A noisier route to salvation!

Originally Posted by Sriniketan

Cheeniya Sir,
This article of yours reminded me of a story where Naradha was told by Lord Vishnu that the person living on earth is more devoted to Him than Narada and proved that by giving him a small utensil full of oil and told Narada that not to be spilled and also to chant His name as usual, which Narada cannot make it and accepted that, in spite of all the chaos on earth and around him, the average person at least chanted His name once in a while.
to people living on earth!

sriniketan

Dear Sri
That story of Narada is a great favourite of mine which has a lot of significance viv-a-vis our stress filled modern life. That God does not go by pomp and show alone is also told in another story. When Arjuna takes a stroll along the heavens, he sees a number of carts carrying flowers. When he asks one of them whence these flowers have come, he is told that it is all Bhima's. Arjun is surprised because he knows that Bhima never indulged in extensive poojas like him but offered only one rose to the Lord daily. A few moments later he sees an old man carrying a small basket of withered flowers on his head. He comes to know from the old man that it is Arjuna's own offering to the Lord. Arjuna realises that flowers do not make a pooja nor loud chanting of mantras and the Lord values only prayers from the bottom of the heart!
Sri

Originally Posted by Malathijagan

Dear Cheeniya Sir,
Yes, if we are not at peace with ourselves, noise or no noise, life would be a hell. And you observation about middle class Indian is very true! One of our great leaders was also intolerant to noise during his lectures like the Ustad you had mentioned.
Regards,
Malathi

Dear Malathi
Once my Guru told me that Ambal doing penance standing on Her toe on the tip of a needle in the middle of a raging fire is emulated day in and day out by many of our middle class housewives! When we laughed, he admonished us saying he was not joking but telling us the story of our own mothers and how they raised us.
Sri

Originally Posted by anandchitra

Dear Cheeniya Sir
Hats off for another great thread.
I think our environment and noise levels go hand in hand. It used to be that when I had exams the corner shop would have some event to celebrate and had all his speakers out to go through the night as loudly as they could play music. Needless to say it kep me company while "mugging" up for all the exams. Here there's scarcely any sound but my son sits inside his room to study for exams and my going up and down the stairs is noisy for him!!! But on second thoughts imagine the noise such a heavyweight woman has to move going up and down stairs..so that is too much noise!?? So since being brought up with all those speakers blaring and all the horns honking now I have to have music blaring to do regular household work and cooking!! BTW when I do cooking I have my dh sitting nearby and his chatter is good music too
Looks like I too have made enough "visual" noise replying..Do I hear you saying .. So theres hope for noisy people like me!!!.......

Dear AC
A good point well made! The entire universe came into being with a Big Bang and noise has been part of our life eversince. You are aware that our planet is revolving on its own axis at over 1000 miles per hour and imagine the noise it would make considering the racket our mixies create in our kitchen! We have heard this noise for millions of years and have become immune to it!
If you are used to noise of any kind , living without it can be a veritable hell. Similarly if you are used to absolute silence, even a little noise made by a liberally endowed person going up and down the stairs can be quite disconcerting!
Nice to know you are a noisy person. I feel more drawn to you now than ever before!
Sri

Originally Posted by Chitvish

Dear Sri,
I warn you, this is akin to my culture post !
Sound energy is very auspicious in our culture and does occupy a unique place.
A pregnant woman is supposed to listen to good soft music since it soothes the baby.
We sing lullabies & do a lot of "baby-talking" even to the new born because we strongly believe the effect of the same on the baby.
If somebody is sick at home, we believe in chanting mantras loudly. We always believe sound drives away negative energy (besides very often, our fear!).
In temples mantras are chanted and very often we feel peaceful after a temple visit. There is a spiritual vibration, which we cannot see, but feel.
We ring the bell in the morning and evening at home to invite virtuous and noble forces to enter our heart and homeand mark the departure of destructive and evil forces.

This holds good for any music - be it Binaca Geetmala in which background you studied or Radio Ceylon with Mayilvahanan which was my favourite !

Well, finally, can't help writing that having lived an entire life with a very, very quiet man, I love noise & crave for the same. That seems to inject life in me.
Love,
Chithra.

Dear Chithra
That is a stout defence of all the noise you make!
Nice to know that you are a fan of Mayilvahanan. An entire generation grew on his voice and that of Ameen Sayani!
Lullabies sung in the lilting voices of Vani Jayaram, Asha or Latha may have a soothing and benevolent effect on the infants but what of people like Paravai Muniyamma?
Too much noise in our worship whip up a kind of frenzy which I personally think does not bring much credit to us. And when we see how such frenzied acts affect our gullible people, we feel sad indeed!
Thanks for letting us know what causes such a craving for noise in you. Would be interesting to know what his craving will be!
Sri

Originally Posted by anandchitra

Dear CheensSir
I only have ONE doubt!
Did somebody drive somebody to become very, very quiet with their craving for noise?

Dear AC
You beat Sherlock Holmes hollow by your deducing capabilities!
Sri

Originally Posted by shanvy

Dear Sri,

A thought provoking piece. I think we need a new definition for noise now...

Noise is a curse sometimes and a boon at lot of times...

Think of a new born baby sleeping and there goes a 1000 wala,then it is... and when there is a thief robbing you, you make a noise, that is a boon..same goes when there is noise when you are walking alone on a lonely street late night....

I like silence, being a loner to an extent.....but veda loves noise(unless he is watching a movie or reading his favorite book).... I love soothing melodies...my kids like to hear all those new blaring also.. ..God knows what is the decibel that our ear can withstand in this new era of noise pollution...

Noise is maddening when you are in for a mri and the hammer pounding like noise during the process..is a nightmare..at the same time, the noise of the heart beat of a fetus inside the womb during a ultrasound is so fascinating and dreamy...nothing in the world can compare with that experience....

The simple trick i follow, when i am disturbed by the noise retreat into myself...it does not effect me.....unless it is blaring from a loud speaker into my ears...

But, the rhythmic chanting of om does help in controlling your heart beat, as the acoustics work on your body...and it has been proved and is being proved....

The new gen music is more on the lines..lots of noise lot of takers..add to it the confusion to decipher the lyrics....

Lot of artists do get irritated when disturbed during a performance...i feel the moment it would be better if they start performing for themselves also instead of for the audience alone.........

We used to have a lecturer who used to get irritated if somebody talked..I always wondered if he forgot...the lecture he had prepared...

Dear Shanthi
A very useful value addition to my thread from you as usual. Both sound and light have all the characteristics that you have mentined. Sound can be both beneficial and harmful as light can be.
I remember that in one of Peter Sellers' Pink Panther series, the villain makes the victim to speak by scraching a nail on a large piece of tin sheet!
The 1000 wala while a new born is sleeping is a very cruel example! My grand daughter was born on Diwali morning and the amount of precaution that we had to take to protect her from the noise!
As a child I used to get frightened by thunder and my mother made me chant Arjuna's name to overcome the fright!
I have gone through that horrible MRI experience a few months back and I entirely agree with you. We have to put up with it for our own good!
I used to get irritated by the pounding of my own heart at times as result of a bad stomach or indigestion. But I never want it to stop because its noise disturbs me at times!
Sri

Originally Posted by Vidya24

Cheeniyasir,

I am one of those who require absolute stillness to focus, but I long for the day when I will be able to concentrate on my task regardless of the din outside of me. To me, that stilling of the mind would be true sadhana! A quietly contemplative piece by you! And I must say, it is wonderful to be able to reply to your lead post without any chatter drowning its gravity.

In the silent movie,'Pushpak'; Kamalhassan would record the cacaphony in his chawl and play it in the tranquil luxury of his five star hotel to lull him to sleep. I myself cannot sleep unless my husband is snoring off to glory, when he is away the silence keeps me awake all night. Bombay is full of success stories of young people who made it to IIT and UDCT studying amidst the Ganpathi utsavs in one room 'blocks'.

Recently, I had the fortune to visit Sunday service in a regular African church. When I say 'regular', I mean a service attended by locals and not the expatriates. Honestly, the atmostphere inside the church was deafening. The choir were gaily attired, clapping hands loudly, the organ blared to good heavens, the worshippers also sang in full throat. There were screams of faith, loud admonishments from the pastor- it was a din. In between, an infant slept peacefully, an old man adjusted his hearing aid every now and then. That was one form of expression of faith, just as were the silent and coded lyrics of the Negro spirituals. Amazing, how decibels can change while faith does not!

Shanvy's reply was equally profound too. Amazing how she can consistently keep producing good replies to your consistently good posts.

Dear Vidya
Like the famed Kurinji flower, your FBs bloom at long intervals and when they bloom, they take the center stage! I love the para 3 particularly. It is a poem expressed in prose! The infant sleeping peacefully and the old man adjusting his hearing aid through all the din present a vivid picture of whatever I try to convey through my laboured essay.

You are right about that Kamal Hassan scene in Pushpak where he stresses the value of noise through silence! That and the Bombay boys show that if you grow up in noise, then noise is a must for your growth.

Shanvy is growing in stature day by day as an ace Feedbacker! Just this evening, I was trying to gather some vital info from the net in order to post my comments on a serious thread but before posting it, I went through other FBs and found that Shanvy had covered all the points I was trying to convey! I quietly withdrew from the scene!
Sri

Dear Cheeniya Sir,

For a lay housewife like me to whom Nirvana and Zen are distant words, noise and sound really depends on my moods.

My husband is a good singer. One day he comes home with a gift of a perfume that I had been eyeing for long. I am all happy and offer him a strong cup of filter coffee with the right levels of sugar and milk. He croons "Jaaneman jaaneman mere do nayan..." and I tell him - "Why don't you take your singing seriously....you sound so close to Kishore Kumar."

A couple of days later we are having an argument as to whether we should be watching Desperate Housewives or the History Channel. He wins and I meekly retreat into the kitchen. After the show, I hear him sing "Aanewala pal jaanewala hai.....". I scream out - "Will you stop singing...even Himesh Reshamiyya sounds better than you!!"....followed by a loud thud of banging the pressure cookers lid.

The Ustad probably must have been still caught in the whirlpool of a householder that he could not immerse himself in his art.

Someday if I find the Bodhi tree and if I traverse on the path of Nirvana and if I find that elusive inner focus, then I will remember - Is this the inner focus that Cheeniya Sir wrote about. Till then I will immerse myself in the sounds of my home and neighbourhood.

Phew….You do take us to places Cheensaar! I enjoyed the journey from the heights of the Himalayan peaks to the din of our cities where the common man lives! All to the accompaniment of ‘chiselled aesthetics’ of Bombay Jayashree!

You are very right, it all boils down to what one is used to. The Zen monk sustains in his quiet serenity and even an utterance once a decade makes him flutter. Whereas, such a quiet atmosphere might even kill our Bombay city dweller who knows not what hit him! One of the most common reasons the visiting parents from India to the west give as a reason for their dislike to live here is…nothing ever happens here..everything is soooo quiet, no hawkers, no street songs, no autorikshaws…in plain language..no noise!

I cannot say that anyone visiting our house could complain though. At one time, hubby’s study would be resounding the saxophone he so loves, my kitchen would reverberate with Lata’s love songs or MSS’s heart wrenching vocals and then there would be the rocking-headbanging beats of some Grammy winners…yes, two of them, emanating from our daughters’ rooms! I am sure, the Bombay dweller would prefer his street to our house!! I dread to think of the Zen monk:)

As usual, enjoyed these thoughts of yours immensely. As a late comer, I get the bonus of enjoying others’ fbs too, which are equally enthralling. You are so right about Vidya, her prose is poetry in true sense. Equally enjoyed Shanvy’s and Nivedhi’s fbs too.

All in all, this is an enriching forum!

L, Kamla

Originally Posted by nivedi

Dear Cheeniya Sir,

For a lay housewife like me to whom Nirvana and Zen are distant words, noise and sound really depends on my moods.

My husband is a good singer. One day he comes home with a gift of a perfume that I had been eyeing for long. I am all happy and offer him a strong cup of filter coffee with the right levels of sugar and milk. He croons "Jaaneman jaaneman mere do nayan..." and I tell him - "Why don't you take your singing seriously....you sound so close to Kishore Kumar."

A couple of days later we are having an argument as to whether we should be watching Desperate Housewives or the History Channel. He wins and I meekly retreat into the kitchen. After the show, I hear him sing "Aanewala pal jaanewala hai.....". I scream out - "Will you stop singing...even Himesh Reshamiyya sounds better than you!!"....followed by a loud thud of banging the pressure cookers lid.

The Ustad probably must have been still caught in the whirlpool of a householder that he could not immerse himself in his art.

Someday if I find the Bodhi tree and if I traverse on the path of Nirvana and if I find that elusive inner focus, then I will remember - Is this the inner focus that Cheeniya Sir wrote about. Till then I will immerse myself in the sounds of my home and neighbourhood.

Dear Nivedi
Traditionally all knowledge is supposed to flow from elders to youngsters but there have been a few exceptions to this accepted belief. Lord Siva is known to have learnt His lesson from His younger Son, Lord Subramanya. Adi Sankara was hardly out of his teens when he propounded the Advaitha Philosophy. Swami Vivekananda made Hinduism a globally admired religion through His lectures when men of his age were prospecting for brides!
When I read your fb, I could align you with the young teachers of yore. I bow to you for opening my mind to yet another dimension of inner peace vis a vis outer chaos. In writing my thread, I had confined myself only to a mindset conditioned by a long association with a particular living condition. That an allowance must also be given to our mood swings is yet another dimension indeed.
In fact, I too can readily relate to it. When I am in a highly pleasant mood, all the din that my grandchildren cause is music to my ears but the same din makes me give them a bit of my mind when I am in a foul mood! Fortunately these mood swings are purely a passing phenomenon.
The quietude that we seek outside is going to be increasingly elusive. We have no option but to seek it from within!
Sri