A year has already passed since the lockdown was announced and we are still struggling with the virus and the changes it has forced/is forcing us to make with our lifestyles. Have we learnt anything from it? Yes that it is possible to live simply on as little, if the situation necessitates it. The attempts at relaxing the lockdowns have shown that people want to return back to their old lives, some out of necessity and some out of boredom – the effect of both is the same, the virus keeps spreading & creating havoc. 

What is needed is that we take ownership of our own lives since that is the only way we can survive this pandemic. We have to reexamine the parameters which got us here in the first place. The crux of the problem is the way in which we choose to live life – it is a consumption oriented, accumulating kind of a lifestyle that brings about categories of haves/have nots wherein the have nots are forced to take risks for sheer survival. We compound the problems by introducing differentiations in terms of religion, caste, gender, etc and we then face a fractured social fabric which gives rise to situations like this in which even if you want to change, the social structure is beyond repair…

Going deeper, this is due to the fact that we have given importance to power, wealth, fame(PWF) as parameters of a successful life. Look around and assess for yourself the “successful” people, are they happy? No, they still want more PWF to keep surviving since they are like honeybees who only know to accumulate honey, but don’t know the purpose of that “honey”.  What use is “honey” if it does not give you peace of mind? The point completely missed out in this chase is that the direction of the pursuit itself is wrong, peace of mind is a result of “letting go” not “accumulating”…

Change always begins with self, so if you start with yourself and take ownership of your life despite the pushes & pulls of the society, you would bring in the change. Start simplifying your life and move away from the consumption/accumulation oriented lifestyle to a more “Letting go” lifestyle – such a lifestyle besides being a reward in itself, would also leave a legacy worth perpetuating…

“Legacy is not leaving something for people. It’s leaving something in people” – Peter Strople​. 

“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today(Action)”; 

“Why do today what can be done tomorrow?(Postpone)”; 

and by extension “Why even do tomorrow what can be avoided altogether? (Avoid)”. 

Having used all maxims at various stages in life, I can say that all have merits depending on the context/purpose for which it is used. 

Action: Doing things gets you a sense of satisfaction having done something and you get a result to let you know whether what you did was right or wrong. 

Postpone: By delaying taking action, either things would sort themselves out or you would get used to it. 

Avoid: By ignoring it altogether you either save your energy or you have only postponed the inevitable… 

Different people prefer different approaches – Action, Postpone & Avoid and all are fine so long as you know what you want out of your life since you don’t get replays in life. In the words of Omar Khayyam in The Rubaiyat “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety not wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

You live in the notion that you have all the time in the world to do what it is that you intend doing and that you would have time for postponing and avoiding things and would deal with them later…The problem is that you think you have time and think that doing or postponing or avoiding will bring a result that would give you joy… The result, my friends, is in the future which no one has seen, life is here and Now! So whichever approach you prefer – action, postpone, avoid, be joyful in the moment for that is the only Truth and accept the result of your action as joyfully since it is the result of your doing…

“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather” this quote of Pema Chodron beautifully conveys the concept of “Shiva”  which lies beyond all that can be experienced & is the Source or the substratum on which existence as we know is created.  We are limited by the ideas of time, space, word and atoms and therefore experience life in a limited way though our limited senses and understanding of existence. We try to conceptualise the motives behind creation but end up tying ourselves in knots.

Paramhansa Yogananda said “How to explain to the highest human faculty-reason, which reduces all concepts to cause-effect relationships – the motives of the uncaused God?” Somehow we claim to know everything that happens in our lives but nothing before or after it. All created things seem to be explainable in the middle, as we have seen, but are infinite and invisible in beginning and end. This mystery should spur man to trace the visible effect to the Invisible Cause, the Spirit which is “Shiva” which can be experienced when you let go of all artificial constructs of ego in deep meditation. The image/idol of Shiva as a Yogi in Deep Meditation  is attempting to show a path which is invisible to the eye. Don’t get enamored with the idol or rituals, get enamored with what it is trying to convey – silence and meditation.

On this Auspicious Day of Mahashivratri, I wish you the courage to practice silence and meditation to allow Shiva to unfold to you from the very depths of your existence. You start this journey of unfolding by saying “Om Namah Shivaya – I pray to Shiva” and end it when you realise “Shivoham – I am Shiva”.

I saw a video on WhatsApp wherein the concept of heaven was explained through a metaphor to a rich man who wanted to take all his possessions to heaven. A wise person told the rich man that just as he had to exchange his currency when he travelled abroad, he had to get the currency of heaven before travelling to heaven – which is blessings through good deeds… Sounds good but if we stop for a moment and ask ourselves what is heaven, we will find that it is just a thought of continued pleasure post death. So we invest in some good deeds now so that we can secure our “pleasure” post death – much like a Provident Fund investment which secures your fund flow post retirement…

In other words our attachment to the cycle of fulfilment – seeking pleasure/avoiding pain is passed on to the next realm(if there is one, we are even not sure of that but doesn’t harm taking some insurance of doing some good deeds just in case…) Doing good deeds is always good but with what intention you do it would matter for your own evolution/maturity. 

The problem is that we have experienced life only as a cycle of fulfilment and are so attached to it that we want it to continue in the next realm as well. It is this attachment to the concept of fulfilment and that life is “Out there” to be achieved or grasped that is the problem. Ask yourself when is it that you would have had enough? Never – you want to live forever and do the same things that you are comfortable doing that bring you pleasure. Now ask yourself can this happen? Obviously No. You observe it all around that everything is impermanent and yet you seek permanency of pleasures in life and in death… 

This is the illusion that you must get over, no one else can do it for you. Meditation is the way to get over this illusion.
When you go deeper you will find that you are not living an illusion, you are the illusion….

What should/shouldn’t others do? You will find most people being eloquent about this but when it comes to doing it themselves they would find justifications for being the way they are or simply blame it on the situation or other people. 

This is a problem that has existed forever with humans, it’s easy to blame others but not easy to change yourself. Over the ages wise counsel has been left through the medium of holy books such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, the Koran, the ten commandments,… If you notice, all these are recommendations for adhering to a personal code that would take you closer to God/Liberation and an interpersonal code that promotes social well being since all of us are in it together, this is “Dharma”. Unfortunately people with malafide intent have used these guidelines to create their own interpretations and further their own ends and this is the beginning of religion which parted ways with Dharma. Resultantly we are experiencing a broken down social order and we remain far away from personal liberation/god.

What does one do in this situation? In my view, working towards your personal liberation by following a personal code that upholds discipline, organised thought and determination is essential along with an interpersonal code that upholds social well being and most importantly the personal / interpersonal code must not conflict with each other. Any of the holy books would give you these codes but to uphold them in spirit is up to you and that is the purpose of life – to align yourself to the code, not to find a way of justifying your misaligned choices… 

Dharma is Dharma, drop all the prefixes/suffixes (Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Christanity….) and live by the principle of personal liberation/interpersonal well being and leave a legacy of a spiritually strong and socially harmonious legacy for the generations to come….

Picture this – children playing a game in the courtyard and fighting over who is right/wrong as per the rules of the game, the parents trying to resolve the dispute since things might get violent and the grand parents simply watching all this with a smile, having been there, done that and knowing that it’s just a game and whatever the outcome the family would be dining together that evening…

Life is as simple – there are those(Children) who play the game of chasing power/wealth/fame, then there are those(parents) who feel that their intervention is necessary for resolving the disputes arising in the game since they feel responsible for the children and then above all are those(Grandparents) who know that none of this really matters…. You will find such people throughout life and the role that they play depends on their maturity and acceptance that life is nothing but a game being played by eternity, of eternity, for eternity. The Grandparents mindset is a product of experience of having been children, parents and knowing that nothing is permanent except change… 

You have to get the Grandparents wisdom(by sheer experience or listening to the wise) which is nothing but detachment with love and yet be young at heart to play the game of life. Keeping young at heart doesn’t mean that you have to be childish, it means that you have to be childlike. Know that you are playing a game of life that may not (most probably won’t ;-)) turn out in your favour and still accept the result as lovingly. Grandparents love all present – the children & parents, yet choose to remain detached from the result of the game without taking sides…

Life is simple but we complicate it. Nothing is “Expected” of us, it is our imagined expectations of ourselves and others that creates problems in the first place. We are just a miniscule piece of energy experiencing life in this world which is itself insignificant as compared to the universe. Our intellect urges us to try to figure out the reason for all this creation but in the process we ignore the most simple principles of life & complicate things for ourselves & others.

Everything is temporary – including your time in this world, your body, mind, and everything that you see around. You are a visitor, at best who has been given a suit(body) and a mind(cognitive & communication) abilities. You want to find out why instead of doing the work you were sent here to do in the first place – your karma. The intelligence that has created this wonderful creation knows what it’s doing, it doesn’t need our esteemed advice. 

If you simply accept that you have a car – first learn to drive it without hurting others and enjoy the car & the sights around. Keep it simple – live by a simple code that helps you and all others experience their short time called life in as good a way as possible. You can’t make others happy if you are not happy yourself. Being happy is living simple. Just switch the paradigm of your life from getting to giving. Takers may eat better but the givers sleep better.

Life is for giving & forgiving and not for getting & forgetting…

Clarity / intensity of intent and the will for execution are critical success factors for any endeavour. A Buddha or a Hitler possessed both, only the direction & focus of the intent was different…

The good part is you can choose the direction and focus of your intent. The not so good part is that you have to fight with all your other inherent tendencies to establish it. Your focus is always on various things of value to you whether power,wealth, fame, sensual indulgences, emotions, intellect, spiritual which may or may not be in line with the direction and focus of intent that you may want. To align this distracted mind and body is one of the results of practicing Yoga consistently.

They say a habit forming period is 21 days or 90 days, but a character forming period is 12 years. Hence one Tapas is 12 years and all the Sadhus practice consistently for 12 years before dipping into the Ganga as a symbol of completion of one Tapas during the Kumbh Mela that happens every 12 years.

I wish there were an easy way of aligning character or forming habits but unfortunately, there isn’t. You have to choose your intent, focus carefully and use all your will to keep practicing it consistently and only then perhaps you will be able to harness the tremendous strength of the Shakti(Consciousness + Energy) in you. Shakti favours only those with a clear intent and will to see it through whether it is for the well being of all or not doesn’t really matter to it but it should to you since history is replete with examples of use of Shakti towards a good cause and a bad cause, why not choose the good one?

Remember what you choose to focus on with body, mind, spirit happens… 

“Time management” is a misnomer. Time actually can never be managed since it is a man made construct that keeps ticking in a predetermined order. It is what we do in that time that can & must be managed.

In the words of H Jackson Brown Jr. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

Time is a constant whilst energy is variable. You must have observed that if you do what you love, you have all the energy at your disposal and you even lose track of time. All people who achieved something of significance pursued what they loved or poured love into what came their way, that is the simple secret of success and energy management.

So don’t manage time, manage energy. Time was never yours and never will be but energy is yours and you can choose to direct it.

Your energy is currency, spend it well, use it wisely….

Some animals/birds are territorial whilst some are nomadic, that is just the way of things. Who teaches some birds to fly thousands of kms in the same route, who teaches tigers to be territorial? There is a scheme of things for everyone which has perhaps evolved as a natural cycle of evolution or simply hardcoded in the DNA.

What are humans? Territorial or nomadic, both? We have been nomadic in our earlier years when hunting, gathering necessitated wandering. Then some settled and started farming and then more settled and now we have cities with people falling over ourselves. Are we really settled? Comes in the industrial revolution, advances in science & technology and now Artificial Intelligence. All are attempting to make life more comfortable and predictable. Noble intentions, but the side effects are not necessarily good – population explosion, environmental pollution & degradation, complex political and social systems that cannot be reconciled except with violence…The gap between the haves and have nots is widening. There are parts of the world wherein people are dying of starvation and then there are parts of the world where people don’t know what to do with themselves and their resources.

Advancement in Artificial intelligence is making human work more and more redundant. Possibly it may solve the problem of food, clothing and shelter in future but then what do we do with ourselves? This challenge is galloping towards us at a furious pace. There are people who are simply fighting advancement of technology, there are some that are living as close to nature as possible but most are simply accepting the advancement of technology and its effects as a fait accompli.

We are living in this bizarre, disconnected world and yet it is in our hands to change it if we wish to. What do we choose? Where do we start? How do you change something that is completely beyond your control? You can’t change the world, you can only change yourself and in doing so perhaps change the world…

Be the change you want to see in the world…