Journals

The idea of gold-hearted unattractive-looking people could be one of the most ageless big ideas found in tales. The gold-hearted ones, more often than not, are represented in unpleasant forms like ugly ducklings (a fairy tale popularized by Hans Christian Andersen), hunchbacks (like in The Hunchback From Notre Dame). Similar to the hunchbacks, other forms recounted like beasts (like in The Beauty and The Beast), and a pale monster-alike stigmatist in a gumshoe story film I ever watched few years ago. I forgot the title though.

The other creatures of the gold-hearted characters are represented by animal forms, like monkeys, frogs, snakes, et cetera. Frogs… The most popular one is a western tale that tells about a frog that is actually a prince and changes into a handsome young prince when a young beauty kissed him. And snakes… I ever watched a Chinese tale that tells about a legend of a white snake.

Somehow I don’t think that animals and/or other horrible creatures are exactly good depiction of righteous people. That’s supposed to be a corny irrelevant myth that has been rooted in people’s mind through tales they listened/watched/read in their childhood age. There are no such beasts with a gold heart! Beasts are beasts, with beast looks and beast natures. One term of my social-life history has showed that animal-minded people left no good marks to re-call to mind.

As friends, animal-minded people are those who are benefit-oriented. Like animals, they are born with such mindset of “eating” / “killing” or “being eaten”/ “being killed”. They could hardly be generous and possessing “just-because” sincerity.

As lovers, they are even worse. Like animals, they have such characteristics of the physical and instinctive needs of animals, rather than the spirit. Hence, in their relationships, animal-minded people could never be able to reach love in a platonic stage since their animal lust seems to be a larger portion that makes them away from monogamous and sexual fidelity.

As both nobody and somebody, they are everywhere; generalized and categorized, are in one of a long line of avariciousness.

Even though, I just cannot understand on why Ganesh, one of deities in Hinduism that is worshipped as a patron of learning and obstacle removal is depicted as an elephant-headed creature.

I seem to be much more fonder of living organisms called “plants” as depiction of righteous people, instead. Plants, in one or in many ways, are asexual. Plants differ from animals in lacking specialized sense organs, having no capacity for voluntary movement, having cell walls, and growing to suit their surroundings rather than having a fixed body plan. Plants are altruistic. They, through photosynthesis, give life to other living organisms.

Plants are also sensitive. Jagadis Chandra Bose, an India’s great plant physicist and botanist (was knighted in 1917), through his Crescograph had proved that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life.

Like plants, plant-minded people, I infer, are those who talk less but do more. Those who are soothing, loyal, giving and sincere, away from pretense and deceit. They are lovely and blessed people with great decent personalities. My father and my mother are perfect examples of my “plants of life”. I am grateful that I am in the midst of plant-minded people. I have the most supportive, the most patient and the most loving parents in this world. Also yet, I have a bunch of plant-minded friends to share thoughts, smiles and laughs with.

An illustration about ornamental aquatic plant Water Lilies gently floating in water just came to my mind when I was feeling centered and thinking of righteous people I know. People who are dear to me. They are like Water Lilies. They live and exist, and prominently look beautiful, regardless the condition of water they are floating in. Mud and dirty waters just cannot keep their both bright inner and outer out of sight.

Sending metta, I closed my eyes, feeling centered and focused.

I visualized a Water Lily that grows in…

a place where the waterfalls are very beautiful as beautiful as rivers of the sanctity,

a place which its end part of the name resounds like a cosmic motor “aum”,

a place which its end part of the name sounds like the thirtieth surah “Ar-Ruum”;

the place called: “Erzurum”.

Cosmic will work for plant-minded people and those who deeply pray in the transcendent level of consciousness.  

O, Thou art the Absolute! I believe that there would no such encounters come to pass in absence of Thine interventions. My sanity was restored by an encounter with the Water Lily from Erzurum. The Water Lily is pure and saved and, indeed, a model of the most beautiful varieties that I want to grow in my garden of life.