Life

Long back, I watched the movie "Rang De Basanti". There was a song in the movie, Lose Control wherein some students are drinking liquor and having fun and jumping from a very high place into the pond and singing the song Lose Control. In today's world, not only the students but also the adults are looking for more and more opportunities to lose control. The more we want to control the world, the more are we becoming desperate to lose control.  We live in a very strange world. Stressed during the day, while attending the office somehow avoiding the undesired consequences. Somehow we manage our work which is ever-expanding with the increasing complexities of the systems. Ideally, with the advent of technology, the life of human beings should have been easier, and we should have had more time to connect to our fundamental elements. However, on the contrary, with the development of technology, we have become control freaks. We have set up cameras at home and want to see what ...

It is difficult to understand the meaning of life unless we contemplate death. Death is the end of this body. What happens after that? The first category of people believes that there is nothing after death and so one should maximize the pleasures in this life. The second category of people believes that depending upon our karma in this life, we go to heaven or hell and therefore we should do good deeds and then there is a whole lot of debate over what is good and what is bad. The third category of people believes that the soul never dies and is not affected by the Karmas. We have made different meanings of death depending upon our own philosophies and belief systems. Our meaning of life also changes significantly depending upon our meaning of death. The first category of people wants to have fun and pleasure from everything in life and invest a lot of time in acquiring and accumulating the ways and means to perpetuate these pleasures. That includes material possessions as well as rela...

 We have often heard that whatever we do in this life, we get the results accordingly in the next life. This is called the law of Karma. Probably we do not need to wait for the next life and psychologically, whatever we do, we get the results the very next moment. For example, if we like appreciation, we become happy as and when appreciation is received. That means whenever somebody criticizes us, we will become sad or angry. Thus, our future sadness or anger is the creation of the pleasure we took in appreciation. Whenever we divide the world between good and bad, right and wrong, we try to associate with the good and what we like or what we consider to be right. That naturally means that we resist what we consider to be wrong or what we dislike. However, all these divisions between right and wrong, like and dislike, etc exist in our mind and most of the time are just a result of our vantage point. The moment we look at things from a different perspective, their meaning undergoes ...

Yesterday evening, we bid farewell to a great officer and a very evolved human being. Somebody asked a question about how she could be so nice. I have no doubt that everybody appreciates fearlessness, love, and compassion. In fact, all three qualities may also be summarised in a single word "love". The opposite of love is fear. All of us are beloved children of the Almighty. At the core, all of us are connected to the divine consciousness. That's why love is quite natural to us. The feeling of love connects us to the divine and since all other human beings are different manifestations of the divine, we love other human beings as well. However, we slowly lose awareness of that inner connection and that loss of awareness makes us fearful.  Probably the only parameter to evaluate the growth of any person, as a human being, is the center of his life. The more the life of a person is centered around fear, the less evolved he is, and the more his life is centered around love, t...

All of us would have faced situations in our lives when we get triggered. Some get triggered by abuse, some by honking, some by physical pain, some by separation in marriage or breaking of a relationship, some by loss of a family member, some by loss of money, some by loss of prestige, some by insult, some by difficult relationships, and so on. Once triggered, we have a foul mood and generally feel unhappy and react in different ways. Some become depressive and isolate themselves from society and friends, some start taking alcohol or some other drugs, some go on pills, and some become aggressive and start abusing others, shouting at others, or even becoming physically violent. There are different ways of self-defense and we adopt one or the other way to defend ourselves when we feel an emotional threat. Why is it so that different people get triggered by different things? Probably it is because we all define life in a very unique way. We are born and brought up in quite diverse situati...

There are different techniques of meditation. Few teach imagination and visualization and the meditator is asked to close his eyes and visualize different things. Some organizations and Gurus ask us to visualize a particular God in a particular form. In contrast, some ask the meditators to visualize the head of the cult, and some more liberal ones ask people to visualize some sort of light or any similar thing in different parts of the body. I often wonder whether all these techniques of visualization serve any purpose. Meditation is an exercise whereby we try to connect to reality in its purest form. When we talk of reality, it should be away from all sorts of impurities and falsity. I have a few questions at this juncture. First: How can a mind, that focuses on visualizing or imagining what is being told by some guru, sect, or organization, observe reality? Second: who is observing the reality? Whether it is the mind or something else? Third: How can one be sure that what one is obs...

Nowadays, almost all of us are suffering from a new age disease we call FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out. We have FOMO of social media, parties, and so many other things. It is strange to see our own behavior that every few minutes our hand is on our mobile to see WhatsApp messages or e-mails as even organizations have started expecting a response from employees the moment messages are put on the group. The gold standard of responses is slowly shifting to minutes or even real-time. The expectations are rising among kids' peers also and I see kids coming under tremendous peer pressure to respond to their WhatsApp messages on the group quickly. Overall, we are moving towards a culture of FOMO where at the back of our minds, we always have a fear of missing out on something. We are so afraid of missing something that we even do not want to examine what we are going to miss. All of us are quite hardwired to have a FOMO about the body and that is why we all have a very robust mechanism of ...

It is often strange to see that some people do not learn despite being surrounded by the source of wisdom, while some learn even if they have to struggle for it. It all depends on the philosophy of life of different people. Our priorities are a product of our philosophy of life. Most people in today's world are followers of Charvak's philosophy which says that we should enjoy our life even if that is at the cost of taking loans. Most people are busy fulfilling the desires of their senses and they want to study and acquire knowledge to use that to get more money and powers to satisfy their senses. That is the reason that they conveniently ignore what they feel is not relevant to the satisfaction of their desires.  Some are mad after information and knowledge because they have tagged their self-image to knowledge and like being regarded as intelligent. For them, knowledge is the tool to get that recognition from their peers and colleagues in particular and society in general. It ...

We have so many movies and books written about happiness, including how to be happy and the pursuit of happiness. I often wonder as to why happiness is so overpriced. Is it because of the internal hollowness that makes us search for something or somebody who can make us happy? Somebody who does not have water and feels thirsty will definitely look for water desperately. But in that case, his thirst will be quenched after having water. Why does our thirst for happiness never get quenched and the more we get it the more we want to get it?  What was Rama seeking in his life that he was so contented? What was Krishna seeking in his life that he was so contented? If we look at history or mythology, only those people who pursued truth could remain happy. When we talk of pursuit of happiness, our minds consider something as desirable and make efforts to get that. Object of desire may vary quite widely. A beggar may become happy if he gets 100 rupees from anybody, a student if he gets good...

Some time back, I watched a movie titled "Shaitan". It is a movie about a black magician who takes control of a young girl through black magic and uses her to physically and emotionally hurt her parents and brother so that the parents may allow him to take that girl along with him to use her to strengthen his skills of black magic. The girl was hypnotized and would do anything at the command of the black magician right from slapping her parents to trying to kill his brother. I have also watched some of the magic shows where a person is hypnotized and starts following the commands of the magician and can do something of which he is not aware and when the hypnotism is over, he is surprised to see his behavior in the recorded video.  I often wonder how this brain can be commanded by someone else? In fact, a more important question that comes to my mind is "What if we are being slaves of our own social conditioning?". We all have different beliefs and mindsets, and by a...

One day, I was listening to a video from Shri Alok Pandey from Aurobindo Ashram. He was discussing "authority". He said that authority has a certain value. For example, the kids are expected to respect the authority of the parents because if they do not respect, they may end up doing their harm which is irreversible. They may end up spoiling their health or have an accident. However, what about the cases where the authority itself is blinded. For example, when the parents are asking the kids to take dowry or bring money of corruption for their comfort. In those cases, should the kids still respect the authority? The same conflict was faced by Bhishma. He was tied to his vow to support the king of Hastinapur. The kingdom of Hastinapur came to be ruled by Dhritrastra who had a great attachment to his son Duryodhana and supported cheating by his son and his brother-in-law Shakuni to snatch the rights of Pandavas. Bhishma understood this cheating and wanted to support Pandavas bu...

Newspapers and social media are full of the news about online cheating, rapes, and terrorism. I would not say that this is a new phenomenon. Indian mythology is full of many such stories. Ravana kidnapped Sita and Duryodhana Chirharan of Draupadi. Rakshasas always used to disturb the yajna by pouring water on the altar and frightening the saints. Probably there are two questions worth examination. First, why all these things happen, and second what can be done to set the situation right. I feel that each of us wants to live with love and peace. In fact, all the infants and young kids just want to play. They can play with a stranger as well as they play with their parents. The moment their stomach is full, they just play and explore. Love is a natural quality, we all are born with. Then where does it disappear? In the process, we come into contact with a hollow society that is en masse running after money and power. Parents start telling the kids that if they do not get into IITs or cle...

 रामायण भारतीय पौराणिक कथाओं की एक सुंदर कहानी है। कहानी का नायक राम है. उनके पिता दशरथ हैं जो काफी बुद्धिमान माने जाते हैं। उनकी तीन रानियाँ हैं और राम कौशल्या के पुत्र हैं। कैकेयी भरत की माता हैं। राम सबसे बड़े पुत्र हैं और जब दशरथ राम के राज्याभिषेक की घोषणा करते हैं, तो कैकेयी की दासी मंथरा उसे दशरथ द्वारा दिए गए दो वरदानों की याद दिलाती है और कैकेयी दो वरदान माँगती है। एक ने राम को 14 वर्ष के लिए वन भेज दिया और दूसरे ने अपने पुत्र भरत को अयोध्या का राजा बना दिया। राम, अपने भाई लक्ष्मण और सीता के साथ वन में जाते हैं। भरत इससे काफी उत्तेजित हो जाते हैं, और फिर भी राम के निर्देश पर, वे अनिच्छा से राम के सेवक के रूप में अयोध्या का प्रबंधन करते हैं। जंगल में, राम, सीता और लक्ष्मण कई वर्षों तक रहे, और अंत में, सीता एक सुनहरे हिरण को देखती हैं और ललचा जाती हैं जब राम और लक्ष्मण हिरण के पीछे होते हैं, रावण उनका अपहरण कर लेता है, जो उन्हें लंका ले जाता है। बाली से अपना राज्य वापस पाने के बाद राम ने सुग्रीव की मदद ली। लंका में, विभीषण सीता को वापस लाने के लिए राम को रावण को मारने में मद...

Ramayana is a beautiful story from Indian mythology. The hero of the story is Rama. His father is Dashratha who is considered to be quite intelligent. He has three queens and Rama is the son of Kaushalya. Kaikeyi is the mother of Bharata. Rama is the eldest son and when Dashratha announces the coronation of Rama, Manthara, a maid of Kaikeyi reminds her of two boons bestowed by Dashratha on her and Kaikeyi asks for two boons. One sent Rama to the forest for 14 years and the other made his son Bharata the king of Ayodhya. Rama, along with his brother Lakshmana, and wife Sita go to the forest. Bharata gets quite agitated with this, and yet when directed by Rama, he reluctantly manages Ayodhya as a servant of Rama. In the forest, Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana stay for many years, and towards the end, Sita sees a golden deer and gets tempted when Rama and Lakshmana are after the deer, she gets kidnapped by Ravana, who takes her to Lanka. Rama takes help from Sugriva, after getting his kingdom b...