Life

One of the biggest debates today is to what extent AI can take over human intelligence. I am not an AI expert, but to the best of my knowledge, AI works on memory. A laptop has limited data available within it but suppose the entire data of the world is stored in a single data warehouse with a very robust search engine and the artificial intelligence works on that data with intelligence to analyze and draw patterns and correlations, the AI can come out with some suggestions that may not be possible for the human mind. The human mind has a very limited RAM and it can keep only very few things at a time on its RAM and that is why its capacity to analyze the possibilities is also very limited. However, AI may have an immense capacity to analyze as compared to the human brain. Probably that is the reason that AI looks so fascinating to the human brain.  Nowadays Chat GPT is being used by many students as well as professionals in their work. Recently one of my colleagues circulated a di...

 हम सभी का सामना ऐसे कई लोगों से होता है जो बहुत कम जानते हैं फिर भी वे जो कहते हैं उस पर पूरा आत्मविश्वास रखते हैं। क्या यह अजीब घटना नहीं है? ऐसा प्रतीत होता है मानो इन लोगों को "आत्मविश्वास की कला" में महारत हासिल है। या, वैकल्पिक रूप से, वे आत्मविश्वास के दिखावे को अपने "जीतने के फार्मूले" के रूप में अपनाते हैं ताकि लोग असुविधाजनक प्रश्न न पूछें या उनका सामना न करें। इस प्रक्रिया में, वे अधिक से अधिक आश्वस्त होने का दिखावा करते हैं, और जितना अधिक वे दिखावा करते हैं, उतना ही अधिक वे नकली प्रतीत होते हैं। वे यह जाने बिना कि इस प्रक्रिया में, उन्होंने अपनी "प्रामाणिकता" खो दी है, अपने ही बयानों का खंडन करते रहते हैं। बिल्कुल एक लड़के की कहानी की तरह जो शेर के हमले का नाटक करता रहता है और जब शेर वास्तव में हमला करता है, तो कोई भी इसे सच नहीं मानता है। इसी तरह, ये लोग इधर-उधर दिखावा करते रहते हैं, और जब उनकी बातों का दूसरों के लिए कोई मतलब नहीं होता है, तो वे और अधिक असुरक्षित हो जाते हैं, और जितना अधिक वे असुरक्षित होते हैं, वे उतने ही अधिक जिद्दी और जिद्द...

All of us encounter many people who know very little and yet they are quite confident in what they say. Isn't that a strange phenomenon? It appears as if the "art of confidence" is mastered by these people. Or, alternatively, they adopt the pretension of confidence as their "winning formula" so that people do not ask uncomfortable questions or do not confront them. In the process, they pretend to be more and more confident, and the more they pretend, the more they appear to be fake. They keep contradicting their own statements without realizing that in the process, they have lost their "authenticity". Just like the story of a boy who keeps faking around an attack by the lion and when the lion actually attacks, nobody believes it to be true. Similarly, these people keep faking around, and when their words carry no meaning to others, they become more insecure, and the more insecure they are, the more stubborn and adamant they become. This is a continuous...

There is a premium given in this society to the people who take ownership of the work. We praise people doing good work, make role models out of them, and often cite their examples while talking to our kids. I often fail to understand why people need to be motivated to do good work. Isn't that quite natural to us? Isn't that in our genes? Isn't that the purpose of life? If we are not here to do good work, to explore ourselves, and our true potential, then why are we living in this world? Just to have some repeated sensations of some tasty food, physical comforts, social validation, and so on?  Had the single-cell amoeba not done good work, life would not have evolved into bigger creatures. Had the monkeys not made efforts to walk on their feet, human beings would not have been born. Had human beings not made efforts to talk and develop a language for communication, we would not have been able to communicate and I would not have been able to write this post. Had some humans ...

The laws of nature provide the quickest justice. We are probably unable to comprehend the same because of our obsession with the external world. If we take a little time out to examine the inner world, we will notice that the moment we develop a desire, the law of Nature immediately starts working. We get fixated on an outcome and the more we get fixated on the outcome, the more we become restless and dissatisfied from the present. The law of nature works irrespective of the nature of our desire. The desire may be to get the comforts and pleasures, to achieve a certain goal, to set up systems, or even to have some spiritual experience. All the desires are alike. They make us restless.  The moment we set a goal, we become restless. It becomes difficult for us to deal with that restlessness and therefore we want quick results. Therefore, initially, we start our life with very high goals such as integrity of character, moral values, and the welfare of all. However, soon the restlessne...

How do we make decisions? There are two broad types of decisions. We make some decisions consciously while we make many decisions unconsciously. Some examples of conscious decisions are decisions with respect to career, marriage, buying a home, selecting a vehicle, destination for a tourist place, and so on. Some examples of unconscious decisions are our choice of food at a party, the way we click with some individuals and not with others, our interest in a particular book when we visit a bookstore and the way we pick our hobbies. In fact, the dividing line between the conscious and the unconscious world is also quite blurred. Some of our decisions seem to be made by our conscious mind, but the unconscious mind plays a great role in the background. In Mahabharata, whether it was Duryodhana who made the decision to fight against Pandavas, or it was the ambition and insecurity of Dhritrastra that shaped the psyche of Duryodhana and that is why Duryodhana apparently made the decisions tha...

Rama understands the reality of the world and develops Vairagya. He becomes disinterested in life. Then his father Dashratha calls Vashistha and Viswamitra to have a conversation with Rama. They have a discussion with Rama and their dialogue is known as Yoga Vashistha. Rama asks a number of questions and each of the questions is very patiently answered by Vashistha and Vishwamitra. After that dialogue, Rama understands how to live life and with that understanding, he lives a life where he goes to the forest for 14 years to honor the words of his father, lives there with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, gets jnana from so many saints, helps Sugriva even when he is himself struggling to find the whereabouts of his wife who has been kidnapped by Ravana, helps Vibhishana become the king of Lanka, and kills Ravana, the most powerful on the Earth that time, on his own land without having even the chariot. That speaks so loudly about the possibilities of an enlightened life. Siddhartha wa...

I sometimes wonder how come so few could realize what life is and move on the path of self-realization, while most of us live a routine life and die. Why is there Buddha only once in a millennium? Why is it so difficult to be like Aurobindo? Why is it so difficult to even appreciate what they have experienced and written? Why is there so much of a crowd in the Ashrams of the self-proclaimed gurus where the gurus offer cheap placebos to their disciples? Millions of people dance to the tune of these Gurus and close their minds to see the reality.  Probably, we are not ready to examine the fundamentals. The entire humanity has a fundamental belief system that the purpose of life is to have pleasure and avoid pain. Different people and societies take pleasure in different things. People take pleasure in food, strong bodies, clothes, beautiful homes, decoration, furniture, accumulation of wealth, comforts, electrical equipment, digital media, likes on social media, number of subscribers...

Our mind remains occupied with so many things during the whole of the day. The matters related to kids, what career they are going to choose, their studies, their PTMs, the issues related to their health, our own health, fitness, the pending works at the office, the politics of office, the issues related to different subordinates, the temperament the bosses, liaisoning, neighbors, relatives, the past and the future. Mind is never still. Right from the time we get up from bed till the time we sleep, the mind is constantly on one or the other thing. It keeps thinking about the past and keeps making plans for the future. In the process, we keep missing the present moment, failing to realize that the present moment is the only moment where something can be done. There are infinite possibilities that exist in each and every moment. However, we remain imprisoned in our past and imagination of the future. We know so limited and yet remain so convinced about whatever we know. We hardly know wh...

Rama is searching for Sita desperately and meets Hanumana. Hanumana makes him meet Sugriva. Rama, despite not being in a happy state of mind, listens to the story of Sugriva and understands his pain. He makes all the effort to help Sugriva and keep his pain aside. Similarly, when he reaches Lanka, he listens to the pain of Vibhishana and promises to help him and as soon as he kills Ravana, he makes Vibhishana king of Lanka. Krishna has no interest in the kingdom of Hastinapur and yet helps not only Arjuna but also Duryodhana. On the last day of Buddha on this earth, he tells Ananda that he is going to leave the body and Ananda announces in the village so that whoever wants to have darshan of Buddha may do so. Just a few moments before leaving the body, when the body is quite weak and fragile, one person insists that Buddha should preach to him about dhamma and Buddha compassionately teaches him about Dhamma. We also have heard the story of Dadhichi who donated his bones to Indra so tha...

During our childhood, there was a ritual that whenever some baby was crying without any reason, parents used to say "Nazar Lag Gayi Hai" and they used to have some ritual such as seven rounds of the kid with an oil lamp or salt in the hand. Yesterday, I watched the following video on YouTube related to Quantum Physics: https://youtu.be/r848-ArgP1Y?si=XAHMvN66Vaj6k_Kk At the quantum level, there is no difference between matter and energy, particle and wave and all the possibilities may be manifested. However, the moment, there is an observation, the reality gets fixed. That's something phenomenal. We have all the possibilities within, however, we get fixated on one of the possibilities and make ourselves limited.  We often read the news of suicides in IITs and IIMs which are the so-called best institutions in India. A kid who got admission into the best of the colleges commits suicide. He explores the possibility of beating the competition to get admission into the college...

I really wonder as to what is "good luck". Whether "good luck" is really good luck or a sugar-coated bitter pill? If somebody has an industrial empire and has hundreds of crore rupees to spend, it is really good luck. I often recall the words of Shri S N Goenka ji that if somebody gets material wealth and powers, without awareness, probably that's the worst thing that can happen to him. Similarly, if somebody is unaware of the inner reality and gets a comfortable life,  he becomes lazy and stops exploring the possibilities of growth. When a person struggles for material comforts, at least he gets challenged to enhance his worldly capacities.  Probably, it all depends upon our understanding of life. If we feel that life is all about comfort, pleasure, and fun, then  "good luck" is really good luck, at least for some time. It is the very nature of all the material pleasure and comforts and their shine and gleam disappear fast. Our body gets accustomed to...

 Often we do not realize how our fears are driving our existence. We have seen a financial crisis in our childhood and we make earning more and more money our life goal. We experience death in our childhood and we become finicky about death. We experience crises in certain close relationships and we become very possessive about the relationships. We experienced insult and disrespect from society and we want to control the very same society by reaching powerful positions. However, the fact of the matter remains that we remain as hollow as we were because a life lived with fear at its center can never be fulfilling. There are two movements of life and we need to examine these movements to understand what life is. The first movement is fear and the other is love. While fear disconnects us from the rest and makes us feel insecure, love connects us to everybody. A fearful person will seek security and depending upon his experiences, he may seek security in money, power, relationships, o...

Often there are long discussions and debates on free will and destiny. The believers of free will say that our deeds matter and that the worst of the obstacles may be turned into opportunities by hard work. On the other hand, believers in destiny say that everything is destined right from the movement of the hand to the thoughts that come to the mind. The history of world scriptures is full of such debates. This is a question that has intrigued almost every human generation. I feel that this debate itself is the result of ignorance. Each human being is unaware of a large portion of his existence. Memories and conditioning of the past keep driving his actions. For example, a chronic shortage of money sets the drive towards the accumulation of wealth, insult and rejection by the cruel society sets the motivation for power, and abusive parenting makes a person introvert since he feels threatened by the presence of others in his intimate zone, and so on. Different memories in the unconscio...

मुझे आश्चर्य है कि भारतीय धर्मग्रन्थ इतनी खूबसूरती से लिखे गए हैं कि अगर हम उन्हें थोड़ा धैर्य और मनन करके पढ़ें तो वे जीवन के महानतम रहस्यों को उजागर कर देते हैं। उदाहरण के लिए, हर साल, साल के इस समय, हम नव दुर्गा और विजय दशमी एक ही समय पर मनाते हैं। जब हम प्रकृति की नौ शक्तियों से प्रार्थना करते हैं तो मानो भीतर का रावण मर जाता है।  प्रथम दुर्गा "शैलपुत्री" है जिसका अर्थ है पहाड़ की बेटी। दक्ष प्रजापति द्वारा आयोजित यज्ञ में भाग लेने के लिए शिव को आमंत्रित नहीं किए जाने पर गौरी ने स्वयं को अग्नि को समर्पित कर दिया और बाद में शैलपुत्री के रूप में जन्म लिया। गौरी के मन में शिव से मिलने की इतनी तीव्र इच्छा थी। इसके विपरीत, भौतिक संसार के साथ तादात्म्य के परिणामस्वरूप हमारे पास कोई न कोई प्रबल संचित कर्म होता है, जो हमारे वर्तमान जन्म का कारण है। ऐसे कर्म कारण शरीर में संग्रहीत होते हैं और ज्योतिष में इन्हें शनि ग्रह द्वारा दर्शाया जाता है। अनभिज्ञता की स्थिति में ये संचित कर्म हमारे निर्णयों को निर्धारित करते रहते हैं। हालाँकि, हम शैलपुत्री से प्रार्थना करते हैं कि वह हमें जाग...