How to Live in Wonder

The Wisdom of a Dandelion — A Tribute to G. K. Chesterton

There are some writers who give us information.

There are others who give us ideas.

And then there are a rare few who make us look at the world again.

G. K. Chesterton was one of them.

Reading him, one discovers that the extraordinary does not always announce itself with trumpets. Sometimes it appears quietly—in a flower, a child's face, a sunrise, a bird, or simply in the astonishing fact that we are alive.

One of Chesterton's thoughts that stays with me is his call to rediscover a “burst of astonishment at our own existence.”

What a remarkable expression.

We spend so much of our lives waiting for something extraordinary to happen that we forget the extraordinary thing that has already happened:

We exist.

We have been given eyes with which to see the world, ears with which to hear it, a mind with which to wonder, a heart with which to love, and a life in which to experience it all.

And yet familiarity has a strange power.

The sunrise that once delighted us becomes “just another sunrise.”

Rain becomes something that interferes with our plans.

A flower becomes something we have seen countless times.

A bird on the balcony becomes merely a bird.

We stop being astonished.

Chesterton reminds us, almost playfully, that perhaps the problem is not that the world has become less wonderful.

We have simply stopped looking at it with wonder.

The wisdom of a dandelion

Think of the dandelion.

It is not a rare or exotic flower. It does not demand attention. It grows almost unnoticed, sometimes in the most ordinary places.

And yet, look at it properly.

A tiny seed becomes a living plant.

A green stem rises from the earth.

A yellow flower opens to the sun.

Later, a delicate globe of seeds appears.

The wind carries those tiny seeds away to begin the mystery all over again.

How many times have we walked past such a flower without seeing any of this?

The dandelion does not need to become a rose to deserve our admiration.

It is wonderful simply because it is what it is.

That is perhaps one of Chesterton's great gifts to us: the ability to recover amazement in the commonplace.

He makes us understand that wonder does not necessarily require a journey to some distant place.

It may be waiting outside our own window.

A crow arriving because it remembers where it is fed.

The first drops of rain.

The changing colour of the evening sky.

A child's laughter.

The fragrance of a flower.

The familiar face of someone we love.

The simple miracle of waking up tomorrow morning.

To live in wonder

Perhaps living in wonder does not mean being constantly excited.

It means not allowing familiarity to make us blind.

It means occasionally stopping in the middle of our busy lives and asking:

Have I really looked at this?

Have I really listened?

Have I noticed how extraordinary this ordinary thing is?

As we grow older, perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is the ability to become a child again—not childish, but childlike in our capacity for astonishment.

To see the moon and still look up.

To hear thunder and still pause.

To watch rain and not immediately reach for the phone.

To see a bird and wonder where it came from.

To notice the first light of morning.

To be grateful simply for another day.

Chesterton's wisdom is not merely about flowers or childhood or imagination.

It is ultimately about gratitude for existence itself.

And that is why his words continue to speak to us.

He reminds us that life does not have to become bigger for us to appreciate it.

We have to become more awake to the life we already have.

Perhaps that is what it means to live in wonder.

To look at a dandelion and see a miracle.

To look at a crow and see intelligence and life.

To look at the sky and feel small—but wonderfully alive.

And sometimes, just sometimes, to stop everything and experience that “burst of astonishment at our own existence.”

Thank you, G. K. Chesterton, for reminding us to look again.

The world has not lost its wonder.

We have only to rediscover our eyes.

The inteligent.

The Crows at Our Home — Our Daily Visitors

Every day, we feed the crows at our home.

Slowly, they have become familiar visitors. They arrive, wait for their food, call to one another, and sometimes sit along the balcony railing as though they own the place!

This photograph captured one such moment. Look carefully—there is even one crow flying in to join the others. The row of waiting birds almost looks like a little gathering of old friends.

We often think of the crow as an ordinary bird—black, noisy and everywhere around us. But when we begin watching them closely, we discover something quite extraordinary.

They remember. They recognise. They learn. They communicate. They solve problems. They observe human behaviour. And, remarkably, there is evidence that some birds, including crows, can use plants or other substances in ways that may help them deal with parasites or illness.

Perhaps our daily visitors have been teaching us something without our noticing:

When we show kindness regularly, even a wild creature can learn to trust us.

And once trust is established, a balcony can become a meeting place between two worlds—ours and theirs.

The Crow — The Bird That Thinks, Remembers and Learns

We often see crows as ordinary birds.

They sit on rooftops, call loudly from trees, search for food, and fly away when we approach. In Indian homes, we may even know them as familiar visitors who appear around mealtimes.

But look a little closer.

Behind those black feathers is one of the most remarkable minds in the bird world.

The crow is not merely a bird that survives by instinct. It can remember, learn, solve problems, use tools, recognize individuals, communicate information and adapt its behaviour to new situations.

The more scientists study crows, the more fascinating they become.

A Brain Built for Problem-Solving

Crows belong to the corvid family, which includes ravens, rooks, jackdaws and jays.

Although a crow's brain is tiny compared with ours, its cognitive abilities can be extraordinary.

Laboratory experiments have shown crows solving problems that require several steps. They can learn that one action produces another result and can select an appropriate object for a particular task.

It is not simply:

“I have done this before.”

Sometimes it appears closer to:

“If I do this, something useful will happen.”

That ability to make connections is one of the foundations of intelligent behaviour.

The Crow That Makes Tools

Perhaps the most famous example comes from the New Caledonian crow.

These crows use sticks and other plant material as tools to obtain food hidden inside holes and crevices.

Some can modify materials into more useful shapes—including hooked tools.

Think about what that means.

The bird sees food that it cannot reach directly.

It finds a suitable object.

It modifies the object.

It uses the modified object to obtain the food.

That is a remarkable chain of behaviour for a bird.

And young crows can learn such techniques by observing experienced birds.

Knowledge, therefore, does not always have to begin again with every generation.

A Crow Can Remember Your Face

Here is something that may make us look differently at the crow sitting outside our window.

Crows can recognize individual human faces.

Researchers have found that crows can remember people who have threatened or captured them and can continue to respond differently to those individuals long after the original encounter.

Even more fascinating, other crows may learn about a dangerous person through the reactions of their companions.

Imagine one crow discovering:

“That human is dangerous.”

Other crows notice its alarm.

They remember the person.

The information spreads.

It is almost like a tiny warning system operating in the trees.

They Learn From One Another

This may be one of the most important aspects of crow intelligence.

A crow does not necessarily have to discover everything by itself.

It can observe.

It can imitate.

It can remember.

It can learn.

And knowledge can spread through a group.

This is sometimes described as social learning.

In the animal world, this is extremely important because learning from others saves time—and sometimes saves lives.

A young crow does not have to personally experience every danger if it can learn from the older birds.

They Know More Than One Way to Get Food

Crows are extraordinarily adaptable.

If one method of finding food stops working, they can try another.

They have learned to exploit human environments, open containers, search rubbish, drop hard objects to break them, and take advantage of opportunities that other birds may overlook.

Their success is partly due to their intelligence—but also to their extraordinary ability to adapt.

A changing environment does not necessarily defeat a crow.

It gives the crow another problem to solve.

What About Self-Medication?

This is where the story becomes especially intriguing.

Many animals have been observed eating plants or other substances at unusual times or in unusual ways, possibly because these substances help them deal with parasites, illness or other health problems.

Scientists call this area of research zoopharmacognosy—the study of how animals may use natural substances for medicinal purposes.

There are compelling examples of self-medication in several animals, including insects, primates and some birds.

Crows and other corvids have also attracted interest because of their unusual feeding behaviours.

But here we should separate fascinating observation from established fact.

It is tempting to say:

“Crows know which plants are medicines and deliberately prescribe them to themselves.”

Science has not established such a simple conclusion.

Researchers are still investigating whether particular behaviours represent genuine self-medication or whether there are other explanations.

The important point is that animals clearly do sometimes interact with plants and other natural substances in ways that may have health benefits.

Nature may contain a pharmacy that animals have been exploring for millions of years.

They Even Remember Where Things Are

Crows are excellent at remembering locations.

A bird that has hidden food may later return to the place where it stored it.

This requires more than simply remembering food.

It requires remembering where something was left.

And if another crow is watching, the story becomes even more interesting.

A crow may behave differently when hiding food if it suspects another bird is observing.

That suggests an awareness of what another bird might know.

Scientists call this area social cognition—the ability to understand and respond to the behaviour and knowledge of others.

The Crow's Language

Crows do not speak human languages, of course.

But their calls are not meaningless noise.

Different calls can communicate different kinds of information—about danger, food, territory and other social situations.

Their communication system is complex enough that researchers continue to study how much information individual calls and combinations of calls can carry.

The crow's world is therefore filled with information that we may simply hear as:

“Caw! Caw! Caw!”

To another crow, it may mean considerably more.

A Lesson in Intelligence

The crow teaches us something important about intelligence.

Intelligence does not always look like ours.

We tend to measure intelligence through human abilities—language, writing, mathematics, reading and technology.

But nature has produced many different kinds of intelligence.

The crow has no hands.

So it uses its beak.

It has no written language.

So it communicates through calls and behaviour.

It cannot build a laboratory.

So it experiments with the world around it.

It does not go to school.

Yet it learns from its elders.

And it has no human teacher.

Yet it can become remarkably good at solving problems.

A Small Bird with a Large Mind

Perhaps that is why the crow deserves more respect than we usually give it.

It watches.

It remembers.

It experiments.

It learns.

It adapts.

And sometimes, it teaches others.

The next time a crow sits on a wall and looks at you with those bright, observant eyes, pause for a moment.

Perhaps it is not simply looking.

Perhaps it is watching and remembering.

For the crow, the world is not merely a place to find food.

It is a world of problems to solve, dangers to remember, opportunities to discover and lessons to learn.

And that little black bird reminds us of something wonderfully humbling:

**Intelligence has many shapes.

Sometimes, it has wings.**

Bhoj the k ing

 Raja Bhoj — the king who wanted to know everything

The story of Raja Bhoj is one of the most fascinating chapters of medieval India's intellectual history. He was not remembered merely as a conqueror. He became famous as a king-scholar—a ruler who believed that the responsibilities of a king included learning, building, preserving knowledge and encouraging the learned.

Raja Bhoj of the Paramara dynasty ruled Malwa

approximately from 1010 to 1055 CE, with Dhara (Dhar) as his principal capital.

But the historical Bhoj and the Bhoj of popular legend eventually became intertwined. It is therefore useful to tell his story in two layers: what history establishes, and what tradition remembers.

The young prince

Bhoj was the son of Sindhuraja, the Paramara ruler of Malwa.

Later traditions tell us that Bhoj suffered from a serious illness in his youth and that learned physicians eventually restored him. Whether every detail of this story is historical is uncertain, but it fits the larger image that developed around Bhoj: a ruler deeply interested in medicine, science and learning.

When he became king, he inherited a kingdom surrounded by powerful rivals.

And this is where Bhoj's remarkable story begins.

A king who became a scholar

Most medieval kings were expected to know warfare, administration and diplomacy.

Bhoj went much further.

He is traditionally associated with works covering an extraordinary range of subjects—architecture, poetics, grammar, yoga, medicine, astronomy, statecraft and philosophy.

The Samarāṅgaṇa Sūtradhāra, associated with Bhoj, is particularly famous for its discussion of architecture, town planning, temples, houses, mechanical devices and engineering.

His Śṛṅgāra Prakāśa deals with Sanskrit literary theory and aesthetics.

The important point is not that Bhoj personally wrote every work attributed to him. Modern scholarship treats some of these attributions cautiously. Rather, the surviving tradition shows that his court was an extraordinary centre of intellectual activity.

He wanted knowledge to flourish around him.

Bhoj the builder

And then there was his passion for building.

At Bhojpur, near present-day Bhopal, stands the unfinished but magnificent Bhojeshwar Mahadev Temple.

Its enormous Shiva linga and massive architectural proportions give us a sense of the ambition of the project.

The Bhojpur complex was not simply a temple. The surrounding landscape contains evidence of a much larger project involving water management and an enormous reservoir.

This is one reason Raja Bhoj is so interesting: his imagination was not confined to the palace or battlefield.

He thought in terms of cities, temples, water, architecture and knowledge.

The king and the lake

There is a famous tradition that Bhoj suffered from a skin disease and that he was advised to bathe in water from 365 springs.

Whether this story is historical cannot be established with certainty.

But the tradition says that engineers under Bhoj brought together the waters of numerous streams and created a gigantic lake.

The lake became known as Bhojtal—today's Upper Lake of Bhopal.

The historical waterworks around Bhojpur are real, even though the colourful story about the king's illness and the 365 springs belongs more properly to tradition than established history.

Bhoj and the scholars

There is another reason the name Bhoj survived so powerfully.

Indian literary tradition came to use “Bhoj's court” almost as a symbol of the ideal royal court, where poets, philosophers and scholars were honoured.

The famous expression “Where is Raja Bhoj and where is Gangu Teli?” comes from a later popular tradition and should not be treated as straightforward history.

Likewise, the stories connecting Bhoj with Kalidasa are chronologically problematic. Kalidasa is generally placed many centuries earlier than Bhoj. Such stories tell us about Bhoj's legendary reputation rather than proving that the two actually met.

A warrior as well

Bhoj was not merely a bookish king.

He fought wars and was involved in the complicated political struggles of eleventh-century India. The Paramaras had to contend with major powers including the Chalukyas of Kalyani, the Chaulukyas of Gujarat and other neighbouring kingdoms.

His reign saw both victories and reversals.

That makes the real Bhoj more interesting than the perfect king of legend.

He was a ruler dealing with the very real problems of war, territory, alliances and succession, while simultaneously nurturing learning and monumental construction.

And then came the end

Bhoj ruled for roughly four and a half decades.

Near the end of his reign, he faced serious military pressure. His final years were marked by conflict with neighbouring rulers.

He died around 1055 CE.

But something unusual happened after his death.

His kingdom changed.

His reputation did not.

The historical king gradually became a cultural archetype—the ruler who valued learning, honoured scholars, built great temples and thought on a scale larger than himself.

That is why even today, when Indians hear the name Raja Bhoj, they often think not merely of a medieval Paramara ruler, but of an ideal:

A king should not merely possess power.

He should possess knowledge—and use both for the good of his kingdom.

Patwa

 The photograph is of Patwon Ki Haveli (Patwa Haveli), Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. Kothari's Patwon Ki Haveli / Patwa Haveli

What makes this photograph particularly beautiful is that it captures the extraordinary stone-carving detail, rather than simply the overall façade.

Patwon Ki Haveli is actually a cluster of five interconnected havelis, begun around 1805 by the wealthy merchant Guman Chand Patwa and developed over several decades for his family. It is built almost entirely of Jaisalmer's characteristic golden-yellow sandstone. 

Look closely at the picture:

The wooden doorway is surrounded by an elaborate sandstone arch.

The tiny jali screens on either side are carved so finely that the stone almost looks like lace.

Below the doorway are successive bands of floral and geometric carving.

The projecting balconies are supported by rows of beautifully carved stone brackets, each seemingly different.

Even the smallest borders have been treated as decoration—nothing has been left plain.

This is one of the remarkable features of Jaisalmer's architecture: the desert stone itself became the canvas for the craftsman. Government descriptions of Jaisalmer's traditional architecture specifically note its carved façades, jharokhas and decorative elements as adaptations to the arid environment as well as expressions of artistry. 

Patwon Ki Haveli, Jaisalmer — When Stone Becomes Lace

In the golden city of Jaisalmer, even stone seems to forget that it is stone.

At Patwon Ki Haveli, every doorway, balcony, jali and bracket has been patiently carved into an intricate work of art. Flowers, patterns and delicate screens emerge from the hard golden sandstone as though a sculptor were carving wood—or weaving lace.

Built by a prosperous merchant family, this magnificent cluster of five havelis is a reminder that India's artistic traditions were not confined to palaces and temples. A merchant's home, too, could become a celebration of beauty.

Here, the craftsman's hand has transformed the desert's stone into the larger story of Indian craftsmanship: when skill, patience and imagination meet an ordinary material, even a house can become a work of art.

Unreliable.

 Human Affection is Unreliable

Human affection is obviously unreliable because it is so much bound up with selfishness and desire; it is a flame of the ego sometimes turbid and misty, sometimes more clear and brightly coloured—sometimes tamasic based on instinct and habit, sometimes rajasic and fed by passion or the cry for vital interchange, sometimes more sattwic and trying to be or look to itself disinterested.

But fundamentally it depends on a personal need or a return of some kind inward or outward and when the need is not satisfied or the return ceases or is not given, it most often diminishes or dies or exists only as a tepid or troubled remnant of habit from the past or else turns for satisfaction elsewhere. The more intense it is, the more it is apt to be troubled by tumults, clashes, quarrels, egoistic disturbances of all kinds, selfishness, exactions, lapses even to rage and hatred, ruptures.

It is not that these affections cannot last—tamasic instinctive affections last because of habit in spite of everything dividing the persons, e.g. certain family affections; rajasic affections can last sometimes in spite of all disturbances and incompatibilities and furious ruptures because one has a vital need of the other and clings because of that or because both have that need and are constantly separating to return and returning to separate, or proceeding from quarrel to reconciliation and from reconciliation to quarrel; sattwic affections last very often from duty to the ideal or with some other support though they may lose their keenness or intensity or brightness.

But the true reliability is there only when the psychic element in human affection becomes strong enough to colour or dominate the rest.

For that reason friendship is or rather can oftenest be the most durable of the human affections because there there is less interference of the vital and even though a flame of the ego it can be a quiet and pure fire giving always its warmth and light. Nevertheless reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion.

In any case human affection whatever its value has its place, because through it the psychic being gets the emotional experiences it needs until it is ready to prefer the true to the apparent, the perfect to the imperfect, the divine to the human. As the consciousness has to rise to a higher level, so the activities of the heart also have to rise to that higher level and change their basis and character.

Yoga is the founding of all the life and consciousness in the Divine, so also love and affection must be rooted in the Divine and a spiritual and psychic oneness in the Divine must be their foundation—to reach the Divine first leaving other things aside or to seek the Divine alone is the straight road towards that change.

That means no attachment—it need not mean turning affection into disaffection or chill indifference.

~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Vol. 31, pp. 296-297

Kanchi.

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Not an aramane like Srirangam nevertheless all prescints of a palace on earth. Huge grounds various sannidhis and magnanimity both in structure and being. A lovely temple a must visit at leisure and enjoy the divinity here. No less than Srirangam or Tirumala only the magnanimity of its people are the lacking factor  once they realize what greatness is in their midst things will change  until then hope. 

Ever somany visits to this beautiful place almost like a second home here. Wish the grandeur it deserves comes its way.  Ever somany Sundays spent at this beautiful place  running up and descending reluctantly the images still dancing before my eyes. But the last visit some time last year was a challenge. Age catching up. But the temple lives within me. Be it Tirumala   Kanchipuram,  Madurantakam, Veeraraghava, Keshavaraya, Madhava, Madhusudhana, Trivikrama, Bala gopala, Dwaraka ,Akshardham, Padmanabha ,Damodhara etc.

Talent and arrogance.

 

Let Talent Never Become Arrogance

Whether one is an artist, a scholar, a musician, a writer, or a person gifted with extraordinary talent, there is one quality that should never be allowed to grow along with success—ego.

Talent may make us special, but it does not make us superior.

An artist may create something beautiful enough to move thousands of hearts. A scholar may possess years of learning and knowledge. A musician may enchant an audience with a few notes. A writer may touch minds and change the way people think. Yet behind every talent lies something we did not create ourselves—the mind, the ability to learn, the imagination, the opportunity, and the people who encouraged us.

That is why true greatness has a quiet quality.

The more a person knows, the more he understands how much remains unknown. The greater the artist, the more he respects the mystery of creativity. The wiser the scholar, the less need he feels to prove that he is wise.

Humility does not diminish talent. It gives talent grace.

So we should not allow achievement to make us arrogant

We can enjoy applause without believing that applause makes us greater as human beings.

Recognition is wonderful, but it is never permanent. Talent is precious, but it is never a reason for arrogance.

Perhaps the finest artists are those who remain students all their lives. They continue to observe, listen, learn and wonder. They know that there is always another possibility, another interpretation, another person whose talent may surprise them.

And perhaps the finest scholars are those who can say, “I know much, but I do not know everything.”

There is something deeply beautiful about such humility.

Let success make us grateful, not arrogant.
Let knowledge make us humble, not boastful.
Let talent make us generous, not self-important.
Let appreciation encourage us, but never define us.

After all, greatness in kala can change at any moment.

Someone new may arrive.
Something new may be created.
The world may suddenly see beauty in a different way.

And that is not a threat to us. It is the natural wonder of human creativity.

So let us create without conceit, learn without pride, teach without superiority, and admire the talents of others without feeling diminished by them.

For true greatness does not lie merely in being considered great.

True greatness lies in having the humility to know that whatever greatness we possess is a gift—and that there will always be more to learn, more to admire, and more to discover.