Life

We often see that out of the two kids at home, one is more responsible and accommodating while the other is more stubborn and bullies. The first one is often expected to adjust most of the time so that there is peace at home. That takes place almost everywhere. The one who grows bears the burden. In a family, if one child works hard and gets a good job, he needs to support the other child. If few citizens of the country work hard and become richer, they have to pay more taxes in a so-called progressive tax system. In a relationship, the one who has grown psychologically has to understand the other partner to make the relationship work. Is there a burden of the growth? I feel that this has many different aspects that require in-depth examination. First of all, we need to examine the give and take in such situations. The giver in such a situation gets validation from the society of being good and the taker gets the care or other material benefit. The giver becomes a hero in the eyes of s...

We have different responsibilities such as the responsibility of a son, husband, wife, employee, citizen, and human being. However, when we observe this world from inner consciousness, many of these responsibilities may appear as attachments. That is what Krishna told Arjuna. Arjuna was reluctant to fight the battle with his cousins and that is when Krishna made him experience the true nature of the world and Arjuna realized that all human beings are just taking birth from and merging back with Krishna. He realized his attachments and with this realization, his attachments dropped and he could fight the battle. At the core of Arjuna's realization was not a person but rather the universal consciousness. When Draupadi was insulted in the palace of Hastinapur, she decided to take revenge. In that background, she could convince and motivate her husbands to fight the battle. That motivation could take Yudhistira, Bhima, Nakula, and Sehdeva to the battlefield and fight the battle. Howeve...

Compassion is a buzzword in the spiritual world. It is often said that we should have compassion with everybody around us. Of course, if we are connected to our soul, we will be connected to all other beings. That connection will bring compassion naturally. If we see anybody in need or pain, there would be a natural inclination to help that person. There is no doubt about the same. We need not make efforts for this. This automatically happens as we drop fixation on the material things and thoughts and move inwards. However, there comes a question. Is compassion unconditional? Did Arjuna have compassion with Karna? Did Rama have compassion with Ravana? Did Gandhi have compassion with the British? The moot question is whether we can have compassion with somebody who is fixated on greed, self-interest, and ambitions. Whether we can have compassion with somebody who is self-obsessed? Can we have compassion for a mosquito that bites the whole of the night when we sleep? I feel that compassi...

Life is full of responsibilities. We have to be responsible for our studies, responsible as a son or daughter, as a friend, as an employee, as a husband or wife, as a member of the society, and as a father or mother to take care of the kids. However, responsibility in any relationship may not be sustainable unless the following two elements are there: 1. Both have trust in each other; and 2. Both of them understand and appreciate the aspirations of each other. In some of the relationships, one of the partners feels more responsible than the other. Such as the relationship of a parent with a child. Parents know that the child is dependent and is not sufficiently exposed to make his decisions for life. Parents make many decisions for their children. However, in such relationships, the child responds with unshakable trust in the parents. The childish mind can not easily accept the seemingly tough decisions for him unless that unshakable trust exists. That trust is at the core of a p...

For the last few days, I have been encountering a question repeatedly as to why it is so difficult to change. Are we just a prisoner of our own choices? Do choices exist at all? There is no straight answer to all these questions. However, a comparison with the mobile may shed some light on this complex phenomenon. Mobile has an operating system as well as different applications that run on the operating system. There are different operating systems that operate in different mobiles that broadly decide the user experience. While some mobiles operate on Mac, some are on Android and some are Symbian. There may be other operating systems as well which I am unaware of. Our cultures are also like the operating systems that broadly decide the way we think and feel. We are products of different cultures.  However, within the operating system, there are many system settings that decide the user experience. For example, when we buy a new mobile, the system asks us to make certain choices and...

This world is full of pleasures. Most of them are so easily available to us. We can eat different types of foods with different tastes. We can take water when we feel thirsty. We get so many comforts for our bodies starting from the bed to the massage parlors. We have ready-made pleasures to please different senses such as different types of fragrances to please our noses. We have different types of music to please our ears. Each of the songs makes us recall our old memories and we start enjoying the old good memories.  The world of internet has radically changed the world we live in. It has made all the pleasures so easily available to us. We can order the food of our taste with just a few touches on the screen of our mobile. We can listen to the songs we like with just one touch. We can see whatever we want, a movie or You Tube video with just one touch on the mobile screen. We neither need to make efforts nor need to wait to satisfy our senses. The market is also collaborating w...

Holi is a festival of colors. After playing Holi, it is difficult to recognize the people because they have different colors on their bodies and clothes. As if everybody has lost his identity. People in the streets look like flowers of different colors and shapes in a bouquet. Thus, Holi is the festival of shedding our identities and merging with each other. However, this merging is very superficial and temporary unless souls connect to each other. That is what Krishna taught us. Krishna played Holi with the Gopis whereby  He connected to their souls. The connection was so strong that its fragrance can still be experienced in Brij and Vrindavan. In today's world, the society is so fragmented and disconnected. There is a war taking place in every nook and corner of the society. Followers of one religion fighting the followers of the other religion, one spiritual sect fighting the other spiritual sect, and laughingly both calling themselves to be spiritual😀. There are fights across ...

 As we move along the path of spirituality, we connect to our soul. However, the people we are related to in this worldly life may still be living life anchored in the external world. That brings two types of reactions from such relatives. Either they start ignoring the ones moving along the spiritual path, considering them to be useless because such people do not subscribe to their philosophy of life, and in fact, at times challenge them and such a challenge creates discomfort and unease. In order to avoid that discomfort, a better option is to avoid such people. Such a response generally does not create problems for both. The ones moving along the spiritual path are happy internally and the ones anchored in the external world make efforts to fulfill their greed and ambitions. However, the world is not that simple. Had the world been that simple, Rama would have finished his exile peacefully and gone back to Ayodhya with Lakshmana and Sita without any battle with Ravana. The probl...

We keep cribbing that we have so many problems in this world. However, ask a person suffering from a terminal disease and having few days to survive. Despite suffering from unbearable pain, nobody would like to die. Ask an old person 100 years old, he would like to live longer. Ask somebody suffering from great poverty and not having sufficient means to fill his stomach, he would also like to live as long as possible. That's the beauty of this life. It offers some or the other temptation to everybody to cling to.  At best, few are able to leave certain temptations to pursue certain other goals. We left so many immediate gratifications in our childhood such as socialization with friends and partying etc. in order to study to get a good job and career to enjoy life long. It was also a deal. Leave the immediate gratification to enjoy life later. That's what society preaches. Leave the temptation of getting up late, and pray to God to get a good body so that you can enjoy the pleas...

Often we keep moving like a pendulum from free will to destiny and again from destiny to free will. We look at different tangible and intangible objects, such as money and taste, and get attracted to them. We feel that we have free will to make efforts to fulfill our desires and set goals to achieve the objects of desire. If we are able to achieve the goal, we consider it to be an outcome of our free will while if we are unable to achieve the goal, we blame our destiny for the same. If the events are destined to happen, where is the place for free will, and if there is free will, where is the place for destiny.  I feel that we remain confused throughout our lives and pass on the confusion to everybody around us. We somehow cook a half-baked story of Karma and start believing in the same. We are facing tough circumstances, due to our past karmas. This is a very popular belief. Mostly used as an alibi to avoid hard work. Karma comes as a shield to protect us from taking responsibilit...

We human beings live in families. Family is the center of our existence. We work for the growth of kids and to take care of the parents. Every household in India does prayers of different kinds. We all pray to different Gods and Goddesses. I somehow wonder that our prayers too are the reflection of our state of consciousness. I remember my childhood. Ramayana was my favorite TV serial of everybody. We all used to watch TV series on Sundays. We listened to the stories of Hanuman. How powerful he was and he carried out so many seemingly impossible tasks. There are so many temples of Hanumana in the town and we used to go to pray Hanumana every Tuesday. Since there are so many fears we have, we used to pray for Hanumana to protect us from all the dangers. A fearful mind always prays to God for protection. If there is a power cut and complete darkness inside our home, we will go inside chanting Hanuman Chalisa.  No doubt it works. It works because most of the fears are just the stories...

Today met Mingyur Rinpoche. It was great to meet sir as always. My younger daughter asked him a question. She said that she does not believe in God. Mingyur told her that it does not matter whether we believe in God or not. What matters is whether we live with love, compassion, awareness, and wisdom. We all realized the profoundness of the statement. Probably, the first stage in the process is awareness. Rinpoche made us practice a small meditation. He asked us to close our eyes and observe the sound. The very process of observation of sound frees us of the thoughts we cling to. We can not observe and cling to at the same time. Either we may be in the river or outside the same. We can not be both in the river and out of the river at the same time. Similarly, the moment we observe, we are out of our thoughts. We may observe our breath, sensations, thoughts, sounds, and so many other things. When we close our eyes, some or other thought comes to our mind. That may be the thought of someb...

Most of us are suffering from a crisis in relationships. There are so many reasons for this crisis such as the pulls and pressures of the busy life, office stress, lack of me time, social media, increased screen time, and so on. However, the most crucial factor responsible for the crisis in relationships is the obsession with self. When a person gets disconnected from the divine inside, he becomes quite insecure and fearful. He feels as if he lacks something and he tries to become complete by acquiring the external objects. He seeks pleasure from different things in the material world such as eating a variety of foods, watching movies, roaming around, going to different places, shopping, buying expensive clothes, and so on. All these things give small doses of pleasure that make such a person feel happy for the time being. However, such pleasure fades away very fast leaving such a person more discontented and dissatisfied.  In a state of utter dissatisfaction and discontentment, su...

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to attend the discussions at the J Krishnamurti Foundation and we discussed a lot of things. We discussed whether there exists something called choice. In life, there come many situations wherein we exercise choices. For example, the choices of food to begin the day, choice of friends to talk to, choice of decisions to make at the office, the choice to study or socialize, the choice to watch a movie, the choice to study a particular stream, the choice to choose a particular career, the choice to enjoy the material world or move along the spiritual path, and the list is unlimited. However, do we actually have a choice in any of these decisions? If one is clear, where is the choice? For example, if a child is clear that it wants to study Physics, where is the choice? If the child is not clear, there is a choice of hundreds of subjects. If the child is clear that he wants to study science, the choice gets restricted to only a few subjects that come within t...

So many events keep taking place in our lives that shake our existence and we find no reason for the same. There are accidents where we have no role, we encounter critical illness of the family members, prolonged legal disputes, marital disputes, death of near and dear ones, false allegations in the career, sudden loss of money, and so many other things that shake us from inside. Different people take these events differently and how they take the events, decides their future. Some people have a Victim Mindset. They keep themselves at the center of the universe and feel that everybody else and the entire universe is just there to serve them. The moment something happens to them that they do not like or did not expect, they start playing the victim. They will start crying and seeking sympathy sending a signal that they should be taken care of. People should pay attention to them and their pain and recognize what injustice has been done to them. People with this mindset try to substitute...

Every day we travel on the road, we see so many beggars on the road. Most of them have their genuine needs: generally physical such as food and clothes and because of any reason they do not have the opportunity to have a source of earnings to fulfill these needs and that is why they request others to help them with that. However, we see many begging for their greed. The rich businessmen begging for political favors to satisfy their greed to become bigger businessmen, some of the politicians begging for votes or seats or ministerships to become more powerful, and all of us begging God to give us more than what we already have. Thus, the world is full of rich beggars. There are not only beggars but also many traders and fighters. The traders want to exchange what they have for what they do not have. Some have a lot of money but not the prestige in the society. They start running NGOs by spending the money they have to get the name and fame. Some have positions but not money to satisfy th...

I feel that many of us do not understand the difference between like and love and remain convinced that like and live are the same. Like is quite "I" centric. "I" is the center of existence and "I" like certain things because they please me. "I" may like money because money gives me pleasure or the things "I" buy with money give me pleasure. "I" may like power because when "I" get VIP treatment, "I" get the pleasure. "I" may like the company of a certain person because that feels pleasant to me. Love is a completely different phenomenon. Love is soul-centric and can not be experienced till we are fixated on likes and dislikes. The reason is very simple. We like the XYZ thing because it feels pleasant. Pleasure is nothing but a sensation that the body experiences unconsciously due to the secretion of a particular neurotransmitter like dopamine. For example, we meet an old friend and we get a dose o...

Watched the movie "Shaitan" which is a Bollywood movie made around a person who practices black magic and hypnotizes a girl and controls her mind to make her harm her own family members and the father fights back the "Shaitan". I was just amazed at the depth, human beings may fall in the mad rush for power and still never be happy. I was just observing a little baby some days back at our home and trying to compare. Does the baby too want power? None of the babies want any power. What is this desire for power and where does it come from? By power, we mean a capacity to control the behavior of others. If someone holds a powerful position, people will come and bow down before him, invite him to their functions, will give money and expensive gifts, and will do whatever he desires. There is always a quid pro quo. The powerful person gives certain favors and the others give money, "respect" or followership. A bureaucrat drives power by virtue of the positions he...

One of the allegations that we face quite often is that we have changed. Especially, the relatives and old friends have this allegation. Most of the allegations come from friends and relatives who got settled in the same city where we were born and brought up and assimilated into that culture. When we, as children, were not so exposed, we presumed that culture and the mindset based on that culture to be absolute. However, as we get exposed, we understand the relativity of each culture and mindset and learn to place each one of them contextually. That brings growth as a human being and probably the ones who have not been able to grow to find it alien and make this type of comment to avoid any challenges to their fixed mindset. For example, different societies have different types of cultures and rituals. Some societies believe that eating non-vegetarian food is against the religion. Then we meet people belonging to the same religion and living in the coastal area to realize that there t...

We keep coming across many people in our daily lives suffering from inferiority and superiority complexes. People suffering from inferiority complexes are quite fearful and afraid, low in confidence, very easily accept their faults, even if there are none, quite submissive and ready to bow down to the ones more powerful than them. People with a superiority complex argue, assert, and at times become quite aggressive in pursuing their cause. Most of the people have the shades of inferiority and superiority complexes at the same time. People appear to be suffering from inferiority complexes when they face someone more powerful than them and appear to be suffering from superiority complexes when they face people who are less powerful than them. In fact, both these complexes appear to be just two sides of the same coin. It also appears that this coin is made of a material called incompletion of deficiency. People feel incomplete and deficient and that is the reason why they feel inferior in...