Jul 7, 2009, 08.00am IST
Stephen Isaac.
As a driver I have this uncanny ability to look out for something that stands out from the normal.
Whether in the city, or on a road winding through a jungle, I am absorbing details which an average person would not even notice. Innumerable times the passenger in the back, would say How can you drive, and still notice something like that? When I pointed out something. Of course the jungle roads beat the city roads by a long margin you get to see something beautiful, and I would feel so peaceful, and at ease. Nature, wildlife and the environment, have always been close to my heart, because it is here that the Divine truly manifests. The roads through Bandipur, Madhumalai and to Kabini have always given me much joy and pleasure when as a taxi-driver I took customers there.
A couple of emperor mongooses, lovely dark brown, standing still at the edge of the jungle, the sun glinting on their silver shoulders, a porcupine racing across the road in front of my car, as my passengers scramble for their camera (and losing the race), as it ducks down a tunnel. A herd of elephants crossing the road ahead of us, a rare scene, as we watch the babies ambling in the middle, my excitement peaking as I slow down. How beautiful. Once I caught sight of a male deer between clumps of scrub brush and bamboo, stocky, dark brown with medium-sized antlers. We stopped and watched, and suddenly it bounded away, using all four legs in a delicate ballet too fast for camera, again. Later when we described the buck and even pointed out a picture in the forest personnels catalogue they refused to believe us, and said we were mistaken because this particular deer hasn’t been seen here. Well I am happy I saw it.
You have to thank God for the langurs. I am having a tough time trying to describe them. Just saying dark grey fur, darker spectacled face, long legs, very long tail is not enough. When they move or run, they are so graceful and fluid whether on the ground or in the trees. For the moment I become a Langur, otherwise there is no way I can experience the energy flowing in its body, which is the same energy flowing in me, and which flows through the whole Universe – a single, powerful, living energy this, which unites everything, visible or invisible to the eye. And the rider beam of this energy is Love. I am put to shame when I think of what we humans are doing in the name of progress. Progress is good, but not when it involves annihilating the very Earth that provides for our every need.
Only if one loves this Earth with unbending passion, can one release ones sadness says Don Juan, A warrior is always joyful because his love is unalterable and his beloved, the Earth, embraces him and bestows upon him inconceivable gifts. Sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings. This lovely being which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, as balm to my pains, and finally when I fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom. Here warrior is a person treading the spiritual path to becoming an Impeccable Warrior. I am walking this path, and it has been a long walk, and yet I am far from being an Impeccable Warrior. But I have every intention of reaching that goal even if takes me another hundred or thousand lifetimes.
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