rawjeev's blog

Fast life

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 21:10:05 +0530

1

School bells, office lights—
running down the long lane—
aching knees, glasses.

— rawjeev

2

Memory, my friend—
racing across the vast field:
distant fading dust.

— rawjeev

Seen, Unseen

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:38:58 +0530

A leaf adrift, light
A poised kite hovering—
lingering… a tug…

— rawjeev

Mother was the sea…

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:44:22 +0530

Mother was the sea
Father the far shining stars
Girl was the sailor

—rawjeev

We are the sea, the stars, the sailor - our family. Often people have asked me about our radical decisions of quitting our mainstream jobs, experimenting a lifestyle of farming, gardening, making and also unschooling our only daughter, trying to integrate different aspects of our life. People have asked me and I have struggled to explain whether our family especially my wife and I were on the same page with our choices. I realize that we both think differently and there is a tension that we negotiate and reason. We don’t necessarily share the same views on everything. Yet we are complimentary in a sense and this haiku captures the essence of our journey that continues.

A Lament

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 20:08:37 +0530

Where are grasshoppers?
Where are the firefly nights?
Where are cricket songs?

— rawjeev

Still that Firefly

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:59:36 +0530

You light my garden
sprinkling shimmers, passing by
still that firefly

— rawjeev

Bilva - An Architectural Pattern

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 15:41:05 +0530

A Whitepaper on the Bilva Architectural Pattern: A timeless triadic pattern of organization in Life Systems, Social Systems, and now for AI Agents.

Version 6.3 - Nov.10.Mon.2025

Quick Summary: Bilva at a Glance

Core Pattern: Systems persist through three co-dependent domains: Internal (coherence), Edge (mediation), External (participation)
Universal: Appears identically in cells, organisms, families, nations, ecosystems
Practical Insight: Current agent orchestration frameworks (LangChain, Symphony, Gossip, A2A) each specialize in different domains—they compose rather than compete viewing through the lens of Bilva.
Key Benefit: Recognizing this pattern enables intelligent framework composition instead of searching for one “best” solution
Substrate Independent: The pattern applies across any system needing coherence + adaptability + external engagement

Abstract

Living systems, social systems, and now autonomous AI systems face a fundamental organizational challenge: maintain coherent function while remaining genuinely open to unpredictable environments. This white paper presents Bilva, an architectural pattern that describes how systems across all scales solve this challenge through triadic organization.

The pattern appears universally: in cells (membrane mediating between internal chemistry and environment), organisms (nervous system mediating between organs and world), families (cultural norms mediating between members and society), nations (laws mediating between institutions and global system), ecosystems (species relationships mediating between community and biosphere), and critically, in autonomous AI systems (coordination protocols mediating between internal modules and agent ecosystems).

Part 1 establishes the universal nature of the pattern: triadic organization where internal domain maintains coherence through circular dependencies, edge domain actively transduces and mediates exchange, and external domain participates in and receives from broader systems.

Part 2 applies the pattern to contemporary agent orchestration: existing frameworks (LangChain, Symphony, Gossip, A2A) each excel in different dimensions. Bilva provides a classification framework for understanding what each is designed for and how they compose into complete systems. This section also discusses the Syndicated Actor Model (SAM) as a conceptual framework for internal domain coordination, noting its current early-stage status.

Part 3 provides philosophical grounding, framework references, and research directions.

The pattern reveals that coherence and openness are not opposed—they co-arise through proper triadic design.

PART 1: The Universal Pattern

1. The Triadic Structure

The Fundamental Challenge

Functional systems face one core problem: maintain coherent organization while remaining coupled to environments they don’t control.

Three incomplete approaches each provide part of the answer:

Strong Internal Organization (without external participation)

Provides: Coherence, reliable function, identity persistence
Limitation: Cannot adapt or learn from environment
Context where this excels: Bounded systems with predictable needs

Open External Participation (without internal coherence)

Provides: Adaptability, access to resources, exposure to novelty
Limitation: Lacks persistent identity and coordinated function
Context where this excels: Massive scale, high diversity environments

Active Boundary Mediation (connecting the two)

Provides: Translation, filtering, learning, adaptation
Limitation: Cannot maintain coherence alone or provide resources alone
Context where this excels: Managing complexity between domains

The Complete Solution: Triadic Organization

Across all scales where complex systems persist successfully:

 EXTERNAL
(Participation, resources,
challenges, opportunities)
↕
EDGE
(Active mediation and
transduction)
↕
INTERNAL
(Coherent organization,
circular dependencies)

Not three separate things, but three necessary aspects of one integrated system.

2. The Three Domains Defined

Internal Domain: Coherent Organization

What it is: Components arranged in circular dependencies where each maintains the others.

Example: Heart pumps blood → blood nourishes all cells including cardiac cells → cardiac cells maintain heart function → system persists

Characteristics:

Self-maintaining through circular causality
Maintains function despite component changes
Learns and improves through internal feedback
Operates with autonomy (doesn’t require constant external direction)
This is organizational closure or autopoiesis: the system sustains itself through its own organization

Why it matters:

Enables persistent identity over time
Creates resilience (failure of one component doesn’t cascade)
Allows learning and adaptation
Provides foundation for all other capabilities

Examples across scales:

Cellular: Organelles coordinating through chemical signals
Organismal: Organs maintaining each other (circulation, respiration, nervous function)
Familial: Members with roles that maintain family coherence
National: Institutions coordinating to maintain governance
Ecological: Species enabling conditions for other species
Technical: Agents with coordinated behavior and circular information dependencies

Edge Domain: Mediation and Transduction

What it is: The active interface where exchange and transduction occur between internal and external.

Characteristics:

Senses: Detects external states relevant to internal function
Filters: Discriminates what matters (not overwhelmed by noise)
Transduces: Converts between external signals and internal representations
Responds: Produces effects that influence external environment
Learns: Improves through experience what to sense, filter, transduce, and how to respond

Why it matters:

Without it: Internal organization is isolated from external reality
Without it: External changes cannot inform adaptation
With thoughtful design: System learns and improves engagement
With active design: System discovers new capabilities

Operational layers:

Offering: What capabilities and resources are available (clear, discoverable, honest)
Engagement: Graduated interaction (start with low-risk, escalate based on evidence)
Protection: What boundaries are maintained (core function, critical resources, non-negotiables)

Examples across scales:

Cellular: Membrane actively regulating what enters and leaves
Organismal: Nervous system sensing, brain interpreting, muscles responding
Familial: Shared norms and values mediating interaction
National: Laws, trade policy, diplomacy mediating global participation
Ecological: Predation, symbiosis, competition shaping species relationships
Technical: Protocols and transducers converting between internal logic and external communication

External Domain: Participation and Resources

What it is: Everything beyond direct control—resources, challenges, opportunities, other systems.

Characteristics:

Partially knowable, partially novel
Source of energy, information, and challenges
Provides conditions for growth and adaptation
Not inherently hostile (research shows mutual facilitation dominates)
Enables emergence and novelty

Why it matters:

Without it: System has no resources or challenges to drive improvement
Without it: No opportunity for learning or emergence
With it: System can adapt, grow, and create new capabilities

Key insight: Genuine participation in external environments strengthens systems. Diversity and novelty are resources for growth, not threats to resist.

Examples across scales:

Cellular: Nutrient environment, chemical gradients, energy input
Organismal: Physical world, competitors, resources, predators
Familial: Broader society, economic systems, cultural change
National: Other nations, global markets, climate, international norms
Ecological: Climate patterns, geology, solar energy, geological events
Technical: Other agents, unpredictable tasks, unknown capabilities, market dynamics

3. How the Three Domains Co-Arise

The Interdependence

These three are not optional modules you can mix and match:

Remove internal organization: No coherence, no persistent identity → System dissolves

Remove edge mediation: Internal organization is isolated → Cannot adapt or learn → Eventually becomes obsolete

Remove external participation: No resources, no challenges, no growth → Internal organization ossifies → System becomes irrelevant

All three together: Internal provides coherent function + Edge enables adaptation through learning + External provides resources and challenges = System can persist, adapt, and evolve

4. Universality and Substrate Independence

The pattern appears identically at every scale where complex organization persists:

Scale	Internal Domain	Edge Domain	External Domain
Cell	Organelles coordinating	Membrane: sensing, filtering, transduction	Chemical environment
Organism	Organ systems coordinating	Nervous system, sensory-motor loop	Physical world
Family	Members with roles	Shared norms, values, boundaries	Broader society
Nation	Institutions coordinating	Laws, trade, diplomacy	Global system
Ecosystem	Species enabling each other	Predation, symbiosis, competition	Climate, biosphere
AI System	Agents with circular dependencies	Coordination protocols, transduction	Agent ecosystem

Same organizational structure. Different instantiation. Same principle.

The pattern is not metaphorical—the functional relationships are structurally identical.

Why Substrate Independence Matters

The pattern is not about what the system is made of. It’s about how function is organized and sustained.

Therefore the same pattern works whether instantiated through:

Chemical reactions (cells)
Biology (organisms)
Culture (societies)
Software coordination (AI systems)
Future technologies we haven’t invented yet

Because the pattern describes organization, not implementation.

This means:

The principle is timeless (predates us)
The principle is universal (applies everywhere)
The principle will outlast current technologies
Understanding the pattern guides design regardless of substrate

PART 2: Application to Agent Orchestration

5. The Agent Orchestration Landscape

The Current Situation

Autonomous agent systems are proliferating: LLM-based reasoning entities, IoT swarms, robot teams, organizational intelligence. As they scale, coordination becomes increasingly complex. Different technological approaches have emerged, each excelling in particular dimensions of this challenge.

Bilva suggests that each framework excels in a different part of the triadic structure. This is not accidental—it reflects intelligent specialization toward domain-specific problems.

Understanding Through Bilva: What Each Framework Excels At

Framework	Internal	Edge	External	Natural Specialization
LangChain/LangGraph	✅✅	✅	⚠️	Bounded system orchestration
Symphony	❌	⚠️	✅✅	Agent discovery and reasoning
Gossip/Blockchain	❌	❌	✅✅	Massive-scale state propagation
A2A Protocols	❌	✅	✅	Inter-agent communication

Key Insight: None of these should try to handle all three domains. Each is appropriately specialized. The innovation is recognizing these as complementary pieces of a whole, not competing approaches.

Framework Specializations Explained

LangChain / LangGraph Orchestration Frameworks

Primary strength: Coordinating agent pipelines with explicit, human-understandable workflows
Domain focus: Internal + some edge
When to use: Bounded systems where you want readable, maintainable coordination
Complements with: External discovery protocols for open ecosystems

Symphony

Primary strength: Decentralized reasoning, dynamic capability discovery, multi-agent negotiation
Domain focus: External domain
When to use: Systems where agents don’t know each other in advance
Complements with: Internal coherence frameworks for bounded teams

Gossip Protocols / Blockchain

Primary strength: Massive-scale state propagation, Byzantine resilience, global consistency
Domain focus: External domain at scale
When to use: Continent-scale or adversarial participation
Complements with: Internal coordination for local coherence

A2A Protocols

Primary strength: Point-to-point agent communication, relationship building, flexible interaction patterns
Domain focus: Edge + external domains
When to use: Enabling agents to discover and interact with each other
Complements with: Internal frameworks for team coherence

6. Syndicated Actor Model: Conceptual Framework for Internal Domain

Overview

The Syndicated Actor Model (SAM), based on actor model theory and dataspace coordination principles, represents a conceptual and research-oriented approach to maintaining coherent agent coordination through circular dependencies and shared state patterns. SAM provides theoretical insights into how agent systems can achieve organizational closure—a key requirement of the Bilva internal domain.

⚠️ Important Notice on Maturity and Availability

Current Status: Syndicate AI, as an implementation of the Syndicated Actor Model, is at a conceptual and early prototype stage and is not readily available as a production framework.

Research Status: Primary research through PhD dissertation and academic publications (Garnock-Jones, 2017; Garnock-Jones & Felleisen, 2016)
Prototype Status: Reference implementations exist but are not mature production systems
Availability: Not available as a packaged, off-the-shelf framework through standard package managers
Documentation: While documentation exists, the framework is not widely adopted or battle-tested in production environments
Use Cases: Best suited for research, exploration, and specialized applications where the conceptual benefits justify early-stage adoption risks

Why Understand SAM Despite Early Stage?

Despite its early maturity level, SAM is valuable to understand because:

Conceptual Clarity: It demonstrates how circular dependencies and dataspace patterns can provide elegant internal domain coordination
Architectural Insight: The design choices reveal what properties are necessary for organizational closure
Research Directions: It points toward capabilities (elegant transduction, natural emergence of coordination, learning through feedback) that production frameworks are still developing
Principled Design: Understanding SAM helps architects recognize these properties in other systems or guide development of new systems

How SAM Addresses Internal + Edge Domains

Internal Domain (Organizational Closure):

Actors maintain each other through dataspace assertions and subscriptions
Circular dependencies naturally emerge through pattern matching
System learns through feedback loops
Organization is self-maintaining without external micromanagement

Edge Domain (Mediation and Transduction):

Dataspace acts as transduction layer between external signals and internal representations
Pattern subscriptions provide natural filtering (what matters to this agent?)
Assertions transduce internal states into shareable representations
Learning happens through observation of what patterns work

Why this is elegant:

No explicit wiring reduces brittleness. Natural emergence of coordination. Built-in learning. Graceful handling of component changes.

Scaling Characteristics and Appropriate Domains

SAM scales beautifully within its designed scope:

Scale	Scope	Appropriate?
Single Agent	1-10 modules	✅ Perfect fit
Bounded Team	10-100 agents, single location	✅ Strong fit
Bounded Organization	100-1000+ agents, multiple locations	⚠️ Good fit with sharding
Planetary Scale	Unknown/adversarial agents	❌ Not designed for this

For planetary-scale or adversarial environments: Different protocols naturally take over (Symphony, A2A, Blockchain).

Why SAM’s Design Choices Are Appropriate

SAM maintains organizational closure for bounded systems. This is not a limitation—it’s correct architecture for the internal domain.

Attempting to force SAM to handle external-domain-scale coordination would:

Break the circular dependencies (external agents won’t follow SAM patterns)
Reduce elegance and clarity
Create systems trying to do everything poorly

Instead: Use SAM concepts for internal + edge design, compose with external protocols (Symphony, A2A, gossip).

This is specialization, not limitation.

Current Production Alternatives

For production systems needing internal domain coordination today, consider:

LangChain/LangGraph: Production-ready, proven in many systems, explicitly designed for binding LLM-based agent orchestration
RAG Systems with Vector Databases: Pattern-matching approach to finding relevant context
Event Sourcing Frameworks: Different approach to maintaining coherence through event logs
Actor Model Implementations (Akka, Orleans): Mature actor frameworks (though without SAM’s dataspace elegance)

These mature frameworks provide production reliability while SAM concepts remain primarily research contributions.

7. Composing Frameworks for Complete Systems

Architecture Pattern: Triadic Composition

A complete autonomous agent system leverages all three domains through appropriate framework composition:

EXTERNAL DOMAIN (Symphony + Gossip + A2A)
├─ Agent discovery
├─ Capability negotiation
├─ Dynamic participation
└─ Massive-scale coordination
↓
EDGE DOMAIN (Active Protocols)
├─ Transduction between domains
├─ Active filtering and learning
├─ Graduated engagement
└─ Relationship maintenance
↓
INTERNAL DOMAIN (LangChain/LangGraph + Event Systems)
├─ Agents with coordinated behavior
├─ Orchestrated workflows
├─ Learning through feedback
└─ Operational coherence

Example System Architectures

Scenario 1: Smart City Coordination (100-1000 agents, coherent)

Internal: LangChain-based agent teams managing neighborhoods
Edge: A2A protocols for inter-neighborhood communication, active filtering
External: Symphony for discovering new services, gossip for city-wide notifications
Result: Locally coherent neighborhoods that discover and integrate new capabilities

Scenario 2: Distributed IoT Network (1000-100K devices)

Internal: Event streaming per cluster (neighborhood-scale, 10-50 devices)
Edge: A2A between clusters, active filtering
External: Gossip for global state, Symphony for service discovery
Result: Local coherence + global awareness + massive scale

Scenario 3: Organizational Intelligence (agents + humans, 10-100)

Internal: LangChain for agent orchestration, structured workflows
Edge: Human-AI interface for interpretation and learning
External: A2A for external services, Symphony for partner integration
Result: Coherent organizational intelligence + human oversight + external integration

8. Implementation Guidance: How to Apply Bilva

Step 1: Characterize Your System

Ask yourself:

Scale: How many agents? Single location or distributed?
Coherence needs: How tightly coordinated must agents be?
Openness: How much external participation/discovery needed?
Stability: Are agents mostly known in advance, or highly dynamic?

Step 2: Select Domain-Appropriate Frameworks

Based on your answers:

If tight coherence needed (single location, <1000 agents)

Use LangChain/LangGraph for internal + edge
Add A2A or Symphony for external

If massive scale (>10K agents, global, adversarial)

Use Gossip/Blockchain for external
Use local event systems per region for internal
Use A2A between regions

If continuous discovery/openness

Use Symphony as primary external mechanism
Compose with LangChain/LangGraph for local teams
Use A2A for relationship establishment

Step 3: Design the Integration Layers

Between domains, design explicit transduction:

Internal→Edge: What internal states become shareable?
Edge→External: What signals go out to discover, request, offer?
External→Edge: What signals come in from discovery, responses?
Edge→Internal: How are external signals transformed for internal use?

These boundaries are where learning happens and where system intelligence emerges.

Step 4: Plan for Adaptation

Build feedback loops into your edge design:

How will the system learn which transductions work?
How will it adapt filtering as context changes?
How will it discover new external capabilities?
How will it update internal coordination based on edge experience?

9. Glossary of Core Terms

Organizational Closure (Autopoiesis): A system that sustains itself through its own organization. Components maintain each other in circular dependencies. The system produces the same organization that produces the system.

Edge Mediation: Active boundary process that transduces between internal logic and external signals. Includes sensing, filtering, interpretation, and response generation.

Triadic Composition: Designing complete systems by composing specialized frameworks for Internal, Edge, and External domains rather than trying to use one framework for all purposes.

Transduction: Converting signals from one form to another. The edge continuously transduces between internal representations and external communication formats.

Circular Dependencies: When A maintains B, B maintains C, and C maintains A—creating self-sustaining organization that requires no external input to persist.

Substrate Independence: A pattern that applies regardless of physical implementation (biological, social, technical, etc.) because it describes organization rather than implementation.

Bounded System: System where agents and interactions are relatively known and stable. Appropriate for strong internal domain frameworks.

Planetary Scale: System with unknown agents, adversarial participation, massive geographic distribution. Appropriate for Gossip protocols and external-domain frameworks.

10. Research Opportunities and Next Steps

Recognizing the triadic pattern reveals where innovation is needed:

Better Edge Learning: Current frameworks treat edge as mostly static. Systems could be more adaptive in how they filter and transduce based on learned experience.

Seamless Protocol Composition: Integration between frameworks is currently manual. Tools for composing Symphony, gossip, and A2A could accelerate system design.

Collective Memory: How do agent collectives maintain and evolve organizational learning across time and boundaries?

Boundary Dynamics: How can edge mechanisms adapt based on environmental conditions? What patterns to attend to changes with context.

Emergence Detection: How do systems recognize when new capabilities are emerging from their coordination?

Each of these extends existing frameworks rather than replacing them.

PART 3: References and Grounding

What is the Bilva Pattern?

Bilva draws its name from the Bilva tree’s three-lobed leaf—nature’s symbol of three parts in one coherent whole.

The Bilva Triadic Pattern: An organizational principle where systems maintain coherent function while remaining genuinely open to their environments through three co-dependent domains: an internal domain that sustains coherence through circular dependencies, an edge domain that actively transduces and mediates exchange, and an external domain that provides resources, challenges, and opportunities. The pattern appears across biological, social, and technical systems wherever complex organization persists.

Philosophical Foundations

The Bilva pattern is grounded in several key insights about how information, organization, and participation work:

On Information and Meaning

“Information can be defined as a difference that makes a difference.” — Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (1979)

This insight grounds the edge’s function: it attends to differences that transform what’s possible for the system. Not all stimuli are information—only differences that matter.

On Embodied Engagement

“The sensing body is not a programmed machine but an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to things and the world.” — David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (1996)

This captures how edges actually function: not as mechanical sensors, but as active learning interfaces that continuously adapt.

On Perception and Reality

“The world we experience—which is the only one we can know—is affected by the kind of attention we pay to it.” — Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things (2021)

This explains why edge filtering is critical: what patterns you attend to shape what world you inhabit.

On Interdependence (Buddhist Philosophy)

The principle of pratītyasamutpāda (co-dependent origination) expresses that nothing exists independently. Every phenomenon arises through its relationships. The triadic structure—where coherence and openness co-arise through relationship—reflects this principle.

Full References

Living Systems Theory and Organization

Maturana, H. & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Varela, F. (1979). Principles of Biological Autonomy. New York: Elsevier/North Holland.
Kauffman, S. (1995). At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, J.G. (1978). Living Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Information Theory and Systems

Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Shannon, C. & Weaver, W. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ashby, W.R. (1956). An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman & Hall.

Phenomenology and Perception

Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Pantheon.
McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. London: Perspectiva Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/2012). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.

Biodiversity and Mutual Facilitation

Cazzolla Gatti, R., Hordijk, W., & Kauffman, S. (2017). “Biodiversity is autocatalytic.” Ecological Modelling, 346, 70-76.
Bonabeau, E., Dorigo, M., & Theraulaz, G. (1999). Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Syndicated Actor Model (SAM) and Dataspace Coordination

Garnock-Jones, T., & Felleisen, M. (2016). “Coordinated Concurrent Programming in Syndicate.” Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming Language Approaches to Concurrency- and Communication-cEntric Software (AGERE), 2016.
Garnock-Jones, T. (2017). “Conversational Concurrency.” PhD Dissertation, Northeastern University, supervised by Matthias Felleisen.
- Note: This is the definitive source for Syndicated Actor Model theory. The framework is at early prototype stage and not production-ready.
Thibault, T. (2016). “Incremental Debuggability for Reactive Resumptions.” PhD Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Garnock-Jones, T. (2025). “Preserves: An Expressive Data Language.” Specification version 0.996.3. https://preserves.dev/

Decentralized Agent Frameworks and Protocols

Wang, J., et al. (2025). “Symphony: A Decentralized Multi-Agent Framework for Scalable Collective Intelligence.” arXiv:2508.20019.
OpenAI. (2023). “LangChain: Build LLM Applications through Composability.” GitHub: langchain-ai/langchain.
LangGraph. (2024). “LangGraph: Graph-based Workflows for Multi-Agent Applications.” GitHub: langchain-ai/langgraph.

Distributed Systems and Consensus

Lamport, L. (1978). “Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System.” Communications of the ACM, 21(7), 558-565.
Ongaro, D., & Ousterhout, J. (2014). “In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm.” USENIX ATC 14.
Castro, M., & Liskov, B. (1999). “Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance.” OSDI ‘99.

Peer-to-Peer and Gossip Protocols

Demers, A., Greene, D., Hauser, C., et al. (1987). “Epidemic Algorithms for Replicated Database Maintenance.” ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, 21(5), 12-32.
Kermarrec, A.M., Massoulie, L., & Ganesh, A.J. (2000). “Probabilistic Reliable Dissemination and Distributed Averaging.” ICALP 2000.

Multi-Agent Systems Research

Wooldridge, M. (2009). An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Stone, P., & Veloso, M. (2000). “Multiagent Systems: A Survey from an AI Perspective.” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 30(2), 138-149.

Buddhist Philosophy (Co-Dependent Origination)

Thich Nhat Hanh (1988). The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. Berkeley: Parallax Press.

Reference Organization by Use Case

If you want to understand the Bilva conceptual pattern: References 1-12, 27

If you want to understand SAM theory: References 13, 14, 16 Important: SAM is a research contribution at early prototype stage, not a production framework

If you want to understand production agent orchestration frameworks: References 17-19

If you want to understand distributed systems foundations: References 20-24

If you want to understand multi-agent systems theory: References 12, 25-26

If you want to implement agent systems today: LangChain (18, 19), Symphony (17), Event Sourcing, Actor Model frameworks

End of White Paper Version 6.3

Bilva: A pattern of coherent, adaptive, participatory systems across scales

The Mahua’s Awakening

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 13:19:26 +0530

A tale of a mahua tree’s journey towards self-discovery and the lessons it learns along the way.

Preamble

There was once a Mahua tree that didn’t know its purpose. There were deer, monkeys and birds that loved the Mahua flowers and they waited for the tree to bloom, but the tree was sulky. There were a few flowers here and there that showed up by its swabhava (natural tendency), but not much. The tree, filled with doubt and sorrow, did not open its million green eyes to the sun with enthusiasm and did not soak up the water and slurp the soil eagerly with its roots, that would have given it nourishment to flourish. The tree was sulky, it did not know its purpose.

The Questions in the Wind

Days turned to seasons, and seasons to years. The Mahua tree stood in the heart of the forest, watching the world around it with growing confusion. “What about the other trees!” It thought. “Are they content? Why do they seem to dance with the wind while I feeel heavy and still?”

One morning, as the first light filtered through the canopy, the tree heard whispers in the breeze. It was the voice of an ancient banyan, whose roots had touched the earth for centuries.

“Young Mahua,” the banyan called softly, “why do you carry such weight in your branches?”

“I don’t understand my purpose,” the Mahua replied. “Everywhere I look, I see trees that seem to know their place. The neem purifies the air, the mango gives sweet fruit, the bamboos growing tall and vigorous seem to know their place. But I? I bloom a few scattered flowers, drop some leaves, and stand here feeling empty. The animals come to me, but I don’t know why. What am I supposed to do?”

The banyan’s leaves rustled with what sounded like gentle laughter. “Tell me, young one, what happens when you simply are instead of trying to do?”

The Wisdom of Wu Wei

The Mahua tree pondered this question for many days. It noticed that when it stopped forcing itself to understand, stopped peering hard at the question, something subtle began to shift.

The soil around its roots felt richer when it stopped struggling against it. The morning dew tasted sweeter when it didn’t question why it was offered. The sun’s warmth penetrated deeper when it spread its leaves to the rays.

An old deer, gray with age and wisdom, approached the tree one evening. She had been coming to this spot for many seasons, and her grandmother before her, and her grandmother’s grandmother.

“Tree,” she said quietly, “you’ve been holding back your gifts.”

“What gifts?” the Mahua asked. “I have nothing special to offer.”

The deer smiled with her eyes. “Child, you’ve been so busy looking for your purpose that you’ve forgotten to notice how you already serve. Let me tell you what my family has known for generations.”

The Revelation of Interconnection

“Your flowers,” the deer began, “bloom at night when most other trees rest. Do you know what this means? While the forest sleeps, you offer sustenance. The bats that pollinate the region depend on your nocturnal blossoms. The flying foxes travel from far valleys following the scent of your flowers.”

The tree had never noticed its own natural rhythm, its unique gift of blooming at night when most other trees rest.

“And your flowers,” continued the deer, “when they fall, they carpet the forest floor. We deer eat them for their sweetness and nutrition. The langur monkeys collect them. The bears know exactly when your season arrives. And the tribal people—they call you the ‘Tree of Life’ because from your flowers they make food, medicine, and celebration.”

“But why don’t I feel fulfilled by this?” the tree asked.

An old crow, perched high in the canopy, cawed softly. “Because you’ve been comparing yourself to stories of purpose that don’t belong to you. You’ve been trying to look for an abstract purpose when you are full of it - magnificently Mahua.”

The Teaching of Natural Flow

The banyan tree spoke again, its voice carrying the wisdom of centuries: “In the way of Tao, there is wu wei—effortless action. Water doesn’t struggle to flow downhill; it simply follows its nature. Fire doesn’t try to be fire; it simply burns. You, dear Mahua, have been fighting against your own nature.”

“What is my nature?” the tree asked, genuinely curious now rather than desperate.

“Your nature is to bloom abundantly when the time is right, not when you think it should be right. Your nature is to provide exactly what the forest needs from you—night flowers for nocturnal creatures, sweet sustenance for many species, oil-rich seeds, medicinal bark, and shelter in your branches and trunk. Your nature is to beautifully take part in the great community of life.”

The Mahua tree felt something shift deep in its heartwood. It was as if a knot that had been tight for years was finally loosening.

The Lesson of Healthy Effort

But then the tree grew confused again. “If I’m supposed to just ‘be’ and follow wu wei, does that mean there is nothing for me to do or try? Should I never push myself or face discomfort? I see other trees stretching toward the light, growing through rocks, extending their roots deep into difficult soil. Are they wrong to make such efforts?”

The banyan’s leaves rustled thoughtfully. “Ah, now you ask the important question that many never think to ask. There is a profound difference between natural effort and forced struggle.”

A young sal tree nearby had been listening. Its trunk bore the marks of having grown around a large boulder. “May I share my story?” it asked.

The Mahua tree nodded eagerly.

“When I was a sapling,” the sal tree began, “I sprouted right next to this rock. I had two choices: I could struggle against the rock, trying to move it, fighting it, competing with it, making it my enemy. Or I could grow around it, using it as support, incorporating it into my journey.”

“What did you choose?”

“At first, I tried to fight it. I pushed and pushed, growing angry and exhausted. I compared myself to other trees that had easy, soft soil. I felt sorry for myself. I struggled.” The sal tree paused. “But struggling made me weak and bitter.”

“What changed?”

“An old teak tree taught me the difference between struggle and challenge. Struggle is when you fight against what is, when you try to force the world to be different so you can be comfortable. Challenge is when you accept what is and then grow in response to it.”

The Art of Natural Challenge

The deer, who had been listening, stepped closer. “Yes, this is the wisdom many never learn. In our family, we teach our young the difference between running from the leopard in panic and running toward our strength when we sense danger.”

“I don’t understand,” said the Mahua tree.

“When we run from the leopard in panic,” the deer explained, “we are struggling. We are fighting reality, wishing things were different, exhausting ourselves with fear and resistance. But when we run toward our strength—using our keen senses, our knowledge of the forest, our swift legs—we are accepting the challenge and responding with our natural gifts.”

The banyan tree added gently, “Young Mahua, you will need to face discomfort to bloom fully. Your roots will need to stretch deep into difficult soil. Your branches will need to endure storms and grow. Sometimes break & heal. You will need to learn to bloom at night when it’s dark and uncertain. But this is not struggle—this is growth and this makes you strong and uniquely yourself even with your vulnerabilities.”

The Difference Between Growing and Comparing

“But how do I know the difference?” the Mahua tree asked, genuinely wanting to understand.

A wise old bamboo, known throughout the forest for its flexibility and rapid growth, swayed into the conversation. “Listen carefully, young one. When I grow, I feel myself becoming more of what I already am. When I used to compare myself to others, I felt I was trying to become something I was not.”

“When I stretch toward the light, it feels like following my deepest longing. When I used to compete with the other bamboos, it felt like running away from my deepest fear.”

The crow called down from above: “Yes! When you grow naturally, even through discomfort, you feel energized by the challenge. When you strive to be like others, you feel exhausted by the effort.”

The ancient banyan offered the final teaching: “The highest wisdom is learning to flow with effort rather than against it. Wu wei doesn’t mean no action—it means action that flows from your authentic nature rather than from force.”

“A river doesn’t struggle to carve through rock, but it doesn’t avoid the rock either. It persistently, patiently flows, using the rock to become more itself—clearer, more focused, more powerful.”

“This is natural effort: persistent, patient, aligned with your deepest nature, in service of your authentic expression, undertaken with joy rather than desperation.”

The Practice of Authentic Effort

Over the following seasons, the Mahua tree began to understand this profound difference. It learned to distinguish between two very different kinds of effort:

The effort of authentic growth felt like:

Stretching its roots deeper because it was naturally curious about the earth’s richness
Reaching its branches higher because the sky called to something deep within
Learning to bloom in darkness because it felt natural to offer beauty when others rested
Facing storms with flexibility rather than rigid resistance
Growing more abundantly each season from an inner sense of joy and expansion

The effort of forced striving had felt like:

Trying to bloom during the day like other trees because it “should”
Comparing the size of its flowers to the mango tree’s fruit
Wishing its bark was as valued as the sandalwood’s
Fighting the seasons instead of flowing with them
Exhausting itself trying to be everything to everyone
Hurrying to present itself as something it wasn’t or wasn’t meant to be.

The Wisdom of Seasonal Effort

“There is one more thing you must understand,” said the ancient banyan. “Natural effort follows seasons. Sometimes you will grow rapidly, sometimes you will rest. Sometimes you will face great challenges, sometimes you will enjoy ease. The trees that burn themselves out are the ones that try to grow intensively all the time.”

“Even I,” said the sal tree around the boulder, “had to rest between periods of intense growth around this rock. I would grow some, then pause to integrate, then grow some more. I learned to listen to my inner rhythms.”

The deer nodded. “We too have seasons of great effort and seasons of gentle being. We run when we must run, rest when we must rest, and we never feel guilty about either.”

The Community’s Role in Natural Growth

As the Mahua tree began practicing this new understanding of effort, something beautiful happened. The other trees and animals began sharing their own experiences of healthy challenge versus unhealthy struggle.

The neem tree spoke: “I learned that purifying the air is not work for me—it’s expression. Like sweet fruit is the expression of a mango tree. Also when I tried to compete with other neem trees on who could purify more, it became struggle. When I simply gave my gift naturally, it became joy.”

A family of monkeys chattered down from the branches: “We learned the difference between challenging ourselves to leap to new trees for the joy of exploration versus forcing ourselves to take risks just to impress others. One makes us more monkey-like, the other makes us less.”

The tribal people, when they came to collect the Mahua flowers, sang songs about this wisdom: “We work hard when the season calls for it, but we work from love, not from fear. We challenge ourselves to create more beauty, not to defeat our neighbors.”

The Transformation Through Challenge

As the Mahua tree embraced this understanding, it began to bloom more magnificently than ever before. But not because it was trying to be the best tree in the forest. It bloomed because it was willing to face the challenges that would help it become most fully itself.

It stretched its roots deep into clay that was difficult to penetrate—not because it was competing with other trees, but because something in it knew there were rich minerals below.

It learned to open thousands of flowers in the darkness of night—not because it was trying to be different, but because it felt called to serve the nocturnal community.

It grew through seasons of drought and flood, wind and stillness—not by fighting them, but by developing the flexibility to dance with whatever came.

In this way, the Mahua tree learned the middle path—that we can embrace challenge without falling into struggle, make effort without losing naturalness, grow without betraying our authentic nature, swabhava, and that our purpose lies as much within as without, harmonizing both; self and the world.

The Invitation

The story offers this invitation to all who feel torn between effortlessness and effort:

Choose the challenges that call forth your authentic gifts. Face the discomfort that serves your true expression. Make the efforts that align with your deepest nature.
Avoid the struggles that fight against who you are, the comparisons that diminish your unique path, and the strivings that arise from fear rather than love.
Like the Mahua tree, learn to distinguish between the effort that makes you more yourself and the struggle that makes you less. Then embrace the former with your whole being, knowing that natural growth through authentic challenge is one of life’s greatest joys.

— rawjeev

Gift

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 19:48:40 +0530

A gift is a fruit:
juicy, nourishing,
sweet in its beautiful skin —
cradling a seed of hope,
a seed of another gift.

Where the fruit goes,
where the seed takes root,
stretching upward to the light:
a quiet unfolding,
the magic of life.

— rawjeev

Disappearing

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 20:36:01 +0530

Disappearing
as if the world’s all just you —
nothing else shining

Disappearing
like in the ocean a drop —
Lost in the vast blue

Disappearing —
you are sea, sky, and mountain,
melting in them all

— rawjeev

Last haiku inspired by this beautiful Chinese poem:

“The birds have vanished into the sky
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.”

— Lǐ Bái (Li Bo), Chinese poet

Tinkering

Sun, 18 May 2025 15:35:29 +0530

Tinkering is a very important concept that I find myself explaining to people now and then. I thought It would be good to gather in a post, some of those quotes related to tinkering that have framed it for me.

Those Quotes

“An overwhelming majority of the time, it is the Great Tinkerer that arrives at something, via experimentation; only later does theory follow. Sometimes the discovery and the theory are many years apart.”

— Radek Osmulski, Meta Learning.

“Nature works as a tinkerer. It innovates with the materials it has in its surroundings, and works towards achieving maximum results with minimal effort.”

— Pranay Lal (Indica)

“Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity. When you tinker, there are no instructions—but there are also no failures, no right or wrong ways of doing things. It’s about figuring out how things work and reworking them. Contraptions, machines, widely mismatched objects working in harmony — this is the stuff of tinkering. Tinkering is, at its most basic, a process that marries play and inquiry.”

— Massimo Banzi.

“Obliquity describes the process of achieving complex objectives indirectly. In general, oblique approaches recognize that complex objectives tend to be imprecisely defined and contain many elements that are not necessarily or obviously compatible with one another, and that we learn about the nature of the objectives and the means of achieving them during a process of experiment and discovery. Oblique approaches often step backward to move forward.”

—John Kay, Obliquity

“A life of making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things: it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do. Waiting, like listening and meandering, is best when it is an active and not a passive state.”

— Ann Hamilton

“A work of bricolage is never science, [Jared,] but it can still astound, make sense, and stimulate thought. It can still impress with its veracity, validity, soundness, and cogency.”

— Daniel Quinn, The Story of B.

“The experience of understanding involves a shift from what seems initially chaotic or formless, to a coherent stable form or picture, a Gestalt - or from an existing Gestalt to a new and better one, that seems richer than the one it replaces.”

— Ian Mc Gilchrist, The Matter with Things.

“What if the music is not Mozart, but something like some sublime jazz, or and Indian raga or Portugese fado? Something we improvise - within bounds. Whatever it is will emerge from a balance of freedom and constraint. It won’t exist until it is being performed: no-one can know exactly what it will be like. But it will not be random: It will emerge from the player’s continuous interaction, and from the music’s own ‘history’ as it unfolds; what comes next will be anticipated by what has gone before. It will also be moulded by the imagination, skill and training we bring, our past experience of playing (together and apart), the conventions of certain traditions, and shared expectations, quite apart from the fundamental laws of acoustics. Our co-creation of the music does not occur ex nihilo, and is not just a projection of ourselves. yet we, and you partake of its making, even if we are only listeners.”

— Ian Mc Gilchrist, The Matter with Things.

Moonlit Reflections

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 12:43:20 +0530

Sensuous presence —
Moon becoming poetry,
And poetry moon

In soft moon poetry —
How much beauty is the moon,
How much is poetry

— rawjeev

Wild and savage…

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 18:12:57 +0530

“Only to the white man was nature a wilderness, and only to him it was ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”

— Luther Standing Bear (1868-1939)

The sensing body…

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:16:39 +0530

“The sensing body is not a programmed machine but an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to things and the world. The body’s actions and engagements are never wholly determinate, since they must ceaselessly adjust themselves to a world and a terrain that is itself continually shifting.”

— David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous.

Out of phase…

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:09:24 +0530

“What if, instead, we were to start with an ontology in which fluidity and solidity are not mutually incompatible properties? […] Continuous variation is more comparable to rhythm. Following Lefebvre (2004), rhythms result from the concurrence of difference and repetition, in which time and space are mutually implicated. In a world marked by rhythm there would be neither pure solidity nor pure fluidity. Conversely, a world that was purely solid or purely fluid would be without rhythm. This is consistent with the ways indigenous communities around the circumpolar north have been reporting their experience of climate change as things going out of phase. They may report, for example, that sea-ice recedes or that migratory species arrive earlier than expected, judged in relation to other environmental comings and goings with which they usually coincide. These are not punctuated contrasts but disturbances in the rhythmic fluctuations of a solid-fluid world in perpetual becoming: where nothing is solid or fluid but everything solid-becoming-fluid or fluid-becoming-solid (Serres 2000). […] The Inuit notion of sila perfectly reflects this ontology. Referring interchangeably to both weather and climate, sila is translated as the breath of life and the reason things move and change. It also means intelligence, consciousness or mind, and is understood to be a fundamental principle underlying the integrity of the cosmos. In the words of Nuttall, “it is an all-pervading life-giving force connecting a person with the rhythms of the universe, integrating the self with the natural world”. Conversely, lack of sila can mean that either people or the environment are going crazy. The emphasis on breath here is critical. In breathing we both surrender ourselves to the environment and launch ourselves into it. With every inhalation, the atmosphere enters into and becomes part of us; every exhalation in turn releases part of us into the atmosphere (Ingold 2015, 84–88). No other process matches this continual rhythmic exchange with the environment – one that continues throughout life. Through breathing we are immersed in our surroundings, and our surroundings in us. In a living world of solid-fluids, marked by constant rhythmic transformation, no organism could endure that was not open, through respiration, to its surroundings.”

— Cristián Simonetti & Tim Ingold, Ice and Concrete

Things and Relationships…

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 21:52:54 +0530

“Reductionism envisages a universe of things - and simply material things at that. How these things are related is viewed as a secondary matter. However, I suggest that relationships are primary, more foundational than the things related: that the relationships don’t just ‘connect’ pre-existing things, but modify what we mean by the ’things’, which in turn modify everything else they are in relationship with. That is because what we are dealing with are, ultimately, relations, events, processes; ’things’ is a useful shorthand for those elements, congealed in the flow of experience, that emerge secondarily from, and attract our attention in, a primary web of interconnexions. I have nothing against things, provided we don’t see them as primary.”

—Ian McGilchrist, The Matter With Things.

Aboriginal worldviews…

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 21:42:40 +0530

“In Aboriginal worldviews, nothing exists outside of a relationship to something else. There are no isolated variables—every element must be considered in relation to the other elements and the context. Areas of knowledge are integrated, not separated. The relationship between the knower and other knowers, places and senior knowledge-keepers is paramount. It facilitates shared memory and sustainable knowledge systems. An observer does not try to be objective, but is integrated within a sentient system that is observing itself.”

— Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Intellect and the Heart

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:50:37 +0530

“I am endlessly fighting a battle with people you know, who want to throw the intellect out and think of knowing with the heart. And whenever you fight that battle, then you sound like an intellectual. When I meet intellectuals, I find myself fighting the opposit battle.”

— Gregory Bateson.

On change

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:36:18 +0530

“Change, may be scary. But not changing, is even scarier. Our ability to remain stable is ironically a measure of our flexibility. Not allowing change is the perfect formula for becoming obsolete.”

— Nora Bateson, in “An Ecology of Mind”.

Those moments…

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:28:18 +0530

“Those moments of being able to say, ‘I used to think it was like this, but I am starting to think it might be like this.’ That was a way of saying I learnt something.”

— Nora Bateson, in “An Ecology of Mind”.

Walking and Balance

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:23:52 +0530

“A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.”

— Gregory Bateson.

What Connects?

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:11:20 +0530

“What pattern connects the crab to the lobster, and the orchid to the primrose, and all the four of them to me? And me to you?”

— Gregory Bateson.

Problems and Consciousness

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:06:14 +0530

“No Problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

— Albert Einstein.

Voice and Words

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:33:46 +0530

“Like logic, law, and technology, the control implicit in language is a facade. We carefully label and categorize the whole world, hoping thereby to impose order upon it, to domesticate the wild, but we delude ourselves to think that the wild respects our boundaries any more than a squirrel respects a ‘no trespassing’ sign. To this day, it is the voice that communicates more than the speech.”

— Charles Eisenstein, Ascent of Humanity.

So are we

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 12:25:24 +0530

So are we…

“Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence.”

—David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous.

Division for Convenience

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 18:34:32 +0530

“The division of things into parts tends to be a device of convenience.”
— Gregory Bateson, (In a lecture)

World’s Problems

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 17:57:06 +0530

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”
— Gregory Bateson, Quoted in “An Ecology of Mind”

Being Human is a Guesthouse

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:17:26 +0530

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Rumi (Translation by Coleman Barks? Not sure.)

How to defeat Fear

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:04:13 +0530

This is a short story from “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron, as narrated by by Chris Goto Jones in the course De-Mystifying Mindfulness.

“Once, there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. Fear seemed too aggressive. It was scary. It seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons ready. The young warrior aroused herself and went toward fear and she asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are, I talk very fast and I get very close to your face. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me. You can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you do not do what I say, then I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.”

TINA Syndrome

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 13:19:28 +0530

There is No Alternative

People often justify many things from use of toilet paper to building mega dams, even war and genocide, with a phrase “There is No Alternative”. Stating it as a matter of fact, like there really isn’t an alternative to anything. Debal Deb in one of his talks called this tendency the TINA Syndrome.

The opposite

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 12:41:12 +0530

“Technological efficiency is opposite to Ecological efficiency.”
— Debal Deb

The Industrial Ethic

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 12:33:33 +0530

“Doesn’t matter whether it is socialism or capitalism it is the industrial ethic thats been destructive.”
— Debal Deb

Downtime

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 23:27:41 +0530

“Work hard and play hard” is an unquestioned adage of today’s life. If you are not working hard, then you must either be having fun or at the least sleeping. Not doing something, or doing nothing in particular, is incomprehensible. I have found it hard to tell my daughter that to take a break does not mean to switch to watching a video, chatting, listening to music or something else. I am glad to have stumbled upon this talk by Mario Cano, that makes the point that I was finding hard to communicate. Please watch if you are not having your downtime now.

As a child in the 70s India, I remember growing up free — Free from things designed to grab my attention, to constantly engage me, or stimulate me — There were no TVs, Socialmedia, or Smart gadgets and I was also free from constant monitoring and guidence trying to optimize every minute of my life. I had a lot of time with my friends in the outdoors. Nobody telling me what to do with my firends nor watching me what I was doing. I had a lot of time to be alone by myself as well, with my thoughts, imagination and daydreaming. My parents and siblings didn’t bother much about that, as it was pretty normal to be so. There was boredom too and that nudged us into creativity and play.

“When I was young, in the very last days before television and video games came to dominate American childhood, we created our own worlds with intricate story lines, practicing the psychic technologies that adults can use to fashion their lives and their collective reality: forming a vision, telling a story around that vision that assigns meanings and roles, playing out those roles, and so on. Today, those worlds of imagination come prefabricated from TV studios and software companies, and children wander through cheap, gaudy, often violent worlds created by distant strangers. These come with prefabricated images as well, and the ability to form their own images (we call this ability imagination) atrophies. Unable to envision a new world, the child grows up accustomed to accepting whatever reality is handed her.”
— Charles Einstein, Sacred Economics.

Even boredom of today is different from boredom of the past.

“Boredom is different nowadays. It’s about super-saturation, distraction, restlessness. I am often bored but it’s not for lack of options: a thousand TV channels, the bounty of Netflix, countless net radio stations, innumerable unlistened-to albums, unwatched DVDs and unread books, the maze-like archive of YouTube. Today’s boredom is not hungry, a response to deprivation; it is a loss of cultural appetite, in response to the surfeit of claims on your attention and time.”
— Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past

Truth

Mon, 06 May 2024 11:26:13 +0530

“Every revelation of truth is the hiding of something.”

— Martin Heideggar, (quoted by Ian McGilchrist in: The Psychological drivers of the Metacrisis)

Image source: a Tumblr post

Why am I Talking?

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 19:00:06 +0530

Why Am I Talking?

An important mantra that I learnt from the NAAS community. One that I can remember. Sometimes to be present in silence can be more valuable than words. And it is a practice to be present, to be aware and to wait.

About change

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 18:59:57 +0530

Steve Jobs’ words about changing the world

And a few more quotes about change

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”
— Antole France

“Revolution is about reimagining common sense.”
— Nika Dubrovsky

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”
— John Keats

“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.”
— Aldous Huxley

“… social change, personal change, inner change, outer change are intimately related and they happen in tandem.”
— Charles Eisenstein

“When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it, all else is madness.“
— Eckhart Tolle

“Anytime you’re gonna grow, you’re gonna lose something. You’re losing what you’re hanging onto to keep safe. You’re losing habits that you’re comfortable with, you’re losing familiarity.”
— James Hillman

“You must allow yourself to outgrow and depart from certain eras of your life with a gentle sort of ruthlessness.”
— Katy Maxwell

“The true work of improving things is in the little achievements of the day and thats what you need to enjoy to stick in that field… The people that are the most giving, hardworking, are capable of making this world better usually don’t have the ego and ambition to be a leader, they don’t see any interest in superficial rewards, they don’t care if their name ever appeared in the press. They actually enjoy the process of helping others, they are in the moment”
— An excerpt from a conversation in the movie “Before Sunset”

“I’ve noticed something about people who make a difference in the world: They hold the unshakable conviction that individuals are extremely important, that every life matters. They get excited over one smile. They are willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren’t determined to revolutionize the world all at once; they’re satisfied with small changes. Over time, though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations, and yes, the world.”
— Beth Clark, Kisses from Katie

Hey Breeze…

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 17:21:21 +0530

Hey breeze!
Did you come and go away?

Were you here
with the whispers of tender leaves
and the fragance of summer flowers?

Were you here?
Couldn’t you have knocked on my door?
Wasn’t I just a knock away?

While I was inside
the house of my own business,
did you come and go away?

— rawjeev

Provocation

A friend from far off was visiting my town for a few days. We were suposed to catch up. And I realized that the dates my friend was supposed to be in town had gone by. And this got me thinking about all that we shut ourselves down to, being busy.

How Can We Live Together?

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 16:01:23 +0530

Even as citis swell, filling up with people, we seem to feel more like a crowd than a community.

Jon Jondai shares his thoughts about being in community in this video.

“Its not easy to be together now a days. Most of the people have no skill to be with other people…” He starts, and shares his perspective about human society today, and living as a community.

Entertained Minds

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 13:51:03 +0530

Minds stuffed
down their throats.
Digital devices
dipped to their guts —
like pipes.

Predigested scraps
fill bellies.
Unsatiated windigos,
craving forever more.

Sedatives for sanity.
A numbing supply
of entertainment.

— rawjeev

The Path…

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 14:11:34 +0530

“The path isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.”
— Barry H. Gillespie

“The experience of understanding involves a shift from what seems initially chaotic or formless, to a coherent stable form or picture, a Gestalt — or from an existing Gestalt to a new better one, that seems richer than the one it replaces.”
— Ian McGilchrist, The Matter With Things

Quotes - On Solitude & Loneliness

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:34:35 +0530

“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps but other people emphasize my loneliness.”

— Anais Nin

“Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.”

— Albert Einstein

“Silence and solitude, the soul’s best friends.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.”

— John Muir

“Without great solitude no serious work is possible.”

— Picasso

“People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.”

— Excerpt From: Turkle, Sherry. “Alone Together.”

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe And you need to be.”

— Albert Camus, from “Notebooks, 1951-1959”.

“My independence, which is my strength, implies my loneliness, which is weakness.”

— Pier Paolo Pasolini

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”

— Daphne du Maurier

Experience is Embodied

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:03:39 +0530

Modern, conventional science has long presumed to observe the natural world from a detached position entirely outside that world. And the science of “ecology” inherited this presumption from the older sciences that preceded it — the assumption that we could objectively analyze the interactions of various organisms and their earthly environment as though we ourselves were not participant in that same environment, as though our rational minds could somehow spring themselves free from our coevolved, carnal embedment in the thick of this ecology in order to observe it from a wholly detached and impartial perspective. In high school biology class, we gazed at a complex diagram of the local ecosystem drawn on the flat blackboard, but of course we did not include our own gaze within the system. Later, some of us learned to model particular ecosystems on the flat screens of our computers. Although I learned a fair amount from such exercises, the primary lesson I learned was that earthly nature is an objective, determinate phenomenon that can best be studied from outside, not an enveloping mystery in which I am wholly participant.

Such is the view of nature that we perpetuate when we neglect, or overlook, the depth dimension of the world — the fact that, in truth, we only ever experience the actual world from our embodied, two-legged perspective down here in the thick of things. Since we are entirely in and of this earthly world, nature can disclose certain aspects of itself to us only by concealing other aspects; we never perceive the whole of any earthly phenomenon all at once. Because we are animals immersed in the world, each thing we directly encounter meets us with its own depth, its visible facets and its invisible facets, its closer aspects open to our gaze and its more distant aspects hidden from view. The belief in a purely objective comprehension of nature, in a clear and complete understanding of how the world works, is the belief in an entirely flat world seen from above, a world without depth, a nature that we are not a part of but that we look at from outside — like a God, or like a person staring at a computer screen.

Deep ecology – or rather, depth ecology — calls this presumption into question; it suggests that such cool, disembodied detachment is itself an illusion, and a primary cause of our destructive relation to the land. It insists on the primacy of our bodily embedment in the encompassing ecology, on our thorough entanglement within the earthly web of life. It suggests that we are utterly immersed in, and dependant upon, the world that we mistakenly try to study, manipulate, and manage from outside.

— David Abram, Depth Ecology

Miracles & Life

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 12:50:33 +0530

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

— Albert Einstein

Understanding Behavior

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 23:01:18 +0530

“For 500 years, we all have been using a very simple model for thinking about living systems. Which is, if you want to understand something that’s complicated, you break it apart into its little pieces. And once you understand the little pieces and put it back together, you will understand the complex thing. And what ‘Chaos’ (book by James Gleick) (…) shows is… that’s how you fix clocks. That’s not how you fix behaviors. That’s not how you understand behaviors. Behavior is not like a clock. Behavior is like a cloud. And you don’t understand rainfall by breaking a cloud down into its component pieces and gluing them back together.”

— Robert Sapolsky

Everything in Relationship

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 22:56:14 +0530

— Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Price of Anything

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 22:50:41 +0530

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Do Them Slowly…

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 21:51:46 +0530

“Whatever the tasks, do them slowly and with ease, in mindfulness. Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Hózhó - The Joy of being part of the creation

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 19:42:49 +0530

Excerpts from the talk:

Contrary to the myth of the “primitive Indian” we were not passive observers of nature nor were we wandering bands of nomads looking for a berry to eat or deer to hunt. No. By and large we were active agents in shaping the land to produce prolefic abundance. We expanded and designed grasslands and forests for the benefit of all life.
We became what the world calls a keystone species, or a species upon which entire ecosystems depend. And our cultures became keystone cultures refined over time.
[Post pandemic]…the logical leap that many observers seemed to make was that the earth would be better off without humans. I reject that leap. The earth may be better off without certain systems we have created, but we are not these systems. We don’t have to be at least.
What if I told you that the earth needs us? What if I told you that we belong here? … What if these human hands and minds could be such a great gift to the earth that they sparked new life where people and purpose met?
4 important indigenous land management techniques:
1. To tap into and align ourselves with the forces of nature.
2. Intententional habitat expansion (many people think that we follow the buffalo when in fact the buffalo followed our fire)
3. Decenter humans (create non-human centric systems).
4. Design for perpetuity (what if our systems were designed to last forever).
…You might say “Oh thats very nice Lyla but, that could never scale. That could never feed today’s massive global population” and to that I say; Contrary to popular belief these continents were actually densely populated by indigenous people, as more and more studies are proving and their food systems still supported them. These systems are even more efficient than industrial food systems because they protect and agument the very thing that give us life instead of extracting and destroying them.
I would love to see the world adopt these strategies and at the same time, I know its not enough to simply mimic native practices. We must also work to return some of these lands to their original caretakers. for, in addition to healing the soil we must also heal our history as a nation.
… If we all unite together in courage, in forgiveness, in amends and generosity.
Hózhó - Is the joy of being a part of the beauty of all creation.
When we understand that humanity is an expression of the Earth’s beauty, we understand that we too belong.
Hózhó understands that we have an ecological role. Hózhó understands that our mother Earth needs us. When we become her friend, her confidant, her ally, her partner in life, instead of her dominator, her supirior or her profiteer, we can transform dead systems to living ones.

Going Alone

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 15:02:41 +0530

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Eating

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 13:53:47 +0530

“Eating with the fullest pleasure is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

— Wendell Berry

Being Open

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 20:13:32 +0530

Openness is sometimes construed as having no boundaries. And that is a mistake because, open and close have meaning only when there are boundaries.

— rawjeev

Each thing in nature…

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 18:48:07 +0530

Each thing in nature is a question containing its own potential answer.
— Christopher Bamford, Green Hermeticism: Alchemy & Ecology

New Technology

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 18:42:33 +0530

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
— Stewart Brand

Any new religion…

Wed, 19 May 2021 13:04:41 +0530

Two things however are clear about any religion that might derive from cybernetics and systems theory, ecology and natural history. First, that in the asking of questions, there will be no limit to our hubris; and second, that there shall always be humility in our acceptance of answers. In these two characteristics we shall be in sharp contrast with most of the religions of the world. They show little humility in their espousal of answers but great fear about what questions they will ask.

— Gregory Bateson (Angels Fear)

On Entertainment & Art

Tue, 18 May 2021 12:31:08 +0530

Thought

I just pulled out two snippets of conversation between Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson from the book Angels Fear. The main topic of their conversation is addiction but their speak about entertainment is the highlight for me, in this time of the pandemic. Confined to our homes, surrounded by gadgets, equipped with high bandwidth connections, besides bad news, we are having to deal with endless streams of information & entertainment through various channels and in various forms.

Sorry if the conversation snippets seem disconnected or even severed. I found these quite meaningful and worthy of sharing. I recommend reading this book but, be warned - Its not entertaining.

Snippet 1:

Daughter: Is this where the connection comes, for Angels? Certainly there are people for whom religion is a palliative and lots of New Age religion is really a way of getting high? Or did you just plan to put addiction in on spec that the different trains of thought do tend to hook up? Or— I know, it’s because it’s a form of learning. Do you remember a paper I wrote a few years ago about the way in which religion can be converted into entertainment, and the way in which people in our society are trained in the capacity to be bored? We think of ritual as boring unless it’s dressed up with new and interesting music or vestments, because we’ve been trained to be subject to boredom.

Father: Collingwood talks about the difference between art and entertainment: that the real thing leaves you richer at the end and feeling good but requires a certain discipline at the beginning to attend to it, whereas entertainment requires no discipline to enjoy it at the beginning and leaves you sort of dead at the end. Education has become increasingly a matter of seducing children into paying attention by sugaring the pill at the beginning, keeping them entertained.

Snippet 2:

Father: Ah, the pleasure of intoxication without the preliminary headache.

Daughter: Well, and that takes us back to entertainment. However much I enjoy learning something new or writing or even arguing with you, there is still a cost on doing it that keeps it from getting out of hand. Because the conversation also supplies the headache.

Father: Well, yes. And in art, as opposed to entertainment, it is always uphill in a certain sense, so the effort precedes the reward rather than the reward being spooned out. One of the things that is important in depression is not to get caught in the notion that entertainment will relieve it. It will, you know, briefly, but it will not banish it. As reassurance is the food of anxiety, so entertainment is the food of depression…

Consciousness & Evolution

Thu, 13 May 2021 20:43:26 +0530

Daughter: {…}Daddy, do you think consciousness is lethal?

Father: Mmm. Empirically it seems on its way to being so. Human consciousness linked with purpose might turn out to be rather like the tail of the argus pheasant, an extreme elaboration of a particular trait that sends a species into an evolutionary cul-de-sac. But that’s happened before. What is frightening is the possibility that the presence of a creature like us anywhere in the system may eventually be lethal to the entire system.

— Mary Catherine Bateson (Angels Fear)

Practice & Revision

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:44:01 +0530

Whatever it is, make your practice something that can bear some revision. Revise it, and revise it again, until it becomes something that truly sustains you.

— Christina Rosalie (A Field Guide to Now: Notes on Mindfulness and Life in the Present Tense)

Materialism

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:38:56 +0530

Materialism is a set of descriptive propositions referring to a univers in which there are no descriptive propositions. Its vocabolury and syntax, its epistemology, is suitable only for the description of such a universe. We cannot even use its language to describe our activity in description.

— Gregory Bateson (Angels Fear)

Hole & The migrating Soul

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:34:37 +0530

The hole in the bagel defines the torus. When the bagel is eaten, the hole does not remain to be reincarnated in a doughnut.

— Grageory Bateson (Angels Fear)

Survival and Thriving

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:31:12 +0530

Survival and thriving are the poles between which the moments of life are strung. The balance is tenuous, and the outcome for each of us is different.

— Christina Rosalie (A Field Guide to Now: Notes on Mindfulness and Life in the Present Tense)

Go all the way…

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:21:17 +0530

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

— Ernest Hemingway

Orwell and Huxley

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:05:22 +0530

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Breve New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

As I witness the world today, it seems the Brave New World & 1984 are at play together.

— rawjeev

Self is a thing I must Compose…

Tue, 11 May 2021 19:00:29 +0530

My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Doing, winning, enjoying…

Tue, 11 May 2021 18:24:52 +0530

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theatre, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

— IAM, but…

In Measurable terms…

Tue, 11 May 2021 18:18:25 +0530

In measurable terms my actions hardly matter. But feeling tiny does not have to end at why bother?

— Wendy Jehanara Tremayne. “The Good Life Lab”

Sign of Wellness

Tue, 11 May 2021 18:11:35 +0530

It is no sign of wellness to be well adjusted to a sick society.

— Krishnamurti

On Love…

Tue, 11 May 2021 18:08:41 +0530

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

— Rumi

Love is the merchandise which all the world demands; if you store it in your heart, every soul will become your customer.

— Hazrat Inayat Khan

Loosing track of the Sacred

Tue, 11 May 2021 12:00:43 +0530

We have so largely lost track of the sacred that we are even becoming incapable of committing sacrilege.

— Gregory Bateson (Angels Fear)

Culture preserves…

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:18:51 +0530

Culture preserves the map and the record of past journeys so that no generation will permanently destroy the route.
The more local and settled the culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road of excess leads to a desert.

— Wendell Berry

Living with uncertainty

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:15:36 +0530

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

— Bertrand Russell

Travel isn’t always pretty…

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:12:45 +0530

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully you leave something good behind.
— Anthony Bourdain

On Time

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:09:41 +0530

But in many indigenous ways of knowing, time is not a river, but a lake in which the past, the present, and the future exist. Creation, then, is an ongoing process and the story is not history alone - it is also prophecy.

— Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass)

Edit your life

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:05:41 +0530

Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.

— Nathan W. Morris

Mysticism is awe…

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:58:39 +0530

Mysticism is awe. And I think any human being who’s lost awe is really a lost person. A civilization that’s lost awe, an educational system that can’t teach awe and nurture it, a worship system that is devoid of awe because it is so full of human verbosity, is perverse. These systems are doing the opposite of what we have to do, which is to awaken the heart. Mysticism is about heart-knowledge, heart-experience. It’s a wonderful balance, a marriage between the left brain and the right. A brain researcher told me his twenty-one years of work on the right brain showed that our right brain is all about awe. So let’s put our awe together with knowledge, and we’re going to get some wisdom. Currently we’re running entirely on knowledge, and that’s why we’re running out of energy, money, time, land, beauty.

— Matthew Fox, from Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros by Derrick Jensen (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004)

Lack of originality…

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:55:29 +0530

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

Stories & Telling

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:50:36 +0530

“A world-changing and world-opening narrative cannot be created by the whim of a single person. Rather, it owes its existence to a complex process in which various forces and actors are involved.”

— Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration

“It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.”

— a Native American proverb

“We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or hate, to see or be seen. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then become a story-teller.”

— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

“We can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without “re-story-ation”.

— Gary Nabhan

“The stories we choose to shape our behaviors have adaptive consequences”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

“Polemics are never persuasive. Academics never inspire. Politicians only follow, never lead. Story tellers change the world.”

— Wade Davis

“The complexity and ambiguity of the environments that individuals face are best understood when language, including the richness of metaphor and the flexibility of the story, is invoked as a sensemaking device.”

— Larry Browning & Thierry Boudès, The use of narrative to understand and respond to complexity

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”

— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

“Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.”

— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

“The art of storytelling is coming to an end. Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.”

— Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller.

“When a ritual is embedded in a story that people believe, they act accordingly, playing out the roles the story assigns to them, and responding to the reality the story establishes…. Rituals and talismans affirm and perpetuate the consensus stories we all participate in, stories that form our reality, coordinate our labor, and organize our lives. Only in exceptional times do they stop working: the times of a breakdown in the story of the people… The only reform (therefore) that can possibly be effective will be one that embodies, affirms, and perpetuates a new story of the people.”

— Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics

Enviable Life

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:38:25 +0530

Because the idea of the enviable life has now replaced the idea of the good life, it may be difficult to hear, or listen to, the parts of our patients or students that are not interested in success. There are, as we know, people around for whom being successful has not been a success… . Our ambitions—our ideals and success stories that lure us into the future—can too easily become ways of not living in the present, or of not being present at the event, a blackmail of distraction; ways, that is, of disowning, or demeaning, the actual disorder of experience. Believing in the future can be a great deadener. Perhaps we have been too successful at success and failure, and should now start doing something else.

— Adam Phillips, On Flirtation

Rhythm, harmony…

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:32:18 +0530

What if, instead, we were to start with an ontology in which fluidity and solidity are not mutually incompatible properties? […] Continuous variation is more comparable to rhythm. Following Lefebvre (2004), rhythms result from the concurrence of difference and repetition, in which time and space are mutually implicated. In a world marked by rhythm there would be neither pure solidity nor pure fluidity. Conversely, a world that was purely solid or purely fluid would be without rhythm. This is consistent with the ways indigenous communities around the circumpolar north have been reporting their experience of climate change as things going out of phase. They may report, for example, that sea-ice recedes or that migratory species arrive earlier than expected, judged in relation to other environmental comings and goings with which they usually coincide. These are not punctuated contrasts but disturbances in the rhythmic fluctuations of a solid-fluid world in perpetual becoming: where nothing is solid or fluid but everything solid-becoming-fluid or fluid-becoming-solid (Serres 2000). […] The Inuit notion of sila perfectly reflects this ontology. Referring interchangeably to both weather and climate, sila is translated as the breath of life and the reason things move and change. It also means intelligence, consciousness or mind, and is understood to be a fundamental principle underlying the integrity of the cosmos. In the words of Nuttall, “it is an all-pervading life-giving force connecting a person with the rhythms of the universe, integrating the self with the natural world”. Conversely, lack of sila can mean that either people or the environment are going crazy. The emphasis on breath here is critical. In breathing we both surrender ourselves to the environment and launch ourselves into it. With every inhalation, the atmosphere enters into and becomes part of us; every exhalation in turn releases part of us into the atmosphere (Ingold 2015, 84–88). No other process matches this continual rhythmic exchange with the environment – one that continues throughout life. Through breathing we are immersed in our surroundings, and our surroundings in us. In a living world of solid-fluids, marked by constant rhythmic transformation, no organism could endure that was not open, through respiration, to its surroundings.

— Cristián Simonetti & Tim Ingold, Ice and Concrete

Pictures, beauty

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:23:52 +0530

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?
— Ernst Haas

An artist can have an intention, but the viewer has their own subjective experience.
– Robert Longo

Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.
— Peter Adam

The spectacle…

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:21:09 +0530

The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, that has become an objective reality.

— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

Everything a commodity

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:09:30 +0530

As part of the business of everything being made a commodity, the shop window has taken the place of the altar-piece and the painting. Tens of thousands look into these windows and wonder. Here are the modern still-lives and the modern heroes and heroines. The function of the shop-window tableau is really the same as that of sculpture for the Greeks, or frescoes for the Italians of the Renaissance. These works appealed because they embodied the hopes, the ideals, the potentiality of most of the people who looked at them. Today there is only one common ideal, created and fostered by commerce: it is the principle that Only what you haven’t yet got is worth having.

— John Berger, A Painter of Our Time: A Novel

(the book was published in 1956. Right before Andy Warhol began experimenting with putting paintings he made for shop windows into galleries.)

Not all cultures…

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:04:43 +0530

Not all cultures in the world share the dominant Western view of a secularized, utilitarian, depersonalized nature. The existence of alternative views of the natural environment is important as part of the cultural heritage of humankind. This cultural diversity is akin to biodiversity as the raw material for evolutionarily adaptive responses

— Fikret Berkes (Sacred Ecology)

You must be the person…

Sat, 08 May 2021 23:01:16 +0530

You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent.

— Paulo Coelho

Freedom,speech,thought

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:55:51 +0530

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use

— Soren Kierkegaard

Language, culture

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:52:05 +0530

A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules, a language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities

— Wade Davis

Happiness, small & numerous

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:45:12 +0530

I am beginning to recognise that real happiness isn’t something large and looming on the horizon ahead but something small, numerous and already here. The smile of someone you love, a descent breakfast, the warm sunset. Your little everyday joys, all lined up in a row.

— Beau Taplin

Seeking v/s Teaching

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:41:12 +0530

Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation” — that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously. …within a Western cultural context, which holds that if there is confusion, it is the fault of the speaker. …But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said.

— Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

Freedom

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:38:51 +0530

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Science, foxes & Hedgehogs…

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:36:03 +0530

Scientists come in two varieties, hedgehogs and foxes. I borrow this terminology from Isaiah Berlin (1953), who borrowed it from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus. Archilochus told us that foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are broad, hedgehogs are deep. Foxes are interested in everything and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are only interested in a few problems that they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvellous universe. Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble were hedgehogs. Charley Townes, who invented the laser, and Enrico Fermi, who built the first nuclear reactor in Chicago, were foxes. It often happens that foxes are as creative as hedgehogs. The laser was a big discovery made by a fox. The general public is misled by the media into believing that great scientists are all hedgehogs. Some periods in the history of science are good times for hedgehogs, other periods are good times for foxes. The beginning of the twentieth century was good for hedgehogs. The hedgehogs—Einstein and his followers in Europe, Hubble and his followers in America—dug deep and found new foundations for physics and astronomy. When Fermi and Townes came onto the scene in the middle of the century, the foundations were firm and the universe was wide open for foxes to explore. Most of the progress in physics and astronomy since the 1920s was made by foxes.

— Freeman J. Dyson, A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe

No act of kindness…

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:32:49 +0530

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

— Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse

Lightly child, lightly…

Sat, 08 May 2021 22:16:43 +0530

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…to throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…

— Aldous Huxley

History, Prediction…

Sat, 08 May 2021 21:53:31 +0530

The thing about being historians is that we don’t have to predict the future. We only have to predict the past.
— Michael Kazin

Cultural Change…

Sat, 08 May 2021 21:46:53 +0530

True cultural change doesn’t happen unilaterally. Cultural innovations occur in deep relationships between land, spirit and groups of people. A person ‘of high degree’ in traditional knowledge may find a song in a dream if they are profoundly connected to land, lore, spirit and community. But that song must then be taken up by the people and modified gradually through many iterations before it becomes part of the culture. Besides, that song can only be found through a ritual process developed over millennia by that community. The song itself is not as important as the communal knowledge process that produces it.

Most lasting cultural innovations occur through the demotic—the practices and forms that evolve through the daily lives and interactions of people and place in an organic sequence of adaptation. When these processes are unimpeded by the arbitrary controls and designs of elevated individuals they emerge in ways that mirror the patterns of creation.

— Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Theories, science…

Sat, 08 May 2021 21:09:21 +0530

Theories don’t give final true knowledge. Theories give a way of looking. The very word theoria in Greek means theater. It’s sort of a theater in the mind that gives insight. Science is involved in a perceptual enterprise.

— David Bohm on Perception

Seeing, thinking…

Sat, 08 May 2021 20:51:34 +0530

The task is… not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.

—Erwin Schrödinger

Relax Wild One…

Sat, 08 May 2021 20:37:37 +0530

Relax wild one. It’s not your job to be everything everyone needs, and you don’t have to be impressive to be loved. Stop trying so hard. Just show up … and be real with the world. That is enough.

— Brooke Hampton

Productivity, Presence…

Sat, 08 May 2021 20:32:15 +0530

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

— IAM

Others, seeing…

Sat, 08 May 2021 20:23:05 +0530

One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.

— Louise Bourgeois

Understanding…

Sat, 08 May 2021 20:15:56 +0530

If I hear myself speaking out loud, the ears with which I hear myself speaking out loud do not listen to me in the same way as the inner ear with which I dare to think those words. And if, when listening to myself, I frequently have to ask myself what I mean, how little others will understand me!

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Cooperation is…

Sat, 08 May 2021 20:03:48 +0530

Cooperation is humanity’s superpower, and the way we have enlarged our circle — from kin, to tribes, to religions, to countries, to the world — is miraculous. But the conditions under which that cooperation have taken hold are delicate, and like everything else, part of the biophysical system in which we live. We are changing that system in ways we do not understand and with consequences we cannot predict.

— Ezra Klein, Texas Is a Rich State in a Rich Country, and Look What Happened

Scientific advance & Application

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 17:03:50 +0530

Behind every scientific advance there is always a matrix, a mother load of unknowns out of which the new partial answers have been chiseled. But the hungry, overpopulated, sick, ambitious, and competitive world will not wait, we are told, till more is known, but must rush in where angels fear to tread.

—Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels Fear - Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred

Do not ask your children to strive

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 20:00:22 +0530

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

— Willam Martin

Emotions & Rationality

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 18:21:21 +0530

“Absence of emotions neither causes nor promotes rationality. […] In order to respond reasonably one must first of all be ‘moved,’ and the opposite of emotional is not ‘rational,’ whatever that may mean…”

— Arendt, ‘On Violence’, in Crises of the Republic

“In the words of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, ‘New neurological evidence suggests that … emotion may well be the support system without which the edifice of reason cannot function properly and may even collapse’. Emotion, far from being antithetical to rational thought, is a prerequisite for it.”

— David W. Orr (The Nature of Design - Ecology, culture and Human intention)

“Native scholar Greg Cajete has written that in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. I came to understand quite sharply when I began training as a scientist that science privileges only one, possibly two, of those ways of knowing: mind and body.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass)

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honourably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be greatful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

— Rumi

“Move through the hard feelings. Slowly. With care. Pickup pieces of them. Study them. Learn from them. There are lessons in the pieces of yourself you are ashamed of. There is healing in keeping joy close. Mourn the memories as they resurface. Ease into the discomfort of grief. And who said you had to push through this alone? Or in silence? Or on anyones timeline but your own?”

— Lora Mathis, No Mist (2017)

Everyday speech…

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 22:39:38 +0530

Everyday speech is “instrumental” rather than “expressive”, intended to achieve a goal rather than simply to tell one’s own truth. When we speak instrumentally, we try to influence the listener by informing or affirming or rebuking or making common cause. But when we speak expressively, we speak to express the truth within us, honoring the inner teacher by letting it know that we are attending to its voice.

— Parker J. Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness)

This too shall pass

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 11:13:57 +0530

📜 There was a king and he once said to the court sages: “I have a ring with one of the finest diamonds in the world and I want to inscribe a message under the stone that can be useful in a situation of extreme despair. I will give this ring to my heirs and I want it to serve faithfully. Think of what kind of message will serve this purpose. It must be very short to fit in the ring.”

The sages knew how to write treaties, but did not express themselves in one short sentence. They thought and thought, but could not come up with anything.

The king complained about the failure of his venture to a faithful old servant who raised him from infancy and was part of the family.

And the old man said to him: “I’m not a sage, I’m not educated, but I know such a message. For many years spent in the palace, I met a lot of people. And once I served a visiting mystic whom your father invited. And he gave me this message. Just don’t read it, pass it to the craftsman and only open it when there is no way out at all”.

The king listened to the old and faithful servant.

After some time, the enemies attacked the country and the king lost the war. He fled on his horse with the enemies in pursuit. He was alone, and there were many. He drove to the end of the road, only to arrive at a huge deep cliff before him.

If he fell there, it would be the end. He could not go back, the enemies were approaching, and he could already hear the clatter of their horses’ hooves. He had no way out and he was in complete despair.

And then he remembered the ring. Recognising the time had come to look beneath the precious stone, he found an inscription: “This too shall pass.”

After reading the message, he felt that everything was quiet.

Apparently the pursuers got lost and proceeded in a different direction. Horses were no longer heard.

The king was filled with gratitude to the servant and the unknown mystic. Words were powerful. He put away the ring. And hit the road.

Again he gathered his army and in due course returned to his palace and to power, and so arranged a magnificent feast for the whole kingdom - the people loved and celebrated their king. The king was happy and proud.

The old servant came up to him and in a soft tone urged him to “Look at the message again.”

“Now I am a winner, people are celebrating my return, I’m not in despair, not in a hopeless situation.” Replied the King.

“Listen to the old servant,” he answered, “the message works not only in moments when everything is bad, but also in moments of victory.”

The king looked at the ring and discovered: “This too shall pass.”

And again he felt a silence fall over him, although he was in the midst of a noisy dancing crowd. His pride dissolved. He understood the message. He was a wise man.

And then the old man said: “Do you remember everything that happened to you? Nothing and no feeling is permanent. As night changes into day, so moments of joy and despair replace each other. Accept them as the nature of things, as part of life”.

This fable was shared to me by a friend, and I learnt from wikipedia that it comes from medieval Persian Sufi poetry.

Tell all the truth

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 13:11:12 +0530

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

— Emily Dickinson (1868)

Ecological awareness & Participative design

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 14:00:53 +0530

“Ecological design is not so much an individual art practiced by individual designers as it is an ongoing negotiation between a community and the ecology of particular places.”

— David W. Orr

“Ecological awareness will arise only when we combine our rational knowledge with an intuition for the non-linear nature of our environment.”

— Fritjof Capra (The Turning Point)

“Rather than placing the human at the center of the work, it’s the systems that surround us—these systems we depend on—that take the appropriately center stage. They take the stage with complexity, mystery, and unpredictability.”

— Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation

“The designers of complex adaptive systems are not strictly designing systems themselves. They are hinting those systems towards anticipated outcomes, from an array of existing interrelated systems. These are designers that do not understand themselves to be in the center of the system. Rather, they understand themselves to be participants, shaping the systems that interact with other forces, ideas, events and other designers.”

— Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation

“Some contemporary work suggests that we are not only designing for participation, but that design is a fundamentally participatory act, engaging systems that extend further than the constraints of individual (or even human) activity and imagination”

— Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation

“design is not just a framework for participants, but something that is also, itself, participating.”

— Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation

“now we’ve got the notion of a machine with an underspecified goal, the system that evolves…”

— Gordon Pask (quoted in Design as Participation)

“When designers center around the user, where do the needs and desires of the other actors in the system go? The lens of the user obscures the view of the ecosystems it affects.”

— Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation

“We must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

— Thomas Berry"

“The standard for ecological design is neither efficiency nor productivity but health, beginning with that of the soil and extending upward through plants, animals and people. It is impossible to impair health at any level without affecting it at other levels. The etymology of the word ‘health’ reveals its connection to other words such as healing, wholeness, and holy.”

— David W. Orr

“We had this old idea, that there was a universe out there, and here is man, the observer, safely protected from the universe by a six-inch slab of plate glass. Now we learn from the quantum world that even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron, we have to shatter that plate glass, we have to reach in there. So the old world observer simply has to be crossed off the books and we must put in the new term: participator. In this way we have come to realize that the universe is a participatory universe.”

— John Wheeler

The reflective practitioner

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 14:00:34 +0530

[The reflective practitioner] allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomena before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomena and a change in the situation. [He] is not dependant on the categories of established theory and technique… his enquiry is not limited to a deliberation about means which depends on a prior agreement about ends. He does not keep means and ends separate…he does not separate thinking from doing.

— Donald Schon

quotes on hope…

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 17:21:43 +0530

To be truely radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.

— Raymond Williams (A British Historian)

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

— Francis Bacon

Hope is not a utopian dream. You have to stand up and work for it.

— John Murphy, cited by Elizabeth Bernstein in An Emotion We All Need More of

Despair is a luxury. If I despair I can drive a Yukon and watch bad television. Despair makes no demand upon us; hope demands everything. For people around the world, in places like Burma and Chiapas, giving up means accepting hideous conditions of life, or death. Despair is cheap for us, expensive for them. What does it mean to be radical, to tell radical stories in our time, to win the battle of the story? The North American tradition seems to focus its activity on the exposé, the telling of the grim underside of what we know: the food is poison, the system is corrupt, the leaders are lying, the war is failing. There is a place for this, but you cannot base a revolution on the bad things the status quo forgot to mention. You need to tell the stories they are not telling, to learn to see where they are blind, to look at how the great changes of the world come from the shadows and the margins, not center stage, to see where we’re winning and that we can win something that matters, if not everything all the time.

— Rebecca Solnit.

I pin my hope to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.

— Rufus Jones

“Its not what we think, its how we act, whats true. The only recognizable feature of hope is action.”

— Jodie Evans

“Beauty happens in space that is messy.”

— Jodie Evans

Given To

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 16:42:16 +0530

'Given To' by Ruth Bebermeyer

What counts

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 18:52:48 +0530

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
— William Bruce Cameroon

Purpose of life…

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 23:04:22 +0530

The purpose of life is to discover your gifts. The work of life is to develop them. And the meaning of life is to give them away.

I like David Viscott’s quote with the gift pluralized in it to suit my beliefs. I believe we have many gifts, not just one.

The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.

— David Viscott

Quotes - Observation

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:38:47 +0530

… a good ecologist must have a broad synthetic mind, an ability to practice strong inference, and a sense of place or a feel for nature (that is, they must be respectful, alert, observant, and intuitive).

— Paul K. Dayton (Observation & Ecology : Broadening the Scope of Science to Understand a Complex World)

The best of science doesn’t consist of mathematical models and experiments, as textbooks make it seem. Those come later. It springs fresh from a more primitive mode of thought, wherein the hunter’s mind weaves ideas from old facts and fresh metaphors and the scrambled crazy images of things recently seen. To move forward is to concoct new patterns of thought, which in turn dictate the design of the models and experiments. Easy to say, difficult to achieve.

— E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (1992)

By observation we usually mean using our eyes, but this just reflects how visually dominated modern people are, raised in a literate and now graphical world. All of our senses have great potential to provide valuable information. For example, smelling or tasting soil can reveal otherwise invisible aspects of its biological, physical and chemical balance. An experienced bird-watcher often learns more from songs and calls than from glimpses of birds that may be elusive. A good fitter and turner can feel the removal of a few ‘thou’ (thousands of an inch) from a crankshaft turning in a lathe.

— Excerpt From: David Holmgren. “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.

We had this old idea, that there was a universe out there, and here is man, the observer, safely protected from the universe by a six-inch slab of plate glass. Now we learn from the quantum world that even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron, we have to shatter that plate glass, we have to reach in there. So the old world observer simply has to be crossed off the books and we must put in the new term: participator. In this way we have come to realize that the universe is a participatory universe.

— John Wheeler

What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

— Werner Heisenberg

Knowledge & Knowing

Tue, 26 May 2020 19:16:22 +0530

In a previous post, I shared David W. Orr’s writing about Fast & Slow Knowledge. Here are some more from scholars & friends who opened me to different meanings of knowledge & knowing.

Nancy J. Turner, introducing the book Sacred Ecology (2nd edition) by Dr.Fikret Berkes writes:

“Perhaps the most profound message we can take away is that our beliefs matter in our interactions with our environment, and that knowledge is more than just something that is known; it is also the process of gaining information and wisdom.”

In the same book, Dr.Fikret Berkes recollects from his meeting with Ojibwa tribal resource managers in Ontario as follows:

“…The one thing they wanted to discuss, over and above all else was, how does one talk to elders? How does one learn from them? Now almost a decade later, I think they meant, how do you access elders’ ways of knowing. This is, as Katja Neves-Graça would put it, ‘knowledge, the process’ was what they were interested in; not ‘knowledge, the thing known.’

This got me thinking about how children in our society are educated today; With an emphasis on what they know in their heads without much consideration to how they come to know, enact, or live it. Our children’s lives are artificially divided into a period of gaining knowledge (education) which is separate from a period of its actual application (work) at a later stage in life.

I cannot forget a story that Ramavatar Singh told during my cycle yatra in rural Rajasthan. It was about a conversation Ram had with an elderly gentleman, earlier when Ram used to be a teacher in a village. The gentleman apparently asked him something like:

“Why do you try filling your heads first and later struggle to do something with your limbs? We learn to do with our limbs, our bodies, and we would have learned something in our heads as well. How is your education better?”

I had initially interpreted this as practical/experiential learning, or learning by doing. Now I understand it slightly different - knowledge as a process which is inseparable from the known or even lived.

Talking about knowledge again, Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass quotes a native scholar, Greg Cajete:

“…in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. I came to understand quite sharply when I began training as a scientist that science privileges only one, possibly two, of those ways of knowing: mind and body.”

How do we want to know? How do we want our kids to know?

Art & Science quotes

Wed, 20 May 2020 22:24:52 +0530

“To me the most interesting thing about man is that he is an animal who practices art and science and, in every known society, practices both together.”

— Jacob Bronowski

“A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?”

— Ernst Haas

“To lose the scar of knowledge is to renew the wound. An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.”

—Wendell Berry

“The modern work of art has no problem of meaning, it has only a problem of use.”

— Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs

“All great works of art are more like amorphous organisms that exist within an ecological system than like solid and fixed systems.They have the capacity to continuously expand towards us from their original location in a specific time and place on many levels - the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, practical, social, educational, institutional and financial - while simultaneously merging with other works of art. An encounter is much more than simply a way of enjoying leisure time or a pretext for amassing historical and theoretical data. It could be a matter of survival.”

— Simon Morley, “The Seven Keys to Modern Art”, Thames & Hudson publishers.

“Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.”

— Eric Hoffer

“I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn’t paint.”

— Chuck Berry

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Scientists tend to operate through a logical process in the material world. In science it seems necessary that your facts be concrete, repeatable, and predictable, which means there has to be an existing reliable form of measure. And the only reliable forms of measure, as far as science is concerned, are pure abstractions, that is, abstract systems which can be overlaid onto the world of experience. Euclidean geometry or clocks or scales are pure abstractions. You can count on them to be the same every time. And, as long as you have that kind of measure, then what you’re getting can be held to be factual, as it were, in line with the original hypotheses and proved in performance.
… Reasoning appears to be more confused, more haphazard, partly because of the scale of what it tries to deal with. The logical, in a sense, seems more successful because it cuts the scale down. In fact, that’s what makes it logical: it takes a very concise cut in the world and simply defines or refines by deduction the properties of that cut, but it never deals with the overall complexities of the situation. It only applies within the confines within which it operates, so it seems much clearer.
The artist, however, as a reasoning being, deals with the overall complexity of which all the logical subsystems are merely segments, and (s)he deals with them through the intuitive side of human potential - and here the inconsistencies are as meaningful as consistencies.“

— Robert Irwin

“Art, when it’s not primarily a commodity, opens the door to another reality.”

— Jem Cohen

“The word “art” is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community… Art is to decorate people’s houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it’s supposed to be right in the community, where they can have it when they want it… It’s supposed to be as essential as a grocery store… that’s the only way art can function naturally.”

— Amiri Baraka

“The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.”

— Junot Diaz

“It isn’t that I like it and I don’t like it—that’s too simple. Or, if you will, it isn’t “both yes and no.” It’s “this but also that.” I’d love to settle in on a strong feeling or reaction. But, having seen whatever I see, my mind keeps on going and I see something else. It’s that I quickly see the limitations of whatever I say or whatever judgment I make about anything. There’s a wonderful remark of Henry James: “Nothing is my last word on anything.” There’s always more to be said, more to be felt.”

— Susan Sontag: Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 143

“How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.”

— Isaac Asimov, “Art and Science,” The Roving Mind, 1983.

“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”

— Samuel Beckett

The Woodcarver

Sun, 10 May 2020 14:02:45 +0530

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand of precious wood. When it was finished, all who saw it were astounded. They said it must be the work of spirits.

The prince of Lu said to the master carver: “What is your secret?” Khing replied:

“I am only a workman: I have no secrets. There is only this: When I began to think of the work you commanded, I guarded my spirit, did not expend it on trifles, that were not to the point. I fasted in order to set my heart at rest. After three days of fasting, I had forgotten gain and success. After five days I had forgotten praise and criticism. After seven days, I had forgotten my body with all its limbs”.

“By this time all thought of your Highness and of the court had faded away. All that might distract me from the work had vanished. I was collected in the single thought of the bell stand.”

“Then I went to the forest to see the trees in their own natural state. When the right tree appeared before my eyes, the bell stand also appeared in it clearly beyond doubt. All I had to do was put forth my hand and begin.”

“If I had not met this particular tree there would have been no bell stand at all.”

“What happened? My own collected thought Encountered the hidden potential in the wood; From this live encounter came the work which you ascribe to the spirits.”

— A Taoist Tale

This Taoist tale is retold by Parker J. Palmer in his book “A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life”. In the book, he shares ‘insights into how the Woodcarver’s tale illumines [his] life’, which he says, were found through speaking and listening in circles of trust.

This tale helped me reflect on my own life and I found his insights extremely valuable. Here are some insightful excerpts.

Excerpts:

Khing is under pressure to be concerned only about externals: the prince and his command, the product he is supposed to deliver, the tools and materials available to him, the way others evaluate his work. But he turns away from these externals toward inner truth - not to escape the world but to return to it in a way that will allow him to cocreate something of worth and beauty.
He makes this inward turn in a very stressful situation! The command to make the bell stand came from a prince who rules over a workplace that has no personnel handbook and no grievance procedure. Suppose Khing had messed up: the prince might have had him killed. Despite the fear he must have felt, Khing takes the Prince’s command and transforms it into a choice.

(Of course, not all commands can or should be chosen: some should be resisted unto death! But sometimes I receive commands - from another person or from my life situation - that evoke something from me that I did not know I had. If I can embrace that kind of command and transform it into a choice, good things may happen.)
The woodcarver resists people’s efforts to name him from the outside in. With simplicity and clarity, he claims the right to name himself from the inside out. “I am only a workman: I have no secret”. When we fail to take this first, critical step of fending off projections and reserving the right to name our own truth, we become lost in eternal smoke and mirrors and cannot even find the trail head of the path into our inner lives.
Woodcarver knows that to do good work, he must deal with external constraints without compromising his inner freedom, letting these polarities flow into each other like the surfaces of a Mobius strip.
Khing’s silence on the technical aspects of his work: as important as they are, they are not the most challenging aspect of bringing truth and beauty into the world. The real challenge is the one Khing talks about: the formation of the human heart behind the skilful hand.

Fast and slow knowledge

Thu, 07 May 2020 18:55:42 +0530

Wanting more knowledge is not considered surfeit, even by those who despise human excesses in this world. David W. Orr., in “The nature of design - Ecology, culture & Human intention” calls us to ponder this subject.

Writing that, “The twentieth century is the age of fast knowledge driven by rapid technological change and the rise of the global economy. This has undermined communities, cultures, and religions that once slowed the rate of change and filtered appropriate knowledge from the cacophony of new information.” He says - The culture of fast knowledge rests on these assumptions:

Only that which can be measured is true knowledge
The more knowledge we have, the better
Knowledge that lends itself to use is superior to that which is merely contemplative
The scale of effects of applied knowledge is unimportant
There are no significant distinctions between information and knowledge
Wisdom is an undefinable, hence unimportant, category
There are no limits to our ability to assimilate growing mountains of information, and none to our ability to separate essential knowledge from that which is trivial or even dangerous
We will be able to retrieve the right bit of knowledge at the right time and fit it into its proper social, ecological, ethical, and economic context
We will not forget old knowledge, but if we do, the new will be better than the old
Whatever mistakes and blunders occur along the way can be rectified by yet more knowledge
The level of human ingenuity will remain high
The acquisition of knowledge carries with it no obligation to see that it is responsibly used
The generation of knowledge can be separated from its application
All knowledge is general in nature, not specific to or limited by particular places, times, and circumstances.

Observing that “Unlike fast knowledge generated in universities, think-tanks, and corporations, slow knowledge occurs incrementally through the process of community learning motivated more by affection than by idle curiosity, greed, or ambition.” he further states that the worldview inherent in slow knowledge rests on these beliefs:

Wisdom, not cleverness, is the proper aim of all true learning
The velocity of knowledge can be inversely related to the acquisition of wisdom
The careless application of knowledge can destroy the conditions that permit knowledge of any kind to flourish (a nuclear war, for example, made possible by the study of physics, would be detrimental to the further study of physics)
What ails us has less to do with the lack of knowledge but with too much irrelevant knowledge and the difficulty of assimilation, retrieval, and application as well as the lack of compassion and good judgment
The rising volume of knowledge cannot compensate for a rising volume of errors caused by malfeasance and stupidity generated in large part by inappropriate knowledge
The good character of knowledge creators is not irrelevant to the truth they intend to advance and its wider effects
Human ignorance is not an entirely solvable problem; it is, rather, an inescapable part of the human condition.

Fish & Water

Tue, 05 May 2020 12:46:48 +0530

The Story

Often, like water to fish, the myths of our culture are transparent and invisible. These ambient stories surround us all the time and get in and out of us without our awareness. We hear these stories in many voices, in many messages & in many forms. They build inside us in bits and pieces. Whether we clearly & entirely know them or not, we enact and make them real. We inherit and transmit them.

The story of money among others, is a dominant & fundamental myth of our culture.

Quotes - Sustainability

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 23:24:50 +0530

Carrying out the Great Work of making an ecologically durable and decent society will require us to confront the deeper cultural roots of our problems and grow out of the faith that we can meet the challenge of sustainability without really changing much. The evidence, I think, shows that we will have to change a great deal and mostly in ways that we will come to regard as vastly better than what exists now and certainly better than what is in prospect.

— David W. Orr

Spiritual beliefs about a higher purpose in nature have been universal and defining features of all cultures before scientific rationalism. We ignore this aspect of sustainable cultures at our peril. …The more we understand the world through the lens of systems thinking and ecology, the more we see the wisdom in spiritual perspectives and traditions.

— David Holmgren. “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”.

The process of providing for people’s needs within ecological limits requires a cultural revolution. Inevitably such a revolution is fraught with many confusions, false leads, risks and inefficiencies.

— David Holmgren. “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”.

In natural or biological systems, waste does not occur. And it is easy to produce examples of nonindustrial human cultures in which waste was or is virtually unknown. All that is sloughed off in the living arc of a natural cycle remains within the cycle; it becomes fertility, the power of life to continue. In nature death and decay are as necessary — are, one may almost say, as lively as life; and so nothing is wasted. There is really no such thing as natural production; in nature, there is only reproduction.

But waste — so far, at least — has always been intrinsic to industrial production. There have always been unusable “by-products”. Because industrial cycles are never complete —because there is no return —there are two characteristic results of industrial enterprise: exhaustion and contamination. The energy industry, for instance, is not a cycle, but only a short arc between an empty hole and poisoned air. And farming, which is inherently cyclic, capable of regenerating and reproducing itself indefinitely, becomes similarly destructive and self-exhausting when transformed into an industry.

— Wendell Berry, Excerpt from: “Bringing it to the Table”

Galloping - A zen story…

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 18:58:47 +0530

Galloping

Blue Pea

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:14:33 +0530

Blue pea flowers & tea

As I am running out of my green, white and oolang teas during the covid19 lockdown, I got an opportunity to diversify my teas and change my tea habits. An interesting addition to my teas comes in the form of Blue pea.

Beyond ‘Right and Wrong’

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 13:53:54 +0530

Beyond right & wrong

Red dwarfs in the garden

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 17:09:45 +0530

red dwarfs story in pictures

There has never been a grand plan or design for our garden. Our little wild garden, shaped by all its inhabitants including us, has emerged organically over the years. Even while I am sure that this garden wouldn’t have been what it is without our participation, our approach has been that of minimal, gradual changes called for by our needs, and in response to the garden itself. Being what it is, our garden has some mysteries in stock, that it often reveals.

It was while trying to harvest Ivy gourds from a vine that had climbed up a henna tree, that we found a hive of the red dwarf honey bee. Delighted as we were about Ivy gourds, we were more delighted that the red dwarfs had made our henna tree their home.

The red dwarfs have been regular visitors to our garden along with other social & solitary bee species such as Indian honey bee, giant honey bee, dammer bee, blue banded bee & carpenter bee.

Soon after noticing the hive in the tree, we stopped harvesting ivy gourds, lest we should disturb them. However our delight was short lived. The next day, we saw the bees were leaving the hive. They felt unsafe & we felt sad. It was a lesson for us to be more watchful and gentle, a lesson to be better members in the community of life.

We were sad about their departure but, we were curious & saw this as an opportunity to closely examine the hive, note down our observations & learn a little more about these bees.

First we waited a day to ensure we were not disturbing the bees in their shifting operations. The next day morning, seeing that there were no bees visiting the hive, we took the liberty to handle the hive.

First observations

The hive had no honey & no bees were visiting the hive.
The hive was full of busy little (most likely) ghost ants. Couldn’t discern immediately what their business was.

Carefully removing the hive from the branch, we studied it further, checking the cells & picking all the cells that had something in them.

Further observations

The hive was small and it filled the palm of my hand covering all my fingers (10cm x 11cm x 1.5cm).
There were no capped cells and we din’t notice any eggs or larvae in the hive.
We could find pupae, of different sizes.
Pupae in the central cells were small.
Pupae in the cells around the edge of the hive were more mature. Some were ready to fly.
We thought that the ants were after the pupae, noticing how hastily they surrounded & carried the pupae away as we picked them from the cells.
The cells of the layers were built in such a way that the walls of one layer crisscrossed the walls of the layer behind.

Overall, we learned how sensitive the red dwarfs were to disturbance around their hive and the costs they incurred in shifting their colony; The hive & the pupae that they had to leave behind, honey that was needed to make wax for a new hive & the effort involved. We also got an inkling of the waste-less, cyclical economy of nature, looking at how the abandoned hive was turning into a bonanza for the ghost ants & quickly getting integrated into their life cycle.

a naturalist…

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 23:08:16 +0530

a naturalist is more a poet than an engineer

— Ramon Margalef

Simpler way

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 20:34:50 +0530

Making biochar

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 12:27:16 +0530

I have a small pile of sticks and coconut shells that have accumulated in the garden. As I can’t compost them, I thought I’ll make some biochar to use in the garden. Looking around a bit, I found this low-tech way of making biochar and I think its a good simple way to start.

The allotment garden page where I found this video also has an article about how to charge or activate biochar

I had earlier seen Jon Jondai’s video on the topic. He shows some simple equipment that seems more efficient and does not call for our involvement throughout the process of making biochar. Thats more suitable for my farm.

Agroecosystems

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 01:08:09 +0530

Unlike other natural systems (e.g., a coral reef or tropical rain forest), the agro-ecosystem always contains a particular “keystone” species. That keystone species is Homo sapiens. It is a species that engineers its own environment far more than any other species in history, a fact that would make ignoring its ecology naïve; nevertheless, its “ecology” involves a structure that no other species has ever had. It has the ability (or is it a need?) to communicate ideas from individual to individual, perpetuated to heights that are magnitudes larger than any other organism in the history of life. That is, our species has language with which it creates structures of culture and society, of economics and politics. As the keystone species in the ecosystem, our special nature becomes part of that ecosystem. The agroecosystem is thus endowed with not only traditional subjects of ecology, but also with the immensely complicating aspects of this particular feature of the keystone species.

— John. H. Vandermeer (Preface, The Ecology of Agroecosystems )

Effortless

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 00:32:47 +0530

“All that effort is ultimately going into trying to make something that is effortless.”
— Andy Goldsworthy (Rivers & Tides)

Notes on ceremony

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 01:03:11 +0530

Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we “remember to remember”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. (If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable)
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging - to a family, to a people, and to the land.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ceremony, it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to prayer. The material and the spiritual mingle like (coffee) grounds mingled with humus, transformed like steam rising from a mug into the morning mist.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

What else can you offer the earth which has everything? What else can you give but something of yourself? A home made ceremony, a ceremony that makes a home.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm, These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.
— Charles Eisenstein

An earnst ceremonial practice is like a magnet that aligns more and more of life to its field; it is a prayer that asks ‘May I do everything with full attention, full care, and full respect for what it serves’."
— Charles Eisenstein

Buyrarchy of Needs

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 21:02:43 +0530

Buyrarchy of needs

Testing Questions

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 20:52:58 +0530

Testing questions to ask about our actions

Scale of Permanence

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 20:19:51 +0530

Scale of Permanence

A good article about the same.

On Observation

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 15:32:05 +0530

The first principle of Permaculture as put forward by David Holmgren is Observe & Interact. For a long time I have been puzzled by Observation. I have wondered what does it mean to observe! At bahulavana, I tried capturing details of things that I noticed. I made a list of flora, I found out the physical & chemical profiles of soil, I am making a bird list as well as a list of other fauna. However all these didn’t give me a sense that I was doing observations like many inspiring permaculture gurus who tell stories about how things were, how things changed, and how they participated in the process.

This morning before going to bath, we heard a squirrel calling and looked out to see what was the commotion all about. The squirrel was on a branch off a castor tree squeaking loud looking at the ground. Its tail flicked on each call and it continued to stare at the ground as he called. Then I started looking at the ground to see if there was something interesting. Is it that rat snake thats going through the garden that I had seen a few days back? Or was it calling looking for a mate like my wife thought?

Soon after, I had a rush of thoughts and a revelation. It dawned to me what observation really meant; to observe is to be able to see stories — it is to be able to see things in connection, in relation to one another, in a story — to be able to observe is to be able to see things big, small, in different forms and colours but, more importantly it is to be able to see the stories that bring them together in relation to one another. While observation means to discern things, it is the ability to see them in their relatedness, fitting into a story that we see thats more interesting. It’s the narrative in which these things participate thats important. The story vision.

I remember reading somewhere about a father telling his son about the marks on the ground. I remember the father explaining that a good hunter sees a deer where one may only see some marks — where the deer came from? Which way it went? How long has it been, was the deer in a hurry and running or was it walking easy - It’s the story.

Observation therefore is the synthesis of a story coherent with reality in which all things seen, fit together in relation, making the story, creating the story.

Therefore I wish to call the activity of meticulously capturing details of various kinds as Data-Collection and not Observation.

And now I will put myself into practicing story-vision. I will go in search of stories in my garden and I will ask my daughter to do the same.

Season of the Gulmohars

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 02:26:50 +0530

In the season of the Gulmohars
We went out for a walk
Hand in hand together
in silence, no talk.

It was a pleasant morning
The sun was just a blush
It was a day of leisure
No worry, no rush.

Under a brilliant Gulmohar
There was a little bench
On it we sat together
I, my lovely wench.

She snuggled closer to me
As I whispered her name
And she said “I love You”
My hug uttered the same.

That time has gone by now
Not all the things are same
but, in the season of the Gulmohars
I still whisper her name.

— rawjeev

Schorlemmer Cafe

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 02:21:23 +0530

I was sitting there
with a cup of tea,
some strong black tea,
with a dash of lime
at the Schorlemmer Cafe

A nice evening,
a nice straw roof
overhead,
and the ambiance
of the goodbye sun.
Sipping my tea
I was sitting there
on a comfortable chair
at the Schorlemmer cafe

I was sitting there
at the Schorlemmer cafe
with my legs stretched
under the table,
with my eyes gazing
nowhere.

There was no one there
Only me,
my cup of tea,
and you.

You came
like a soft breeze
to the Schorlemmer Cafe
of my heart
and I was sitting there
sipping my tea
with you.

— rawjeev

ಚಿಟ್ಟೆಯ ಕಥೆ

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 02:11:49 +0530

ಬಣ್ಣ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಚಿಟ್ಟೆ
ಸೊಗಸಾದ ಚಿಟ್ಟೆ
ಹೂವಿಂದ ಹೂವಿಗೆ
ಹಾರುವ ಚಿಟ್ಟೆ

ಕಾಮನಾ ಬಿಲ್ಲನ್ನು
ತಾಕಿ ಬಂದೆಯ ನೀನು
ಎಲ್ಲಿಂದ ಬಂದಿರುವೆ
ಹೇಳೆಯಾ ಚಿಟ್ಟೆ

ನನಗೇನು ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ
ನಾನೇನು ಕಾಣೆ

ಸಣ್ಣ ಮೊಟ್ಟೆ ಒಡೆದು
ಪುಟ್ಟ ಹುಳುವಾಗಿ
ಗಿಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಎಲೆ ತಿಂದು
ಮಲಗಿಬಿಟ್ಟಿದ್ದೆ

ಎದ್ದು ಕಂಡರೆ ಸುತ್ತ
ಚೀಲ ಒಂದಿತ್ತು
ಒದರಿ ಬಂದೆ
ನಾನು ಚಿಟ್ಟೆಯಾಗಿದ್ದೆ

ಕಾಡ ಹಾಡು

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 02:07:49 +0530

ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಇಲ್ಲ
ಪುಕ್ಕ ಇಲ್ಲ
ಬಣ್ಣ ಬಣ್ಣದ
ಚಿಟ್ಟೆ ಇಲ್ಲ

ಜಿಂಕೆ ಮೇಯೋ
ಹುಲ್ಲೂ ಇಲ್ಲ
ಜಿಂಕೆ ಇಲ್ಲ
ಜಿಗಿತ ಇಲ್ಲ

ಹಾವೂ ಇಲ್ಲ
ಹುಲಿಯೂ ಇಲ್ಲ
ನೀರೂ ಇಲ್ಲ
ನದಿಯೂ ಇಲ್ಲ

ಇರುವ ಕಾಡನ್ನುಳಿಸದಿದ್ದರೆ
ನಾನೂ ಇಲ್ಲ
ನೀನೂ ಇಲ್ಲ

ಬಾದಾಮಿ

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 02:04:34 +0530

ಬಾ ದಾಮಿನಿ
ನನ್ನ ಕಂಗಳ ಹೊಳಪು ನೀ
ನನ್ನೆದೆಯೊಳೊಂದು ಮಿಂಚು ನೀ
ಆಗು ನನ್ನ ಸಂಗಾತಿ
ನನ್ನ ಪ್ರೀತಿಯ ಪಾಯಸದಲಿ
ತೇಲಿಸುವೆ ಮುಳುಗಿಸುವೆ
ಬಾದಾಮಿ ನೀ

Worlds of Their Own

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 01:49:28 +0530

Winged termites seeking the divine lights.
Frogs feasting on foolish flies.
A snake, sneaking in the shadows, for a frog meal.

And those philosophical stars,
Finding naught of much significance,
Continue gazing the universe.

— rawjeev

Missing

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 01:44:36 +0530

A haiku

I found you at last
Unbeknownst what I had lost
A poem gone missing

Not a haiku

Didn’t know what I was searching
till I found you again
a poem gone missing

I liked the archaic feel of ‘Unbeknownst’ in the haiku. I had never used that word, it just came to me mysteriously.

Passion, Time

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 01:34:43 +0530

Us in each other’s arms
Wild passion burning
Molten past and future draining into oblivion
The now, stretched to the horizon
Longing to be eternity
— rawjeev

5 to 7

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 01:17:31 +0530

Grinning, chuckling
Cheek bones sweetly aching
We watched ‘‘5 to 7’’ from 4 to 6

Baya weavers at dawn

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 00:07:00 +0530