Life lessons from a ‘guru’ who I have never met – but whose presence I have always felt!

You can’t solve all your problems at the same time. Do what you can do in a given moment, do it well and let go. There is no other way to live Life. This is the only way to be happy.

This is what I have learnt from our guru, our teacher, Swami Sathya Sai Baba. Interestingly, I have never met Swami in my Life. But I have, over the last 7 years, experienced his presence every moment and his teachings have come in at all those crucial times when I have needed them the most.

I remember vividly. It was 8^th May, 2009. A Friday.

Earlier that week, given that we were dealing with the bankruptcy of our Firm, and were unable to repay our creditors, including my immediate family, there had been a showdown with my mother. I had borrowed money from her and had pledged my parents’ property (an apartment in Chennai’s Gandhi Nagar/Adyar area) with a bank. With the turn of events and the eventual collapse of my Firm, and my personal insolvency, I was neither able to return the money I owed my mother nor was I able to redeem their property from the bank.

For whatever reason, best known to her, my mother, with whom I have always had a poor chemistry, imagined that my wife and I were faking a bankruptcy. She said I was a cheat and demanded how I was able to carry on living “flashily” while being unable to repay her. I have had so many arguments with my mother and several showdowns over the years of growing up, of knowing her and being her son. But this time, this showdown was gut-wrenching. The burden of the label she affixed on me, of a cheat, was unbearable. What she said was not so important but what weighed me down was that my own mother, my own biological creator, was saying it without wanting to understand me.

This showdown happened on Monday, 4^th May, 2009. For the next few days I was numb. I was struck by grief. 178 other creditors were chasing me, demanding money. Many of them were harassing me and my family. But facing all of them, and the stresses of having to convince people that I did not have money to repay, I never felt so beaten, so battered. But my mother calling me a cheat, this was something I could not get out of my mind. I hardly slept those next few days. (I have recounted this experience and others in my Book - "Fall Like A Rose Petal - A father's lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money"; Westland, August 2014) That’s when, seeing my plight, a friend recommended us to a Sai Bhajan. The host of this Bhajan is a young man who is a messenger of Swami – Swami speaks through him. Given that I am a rational thinker, my friend advised me and my wife to “hang all scientific thinking and reasoning at the door” and simply go in total surrender to a higher energy. At that time, I never had any disrespect for Swami – I always believed he was a great social worker and I felt the work he was doing in the Puttaparthi area was remarkable. But I didn’t, back then, think much of Swami as a guru or even as a swami.

Swami Sathya Sai Baba

Yet, convincing myself that I didn’t have anything to lose by following our friend’s suggestion, on Friday, 8^th May, 2009, I attended a Sai Bhajan for the first time in my Life, at this young “messenger’s” house. As the Bhajan was in progress, something happened within me. I simply broke down and cried inconsolably. I remember saying this to myself, “I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know if you are indeed a swami, swami. All I know is that I am not a cheat. And I want you to help me and my family. We don’t know what to do. There is total darkness. There is no way. Please help. If you lead, we will follow.” You can call it a prayer. You can say it was a despondent appeal. Whatever it was, on that day, I couldn’t think of anything else to say or do. My own mother had called me a cheat – it seemed like the whole world had ended for me there. At the end of the Bhajan, my wife and I were invited to ask Swami questions – through the our young host, Swami’s messenger. We went into a private ante-chamber, where we were given vibhuti as prasad in a tiny zip-lock pouch. Words failed me and my wife. This seemed very illogical. Very bizarre. Yet, strangely, it seemed real. And true. Swami spoke through the young messenger: “I am now your mother and father. Your debt is mine. Just let go and be happy.” I had not told the young messenger anything. I had not talked of the issues I had with either my mother or of our bankruptcy and insolvency. But Swami was bang-on! He had addressed the most important issues that plagued us both at that moment. We were dumbstruck by what we heard. And that’s how our journey with Swami began – we simply let him be our coach, teacher and guru.

Over the last 6 years, whenever we have had problems – and we have had huge ones, almost every single day – Swami, through the young messenger, will only reiterate this one point: “Let go! And be happy. Focus on the now. Live in the moment. Tomorrow’s problem, we will see tomorrow. Stop the worrying. Just stop it.” Yet, Swami has never advised or allow inaction. He would always say: “Do what you can, what you must, to solve the problem. Take action. But don’t worry. Worrying is useless. It kills the spirit of all your action.” To be sure, never once has Swami, through the young messenger, asked us to do a puja or say a prayer or conduct a penance – the only thing he’s asked us to quit is, well, worrying! And there’s really nothing irrational about that advice!

Over time, this consistent coaching by Swami has helped us train our mind. I can’t say we don’t worry. But when worry arises like a wave, our awareness, our training, helps us tame that wave. We let go of the worry and move on. I am personally a lot more evolved and anchored as a person, a professional, a parent, a friend, a son, a brother and husband today – than I was just 6 years ago! And that’s because of Swami’s presence in my Life – his teachings and his hand-holding. He’s the guru I have never met, but whose presence I have always felt! To that presence, I offer myself on this Guru Purnima Day and onward…

Fundamentally, happiness is an inside job!

Happiness is just being. Being available to what is, being present in what is, being accepting of what is and moving on with what is.

If we can’t understand the concept and value of just being, we simply will never be happy.

In the July-August 2015 double edition of Harvard Business Review (HBR), Senior Editor Alison Beard writes about “The Happiness Backlash – Investigating the seemingly universal insistence on feeling good”. Reviewing a set of new books on happiness (mostly in the ‘Self-Help’ genre) and sharing her own perspectives candidly, Beard confesses that reading about happiness depresses her. “Because there’s too much advice out there about how to achieve it,” she explains. And she continues, “…And yet for me and many others, happiness remains elusive. Of course, I sometimes feel joyful and content – reading a bedtime story to my kids, interviewing someone I greatly admire, finishing a tough piece of writing. But despite having good health, supportive family and friends, and a stimulating and flexible job, I am often awash in negative emotions: worry, frustration, anger, disappointment, guilt, envy, regret. My default state is dissatisfied.” I feel sorry for Beard. That she has come to believe that her default state is one of dissatisfaction if not of complete unhappiness. To be sure, millions out there are unhappier than most others and, unfortunately, they remain unhappy almost perpetually. And the reason these people are this way is because they have not understood the value of just being.

Fundamentally, happiness is an inside job. As Beard rightly surmises, just because there is a wave of activity in the “happiness industry” with books being churned out and people talking about it more and more – actually tweeting and #tagging about it – it cannot be assumed that the people of the world are getting any happier. No one – or no thing – can make you happy unless you learn to simply be – be with yourself, be with your true Self, be with what is, be yourself, be in the moment. And to be, you must understand Life. You must realize that Life does not happen because of you. It happens in spite of you.   of what you do or don’t do. You cannot control the Life that’s happening to you. All you can and must do is to accept the Life you have, do the best in any circumstance and again be accepting of whatever outcome or result your efforts may generate.

Per ancient Roman philosophy, the Goddess Fortuna, rotates the wheel of fortune, rota fortunae, of our lives. The wheel has the picture of a king on top and a picture of the same man as pauper at the bottom. So when the wheel of Life turns, as it surely will, you are pushed down if you are on top and you are pushed up if you are down. But we as people, as a race, we have all been conditioned to cling to the periphery of Life, holding on to the material aspects of our lives – power, wealth and assets. This basically means that as long as you are on the periphery of Life you will have to deal with the ups and downs, with the highs and lows, with gain and loss, with success and with defeat. But if you move inward, to the center of the wheel, you could be unmoved by all that happens to you in Life. In a way, at the center of the wheel is where the opportunity to move beyond mortal and material abundance transcending health, wealth, power, pleasure and fame is available. This is where you are in a state where you just accept what Life is offering you at the moment. Which is, kahbi khushi, kabhi gham – sometimes joy and sorrow. The nub is this: when you are accepting of the Life you have, of what is, you may feel the pain, but you will not suffer. You will learn to be in this material world and yet be above all the attachments that lure you and want to hold you hostage!

There are only two ways to live Life. You can enjoy it. Or you can endure it. Enjoyment comes easily. When what you want comes your way, you enjoy it. But how can you enjoy death, separation, illness, misunderstanding, hatred, conspiracy, break-ups, loss, penury? These you simply have to endure. If you learn to just be, you can indeed be happy, even while you are enduring the Life that you never wanted, never wished or never expected.

So, I would like to humbly disagree with Beard – even though she is one of my favorite writers at my favorite HBR. There is no backlash against happiness. There can never be – who will ever say no to being happy? Besides, happiness is not an industry. It is not a pursuit. It is a state. A state of being. Really, happiness is in you. You are unable to find it, or uncork it, because you have heaped layer upon layer of negative, debilitating emotions on happiness. To be happy, you simply have to be. When you are, accepting of the Life you have, no matter what the context or circumstance, you will find that all the negativity in you has evaporated. Or better still dissolved. When you are, you are in the moment, in the present. All your negativity stems from living in the past – anger, grief, guilt over what happened in a period of time that is dead, is gone – or from living in the future – worry, fear, anxiety over what may happen in a moment that no one has really known or seen. In the present moment there is no negativity. In the present, there is only one way, and that way is to simply be. When you simply are, you are happy!

Live for your inner joy!

Pay attention to what Confucius had to say, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your Life.”

So, pause. Stop rushing. Know that in Life, you really have to choose only between two things: do what you love or love what you do. When you do neither is when you grieve, you struggle and you labor through each day. Please awaken to this reality that you and I have not been created to slog, to earn a living and to pine for a Life in the future. We have been created to enjoy this Lifetime and have been endowed with all that we need for this celebration called Life. We are perfect creations in our own, unique ways.

Roman Opalka was a French-born Polish painter who passed away in 2011, at 79. His claim to fame: something bizzarre from a layman's point of view. In 1965, in his studio in Warsaw, Opałka began painting a process of counting – from one to infinity. Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and finishing in the bottom right-hand corner, the tiny numbers were painted in horizontal rows. Each new canvas, which the artist called a 'detail', took up counting where the last left off. Each 'detail' is the same size (196 x 135 cm), the dimension of his studio door in Warsaw. All details have the same title, "1965 / 1 – ∞"; the concept had no end, and the artist pledged his Life to its execution: “All my work is a single thing, the description from number one to infinity. A single thing, a single Life.” Typically he would paint around 400 figures a day. Brush and paint never varied. His figures were roughly a centimetre tall, most made with two deliberate strokes of the brush, and allowed to fade away as his paint ran out. Over the years there were changes to the ritual. In Opałka's first details he painted white numbers onto a black background. In 1968 he changed to a grey background ‘because it's not a symbolic color, nor an emotional one’, and in 1972 he decided he would gradually lighten this grey background by adding 1 per cent more white to the ground with each passing ‘detail’. He expected to be painting virtually in white on white by the time he reached 7 777 777: “My objective is to get up to the white on white and still be alive.'” He never got to that number. But what the heck, he lived a full Life doing what he loved doing!

The reason why we don't often make the right choice to only do what we love doing is because we relate to reference points other than ourselves. Oh, what will the world say if I just painted numbers? What will I do for an income? What will happen if 10 years from now I don't like what I have chosen? Instead of torturing yourself with external reference points, instead of dying every moment that you live, live for yourself, for your inner joy! This is what they call bliss! And it’s inside you. And it is waiting for you to anchor within. Go find your bliss, start loving it and then __ you will never have to work again! 

Khudi Ko Kar Buland Itna…The Kalam Way!

Sigh, I have never met Dr.Abdul Kalam! So I don’t have a picture of mine with him to post here. I don’t also have anything to say of him which hasn’t been said already.

As my fellow Indians celebrate his Life by sharing what they think of him, I feel deeply too. But words cannot express what I feel about him. His presence, his Life and now his absence in a physical form can best be described as an eternal inspiration.

Cartoon Courtesy: Internet
Copyright rests with cartoon's original creator

Last night as the NDTV newsbreak notification appeared on my phone, I was reminded of the lines that Mohd.Iqbal, a Pakistani poet and philosopher (1877~1938), also famously known as Allama Iqbal, gave the world to live by: “Khudi ko kar buland itna, ke har taqder se pehle, Khuda bande se ye poche, bata teri raza kya hai.” This roughly translated in a practical sense (there are a few exalted interpretations too) means, “Make your self-will so strong, your contribution to this Universe, therefore, so unputdownable, that before making your next destiny, the Creator will ask you for your preference of what you want to be created as.”  

We hope the Creator will ask this of Dr.Kalam. And we hope Dr.Kalam will ask to be created, yet again, as himself, as the most devoted, committed, true Indian that ever lived.

Dr.Kalam inspired us to believe that this Life is unlived and incomplete, if you have not touched lives. He lived this way to make his Life his message. In celebration of his Life, let us live that spirit of humility and selfless service – today and always...

Let people and their opinions just be – you carry on living the Life that you love living

Don’t measure your Life in terms of success or defeat, asset value and brand value or on what people – including the media – have to say. Nothing matters in the end; except whether you lived each of the moments you were alive and except the lives you touched!    

This morning’s Economic Times had a story on Indian cricket’s most successful captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Written by Ratna Bhushan and Ravi Teja Sharma, the story (“Is Brand Dhoni on the wane?”) seeks to analyze if Dhoni’s appeal as a brand endorser is under threat and if it is worth betting on post the ban on Chennai Super Kings’ from the IPL. Nothing wrong with the story per se given that ET is a business paper and they have the need to comment on subjects such as brand value and asset value. But there’s a naïve perspective, in fact an avoidable opinion, that the story plays up. It reads: “Dhoni was listed by Forbes in 2014 as the world's fifth most valuable sportsperson brand, valued at $ 20 million. And only last week, he was named as the world's ninth most marketable in a study by London School of Marketing. But can this change? It can.”  I infer the statement to mean that if you thought Dhoni was invincible, infallible, indispensable, think again; because his brand aura is waning with his poor ODI performance as captain, with CSK in trouble and with his retirement from Test cricket. My point is – whether any of the reasons Bhushan and Sharma attribute to Dhoni’s dropping brand value are relevant or not, the irrefutable truth about Life is that what goes up has to come down. Such is the nature of Life. The question whether someone’s position in a given context (in Dhoni’s case it is his supremacy in the game) can change or not is both irrelevant and naïve at the same time. Of course, all Life is about change. And nothing lasts forever – including the social definitions of success or failure.

Mercifully, the Dhoni we know is the man he is. He is unlikely to be bothered by the ET analysis. 

Yet, I find so many people grieving over what other people have to say about their lives. They put on a mask and pretend to be living a Life to contend with social and peer expectations than to live fuller, wholesome lives. They work overtime on how they are perceived than how they simply are. So people suffer bad marriages because they have to protect their social identities. They get stuck in lousy careers because the money is more important than the quality of work they do. They work overtime, often vainly, to look presentable and appear good on Page 3 or on TV, while within them they are rotting – feeling empty, lost and unwanted by their immediate circle of friends and family. All of this is wasted, misplaced effort that only accentuates personal suffering.

Remember this: your Life will mean nothing to you when you are gone. You can’t take anything with you when your time here runs out – not your money, not your assets, not your memories, not your family and definitely not your rewards, recognitions, media stories and public opinion. What really matters are two things – First, how did you live your Life? Did you live it fully or did you merely exist? And second, did you do work that touched people’s lives and made a difference? When you believe you lived all the moments of your Life fully, when you believe you touched even one Life in your lifetime, then, you can say your stay here has been meaningful. Only then you can say your lifetime mattered. Else, it was all fluff. Before you know it, it’s gone with the wind! Pooh!  

So, drop all pretentions. Get real. Let people say what they want to and let their opinions be where they are. You simply carry on living – being who you are and living the Life you love living! 

Feeling confused and lost in Life? Relax, if you are willing, you will find your way and light!

Only when you lose yourself, can you find your true Self. Only through a confusion can you gain clarity. Only when you deal with a crisis, will you awaken to realize yourself.   

There will often be times in Life when you don’t know what you are doing. Or you will not know whether you are doing the right thing or not. You seem to be lost. With no sense of direction. Every aspect of your Life seems broke and broken. It appears that no one wants you, no one loves you and nothing that you want to work ever works. In such situations, it is not unusual to feel an emptiness – along with self-pity, guilt, anger, depression and a sense of dreariness, purposelessness.

I have been through a similar situation in Life. When my Firm went bankrupt and we were plunged into a dark, hopeless, penniless phase in Life as a family, one night, I sat in my living room and was trying to swap channels. I was so disturbed that I was not able to attend to what I was doing. I was swapping the channels aimlessly not even knowing if I was understanding what was playing on any of them. At hand, apart from the TV remote, was a glass of whisky – a friend visiting us from overseas had brought a bottle of Glenfiddich some days ago. But while I drank my favorite Single Malt, I didn’t relish it either. Both the channel-swapping and the whisky-sipping were involuntary actions. I was not mindful of either. That’s when I turned to my bookshelf which was at arm’s length from where I sat that night in my living room. Almost involuntarily, I reached out to the Sai Satcharita (a book dedicated to extolling the Life and teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba). The book had been on my bookshelf for several years then. But not once had I had the urge to pick it up, or even read it. But that night I did both – without much thought or desire, I must quickly confess. I soon found the book ‘unreadable’ – the English translation is pathetic and getting past each page is sure to accentuate your suffering, especially if you love English as a language.

But two words stood out. And in the context in which my Life was placed then, they made imminent sense. Shraddha and Saburi – Faith and Patience. These two words form the cornerstones of Shirdi Sai Baba’s teachings and in a way hold the key to facing, dealing with, and living Life. Which is, keep the Faith – that is you have been created, you will be looked after, cared for and provided for. And while you keep the Faith, learn to be patient with Life – with people, circumstances and events.

Inspired by my “discovery” that night, I began to delve deeper. I embraced a form of meditation called mouna, meaning silence, where you practice daily silence periods. Through your remaining silent you train your mind to stay calm, anchored and focused. Along the way, I also turned to Osho, the Master. I found great value in what he had to say. His teachings pointed me in the direction of Zen Buddhism – I loved Osho’s practical, real-world, in-the-face approach. He always managed to distill the essence of Zen in the context of everyday living. That was indeed useful. As I explored Osho’s teachings further, and as I hung on to Baba’s two magical words, Faith and Patience, I found my Life transforming. My problems didn’t go away (they still are where they were 8 years ago) but my ability to deal with them improved greatly. Simply, I have learnt to accept my Life and whatever it brings my way, while making my efforts daily to do whatever is within my control to change my Life. But when my efforts don’t yield results, I don’t panic, I don’t grieve, I just try harder the next day. So, in a way, from being totally lost and confused in Life, I must say, I have found my true Self and have learnt that it is possible to be happy despite your circumstances.

The Venerable Subul Sunim
Abbot of the Beomeosa Monastery in Korea

Yesterday, we attended a Talk on Mindfulness at the InKo Centre by The Venerable Subul Sunim, the Abbot of the Beomeosa Temple in Korea, who is currently visiting Chennai. The Abbot made a very important point in his Talk which has great relevance to what I have shared here today: “Meditation can be compared to allowing the sediments in muddy water to settle, while Zen attempts to eradicate the sediments themselves.”

I can completely relate to the Abbot’s point of view. The muddy water is the confusion, that lack of clarity that haunts us when we feel our Life is listless or battle-weary through a crisis (a relationship break-down, health issues or even loss of a dear one). The sediments are the emotions we cling on to – pain, anger, jealousy, hatred, grief and such. So, in my case, while Baba’s two keywords, Faith and Patience, got me started and mouna helped me along, it was Osho’s teachings on Zen that helped me let go of all wasteful emotions.

To be sure, each of us is capable of reaching this state. But for that, you must let go of all those debilitating emotions that hold you hostage. Try Zen. It works. As the Abbot said yesterday, “The purpose of Zen is to awaken to the absolute and to enjoy mindful living perpetually.” But don’t rush to Zen as if it is a headache pill or because it’s a nice sounding word or the latest fad. Be hungry to explore and understand the true nature of Life. Be humble. Approach Life like a good student. As they say in Zen, when the student is ready – and willing – the teacher appears. And only a teacher, a guru, can dispel the darkness, clear the confusion and help you see your light – within!     

Our Life design, the Master Plan, is inscrutable – but has to be accepted and faced!

Anything, absolutely anything can happen in Life. You just have to learn to face it and deal with it.  

A couple of days ago I finished reading “Aarushi” (Penguin, 2015) by journalist Avirook Sen. The book obviously tells the story of the double murders (of 14-year-old Aarushi and the middle-aged housekeeper Hemraj) that shocked all of India in May 2008. But more important, the book tells us that Dr.Rajesh Talwar and Dr.Nupur Talwar, Aarushi’s parents, did not kill her. In telling us so, Sen makes few things very evident to the reader: how flawed our judicial system is, how there is a heartless, cold bureaucracy that thrives at our premier investigating agency, the CBI, and how lawyers, and their often flaky strategies, can ruin a good chance for a client. Sen does not make an explicit summary of these points. This is what you glean through reading his unputdownable book. But above all that is evident, there is also the implicit Life lesson that one picks up – anything, absolutely anything, can happen in Life; and all you can do is face Life and deal with it.

Sen quotes from Dr.Rajesh Talwar’s journal entries on the immediate few days/weeks the couple spent in Dasna jail after their conviction on 25 November 2013. I reproduce some of the quotes as they are:

3 Dec 2013: Still can’t understand how this happened to us. If only I would have gotten up….I could not even save my dear Aaru. Very difficult to live without her.

9 Dec 2013: Miss Aaru so much and that time and our Life. People talk about their children and what they are doing. They come and meet them in jail. But for us, nothing.

10 Dec 2013: Met Nupur in the afternoon. It’s really strange what Life has dealt us. But this is what it is.

18 Dec 2013: This is the 25^th year of our marriage and we will celebrate 25 years on the 19^th of January (2014). Could anybody imagine where we would be on our 25^th anniversary? No Aaru, no house, no clinic, no money and sitting in jail for something we haven’t done.

Dr.Talwar’s journal entries gives us a peek into how we think through a cathartic time in Life. When you read “Aarushi” you will realize how the Talwars have been done in by Life. Yes, we can blame the investigators, the judicial system, the witnesses who were influenced or coerced and whoever else we want to; we can even blame the Talwars for sleeping through the most dramatic and gruesome night of their Life. But ultimately this is the design for the Talwars’ Life: No Aarushi, no house, no clinic, no money and sitting in jail for something they haven’t done. They simply can’t escape it.

This is the way all our lives are designed. We can’t escape that design. We can fret, fume, kick around, bawl in agony, fight, resist – we can do all we want and can do, but Life goes on happening to us. The way it wants to. The Life design we all have to face and deal with is inscrutable. Some call it karma. I believe it is a Master Plan. And as I have learnt from someone, and learnt from being through Life’s experiences, the Master Plan has no flaws. We may think it is flawed because we believe we don’t deserve what we get or what happens to us. But in the end, it all adds up, all of it makes sense. You do eventually realize that whatever happened, happened for a reason and, believe me, for the good!

Dr.Talwar runs a dental clinic inside the Dasna jail. Even as he and Nupur await their appeal for suspension of their sentence by the Ghaziabad CBI court to be heard by the Allahabad High Court. The truth is, reveals Sen, the Allahabad High Court is presently hearing appeals from the 1990s. So, you can imagine how long it can take for the Talwars’, who were convicted in November 2013, appeal to be heard.

That brings us to a key operative word, a killer App, if you will, to face and deal with Life stoically – that word is “acceptance”. You can’t control what is. You can’t create what is. And because it is what it is, you simply have to accept what is; while continuing to do your bit to make each day count, and keep on living the Life that you have!  

Don't connect the dots forward

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, don't connect the dots forward and imagine that the worst will happen to you soon.

This is a favorite human hobby: to conjure up worst-case scenarios and live in desperation and despondency. Consider this: Your project at work goes awry, results are poor and deadlines have been missed. Your boss calls you and gives you hell. On your drive back home, you review the conversation with your boss and fear you will lose your job. You get into your apartment and your spouse tells you that she has been having abdominal cramps. Your already embittered frame of mind now invites you to think pessimistically. You imagine she may be having the dreadful 'C' disease. As you plan to sleep, your worries magnify. What if I am asked to leave my job? What if my wife is diagnosed with cancer? How will we survive? You wake up in the throes of this negative thinking spiral and start work the next day; your anxiety further drives your performance into the ground. Your negative thinking will lead you to more crises during the day, week, quarter and onward. To flip your thinking switch and to break the negative spiral, you need to elevate your thinking.

And the only principle that works is this: simply don’t connect the dots forward. Your reprimand at work was isolated. Your wife's cramps were not influenced by the work situation. And you are no doctor. This is the way to rise above and see things from a 30,000 ft-level. When you fly in a plane and look down at the ground, you will find tallest of structures looking like specks from the sky. Similarly, the gravest of problems are but pimples. They will appear and disappear. But if we don't give them attention, they will not bother us. Only if you are anxious about them all the time will they seem like something grave and serious. Filmmaker Onir, a gay rights activist who wears his sexual orientation on his sleeve, was once accused of molestation by a wannabe male actor. In response, Onir had this to say: "If you have one car accident because someone else broke the traffic rules, you don't stop driving. I realized that I can't let one bad thing negate all the good things that have happened to me."

In Life's grand theater, things will sometimes happen that you least expected or wanted and when you are least prepared for them. Such is Life. Don't try to connect the dots forward or interpret each event or imagine the worst. The worst seldom happens. So, just live. Just be!

The God you seek is within you

You wait and you wait and you wait for God to come to you, and when you give up, you find the God that you seek: right within you!

This is the world's most open secret but alas nobody gets it. Because we all think we are educated, we are wise and are capable of knowing what's inside us. And we believe God is not inside us. We know we have a beating heart, we have two lungs, two kidneys, all that and more inside us. How do we know what's inside us biologically? Because we have been taught so. And what else have we been taught? That God is in places of worship that we must physically go to and pray. But hold on a second. Why do we go some place to pray to some God? So that we find peace, so that we get energy to perform our roles with diligence, so that miracles may happen to get us out of miseries, so that we are able to provide love, warmth, security for our families and such. But all of those capabilities are resident in us. Just as they were resident in the Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed or Krishna. No, but I don't see them, you may argue. Then consider this: do you see your heart, your lungs or your kidneys?

Break free from this belief that the source of solutions, the fountainhead of miracles is outside of you. Go within. Seek within and ye shall find, says the Bible. Swami Sathya Sai Baba was ridiculed and taunted for being a miracle man. But he never claimed to perform miracles. We interpreted them so. He only said, "I know and accept that I am God. The problem with you is that you don't know and don't want to accept that you are God." 

Please don't get me wrong. I am not an atheist. I am an i-theist'!!! You too can discover such clarity in thinking and realize the true nature of your creation. In that moment of awakening you realize the Godliness in you and discover miraculous powers. More power to you on your journey of self-awareness and discovery....!

There’s a lot of Life left after a crisis; believe me, a lot of Life!

Often when in the throes of a crisis, we think we cannot go on. We don’t see a way out of whatever we are faced with. And we think it’s all over. We want to give up. But just remember this – failure or defeat is temporary, it is giving up which is final!

On Sunday, I was in a conversation with the world-famous pianist Anil Srinivasan. This was part of a monthly Event Series I curate called “The Bliss Catchers” which is hosted by Odyssey, Chennai’s most happening bookstore. The Series celebrates people who have had the courage to let go of “safe and secure” careers to follow their bliss, to go do what they love doing.

Anil Srinivasan and AVIS Viswanathan
at "The Bliss Catchers"
Odyssey, Adyar

Over the course of our conversation, Anil shared his story of how he found and followed his bliss. Anil’s heart was always in the piano – he started playing it when he was just three years old; in fact, the piano is his Life. But family circumstances (a grave financial crisis had made it mandatory for him to pursue a career option that would be immediately economically viable and rewarding) and peer pressure forced him in the direction of an MBA at a US University. He followed that up with attempting a PhD at Columbia. But at one time, what he describes as his lowest phase, the PhD was just not happening. He had huge educational loans to repay. He had no money. And his academic career was going nowhere.

One day, Anil, out of sheer desperation and depression, just blacked out. “I was going to a friend’s place in a cab in New York. But I just lost track of what I was doing. I did not know where I was or where I was headed. When the cab reached the destination, I told the cabbie I had no money to pay him. He kind of made out that I was losing it. So, he said that it was okay, he waived the fare, but he also urged me to take care of myself. I got down from the cab and I just slumped on the stoop in front of my friend’s apartment. I was still clueless of who I was, what I was doing or who I had come to meet. So I simply sat there and spent much of the night there,” recalled Anil. Later that week, Mandolin U.Srinivas (1969~2014), who was a good friend of Anil, called him. Srinivas was performing at Burlington (on the US-Canada border, in Vermont) and wanted to just say hello to his friend. From Anil’s depressive tone, Srinivas surmised that Anil needed help. Urgently. So, Srinivas rushed to Anil’s apartment in New York the next morning and urged Anil to take a walk along with him. The two of them walked along the Hudson for over an hour. Anil says that Srinivas was certain that Anil needed help. But more important Srinivas felt that Anil must play his piano. Immediately. “‘How long ago is it since you played the piano?’ Srinivas asked me. I had no answer. I had forgotten when I had played the piano last. That was how far removed I was from my beloved piano and my music,” Anil told me and the other guests at “The Bliss Catchers” Event. As it turns out, Srinivas took Anil back to his apartment and encouraged him to play. Anil just followed Srinivas’ suggestions without protest. In just a few hours Anil was playing beautifully, enjoying himself and was feeling “totally alive”. “Srinivas re-infused the gift of Life, my music, back in me,” Anil reminisced, even as a tear dropped from his eye. “I can’t believe Srinivas is no more,” he added.

So, that’s how bad things really were for Anil Srinivasan – someone who, as much of the music world believes, is the finest pianist India has ever produced. Can you believe it? One of India’s best musicians was beaten by Life, was depressed and defeated just 15 years ago? And look at him today – he’s living the Life he truly wanted to live, he’s enjoying his music and he’s making music that everyone loves to hear. He’s traveling the world and making people realize that the piano is not just a Western classical instrument but one where it is possible to make any kind of music – from Carnatic to kuthu to Bollywood – if you play it from your soul!

Anil’s story teaches us, yet again, something very, very important. It is the most significant lesson you will ever need to learn about living intelligently – that Life’s darkest moments must be faced. And no matter how dark it is, no matter how hopeless it is, every storm will pass one day. All you must believe, when you are feeling down and out, done in by Life, people, events and circumstances, is that there is a lot of Life still left, after each crisis.

No point trying to squander your precious lifetime by taking it too seriously

Let’s not take Life too seriously. Just live it. And forget about it!

A story in the papers this morning set me thinking. The family of a dead man in Trichy has charged the local gasifier crematorium of the Trichy Corporation of not handing over his ashes to them. The family claims that the ashes they have received are not of their man’s and believe that there has been a “mix-up”, “some foul play” and demand a “DNA Test” by the Corporation to confirm and assure them that those ashes indeed belong to their dead relative.

I couldn’t help chuckling to myself as I read that story.

Does it really matter what we do about our dead after they are gone, after they are cremated or buried with dignity? Think about it, they are just mere ashes. We came from dust and unto dust we all will return – this is the simplest way to understand Life. That is all there is to it. It was a choice-less birth (none of us has asked to be born), and it is often an exit which we don’t quite plan. We come with nothing. We go with nothing. Then why this drama – of success, failure, wealth, ego, relationships, religion and what not – during this lifetime? What’s worse, as is apparent in the Trichy crematorium story, is that the drama continues even after someone’s dead and gone!

I can’t think of a better way to live than to simply let go. Don’t take Life too seriously. Nothing will survive. No one will survive. So, just be easy on yourself. And on people around you. If you can solve your problems, do so. If you can’t, let them be. If you can get along with people, great. If you can’t let them be and you just move on. If you have money, you can buy a few things you want. If you have no money, be sure that no matter who you are, your needs will be taken care of. Not the way you want your needs to be met, but the way Life has designed to meet them. This is what Life is all about. So, don’t waste your precious lifetime trying to make your ever-perishing Life perfect. Just let go and be happy!

In Life’s fairy tale, there are no sad endings

Don't approach anything that happens in your Life from sadness.

A loss. Pain. A heart-break. An insult. All of them are not what we ever want in our Life. And so we respond with shock, anger and sorrow. But after we get over the initial response, we must develop the attitude to shift the attention to joy.

Exult in the opportunity that each of those surprising events has thrown up. A loss always points to a gain in the future. It has also taught you through your grief what is more valuable in your Life. You grieve a loss because you attach a value to it. This awakening to the realization of what's important to you must call for celebration. And joy. If someone insults you, you must celebrate because you have now the opportunity to live with an insult. A capability that you never thought existed in you. Again, it calls for joy! Your spouse tells you that she or he can't carry on in the relationship with you anymore. Beneath the obvious layer of shock and tears, it actually opens so many more opportunities to start afresh in Life. To explore newer horizons rather than be stuck in a bad relationship in grief, in sorrow, in pain. Joy here means the suffering for both of you has come to an end. Yes the pain of going through the process of separation will have to be dealt with. But eventually it too will lead to joy!

What is certain about your Life and mine is that it will end one day. But interestingly when your Life ends you will not even know it. Only those who you leave behind will feel sad. And again you will not know that they are sad! So, in reality, in Life's fairy tale, there are no sad endings. So, why be sad about the interludes over which we have no control? 

Hissssss…when you must!

To be spiritual and loving does not mean to be meek and submissive. On the other hand it means to be firm, stoic and resolute in everything that one does.

An interesting story from the Life of Gautama Buddha should throw some light on what seems like a challenging paradox. Gautama was once walking through a village with some of his disciples. A snake crawled up to him and falling at his feet begged of the Awakened One to help him. The snake pleaded, "Those kids out there don't let me play with them because they think I am poisonous. So, will you please rid me of my poison and transform me?" Gautama smiled and blessed the snake, who lost his poisonous self instantaneously. A few weeks later Gautama and his disciples were passing through the same village, returning from their travels, when the snake came up to the Buddha once again. He was sad and completely heart-broken. Gautama petted him and wanted to know the cause of his agony. The snake lamented, "Those kids, O! Learned One, still don't believe that I am not poisonous. They don't let me play with them and worse, they are hitting me with a stick." The Buddha quizzes in response, "So, why didn't you show them your fangs?" "But you removed them O! Buddha and made me non-poisonous," replies the snake. Gautama smiles and chides the snake thus: "Sure I did my dear one. But I didn't also ever advise you not to hiss!" 

By being loving you don't need to necessarily allow anyone to trample upon you or take you for granted. Be calm. Be caring. Be forgiving. But be sure to hiss when you must!

Don’t do anything that will rob you of your sleep

Whenever in doubt, lean on the side of your inner peace. Do only that which will give you a good night’s sleep.

I was speaking to a young man yesterday who shared with me his story. Very inspiring! He wanted to be a police officer. He was selected to join the force but there was a catch. He was asked to pay a bribe of Rs.1.50 Lakh to be recruited as a Sub-Inspector in the Tamil Nadu police force. The man was in a dilemma. To be a cop was his life’s dream. Here he was on the threshold of becoming one but the demand for bribe rankled his conscience. He was raised in an upright family where they worshipped not Gods and religious texts, but worshipped Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography “Sathiya Sothanai” (The Tamil translation of “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”). Even as he was contemplating what to do, some of his extended family members made overtures to him saying they would offer him a dowry if he married into their family – this could have helped him pay the bribe and get his dream job. But the young man asked himself some simple basic questions:

Is being a cop more important to me than being an honest citizen?

Is my dream more important to me than a good night’s sleep?

Is that dowry more important to me than really marrying the person I truly love and want to spend the rest of my Life with?

These questions gave him immense clarity. And he leaned on the side of his inner peace. He told me, “I decided that I did not want to forsake my inner peace for the sake of my dream. In fact, when I look back now, I realize I was only infatuated with wanting to be a cop. What matters most to me is being true – to myself and to all the people I know.”

Of course, this young man faced several challenges on his way to finding a stable career in an NGO, where he currently works. But he says has no regrets: “I earn enough to provide for my small family. I am happy. And content.”

I share this story for two reasons. One, we must all have the clarity in us to be discerning – to know what will give us peace and what will disturb it. The other is that we must be prepared to journey along, without regret, whatever be the path we choose. For there will be many times and situations when you will rue the choice you made. But if you believe you would have been unhappier not making that choice, then plough on. Live with your choice. And it will always end well.

Yes, in the end, everything works out just fine. So, why trade your inner peace for petty short-term material gains?

Get some ‘zazen’ into your day today!

To conquer the mind, you must know the soul. To know the soul, you must be silent. To know silence, you must just be.

Just being may appear to be difficult. But it is not. And to keep it simple and silly, just as it sounds, don't try to be. Just be. In Zen Buddhist practice, there’s this concept called 'zazen'. It invites the seeker to simply sit, opening the hand of thought__which means drop judgment, let words, actions, events just unfold. A friend who is going through a troubled marriage was advised by her other friend to just be an observer and not be involved emotionally in the actions of her estranged spouse. I believe she was getting the most valuable advice. How can I be an observer when my world is falling apart, you may wonder? What else can you do? By trying to control the uncontrollable__Life__you are subjecting yourself to trauma. The suffering comes from this desire to control. Instead be detached. The essence of detachment lies in being. Not doing. Not becoming. Just being.

Osho says it profoundly, "There is nothing to become. You are already that, it is already the case. Stop running after shadows. Sit silently and be. Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself." What a beautiful perspective. Try and get some ‘zazen’ into your day today!

Look into the mirror before you opine

No one is good or bad. Everyone is a product of the time that they experience/go through.

There's so much talk about corruption in high places in India today. And the lack of morality in power centres. All of us lament of a basic erosion of value systems. Social Media offers the perfect platform for people to give free, unsolicited advice and opine on how other people must be leading their lives. So much time and energy is being expended on hashtag activism against the political class, the corrupt and those who invite public scrutiny and attention. Let's divest ourselves of indulging in such wasteful opinions and invest in introspection instead. We are all as corrupt as anyone else is. If you pay a bribe to have a cop let you off for breaking a signal, if you drink and drive, if you support a communal (anti-human) point of view, if you pollute the environment by indiscriminately using plastic, if you private ogle at someone, you are as corrupt as the people who are accused of financial and criminal wrongdoings. Period.

True character is who you are when you are in a dark room, alone, when no one is watching. So, before rushing off to opine, let us look into the mirror. As someone famously said,"Every Saint has a sinful past and every Sinner has a saintly future!" Amen!

Focus on what matters than on matters that don’t

Just consider the irony of our lives. We keep trying to increase the value of all the unimportant things in our Life, instead of trying to reduce the values (parameters) of what's most important for us to live.

We worry ourselves to death trying to increase our wealth, our real estate, our fame; we lust and crave for rewards and recognition, and want more and more people to appreciate us. Even as we are doing this, we don't realize that things more valuable than what we are chasing are also increasing in value. Our weight, our blood pressure, our heart rate, our triglycerides, our sugar and cholestrol. The irony: if we worked systematically to reduce the values of our body parameters and bring them to acceptable levels, we will be able get more of what we want without as much effort as we are struggling to invest now.

Phil Crosby, the Quality Guru, wisely said, "Health is the only Wealth. And it's Tax Free!" So, doesn't it make sound financial sense to focus on what matters than on matters that don't?

It is possible to discover newer ways of following and living your bliss

Life is never a black and white saga in that sense. It is never only this or that.

There can be various permutations and combinations of this and that if you are a bit creative while still retaining the focus. Learn to discover newer ways of living in bliss. Indeed, when we make joy and service the focal point of our lives, we will find newer means of encountering and staying blissful.

Olivier Roellinger
Picture Courtesy: Internet

Master Chef Olivier Roellinger retired from his own three-star Michelin restaurant in 2010 owing to health problems. His love is food and ostensibly his must have been a painful decision to make when he had to exit a line that gave him joy, fame and money. But in less than six months he found a way to follow his bliss by setting up a chain of spice boutiques called Epices Roellinger which doesn't have the stresses of running a fine-dining place but has the potential to reach a far greater number of people. While his boutiques stock and sell the most exotic varieties of spices, some of them long forgotten, from across the world, Roellinger is intent on paying the farmers, many of whom are currently struggling, at fair-trade levels which is currently four times higher than existing market prices. Roellinger's story is a humble reminder to us that making money while doing what one loves may not have only one way of doing. That we can all do better than what we are currently doing if we throw in an element of service and create a flavor that's both unifying and yet distinctly different. "We must increase our capacity to embrace what's different until one day it becomes a part of us. Ultimately, the intermixing of aromas, flavors and cultures (as in the spices trade) is what's beautiful about the story of humanity," says Roellinger.

If we reflect on that thought of his, we may find more meaning to our individual pursuit of following our bliss.

When you embrace your problems, they make you stronger

No problem goes away until you have learnt from it and know how to deal with it.

This is the simple truth we all fail to get. And so, we keep denying problems or keep hoping the problems will go away. Only when we stop denying or wishing our problems away, only when we embrace and welcome our problems with open arms do we find them mellowing down, or easing their stranglehold on our lives. Even so, what happens then is that the problem still remains as it is, where it is, only, our ability to deal with it gets better. When we are able to deal with a situation better, we play the game__in this case, of Life__better. When we play anything well, we experience joy. When there is joy, nothing remains a problem.

The Bible says,"And God said, let there be light; and there was light." The light that God is referring to is the joy in us. Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of Light, problems cease to exist in their draconian forms when we experience inner joy and peace. This essentially means that when we are anchored, our problems don’t frighten us, they don’t make us insecure. We then learn to co-exist with our problems.

Let us stop making pimples seem like cancers. Let us un-darken our lives by opening our souls to the Light within. Let us embrace our problems and discover the joy of having them in our lives__and be grateful for the opportunity they give us to learn from them and become better, stronger people.