Passing clouds and the spotless sky

The unblemished sky tinged in sapphire hue looked majestically pristine as the unfurled terrestrial canopy expanding across and beyond the horizons appeared spectacularly benevolent. Just as the aerial panorama seemed calm and serene, the sudden random streaks of lightning zigzagging over the zenith flashed out a hundred blinding illuminations while the roaring thunders that followed in quick successions threw the nature quickly into turbulent turmoil. The stray winds metamorphosed into gathering storms and whistled past with unreasonable fury and the laden clouds rolled over each other to turn into heaps of dark monsters frighteningly usurping the overhead skies.  Sparingly scattering tiny droplets of silver quickly gave way to sheets of torrential downpour and with it the fields submerged, habitats flooded and rivers breached their banks to inundate vast stretches of fertile land. In that unrelenting frenzy, the elements enveloped the sky above and the land below and merged into one single expanse of all-around devastation!

And as the storms petered, the rains thinned and the rivers quietened to return to their original courses, the sky once again presented a picture of tranquil beauty unfazed by the violent eruptions that were, not so long ago, played over its canvas.  However intense and tumultuous the weather patterns are, the sky would not allow itself to be marred by the scars of the activities that are staged over it. Essentially integral yet aloof and distant, it is a host to a myriad terrestrial spectacle and yet remains a silent and unconcerned witness on the backdrop. A detachment only matched in its magnificence by its own grandeur.  

This awesome disinterestedness to the surrounding cacophony and the stunning calmness amid clamouring chaos is a compelling lesson in detachment worthy of emulation for man too is buffeted, just as the skies, by the avalanche of unsettling experiences that trigger emotional upheavals on an untrained mind.  And just as the sky doesn’t get affected by every passing cloud, man too should seek to be free from the pulls of his fanciful thoughts and remain just a witness to the unending cascade of emotions that surge within him, one after the other.  And in this voyage towards attaining the state of stillness where the innate brilliance of the self does not fickle with every sundry emotion, the stately aloofness of the lotus flower is yet another guidepost. Though blooming and blossoming on marshy waters and drawing sustenance therein, the lotus does not inherit an iota of the repulsive traits of its habitation but instead, exudes an invigorating freshness that elevates even the stature of pond that it is embellished in. We too need to be of our environs yet not part of them and it is only in such an extolled position of detachment could we aspire to explore our true self.

But rather than picking a leaf from the University of Nature, man, like that cotton shred which gets tossed up by every whiff of air only to land and roll aimlessly, allows himself to drift directionless by his unregulated thoughts and uncontrolled emotions. And akin to the deer caught in the net of the merciless hunter, he gets fearfully enmeshed in the entrancing temptations of the worldly variety moving far away from the source of all his vitality- a dreadful reality!

And all this could be reversed only when he let go his clinched possessiveness and engrained prejudices and choose to embrace the unsullied state of nothingness. For in that nothingness is hidden the seeds of everything.

Yours

Narayanan

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