We can’t see it or don’t know it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Changing forms of the same essence is what this entire world is made of. Ice Cubes are made of water which is condensed water vapour received in the form of rain, water vapour in turn is made of 2 elements of Hydrogen and 1 element of Oxygen which further are made of sub atomic particles,… We can see Ice Cubes and water but rest is invisible / subtle. We are like ice cubes denying the existence of the very Source that provides us the experience of life.
We observe the Circle of life in everything around us – humans, animals, plants, etc and yet somehow get attached to the process of life. In accounting terms, our physical body(and everything visible) is a depreciable asset subject to wear and tear and eventually unsustainable for the life that resides within us, that is when life leaves the body to take form again later in another body. The physical body that we leave back is merged into the elements and life goes on…Despite observing this on a daily basis, we somehow live in denial of it or fear it from happening to us…
The Ganesh Festival is to remind us that even the idols of Gods are consigned back to the elements so let us not get too attached to the ephemeral/impermanent world, instead live life in the awareness that we are eternal life living a limited existence and lets make that existence pleasant for not only us but everyone around us…
Recently I saw the movie “The Walk” which is the story of a French High Wire Artist who walks between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre on 7th August 1974. I was sitting on the edge of the sofa through the movie and couldn’t imagine why someone would want to do such a crazy thing at the risk of certain death. Reminded me of the famous reply by Mountaineer George Mallory when asked by a journalist “Why do you want to climb Mt.Everest?” and his reply was “Because it’s there”. I am sure there are many more stories of adventurers, artists, scientists who have not given up despite repeated failures like Edison and his invention of the light bulb despite repeated failures he said – “I haven’t failed — I’ve just found 10,000 that won’t work.”
To expand the boundaries of human possibilities, it is these crazies who have done it and are still doing it. The crazies know that time is limited and that they need to do their bit quickly in order to raise the bar for the next generation to take it to the next level. What stuff are these men made of? The same stuff as you and me except that they choose to live with an attitude of enjoying challenges and surmounting them.
Most people say you should take only what you can handle, the crazy attitude says take up more than you can handle – increase the bar. Now more than ever we require an attitude of facing challenges and enjoying the process. You think all crazies that lived years ago did not have crazy situations? No, they did what they did regardless of craziness around them.
God has gifted humans with an indomitable spirit of resilience we need to choose one area of our liking and put our efforts to excel in that – whatever it may be – For Buddha it was enlightenment, For Michelangelo it was painting, For Mother Teresa it was service, For Gandhi it was Freedom, For MS Dhoni it was cricket, you get the point. Choose one area of focus and lose yourself in challenging the existing limits in that area – that would be a life certainly well lived regardless of whether you achieve your goals…
In Yoga this is called an Ekagra Chitta: focussed on one…It is possible for all of us. Why not try?
Just received a message on a whatsapp group that someone lost her mother, another message followed was birthday wishes to someone celebrating her 50th birthday, the next message was a joke on the vaccine found by Russia and the next was someone died of COVID… I am sure you must also be in a similar situation wherein you are subjected to a wide range of emotions from elation to tragedy, from pain to happiness, all within moments, without even allowing you a moment to process the emotions. Welcome to the digital age which bombards you with information at the speed of thought without asking you whether you wanted it in the first place. All this is one of the contributors to the increasingly stressful lives that we all live, but coping is no longer an option, you simply don’t have a choice unless you decide to crawl under a rock, which certainly seems to be a tempting option under these bizarre circumstances.
Along with problems come solutions, along with risks come opportunities. It is when you face problems head on that you get into finding solutions, not by avoiding/side stepping them. This information overload is going to only increase and lives are going to be only more complex to understand and live peacefully. So what does one do? You would have to build your inherent capacity to deal with the new world order of chaos and confusion. As Sadhguru beautifully puts it “We are trying to set up a new normal: to be immensely capable and absolutely involved with life in every way, but untouched by the process of life”
How? you may ask. Yoga is the way to build capabilities and capacities, be absolutely involved with everything and yet remain detached. It is our attachment to various people, roles, possessions that is the root cause of suffering. We somehow make ourselves believe that people & things(including our own body,mind) in this world belong to us and we get attached to them, it is we who nurture the emotion of attachment under the umbrella word “love”. These are Moha Moha ke dhaage. “Hate” is also just a negative attachment. The word love and hate as we understand them are our excuse of forming and maintaining attachments to various things.The problem you see is attachment.
You are attached to the process of pleasure seeking, pain avoiding. It is only when you realize that what you are attached to is your source of pleasure as well as pain, and you seek to experience detachment that your spiritual journey begins.
Sant Kabir says: “Sadho bhai jival hi karo asa” which is beautifully translated by Rabindranath Tagore: O FRIEND! hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live: for in life deliverance abides. If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death? It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him because it has passed from the body: If He is found now, He is found then, If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death. If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter. Bathe in the truth, know the true Guru, have faith in the true Name! Kabîr says: “It is the Spirit of the quest which helps; I am the slave of this Spirit of the quest.”
All of us are broken in many ways, how we handle the broken elements is what is important. The Japanese have a very interesting method for mending broken ceramics, its called Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) which is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognise the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it.
Life breaks us in multiple ways- losses of our near and dear ones, financial setbacks, health issues, etc. In that it is fair, it screws everyone. It’s how we deal with the screw ups that matters. Do we make our lives and the lives of others around us miserable or do we take it in our stride and do our best to resolve the setbacks in a positive way? The lacquer to mend our broken lives is the attitude of acceptance and positive response to all situations, no matter how much life has broken us.
There are some games designed for children that do not allow the players to win so that the children realise that it’s not about winning or losing but about how much they enjoy playing the game. Who is going to teach this to Adults who are busy nursing their wounds (losses) and only want wins in their lives? Who would inform them that life is also such a game which is designed not to allow the players to win so there are actually no winners or losers, you just have a choice of enjoying the game or suffering it.
So let’s choose to enjoy whatever life brings our way like a game. Try our best to make it as lovely as possible but wherever not possible, also cherish the scars life brings our way and like the Japanese Kintsukorai, honour the scars with Gold(our positive attitude) instead of being frustrated with them
A man sells earthen pots of different sizes for Rs.10 each. He then starts varying the price according to size, people accept . He then adds a layer of colour on some and charges double the price, people accept. He then says that there are special ones with an autograph of Amitabh Bachchan on them and charges 10 times the price of the coloured ones, people accept. Then a God Man endorses the product linking it to Mythology and that our ancestors used to eat and drink in earthen pots which is healthy and suddenly the price quadrupled… You get the gist – price is what we pay, value is what we get.
The value in each case for intrinsically the same product varies depending on the perception of value. The truth of the matter discovered by Advertising and Marketing firms long back is you control perception and you control reality. Perception is reality in today’s world be it what you see in the stock markets(Why are they moving up when the world is in doldrums?) or in Politics (Politicians winning elections despite reality being completely different…), or Sugared water being sold as energy drinks for 100 times the actual cost… What we are experiencing as life is through our perceptions that are controlled and varied by various factors and people interested in promoting their products, so much so that we have lost connection with reality..
We also have many “truths” being handed over to us by the University of Whatsapp. Just because it was practiced thousands of years back, it is packaged to make it look like it is the right thing. Do you mean to say that our ancestors had everything figured out? No. We would also be ancestors to people that live thousands of years from now and we know how far our lives are from the Truth.
Perception seldom is reality. The Mother of all perceptions is that we are somehow different from others around us and we try to reinforce this difference throughout our lives. We keep perceiving that we are our body and mind and that we have a soul, its actually the other way around – we are a soul that has a body/mind. We however continue living through our perceptions of body/mind, the choices and desires of our body/mind and forget the underlying reality. It’s only in moments of tragedy like the death of a near one, or the traumas due to the pandemic that we are experiencing that we start thinking of what this is all about…But how to get to Reality?
In accounting there is a process called zero base budgeting, in which you simply go back to point zero to build your budget. For life – this zero base budgeting process is called Meditation or Dhyana in which you simply let go of all assumptions/perceptions/choices you have accumulated through experience and just observe your true nature ASIS. J Krishnamurti beautifully described the meditation process and the result as “choiceless awareness”. Deeper your meditation, sooner you would drop perceptions and experience reality…
Prana shakti is the life force that everything and everyone is made of. Many people consider certain breathing exercises to be Pranayama. Whilst breathing air is one of the major sources of prana, it isn’t the only. We draw and give prana from everyone and everything, whether animate or inanimate. Whatever you focus on energises you and is also energised by you. For instance an inanimate piece of stone is converted to an idol by an artist, there is certain energy now in the idol due to this focus, the idol is consecrated in a temple, there is even more energy in it since so many people are focused on it and furthermore if a miracle takes place in the said temple then it becomes even more focused upon and energised. It’s the same piece of stone but getting energy due to our collective focus. This energy is drawn by us in turn when we visit a temple.
If you take a walk in the forest, you will feel energised by it, in fact they have forest walks as recommended therapy in Japan. The CO2 that we breathe out is taken in by the trees and Oxygen is released by them. It’s actually a symbiotic and interdependent relationship. This is so with everyone and everything we come in contact with.
So Pranayama is actually an energy exchange. Fresh fruits, vegetables, salads, grains are also sources of prana, as are healthy and positive thoughts, emotions. If you notice, some people bring positivity wherever they go whilst some negativity. This positivity or negativity also affects your prana, remember prana is a two way street. You cannot control the prana of others, but you can certainly control your own prana. What you input(air, water, food, thoughts, emotions, etc) should be healthy and positive, what you give out should be healthy and positive, then you are practicing Pranayama.
So you see, practicing certain breathing exercises is not the only pranayama. You entire lifestyle, the way you conduct yourself, your choices of input – output and how you choose to respond to life, everything is Pranayama. In order to get good prana you must be prepared to give good prana first. This healthy and positive exchange of prana is pranayama.
“Satya” is one Yama(Observance) prescribed by Maharshi Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra’s. Mahatma Gandhi started his Satyagraha movement based on this concept. Satya doesn’t only mean – speaking the truth, that is a very limiting definition. Satya actually means being the same inside and outside – meaning reflecting whatever is within, in your behaviour without. We actually play multiple roles in our lives and change our behaviour to suit the role we are playing and we do it so seamlessly that it seems perfectly natural for us to hold a different intent than our actions.
“Integrity” (out of Self awareness) is the closest english word to Satya. Satya is actually knowing that we are all the same within and acting out of that knowledge. Then you cannot be different inside and outside. So the practice of Satya is actually considering everyone to have the same essence as you and then deciding your course of action.
On Guru Pournima, Sadhguru offered an excellent Sadhana that would cultivate the quality of Satya in you. He said that just imagine that every person or thing you deal with is your Guru – then automatically your behaviour towards everyone/everything would be the same. This sadhana has a transformative quality since you will only behave your best when in front of your Guru and would have to restrain yourself from negative behaviours.
The consistent practice of this Sadhana could also lead you to the Truth that everything is Advaita. That is Satya.
Your actions reflect your state of mind within. If you are frustrated, angry, sad, depressed or joyful, happy, equanimous, remember it only reflects your current state of mind. If you observe, you feel very light when you are happy and very heavy when you are frustrated. If more often than not, you are harbouring negative feelings and emotions then your choices would automatically be inclined towards giving expression to the negativity. It is the garbage in – garbage out principle.
Hell and heaven are actually only states of mind. Living in a negative state of mind is hell, whereas living in a positive state of mind is heaven. If you are stuck with a negative state of mind and want to change it then there is a way. Like you exercise the body and feed it good food in order to be healthy, you have to do the same with your mind which will, over a period of time, change negativity to positivity.
There is a concept in Yoga called “Pratipaksha Bhavana” and it is used to transform the behaviour of the mind. Whenever an undesirable emotion, thought or idea emerges, you quickly transform it to its opposite. If anger emerges, transform it to joy. If frustration emerges, transform it to acceptance. By doing so you are choosing a positive response to any situation/stimulus and over a period of time, the positive response becomes a habit and your character. Then you have converted your life to a living heaven. When Swami Vivekananda was asked, what did he get by practicing Yoga, he replied that he didn’t get anything, he only lost anger, frustration and all negativity. What more can you ask for?
Your mind is your garden – you have to choose what you grow in it – nourish it with positivity and constantly remove the weeds of negativity. Initially, it may take time and effort to deweed your garden but over time you would have a lovely garden.
A Guru points you in the right direction, which is more than sufficient. Once you know which direction you need to head whether you race there or go gradually at your own pace or keep wandering off the path, is up to you. The intensity and the sincerity of your efforts would determine your progress. Remember, only when the student is ready, the Master appears. The Guru could be in flesh and blood for a fortunate few, for others the Omnipresent Grace of the Guru always guides you in the form of a wise counsel from a friend, family or colleague or even a stranger, an event that changes your perception, or anything else that happens in your life. You should be aware enough to pick it up. So don’t look at where the guidance is coming from, be humble enough to accept it and learn from it.
For those on the spiritual path, efforts are essential and yet efforts don’t get you there. To understand this paradox Sri M offered some guidance in the form of an anecdote- just imagine that you are in love with someone, you know that you love the person but don’t know whether your love is reciprocated. So one day you turn up at your best to impress this person and wait on one knee with a rose in hand to offer to the person. At that stage, you hope that your love is reciprocated but even if isn’t, it’s ok. At least you have done your job of expressing it. So 50% of the job is done. This effort of being at your best and waiting with a rose in hand is the effort that you should make on a daily basis to the Divine within – hope for reciprocation but accept it even if it doesn’t happen that day, wait patiently for it to happen, happen it will…
A secret that I am sharing with you on this auspicious day of Guru Pournima is that it is actually the Divine waiting for you on one knee with a rose in hand, hoping for reciprocation from you. So 50% of the job is already done by the Divine, it is now your turn of bringing your 50% to the deal. However you are not yet ready to reciprocate and in order to be able to do so, you need to raise yourself to the level of Divine by cleansing yourself of all the negativities, doubts, fears that you have accumulated over lifetimes. As Sadhguru puts it – it is a journey from wine to divine or from Bhoga to Yoga. Yoga is the way to cleanse it and access the omnipresent Grace of Gurus & the love of the Divine. In is the only way out!
Today let us commit to cleanse ourselves by practicing Yoga till the edge of our efforts, whereby we are able to reciprocate this Divine Love and experience it.
The highest respect you can accord to the Guru’s is to uphold their guidance and imbibe it in your life. The Guru doesn’t need anything from you except 100% commitment to the path, methods and guidance, that is the best Guru Dakshina that you can give.
Bodhisattva 