Hinduism

Another is from one of my favourite books - 'Riot' by Shashi Tharoor. I find his writings simple in word and extremely profound in thought.

.....exemplified the Hindu idea that religion is an intensely personal matter, that prayer is between you and whatever image of your maker you choose to worship. In the Hindu way, I was to find my own truth. Like most Hindus, I think I have. I am, as I told you, a believer, despite a brief period of school boy atheism - of the kind that comes with the discovery of rationality and goes with the acknowledgement of its limitations. And, I suppose, with the realization that the world offers too many wondrous mysteries for which science has no answers.

As a Hindu I subscribe to a creed that is free of the restrictive dogmas of holy writ, that refuses to be shackled to the limitations of a single holy book.

Chess or Sonata

Have this habit of noting down excerpts that have touched me and got me thinking for a long time. One such is from "The Bridge Across Forever" by Richard Bach.

The most commonly used form for large classical works is Sonata form. It is the basis of almost all symphonies and concertos. It consists of three main sections: the exposition or opening, in which little ideas, themes, bits and pieces are set forth and introduced to each other; the development, in which these tiny ideas and motifs are explored to their fullest, expanded, often go from major (happy) to minor (unhappy) and back again, and are developed and woven together in greater complexity until at last there is: the recapitulation, in which there is a restatement, a glorious expression of the full, rich maturity to which the tiny ideas have grown through the development process.

Chess is a game in which each party has its own singular objective even as it engages the other; a mid-game in which a struggle develops and intensifies and bits and pieces of each side are lost, both sides diminished; an end-game in which one traps and paralyses the other.

You see life as a chess game; I see it as a sonata. And because of these differences, both the king and queen are lost, and the song is silenced.

Lost

Lost - the sweet the innocence of youth,
Enroute to the quest for truth.

Lost - the melody in laughter,
Just a smile lingers after...

Lost - the magic in romance,
Should I give destiny another chance?

Lost - the will to win the race,
Let life unfold at its own pace.

-genieinabottle

The Fly

Little Fly
Thy summers play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath;
And the want
of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

-William Blake