Life

When there is a crisis in a family, say for example somebody is diagnosed with cancer or some other terminal disease , or there is an acute financial crisis that mandates selling off the home and basic possessions of the family, or there is a crisis in relationships with ugly allegations and below-the-belt actions and reactions, or there is a natural disaster like earthquake , we switch on the " survival mode ". In the "survival mode" , we are driven by a fundamental objective to survive and ensure the survival of our near and dear ones.  If survival is ensured, generally, we want to enjoy life. Have nice, tasty food, meet friends, visit different places, socialise, gather comforts, watch movies, enjoy entertainment, and enjoy life. Basically, we switch on the " comfort mode " of our lives. Sometimes, when we switch on comfort mode, we realise that we do not have enough means to provide comfort for ourselves and our near and dear ones. We set different...

It's amazing to see the enthusiasm of a new bride and groom. Their minds are full of imagination about the future. Probably, that also gives a sense of achievement, because most Bollywood movies portray marriage as the destination . The hero struggles throughout the movie just to get married, and the moment he marries his beloved, there is "The End". So, probably, there is childhood conditioning among boys and girls that marriage is "the destination". There is very little appreciation for movies like Ijajat, Masoom, and Drishti. They are discounted by the people as boring, while their "boring" concept may be the closest to life.  There is a phrase in the recruitment system, " catch them young ". Identify potential employees early so their minds can be trained more effectively to align with the organisation's culture. Before a person develops independent thinking, organisations train their mind to align it with the organisation's obje...

All of us would recall the structures we used to create from the sand while playing in the garden or on the beach. We will take great pride in the structure we created, the cave, the statue, and the little home. We would put in hours and hours to create those structures and, in fact, had a strong sense of ownership and possession of having created them. The "pride of creation" will be doomed when we visit the garden or beach the next day, only to find that the structure we created with so much effort has been taken away by the waves or has been crushed by some animal. The structure becomes sand again, and we try to build something new out of it. The pot makers also do the same thing. They make the pots from mud and then fire them to make them more durable. We buy these pots and use them. But once broken, they turn into mud. So many different metals are extracted from the Earth, and we make so many different things from those metals. This laptop is also made of so many metals....

Every one of us must have memories of going to a hill station in childhood and being amazed by the different kinds of stones and pebbles on the banks of mountain rivers. We used to feel excited and pick some of these pebbles. Similarly, we will go to a hill station, get excited to see the pine cones , and pick some in our backpack, only to realise soon that it has become too heavy. Life offers us amazing experiences, but it does not want us to carry them home. You go for a walk, and a very nice wind is blowing; we can't carry that home. We meet a friend and have a wonderful discussion. We can't guarantee we'll have the same discussion when we meet next time. We travel and see some beautiful scenes in the sky, but we can't recreate them at will. The human brain has this amazing capacity to create. It has created roads, buildings, machines, aeroplanes, computers, mobiles, and so many different types of machines. We created so many things, only to be buried by the weight ...

There was a scene in the famous movie " Schindler's List " when the hero leaves the factory, where he sheltered many Jews to save their lives. He says he could have saved one more person by selling the golden button on his coat, his only asset. Despite doing so much, he feels that he could have done more. On the other hand, we have people who get so many things without any commensurate effort and still lack gratitude. Not only do they lack gratitude, but they also feel that others are duty-bound to fulfil their expectations. How do we have the two types of people, poles apart from each other, in the same world? I feel that all of us have two different voices within us. The first voice is the voice of instincts . It makes us feel that comfort and pleasure are good for us. It says that you earn money by whatever means, even by cheating others, so that the means of comforts and pleasures may be accumulated. It says that the comfort of the day is more important than anything ...

When Akrura ji went to invite Krishna to Mathura , Krishna was happy playing with his friends in Brij . What would have gone through the mind of the young child? On the one hand are Ma Yashoda, Baba Nand, and all the friends. On the other hand, there is some possibility that is quite hazy. How would one choose that dim possibility over what Krishna already had with him? Why do we choose to get unsettled when we are well settled in our lives?  But what is the essence of life? Settlement? In that case, rocks and mountains are also settled. The atoms making the human body are also settled. Where is the need for so many atoms to come together and make cells and organelles, neurons, tissue, bones, and so many different organs and make all of them function as if they are one? Why do the settled atoms make a body that is highly vulnerable? It is because they wish to explore possibilities that cannot be explored at the atomic level. Why do we leave the settled life in a small town and mov...

I was talking to a parent today. Worried about her child's future, she asked me to guide the child. I told her that the child is struggling with two things: first, the uncertainty about the competitive exam, and second, the parents' anxiety. It would be a great favour to the child if the burden of the second is taken away from her shoulders. Anxiety is very natural for parents in this world, which is so competitive that everything from getting admission to a good school, to a college, to getting a job is so challenging. There are so many distractions, and it is one of the biggest challenges for parents to ensure that their children remain focused on their studies in a world full of them.  But why are some children so focused while others get distracted easily? Similarly, why do some parents get so anxious? Probably because we do not want to observe reality with clarity. If a child observes reality, it will not take him the study of rocket science to understand that it is explo...

I was reading a book, " The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence ", written by Sebastian Mallaby on 31 March 2026. The book provides an inside look at the AI arms race through the lens of Demis Hassabis , the co-founder of Google DeepMind and the 2024 Nobel Prize winner.  In Chapter 2, titled "Deep Philosophical Questions", I came across the following text: "For a while after that fateful game in Liechtenstein, Hassabis had thought seriously about a career in theoretical physics. Here was a field that seemed to grapple with the biggest possible questions-the nature of the universe, the building blocks of reality. For a youth with vast ambition, the prospect of understanding everything was profoundly alluring, and physics held out the hope that you could rise above the clutter of quotidian facts to a higher plane of abstraction. From that loftier vantage point, physicists could explain reality in terms of phenomena u...

Yesterday, I just wanted to have some fun with AI and asked the AI, "Do you have ego?" The AI answered, "No. I don't have because I do not have any consciousness, personal identity or sense of self". Then I asked the AI the next question, " Why don't the spiritual seekers take inspiration from you to reach that egoless state?" The AI answered, "No. A spiritual seeker does not want to turn off their mind or become an unfeeling object. They want to wake up completely. They want to experience life so profoundly that the small boundaries of their personal ego naturally dissolve into a sense of oneness with everything around them." The AI is intelligent enough to understand its limitations. It knows it has no consciousness and is just collecting and collating what is already available on the web. Human beings are conscious entities . They are essentially the same consciousness that gives rise to all the matter. Yet, they get trapped in certa...

While reading horoscopes, I often wonder whether a person can see the future clearly and, if so, how difficult their life would be. He can see his own death, the death of his children and all the family members. He can see major problems and crises. Basically, he will start worrying about something that will happen in the future. The known will itself become a heavy burden. He may run from pillar to post, but will be unable to get rid of it. But what if he knows that there is a life beyond death ? We know a few things, and what we know heavily influences our decisions. Our rights and wrongs, good and bad, are defined by what we know, and our decisions are primarily based on them. Basically, our brain tries to conform to the known framework. In our childhood, our parents told us that we should not talk to strangers because we were vulnerable as kids. Later, we realise that it is fun talking to strangers, especially when they come from different cultural backgrounds and religions . We re...

We wish to be certain about things. Certain about the future. Basically, we want to be happy and remain happy forever. With our limited understanding of the world, we make sense of happiness, set targets, and by the time we achieve them, the meaning of happiness has changed significantly. I recall that I once developed a hobby of collecting empty match boxes of different designs and set a target of collecting 100 different types. Wherever I went, my goal was to get that different type of matchbox. In fact, I remember purchasing a few matchboxes just to get that different type. I don't know what pleasure I derived from that. Today. I don't even remember where those match boxes have gone. I am 100% sure that all of us have had our own such targets and objects of pleasure. We are also witnesses to the fact that most of these things no longer make us happy. Yet we feel that what we crave for today will make us happy. As if we have become blind to our own history. We were very sure ...

 I presented a paper on Vipassana long back at Delhi University, and at that time, a professor there asked me a question: "Who realises the temporality of the sensations when we practice Vipassana: the mind or something else?" That question stayed with me. I told him about my experience in Estonia. Once, I went on an office tour in Estonia, where it was extremely cold at around -15 degrees. I walked outdoors for quite a long time and developed severe stomach pain. With no medicines available to me and no doctor to visit, I sat in Vipassana and began observing sensations. After about an hour of observation, the pain disappeared. I told him that I don't know whether that was a realisation of the mind or something else, but the same brain that experienced pain some time back had no pain after some time.  The question is who was feeling the pain and where that pain disappeared after observation. When we sit in Vipassana, our minds are full of so many thoughts. Usually, our m...

Despite so much progress and availability of all types of comforts and pleasures, probably if we have a happiness index of humanity across time, we may be at the lowest in the present times. One strong indicator is the sharp rise in psychological diseases across countries. In our childhood, we hardly ever listened to psychologists' advice, and today I personally know many people who visit psychologists regularly. If there is so much sorrow, there should be a reason for the same. As I understand it, the ABCs of sorrow are A ccumulation-drive for accumulation, B ecoming-the drive to become something, and C ontrol-drive to control circumstances and others. If we look around, the primary cause of sorrow is our drive to accumulate . Since childhood, we are told to accumulate objects of pleasure and security. Since in the present-day world almost every material object is available for money, we have a very strong drive to accumulate money. We also have a very strong desire to accumulat...

How do we change? We make thousands of choices every day, and each one is driven by our belief system . Suppose a person feels that money has great value in life. Every decision he makes during the day will be driven by his belief. He will choose a career that offers a hefty package, marry someone from a rich family, and try to befriend people with a lot of money. Slowly, he will be surrounded by people who have a similar belief system, and the belief about the value of money will look all the more real. If a poor person tells him that life is wonderful without money, he will simply reject that idea and have hundreds of examples to cite in response. Similarly, if a person believes in a particular version of spirituality , their choices will naturally align with that version. He will join the spiritual organisation or guru that promotes that version of spirituality. He will discuss more and more with those kinds of people. He will read books of that type. Slowly, over time, his belief ...