Life throws myriad challenges at everyone and there is no choice but to face them, more so in the present situation. To be able to see the bright side of things despite almost everything going wrong, is an attitude to be cultivated. 

If you notice your discussions during the day and analyse it, you will find that quite a substantial portion of the day is spent in complaining about problems, whether your own or observed in others. What this does is it simply sharpens the ability to observe negatively and takes your mind down a negative spiral out of which it is difficult to emerge, consequently you have negative experience of life and share it with others as well…

A simple habit of writing down 10 good things that you do/observe on a daily basis can change this carefully cultivated habit of negativity. Also whenever you speak, observe whether what you speak is just negatively stating your own situation or the situation around you, if so refrain from doing so, instead do something positive to rectify the situation, if you can’t then simply accept it, complaining about it won’t help.

Accept it, change it or leave it….

Aasman ko zamin ye zaroori nahi jaanle,(the sky doesn’t have to meet earth)Ishq saccha vahi jisko milti nahin manzilein…(only the love that doesn’t seek/find a destination is true love)Lyrics from a song recently released that point in the direction of unconditional love… 

I love ____ person, ____ thing, ____ idea is an expression of our preferences that could change due to time and circumstances. ​Love as a state of being that was experienced by Radha / Meerabai / Kabir is completely different from love for people/things/ideas. Love as state of being can be experienced only when you dissolve all identities that you have built around yourself – as in the words of Rumi – Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Dissolving identities is a path of Bhakti Yoga – it is recommended especially for people who are very emotional. There is no structured approach to dissolving identities since you are the one who has created them and holding on to them. Another method is that of Gnana Yoga for people who are inclined to experience life from an intellectual perspective. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, a character created to be a great logician, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth….This is a method of using intellect called “Neti” (Not this) which involves observing yourself and letting go of who you are not and then what remains would be who you truly are – your state of being of which love/bliss is a quality experienced….

“It is illusory to think that a person has one mind, good or bad. There is no single mind but many; we are a coalition, not a single person.
People can consciously redirect their minds, but, like learning to read it to do math, this ability doesn’t come naturally. It has to be nurtured. We have to know who is in there to order around.”Robert Ornstein- PhD Psychologist UCLA

Knowing the mind is key to life itself. Mind is the intangible part of our existence whilst Body is the tangible part. We readily accept to address the tangible part body by diet, exercise, rest but don’t do much about the Mind which is actually controlling our life itself. 

Which method you choose to know your mind is up to you. Psychology and Psychiatry are the scientific disciplines that are attempting to know the Mind. Philosophy is a metaphysical approach towards knowing the mind. Yoga is a practical way of experiencing the mind and its various dimensions that ultimately leads you to Samadhi which is a state of Still Mind in which you transcend duality and experience the very Source of Creation – Advaita…

Sharing this note to self circulating on WhatsApp that rings so true. I was prompted by google photos about this day last year and saw a dear friend in it who passed away earlier this year and it reminded me of the uncertainty of how much time we have left to do what we choose to do with it.

As the lyrics of a famous Beatles song goes – “there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friends…” , there is only this moment at your disposal, live it as joyfully as you can, sharing that joy with others around you, there’s really nothing better. 

Look at what you are chasing or what is bothering you and simply let it go to be in this moment in peace. As a famous zen saying goes – a man was running as he crossed the Buddha and Buddha asked him “Why are you running?” and that was the man’s moment of enlightenment, the man stopped and returned home…

Remember after the game is over, the king and the pawn return to the same box… 

All of us pray and have our own methods of doing so. Prayer, in my view, is a form of auto – suggestion that expresses your intent or statement of purpose. It could be in any language, mantra, chant, the important thing is you understand what you are chanting/reciting or the import of the prayer. Once you have expressed and reminded yourself of your intentions through prayer, it is most important that you execute the intent through the day as sincerely as possible. Most of us do the first part of the prayer of expressing it very well but whether we actually bring to action what we wish for is what is doubtful.

Prayer is not sufficient unto itself, it needs the wheels of effort to make it come true. Who is going to make the effort? We wish to outsource our effort to some entity called God and wish that it happens. What we forget is this God is within us and wants to see the prayer accomplished but we need to take efforts to accomplish it. 

Examine/Re-examine your prayers, make it as simple and understandable to you as possible, but above all put efforts behind whatever it is you pray for… Sharing a lovely prayer that I came across of St.Francis, who also took the efforts of actioning his prayer and actually walked his talk…

For as long as space exists

And sentient beings endure,

May I too remain,

To dispel the misery of the world.

Lord make me an instrument Of thy peace,

Where there is hatred, Let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant thatI may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we Are pardoned,

and it is in dying

That we are born to eternal life.

Almost all crackers are banned this Diwali due to the increasing air & noise pollution levels, so what do you light up this Diwali? The best thing and in my view, the first thing to light up besides your homes and environment, is the light of Sattva within. 

Sattva is stillness of mind. In ayurveda the mind is considered to be the sixth sense that controls the other five senses. The pure state of sattva where the mind is considered one with the Soul is the true state of awakening. Sattva brings about goodness, truth, compassion and peace. A disturbance to the balanced state of sattva by indulging in excessive action (Rajas) or excessive inertia (Tamas), is the cause of most of the problems we face in life whether physical, mental, financial, relational. Bringing back the balance by realigning with sattva is the best gift you can give yourself and others.

The more you align with sattva the clearer your mind becomes, your faculties optimally aligned, you then know what true clarity & joy means. Light this light of sattva in you and be a clearer, lighter & better balanced person – that is true celebration. 

Happy Diwali.

Regret, remorse, guilt are indications that you are suffering your past memories. Worry, fear, anxiety are indications that you are suffering your imagination. Both memories and imagination are faculties provided to us for navigating our way through life but if we make them the source of our suffering then who is to blame? 

Yes, you should learn from your past(Using Memory) and also plan ahead(using imagination) so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes or do repeat the right conduct but flogging yourself for not doing something right isn’t going to help. Do something now, if you can to rectify the situation, if there isn’t anything that can be done then simply move on enriched with the learning that now you know one more thing you shouldn’t do. Wallowing in regret, remorse, guilt or worry, fear, anxiety won’t help, instead it will only create psychological trauma that would manifest as a psychosomatic disorder for you, so stop the habit.

Attention, focus on the moment you are living in is a Sadhana to overcome this suffering of memories/imagination. The Power of Now.

Whether Buddha, Jesus, Kabir and all other Masters are referring to the same thing or not, who knows? Their words, at best, give us a conceptual framework of what Truth could be but to experience it is an individual thing and efforts in the right direction are needed. The truth is not just going to dawn upon you one fine day, you have to lend yourself to experiencing life and maturing yourself. 

To a lay observer, taking no efforts and being effortless may seem to be very similar but actually there is a world of difference between the two. Just like driving a car – you first need to decide that you want to learn to drive a car, then you take efforts to learn it from people who know and then after years of efforts of driving thousands of kms you finally become effortless in driving. It takes the entire chain of decision-learning- sustained efforts to learn anything & be effortless. Being effortless is the culmination of sustained practice of the right effort.​

Similarly​ in the spiritual journey you first need to decide that you want to know the Truth in the first place, then find a Master who would be able to teach you the right practices, consistently practice that for years and only then perhaps you would get there. The doors open up when you lend yourself to experiencing by consistent right practice. It’s like a video game that is played at different levels, the moment you master one level, the door to the next level opens up. Who opens these doors? It’s your own mind that takes you to the next level of the game till you reach the source itself and are no longer a part of the game…

Sitting on my breakfast table, having apples from New Zealand, Eggs & Bread from the local market along with Swiss Cheese & preserves from different parts of the world, speaking on a video call on a mobile made in China, with my brother in the US, it is safe to say that we are living in a world wherein consumer or rather the money he/she has would buy goods & services from across the world – a Global Economy indeed. Do we pat ourselves on the back or is there something wrong with this picture? The micro picture looks just fine but if you consider the macro picture, things that are happening across the world – wars, conflicts, people starving, forests burning, you know that to achieve this global consumerism we’ve screwed up somewhere along the way but can’t exactly figure out where. 

Simple morality says that you shouldn’t sleep if your neighbour is hungry. How do you apply this morality in today’s age and time wherein everything has been converted into money terms and people are simply chasing money to better their own lifestyle. The more you earn, the more your needs increase and you finally never have ‘enough’ of money. So morality usually takes a backseat or at best a cheque written to a charity from time to time, that assuages your guilt. You have to figure out your own morality since society has long forgotten it’s, now it only knows the chase of money (power and fame are close siblings). People give themselves a cover of honour – Industrialists, successful professionals, Politicians etc but the underlying chase is still wealth, power, fame since that is what the society acknowledges and upholds.

We live in times wherein Presidents/Prime Ministers of First World Nations are looking at ways and means of increasing economic wealth instead of moral wealth since the parameters of success are wealth, power, fame. What good has it done these progressed nations who have economic well being but weak ethical and  moral wealth? The parameters of success have to be redefined with Ethical and Moral Values as the Foundation. A society is only a collection of people and what the people uphold. So unless individuals across the world seek Ethical & Moral Values as the foundation, this may never happen. Why not be the one to start this revolution? It simply needs you to commit to an ethical and moral code and pray that there are many more like you across the world who want this change. A revolution of this kind will come sooner or later but whether we make it happen in our lifetime or give it a pass, is upto us….

All urges that you act upon are from one of the 4 aspects of mind: Ahamkara(“I” ness), Chitta(Storehouse of Memories), Manas(Controller of senses) and Buddhi(Discriminative intelligence). The noise that you constantly experience in your head are the urges being sent out by one of these functions and you choose one or multiple things to act upon. Everything is first created and decided in your mind, the body only executes the actions as directed by the mind. So knowing your mind would get you better control of your life, it is also the doorway to realising your Self – Advaita.

Awareness is the key to Self Realisation which is a result of experience.  You may read scriptures and books written by Masters that expresses their experience but that is just the start point that assures you that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the journey still has to be performed by you to experience it. As the Tibetan saying goes: Do not mistake understanding for realisation and do not mistake realisation for liberation.

To cultivate awareness, Buddha has indicated a simple path of simply observing your breathing. This practice keeps your mind in the present and also makes you aware of the fact that everything is constantly changing. This simple practice would develop your awareness. Simply observe what are the urges you get and what are the ones you actually act upon. This would, in time, give you a glimpse of your own mind & better control over it. Your objective however is to transcend it and get to the Source of creation itself. This can be explained better through an analogy.   

The body and mind are both manifestations of creation – the body is gross and hence can be seen, the mind is subtle and can’t be seen. Everything (Including thoughts and emotions) in creation is made of 3 Gunas (Qualities) which are Sattva(Clarity), Rajas(Activity) and Tamas(Inertia) and all this life of Gunas is played on the substratum of Nirguna (Advaita:That which has no other). Our lives are much like images flashed on the screen of a TV so whilst the images seem to be in motion all the time, the screen is completely unaffected. So Nirguna is like the screen that remains completely unaffected by the Guna’s (Images) played on the screen. The images are our existence which we identify with and the screen is the substratum on which it plays out which we miss out, even though we are in essence made of/from it, since we are unaware of it.

Cultivating awareness by focusing on breathing would eventually enlighten you. Awareness doesn’t change the world around you but completely changes the way you look at the world. That’s what the zen saying beautifully captures:” Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water”