the audience

If I have to prove all my thoughts and actions

to an imaginary audience in my mind

and I have picked up a habit of analyzing

everything comes across my way always,

I am missing out something really precious.

running commentary

We judge,

analyze, compare and comment on

people, objects, places and incidents

always, all the time...

If I say,

"I have no comment about this moment",

that too is a running commentary!

It has become 'about' something

rather than life as it is,

as a direct experience.

Hungry Ghosts

Is pleasure happiness?

or is it just a distraction

form unhappiness?

Doesn't pleasure have

the tendency to destroy

it's own host,

when it is pushed too much?

and how much is too much?

Is excitement happiness?

Once we are used to it

we expect that all the time.

We feel uneasy and lacking

when we are not exuberant.

At which point the passion

for something or someone,

an obsession, compulsion,

becomes an addiction?

Aren't we all in the realm

of Hungry Ghosts, in a way?

______________________

The Realm of Hungry Ghosts:

Hungry Ghosts have huge, empty stomachs, but their thin necks don't allow nourishment to pass. Food turns to fire and ash in their mouths. Psychologically, Hungry Ghosts are associated with addictions, compulsions and obsessions. People who have everything but always want more may be Hungry Ghosts. (Ref: The Tibetan Book of the Dead)

Obvious cycle

Earth takes this immense task of breathing life back into the vestige humans have generated. We kill, consume and trash. Soil breathes into it. Like fire, layers of earth burn the morbid and bring back new life. Ashes make it fertile. Monsoon nourishes it. When fire in every atom, every molecule and every bacteria takes care of the decay, we humans are still in the realm of hungry ghosts with our selective indifference and blind greed. We have this unending urge for indulgence; or we have fallen into that habit pattern. As the ego devours resources voraciously, whether unknowingly or not, slowly destroys itself during the process of over indulgence. The mechanism gets burned out. A sense of well being is lost. Thus this 'birth-habits-disease-aging-death'- an obvious cycle of misery is repeated endlessly.