Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention a story titled ‘The Sentry and the Vault’ from the book titled ‘Evenings with Idries Shah’ which is a compilation of Sufi discussions.

In this little book, Idries Shah explains the nature of the teaching-story and how the reader might approach this amazing material.

THE SENTRY AND THE VAULT

A powerful king was entering his palace amid a concourse of soldiers, his personal guard, whose accoutrements gleamed with silver, gold and precious gems.

As he was passing a sentry, who believed that such manifestations of wealth and power were vain and foolish, was overcome by these reflections and shouted: “If you have wealth, you can do anything! Wealth is all you need! There is nothing but appearance and show, and those things are bought with treasure!”

The soldier was seized and taken to where the King sat on his throne.

“Are you convinced that all that anyone needs is to be surrounded by wealth, and that wealth is power?” asked the King.

“Yes, I am!” said the sentry, who had given up all hope for his life.

“In that case”, said the King, “I am prepared to try an experiment. You shall have all the wealth you can imagine.”

He ordered that the soldier be placed in a vault and that he be surrounded with bricks of gold and silver and have sacks of jewels piled around him. Then the vault was to be bricked up.

The soldier was surprised, but he was somewhat grateful for having some sort of communication with the real world outside. After a day or two, when he was getting very hungry, he began to shout down the hole in the wall, and his voice happened to come to the ears of a goldsmith who was passing.

The goldsmith went to the hole and heard the soldier’s story. He went home, brought back a forked stick, and withdrew some of the jewels which the soldier offered him. In this way he supplied the prisoner with food and water day after day, getting paid in jewels.

After some weeks the soldier found that time was hanging very heavily on his hands, and he asked the goldsmith for some metal-working tools. With these he made a flute for himself out of the gold in the vault, and practised melodies which he played, to provide some recreation.

As he played, however, the prisoner began to think, “I have gold and silver, and jewels, I have food and water and amusement, but I have no freedom”.

His tunes became more and more plaintive, and he became more and more wrapped up in

them, as his thoughts sought to understand his condition and to probe as to whether he

could ever escape

One day the dervish came past the hole in the wall of the vault to see what was happening.

The soldier said: “I have everything except freedom. Can you not help me to escape?

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled ‘Pursuing the Future’ from the book titled ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ by Alan W Watts.

‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ underlines the importance of our search for stability in an age where human life seems particularly vulnerable and uncertain.

Pursuing the Future

The miracles of technology cause us to live in a hectic, clockwork world that does violence to human biology, enabling us to do nothing but pursue the future faster and faster. Deliberate thought finds itself unable to control the upsurge of the beast in humans – a beast more ‘beastly’ than any creature of the wild, maddened and exasperated by the pursuit of illusions. Specialisation in verbiage, Classification, and mechanised thinking has put humans out of touch with many of the marvellous powers of ‘instinct’ which govern their body. It has, furthermore, made humans feel utterly separate from the universe and their own ‘selves’. And thus when all philosophy has dissolved in relativism, and can make fixed sense of the universe no longer, isolated ‘I’ feels miserably insecure and panicky, finding the real world a flat contradiction of its whole being.

Of course there is nothing new in this predicament of discovering that ideas and words cannot plumb the ultimate mystery of life, that Reality, or if you will, God, cannot be comprehended by the finite mind. The only novelty is that the predicament is now social rather than individual; it is widely felt, not confined to the few. Almost every spiritual tradition recognizes that a point comes when two things must happen: humans must surrender their separate-feeling ‘I’ and must face the fact that they cannot know, that is, define the ultimate. These traditions also recognise that beyond this point there lies a vision of God’ which cannot be put into words. They also indicate that this vision is a restoration of something which we once had, and ‘lost’ because we did not or could not appreciate it. This vision is, then, the unclouded awareness of this indefinable ‘something’ which we call life, present reality, the great stream, the eternal now – an awareness without the sense of separation from it.

Excerpt from ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ by Alan W Watts

I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:

Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.

Concluding today’s post and podcast episode, I thank all who take time out and read (the blog post) and listen to the episodes each week. For those who listen and have not subscribed to the podcast I suggest you do and click on the bell icon so that you can be notified for all the new episodes that get uploaded every week.

Namaste.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled ‘Prisoners of Our Transitory Knowledge’ from the book titled ‘The Heart of the Hunter’ by Lauren Van Der Post.

In this book the author describes his desert travels, the splendid landscape and wildlife, and his encounters with the Bushman – the first people of Southern Africa, an elusive culture.

Prisoners of Our Transitory Knowledge

Intellectually, modern humans know almost all there is to know about the pattern of creation in themselves, the forms it takes, the surface designs it describes. We have measured the pitch of its rhythms and carefully recorded all the mechanics. From the outside we see the desirable first

object of life more clearly perhaps than humans have ever seen it before. But less and less does we experience the process within. Less and less are we capable of committing ourselves body and soul to the creative experiment that is continually seeking to fire us and to charge our little life with great objective meaning. Cut off by accumulated knowledge from the heart of our own living experience, we move amongst a comfortable rubble of material possession, alone and unbelonging, sick, poor, starved of meaning.

From ‘The Heart of the Hunter’ by Lauren Van Der Post.

I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/158258.The_Heart_of_the_Hunter

Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.

Concluding today’s post and podcast episode, I thank all who take time out and read (the blog post) and listen to the episodes each week. For those who listen and have not subscribed to the podcast I suggest you do and click on the bell icon so that you can be notified for all the new episodes that get uploaded every week.

Namaste.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention a tale titled ‘The Gates of Paradise’ from the book titled ‘Tales of Dervishes’ compiled by Idries Shah.  Tales of Dervishes is the result of a thousand years of development.

The tales are held to convey powers of increasing perception unknown to the ordinary man.

The Gates of Paradise

There was once a good man. He had spent his whole life in cultivating the qualities enjoined upon those who would reach Paradise. He gave freely to the poor, he loved his fellow creatures and he served them. Remembering the need to have patience, he endured great and unexpected hardships, often for the sake of others. He made journeys in search of knowledge. His humility and exemplary behaviour were such that his repute as a wise man and good citizen resounded from the East to the West and from the North to the South.

All these qualities he did indeed exercise – whenever he remembered to do so. But he had one short-coming, and that was heedlessness. This tendency was not strong in him, and he considered that, balanced against the other things which he did practice, it could only be regarded as a small fault. There were some poor people whom he did not help, because from time to time he was insensitive to their needs. Love and service, too, were sometimes forgotten when what he thought to be personal needs, or at least desires, welled up in him.

He was fond of sleep; and sometimes when he was asleep, opportunities to seek knowledge, or to understand it, or to practice real humility, or to add to the sum total of good behaviour – such opportunities passed by, and they did not return.

Just as the good qualities left their impress upon his essential self, so did the characteristic of heedlessness.

And then he died. Finding himself beyond this life, and making his way towards the doors of the Walled Garden, the man paused, to examine his conscience. And he felt that his opportunity of entering the High Portals was enough.

The gates, he saw, were shut; and then a voice addressed him, saying: ‘Be watchful; for the gates will open only once in every hundred years.’ He settled down to wait, excited at the prospect. But, deprived of chances to exercise virtues towards mankind, he found that his capacity of attention was not enough for him. After watching for what seemed like an age, his head nodded in sleep. For an instant his eyelids closed. And in that infinitesimal moment the gates yawned open. Before his eyes were fully open again, they closed: with a roar loud enough to wake the dead.

‘Tales of Dervishes’ by Idries Shah

I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:

Tales of the Dervishes by Idries Shah

Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled ‘A Passive Instrument’ from ‘Silent Union’ by Francis Eaglesfield.

A Passive Instrument

A doctor writes of his life.

All I have got I have got from others. If I have grown a millimetre in stature it is none of my doing. All my ill – sustained efforts, all the long civil war dragging on within my ego, has done little for me. Whatever I have has been given by my friends, and my patients have contributed far more than I have. If you call this the grace of God, I will not deny it. But this grace came to me not through any majestic revelation. It came from on high but not directly. It was filtered through the hearts of my friends and patients; it came to me not as a voice thundering, or in visions or portents or in terms of light. It revealed itself along wordless channels, through simple people in banal surroundings, in an age dim with the gray fog of rationalism. This is one of the aspects of the grace of God.

When I search for one fragment I have contributed to my own enlightenment, I am at a loss to supply an answer. All I can find is that perhaps I have kept my mind open to what I might receive from others. Yet I have never been conscious of doing so and indeed, except with my patients, I have a deeply ingrained tendency to raise a barrier between myself and others. It has always been said of me that I resist affection. I do not know if this is true. I can only think that we are cared for in spite of ourselves and that some higher influence draws me like a magnet in spite of my resistance. Certainly so much has been given to me that I deplore the little use I have made of it. If in these pages I would seem to attribute to myself some influence not wholly bad that brings peace to others, I know it is not from myself. How could it be, seeing that in the moment it is being exercised I am for the most part unaware of its operation? If I have done any good it is only as a passive instrument. I say this with conviction because so often when I have tried to do so I have not only failed lamentably but sometimes wreaked havoc.

Excerpt from ‘Silent Union’ by Francis Eaglesfield

Concluding today’s post and podcast episode, I thank all who take time out and read (the blog post) and listen to the episodes each week. For those who listen and have not subscribed to the podcast I suggest you do and click on the bell icon so that you can be notified for all the new episodes that get uploaded every week.

Namaste.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled ‘Constant Observation’ from an interview of Shri Jiddu Krishnamurti.

He was a philosopher, speaker and writer.

Constant Observation

Seeing is very important, not only outwardly, but inwardly, seeing myself as I actually am – my greed, my envies, my bitterness, my cynicism, my beliefs – I have to watch them. I cannot watch them if I am frightened or if I wish to change them, as I watch the tree. I can’t change the tree, I watch it – not that I identify myself with that tree but then the – observer and the observed, which is the tree that is not that relationship of division. So in the same way – if one can look at oneself – without condemning, without justifying, without trying to wish it to be altered in terms of ideas and ideals – then you can look at what you are actually – so clarity comes not through – a wish – a desire – an ideal – but through actual work of observation and actual seeing demands tremendous energy and actual seeing is in itself discipline, so clarity comes that way. Not through cultivation but through constant observation which is attention.

An interview with Jiddu Krishnamurti (Excerpt)

Concluding today’s post and podcast episode, I thank all who take time out and read (the blog post) and listen to the episodes each week. For those who listen and have not subscribed to the podcast I suggest you do and click on the bell icon so that you can be notified for all the new episodes that get uploaded every week.

Namaste.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention a tale titled ‘The Palace of the Man in Blue’ from the book titled ‘The Dermis Probe’ compiled by Idries Shah.  The Dermis Probe is a collection of extracts from the written and oral tradition of Eastern thinkers.

This compilation presents a serious yet entertaining look at the impediments in current thought which prevent certain forms of understanding between people.

The Palace of the Man in Blue

One day a group of people who had been travelling together through a certain country came upon a magnificent palace by the roadside. They stopped to admire it, and a steward came out and said:

‘My master, the owner of this palace, invites you to pass a little time here. There are refreshments and diversions, if you would care to consider yourselves our guests.’

The travellers delightedly followed the man into the courtyard. Just within was a crowd of people, all watching a man in blue robes. One by one he touched the people, all of whom seemed to be ill. One by one they changed: the lame walked, the pale looked healthy again, the bent straightened.

One of the visitors said to his fellows:

‘But this is the strangest thing that I have ever seen! This man is a healer, and yet, in my own town, I have seen him going from one doctor to another, seeking a cure for various ailments of his own.’

Within a few minutes the man had finished treating his patients. He dismissed them, and led the guests to a banqueting-hall where every kind of delicious food was waiting for them. As soon as they had sat down to eat, one of the company said to his neighbours:

‘This is the strangest thing that I have ever seen! This man gives banquets, and yet, in my own town, I have seen him begging scraps of bread from door to door.’

When the meal was finished, the host took them to see his gardens, which covered an immense extent of land. There, amid every conceivable variety of fruit and flowers, an army of gardeners were at work, swarming like ants through the grounds.

When the man in blue was out of earshot, yet another of his guests said to the others:

“This is the strangest thing that I have ever seen! Here is a man who must employ more than five hundred gardeners. And yet, in my own locality, I have seen him desperately seeking work for himself, and often unable to find it.

Minute by minute the wonderment of the visitors increased. It was not diminished when yet another of them said:

“This man is well known in my own area. There, he is a beggar, piteously stretching out his hand for the smallest coin. Yet here, he must be spending more money in a day than a king does in a year.”

And, strange though it may seem, each and every one of those people had seen the man in blue, at some time or another, in circumstances of want and suffering.

When they had spent several hours in mingled enjo...

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

We are all limited by our habits and if we are captive to our poor behaviour and make excuses, no amount of ambition, innovation or motivation will be of any use.

This week I bring to your attention a tale titled ‘After a Swim’ by Idries Shah. This tale draws our attention to such a situation.

After A Swim

Once upon a time there was a cat that lived in a field beside a wide, wide river. He often wished that he could swim because, that way, he might cross the river, reaching the large and well-stocked pigeon-house, which was on the other side.

The cat spoke to the horse, ‘If only I knew who could swim and who liked sweet juicy corn,’ as that delectable golden corn is really wasted on those fat foolish pigeons.

‘What a coincidence’, said the horse. ‘I’m thinking of swimming across the river, to graze on some of that lovely ripening corn on the other side.’

Picturing the feast he would have the cat made a proposition. ‘Perhaps you could take me along on your back?’ and in next to no time the horse and the cat were in the water.

On the opposite bank, the horse slowly started to graze. While the cat immediately leapt upon the pigeons.

In just a few a seconds, the cat had caught several birds. In a few seconds more, he had gorged himself. And in a matter of minutes he was fit to burst.

Unable to eat another mouthful, the cat started to yowl as loud as he could. ‘What delicious birds those were!’ he sobbed. ‘Shhh!’ cried the horse, still munching.

But the cat kept on making a terrible din. ‘Keep the noise down!’ hissed the horse, his mouth full of corn.

‘The villagers will come out, if they hear this awful racket. And they will do us all sorts of harm!’

But the cat kept on yowling on the top of his voice. ‘Please stop it!’ gasped the horse. ‘You don’t understand the damage you are doing…’

‘I simply cannot help it, my friend,’ screeched the cat, the tears still streaming from his eyes. ‘I always do this after I have eaten; It’s simply the way I am.’

The horse was extremely annoyed. It took him longer than the cat to eat his fill. And he was not yet ready to leave the delicious cornfield.

But the cat continued to caterwaul. And it wasn’t long before the villagers heard his cries.

They came charging into the cornfield, brandishing sticks and hurling stones, giving the horse no option but to stop eating. With the cat on his back, he fled across the river once more.

 ‘You’ve ruined everything!’ the horse complained to his companion. ‘Now we can’t go back, and I am still hungry.’ ‘I have told you,’ gasped the dripping feline, as they scrambled up the river bank. ‘It is simply the way I am. It’s a habit I have.’

Suddenly, the horse dropped to the ground. And started to roll on the grass…trapping the cat beneath him.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention a tale from the corpus of ‘Land of Fools’.

The Branch

Once upon a time, in the Land of Fools, a stranger to the country found that the branch of a tree had broken and was about to destroy a dam full of water.

He seized the branch and held on to it. And soon afterwards a party of people of the Land of Fools came walking by. And they said, ‘What are you doing with that branch?:

And he answered, ‘How lucky you have arrived! Help me to lift this branch, for otherwise the dam will be broken, and we shall all die! ‘

And they laughed and they laughed and they laughed; and finally the wisest among them, wiping the tears from his eyes, said, ‘Dear friends! This is a delicious moment: savor it. Not only does this man, talking about a branch, imagine that we are stupid enough to think that it has some relevance to a dam–but he imagines that by relating it to an ancient fear of ours he will make us obey him!

And so, doubled up in paroxysms of laughter, the people of the Land of Fools went on their way.

And the end of the story? The end of the story is exactly what you think it is.

Now this kind of a story is not only a joke, but it is intended to be used wherever one comes across that very common phenomenon of people getting all ‘gummed up, ” people’s ideas having crystallized, so that they cannot see the possible relevance between two apparently disconnected things, which are, in fact, at some level, connected.

Before concluding today’s episode please pay attention to these words of a Storyteller.

My stories require, at this stage, no extra commentary, imaginings, or guesswork by you, me, or anyone else. The very worst would be that of moralizing. To explain away is to forget. Thus, let the stories which you can remember do their own work by their very diversity. Familiarize yourself with them.

Concluding today’s post and podcast episode, I thank all who take time out and read (the blog post) and listen to the episodes each week. For those who listen and have not subscribed to the podcast I suggest you do and click on the bell icon so that you can be notified for all the new episodes that get uploaded every week.

Namaste.

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt, which is extracted from an interesting and thought provoking work, titled ‘Learning How to Learn’ by Idries Shah.

Deterioration of Studies

How do studies deteriorate?

People look for new teachings, or the revelation of concealed ancient ones, when their problem rightly may be that they cannot see the presence of the teaching in the materials abundantly available to them, ancient and otherwise.

They cannot see these teachings because they have chosen to blind themselves to the intention of a teaching-technique. They have ‘superficialised’ their own heritage of materials. Here is an example:

Many people are impressed by the example that if they look at something for half a minute, they will find their attention wandering. Instead of looking at this as an indication of fact, complete in Itself, they do two unnecessarily shallow things; they

1. Try to look at things for long periods in the hope that they will be able to develop attention capacity. They never achieve it, however, when they try in this manner, because the description of the deficiency does not of course, contain the technique;

2. Immediately assume that the person who drew their attention to their lack of attention is able to supply them with the method or system whereby they can remedy the situation. They seldom seem to imagine that, if a man says, This door is splintered’ he does not necessarily know how to mend it.

These people have lost the versatility of thinking which was the hallmark of ancient teaching. They have ‘idolatrised’ ideas, by making omniscience resident in illustration. This is exactly what a totemist does. The modern man does not, however, recognise himself as a totemist, perhaps because he does not live in a tropical jungle.

Learning How to Learn by Idries Shah 

Idries Shah through this compilation tries to strip words like humility, pride, greed, love, idolatry, charity among others of their sentiment and vague emotion and re-introduces them – as tools.

I hope you enjoy reading this compilation and find it thought provoking too. You can buy your copy from any of the bookstores near you or via any on-line portal selling books or also by clicking the following link:  

Learning How to Learn by Idries Shah

Concluding today’s post and podcast episode, I thank all who take time out and read (the blog post) and listen to the episodes each week. For those who listen and have not subscribed to the podcast I suggest you do and click on the bell icon so that you can be notified for all the new episodes that get uploaded every week.

Namaste.