Life

Human beings are the sum total of their emotions. We have a wide variety of emotions such as fear, love, trust, anguish, serenity, irritation, frustration, stress, and so on. Our emotions keep changing like the weather. Our feelings are very complex, and it's actually difficult to distinguish the emotions underlying them. When a parent feels anxious about their child's education, that anxiety may encompass many different emotions. It may be due to the fear of social validation, "Log kya kahenge?" It may be due to fear regarding the survival of the child, "iske kharche kaise chalenge?" It may also be a feeling of losing the competition, "Mehta ji ka ladka to IIT kar gaya, hamari aulad nikkami nikli". It may also be a feeling of guilt, "meri hi parvarish me kush kami rahi hogi". Or the remorse that I could have done something better, "Kash maine kuch aur samay diya hota". It may also be a sense of meaninglessness due to the shatt...

 हमें अपने दुख का पूरा यकीन है। किसी ऐसे बच्चे से पूछिए जो सिविल सर्विसेज़ प्रीलिम्स में फेल हो गया हो। वह बहुत दुखी होगा। किसी ऐसे व्यापारी से पूछिए जिसका बिज़नेस फेल हो गया हो, और वह बहुत दुखी होगा। किसी ऐसे सरकारी कर्मचारी से पूछिए जिसका ट्रांसफर उसकी मर्ज़ी के खिलाफ़ हो गया हो, और वह भी दुखी होगा। किसी ऐसे माता-पिता से पूछिए जिसका बच्चा अपनी पसंद के कॉलेज में एडमिशन नहीं ले पाया, और वह भी दुखी होगा। हमने क्या खोया है? कोई सपना टूट गया? कोई अंदाज़ा गलत हो गया? हमने अंदाज़ा लगाया था कि या तो ज़िंदगी स्टेबल रहेगी या हमें वह मिलेगा जो हम चाहते थे। ऐसा हमारे हिसाब से नहीं हुआ, और हम दुखी हो गए। एक आसान सी सिचुएशन लेते हैं। हम किसी सोशल गैदरिंग में बढ़िया खाने की उम्मीद में जाते हैं। लेकिन, खाना हमारे टेस्ट का नहीं होता, और हम उसका पूरा मज़ा नहीं ले पाते। क्या होगा? क्या हम दुखी होंगे? यह हमारे लोकस पर निर्भर करेगा। अगर लोकस हमारे दोस्तों के साथ अच्छी बातचीत करता, तो ज़्यादा फ़र्क नहीं पड़ता। लेकिन, अगर लोकस अच्छा डिनर करता, तो हम निराश होते। लोकस से ही सारा फ़र्क पड़ता है। भगवान राम...

 We are so sure of our sorrow. Ask a child who has failed in the Civil Services Prelims . He would be very sad. Ask a businessman failing in business, and he will be very sad. Ask a government servant transferred against his wishes, and he will be sad too. Ask a parent whose child has not been able to get into the college of his choice, and he will be sad, too. What have we lost? A dream shattered? A projection went wrong? We projected that either life would be stable or we would get what we desired. It did not happen our way, and we became sad. Let's take a simple situation. We go to a social gathering expecting great food. However, the food is not to our taste, and we are unable to fully enjoy it. What will happen? Will we be sad? That will depend upon our locus. If the locus were to have a good discussion with our friends, it would not matter much. However, if the locus were to have a good dinner, we would be disappointed. Locus makes all the difference. Lord Ram is about to be...

Love, in this world, is used in a very generic sense, and that's why it's quite difficult to understand. Love often brings possession, while love should make us free. How do we feel when our best friend ignores us and gets interested in somebody else? We feel jealous. At times, we develop animosity against the beloved. It reminds me of the famous song picturised on Raj Kapoor , तुम अगर मुझको न चाहो तो कोई बात नहीं, तुम किसी और को चाहोगी तो मुश्किल होगी: https://youtu.be/nt4Zgk1ftEA?si=eu5HubBjBQBiX7ox Is it love? How does that love turn in to jealously? What happens when a son talks to his parents and lets them know that he is gay and would like to marry a boy? Parents get scandalised and try to convince the boy to mend his ways. When they try to convince the boy to marry a girl, is that out of love? When an industrialist accumulates a lot of wealth and passes it on to his children, and the children become addicted to the comforts, and waste their lives without utilising their...

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...