's invitations, not so much on account of Aunt Dahlia's personal attraction as on account of the opportunity it offered to partake of Anatole's delicacies. And these could well include mouth watering Chateaubriand steaks, served with roasted small new potatoes and mustard sauce. It must have been the roasted potato that brought up Anatole and his employer in my mind, for I am sure that your Aunt A, unlike Bertie's Aunt D, is a strict vegetarian. Well what's rasam to you is steak to me I suppose and I wonder what advice Aunt A will have to offer on this subject. No moksha in store for me alas.

I have to admit that my favourite part in your dissertation on Aunt A is:

I enjoyed it to no end, since it reminded me of a confusion I had once inflicted on my son in the form of a letter. I was talking to him about the birth of Ganges herself. From Vishnu's molten toe!

(The M in question is not you of course, but M as in Mahadeva and V is Vishnu.)

Well M!! This time it's you, not M as in deva. What should I say? This has already been a long fb. No apologies for that. Don't read it if it makes you feel drowsy. But reading you made my day. Do keep producing such classics. You said "characterization" was my forte. But I am looking wide eyed at your line:

What, I wonder, is your forte M!

Whatever it may be, I visualize you being drenched in "pushpa vrishti" in no time at all!!

ojaantrik