“You two were great friends, what happened?”

“I guess our friendship ran its course, we simply moved on with our lives…”

A dialogue from a Serial on OTT that I was watching and it got me thinking as to can friendship really run its course? It again depends on who you call friends, “Friend” after all is just a word, everything depends on what you understand as friendship and what value you assign to it in your life which in today’s facebook world is just a matter of a click or who “likes” me more…

Does just sharing common interests/situations/background,etc make one a friend? No that is an acquaintance, a friend is something special right? What is that something special that a friend has but acquaintances don’t? In my view, it is being concerned (and acting) for the well being of the friend without any expectation in return. So how many people from the list of common interests/situations/background, etc fall in this category and how many would you be willing to do anything for unconditionally?

The question really isn’t how many friends you have, it is whether you can be a friend. Don’t look for good friends, be one. Jagat Mitra is a person who wishes well for everyone and acts daily for the well being of all. It’s a one sided love affair of sorts. Be such a friend…

Khada Kabir Bazar mein

Maange sab ki Khair

Na kono se Dosti

Na Kono se Bair

Jaana to Ghar se Kabr hi tak hi tha

Magar isime Puri zindagi nikal gayi 

What you do for a living really doesn’t matter and it depends on your situation, capability, opportunity, desire, etc but how you live it matters a lot… Mortality reminds us that the show is limited and will end one day or another. So how to live it is something that you must learn and implement on a daily basis to know that you have lived well.

In my view, Healthy, Wealthy, Wise are the 3 blessings that should be sought by everyone and work towards maintaining them on a daily basis. Health and Wealth are accumulatory in nature & depend on understanding & implementing the process of creating and maintaining them, whereas Wisdom is understanding what life is all about and knowing the joy of sharing. How much to accumulate and how much to share, well that is something that each one of us has to learn and keep doing on a daily basis. 

Remember it is sharing that brings you maximum joy. Live a joyful day, everyday.

Learn, earn, share. 

You may have 10 houses and yet you can live in only one and sleep only on one bed at a time…

The best of places seen, adventures experienced, sensual delights finally reduce to memories that you may not be able to recall with age…

There comes a point where you feel you are repeating the same beaten path hoping to give you the same pleasure but it never does since all experiences follow the law of diminishing returns….

Then what is the point?

Are you peaceful and happy with yourself at this very moment and can retain that feeling with you for all moments to come?

Peace and happiness never comes about by acquisition of things or knowledge, it comes about by letting go…

Of what and how is something that you need to figure out. As Confucius puts it “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance”…

Masters and scriptures can just point you in the right direction but letting go of even knowing is the key…

There is a saying in Arabic – “al-‘ilmu-hijaab-ul-akbar” – Knowing is the greatest ignorance…

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Pilgrimage is a journey unto oneSelf, the external journey is just a support to the internal journey. The internal journey is of discovering the Divinity within us and the external journey (whether it be a Pandharpur Vari or Kailash Manasarovar Yatra or Hajj or Narmada Parikrama,…) is one of helping us achieve the internal one.

Pilgrimage is a process of letting go of the illusion of separateness, that you are the body/mind. So long as you are prepared to let go of your attachments to the amusements of the body/mind – senses, relationships, ego and discover what lies beyond body/mind you are a pilgrim. You needn’t embark on any external journey since what you seek is not without but within.

As Sant Kabir puts it beautifully – “I felt in great need of a pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days and God came to me”

The indications of the rapid climate change are such that the earth may not support human life very soon unless we find a way of restoring the balance that has been skewed by unmindful abuse of nature for a few conveniences and technological advances. What is the use of these conveniences/technological advances if our planet itself is lost in the process (Operation successful, Patient Dead! kind of a scenario). Destroying the planet we live in whilst searching for other sustainable planets is ridiculous but that’s exactly what we are doing. We are killing our planet and hope to find another planet where we can migrate our species to since we cannot deal with our own greed…If such is the intelligence that we have gathered through evolution, have we even evolved and if we haven’t then isn’t it better that we are rendered extinct by our own foolish acts?

Monsoon has not arrived as of 22nd June in Mumbai/Western India, Heat waves across the country/world, Himalayan Glaciers melting at an alarming rate, Forest Fires in California/Amazon Forests… Abhi to party shuru hui hai? Any idiot can see that this party cannot last long given the momentum it has caught. Any action now is already like digging a well when thirsty. 

Well better late than never….But what to do to reverse this momentum? The answer is simple “Start living in harmony with nature without wanting to abuse it for our own greed/conveniences” but who’s listening???

Coincidentally 21st June, besides being the longest day, is celebrated as World Music Day as well as International Yoga Day. 

Music and Yoga are interconnected. Yoga is about achieving inner silence and life is musical notes in the background of silence. As Mozart beautifully put it – “music is not in the notes, it’s in the silence between…”

If you find the silence, you enjoy the music

Some people find their mojo in climbing the Everest (Many die trying), some others in being successful businessmen, politicians, actors or whatever other role catches their fancy. You start experiencing life through this lens of the role/s you play and remain blissfully ignorant to the fact that you are identifying with the impermanent and it will pass. You get so used to living through the lens of duality that you think that this is what life is all about and by the time you feel that you have missed the point, you are already addicted to living the way you are…. Sounds familiar?  

It is when you realise that you are not your achievements or your titles or your relationships, that you start wondering who am ‘I’ and what am I here for? For the first part of discovering “who am I?” the path of letting go of identifications/attachments to the impermanent by reminding yourself “इदं न मम”(Idam na mama) – This is not I/me/mine”/ Neti (Not this, not this), whatever remains at the end of this exercise is Truth which you can neither say is you or not you. This is liberation / Self realisation when you have transcended your attachments/identifications with the impermanent – Such people are Jivan Mukta – One who is inwardly free whilst living in this world or liberated while living…

“Elephant in the room” is an obvious problem that no one wants to discuss(and resolve)….Global Warming, Local inequities, Poverty, Caste/Religion/etc based politics, etc. There are many elephants in our room which were/are created by individuals stricken with Kama(lust/craving), Krodh(anger), Lobha(greed), Mada(arrogance), Moha (delusion), Matsarya(jealousy). If you analyse any problem that has reached global proportions, you will find the crux is weak minds unable to conquer the shadaripu’s(six enemies of the mind). The only solution to this is to find Love within, which is an individual endeavour and leave the world a better place with one less problem that needs solving. 

Find the love in yourself buried under heaps of prejudices, beliefs, desires, etc. “Finding love” is the real Elephant in the Room that everyone must address individually. It won’t solve the problems but it would give you the proper attitude to deal with them. Love is sufficient unto itself….

Reminds me of a couplet from a famous sufi quawali 

Ab Labs o bayan sab khatam hue

Ab labs o bayan ka kaam nahi

Ab ishq hai khud paigam apna 

Aur ishq ka kuch paigam nahi

Now the time words and sayings is over, just words & sayings are of no use.

Now love is its own message and love doesn’t give or need any message/direction

How you find your God or not is your problem, how you choose to live in society is everyone’s problem and we are adopting insensitive/technology dependent lifestyles that are taking us away from nature/natural living. When the biggest expenditure for all countries put together is “Defence”, whilst the world is headed towards ecological disaster, the signs of which are already staring us in the face, you know that you have messed up. It is upto us to fix this within ourselves and our environment. We have to figure out ways of living harmoniously with technology, nature and most importantly with people… 

Life is simple if you keep it simple. If a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment, not the flower…

Old Woman/Young Woman? The same picture could give you two different impressions, doesn’t make one right and the other wrong, they’re merely different perspectives of the same picture. Both are right. For one to be right, the other needn’t be wrong. The same holds true for religions, we are all looking at the same Divinity with different perspectives as beautifully depicted in this picture. 

All of us are trying to get to the Source through our own paths. Live and let live…By resisting other perspectives or downright rejecting them, we only limit our world view. Learn to be inclusive, not exclusive. Learn to appreciate and celebrate differences, that will broaden your perspective on life.  

In a lighter vein sharing a joke on religious truths. Don’t get stuck in any “ism” since that’s where exploration ends. Explore life to its fullest, drop “ism’s”….