Life

We see so much exploitation and aggression all around. The weak are constantly exploited by the powerful. The powerful just keep shuffling the targets. But why do all the well-meaning people keep suffering? Why do the powerful become so strong and exploitative? Why is there no check on exploitation? It is because the weak don't want to leave the little comfort they have. That's what happened precisely when India was enslaved by the British East India Company . People will not fight for their freedom out of fear of losing whatever little they have.  The ego is like the captain of a ship carrying a load of containers. When the ship gets threatened by the storm in the midst of the ocean, he will not mind throwing away some of the containers. For him, it is more important to save the ship because the survival of the captain and the whole crew depends upon it. The ego also operates the same way. It will always try to protect itself, whatever the price. Thus, the ego has certain id...

The more we try to get out of the play of ego, the more we are trapped. Why? Because the one who tries is just an extension of the ego. The ego may divide itself into many different forms. It may get attached to our self-image, social image, family, community, position or material possessions. "I" may claim that I am not interested in money or powers, but "I" may be very possessive about the social image of being a saint. Similarly, "I" may claim that I am free from biases and beliefs and like to enquire and observe everything, but the fact of the matter may be that "I am highly attached to my self-image of being an aware person. I once met Mingyur Rinpoche in Bodhgaya and asked the same question. How do we test ourselves? He told me that the only yardstick is to watch our reactions. If we are attached to material possessions, we will react when we lose them. Similarly, if we are attached to our family, we will react when there is a crisis. If we ar...

On the one hand, it is the dream of almost every child in today's world to earn money and live a comfortable life, mostly abroad in a developed country with good infrastructure. In almost every recent discussion among the parents, there was an emphatic mention of the children doing their UG or PG at some college in the USA or Europe. Parents appear to feel a sense of great achievement and, at the same time, are curious about the next steps. Obviously, it's quite expensive, which is why it's not possible for everyone. Parents have to plan extensively and save a large amount of money to make these opportunities available to their children. That's the best in the known domain that parents can aim for their children. On the other hand, I wonder about the spacecraft that brings astronauts back from space. It is such a small, uncomfortable capsule, and the astronauts have to spend so much time in it. That's quite uncomfortable. Yet the astronauts willingly and enthusia...

Almost all the parents and schools teach a very important lesson to the children: "Not to waste resources". "Do not waste water and close the tap when you come out of the bathroom", "Do not waste electricity and switch off the fan when you leave the room", "Do not waste money, save it for the bad times". All of us have heard these instructions and followed them all through our lives. I was listening to the news about around 1 lakh crore rupees, with the cost of war being around 2 billion dollars per day. That will be roughly $ 2000 million or 20,000 crore rupees per day. We have heard so much news about the oil ships being destroyed by missiles. So many people are being killed, including so many innocent people. I fail to understand how we forget the lessons we taught our kids so passionately. Why do we waste so many precious resources? Why do we destroy the cities that have been built with the hard work of so many people? How are we going to fac...

Mahamrityunjaya Mantra is quite famous in India, and many people regularly recite the mantra. The mantra is as follows: ॐ त्र्यम्बकं यजामहे सुगन्धिं पुष्टिवर्धनम् | उर्वारुकमिव बन्धनान्मृत्योर्मुक्षीय माऽमृतात् || Om Tryambakam yajaamahe sugandhim pushtivardhanam | Urvaarukamiva bandhanaan-mrityormuksheeya maamritaat || Through the mantra, we pray to Lord Shiva to increase " Sugandhi " and " Pushti " and to free us from this world, like a ripe fruit that falls from the branch of a tree. It appears a bit contradictory. If we are praying for " Moksha ", there should not be any question about increasing "Pushti" and "Sugandhi". It all depends upon the meaning we assign to Moksha. Is Moksha all about leaving this world and merging the individual soul into the universal consciousness ?  What if "Moksha" has a very different meaning? Why would an individual soul separate from the universal consciousness if the end purpose is just ...

There is a well-known analogy of a chariot in the Kathopanishad . It says that our body is like the chariot, the emotional mind is like the horses, the rational mind is like the charioteer who is giving direction to the horses, and the soul is like the owner of the chariot who gives direction to the charioteer. If the owner is aware, he will direct the charioteer to take the chariot to the correct destination. However, if the owner is asleep, the charioteer will drive the chariot according to his own whims and fancies. Similarly, if the charioteer is also weak, the horses will become uncontrolled and take the chariot aimlessly from one place to another. Horses are very powerful, provided they are given the right direction. Similarly, a charioteer is very skilled, provided he knows where the owner wants to go. It is unfortunate that in today's world, we are too busy taking care of the chariot as well as the horses. Slowly, the charioteer's function is being handed over to the A...

 When we sit in Vipassana , we experience different sensations in different parts of the body. Itching, vibration, heat, heaviness, pain, and so on. We sit for long hours in Vipassana, and that's why I normally feel pain in my legs and back. Sometimes the neck becomes stiff. Initially, we react a lot, and one hour of sitting becomes painful. In fact, we change our posture many times during a one-hour sitting. Then comes the real test. We have Adhistana for 1 hour when we don't have to change posture. We realise how painful that posture looks. The more we feel pain, the more we feel the urge to change our posture. But the instructions have to be strictly followed. We just have to observe the sensations rather than react to them. That seems quite difficult at first, and one hour feels like a lifetime. In fact, we give up after some time and make a slight movement to feel that little comfort. However, there comes a stage when we decide that we will not react to the pain. We conce...

One of the most fundamental discussions in the world of spirituality is the difference between love and attachment . Pandavas "love" Draupadi to the extent that they fight the battle of Kurukshetra to take revenge for the insult to Draupadi. They kill the Kauravas , Karna and all the people who caused the insult to Draupadi. We may call it a perfect example of love. But the question is: "Whether it is love or attachment?"  When Arjuna enters the battlefield of Kurukshetra, he gets confused. He wants to run away from the battlefield because he feels that killing his own cousins, teachers, and elders will send him to hell. He feels quite anxious, and then Krishna rips apart his logic. Krishna helps him see reality from a broader perspective and, in the process, answers many of Arjuna's questions. When Arjuna is still not convinced, Krishna shows him Vishwaroop to make him realise the vastness of the universe and the limitations of the body. He makes Arjuna r...

In Vipassana , the meditation technique taught by Buddha , we observe sensations in different parts of our bodies. There will be so many different types of sensations. Somewhere itching, somewhere pain, somewhere vibration, and somewhere feeling the life flow of liquid. Sensations are closely connected to feelings. Each time we feel pleasure or pain, our body stores these feelings. Thereafter, whenever we encounter any situation, these old memories stored in the body try to give us a sense of direction through sensations. Somebody cheated long ago, and we felt bad. Those feelings are stored in the body. Whenever we meet that person again, our brain recognises them, and the old bad feelings are retrieved by the body. We feel bad again. The more we think about that person, the worse we feel. Body sensations are trying to make us feel bad so that we maintain a distance from that person. It's a self-defence mechanism . Similarly, a boy and a girl like each other, and somehow their fami...

A husband and wife can fight for hours and still reach no conclusion. The same applies to the political debates. These are two very common examples of debates taking us nowhere. All of us have opinions about different things. Our rights and wrongs differ from others'. While some may consider non-vegetarian food wrong, others may consider animal products and milk wrong, and still others may consider even potatoes and onions wrong. Everybody will have their own logic to support their argument. But what's wrong with these divisions? The whole of Ramayana and Mahabharata is also a fight for Dharma . Dharma is also closely connected to what's right. When Rama and Krishna can fight for the right, why can't ordinary people like us fight for the right? I feel that it all depends on the frame of mind in which we think. For example, if somebody thinks from the frame of family, Gautama Siddhartha leaving his family and going to the forest in search of truth is wrong. On the ot...

Sometimes we wonder why the person we are talking to seems so depressed. He has everything in life, and yet his complaints never end. Spending some time with these entitled people will make us realise that they are the saddest people in this world. My children do not listen to me. How do I ensure my child gets into IIT ? I have a short 6-month visa, while I wanted a 1-year visa. I have gained an inch, and I am so worried. My mother-in-law is sitting on my head. How do I give her a send-off? I want to go on vacation to Norway , while my husband insists on London .  The list is endless. I don't know where the genesis of these entitlements lies. Since childhood, we have a very strong drive to "become" something. We want to become doctors , engineers, CAs , and civil servants . Why? To become rich and powerful. Why do we want to become rich and powerful? Because we want to consume more and more. In the struggling phase, we feel that as we grow rich, we will eat the food of ou...

Just watched the movie Assi . A very well-made movie. The movie is about the rape of a teacher who is raped by 5 men in a moving car while coming back from the Metro at night. The movie is all about the tough fight the victim's lawyer puts up in court. Apart from other things, the movie shows the dirty face of the institution called family . How people try to protect the victims of rape in the name of respect of family in society. How families carve out settlements for the girls who are raped by marrying them to the accused of rape. How the family of the rape victim tries to convince them not to fight the battle in the court, and tries to get a settlement done out of court. What have we done in the name of love? I fail to understand how the institution called family can be so divisive vis-à-vis the rest of humanity. There is no doubt that we have formed the institution called family so that a few people can take care of each other during tough times. If a family member falls ill, o...

Where does communication get lost? So many problems in this world arise due to a lack of communication. Relationships get spoiled because of misunderstandings. There may be times when semantics matter because different words carry different meanings across cultures. It may also be because a person may carry a wrong understanding of the meaning of a word and use it accordingly, while the other person may not be able to understand that "personal meaning" of the word. However, these are minor communication errors and can be easily corrected. The more serious problems in communication stem from inauthenticity and a lack of integrity . By inauthenticity, I mean a conflict between our conscious intentions and our unconscious drives. For example, a person may invite his boss to a family function, even though he does not like him. In this situation, he will welcome his boss when he arrives, but a "little voice" at the back of his mind will urge him to send the boss away q...

We often feel hurt. We feel that so-and-so person has caused us harm. He has deceived us or cheated us. There remains a lingering pain in our heart regarding some event where a friend did not support us in a bad time, children did something that we did not expect them to do, a trustworthy colleague revealed something that we told him in confidence, or there is a breach of commitment by somebody close to us. It's difficult to bear the pain. Especially if we continue to live with the person, the hurt is all the more difficult to bear because every time we see that person's face, we recall the incident and feel hurt again and again. So far so good. Going by the same logic, Lord Ram should feel hurt by Mata Kaikeyi every day he spends in the forest. He should feel hurt when Mata Sita is kidnapped by Ravana , and he has to go through the entire rigmarole of searching for Sita and attacking Lanka. It means every minute of his Vanvaas of 14 years, he should feel hurt. Had that been...