The Trial : Franz Kafka

For this book, what I gather, the world of classic literature should be more thankful to Max Brod, the closest friend of Kafka, rather than Kafka himself. "The Trial, a classic, more of psychometric kind, was neatly placed in the drawer of Kafka at the time of his death in 1920. Max was instructed by Kafka to burn all the manuscripts after his death. Thankfully, Max Brod, after reading only few pages never felt like burning it. The Trial was published in 1925 with fragments added by Max Brod. Since then, it is incomparable.

This terrifying tale of Joseph K. gripped me from its very first lines : Somebody must have slandered about Joseph K. as one fine morning he was arrested in his apartment. The tale further unfolds into such dimensions that any sane man would fear to put himself in the place of K. He gets arrested without any reasons, faces the trial without any judge & gets death sentence without any vision of magistrtate. In his own words he gets killed like a dog.
It shook within me the very trust that we put on modern society. But how does a German-Jew reads it all to narrate in his novel. I tried to explore Kafka in his diary after I came across The Trial. The by-product of enimity of kinsmen, to be specific, his father, is evident in the pages of his diary. This constant clash made Franz Kafka. His mind piercing words were the only sanctuary for him.

The Trial, vanishes within us, the rare emotion of trust that we have for the surrounding world. Bizaare in it's plot, it narrates a story of a man who is convicted for a crime that he is unaware of. The height of fright reaches with the fable which an unknown priest tells K.
To be mentioned, I love the writing style of Kafka. The way he starts his story.
This book, I love a lot.

Zorba The Greek : NIkos Kazantzakis

I apologize dearly for my absence from this blog for a long time. I had been busy in unwinding the other aspects of life. I, in the future, will try to make it sure to not to repeat it again.

Though, I hadn't had any interest towards the fiction since I always liked to watch cinema instead but still there are several books that left upon my soul an impression which was hard to omit. Nikos Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek is one of such books. This book came out of Kazantzakis in 1946 & since then has been unmatched. To be mentioned, Osho includes this book in his favorite list & based his way of life partly on the lead character Zorba.

Never had any other imaginary character like Zorba lived life in such totality. His passion for life goes to such an extreme where majority of us wouldn't even dare set foot at. The story revolves round a man who is imprinted by the Buddha & is on a feat to write a book on it. He also owns a mine in Crete, a small town on the southern Greek sea shores. Zorba, the chief assistant of his mining expedition, leaves a mark on his mind.

The Zorban way of life, albeit of it's dangers, attracted me. It had something in common with what we call in India "The Sufis". He dances when he gets angry or when he is happy or when he is filled with sorrow. In fact, the only outflow of emotions for him is dancing & that too uncontrolled. He is an atheist but still very much in love with the existence. He loves women & can go to any limit to capture them. He has a musical instrument "Santuri" which does not obeys him & has it's own temperament i.e. it allows to play itself whenever it's on the mood. He laughs at his master every now & then for searching the meaning of life in books. He never cares about tomorrow or yesterday. I won't get surprised if he didn't even cared about the next moment. That's what Zorba is.

I vowed to myself long ago to not to follow anyone but I never vowed to not to love anyone. I fell in love with Zorba. It may seem surprising that I never finished this book. I felt no need of it instead. This book & this character may be imaginary but aren't mean to be read & put aside. They, instead, are to be lived. Not finishing this book had some unknown reasons & they still guard it. With shaking hands I scribbled this thing on it's page. This book, in matter, occupies a space in my library but, in reality, lives somewhere within me.

Bravo ! Nikos for Zorba

Aesop's Fables

No one in this world is may be unknown with this book Aesop's Fables.
For most of the people this is a book of short stories but for me this book has always been a book of wisdom.

Aesop is quite an unknown man. Nothing significant about his life is noted down in the pages of history. I will try to write whatever little is known about him.
Aesop, born 2000 years ago in 6th century, was a slave but was later granted freedom.
He used to travel a lot & these fables were told by him during his journey.
He was accused of theft of gold in Delphi & was condemned to death by hurling him off the cliff.

There are 656 fables in this book. Some of them are :-


In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
"Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.
When the winter came the Grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.
Then the Grasshopper knew...
It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said: "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin."
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give in despair.
Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak of.

One afternoon a fox was walking through the forest and spotted a bunch of grapes hanging from over a lofty branch.
"Just the thing to quench my thirst," quoth he.
Taking a few steps back, the fox jumped and just missed the hanging grapes. Again the fox took a few paces back and tried to reach them but still failed.
Finally, giving up, the fox turned up his nose and said, "They're probably sour anyway," and proceeded to walk away.

Afather had a family of sons who were perpetually quarreling among themselves. When he failed to heal their disputes by his exhortations, he determined to give them a practical illustration of the evils of disunion; and for this purpose he one day told them to bring him a bundle of sticks.
When they had done so, he placed the bundle into the hands of each of them in succession, and ordered them to break it in pieces. They tried with all their strength, and were not able to do it.
He next opened the bundle, took the sticks separately, one by one, and again put them into his sons' hands, upon which they broke them easily.
He then addressed them in these words: "My sons, if you are of one mind, and unite to assist each other, you will be as this bundle, uninjured by all the attempts of your enemies; but if you are divided among yourselves, you will be broken as easily as these sticks."

This book, I love a lot.

Commentaries On Living : J Krishnamurthy

Jiddu Krishnamurthy, the sage who would'nt be guru, had declined to accept the throne of the world master in 1930. The order of the star of the east was offered to krisnamurthy by Annie Besant the then chief of Theosophical Society. He was brought up by Annie Beasnt & Leadbeater in order to become the world master that they were awaiting. The twist in the tale came with the awakening of Krishnamurthy & he announced that truth can never be organised or cannot be sought with the help of any guru.

He died in 1986 in Ojai USA.

Although he refused any kind of guruhood but he went on to become a world reknowned teacher & preacher of his own experiences in the form of his discourses & writings. A small group also flourished around him by the name of Krishnamurthy Foundation.

Commenataries On Living is one of the many writings by Krishnamurhty. In this book he talks in details about every aspects of human life.

some excerpts from the book:-

The mind moves from the known to the known, and it cannot reach out into the unknown. You cannot think of something you do not know; it is impossible. What you think about comes out of the known, the past, whether that past be remote, or the second that has just gone by. This past is thought, shaped and conditioned by many influences, modifying itself according to circumstances and pressures, but ever remaining a process of time. Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover the new.

Disciplines, renunciations, detachments, rituals, the practice of virtue—all these, however noble, are the process of thought; and thought can only work towards an end, towards an achievement, which is ever the known. Achievement is security, the self-protective certainty of the known. To seek security in that which is nameless is to deny it. The security that may be found is only in the projection of the past, of the known.

For this reason the mind must be entirely and deeply silent; but this silence cannot be purchased through sacrifice, sublimation or suppression. This silence comes when the mind is no longer seeking, no longer caught in the process of becoming. This silence may not be built up through practice. This silence must be as unknown to the mind as the timeless; for if the mind experiences the silence, then there is the experiencer who is cognizant of a past silence; and what is experienced by the experiencer is merely a self-projected repetition. The mind can never experience the new, and so the mind must be utterly still. The mind can be still only when it is not experiencing, that is, when it is not terming or naming, recording or storing up in memory.

This book, I love a lot.

Tao Te Ching : Lao-tzu

Tao Te Ching roughly translated as the 'The Way & It's Virtue' was written by Lao-tzu in around 600 B.C.
Lao-tzu, a chinese philosopher & contemprory of Buddha, was considered to be a man of wisdom in his country. Somewhat eccentric in nature, Lao-tzu, talks about the way to enlightenment in a very awkward way. The name Lao-tzu means the old man. Since his childhood he was as wise as any old man & that's why he was named as such.

Tao Te Ching being the only book written by Lao-tzu carries a very strange & interesting story behind it's creation.
Lao-tzu, on the order of king of China was caught on the borders when he was on his last journey towards the Himalayas. The king's order were very clear that Lao-tzu should not be allowed to go untill & unless he writes his teachigs in form of a book. Miserably, Lao-tzu wrote Tao Te ching. But did'nt wrote a single word about Tao(the way) in the whole book.

He starts the book with these sentences:-

The Tao that can be told of is not an Unvarying Tao;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures,
each after its kind.

On the introductory page Lao-tzu writes:-
My words are very easy to understand ; yet no one under heaven understands them.

The Tao Te Ching can be seen as advocating mostly "feminine" (or Yin) values, emphasising the qualities of water — fluidity and softness (instead of the solid and stable mountain), choosing the obscure and mysterious aspect of things, and controlling things without ruling them, in other words to 'have without possessing'. In this respect, this book can be understood as challenging "male" (or Yang) values such as clarity, stability, positive action, and domination of nature; such values are often referred to as Confucian values. Yet a perfect balance between the Yin and Yang is still encouraged.

Something more of wisdom from the book:-

So a wise leader may say: I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength;

The contrast of opposition — i.e. the differences between male and female, light and dark, strong and weak, etc. — helps us understand and appreciate the universe.

The harder one tries, the more resistance one will create for oneself.

When the spring comes, grass grows on it's own.

This book, I love a lot.

The World As Will & Idea : Arthur Schopanhauer

The World as will & idea, although this book was rejected by most of the contemprory thinkers of Schopenhauer but still, I fell in love with this book as soon as I started reading it. The book was published in 1844.
What strikes me most is the style of this book. Here is no chinese puzzle of kantian terminology, no hegelian philosophy but there is blunt honesty, refreshing vigour & uncompromising directness.

The book starts with the first sentence of Schopenhaeur , 'The world is my idea'.
The most vital part of the first section is the attack on materialism. 'How can we explain mind as matter, when we know matter only through mind ?'.

In the second section i.e. The world as will he writes ' Consciousness is the mere surface of our mind, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside but only the crust'.

He ends this book with a sentence which I think partly became the cause of rejection of this masterpiece ' No time can be more unfavorable to philosophy than that in which it is shamefully misused on the one hand to further political objects, on the other hand as a means of livelyhood.

This book, I love a lot.

Bertrand Russell

I appologize dearly to all the readers as I have again deviated from the topic of books to the authors. But in this case it was necessary;just to save time & space.

Bertarnd Russell, the logician,philosopher,thinker,mathematician & the reformer, was born in Britain in 1872. He was awarded Nobel Prize in 1950.
There have been two Bertrand Russells : One who died during the war; & another who rose out of that one's shroud, an almost mystic communist born out of the ashes of a mathematical logician.Perhaps there was a tender mystic strain in him always. I tried to focus myself on the later Bertran Russell.

I had a chance to read four of his books:

1). An Inquiry Into meaning & Truth :-In this book Russell is concerned with the foundation of knowledge. He approaches his subject through a discussion of language, the relationship of truth to experience & an investigation into how knowledge of the structure of language helps our understanding of the world.

2). Analysis Of Mind :- This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different tendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of which Rusell found himself in sympathy, although at first sight they might seem inconsistent. On the one hand, many psychologists, especially those of the behaviourist school, tend to adopt what is essentially a materialistic position, as a matter of method of metaphysics. In this book, Russell talks about consciousness, desires, instincts & habbits.

3). Why I am not a christian :- This book actually is the collection of Russell's lectures & debates over his firm postion of atheism. Russell deeply goes into human mind in order to investigate the origins & causes of religion. Like Nietzsche Christianity is symbolic for Russell's rational ideas. He opposed all the organised religions.

4). The Roads To Freedom :- This is political doctorine of Russell. A pro-revolution book in which Russell developed his specific political idealogy more clealry than in any other book that he wrote during the first world war.

Saaye Mein Dhoop : Dushyant Kumar

Saaye Mein Dhoop is a collection of urdu ghazals by Dushyant Kumar, a well known hindi poet.
Although Dushyant Kumar lived a very short life of only 42 years but he succeeded in making his impression on the field of hindi literature.

I am in deep love with this book simply because these poems are seminal & heart touching.

Leaves Of Grass : Walt Whitman

I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.


I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.


Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.


The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

'I Celebrate myself ' These lines from the book Leaves Of Grass makes stand Walt whitman tall in comparison to all the poets.

Today, more than a century after the publication of the final edition of Leaves Of Grass, Whitman's place in American literary history often seems as nebulous and enigmatic as the ideas upon which America was founded. Numerous poets since Whitman have consciously either placed themselves in the wake of his tradition or reacted violently against him, and the aesthetic value of Whitman's poetry continues to be a controversial subject. The intention of this exhibit is not to make a critical appraisal of Whitman's work; instead, it is hoped that the materials assembled here will help explain the phenomenon which was Walt Whitman. While the subject matter and themes present in Whitman's poetry reflect the historical attitudes and concerns of his day, the books themselves are also artifacts of a fascination and extremely dynamic period of American publishing history.

This book, I love a lot.

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones : Paul Reps

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is an amazing book & it’s was fortunate on my part to be a part of all those who are in love with this book.
This book is actually a compilation by Paul Reps. He has simply translated the Zen stories & I should add that he has done a marvelous job.
I have seen many books on Zen but Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a mile-stone as far as the Zen philosophy is concerned,

The best thing about the book is this that Paul Reps has not added a single word from his side. He tried to be very fair ; in this regard even D. T. Suzuki has also failed.
Although Suzuki’s approach is no less than that of Zen master’s but still his work on Zen lags far behind from Paul Reps’s.

Apart from Zen stories this book also contains 112 meditative techniques of Lord Shiva. In Hindu mythology these techniques are compiled in a book called Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. Paul Reps when came to India visited a famous saint in Kashmir. The saint was Lakshmanju. From him Paul Reps came to know about the ancient hindu meditative techniques.

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a very small book; pocket size.
Paul Reps picked up the name for his book from a very interesting story :
Bodhidharma, when asked his disciples about the Zen, the firs one replied that Zen is this world. Bodhidharma said you have skin of Zen. The second one replied that not only earth but also sky is Zen. Bodhidharma said you have Zen flesh. The third one replied that universe is made up of four elements & the fifth unknown element is Zen. Bodhidharma said you Zen bones. The fourth disciple did not said anything; he just kept quite. The Bodhidharma said you have Zen marrow.
So, the name Zen Flesh, Zen Bones comes from this story. The Zen marrow is not added in the title simply because it cannot be said.
That which cannot be spoken about, must be passed over in silence--- Ludwig Wittegenstein.

The Zen stories are one of the most complicated things in this world. Although, being an engineering student, complication was never a problem for me but speaking frankly Zen stories are even more complicated than cracking CAT or UPSC.
Just read some of them & one will find me correct.

But I will narrate a very simple story just to make the reader aware of the taste of Zen :

Once a warrior came to Hakuin ( famous Zen master).
He asked Hakhuin , ‘ Do you know anything about the heaven & hell ?’.
Hakuin said , ‘ Who are you ?’
He said, ‘ I am a warrior.’
Hakuin replied, ‘ Well, you look like a beggar instead of warrior.’
On hearing this the warrior felt offended & drew out his sword.
Hakuin said, ‘ Oh! So you have a sword too. From here my son, opens the gate to hell.’
Instantly the warrior felt that he was going to do something wrong. He placed the sword back & touched the feet of Hakuin.
Hakuin said, ‘ And from here my son, opens the gate to heaven.’

This book, I love a lot