Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Dear Mr Narendra Modi, At the outset I ask your pardon for addressing you as Mister rather that something like “Worshipful” because in case you become the Prime Minister of India that’s what you would demand from the citizens.  You like to be worshipped.  You’ve already got (or bought) many of your chelas to sing hymns and display posters projecting you as a god.  However, even if you become the PM I won’t address you as “Worshipful”, let alone imagine you as a god.  I’d rather die. That’s not the issue which prompted me write this letter, however.  It is the report in the front page of today’s Hindu titled Modi fears a ‘pink revolution’ . You fear for the lives of cows in the country.  I have no problem about anyone choosing to worship anything.  Once I attended a meditation course in which the participants were told that we could meditate even on a potato.  Keep a potato in front of you and concentrate on it.  Focus.  Slowly the potato will assume larger-than-pota

“Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism is the madness of wisdom,” said Bergen Evans.  Both stoicism and cynicism are stances that spill over the borders of the normal; hence the nuances of madness.  Can’t one be normal and yet be wise? Psychologist Erik Erikson described wisdom as “detached concern with life.”  Detachment implies a transcendence of emotions while concern involves a certain degree of emotions.  If the stoic and cynic in ourselves can come together in a rational understanding, we will be sanely wise. Life inevitably takes us through a multitude of experiences.  Some are good experiences while the others may be bad.  Joys and sorrows are intermingled in life.  There are both successes and failures.  A time may come in our life when we learn to rise above the urge to celebrate joys and successes and lament sorrows and failures.  That’s when we have become wise. As we grow older we should acquire greater integrity of being.  Integrity is a psychol

One of Osho Rajneesh’s witty tales is about a man who runs into his old friend after a gap of some twenty years.  The man (let’s call him Ram) took his friend (let’s call  him Shyam) home and gave him the best clothes he had.  Then both the friends decided to take a stroll in the village. Interesting body languages Everyone on the way enquired about Shyam.  Ram realised that all the people took note of Shyam’s clothes.  In fact, Shyam looked charming in those clothes.  Beautiful women eyed him wistfully, or so thought Ram.  They visited the houses of some important personalities in the village.  “This is my friend, Shyam, whom I’ve met after some twenty years,” Ram introduced his friend.  Then he said, “he’s a very successful and charming person.  But the clothes he’s wearing, they’re mine.” Shyam flinched slightly but ignored it. A similar introduction was given in the next house too.  When they came out of the house, Shyam said, “You know, if you wish we can e