All Fool's Day

All Fool’s Day

Whatever may be, it’s my doing,
by choice or by force, that I forget;
my rush ends it in half-hearted doing
and in endless strife I am caught.


In my fear of loosing my doing
no moment spared to stop and look
from all sides around, inside out,
at all levels, in all dimensions:


much of it I am ignorant.
On the fast track of one dimension
never knew when I lost myself;
never realised I am the means;


and I am the end. A product, an idea,
a thought, an act, or a concept
in time is perishable and transient:
no sooner born belongs to the past.


In stagnant water all actions stink.
But waters of life are always flowing,
condensing, evaporating, raining,
reflecting; that’s the nature of water,


of life born in water, but not my doing.
In looking at doing, the doing ceases.
At the core of ocean prevails
Silence pregnant with new life.
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Remigius de Souza
(26 March 2004)




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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Senses and SenseAbility: Sex-as-a-Sense

Senses and SenseAbility: Sex-as-a-Sense
By Remigius de Souza

Illustration: shows Design by Nature striped to bones shows differences in the skeletons of man and woman. It is only now that the scientists are realising what they so far thought human brain is one is wrong. There are two human brains that of man and woman, reports Hannah Hoag, science writer from Montreal, Canada (“Sex on the brain”, New Scientist, 19 July 2008). Mystery of body deepens.

Sex is a Sense: Its organs are male and female genitals; their functions are cleansing by urination (for both sexes) and menstruation (on puberty for female), and on maturity in union of both sexes the procreation for the survival of the species. The function of procreation or propagation is present by variation of Design by Nature in all the life-forms.

I have not come across any scientist, sociologist, anthropologist, linguist or economist ever considered “Sex as a Sense” (whatever little that I have heard or read). It may be so because of their religious taboos that have become a habit?

In this regard, of course, it is least expected from the religious of many popular brand faiths for whom ‘sex’ is a taboo, though it is dominant on their minds: The topic is expelled from all polite talk; forget they would recognize “Sex is a Sense”. For them “sex” is sinful. Hence the “Sex-Sense” is religiously expelled from the recognized senses and dictionaries! (Remember ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ by D. H. Lawrence that was banned!)

No! We are not talking about the “sex of hedonism” that prevails in the so-called advanced and civilized societies, where prostitution and sexual crimes are rampant, which also receive abundant attention of the media. The developing civilized societies are no exception, for example, the Third World India.

This is obvious fallout of the creation of limitless wealth and waste by Industrial Civilization. Fallout also includes population explosion. And the institutionalized religions cannot do anything about it.

Otherwise, adivasis – aborigine – communities who adore vagina and phallus, neither have prostitution nor population explosion, unless forced by the civilized powerful classes/castes.

Sex being a primal force, sex as a sense has place in Intuition, i.e. the Sixth Sense. Why then it is not recognized and added to the five senses?

I do not know the history of who, why, when, where and how this vital sense was expelled from the popular (populated) religions (if it was ever there) and languages? Yes, I come across news that a lot of research goes on sex-related issues in science labs, either on mice or men.

During my adolescence I was working with a Spanish priest–architect in Mumbai, as an apprentice for a year. On his bookshelf there was a book of measured drawings of classical Greek and Roman architecture. The drawings of buildings also showed sculptures in bass relief of naked men and women on the building surface. This puritan man had cut with skilled scissors 1mm x 1mm pieces of plain paper and meticulously pasted them on the breasts and genitals.

Where I was born and brought up in my native village in Konkan Region – one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world – there was sex every where: dogs, cats, cattle, snakes, flies, hens, frogs… We kids often saw the mating of cow and bull, birth of a calf…

There are innumerable nude sculptures on thousands of temples across India, for example, Khajuaraho Temples. Without knowing the significance western scholars and art critics interpreted them as obscene, erotic, pornographic…

Indian mind has understood the paradox in the genitals – Yoni (vagina) and Lingam (phallus) – Sacred and Profane, for millennia. They even worship them. The Warli tribe in the backyard of Mumbai, likewise many other tribes and cults, worship Fertility Goddess.

However, in modern India, fundamentalist sections of Indian society get touchy and even violent on artistic expressions that depict nude. Perhaps they too are influenced by the slavery under the Firangi’s rule, teachings by Christian Missionaries and Victorian values of morality.

Procreation is certainly a function of genitals. However it is not the cause of population explosion, as is often implied by the vested interests. The real cause is the exploitation of the poor and the powerless of the societies at local as well as global levels by the powerful by military and wealth.

It has been going on for millennia of feudal powers. It continues now at accelerated rate, since the rise of Industrial Civilization in the West and imitated in other regions. It is not only the poor humans but even the insect population is on rise due to global war on insects. The immediacy of the survival of the species comes through Homeostasis – “the wisdom of the body”, not economics.

The experts and specialists in various disciplines of knowledge, the statesmen and politicians and world leaders are either ignorant of this fundamental principle, or ignore it because of their weakness and vested interests. The powerful are the most insecure species (!) amongst humans.

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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Senses and SenseAbility: Sixth Sense

Senses and SenseAbility: Sixth Sense
By Remigius de Souza

Bruce Durie mentioned in passing in his article “Doors of Perceptions” (New scientist, 29 January 2005, p. 34-36) ‘…Some things commonly labelled a “sense” are no such things – a sense of loss, having a sixth sense…’ The term “Sense of loss” is clearly a literary phrase.
But “sixth sense’, or “intuition”, or “inner voice”, or call it whatever you may like, we can’t say, is “no such thing”, only because we can’t put it in a laboratory test-tube, or we don’t perceive it, or experience it or we don’t want to listen. Dr. Deepak Chopra defines intuition as “heightened perception” (that I heard in one of his audio cassettes). In other words, intuition or perception could be developed, by any person – rich or poor, educated or illiterate, of white or black-brown-yellow races, civilised or aborigine.

Such an argument is typical by the scholarship or expertise that goes on single tract. This is also typical of the advance societies of missing the direction: a “circular path”, which enables to reach back to “value” to all human beings and all the living beings.

However, Mark Buchanan concludes his article “A billion brains are better than one: a single microbe won’t have much to say for itself. But put a lot of them together and it’s a different story” (New Scientist, November 20, 2004, p 34-37), with following words:

‘As we find out more, we will perceive microbes as more like ourselves, or
discover the roots of our own social behaviour in the supposedly “simple”
microbial world. Perhaps our ability to talk and communicate, to form teams and
root out and punish the freeloaders, goes all the way back to our days as
bacteria.’

Among bacteria, however, there are different species; human are one species irrespective of colour, race, religion, nationality, patriotism, etc. The world of bacteria gives us clues to how DEMOCRACY should function, which is not developed with thousands of years of civilised society. Of course, the aborigine tribes function in democratic way even to this date, despite all the atrocities caused by the civilised societies over a period of time. Democracy is still languishing in the chaotic conditions created by the past barbarian feudal powers that now lead by a new garb called “leadership” – a new avatar of centralised power within the so-called democratic nations.

To reach the democratic level of “simple” bacterial world is a tall order achieve for the so-called democratic states in contemporary times.

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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Gandhism (गांधीवाद): Marathi Poem

Gandhism

Gandhiji wore loincloth of Khadi
We patronise marketed Khadi
That’s our limit of Gandhism –
Don’t shed crocodile’s tears.

02.10.2008
(Translated from the original by the author)

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गांधीवाद

गांधीजी पंचा नेसत होते.
आम्ही बाजारू खादी नेसतो.
ही आमची गांधीवादाची मर्यादा --
नक्राश्रू ढाळू नकोस.

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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Senses and SenseAbility – 7: Seeing

Senses and SenseAbility – 7: Seeing

SENSE OF SEEING is the function of eye. Seeing, when one is looking, witnessing, going beyond a cursory glance, reveals many facets of an event. Perhaps one may discover roots of some great event in an ordinary one. Fr example, Galileo watching a chandelier swing back and forth at the Cathedral of Pisa or Newton looking at the falling apple, or Dronacharya (of Epic Mahabharata) demands a thumb from Ekalavya as his fees [a dakshina or deed of gratitude] for being an absentee guru.

The descendants of Ekalavya, the Bhil tribe do not use their thumb even to this day. This is his living memorial that signifies Aryan atrocities on the aborigine communities. The aborigine, then, though assimilated in the Aryan society, its purpose was to add a service class, which was identified as Shudra caste. Even in the free democratic India the discrimination continues. In the era of Industrialization in India the peasants are now facing the onslaught of elimination. In the last decade, between 1997 and 2005 about 150,000 farmers have committed suicides (Ishwari Prasad, “Significance of Farmers’ Suicide”, Janata, Vol. 69, No. 32, August 31, 2008, p. 3-8, Mumbai), one of the reasons is farming is no more sustainable.

Such a seeing or watching or witnessing also combines other senses. The whole body becomes an eye, as in archery, which has iconic dimensions in eastern cultures. Or for example, a cricketer who throws or hits a ball: be alert or miss the target.

Observing (without malice, likes-dislikes, taboos or judgments) during even the ordinary routines such as, seating, reading, eating-drinking, walking, traveling etc. or watching the people watching TV, the ordinary activity of seeing becomes an action, which could be a creative action.

Such an action, which involves self and the outside, has values of entertainment (leisure) and education both. No investment. No time schedule. No rules and regulations. No legal curbs (in case you don’t intrude in other’s privacy). No losses in time-money-health… on the contrary, by being alert the senses become sharp.

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Scientists say all animals received vision some 540 million years before now (identified as Cambrian Explosion); they were in the sea then. It is said the vision brought great change in their lives also: the conflict between the pray and the predator accelerated (see: Andrew Parker, ‘In the Blink of an Eye’). “Pikaia”, our remote ancestor, survived: thus we are.

In modern times the sense – vision – has overtaken even other senses. ET-IT has taken this change to great heights. We live more and more in virtual reality than ever before through canned visuals, canned music, canned games, canned wars, canned education… on cell phones, computers, TV screens… The worst victims are the youngest, younger and young generations in the increasing proportions. The poor little ones, who have not yet seen even a smallest fraction of real world, are trapped by the game called virtual reality. It is happening before our eyes but we don’t see or notice it.

A few decades ago the children were provided with toy-guns and toy-cars. Now as they grow a little they are with violent games in the Vice City or Road Rash or Sports of cricket or football etc. on the TV mast, and quietly Porn enters…

Neither parents (citizens) nor educationists nor the planners, and never the governments of any brand, dogma, right or left or fundamentalist ever think of play grounds for the children of different ages within their neighborhoods. And they boast of holding Asian Games and Olympics: indeed the height of hypocrisy.

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A true story of an extreme case of a computer-nerd

“Y”, a young man, is, or now was, a student of engineering in second year. His father – a professional engineer, mother – a high school teacher, sister – a medical student. Y spends hours on computer, almost an addict, many a times late at night, while other family members are fast sleep. (I don’t know what he was looking at, and don’t want to know). His eye sight was very low from childhood. On one fateful day, or perhaps night, Y’s both the eyes started bleeding profusely, it was a hemorrhage. The veins busted. There is no remedy. Y is permanently blind. I don’t give the names for obvious reason. Hid kin should have informed all their contacts and the public about the gory incidence as a warning and caution. Precisely because the cause is absolutely foolish, though unfortunate and sad it may be. The educated could be ignorant in many, many ways.

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Vision – inner vision, light, an eye, eyesight etc. – has been a subject of visionaries and scientists, of metaphysics and scientific discoveries… There are a great number of volumes on vision written by scientists and pundits; great schools of theories have been founded; great monuments have been erected.

Yet vision is still elusive, still a mystery, and the mystery deepens with every invention… Reading about them my eyes have gone foggy, but in vain. No salvation. What am I to do? In my ordinary life I must find my own answers. When I took and followed an advice and took a curative measure I saw the ‘Rainbows’.

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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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