Shree: Nourishment

Shree: Nourishment

Every environment from personal (mindscape) to collective offers nourishment for the mind – what signals it perceives, how it decodes and what it decides to propose as action and finally how it engages. Reality in a nut shell may be seen as mindscape and nothing else more than that. So whatever one perceives as good or bad in any situation “out there” is actually within one self. Remove the dirt within and there will not be any measure of the same outside.

The other day at home, we were discussing issues of elders and what can be done to address their issues – socially, culturally perhaps and architecturally.

I was reminded of an experience of Vancouver. Situation of Vancouver has come to a point which can be stated as everyone is an island – routine is extremely individually driven; planning for numerous activities is different and unique for each individual; there are billion “tasks” that one is engaged with since there seems no one to rely on for “sharing” of any activities. Our personal activity or bucket list itself is overflowing to an extent that nothing can be said or offloaded or shared or contemplated with anyone else and this creates a permanent self absorption or occupation with tasks and the anxiety if something gets missed. There may be many people physically, but mentally each one is a closed bounded mindscape. The entry to this mindscape of the individual is tightly guarded and what goes within does not come out and what happens “out” (which is not of any collective concern anyway as the situation is) – is interpreted very individualistically by each person. This brings a fundamental equation that shared spaces “outside” (regarding values, environment, culture, society) also indicates shared spaces “inside”. If the spaces “inside” each person talks of individual world views, then there is no place left for any common shared collective space of any kind – the “outside” has permanently become fractured! This means what one is saying is continuously subjected to logic, discussion, debate, arguments, evaluations but NOT necessarily compassion or empathy (that goes beyond individual identity and encompasses the collective).

Any field - say architecture, archaeology, engineering is supposed to respond (also) to the collective and not just the individual. Irony is that this has to be explicit agenda nowadays, else the output is expressed in terms of some mundane desires or by some whims and fancies of people in positions of power and that itself does not say much of the society at large.

Coming back to nourishment, what are the values that the society is practicing? A few centuries ago, we had expressions of ideograms that took generations to form (YinYan or the Dharmachakra as examples) and this concept of collective ideogram would now appear too remote perhaps.

If a kid is subjected to mass of people who have created their own islands of aspirations throughout his/her life – what character will he/she grow up in? Is there anybody “available” emotionally or psychologically for his/her nourishment of mental health or is he/she left out to fend for himself/ herself and make numerous choices and be consumed by overflowing bucket lists for his/her entire lifetime? Is life only an unending rounds of bucket lists or “to-do” lists? Look at the environment around us. Signages, surveillance systems, AIs, sterilized environments, packed busy routines, hyper anxieties, mechanized envelopes or architectural volumes, environmental degradation – does not it say anything about our internal mindscape?

The Government promises its elderly population that they need not “worry” and stay in government managed and paid Old Age Homes (in any case taxes have already been recovered long time back by the government from the same person when he/she was in a position to work). Does this “solve” the problem of loneliness and empathy for the elders? By giving all facilities and having best maintenance facilities and descent architectural environments – does the problem of mindscape get addressed in such individualistic societies when the upbringing of people have been groomed in a certain way wherein the idea or the need of empathy has just been lost? Too tragic, to put it in one way.

Feelings and understanding and acceptance – these dimensions of the mind require a certain kind of interaction and environment to develop and these are very important aspects of human being of any gender and age. Certain societies offer this nourishment more than other societies, it seems. This also has relationship with density, climate/ weather and geographical location on the globe. Certain dimensions of the mind introspect, they dwell on one idea or a set of ideas, they contemplate, they laterally take inspiration from other sources and they too face dilemmas and they need time to “sort themselves” again. Certain thoughts expand to encompass the total environment and the rate of change when encompassing this scale of perception is slow. Are we conscious of what is being created as a mindscape in the environment in which we live and perceive? Are we conscious of the relationship of mindscape with the landscape?  

Busyness and multitasking and extremely packed routine isn’t something to be celebrated, if it ends up mistrusting and abusing the self and people and environment.

The question needs to be taken still deep down till we come face to face with what we are as phenomenon. First of all, I am a human being and I don’t have answers to everything. Then there is something called as doing a thing beyond a limited purpose without any apparent reason (to remain unconditional). There is something called as vibrations that make up our mind and body. What we consider as life, is an imagination that is brought into existence by being identified with movement or vibrations. Imagination itself is reality and this changes. There is no such thing as control or expectations or what can be done to arrive at a perfect situation and hence any system has constraints with a lot of dependence on changes. Despite this reality, the presence of divinity is real and which we too have a seed of this dimension. I am made of divine unconditional medium of eternal existence and hence I will eventually dissolve (and rightly so).

This understanding does not develop overnight and perhaps not in one lifetime. How it develops and when is a mystery. The idea is that external control of any kind (or any attachment and resistance of change and any perception) has no concrete answers in terms of routine or fulfillment of desires. What and why do we run and should we in fact be running at all? And by running what are we achieving and is that permanently attained? All these are questions to be dealt with and that also comfortably without any guilt or regret or fear.

There is no greater reality than that of divine presence in us and life. I may not be anybody and the world may not know me at all and my actions may appear extremely foolish to many, but I cannot forget God and accept the fact that HE is the One and the only reality – all else is only incidentally an effect of His presence. We do not know the entire story neither the trigger for this illusion, but He is real and He is to be trusted for everything that happens in our lives and to us.

Hari Om.