Life

There may be two different approaches to life. First, we know, and we try to achieve the best based on the information available to us. Second, we acknowledge that we know very little and try to explore the unknown. While following the first approach, we may set different targets in this world. Someone may feel that more money brings more happiness because they can buy a good home, luxurious cars, branded clothes, and travel in luxury to different parts of the world. Somebody may target powerful positions and feel that once they reach these positions, they will get respect from society and VVIP treatment from everybody around. Somebody may set a target around knowledge because he feels that, with knowledge, he will be able to get both money and power. Somebody may keep the target around some spiritual experience because he may feel that spiritual experience is above all these worldly experiences. Whatever the target, we feel that we will be happy after achieving that target. We have t...

How will we rate a home that is very dirty inside, while the gate and outer walls are spic and span? We would be quite impressed at first, but as we enter the house, we will immediately realise the reality. A fruit looks very tempting at first, but as we cut it, we find that it is rotten. We meet many people in our lives who look impressive at first sight, but as we interact with them, we get to notice the fears and insecurities inside them. Some of them may have a very strong external support system in the form of powerful positions, networking, and wealth, but from inside, they are very hollow and weak. I wonder why we concentrate so much on our outer appearance while ignoring the inner strength? Is it laziness? That's difficult to believe because many people work quite hard to improve their outer appearance. Then what? I think that the answer lies in the Ramayana. Lord Hanuma had all the strength and energy to do miracles. However, in his childhood, he did not meet Rama, and the...

There is a very strange characteristic of fear. When we are afraid, we try to take shelter in something that makes us secure. Some mental story, belief system, community, position, or money. Over time, we become quite fearful of losing that shelter. We are afraid of dying, because death is a reality of life. We take shelter behind the concept of "X" or "Y" or "Z" God. We start believing that nothing will go wrong to us and that God will take care of us. Then somebody points out that the God we believe in is just an image that many fearful people have created together and planted in our minds. We get frightened by this. How can somebody dare to shatter the image of God that gives us so much security? We start disliking that person who shows us the mirror. In life, so many ups and downs come. We pass through crises, and as and when a crisis comes, doubt enters our minds about our own defence system. Then the cunning mind thinks whether the psychological defe...

When we look at children on the street with no resources, all of us feel like doing something for them. When we go to a hospital oncology ward and see the patients fighting cancer, we feel as if we could do something for them. When we see the rotten systems all around us, we feel as if we could do something to set them right. When we see the rivers so dirty, all of us feel equally desperate to clean them. Then? We get busy with our family. We take our attention away from those children, patients, rotten systems, and the rivers, and just focus on our children. Somehow our conscious mind rationalises that too much sensitivity is dangerous. We shift the focus to two children, or a few more.  Buddha's father tries to keep him away from reality. He would not allow young Siddhartha to meet the old people, go to the crematorium, or meet poor people. He would try to fill his life with all kinds of wealth and pleasures. Yet, young Siddhartha was so sensitive that a few incidents of contact...

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...