Aah, summer is around the corner! You can smell it, especially on a steamy day like this. The smell of 
freedom from the regular routine, relief from runny noses, dusty rooms, heavy jackets and plodding 
shoes, the season of friendly breeze and bright sunshine flowing through open windows and women 
in leafy dresses, the sound of ocean waves, ice-cream trucks and campfire guitar accompanying the 
crickets…Winter may build it but summer is when you get to enjoy all that accumulated character!
Life is short, my dear friend. Don’t just watch the river go by. Throw away your fears, jump in, enjoy 
the cool refreshing waters. Do watch out for the swift currents. But most of all, keep in touch. You 
never know if our paths will meet again. I am grateful that I can at least write to you like this, from my 
heart to yours.
Sankar

Random Thoughts (77)
25 April 2009
1. (Sun, 4/12) I was watching CNN just after they killed the pirates and released the Captain. I had 
been following the story for a few days hoping for a good outcome. But when Don Lemon, the anchor, 
opened the news by saying “Well, sorry about the three pirates who died, but we are happy that the 
Captain was released…” I suddenly realized that I had been only thinking about how the Captain could 
be released. The life of the pirates had not been prominent in my mind. Nor was it mentioned by any 
other TV personality. Everyone was all smiles about the Captain’s relief, as they should be. Thank God 
for good, thoughtful men like Don Lemon. From what the military says it seems pretty clear that the 
Captain’s life was in danger but one never knows in these situations exactly what was in the pirates’ 
minds.
2. (Sat, 4/18) Today was the first really warm and sunny day of the week. I was biking to the open 
house at Mike Tidwell’s environmentally sustainable home in Takoma Park 
(http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/pages/page.cfm?page_id=47 ). One guy was walking his 
ferocious looking bull-dog. I was passing through Warder St, and saw a guy handling an enormous, 
actual snake in his hands. My ride took me through some of the more crime-ridden areas of NW DC 
(much better now than what it used to be). I was also thinking about what I saw on TV –more news 
about pirates. Made me wonder when all the violence would stop. Then a rather unpleasant thought 
passed through my mind. I realized that that most Hindus would have no trouble with taking the life of 
the killer.  This thought made me pause and consider the reality of the violence in my genes. Genes 
are so powerful. In spite of generations of vegetarian living, practicing non-violence and observing 
religious customs the violence passed down by our Aryan ancestors still lives within us. Of course all 
men have it in them, perhaps to differing degrees, but one would think that people whose ancestors 
have been living non-violently for generations would have less of it.  Guess it manifests itself in other 
ways, as a sort of competitive nature. Not that in Hinduism the question of non-violence and practicing 
compassion towards all beings is not considered. But as Krishna says in the Gita, it is the warrior’s duty 
to kill the enemy if necessary to establish the Dharma (by which I mean righteousness). “The soul can 
neither kill nor be killed,” he says to Arjuna who is agonizing over his choices. Later he also says “The 
soul united in yoga observes the soul in all beings and all beings in the soul.”  Buddhism also speaks of 
the oneness of all creation, but tells you to avoid killing at all times. Since we are all one, it doesn’t 
matter who lives and who dies. One may think that the world will suffer if the “evil people” live at the 
expense of the “good”, but no human being is evil according to Buddhism (or any other religion, for 
that matter). All beings, however their actions may appear to us, are Boddhisattvas within. Besides, is 
it not better to die than to kill, to give than to take, and to suffer than to punish? This is a tricky 
question, and all may not agree about this. Some would argue that different people have different 
duties, and not everyone should practice non-violence at all times.
3. (Wed, 4/22/09) Drifting along in the river of life: Today was a busy day. I had to give two tests, 
prepare a report about teaching committee meeting, meet with a student for a reading course and 
help with earth day activities in between. [I wish I had remembered earth day when I scheduled the 
tests at the beginning of the semester]. Anyway, by the time I finished work it was around 6.30 pm. I 
was planning to go to yoga class at the vihara at 6.30. Even though I was running late, I still wanted to 
go. Elsie the yoga teacher was always nice about latecomers. But when I got home I was too tired and 
hungry. So I had dinner, rested a bit, and decided to go to a filmfest DC movie instead. There were a 
bunch of movies starting between 8.30 and 9. I decided to go to the ones at Chinatown. As I was 
walking to the metro station a bus came along. I turned to see what it was and since I was near a 
metrobus stop the bus (H4) stopped. I decided to get in even though the metro station was just a few 
blocks away and I would be wasting the bus fare. I simply couldn’t wave it off after the driver had 
taken the effort to stop for me. I have a pathological difficulty in saying no sometimes. Once I got in 
the bus I realized that I could take the bus all the way to Avalon theater on Connecticut ave (or at least 
near it). There were a couple of movies showing there as well. It turned out that the bus went near 
Uptown theater in Cleveland park and I had to take the L2 to reach the Avalon further up Connecticut 
ave. By the time I got there it was 9pm. I saw a couple of women buying tickets and got in the line. The 
ticket lady said there were two movies. I asked her if there was one that started at 9. She said both 
started at 8.45, her voice betraying a little bit of annoyance. I told her to pick one of them because I 
didn’t know anything about either. She gave me a ticket for “35 shots of rum,” a Franco-German 
movie. “I think you’ll like it,” she said. The movie turned out to be very meditative, albeit a bit too 
mysterious for my simple mind. So much so that I had to clear up a few doubts I had with some other 
moviegoers, many of whom were discussing it animatedly in the hallway after the movie. Apparently 
they were as befuddled as I was by  the missing details that were supposed to be understood 
somehow.  The movie was centered on a subway driver -- a rather stoic character -- and his 
relationships. I enjoyed the driver’s eye scenes shot from the subway. Paris didn’t look glamorous at 
all in those scenes (not that I know how Paris looks). I guess, as in DC, the train always goes through 
the underbelly of the city, its path lined by graffiti strewn walls and ramshackle buildings. But when 
you look at the earth and the trees, you see that it is the same everywhere. Our feelings and image of 
a city, even one as great as Paris, is based on associations created by its history and its people. One of 
these days those associations might cease to exist and only the earth and the trees would be left. 
Even otherwise, if you look at things as they are without the filter of our mental associations, they all 
look the same. The streets of DC become as exciting as the streets of Paris. But what struck me about 
the movie was the portrayal of the human relationships, and their life in general. The movie took us 
deep inside their emotions using some very simple devices that turn out to have a subtle but lasting 
effect. Showing the old subway driver making an omelet, his daughter preparing for a shower and 
laundry, his looking at her as she was studying -- very ordinary moments and scenes with 
extraordinary meaning. Without giving away much about the movie in case you plan to see it, let me 
say that the movie builds slowly (a bit too slowly for a lot of people, as I learned from conversations 
after the movie) to an intense finale where the lives of the daughter and the father are pressed by 
sudden crises. In our life we build our existence, our happiness, our sense of purpose, security and 
progress on certain things. Almost always it involves the love and companionships of other people, 
and it could also be related to the satisfaction we derive from our work or even from material 
comforts. When any of those things are threatened we run around trying to fix them like a roach 
scurrying for cover. Even the rock solid, stoic bus driver needed comforting at times. But the moment 
we realize that these attachments are creations of our mind and understand that we are the rider on 
the horse and that we are not the horse, is the moment when we can be truly free and happy. When 
that happens, even if sometimes we get thrown off or the horse itself breaks down we can still get up 
and keep moving. In fact, once we understand the true nature of our mind and our existence we 
begin to enjoy life with its many daily ups and downs, people with all their beauty and their foibles, 
every leaf of grass and drop of dew with exhilaration.
4. In societies where obedience and conformity are valued above all, the parents try to instill these 
qualities in their children. Any sign of independence and individuality is quashed in the bud. So unless 
the child is strong-willed and willful by nature, he or she grows up to be very docile. You get a society 
with a passive, submissive majority and a minority of arrogant, unscrupulous thugs ruling over them.
5. I often wonder what the world would look like, 10,000 or 100,000 or a million years from now. Would 
there still be people, and if so, what would they look like? Would the streets of DC and Paris be still 
humming with life, or would they be buried under layers of earth to be discovered by some other 
civilization? There are all sorts of theories, whole books written about it. Is there a natural lifetime for a 
whole species, as there is for an individual organism? Is every species destined to go through a period 
of growth followed by a period of sustained life and finally an inevitable loss of “species vigor” and 
decline? Certainly some species, especially insects, have survived for millions of years. Could humans 
also do the same? Do we have the vigor and the adaptability needed to survive for thousands or even 
millions of years?