Life

I don't think that there is even the slightest doubt that we feel happy when we are free to explore. When we love and are loved. Exploration expands us, and love makes us merge. Love and exploration also go hand in hand. We can't explore something or somebody unless we love that thing or person. Einstein can't explore Quantum Physics so deeply and with so much dedication unless he is deeply in love with the subject.  But biology plays its own role. We feel vulnerable. We want the company of somebody who can take care of us when we fall ill and when things do not turn our way. We form many different relationships in search of security. Give and take is the basis of most of these relationships. We become ambitious and feel that "X" amount of money and power will make us secure forever, which never happens. Probably, intelligence demands that we take stock of the actual needs for survival so that the time and energy spent on these things may be minimised, and we get ...

It appears to me that the root cause of inauthenticity is the caging of truth. Trust is like light. It can not be confined to a cage. That's why whenever there is an effort to cage the truth, we end up living with inauthenticities. We define certain behaviour as unacceptable in society, and there is a lot of taboo around it; therefore, people hide it. We set similar boundaries in relationships, especially in marriage, and therefore people often surreptitiously cross these boundaries. We set boundaries around our children: they will not use mobile phones or laptops, and will not have girlfriends or boyfriends. Then they do it without telling us, and we feel there is a lack of integrity. If society makes admitting the truth so difficult, people will definitely try to find workable solutions. People will be inauthentic. They will say something they actually don't do or don't believe. That is the reason why we have crises in parenting and relationships all around us. People wi...

मुझे लगता है कि बनावटीपन की जड़ सच्चाई को पिंजरे में बंद करना है। विश्वास प्रकाश के समान है। इसे पिंजरे में कैद नहीं किया जा सकता। इसीलिए जब भी सच्चाई को पिंजरे में बंद करने का प्रयास किया जाता है, हम अंततः बनावटीपन के साथ जीने लगते हैं। हम समाज में कुछ व्यवहारों को अस्वीकार्य मानते हैं और उनसे जुड़े कई सामाजिक निषेध हैं; इसलिए लोग उन्हें छिपाते हैं। हम रिश्तों में, विशेषकर विवाह में, इसी तरह की सीमाएँ निर्धारित करते हैं और इसलिए लोग अक्सर चुपके से इन सीमाओं को पार कर जाते हैं। हम अपने बच्चों के लिए सीमाएँ निर्धारित करते हैं: वे मोबाइल फोन या लैपटॉप का उपयोग नहीं करेंगे, और उनके कोई प्रेमी या प्रेमिका नहीं होगी। फिर वे हमें बिना बताए ऐसा करते हैं, और हमें लगता है कि उनमें ईमानदारी की कमी है। यदि समाज सच्चाई को स्वीकार करना इतना कठिन बना देता है, तो लोग निश्चित रूप से व्यावहारिक समाधान खोजने का प्रयास करेंगे। लोग बनावटी हो जाएँगे। वे ऐसी बातें कहेंगे जो वे वास्तव में नहीं करते या जिन पर वे विश्वास नहीं करते। यही कारण है कि हमारे चारों ओर पालन-पोषण और रिश्तों में संकट दिखाई देते हैं। लोग...

 It is strange to see that most people are silent in society when there is so much exploitation all around. Why would millions of Indians keep quiet when they are being enslaved by the British Empire ? In organisations, when an employee is being bullied , why would others keep quiet? Probably because the foundation of society as a whole is fear and isolation . All of us are individual units, fighting against each other for the maximisation of pleasure , and actually, there is a zero-sum game . The profit of one company is the loss of the other.  What if a person tries to treat the maid at home on par? If somebody asks what price he will charge for the same type of work and what conditions of service he will demand, I think he would immediately understand what's happening. However, the question is quite uncomfortable, and that's why we brush it aside. I once asked a relative, who is an industrialist, whether the labour class is getting its due share of the profit he earns, and...

It is difficult to drink milk when you see that there is a fly in it. People often say that we eat at some restaurants and eateries because we have never entered their kitchens. Once we happen to see the kitchens and see how dirty they are, it will not be possible for us to eat food in such restaurants anymore. The taste of the food covers so many impurities because we are not able to dissect the food. We are not aware of the dirty conditions in which it has been cooked. What if we happen to see the pretensions and greed in relationships? What if we find out that we are being used? Even worse, what if we realise we are using others? All these realisations are not easy to handle, and most people try to sweep them under the carpet because they do not want to let go of life's pleasures. At max, they will switch over from one object of pleasure to the other. One relation to the other. Inquiring into the depth of relationships is quite painful, and most people do not want to be in pain....

I don't think that we want to come out of the pain because the feeling of pleasure is intense. Pleasure is instant, while pain may or may not come. At least we believe so. Why should we not believe? Why should we look at the negative side of things? We work hard to earn whatever we want.  No doubt that if we work hard, there are more chances that we will get what we want. That's a reality. If we work hard for money, we will get money. If we work hard for a reputation, we will get the same in return. There is no second opinion about that. Yes, there may be mishaps where calculations go wrong, or tragedies or disasters. But we can't take those unfortunate events into account when planning for the future. But there is something more fundamental than this. What if we achieve whatever we have aimed for? Will we be happy? Do we ever examine our fundamental assumptions about happiness ? So many of us know the reality of marriage as an institution , but how many of us would dare to...

In our school, we used to study differentiation and integration . Differentiation divides the whole, while integration sums up. Life is integrated. Science of the day has proved that it is the same unified field, which they call " Higgs Field ", which has given rise to matter and energy. It is just the forms that look different. So many different sweets are made from the same milk and sugar, yet they taste so different because of the different ways they are prepared. So many different seeds are sown in the soil, and different types of plants emerge from the same soil because their genetic moulds are different, and that mould converts the soil into so many different forms. If we remember that all life forms come from the same source, there will be collaboration instead of competition. Do we have competition with our kids? No. Because we know that we have given birth to them. A mother has kept the baby for 9 months inside her womb. How will she compete against the same child o...

 Today, while sitting in meditation, something struck me. One thought after the other, one sensation after the other, keeps us occupied. For example, when a thought about incomplete office work comes to mind, the mind starts thinking about it and plans to complete it at the earliest. When the thought of the ITR filing comes to mind, the mind starts planning for tax payment. Every thought takes us away from the present moment, and we move either into the past or the future. Every thought is like watching a movie on the screen. Once the movie is finished, we come out of the movie hall, having done nothing and exactly in the same position where we started from. Similarly, while thinking, we feel very occupied, but at the end of that, we stand exactly at the same place where we started. The mind projects movies one after the other. Some movies are very entertaining, full of nice experiences from the past. A good friend is coming to visit, and we will recall the good times we shared an...

I was really amazed to see the YouTube video of a spiritual leader who is among the most educated in the present generation of spiritual guides. He says that I am forced to always be well-dressed to make the YouTube channel popular, so that the message of the Bhagavad Gita can reach as many people as possible. He also says he feels free at night when he takes off his formal attire. He also says that he can't sleep for even 3 hours peacefully because the worry of the organisation keeps him awake. He is asking people to be fearless. I have also seen many of his videos, and generally, he talks a lot of sense.  Then I watched another video of J Krishnamurti wherein he says that nobody can give anything to anybody. A flower will bloom and will also spread its fragrance. Anyone who passes by enjoys the smell. Flower is just doing what it naturally does. It does not go out of its way to help somebody. Similarly, the trees produce oxygen naturally, and just because human beings have esta...

Today in the KFI discussions , there was a discussion around the escapes and reality. When we come to this world, we have a fundamental fear of being alone . By the time we develop the capacity to examine that loneliness, we get used to the escapes. Society tells the child to seek security in family, money, power, knowledge, and social approval. We get used to these escapes. As and when we face a problem with any of these escapes, we become worried and soon jump to get hold of another escape.  I don't know whether we can ever deal with the fundamental fear of being alone unless we examine what "being alone" is. How many of us even try that for even a few moments? The moment we are sitting idle, we pick up our mobile and search for a social media site or a YouTube video, call a friend, or plan a trip. When I first attended the Vipassana camp in 2012, I was away from all forms of communication, electronic and physical, for the first time in my life. That's a very diffe...

There are nine forces of nature acting within us. Three of these forces act within the domain of the mind: Chitta, Man, and Buddhi. Three of these act within the domain of energy and represent the quantum, physical, and cosmic energy. The remaining three of these act within the domain of the causal body and sensations, representing the Tamasik, Rajasik, and Saatvik causal energies. All of us have different constitutions. Some of these forces are strong, while some are weak inside us, and we can study their relative strength and inclination by reading the horoscope. What matters more is the "Guiding Force". If the Guiding Force is ego, despite having a very strong constitution, one may end up living life confined to a very narrow framework. On the other hand, if the Guiding Force is Truth, one may explore infinite possibilities in one's life, as did Gautam Buddha . To begin with, Chitta is the storehouse of past memories and experiences. If Chitta is guided by Ego, it will...

We have been sitting in a home with all kinds of facilities, the best of the food, and all kinds of luxuries may be available to us, but if we have pain in any part of the body, or apprehension of some disease, or apprehension of some financial trouble, we will not be happy. Our brain has been designed to prioritise pain signals. It is because we will enjoy all those pleasures only if we survive. That's why survival gets top priority , and any alert about a threat to survival does the same to us. We have come together as a society, and therefore, some alerts, such as those for scorpions or snakes , have become rare. But at the same time, alerts about the loss of money, job, social reputation, social validation , and peer approval have become quite regular.  The fundamental fear remains the same. Fear that our existence is under threat. That creates an unpleasant sensation in our bodies which we want to somehow get rid of. That's why the brain's entire focus shifts to elimin...

Do you remember the bullies in school? They will bully the students who are serious about their studies. While the diligent students work hard in the classroom, they would just roam around here and there, trying to prove that they are having fun. As if they were very intelligent and the students working hard were stupid. Today, when we go back to our hometowns, we see some of them running small shops and struggling with finances, while some of them have even turned to crime. They could not understand the value of hard work and delayed gratification at their tender age, and they have to pay the price all through their lives. Sometimes, I really get concerned when I get to see such bullies working in offices, and scattered in society all around.  I remember my 12th standard when there were a few bullies in my school who never went to the Physics laboratory . They ran away with my practical notebook just a few days before the exam, and my parents traced the bullies after a lot of ha...

I fail to even imagine how it will feel when somebody realises at the age of 70 that he has spent his entire life in pretention . The relationship that was the centre of his life was actually based on pretension. He never loved the person with whom he lived all through his life, and the entire relationship was based on practicality. Actually, he never allowed that person to peep into his secret world, and so did the other person. They lived together like strangers, pretending to society that they were very close. Actually, they never knew each other well enough to love. What if somebody realises at the age of 70 that money and power , which were the targets of his life, have actually not given him any happiness? That means he has wasted his whole life under an illusion created by society. How horrible will it feel when a person has no time left to correct the hypothesis and restart? How will it feel to look back at those 70 years spent waiting for some happiness, founded on a hypothesi...

 Yesterday, I had a discussion with a dear friend on "choice". My friend said that in a state of realisation, there is no choice, and one would be neutral among the options. I asked him that, in that case, would a realised person like Krishna fight on the Kauravas ' side? Does realisation mean that fighting on the side of the Pandavas or the Kauravas makes no difference? Consciousness is one, and all forms take birth from the same. That's why Shiva makes no distinction between the Devas and the Danavas. Whoever prays to Lord Shiva is blessed in the same way. Mythology is full of stories in which the Danavas received boons from Lord Shiva and then tried to control all three Lokas. I think that to contemplate this complex problem, we may consider the three natures of Prakrati, viz., Tamas , Rajas , and Satva. Underlying all three is the same consciousness. Like H2O taking the form of ice, water, and vapour. It's the same water in all three states. We need all three...

We read so many theories about the meaning of life. However, the best lessons for life come from relationships. It's easy to maintain an arm's length distance in relationships. In fact, we do the same in most relationships. Even if we find such relationships irritating, that irritation lasts only a few moments or, at best, a few days, and we know that at the end of that period, we are not answerable. Many a time, we manage the show by pretension. Just be good on the face of the relative, and then you get a license to say whatever you want. We vent our frustration when the relative leaves home. People also make excuses and tell lies. When a relative seeks help, they will make all sorts of excuses for why they can't get it. However, these "arm-length relationships" do not make us happy. At best, they provide some degree of security based on the principles of reciprocation and nothing beyond that. Human life is not about security. Yes, we need to be secure and safe t...

Why do the closest people become the biggest enemies? We meet a lot of people in this world. We get along well with some of them and maintain an arm’s-length distance from many of them. Our expectations with the second category of people are quite minimal. Mostly, expectations from such people are based on reciprocity, and the terms and conditions of reciprocity are well defined. You come to attend my function, and I will come to attend yours. You support me, and I support you. Most of these alliances are political, and in politics, there is no permanent friendship or animosity. We maintain very clearly defined ego boundaries in these relationships and form alliances like the alliances among the kingdoms. However, we get along well with a few people. When we enter into a deep relationship with someone, we naturally start entering each other’s personal space. We open the gates of our fort to welcome the friend. He comes to visit the nooks and corners of the fort. As the friendship deepe...

Yesterday, I visited three different places and spoke with children and women going through difficult times. I really don't know what to say. Feeling different emotions. While the girls, whose characters have been tainted, are struggling to get assimilated back into society and facing anxiety over these issues. The boys in the juvenile home are struggling to get over their anger. Some women are lost and struggling to remember their home addresses so they can get home. I had a lengthy discussion yesterday morning about the meaning of life with a young, inquisitive boy. His question about the purpose of life, given how temporary life is, stayed with me. What are we all trying to do in this life?  Why do we experience such a wide range of emotions? When we fall in love with somebody, it seems that we do not need anything else. We feel complete. Then, when we are separated, living becomes a torture. We have thousands of movies around this theme. We watch a movie like Bobby or Maine ...