Life

"hazāroñ ḳhvāhisheñ aisī ki har ḳhvāhish pe dam nikle  bahut nikle mire armān lekin phir bhī kam nikle"  This is a famous couplet from the poetry of Mirza Galib. That means we have thousands of desires and each desire is so powerful that if we are not able to fulfill the same, we feel like dying. Whatever desires are fulfilled, we always feel that our desires have not been fulfilled.  I feel that everybody can relate to this. We have so many desires for almost the rest of our lives. During childhood, we have a desire to play around, have toys, get appreciation from our parents, teachers, get good marks, pass the examinations, win medals, win different competitions and championships, and get admission to good universities, and finally get a good job, and a good life partner. Similarly, adults have thousands of desires such as going abroad, getting increments, a good home, properties, powers, and so many other things. These are the high-level desires during childhood. We ha...

All of us in India celebrated Independence Day yesterday. What a great feeling, independence is. Freedom from dependence on anything must be great. What about freedom from reactions? We often get triggered when we listen to anything unreasonable such as an unreasonable statement from the boss, the unreasonable behavior of a fellow traveler in an airplane or train, the behavior of a rash driver or blowing the horn unnecessarily, or even during the social discussions when somebody takes unreasonable view. Suppose somebody or something can trigger us and we lose our control over ourselves, or become sad, or become agitated, or anxious. Does that not simply mean that we have given undue powers to that person or thing over ourselves? Nobody wants to be agitated or angry. I think that is an eternal reality because whenever we get agitated or angry, we do not feel good. Yet, if some situations or people are making us crazy, does that mean that there is some divine injustice with us, or are we...

"Strength is life, weakness is death" is a very famous quote from the sayings of Swami Vivekananda. The older I am growing the more I am connecting to this statement. Since the broad mindset of society is to maximize pleasure, most people work hard to get a job or set up a business whereby they can earn money and maximize pleasure. In the process, a calculation always goes on in the mind to maximize the pleasure. When we undertake any hard work such as kids doing studies, businessmen putting in hard work to set up a business, or employees giving extra time for a project, we all keep calculating the expected outcome of the hard work and whether that outcome will give us more pleasure.  Thus, we keep calculating the opportunity cost in terms of the pleasures we forego and keep compensating the cost with the anticipated pleasure. In the process, we develop certain skills, build wealth, build business empires, get positions and powers, and so on. However, we suffer significant da...

So many of us try to follow the path of spirituality. The path of spirituality is nothing else but being aware of the inner world, and the truth behind that, and having become aware of the same, maintaining that awareness while living life and taking the day-to-day decisions. On the contrary, the world tells us to live an altogether in different fashion. Society teaches us that we decide our life goals with the present level of awareness and make our best efforts to fulfill these goals. Students are asked to set goals in terms of the percentage of marks in the examination getting admission to a particular university or institute, getting a package of a particular amount, or getting success in some competitive examination. Adults are asked by society to achieve goals in terms of promotion, a particular assignment, position, or power. Scientists are asked to set the goals in terms of a number of research papers or publication of books. Organizations are asked to set their goals in terms ...

I have often experienced that we get stuck with some thought and keep thinking for quite some time, traveling into different possibilities. For example, near an examination, we may be afraid due to insufficient preparation, and out of fear, we may have different thoughts in our minds about the consequences of failure. We may imagine not getting admission to a good college, our parents getting upset with us, our peers making fun of us, teachers insulting us, us failing to achieve our dreams, and so on. Similarly, before a presentation, we may be afraid. Therefore we may start imagining that we will fumble during the presentation, will not be able to answer the questions, or will be criticized by the bosses. Similarly, if we plan a fun trip, we may start imagining the places we will visit and the fun and entertainment with family or friends.  We keep traveling in thoughts quite often. Sometimes, we travel in the past, or future, while sometimes we try to find a solution to the proble...

All of us try to set up systems: whether small or big. We all try to set up a system in our family by deciding on the wake-up time and sleeping time, division of roles and responsibilities, some schedule for ordering the groceries, some rules to spend the money, and so on. We try to form systems in the organizations. Governments across countries also try to put in place different systems by making laws and rules and enabling ecosystems to use the technology. There is no doubt that almost all the systems have multiple use cases. They make our lives easy and save a lot of time and energy which can be invested in exploring many interesting things. Systems also help provide equality of opportunities to different people. Systems also bring transparency and help haves not fight for their rights. However, when systems are misused by the wealthy and powerful for their advantage, they become the worst tools of exploitation too. In the past, systems have proved to be the worst tools of exploitat...

I have been quite interested in the destiny vs free will debate for quite a long time and probably that was one of the reasons that I got inclined to understand Astrology. I have been doing research on different horoscopes for the last 12 years. It has helped me a lot to understand how destiny unfolds and what is the role of free will. To the best of my understanding till date, the unfolding of different situations in our lives is not at all in our control. However, we always have free will to stay aware and maintain equanimity. The moment we switch to reaction mode, reactions will be driven by different forces of nature, as reflected in the horoscope. However, the moment we switch to observation mode, we stop reacting and become peaceful. There are 9 planets in Astrology. 3 planets are in the domain of matter. They represent causal energy. The causal energy of solidity is represented by Saturn, fire by the Sun, and water by the Moon. Then there are three planets of astral energy. They...

There is an amazing story in Mahabharata, the great Indian epic. Five Pandavas, who are the heroes of the epic are forced to stay in the forest and while moving around they feel thirsty and find a pond. As they try to take water, the caretaker of the pond, who is a Yaksha, warns them that they can only take water from the pond if they answer his questions. When the four brothers faint, finally Yudhistira answers the questions of Yaksha. The most interesting question was "What is the greatest wonder in this world?". Yodhistira answered that everybody sees death almost every day and yet believes in his own immortality and lives life as if he will never die. That is the greatest wonder. Yudhistira was bang on the target. Definitely, that remains the biggest wonder of the world even today. There is war war-like situation in almost every corner of the world today. We are getting news from Bangladesh, the UK, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Palestine and so many more countries about...

We all have been given a hard and a soft problem to solve in our lives. The hard problem is finding the purpose of life and the soft problem is finding the way out to achieve that. The first problem is like choosing a tourist destination. The second problem is deciding how to get there. Unfortunately, most of us hardly contemplate the first problem and keep spending almost the whole of our lives on the second problem without realizing that if we choose a bad destination, even if we do our best to plan the trip, our experience will be bad.  As a parent, we hardly encourage kids to think of the purpose of life. The society takes the purpose of life for granted for everybody. Everybody has to get an education, find a good job, earn money, buy properties, marry someone, have kids, hand over the properties to the kids, have some fun and entertainment in parties, dance, and social get-togethers, and RIP. Most people spend their lives either doing these things or struggling to earn money ...

Generally, I don't look forward to different days such as Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Friendship Day. It so happened today that I came for an outing today and while moving around in the garden, messages of friendship day started coming and that made me contemplate friendship. Friends are always very special because we get to choose them. They are not like relatives, who get tied to us along with our birth whether we like it or not. We choose friends based on common areas of interest and sharing. In schools, colleges, and workplaces, we get to know many people and something clicks with few people and we feel like sharing with these people. When we share our thoughts and life with these people, we feel that some of them are not able to appreciate while the sharing goes on with few over the years and sometimes friendship travels quite a long distance and we become comfortable sharing even the deepest of our secrets. Such a sharing results in the formation of a wonderful fr...

I have talked to hundreds of people on consciousness. It is an idea that strikes everybody. However, when it comes to living life, we get busy with the routine and feel that all these talks about consciousness, and awareness exist in just speeches, posts, and books. Yesterday, I was watching a YouTube video about the cosmos. Isn't it interesting that our Milky Way itself has around 100 billion stars in this Milky Way and there are 200 billion such galaxies in the known universe. Actually, we don't know the real dimensions of the universe so far. The nearest star from Earth is at around 4.2 light years. That means if we start today at the speed of light, it will take nearly 4.2 years. With the speed of rockets being around 5 Km/second, it will take around 2.5 lakh years to reach the nearest star. With the fastest one available to us today, we will take 81,000 years to reach there. Not only the cosmos, we have so far not reached the deepest secrets of the oceans. We have so far n...

Every organization forms certain rules for smooth functioning. Similarly, every society develops a code of morality for the smooth functioning of society. The fundamental principles underlying these rules are quite noble. For example, generally, fairness, justice, and freedom are at the core of morality. That is why the moral code of conduct of any society says that we should not steal, hit, or hurt others, have discipline so that we may be free from laziness and may explore this world, treat others with respect, and so on. Society develops many rituals and customs around all these things and with time loses awareness of the foundations of these customs and starts following them literally. The customs and rituals, which in their original form promoted justice, fairness, and freedom start becoming emotionally and physically painful. There are many such examples. For example, the festival of Rakshabandhan must have been started to make the boys feel their responsibility towards sisters. ...

We all are blessed with the human body which is the most wonderful machine on this earth. Fulfillment lies in the use of the human body and mind. It is like a car that is made to help us travel and explore the world. Suppose a car was alive, it would not fulfilled if we got its fuel tank filled, got the most beautiful garage made for its parking, kept it decorated with the most expensive flowers, wrapped it in a nice cover to keep it safe, and keep polishing the car every day. The fulfillment of the car would definitely lie in its best use.  Aren't we doing the same thing to the human body? Some of us somehow want to fill our bodies with tasty food, good clothes, a comfortable home, nice vacations, and some security that we generally seek in money, so that we may keep getting all these comforts all our lives. We join a job and go to the office against our wishes so as to get money to have all these comforts. That is the reason that we crib almost every day during the weak and try t...

Driving in Delhi traffic may actually be quite frustrating. Sometimes, we want to reach fast to a destination, but it appears as if all the red lights are somehow conspiring to make us late. We get irritated at every light. Then we meet the bike riders riding zig-zag as if they want to show us their skills for free. Some bikers will suddenly come from the left side to overtake and leave us in horror because if the bike touches the car, first of all car gets damaged and then there is always a chance that he will fight and start shouting. After crossing the bikers and many red lights comes a speed board hiding behind the tree, as if playing hide and seek game with us by the time we notice the speed board, we have already been caught by the camera and feel like looking at our mobile for the message regarding fine and as we look at the camera, we are suddenly caught by the Policeman to look at mobile.  This is our normal life, wherein we keep living routine life. We try to move ahead a...

Sometimes, we feel good after meeting somebody. While, sometimes, we feel quite bad. I often wonder as to why it so happens? Sometimes, we have heard so many negative things about somebody and yet when we meet that person, there are positive vibrations. What do these positive vibrations mean and where do they come from? Probably, these positive vibrations come with the connection established at the level of our true selves. We all are pure consciousness, that manifests in different forms quite differently. Astrologically, we are all made of 9 forces. There are three causal forces comprising the Moon, Sun, and Saturn that represent the Saatvik, Rajasik, and Tamasik forces respectively. Similarly, there are three astral forces viz Jupiter, Mars, and Venus that represent the Saatvik, Rajasik, and Tamasik forces respectively. Then there are three mental forces comprising Mercury, Rahu, and Ketu that represent the Saatvik, Rajasik, and Tamasik forces respectively. Each horoscope comprises 1...