Zen Master

A professor and an IT millionaire go to the Zen Master in hopes of learning his secret of inner calm

Millionaire:  I am ready to give it all up, work as hard as required, please tell me how I can get this calmness that you have. I have worked hard to bring about the change in the world, help people in the way I can.

Professor:  My entire life I did not even care about money, I thought knowledge is the only truth that matters and worked on spreading knowledge to everyone I could, I am a good person in search of enlightenment.Tell me what how to achieve what you have

After a long uncomfortable silence

Zen Master: The trick is in not caring.

Millionaire and Professor talk amongst themselves to understand what it means and how they should go about it. In a mean team, a young boy carrying a cooler filled Pepsi can comes towards them, in hopes of selling some Pepsi to the group

Millionaire: I don't care for this materialistic drink anymore, I now will eat only to sustain myself.

Professor: I won't spoil my body with such sugary poison. I am on course to purify myself.

Bemused, Boy goes towards the zen master, who promptly takes out money and hands it to the boy in exchange for a can of Pepsi.

Millionaire and Professor both are dumbfounded and after a long uncomfortable silence

Zen Master: I didn't care, I was parched so took the drink.

Word Salad

Few are plagued with loss of memory, most are tormented by its existence.

 Who can deny this cruelty of life where you can relive every terror of past, every heartbreak, every disappointment of your life, hundred times over where surely, once was enough.Yet not be able to feel the feeling of a warm embrace of a friend, of that sunrise which lightened your day, a goodbye kiss which brought on a smile that refused to leave. 

In this race of pursuit for happiness, we seem to have not noticed that memory may be cumulative but joy is truly transitory.  It is the time one lives without the concern of future and burden of past. I don't know what then is more futile, the pursuit to hold on to something so fragile or the relentless need to die a hundred small death over the regrets of pasts. 

Caught in between the promise of future and realities of past, here I am, all alone again. 

What does it even mean

- Be Yourself 

I have a brain the size of peanut and I cannot comprehend many things which people say. What does be yourself mean, I have no benchmark. I am not a robot pre-programmed to do actions based on conditions. If I you took me and put me in 100 parallel and the identical universe and I was me in a situation I'd behave differently in each of them. So which myself should I behave like. If I have 2 cups of coffee as opposed to one I'd behave differently, If the temperature is up by 5 degrees then I'd behave differently. The whole thing is just dumb. It should be called 'Don't give a fuck about others and do it'

- Listen to your heart

I have never known what my heart is saying vs what my brain is saying. I don't get this saying at all. I had a question Should I stay in the US or go back to India, people said trust your heart and it made absolutely no sense, I decided to come back and in my heart I knew it was wrong decision but the weird thing is I had no good reason to come back so I made myself believe may be my heart wants to go, truth is coming back was probably irritational. Even weirder is the fact I'd probably do it again even though it was irritational and stays so, which again makes me believe maybe my heart wants it, though I am sure my heart also wants to go back to the US.  It should be called, 'Go for call of the void, do irrational thing'. I am not saying it's good saying or anything but that's what it should be called

- Don't be depressed 

Yeah, Like I have control over being depressed like I elect to feel this way. Try saying don't cough or just make your back pain go away and see how that works.This should be changed to ' I'll buy a beer if get out of bed'.

Dementia

I think I am lost, I tell the sweet voice across the table

I don't know what I am doing here with these people and their fancy hairstyles

Do I belong here?

But a server is coming towards me with a cup

And who doesn't enjoy a cup of coffee, So I wait

So many memories associated with coffee, if only I could remember them.

I remember I always liked coffee

Perhaps the only thing that brought me sanity

I think a loved one once brought me a cup of coffee

And we enjoyed it together or so I believe but I know this is a memory I make not remember

For no one loved enough to bring me a cup of coffee.

Of course mother you loved me, how can I forget you.

But I'm old now and that means you are not here

I was one of those people perhaps the only one to go from being a kid to being old

I had no youth to describe, no memory of every being young.

I digress, was she there, did she enjoy coffee with me

No, I think it was my brother she liked

For he knew how to say when I only knew what to say

Yes, certainly she brought the coffee but for my brother.

I could have lived with it, may be learned to live with it

but I don't think I have a brother.

Maybe she doesn't exist or maybe I am dead.

For no one here sees me talk or hears me, maybe I ceased to exist.

I can ask the lady with sweet voice across the table, but I can't see her face

I rub my eyes and she disappears with steam from the cup like jinn released from the lamp.

The cup reminds me of the server but she goes to another table

I don't get coffee,

Maybe I can order it,

Am I someone who has money. I don't know

I want to ask how much does coffee cost and if I can afford it

But I don't know whom to ask, everyone is dressed in white and they look mean

Even the cups are white, just like in a hospital

Maybe I am in a hospital,

the hairstyle, It is not fancy, No one has combed their hair

It is a hospital, now I remember, for people like me who don't have anyone and who don't remember anything.

I am sad, I'd rather be lost than belong here.

Maybe if I belong here, they will get me coffee, I should ask them

Maybe I don't deserve it so they won't give me.