The Blood Scam

The blood scam. It works under the premise that everything can be inherited: intelligence, holiness, heroism, kindness, etc.There's this guy who became president because his mom and dad were known heroes. If you're born in a family of doctors you're the odd one if you don't become one. A son of a brahmana, a religious leader, guru, inherits the followers of his dad. Thus exist political dynasties, professional dynasties, religious dynasties. Nowadays dynasty is almost always immediately a derogatory term. And it must be so. The hero's son turned out to be not so heroic at all; the doctor's son really wanted to be a butcher; and the pastor's son was a charlatan. The reason is simple: it is based on the false identification of the body as being the self. The self and the body are different, just as a driver and a car are. the self, not the body, possesses the qualities of holiness, heroism, kindness, as well as cruelty, lasciviousness, greed, etc. you may inherit your father's body color or shape, or even his mental capacity, but not your father's humility, or how he cares about other people. It's sad that this scam based on blood has been going on since history. It has been so long occurring that people dismiss it as an inherent trait. Ganyan na talaga tayo. But the reason i think is so simple. we are scammed not because we are idiots or lazy, but because we don't know the truth about ourselves, we don't know who we are, what we are.

The Math of Happiness

The number of people who hates a truly happy person doesn't matter, what matters is how many people he hates: zero. The number of people who loves a happy person doesn't matter, what matters is how many people he loves: every single one. 

May we all be truly happy. Haribol! _/\_

THE NAME GAME

I have always told my daughter Radha that God has many Names even before she started going to school. One can call Him Allah, Jehova, Yahweh, Krishna, El Shadai, or simply Father, Friend, or God. I especially emphasized to her that God has many Names, and not many gods. To have many gods defeats the very meaning of God. When she started taking a "religion class" in elementary, we started having a minor theological issue. Apparently her religion teacher does not agree with the idea of God having a lot of names (millions, I told her initially, but in fact the Names are enumerable, as The Supreme has countless qualities, activities, etc.), the teacher insisted that God only has a particular name, and that name is the only name of God. My wife told me to drop the issue and refrain from indoctrinating our daughter with "weird, new age stuff" at least after Radha finishes her "religion subjects". Radha got an almost perfect score in her "religion subject" exam, so her mother was relieved. I'm not, however, due to a few things. Things like religious wars or wars related to religion, that is actually rooted in in this particular disagreement: The Name of God. Some people worship God because of His compassion, and so they call Him Allah; some are attracted to His might so they call Elohim and El Shaddai; God is all-attractive so He is called Krishna. God is not many. There is no such thing as the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims, or the Jews and the Hindus. If you call out Allah, referring to some tribal god, then that is NOT the name of God, but if one calls out Allah, meaning the all-compassionate God, then that IS God. It's funny some people can have three to five names, nicknames, etc. but God can only have one or two. I myself, an insignificant dot in the universe have the arrogance to call myself in five to six names, and the Lord can have only have one name. I still tell my daughter the many Names of God, although I have to work doubly hard to scrape away the bigotry she got from school (ironically!). It is sad to think that because God has many Names it gave way to many religions, and from those religions sects and denominations, all claiming their's is the exclusive name of the Lord. Haribol

September 8, 2015

Today is my father's 4th disappearance anniversary. Someone asked if we're going to visit, meaning go to the cemetery. I answered "He's not there." 

But i have to admit that saying that requires mental effort. the conditioned mind, which is so used to identifying the person, my dad in this case, as this short frail guy who looks like Rudy Fernandez, resists to let go of the idea. 

thinking about it i realized that the visiting of the remains, bones and hair and some rotting flesh, is our helpless attempt to cling on to something when pictures and memories fail to fill up the void left by sorrow and lamentation. so if that would hush someone's sadness for a while i have nothing against it. i may even go and light a candle for the sake of familial camaraderie. 

but i choose to cling on to something real. believing that the person is inside that sarcophagus or pantson or whatever for me is blind faith. you have to convince yourself he is there for it is maddening to try to figure out where the person is. let's convince ourselves he is inside that cement box resting in peace. and this candle will be our loving remembrance of him translated into matter. after that we go home pacified ourselves with the thought that we have visited dad in his new address ie land of the dead. then we can go on with our lives. 

I believe he is not there. what's there are what he left. my father was not these bones, or his name on the tombstone. he was part of these yes but after he left these just became exactly what they always were: matter. i mean there won't be much of a difference if i take out all his clothes and light a candle around it, i mean thats less gross than putting candles around his bones right? 

my father is not inside that box is not faith, it's science, it is truth. it's same as saying that he is not his old t shirts and socks and neck ties, he used these but he is not these. this is a long subject and ill jump to the point: i liberated myself from sadness and lamentation by remembering the absolute truth that my father is not his dead body, that he is the person, the spiritual spark of life inside that body. of course I miss him so much but it is not enough to drive myself crazy and talk to the dead ie stone, bone, carcass. because my father never died, he just left his body, that's all. he is somewhere very much existing and alive. i know i may not see him again but that's life in this world: for one who is born death is certain. so there. 

let me close this with a powerful verse from the sacred Bhagavad Gita imparted to me by my spiritual guide Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Prabhupad to whom i am endlessly grateful for pulling me out of the well of lamentation over the death of my father and the inevitable coming deaths of loved ones:

the Supreme Personality of Godhead Sri Krishna said:

"Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be."

BG v 2 chap 12. 

Jai Gurudev. Haribol! _/\_

A Rose

Everything came from nothing, randomness or chaos, has been the long standing conclusion of science regarding the origin of anything, including life in our universe. As we know it--as they know it. Everything we see in this world came from nothing. Everything just happened to happen. I've thought about it for the longest time, and when I'm in the sterile box of my room full of black and white words on squares it seems to make sense in my mind. But then I see this rose with its layers of intricate petals arranged in a pattern so organized you'd think a machine so complex beneath the ground had manufactured it, that I always return to my heart that says there's got to be someone so supremely intelligent, cool and creative who designed and made that. Come to think of it: everything or most things in this world that supposedly came from chaos or disharmony have harmony, symmetry, patterns: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, wet and dry season, a woman's menstrual cycle, planting and harvesting, the veins on leaves, the tides, our very aging, birth and death, over and over, again and again, patterns everywhere. If chaos or randomness, had created this rose, then perhaps I can imitate randomness by tearing down this rose, plucking out all its petals, leaves, thorns, etc., put these parts in a box and shake it until all the parts, petals, stem, thorns, scent, fall in the right place and form themselves into a rose. The question then would be how long should I be shaking that box. How many years, centuries or millennia of shaking that box full of petals, leaves, etc., would it take anyone to create one decent rose that the humble earth grows effortlessly? The probability is so slim that I can confidently say it's impossible. I mean, taking randomness aside, who among us or even our brightest scientists who dared explain the universe, with everything our latest technology can offer create a rose just like that? 

Love For God and Others

First and foremost, I humbly offer all my respects to my spiritual teacher, Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Prabhupad, who thought me what real love is. Without Him, I know nothing. I also offer my respects to all the saintly teachers, especially Lord Jesus Christ who declared that one must love God, the Supreme Father with all our heart, mind and entire being. And like unto it love His other children.

Love for others must come from love for God. It is the natural way. Some people claim that they can love others without even believing in the existence of God, but eventually they should be able to come to the point of asking what or who gives them the joy of loving. Did it come from love, which is a vague and abstract idea or entity? Did we make ourselves happy? Did those whom we had helped made us happy? Can we even make ourselves happy only by sheer will power? If so then why do we have to get out of our way to find happiness in loving others?

The conclusion of saintly teachers is this: when God is pleased with us we experience sublime joy. When we are loving His children, God, the Father of all living entities, is pleased with us and we experience joy.

Love for God must come first, as declared by Lord Jesus Christ, because it is the proper way. As rain can be produced by seeding clouds, the natural process of evaporation and precipitation, as conducted by nature, is far more superior. Thus, we can make believe that we are loving others even without loving God, but such “love” and the concept of “others” is dubious. Without love for God, so-called love for others is driven by different things. It could be out of anything: pity, patriotism, loneliness, hunger for glory and fame, self-righteousness, etc. And this so-called love is directed to many different concepts of “others.” “Others” may refer to a certain type of race, species, name, form, color, denomination, etc. That’s why we have patriots who love others i.e. their countrymen, collected as a nation. We have environmentalists who love others i.e. whales, pandas, gorillas, etc. We have so-called public servants who love others i.e. their constituents or possible voters. We have philanthropists who love others i.e. living entities in human form.

When it is said that God is the Father of all living entities, it means all living entities regardless of physical differences of form, color, species, political boundaries, etc. God, being the Father of all living entities, naturally loves each and every single one of His children in whatever form they are in (whether they are inside a body of a maggot or the president of a country). Love for others therefore is to love every single one of God’s children. To appreciate this, we must be able to see God as our Father, and we must be able to see others as our brothers. But to actually achieve this love for others, we must be able, not only to see, but to actually love God as our Father in order for us to actually love His children as our brothers. This is simple science. This is real love for others without boundaries. This is love beyond the material garb of the living entity which is inside a certain body. At the same time this is also knowing the real identity of the other person, that he is not his body but the person inside the body.

One must be able to taste love for God to know the difference. Love for others in itself can offer a slight, albeit fleeting, taste of happiness or fulfillment to a person, but it can never compare to the happiness and satisfaction in loving others a lover of God feels. In fact, one just needs to love God, and love for others automatically follows. One cannot love God and hate others, one cannot factually love others while hating God. It is like separating wetness from water, it is not possible. When one is tasting love for God, his entire being is flooded with ecstasy. He becomes, just like a prism hit by a single ray of sunlight, an explosion of light. He sees everything in relation to his beloved; he sees His beloved in everything. An ant crawls up his foot, he does not see the little creature as a threat, instead he understands that this little fellow is a brother, a person like him caught in the web of birth and death. He sees everything animate and inanimate as his Lord’s property, thus he does not use them for his own selfish motives, instead he tries to engage them in the loving service of his Lord. This is love for God, this is love for others founded upon love for God.

My teacher said: A person can only be truly happy, truly satisfied when he is tasting love for God (and from that, love for others). The easiest way to come to the transcendental platform of love for the Lord is by regularly hearing and chanting His Holy Names, Gopala, Govinda, Rama, Madana-Mohana, Krishna, Allah, Jehova, etc. Haribol!

There are no roaches in America

I was a kid when I heard from someone that in America there are no rats or roaches. That it was a very clean place, you can almost lick the sidewalks. Being a little older than me, and a boy who is cool enough to already wear trousers, I took the person who said this as an authority and his statement as truth. And for a long time I believed it as all in all. Eventually when the dazzling effulgence of coolness diminished and I being a trouser-wearing kid myself, I found out the “real” truth. But to give that person the benefit of a doubt of being just a complete liar, I think he was only able to come up with that statement because his actual experience of America was of a theme park where his parents took him for a trip. The place was in America alright, and true enough the park had no rats or roaches and the mock sidewalks seem to have just been painted the other day. So given these givens, my man concluded that yes, America is so clean. Having limited vision, not to mention limited brain power, there’s no way for him of knowing what is outside the theme park. That in fact just a few meters from the park entrance there is a water drain and underneath it is an ecosystem of six legged and four legged species of vermin. And being distracted by the goodies he got from the gift shops the real grimy sidewalks outside escaped his attention. As far as the limits of his human facility, what he reported was all the truth he can muster. But it is not the actual truth, just because he said it. His imperfect senses are not the proper vessels of the truth, so what he professed cannot be accepted, in other words it is false. Absolutely, America is not a clean place, and America has rats and roaches, and if you want to lick its sidewalks be my guest. 

In the big league there still are those who play as cool, trouser-wearing men among trouser-wearing men.  These guys love to tell you truths they gathered from big kids’ theme parks, accessible only by rocket ships and telescopes on mountain tops. Like my childhood friend, they never seem to lay off the habit of saying “there’s nothing there.” “No roaches and rodents here. Yes, sir. If there were, I should’ve seen them by now.” So they tell us, wide-eyed kids on old men’s trousers: “There is no God. Only human determination.”  And we nod, because they are so cool with their messy hair and spectacles with lenses thick as an electron microscope. Nobody is smart enough to ask: have you guys been to every part of the universe, and actually saw everything? Have you guys even ever been to every single place in the planet earth? But we give our faith to Mr. Science Man. I mean, how can you doubt? Is it even possible that a shred of lie can come out of a leather-bound science book written by PHD such and such?  And when someone expresses it in formulas isn’t that synonymous with The Truth? And the truth can’t be wrong right? Because they are scientists, they are disciples of Science, and science means truth. They invented the gadam computer right, and the computer is never wrong. And I heard science can explain everything, including why the moon is not made of green cheese. Scientists, I heard never tell a lie, it’s like their secret code, a creed of honesty. What they see is what they profess. They have such perfect vision thanks to their very scientific spectacles. But what about this book that says about everything being created by someone? What about that? I have a whole stack of creation stories in my private libe, under the mythic nonsense category.  Jesus, the truth, the way and the life, who is that? It’s like these silly books saying Odin will slay frost giants, and I’ve not seen frost giants. I mean is there even evidence that Jesus is a real person, come on. Show me. Epics. Myths. Mine is a science book, yours is a story book. Are you willing to build your life upon some Homer of the Far east? There’s no God, if there is, show me. Show me if there are roaches in America, show me a filthy American sidewalk. I dare you. And we do a standing ovation in some big hall in Sweden. Well said Mr. Science Man, I give you my heart and soul (oh, wait, there is no such thing as soul). We sleep soundly at night, dreaming “There’s nothing out there.” And we live peacefully in life shutting our eyes seeing nothing. Just simply living, and then dying and become nothing. The end.