20.The Mind-Bang
“What you going to do now?”, asked my father as I was packing my bag. The bulk of the bag was filled with my DVDs and books covering whole range of philosophy to psychology to fiction.
“I am going to find her”, I said calmly.
“Listen, son, Please listen to me. Don’t do it. Listen to me carefully”, he pleaded.
“Okay, I am listening”. I replied, obviously a bit touched by the 'please'.
“Let me ask you this. If you were born in a poor family, unable to afford even two decent meals a day, in a family where your sister is supposed to sleep with dirty laborers for those meals, if you were born in a family in which getting a heart disease is death, in a family which dreads that time in the night when the father comes drunk and beat everyone in sight; would you be thinking in the same way you are thinking now? Answer me.”
He talks logic. He talks logic. Mother wrote in her dairy.
“ I don’t know”, I replied. I was interested to know where he was going with all this.
“ You don’t know. But, I have seen families like that. They wouldn’t care a rat’s ass if their mother left them or not. If she left, its fine. You know why? Because, the hunger in the stomach or rather the fear of getting hungry can eat away the sorrow of deaths of hundred mothers. They wouldn’t chase mysteries. Tomorrow itself is a mystery for them. They are so involved in solving their own mystery of life that all other mysteries are mere facts for them. ‘Our crazy mother mysteriously left us’, that’s not a mystery. There is no why? What? How?. It happened and its over, and the next day the sun rises as if nothing happened.”
“Where you going with all this?”, I interrupted.
“Look at you. You get up at 12 in the afternoon. Eat food thrice a day. Drink diet coke. Smoke cigarettes. Drink alcohol. Watch TV and sleep effortlessly at 2am in the night. Where did you get all this comfort? Who provided you for your education? If I let that woman stay in this house, or if I went in search of her and brought her back, she would have destroyed our life. I wouldn’t be able to provide the comforts and education, you wouldn’t have this spare time, and acidity in the stomach because of overeating, and diet concerns. You wouldn’t want to go after her. You want to go after her because I saved this family. I saved this family."
"What family? You and me?", I laughed, satirically of-course.
"Yes. You and me. Two lives versus already one brain dead person. Think logically with the perspective of reality. What else can any man do in my position? Crazy people are crazy making.We both would have gone crazy. We both would have hated her. Look all those old people who refuse to die, who piss in their beds, who cannot move, look at them, do u think their kids really want them? Life does not stop for anyone.Everyone have their own lives to live.We have to move on. We have to survive."
I saw his point. I understood his logic. I had seen many middle class families who just hated their grandparents, very old grand parents who remained coma like for many years. Yes, their grandson and daughters cried for them initially for the first few years. And then, it got on their nerves. The old people just refused to die, eating away their time, money and most importantly their hygiene. Imagine the smell of piss and faeces, and that constant smell of death which refuses to leave.
Yes. I understood what he was talking. People move on.There were no memories to make peace with, just their conscience. Making peace with your conscience is nothing but the concept of moving on, as Everyone moves on, as if it is a fact of life. Morality has no meaning if everyone does the same thing.
But, then again, nothing made sense to me. All logic is based upon certain assumptions and ground rules. If you agree to those assumptions and ground rules, then only you can venture into that logical world. He made sense because a part of me understood those ground rules, but a part of me refused to accept the same rules. I went beyond those rules. I wanted to know the reason behind those rules.
Lot of questions popped up.
For what purpose are we all moving on? For what purpose we are living? For what purpose we are surviving?
I asked him the same. " Dad, What is this life all about?"
He gave me a surprised look and remained quiet for close to half-minute, and said something which kind of triggered me to some realizations, which made me finally find the reason behind my obsession to chase the mystery of mother.
" Life is a game. As simple as that. We got to understand its rules first, and than play it.Its pointless to ask why we are playing that game, because we are born on that playground. Horrifying darkness surrounds that playground. A darkness at which we are not supposed to look, a darkness into which you are not supposed to venture. People make rules of the game, people play the game hard, people compete with other, people do anything to involve themselves in the game -- with only one purpose -- with - only - one - purpose --- Not to stare at that darkness. That darkness is unknown, and its the most fearful-thing in the life of every organism, it is death, it is insanity.For all practical purposes, your mother ventured into that. I refused to follow her. I did the right thing"
He remained quiet for a few seconds, and then said as if he found something about his own life."Fear of that darkness drives our lives".
Emotion driving those rules: Fear. Fear of unknown. Fear of darkness. Fear of death.
The metaphor my dad gave stimulated my mind. May be that's why metaphors are for. May be every word is a metaphor for something in our lives.Now, he was talking about the king of metaphors -- a metaphor for life itself. A metaphor in which his philosophy of life got wrapped in.
Thoughts.Thoughts.Thoughts. What drove these thoughts? I didn't know. But, many thoughts came, only with the goal of proving myself right. I guess!
"Dad, What if there is no darkness surrounding us? What if there is a beautiful world surrounding us? Beautiful gardens, peaceful gardens with flowers and trees. But we refuse to look at them, because we were told..taught that there is only darkness outside, that it would be horrible for us if we stop the game and look outside. People refuse to look because they fear..an illusory fear. What if all that fear is an illusion?"
"Death is not an illusion"
"But, fear of death is."
"Are you saying that you have no fear of death?"
"No. I realized, just now, that I can be truly happy only when I lose that fear"
"You can never face death without fear"
"May be I will fear death at the exact moment I meet it, but I refuse to let my life guided by that fear".
He got my logic. He got my logic because I went beyond his assumptions, and established my own assumptions. But, those assumptions themselves became logic. Contradiction?
All physics becomes meaningless beyond big bang. All logic becomes useless beyond the big-bang of mind. is big bang in the realm of physics same as big bang in the realm of mind?
How can we define big-bang of the mind? Whats this mind-bang?
Yeah, he got it. Everyone gets it. But, they discard it. If they don't discard it, and accept it, that means they lived a false lives all these years. They played a game, and they played it with a purpose, but the logic behind that purpose was based upon wrong assumptions.But, they already mastered the rules of that game, and played that game all that life, just like a machine. They were programmed...and I was just a bug or a virus...for them.
Their life is programmed."Vadhinchina vistari valla jeevitam". A great poet said in telugu.
The machine --my father, started again, " But, that's not reality".
"Whats reality?"
" The reality is that your body is material, and it needs to survive"
" Dad, Do I need all your cars, palaces, fashions to survive?"
" But you gotta be competitive and successful in life. You need to find success and be powerful"
" Why do I need to be powerful?"
" You need to be powerful to play the game better"
" Wait. You need to play the game better so as to play the game better?"
"So, you chose to be a loser, then"
"How can I be a loser if I refuse to play that game of life...at-least the game you are playing which is based on false assumptions. You see dad, there is no stopping in that game of life you are playing. You get food and bed, but thats not enuf. You gotta own stuff, buy stuff, you are not supposed to be satisfied with what you have..because if you are satisfied, then you stop the game, but the fear wouldnt let you stop, and you gotta play the game forever..you played that game for too long that, Fear became you."
"Son, you are not buddha, you are not jesus, you are not muhammad, you are not mahavira.
If you think you are, please come out of your illusions. You dont know what pain is. You never suffered."
Can a buddha become buddha without pain?
Words came automatically out of my mouth, as if the thought 'Fear is an illusion' , and the thought that I rejected the assumptions on which the humanity based their lives, drove me.
"What if pain is pain only in your game?"
Pain is pain because of the game.
"But, you are still in the game", he replied.
"Yes, I was playing that game. I am taking a break from it now"
He lost interest in this whole discussion, I guess, as he might have found his contradictory self, and he was not comfortable with contradictions. His logic might have shutup my mother..but not her son.
He finally asked, "Where is this going?"
"I dont know, Dad. You tell me. You started it, so let me continue this.Now, tell me, what is the purpose of our lives?"
"Purpose of life is to play the game.Simple! Because, if you dont play the game, you would'nt be here to ask that question in the first place"
"I thought we are all in the pursuit of happiness"
"The happiness can be found in the game itself"
" Are you happy?"
"No, I am not", he replied.
"Why?"
"Because of you".
"Sorry dad. Your game is yours, my game is mine.If everyone plays their own game and find happiness in that, then how can I be responsible for your unhappiness?"
"You are my son, goddamn it!", he finally lost his patience.
"She is my MOTHER", I strategically stressed the word.
"Whats your point?", he asked betraying some helplessness.
"Dad, You are right and wrong about your game metafor for life. You are right because thats how people live. You are wrong because thats not how human life is supposed to be. Yes, I too played that game. But, it didnt give me any happiness. Now, because of mother I am forced to look into that darkness. I am forced to face my own fears. Mother is hiding in that darkness,and she wants me to find her even if she was buried or burnt to ashes somewhere. The only way I can find her is by chasing away that darkness -- becoming free of fear -- and filling it all with light. Then only I can find mother, and my happiness. Pursuit of mother is pursuit of happiness"
What I ever I said at that time was not planned at all -- I realised it right there -- at that moment -- triggered by the argument.
Continued here..
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