Life

पीरा नु मैं सीने लावां, ते मैं हसदी जावां हो पीरा नु मैं सीने लावां, ते मैं हसदी जावां धुप्पां दे नाल लड़ लड़ के, मैं लाभियाँ अपनीयां छावां दुःख वि अपने सुख वि अपने, मैं ते बस एह जाना सब नु समझ के की करना ऐ, दिल नु एह समझावां तू झूम झूम झूम झूम, तू झूम झूम झूम झूम I was listening to this song and thinking about what it means to embrace the " peeda ," or the suffering. How would somebody embrace suffering and yet be happy and dance with happiness? How would somebody cope with the suffering? When I see the privileged kids and even adults complaining about little problems in life and giving up the drive for excellence for small problems in life, I feel sad that they will waste the potential of their lives due to their ignorance about the true meaning of life , coupled with stubbornness not to be open to exploring the true meaning of life. Unless somebody learns to embrace the suffering , how will they realise their potential? Their entire life, they will keep running from pillar t...

 The moment this consciousness takes the form of a body, the ego is born. The ego is nothing but a sense of separation. We feel different from the rest of the universe. We don't want to die and will go to any extent to protect this body. As we grow, we form complex correlations between this survival and different things. First of all, the ego feels that certain relationships, such as parents, siblings, and friends, are necessary for survival, and that's how we become deeply "attached" to them. We can't think of losing any of them. Then we realise that there are many more things necessary for our survival in this world, and that's when the ego forms deep attachments to money, positions, wealth, social image, and self-image. We still feel vulnerable. The whole bunch of attachments, too, does not make us feel safe, and then we start believing in certain thoughts, such as the existence of God , the theory of karma , and the concept of the afterlife, to add that ...

 All of us would have read hundreds of spiritual quotations on the ego and visited the cremation ground many times. Each time we visit the cremation ground and read the spiritual quote, we feel strongly to get out of the grip of the ego. However, the moment we come out of the cremation ground, we get back to the world of ego again. We start to feel jealous when we see a colleague's luxurious flat or a shiny car on the road. We worry about whether our child will be able to get into the college we want him to attend. The worry about money, promotion, relationships, and so on fills our minds the whole day long. Why are we unable to handle these desires despite being fully determined while being at the cremation ground or while listening to a couplet of Kabir ? It's because all these worries and desires lie deep in  our psyche. We may give thousands of reasons when we look at the shiny car on the road, trying to convince ourselves that it is not meant for us. We have tried to tak...

Why do people feel so disturbed despite having so many things in life? People have money, resources, family, relationships, and travel the world, yet still feel so miserable. Even if one of their desires is not fulfilled, they keep searching for someone to cry to or to blame for their miseries. If they get none, they don't mind blaming God for all their miseries, failing to appreciate that it is the same God who has given them so many things. Not so that they pretend, but they actually feel so. How come people get so deluded? This phenomenon has been troubling me for so many days.  You see bureaucrats who have held whatever position they desired throughout their lives, yet they don't mind cribbing about not getting what they deserved. You see industrialists who have got so much money, yet they compare themselves with others and don't hesitate to say the others have got much more than they do. You see so many people who have so many loving people around them, yet they will...

I am often amazed by one thing. People keep suffering and yet keep playing being victims. Not so that if the people of any village decide, they can't make a difference to the economic conditions of the village. Not so that if the people of any country decide, they can't make the country a developed one in a short span of time. Yet, we somehow choose to play victim. We tend to assign some reason for our misery. We tend to hold some person responsible for our grief . We don't leave even the dead people and keep holding them responsible for our conditions.  On the other hand, we also see many children happily playing on the street. They tend to enjoy the game. As if they have forgotten everything else. They have not set their expectations high. That's why they can live in the present moment and enjoy whatever comes their way. In fact, as children, we were all much freer. The tensions of the future did not deprive us of the fun in the present moment. Just because we have an...

There are so many people in this world, and almost everybody has a different idea of what life means. For some people, life is all about eating, getting married, and having  fun. Somebody spends the whole of his life in the quest for power . Somebody has an unquenchable thirst for money . Somebody devotes his entire life to spreading the message of his religion . Somebody is driven by curiosity about nature and relentlessly works throughout their life to discover a natural phenomenon . What surprises me is that all of them are equally convinced. So many people believe in different gods , and each is equally convinced that the God they worship is the only one. Different religions preach many different things, and people from different religions believe that what their religion teaches is the gospel truth. People join a cult in the name of spirituality and become so sure of the ideas spread by that cult, however distant they may be from reality. It appears that everybody is ou...

The talks to prevent war fail miserably in this world. Thousands of people keep suffering. There have been so many saints in this world, and if their words had been properly communicated to the whole of the world, we would not have been fighting so many wars. What happens? Where are the worlds of realised souls lost? Almost every parent tells their children to stay away from addictions, and yet so many children fall into the trap of drugs and alcohol. What goes wrong?  We see so many examples of ineffective communication around us. There are misunderstandings in relationships, ego trips and battles, and even countries fight due to miscommunication. It seems so simple. Why can't we say what we want to say, and why can't the other person listen to what we want to say? I think that if we address the issue of communication, our relationships with the people around us, in particular, and society in general, will also improve significantly. There are two fundamental elements of comm...

 The discovery of truth is a very sensitive task because we often assert our opinions in our endeavour to discover it. Discovery of truth requires setting aside "our opinions and beliefs", but often we are quite obsessed with our life experiences. The ego has to hold on to something. It is easy to see the tangible things it is holding on to, such as our home, office, relationships, wealth, and positions. However, it is more difficult to observe the intangibles to which the ego becomes attached, such as social and self-image . All of us are social beings. We live in a society and therefore have many interdependencies with one another. We carry out almost all the social interactions from behind the mask of " social image ". We try to behave well toward people around us, even when we get irritated by a few of them, because we want to maintain a mask of "being understanding". Social image has many advantages. The social image of "being good" gives ...

Yaksha asked Yudhistira about the greatest wonder of this world, and he replied that people die every day on this Earth, and yet we remain so sure that we are never going to die. That appeared to be the greatest wonder to him. Another great wonder of this world I often get amazed by is that people like Bhagat Singh could give their lives for the country's freedom, while most people will not mind taking others' freedom for petty benefits if they do not fear the law. People like Socrates will drink poison for expressing their thoughts freely, while some would agree with outright stupidity at the drop of a hat just to get small favours. While some people will work painstakingly for years to put on that space suit to get a glimpse of space, many would spend their entire life in their mental stories full of jealousy and hatred. How come the same human body and mind manifest so differently? I feel that the strength of character that should have been the greatest virtue of a human b...

 The ego has a natural tendency to control, while all of us have a natural tendency to explore. When we go to the mountains, sit by the side of a river, watch the wild birds, that "free spirit" within us comes out in the open, and we get lost in the magic of nature. We suddenly become thoughtless, as if thoughts are too limited to absorb the beauty and grandness of nature. When we travel by air and peep out the window at the clouds and the horizon, we get mesmerised by the wonderful show of nature. When we suddenly encounter a good soul, we talk to that person for the first time and feel as if we know them for life. Time flies by, and we don't have a sense of time. We stumble across so many wonderful things, and then? Then, the ego wants to control. We had such a beautiful experience at a tourist station, and now we want our family members to have the same experience. We plan a visit to seek the same experience. We plan visits to seek out the experiences advertised on so...

Today, we had a very interesting discussion at the Sunday dialogue at Model Town. One of the key questions we discussed was: "Why do some people stay more aware than others?" There were so many different perspectives. The discussion started with knowledge. A friend said that if we keep gathering knowledge from different sources, we tend to remain more open. Another friend challenged that claim, arguing that all knowledge exists in the domain of the past, and therefore, awareness seems quite different from knowledge. We discussed whether one can ever express one's awareness. It appeared to most of us that no one can express "what he is aware of" to others because the moment "thoughts" interfere, that "awareness" disappears.  One question that stayed with me even after discussions is why some people stay more aware than others. Why are so many people "fixated" on their viewpoint? I feel that there are varied reasons for the same. Howe...

 Yesterday, while watching the new series "Samkalp", I recalled the following lines from the famous bhajan "Damru wale baba" मन ही है बेकार में जो संकल्प-विकल्प बनाता है जिधर चाहता है मन उधर ये प्राणी दौड़ के जाता है मन सब को भटकाये जग में क्या नर और क्या नारी.... डमरू वाले... डमरू वाले बाबा तेरी लीला है न्यारी..... The hero of the net series is Maat Sahab, who gets humiliated in a university election and makes a samkalp to take revenge on the people in power in Delhi. To achieve this target, he establishes a gurukul and selects the best students there. He gives them a good education so that they clear the civil services examination, and then uses his entire network of civil servants against his opponent. In the process, he abets many crimes, including murders and also anti-national activities. All of us take many samkalps. The story "Damru wale baba" is a mythological tale in which Parvati visits Lakshmi at her home. Lakshmi humiliates her for not having ...

Life is fun. It's all about good food, a nice home to live in, dining out with friends and family, pleasure trips, and chit-chat with the people we like. Basically, it's all about fun. That seems so nice and simple. But the moment we think about these things, immediately our minds become full of fear and apprehension. Apprehensions about the future. Will we be able to get all these things in the future? Will our children be able to get all these things in the future? Since we need money to get most of these things, we feel like earning and saving money for the future, and we end up in a trap. Some "smart" people have learned the art of living in the present moment. They feel like enjoying themselves whenever all these things are available without thinking of the future. They will not mind even borrowing money to have fun.  Why do people who have had a lot of fun in their lives suffer miserably? If somebody had fun for 40 years of his life, he should be happy for the r...

If you feel that life is unfair to you, just imagine Bharata's plight. Bharata is out for a pleasure trip to his Nanihal, and Kaikeyi asks for two boons from Dashratha. Bharata not only loses the company of his dear brother for 14 years but also feels guilty for a crime he was never a party to. For the next 14 years, he repents for a fault that he never committed. It is because his mother, Kaikeyi, lost awareness for a few moments. Greed and ignorance took over her existence for some time. What she thought was the greatest welfare for her son turned out to be the greatest punishment for him. Where did Kaikeyi go wrong? She did not understand that each human being is different. She thought that material possessions and rulership are very important in life, and his son will be deprived of these because Ram is the elder son. She never realised that her son was quite different from others. She did not realise what mattered to her son. Probably, she never connected with her son that dee...