Does a sixth sense make sense?

The Sixth sense? What is it?

If you develop the five existing senses with the help of meditation,maybe you may also discover your sixth sense.

When you start your meditation, get into your favourite meditation posture and close your eyes.Give your eyes total rest.Enter the blackness and feel the eyelids getting heavy.After meditation,every image  looks sharper.Feel the nerves behind the eyes relaxing.

Now focus attention on the nose.Smell all the smells around you.Feel the warm air as it enters the nostrils.Try and feel the nerves from the nose to the brain.

Now focus on your lips and move your tongue around it and move it at the top of the palate.Feel the nerves behind the tongue.

Now focus on your ears and the sounds all around you.Isolate each sound and then collectively listen to all of them.

Finally,focus  on the skin in contact with the ground or on sensations all over the body as done in Vipaasna meditation.Let the sense of touch become more and more sensitive/awakened.

Do each sense individually and then collectively.

Do this short  meditation of sense awareness at different times  whenever possible.

If you develop the five senses,you may discover the sixth sense.

According to me the sixth sense is a sense of intuition.And this is in a very undeveloped stage in our brain structure.

Why do scientists not work on developing intuition…?

Enlightenment Level ?

I had earlier written about Spiritual level and asked what is your spiritual level?
In the same vein,I would like to think of what is enlightenment level?
How close are you to enlightenment or really how far?
But before that I would like to ask the following questions .
1.Is enlightenment total or can it also be partial?
2.If one is partially enlightened or totally enlightened,is it permanent or it could be temporary?
3.Is enlightenment obtained gradually or suden ? If gradually is it over a long period of time or a short period ?
4.Does enlightenment appear and then disappear if you dont know how to hold on to it properly or if you misuse it or brag about it ?
The questions are serious and not in a lighter or sarcastic vein.
Coming back to the main issue of enlightenment levels ,I am making the following hypothetical measuring scale.
Lets assume that the scale is from 0 to ten,going on a reverse scale.
Zero is the level that Buddha reached,that is,full enlightenment.
In Buddhist terminology,Shoonya is an important word which means emptiness,or void or a zero.Thats why I have kept zero as the ultimate in enlightenment level.
Lets keep level ten the highest level of unenlightenment.
Each person has to ask himself this question what is my level? if he is into setting himself on the path of enlightenment.
Most of mankind is not into this.How much money have you made,how successful have you been in your career,how famous have you become,how happy are you with your family,how compassionate are you,how much you have returned to society,how environment friendly are you,these are the types of questions generally asked.How much have you refined your inner being towards enlightenment is hardly ever asked.The science of the inner world has not been investigated enough.Why not?

Jottings on Shoonya

Shoonya in Sanskrit could mean many things.

The common translation could be empty or emptiness.

It could mean the void.

It could be zero (a component of the computer language)

It could be vaccum,or non-existence,or even indifference.

Shoonya is full of meanings.My jottings on Shoonya are on Shoonya as void.

Jottings are thoughts on paper.Question marks.Shoonya is quite a popular concept both in Hindu( including Kashmir Shaivism) as well as Buddhist religious literature.

Could the Universe be an expanding Shoonya? With portions of it a contracting shoonya?

Can a void grow larger or smaller?

Can there be a void within a void ?

Is a dark hole in space  not a shoonya ?

Can a shoonya not explode ? Or implode?

If darkness is an absence of light,is not Shoonya  an absence of light as well as  space?

The big bang was born from Shoonya  and will end in shoonya.

The sun as well as the solar system as well as the planets and the earth have all emerged from  the void.

All humans too are a part of this void.

Death is accepted but the void is not.Why is this so ?

In praise of retirement

The biggest fear in most humans is death and the second biggest fear is retirement
I can understand fear of death but why are men so scared to retire?
Even if they are financially secure,men will not retire at 60,the earliest retirement age.

There must be something wrong in the very basic fundamental attitude that society breeds of a retired man-an image of boredom or of uselessness or sick and diseased or a parasite .
“You’re too young to retire” is the most common reaction you will face.
“What will you do the whole day?” everyone asks.
The women would worry about having a man on their hands to look after the whole day,and worry that their freedom would get curtailed.And you will find few women encouraging retirement especially early retirement.
And the men dont wish to retire because they have just started earning huge salaries with great perks so retirement would suddenly cut off all that power,the money etc. and would alter their lifestyle totally.
So greed keeps them going on and on and on.Work till you drop dead.

I think its sad that the system is such that a person becomes so productive only at such a late age that society would not want to give up the services of that person at the age of sixty.Its sad for the individual concerned,not for society.Its the individual who is missing out on the golden age.You have studied and then worked all these years,and you need to enjoy the remaining years of your life after sixty.Who knows when the end is going to come?
If all the top posts were to be given to men in their late forties then they could retire at sixty.
If all mortgages were planned so that by 45 you have no liabilities,you could plan to retire by 60.Wishful thinking,but possible ,if a whole generation is taught the value of time spent on yourself without feeling guilty or insecure.

What Bill Gates has done by retiring at 52 is simply amazing.Not for anybody else but for himself.
What growth he will discover in his early retirement ,only he will know.But I am glad he has set an example to the world.I hope many many others follow him.If the senior staff in Microsoft follows his example, en masse,it will be a revolution.The younger generation would all get promoted, and the retired seniors can help the juniors and also work towards making the world a better place.

There are so many joys,so many pleasures that life offers-and all these dont require a lot of money.But they do require time.
You have to take time off.And grow within so that you become richer and richer from inside.This richness cannot be measured by society.But a society which is full of Buddhas is obviously going to be a rich society.
I would like to end the post with an extract from the Tao:
“It is important to know ” When to Stop”,
Otherwise there is danger of becoming overfull.
If you keep on sharpening a sword endlessly
It is bound to become useless.
If you keeping on filling a house with gold and diamonds,
It is bound to fill you with tension and fear of being robbed.
The way of the Tao
Is to know when you have Enough.
To know you have Enough
Is to be filled with Joy and Contentment.”

When You have done your job…Retire.

Make the moon your friend

Most people ignore the moon.
They take it for granted.
There are too many other problems that they have to cope with in day to day life.Who has time to look up and gaze at the moon?And it is so unpredictable.One day it is there,the next day it is somewhere else at the same time.No consistency,like the sun…..
But make friends with the moon..Study it a bit and you will soon know where exactly to look for it and at what time.
And why should anyone bother to make friends with it?
It is our closest neighbour in space.
It is visible to us most of the time,in all its beauty.
It affects our life on earth so much.
If you associate the moon with nature and if you associate nature with God,then making the moon your friend is like making God your friend.
The moon will widen your mindscape regularly if you take out time to gaze at it lovingly like you do for sunsets.
If you learn to talk with the moon in your mind,it will show itself to you regularly when you are least expecting it.Try it out.And the full moon is such a lovely friend to have ,and the moonlight it showers on you will make you so peaceful and so blissful.
So why not make friends with the moon?