For once, this is not about Army Camp! I came up with the camp theme. That is shorthand for a "million different occurrences conspired together resulting in an email being sent, bearing the name Chinmaya, telling Samyuktha to settle on that theme for a camp". I like shorthands.

The camp started out with quite an adventure. It started out with two disappointments. Gladly, I wasn't too shaken by them and held on to my "how can I make this fun?" mantra. With regards to the second one, I got the wrong directions and got lost and ended up here:


It is an abandoned landscaping agency or something.


Then ran down the slope in the next picture. I forgot I wasn't in my army boots. The grass is a few inched high.

As I watched the movie, I picked out a bunch of thoughts which appealed to me.

During the american football game which the dude keeps getting knocked down repeatedly, his dad exclaims "You sure got guts but you gotta know when to quit".

With reference to the boy finding inspiration from the launch of Sputnik, his dad again comments, "What are they accomplishing anyway, it's nothing but a stunt". It hit me especially hard since I'm a magician and all that we do are simply stunts. However, by that simplistic view, would life saving surgery be reduced to just educated sleight-of-hand?

On another occasion, someone asks Homer, "You don't give up do you?" To which he answers, "I can't"

When he is about to approach the "nerd friend" during lunch break and his friends remind him about his impending drop in social status due to other's perception of his actions, he remarks "Who cares what any of them think?" (Note to self)

I believe when he's at a nightclub with another guy dancing with his favourite girl (don't need special efforts to empathise with that) the song in the background goes something like "Many a tear has to fall but its all in the game. Many a wonderful game."

Those are pretty much my significant highlights of the movie. Draw your own meanings from them.

In essence, I think what the games taught us can be summed up in a (slightly twisted) interpretation of VI:35 of the Bhagavad Geeta :

Undoubtedly, O mighty armed, it is very difficult to control the ever moving mind. However, O son of Kunti, through sincere practice and dispassionate detachment (vairagya), it can be achieved.

Source: http://www.hinduwebsite.com/gita6.asp

The answer to many of our inabilities lies in practice. Mastery is then acheived when this sincere practice (with sufficient experience) is coupled with a sense of detachment. Try it in your endeavours.

When it comes to awareness practice, I realised that my mind needs to be tired out a little before I can acheive that state. During the walk, my mind was kind of hyper and that blocked out the fear. I personally do not rationally belive in the supernatural. But the instincts are quite strong (I'll get to this later on). Even the army didn't let me get wet like I did that day. It was fun and we were high spirited at the end.

Regarding Shiva's face, O Vaidehi (this sounds soo like Ramayan. Vaidehi is another name of Sita), he popped an anti-histamine and had the control to not scratch. (I miss him =/ )

One of the lessons I could have learnt was how a saint's mood/cheerfulness is typically independent of their health. I was falling sick so didn't feel like playing too much. Everyone probably agreed and didn't bother me much. I just watched =/.

Apart from meditation, Swamiji gave us a talk about Hinduism. It was not totally new to me but I know you guys would have learnt alot from it. He put his points across nicely. (At this point my inner atheist wants to say something but that is for another post). Perhaps you might want to check out "Who is a Hindu?" by Koenraad Elst right here Its scholarly and dense but very eye opening.

By the way, here is my pencil case. I wrote those words with fabric paint around the time when I was fifteen :



The sentiment is still there deep inside. And the bigger picture?


Recall that Swamiji said something along the lines of "when a religion reaches a certain level of maturity and is finally accomodating of all levels of society, you get Hinduism". I shared my thoughts about convergent evolution. Ill make it clearer here. Convergent evolution is said to have happened when two different species, due to the need to adapt to the same environment, evolve the exact same kinds of features. Perhaps a bunch of images will make this clearer (omniscient wikipedia).


The top one is a Humming Bird. The bottom one a hummingbird moth. You can find other examples too and sociologists would also tell you about such parallels when it comes to different cultures.

While having a late morning tea, I had an extended conversation with HariOm, but that too is a topic for another post.

For me I think, the Zip Line or Flying Fox was an opportunity to consolidate alot of things which I learnt. It brought out my nurturing instincts. I felt very fulfilled everytime I helped someone off the cable and back on stable ground. Not a huge deal but warm and fuzzy nonetheless. Also about fear. When I showed Roshni a magic trick (which I had not practised so well), she noticed my hands trembling a little and asked me about it. That trembling is caused by the fear of getting caught. Even experienced magicians get it once in a while. When I was on the tower, Rohini was behind me, she showed me her hand and it was the exact same trembling. Its very much an instinct. I have been in this situation alot of times, when performing a new (risque) trick in front of a sceptical audience or (erhem) chatting up a *nice* stranger on the bus. One of the most effective solution, is to not analyse the situation, as much as people might tell you that analysing will convince you how baseless your fear is an will help you overcome it. The analysis is to be done before the fear sets in so you have an improved awareness of it. A product of this should be an action plan, however simplistic.

When you are at the top of the tower, perhaps you should not be telling yourself how safe the tower is, whether you have done it before, that *God* is there to save you etc. The single pointed thought should be "JUMP". Try it the next time you are afraid. Focus on the next step and plunge into action. I would bring your attention to what Vaidehi said in her post "Disclaimer, this does not apply to injections of any sort - they are all just as evil as you fear they are going to be."

I beg to differ. It applies to injections as well. Take it from me, I've had thick needles poked into my arms repeatedly, not to inject painkillers, but for my buddy's "target practice". When being injected, I tell myself to simply be aware of the pain, and although it does not reduce it in anyway, it becomes surreal. Fundamentally, all the knowledge you get from your spiritual quest should be liberally applied everywhere in your life. The reason why I keep saying "that sounds alot like a magic trick" is because I have learnt so much from performing and creating magic that I feel it has enriched my life as a whole. During Kokila's Win-Win game, you might recall me adding that "we did not think in that manner because we were operating on a set of hidden assumptions", no prizes for guessing where I learnt that from. You will not get the link immediately but that doesn't mean I'll explain it further my revealing how I did that trick =P.

Cheers.
I hope you learnt and enjoyed the camp as much as I did.