Go to work on your problems than just lament about them

When Life’s problems seem insurmountable, take each day as it comes, but keep at your problems without thinking of the outcomes.

There will be times when nothing will seem to go your way. Situations at work will be unproductive – stressful, political and complex. Your relationship could be heading nowhere – often leaving you lonely and lost. The money may just not be enough. And any efforts you make to fix things, to find solutions, to make the situation better, may only end up confounding matters. The normal response to such a situation is anger, frustration and depression. When these emotions arise, observe them. Hold them and give them your attention. Ask yourself if feeling angry, frustrated or depressed is of any use in a situation when you don’t like what you are getting in Life. When you realize the futility of anger, frustration and depression, you will immediately want to let them go.

Running away from Life or feeling sad continuously for what has happened or feeling guilty for what you may have contributed to what has happened – none of these serve any purpose. In fact, Life never cares how you feel. Life just goes on happening. And if you bring debilitating thoughts to the table, if you keep clinging on to the negativity that arises as a result within you, you will feel bogged down and held hostage.

What is a problem situation at the end of the day? Any situation that you dislike is a problem situation. Plain and simple. If what you dislike must go away – one of two things must happen. Either you must work on driving it away. Or you must walk away from it. You can’t forever be lamenting that you dislike a situation. That’s escapism. Of course, in any situation, you can act, you can take remedial steps. So, act. Don’t worry about the results. Simply act. An action may lead you to a result. And you may like or dislike that result. Then act again if you must change that result. That’s how it works. Inaction on account of depression, anger, guilt, grief or worry is sacrilege. For anything about a current reality to change, you have to change something within you first. Which is, you must be ready and willing to go to work on your problem regardless of circumstance, outcome, reward or recognition. Just keep chipping away. When the going gets tough again, when you face rejection, failure and hit another no-go place, you may well face another bout of depression and frustration. Hold your depression again and examine its futility. Then let it all go. And you go back to work, to chipping away at your problem. One day, one day surely, what you are chipping away at will give way. And that day, when you connect the dots backward, you will be grateful for the choice you made – to have gone to work on your problem than sit and bemoan it!   

Your ‘Mahamaham’ moment awaits you – not in Kumbakonam, but within you!

A dip in a ‘holy’ river or tank can never ‘cleanse’ you. Pausing, reflecting and awakening alone can.

A friend feverishly texted me on WhatsApp a few days ago. He’s close to me and believes that the financial challenges that my family and I are enduring, for close to a decade now, is directly related to my past karma – a ‘carry forward’ of sorts of ‘sins committed in a previous birth’. He furiously appealed to me I must make the pilgrimage to the Mahamaham tank in Kumbakonam and take a dip to ‘wash away all my bad karma, my sins’. “You will see an immediate change in your fortunes,” he insisted. I merely thanked him for his compassionate perspective and offered no justification for my choice not to accept his advice.

Mahamaham - Kumbakonam
Picture Courtesy: Internet

The Mahamaham is a Hindu festival that happens every 12 years in the Mahamaham tank in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu. I have no disrespect for the Mahamaham. Nor do I intend questioning its legend that’s drawing several millions in (what they think is) piety. Yet, I sincerely don’t believe a ritualistic dip, however ‘holy’ the site may be, can ever cleanse anyone. In his memorable 2003 classic, Anbe Sivam (Love is God), Kamal Hassan beautifully explains to his co-star Madhavan why the God within us – the Universal Energy that keeps us alive – must awaken for us to realize the magic and beauty of Life. That realization, to me, is the biggest awakening. And only an awakening from within can truly cleanse us.

To be sure, there is a Mahamaham moment waiting for each of us – provided we are ready and willing to understand Life and have seeker’s, a student’s, attitude. And that moment need not be at a temple tank, where millions are crowding with a herd mentality, throwing personal and public hygiene to the wind! My own Mahamaham moment happened in my living room, some time in 2007, when I was having my favorite Royal Challenge whisky, and was utterly bored with two other things I was trying to do at the same time – swap channels on TV hoping to find something interesting and make sense of the English translation of the Sai Satcharita, a book on the Life and teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba. My search for something meaningful on TV drew a blank. And I soon turned it off. My family had long gone to sleep. Even as I poured myself another drink, I tried – but failed miserably – to understand what the Sai Satcharita was trying to say – it will easily rank as among the most horrible works of translation ever, from the original Marathi to English! I put the book away. And I thought deeply about what Shirdi Baba had taught the world in his lifetime. In a Eureka-like flash, it dawned on me that the two principles around which all his teachings were anchored are – Shraddha, Faith and Saburi, Patience. To face Life and to overcome the challenges that you are faced with, I realized that, you must keep the faith and learn to be patient.

Over time, I employed this awakening very constructively, through my daily practice of mouna (silence periods), to understand the impermanence and inscrutability of Life. I learned that this is the only Life we have. And to live this Life well – and happily – we must train our mind to be in the present moment. In the now. I discovered that the way religion is practiced in the world today is that it encourages you and me to fear people (who peddle religion) than inspire faith in creation – that if you have been created without your asking to be born, then the same energy that created you will care for you, will provide for you. When there is fear, how can there be faith? When there is no faith, how can you be patient?   

This clarity is helping me live my Life with total inner peace, despite the storm that rages on outside, in my business, professional and material Life. This clarity makes me believe that a dip in an insanely crowded temple tank will hardly cleanse anything – not even your body, let alone your mind. I am more with Kabir, the 15^th Century weaver-poet, here. He said:

Kabir Man Nirmal Bhaya, Jaise Ganga Neer 

Pache Pache Har Phire, Kahat Kabir Kabir

Translation

Kabir Washed His Mind Clean, Like The Holy Ganges River

Everyone follows behind, Saying Kabir, Kabir

That is, Kabir urges us to remove all impurities from our mind, from our thinking process, thus letting the light of divinity to shine forth. Truly, there is divinity in each of us. That divinity is suppressed, lying buried under layers and layers of grief, guilt, anger, fear and such debilitating emotions. This is why we are searching for God outside of us. This is why we are running to a Mahamaham.

Seriously, you don’t need to wait for 12 years to scramble to a Mahamaham for cleansing yourself. Your Mahamaham moment awaits you if you can simply pause, reflect and awaken to the opportunity of cleansing your mind, of living in the now! 

Forgiving someone is the best gift you can give yourself

Forgiveness means to accept people for who they are. Irrespective of their irrationality, of their attitude towards you and of their actions.

I recently met a business associate who had failed to fulfil his contractual obligation to my erstwhile (and now defunct) Firm.

It had been a messy relationship. He was paid a sum of money in lieu of his services that he never delivered. When my Firm demanded the money back, he stonewalled us and refused to even take my calls. I sent him a strongly worded email to which he never replied. So, it was in these circumstances that this person and I met at social event. He was courteous but he was both uncomfortable in my presence and, most certainly, unapologetic. Sensing his discomfort, I clasped his hands, and looking him in the eye said, “Let bygones be bygones. I know we have an issue pending. But I am not carrying any grudges any more. I am sorry if I have hurt you in any way over the episode we both wished had never happened.” That kind of lightened the atmosphere and we spent the rest of the evening drinking and chatting up! 

I am not even sitting in judgment of what I did as right or wrong. I simply forgave the person. Period.

I have learned from Life that nobody is bad. Nobody is out to fix anyone! People do what they do because they believe they are right in doing so. Or they think if they didn’t do so, something grave is going to happen to them. Or if they didn’t do what they are doing, they may not get what they expect from you. All irrational behavior by someone then is a manifestation of what they are thinking, their belief systems at that moment, which again is a reflection of the time that they are going through. Such behavior needs to be responded with compassion not hatred. These people need your understanding. They need your forgiveness, not your anger. Besides, if you think deeply about it, what purpose does anger serve? You burn in it, while the person at whom you are directing your rage is often totally nonplussed about how you are feeling.

To truly forgive means to give someone your deepest understanding. It means to let go of the need to judge, opine, analyze or justify and to simply accept the diversity in human Life. It also means to appreciate that people will think different, behave different from you, because they are different from you!  Besides, forgiving someone unburdens you of all the excess baggage of anger, hatred, grief and suffering that you will otherwise carry around. Forgiving someone who has hurt you is the best gift you can give yourself. Think about it. This awareness can make your Life beautiful!

Why forsake your freedom for someone else’s folly?

Some people you meet in Life will be cantankerous, scheming and unethical to the core. Let them be.

Recently someone we know worked in a despicable manner against our interest. It was hurting to see how we were treated and how our self-esteem was trampled upon. We did not protest. We did not whine. We did not rant. We did not fight. We merely exited from the relationship.

10 years ago, I would have kicked up a ruckus. I would have fought. I would have wanted to get even. I would have pushed hard to justify ourselves. I remember during one ghastly episode (which I have shared in my Book “Fall Like A Rose Petal”) with an unethical client, in 2003, I launched a 45-minute tirade against the CFO of the client’s company over the phone. It was a monologue – only I spoke, actually, I howled non-stop for those 45 minutes! When I was tired and done, and could bawl no more, the gentleman at the other end of the line calmly said, “Never waste your energy banging your head against a wall, AVIS. Not worth it.” But I did not heed his sage counsel. I threatened him and his company of dire consequences. For weeks on end, I tried to pursue options to sue them in international courts (they are an MNC). It was very late in the day when I realized I had I wasted precious time and inner peace on a dead cause.

Mercifully, I am not that way anymore. This is what Life has taught me: People will be who they are. And what they do to you, need not__and must not__change the way you deal with them. A common response we, good, ethical, warm and kind folks, have to such people is that we become depressive or angry or vengeful. This only creates more negative energy in us. And that, you will agree, is simply not worth inviting into your Life!

Here’s a Zen story which is awakening.

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process the scorpion stung him. Unmindful, he went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell into the river and began drowning. The monk saved the scorpion one more time and was again stung.

The other monk, who was watching this spectacle, asked him, “Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know it's nature is to sting?”

“Because,” the first monk replied, “to save it is my nature.”

So, stay true to your nature. And let no one affect it. This does not mean you must suffer in silence. There surely are other means to express yourself than to retaliate in a similar manner as the one who’s causing you pain. When you are filled with anger and act from that impulse, you breed negativity in you. When you are negative, your inner peace gets affected. When your inner peace is disturbed, you are held hostage by debilitating emotions. And that essentially means you are not living free!

Think about it: Do you really want to forsake your freedom because someone acted foolishly?

The one who is angry is often helpless

Being angry with a situation and expressing your anger on everyone and everything around you is never an intelligent response.

I watched a beautiful Malayalam film the other day called Manjadikuru. Made by Anjali Menon (of Bangalore Days fame), the film tells the story of a family as seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy, Vicky. One of the protagonists of the film is a man called Raghu (played by Rahman). And Raghu is forever angry with his family – with his brother and his sisters. Raghu’s anger seems often irrational and habituated. As in one moment he could be complaining about his brother’s decision to turn a Naxalite, abdicating his family responsibilities, and the other moment he could be ranting about his sisters flocking together only to seek a share in the family wealth. So, Vicky, while narrating the story, concludes that his big learning watching Raghu’s bouts of anger is that those who are angry are often helpless.

Anjali Menon (who is also the writer of the film) shares a phenomenal spiritual insight there. Something that I can totally relate to. I used to be prone to senseless bouts of anger too. I once remember, as a 20-year-old, flinging my shaving razor at our television – which left it cracked – because I could not have a reasonable, logical conversation with my parents. Years later, when these anger spells had become far too frequent and had begun to ruin my professional stature, I discovered that each time I lost it, I was choosing to express myself in a violent sort of way only because I was unable to control what was going on or what others were saying or doing or because I was unable to convince someone. Bottomline: my helplessness was manifesting as anger.

Through diligent practice of mouna (daily silence periods), I learnt that your helplessness is nothing but a ego-based position. Why do you need to convince anybody? You have a right to your opinion. And they have a right to theirs. It is only when you try to force your view on someone and you fail, it is only when you try to control a situation and you fail, that you get angry. But the truth is that you never were in control of anything or anyone. Things just happen. People just behave the way they want to. So, just go with the flow. There is no need to be angry. And even if you do experience anger, channelize it constructively. Anger is nothing but the energy within you. Don’t squander it through violent thought, expression or action. Simply use it to drive change in a logical, legitimate fashion. This is what Gandhi did to practise ahimsa and help secure India her independence. This is what anger, when used constructively, can eventually yield.

So, if you are experiencing too much anger within you, pause and ask yourself if you are responding so only because you are helpless? In asking that question, you may well unlock the way to a lifetime of inner peace.

Live Unsoiled!

Learn to live unsoiled by the world.

There are enough and more temptations and distractions out there. And we are not talking about materialistic objects of desire alone. Or of ruinous addictions like alcohol, tobacco or drugs either. While these are deterrents to intelligent living, most certainly, what we need to be wary off also are the myriad ways in which we get dragged into brooding or worrying on a daily basis. Think deeply about this. How often in a day do you worry about a future event __ someone’s terminal illness and impending passing, a child’s graduation, someone’s wedding or loans to be repaid? How often in a day do you grieve over the past __ having experienced someone wrongly, an irreconcilable loss, a mistake you made, a hurt you caused someone? How often do you lose your patience or temper or both daily __ on a child or spouse or subordinate or with just someone on the street? Each of these episodes takes us away from living. Every time we worry about the future or fret over the past or get dragged into anger spells, every single time, we die a death.

The ultimate goal and measure of success of intelligent living is not to change your external environment and make it incapable of causing you worry or making you feel guilty or angry. It is about engineering your inner space and insulating yourself from the vagaries of the world. This is what the Bible says ‘living in the world but not of it’ and what the Bhagavad Gita advises of ‘being in this world but being above it’.

The Buddha enlightens us, making this perspective simpler and easier to hold, using the metaphor of the lotus, “As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world.” Imagine being like a lotus. You too must avoid letting your soul be soiled and live, unsoiled, in bliss!

End the anger, seek closure, move on!

Seek peaceful closure than revenge in situations where you have been betrayed, back-stabbed, let down or trampled upon.

The normal reaction to an emotional or physical breach of trust or violation of personal space or privacy is anger. You demand justice and want it instantly. And when it is not immediately forthcoming, as is normally the case, your anger brews within, leaving you in a perpetually explosive state. You are like a violent volcano, vulnerable, emotionally fragile, that is waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation. While the best and spiritually recommended path is one of unconditional forgiveness, many people may not immediately be willing to consider it. In such and similar instances, seeking a peaceful closure can restore the victim to a state of emotional equilibrium.

Dr. Nancy Berns, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Drake University, Iowa, US, and the author of “Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us” says, “Focusing on vengeance intensifies thoughts, emotions, and behaviors related to aggression and anger. Although revenge may be sweet for a brief time, regret, fear of retaliation, and shame are some of the negative emotions that follow acts of revenge in the long term.” I read the story of a young mother of two, in an issue of ‘Open’ magazine, who says a man, who she treated like her father, tried to rape her in her teens. She says she escaped, but the next day, she looked him in the eye and made him apologize. This suddenly changed the power equation. “Less than 24 hours after it happened, I entered his room. He tried to seem concerned like I was a child with childlike problems who he needed to pander to. He denied it in a voice louder than mine. He said I misinterpreted his affection towards me. It was very difficult for me to hear that. He told me that it was all in my head. That made me very angry. I didn’t raise my voice, but I looked at him and my voice didn’t waver. I told him I didn’t want to blackmail him. What he did was wrong. He was taken aback when I went through the inappropriate details, asking him if he would touch his own kids like that. At some point, the tone of the conversation changed. He got scared, and I saw him for the wimp he was. He accepted what he did and apologized. After so many years, I can understand what I was trying to do. We often miss a very important component of justice. It has to help people move on, not be stuck forever in the injustice. For me to move on, I needed to hear him apologize. I needed to see him as the weaker one, not me. I needed to stop feeling fear or anger when I saw him. We all have our dark moments, but no one, not me nor him, wants to be bound by only the darkness,” the lady recounts in ‘Open’.

So perfectly said. We all have our dark moments. But we must want to move beyond the darkness. So, seeking closure, a peaceful one, is far more intelligent, practical and profitable than just fighting a battle that will leave no one the real victor. A few years ago, the entire team in our Bengaluru (South India, India’s IT hub) office was poached by a competitor. One fine morning, we were left with 5 irate clients (we are a consulting Firm) in Bengaluru and no team to service them! I flew to Mumbai and walked into the competitor’s office without an appointment and met their CEO, who had personally ‘masterminded’ this coup. I sought him out for tea at a nearby Irani café and shared my angst with him. I remember breaking down. Inconsolably, for a long time. He did not apologize. Instead he declared: “All is fair in business and in war. I was only able to poach them because you were unable to retain them.” I learnt an invaluable business lesson in that moment. I also felt a strange peace envelope me. Till that time, I had been seething with rage, wishing this competitor the worst, wanting to see him fail in business and in Life. In fact, when I opened the conversation at the café with him, I called him a cheat, an unethical businessman and a poor human being. But after I broke down, after I learnt what I needed to from his act and his justification, I was at peace. Almost magically, this closure was far more powerful to me than all the hatred and the fury that was brewing with me up until that moment. (This story is recounted 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.)

Renaissance author and English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561~1626) has said, “In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior.” End the anger. Don’t perpetrate it. Reach out, seek closure with those that have wronged you and find abiding, lasting, beautiful peace. 

Being POPO-ed is a dimension of Life that you have to live with

POPO: Pissed On and Passed Over!

This often happens to all of us in Life. And leaves us frustrated, fuming, feeling negative and vengeful. So, when this happens to you, or if it is happening to you just now, take it easy. You are not the only one. We are all POPO-ed__one way or the other. When this happens in a relationship, you feel like a used paper tissue. And the grief of having been taken for a ride, taken for granted, takes a long, long time to heal. At work, it leaves you disenchanted and grumpy. You sulk. You stop putting in your best and reason with yourself asking ‘what’s the use?’

But here’s a different take. When POPO-ed don’t do the normal. Don’t grieve. Don’t sulk. Don’t give up on the individual. Instead keep giving your 100 %. Grieving, sulking, bad-mouthing and cold-shouldering are acts of cowardice. Fight the injustice but with love, with mindfulness, by serving. In fact, whatever happens in Life, happens because it was meant to be so. If someone got promoted, that person perhaps deserved it. But in your eyes, you deserved it more. Instead of saying ‘hey, this is unfair’ respond with ‘how could I have served better so that I could have got it.’ This whole idea of deserving must be preceded by serving. Serve to deserve. And even then if you don’t get what you think was truly yours, live in the acceptance of that verdict. This is what will help you retain your sanity, stay anchored and keep moving on.

When we get caught in the cesspool of negative energy, resentment, anger and vengefulness, we are hurting ourselves. We must be selfish here. If someone pissed on you, trampled on you, let you down, they did it because they wanted to hurt you. And you will be, by being angry with them, by carrying vengeance and hatred in your heart, allowing them to succeed. If someone overlooked you and gave another what must have truly come to you__a job, a raise, a promotion, a gift, a compliment, a reward, whatever__understand that this person may either want to hurt you or must have a different point of view. By burning within, you are helping this person get what she wants. By reacting without understanding her point of view, you are being judgmental. So, the most selfish, the most blissful response to being POPO-ed is to be selfless and give the situation love, all your attention and magnanimity, to keep doing what you would have done if the situation did not exist. This is your way to inner peace.

Now, many times, people tell me, “But I am not Saint or a Mahatma? I am not evolved. I am just human.” Please know that Gandhi was also an unevolved, hurting human and he died only because he was human. To be evolved you don’t need to be a Saint. And being a Saint does not mean you are meek. A Saint, a true Saint, is a warrior of a different kind. Someone who has conquered the demons within. Someone who knows that it is but natural for Life and people to be unfair, that being POPO-ed is but a dimension of Life, a phase that we have to live with. Not with suffering. But with peace.

This doesn’t mean that the peaceful should not fight the injustice. But fight it differently. First don’t hurt. Next, return love for hatred and respect for contempt. Third, if there has truly been a case of injustice, choose a form of protest which rises above the ordinary and refuse to yield to the injustice by giving the situation 100 % of everything. These are not contradictory approaches. They are complementary. When you are peaceful, you will be able to fight meaningfully and successfully. So when POPO-ed, be mindful and loving, don’t be sulking!

Drop anger, grief and guilt to be free from suffering

Suffering comes from anger, grief and guilt. Drop these emotions and you will be free from suffering even if you are in intense pain.  

Yesterday, I addressed women belonging to an international association. I delivered my ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal’ Talk (also a book by me with the same name published by Westland last year). I shared our story of self-realization and awakening, of how my family and I found that it was possible to be happy despite our circumstances – a numbing bankruptcy which left us penniless. I confessed to how a series poor decisions I took with our consulting business had landed my family in abject penury. I narrated how, on one occasion, I could not even buy my daughter a text book, that cost Rs.450 (US $ 9.00), she needed at college. A lady in the audience, who was much more senior to me in age, asked me in utter disbelief: “Are you not feeling ashamed and guilty? Isn’t it your duty as a parent to be providing for your child? Aren’t you a loser?” I found her question most logical. Of course, this is how the mind – led by social expectations – classifies people and situations. If you have made mistakes and not fulfilled your moral and financial obligations you must be ashamed, you must feel guilty and you are indeed a loser. Having said that, I shared with the audience the burden that these three emotions – anger, grief and guilt – can bring you to bear. I said: “It is natural to feel angry and ask, in any context, why, why me and why me now? It is natural to feel anguish and grief over what has happened. It is natural to feel guilty over your actions, over what you may have done – or not done – to have brought you to a precipitous point in your Life. But of what use are these three emotions? While they may awaken you to an extent, while they may help you realize your mistake and learn from it, continuing to hold on to them can only lead to depression. And you cannot solve any problem while being depressed. In fact, depression will then be a new problem for you to deal with.” So I reiterated that I carried no guilt, I felt no grief and I was angry no more.

I am not sure the lady found my perspective convincing. The truth is Life’s learnings can be internalized more from experience than by logical reasoning. This is what I have learnt from Life. We all suffer when we find ourselves in situations we did not expect to see ourselves in. But what’s the point in hating a situation that you are in? Irrespective of whether you caused the situation or someone else did, the bottomline is that you have a situation. Being angry with it, feeling sorry over it and feeling guilty about your role in creating it, cannot make an unwelcome, awful situation go away. Always, accepting Life for what it is, accepting your current reality, internalizing what the experience has taught you, only that can help you stay free from suffering. When you are not suffering you can focus on finding solutions to the problems you face. These solutions may not always be instantly available, the problems themselves may not go away soon either, but your ability to hang in there, your ability to deal with a situation will be enhanced greatly when you are free from suffering.

There is no winning or losing, there is no success or failure, there are no winners and losers in Life. These are all labels that society pins on you. They mean nothing. If you pay heed to what society is telling you, you will either be struck by hubris (insolent pride) or you will be felled by depression. I have experienced both these states and I know how meaningless both of them are. The best state to be in in Life is to be in the now. Face the Life you have. Don’t get swayed by what’s happening around you. Stay anchored. Stay strong. Drop anger, grief and guilt to be free from all suffering! 

Staying depressed is a complete waste of precious time

Dealing with depression requires a deeper understanding of what’s making you angry and unhappy. The moment you understand what is disturbing you, you can either let it go or fix it.  

A recent issue of India Today ran a cover story on depression. The statistics are alarming. One in every four women, and one in every 10 men, in India is depressed. That’s about 120 million people – enough to fill a state the size of Maharashtra! From death to divorce to health to stagnating careers, these people are battling unmet expectations and struggling to cope with the psychological impact of their challenged state of mind.

I know what it means and feels like to be depressed. About 10 years ago, I was depressed too – except that I didn’t even know I was depressed! I had gone to meet a renowned psychiatrist Dr.Vijay Nagaswami; I was reporting irrational bouts of anger. Dr.Nagaswami heard me out for an hour and told me that I was depressed. He said I had two ways in front of me to deal with my depression – medication or meditation. And he staunchly advocated the latter. Thanks to Dr.Nagaswami, for me, meditation worked.

I learnt to practice silence periods daily – a method called shubha mouna yoga. It required me to be silent for an hour each morning. That investment of an hour up front in the day helped me gain control over the remaining 23 hours! As my practice of mouna deepened, over time, I began to go to the root of my anger and my depression. Through that process, I understood myself and Life better.

Let me share my learnings here. You become depressed because something you expect has not happened. You wanted someone to love you, but she is not interested. You become depressed. You wanted a raise but it’s not happening. Again, you are depressed. The only person who understood you in the whole world is dead. You are depressed. You are accused of something you did not do. Depressed! You have a health situation that has crippled your functioning. You are depressed, to the point of losing interest in Life! So, in effect, whenever an expectation goes unmet, you are depressed.

Now, depression can manifest itself in two ways. As anger. As it happened to me. But that anger is not always there. A certain listlessness, a self-pity governs your daily Life. When someone or something interferes with it, you explode with anger. The other way depression happens is with sadness. Sadness is nothing but dormant, passive anger. You conclude you are helpless and lonely and that no one understands you. You brood all the time and keep pitying yourself.  Now, in either context – anger or sadness – the mind is not allowing you the opportunity to understand the futility of your being depressed. Which is why meditation – which helps you still your mind – is very useful in understanding what’s going on and choosing an intelligent response, and not a depressive one, to the situation.

Let us say you are angry, hurt, upset – and are therefore depressed – with the way someone has treated you. You can sulk for as long as you want, but that person is never going to realize that she or he has done something wrong, until you walk up and speak your mind. When you do this, that person can either accept your point of view or reject it. Now, you can never control another person’s attitudes or actions. You can only do what you can. When you realize that you have done the best you can, you learn to let go and move on. Now, you are not depressed anymore – because you are not suppressing your anger against that person nor are you sad that you have been treated shabbily.

Surely, this approach works in all contexts. The simplest way to snap out of a depressive spiral is to know that, in Life, it is always what it is. People and events are just the way they are. Your wanting them to be different is of no use. Unless people and things change, of their own accord, it is what it is. Period. So, don’t punish yourself trying to bemoan your fate. Get up and move on. Every moment that you are angry, sad and depressed, is a moment you have not lived your Life fully! Think about it. Staying depressed is a complete waste of precious time. And you don’t have much time either!!! As the famous Persian philosopher and poet, Omar Khayyam (1048 ~ 1131) says in his classic, Rubaiyat, “The wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop; the leaves of Life keep falling one by one.”

The mind holds the key to your physical fitness

When you are anchored in inner peace, your body functions the best.

Swami Parthasarathy
Photo Courtesy: Mid-Day/Internet

This morning’s The New Indian Express (TNIE) carries a story of Swami Parthasarathy playing cricket. Parthasarathy, now 88, was once a businessman and is now a corporate guru who teaches managers to live intelligently! He lectures frequently on the Bhagavad Gita and runs Vedanta World, a learning academy in Malavli, near Pune. Sharing the key to his fitness, he told TNIE: “When you don’t worry about the past and don’t get anxious over the future, you stay fit.”

This is such a simple, beautiful, perspective. Yet this philosophy eludes most of us. Because we have come to somehow believe that our lives are complex and so only a complex solution can help rid us of our problems. Resultantly, we keep waiting for a perfect future, where there will be no problems and we can live happily ever after. The truth, however, is that there is and can never be a perfect future – you can never have a Life that is free from problems. All you can and must do is to live your present perfectly. What prevents this from happening is the mind. It draws you into grief, anger and guilt over the past and into anxiety and worry over the future. So, you are never present in the now. The now is perfect. It is what it is, the way it is. But you are not here. You are brooding or you are worrying. So you are besieged with lifestyle-related ailments – diabetes, hypertension, stress, cholesterol and such. What is a lifestyle ailment? Anything that is an outcome of the Life you lead. So, if you can train your mind not to worry and if your Life can be a continuous celebration of a series of present moments, your body will be fit and you can enjoy the pleasures of a good, productive Life.

I don’t say this from a philosophical perspective alone. I have been there – so I know what it means to be trapped in an unhealthy lifestyle situation. And I have experienced the power of transforming my Life by changing the way I think. I once had a tobacco habit and was obese. And I am both diabetic and hypertensive. When I understood the role the mind played in my physical condition I worked on training my mind. Over time, I have learned to rein in my mind and now know how to stay focused on the present. I have since shed my excess weight and have been able to keep my key physical markers under check. I did this through the practice of daily silence periods – mouna. So, I know that you too can do this. Your method may be different depending on what works for you. But I want to reiterate that it is both possible to train the mind and, therefore, stay fit. It doesn’t matter what industry you work in or the hours you keep. You just need to be willing to be the change that you want to see in you!

Inner peace is not elusive. It is not complicated. If you stop imposing conditions on the way your Life must be, and instead accept it for what it is, you will start living, than merely existing. When you live fully, in the present moment, you will experience inner peace and you will see the magic and beauty of a healthier, happier Life!

Mind to no-mind: the art of taming your drunken monkeys

To enjoy Life and to live each moment fully move from mind to no-mind.  

We have all been conditioned to believe that the human faculty to think is what differentiates us from other forms of creation. Undoubtedly it does. But the human mind is also responsible for causing all our suffering. The nature of the mind is that it keeps generating thoughts. And the other fact is that the mind thrives only in the past or in the future. But either position is irrelevant in the present moment. Which is why it serves no purpose for the mind to be in the past – which is dead, which is over – or to imagine a future – that is still unborn, yet to arrive. Life is always happening in the present moment, in the now. So, when we listen to the mind, we are missing living in the moment. We are missing the beauty and magic of Life.

In Buddhism, the mind is referred to as the Monkey Mind. This is to emphasize the point that there is a constant churn of thoughts, most of them unsettling in nature, that is happening in the undisciplined mind. With a mind that is steeped in anger, grief, guilt, fear, anxiety, worry and such wasteful, debilitating thoughts, where is the opportunity to live in the moment? One Buddhist scripture quotes the Buddha even describing the mind thus: “The human mind is like a drunken monkey that has been stung by a bee.” This is so apt. So powerful a metaphor that I can totally relate to.

The mind is powerless in the present. So, when you are trying to relax, for instance, watching TV or a sunset, the mind will remind you of a sunset that you watched with your girlfriend. And your thoughts will go to a time in the past that is so painful because your girlfriend and you had a messy break-up. Or it will drag you into the future, to a worry about some unpaid bills and the lack of cash to meet them – which includes not being able to pay for your DTH TV connection coming due next week! When your mind wanders, it will stop being in the present. So will you. Which is why all of us are leading incomplete lives – lost in mourning about the past or worrying incessantly about the future. This is why we suffer. Since we cannot undo what has happened nor can we tell what will happen, we are either pining for something is not there or we are fearing something which we believe will happen to us. Both these thoughts cause our agony and suffering.

I have, over time and consistent practice, learnt to tame the drunken monkeys in my mind. I do this by having conversations with the monkeys. Every time a monkey starts jumping around in my mind, I talk to the monkey. For instance, whenever I think of someone who has betrayed me or has been unkind to me, Anger Monkey starts jumping up and down. I ask Anger Monkey, “What’s the point in your getting excited. It’s all over.” The Anger Monkey replies, “But you were cheated, you were pissed on and passed over. You must avenge.” I would say, “I am not interested. Why do you insist?” Anger Monkey would reply: ‘So that they (my detractors) don’t get the feeling that they got away with doing what they did to you.” I would conclude, “Let them. I am happy not wanting to prove anything to anyone or teach anyone a lesson.” That would be it. And I would go back to living my Life without the least trace of anger or vengeance in me. But, as I said, this attitude is something you cultivate with practice. This is true for every monkey in your mind – from Fear Monkey to Guilt Monkey to Worry Monkey.

To expect thoughts – the drunken monkeys – not to arise in your mind is futile. As long as you are alive your mind will be churning out thoughts. Intelligent living is the ability to tame the drunken monkeys and make them powerless by staying in the present. This then is the state of no-mind. Try to be in this state for as long as possible each day. That’s the only way to not be held hostage by the past or be fearful of the future. That is the only way to live in the now!

Awareness can help you beat frustration

Frustration fulfills a need to express what you feel momentarily. But prolonged frustration makes you angry and depressive.

The only way to beat frustration is to be aware of it when you feel so. Each of us is entitled to a bad hair day, a lousy mood and explosive expressions. Nothing wrong with it. It is part of living, growing up, learning and evolving. In an instant gratification environment, a piece of technology that plays truant can cause frustration. An inconsiderate fellow-passenger can land you in a bad mood. A spouse or child can lead you on to a depressive spiral. And you may choose to express your frustration: gritting your teeth, thumping the desk, yelling, kicking a piece of furniture or breaking something. Up to this stage it is fine, but when you reflect back, you will often find that your frustration does not linger on because of what caused your explosive behavior but because you chose to express yourself in such dramatic ways. And for several hours, maybe even days, weeks and months, after that bout of frustration, you continue to sulk, grieve and brood over your 'plight'. In this time the cause of your frustration may no longer exist or may have chosen to move on! But you are still languishing in the abyss of your negative mood or the anger that followed it.

For just a momentary indiscretion, do you want to embrace prolonged agony? Think. How long would you hold on to a matchstick after you strike/light it? If you hold on too long, you risk burning yourself. So it is with frustrations. Be aware. The moment you feel frustration building within you, shift your attention. You see yourself in a long-winding queue, look for the most beautiful sight (may be even a person!) in your vicinity. You receive a disturbing e-mail, get on to facebook for a moment and see what's going on! You and your spouse have had a lousy argument, go out, stand in the open and look up at the sky! Beat the first frustrating thought that arises within, by shifting focus. If you can play a game on your phone or computer, where you have to shoot to win, you can and will win this frustration-beating game!

Frustration almost always breeds anger – which is a killer! So, be aware and beware! The Buddha says this so beautifully, "You will never be punished for your anger; you will always be punished by your anger"!

Romance Life to see how loving you really are!

Just as you can learn swimming, cycling, writing, you can learn loving too.

Overcoming small irritations and injustices by giving the situation and the perpetrator love, instead of anger, is how you practice loving. A motorist tries to cut past you and creates a small traffic jam but ends up blaming you. Don't respond with a how-dare-you look. Smile and say it was just an 'oops!' situation. At a busy check-out line at a store, someone edges past you and the cashier does not insist that you must be allowed to bill first. Don't agitate. Smile and say these things happen! Your boss holds you singularly responsible for the team's poor show though you have put in several extra miles. Don't grieve. Pray for your team and your boss.

Our daily Life is peppered with several hundreds of opportunities__or call them nanosecond tests__to practice loving. In that nanosecond you have to make a choice. Do you want to respond with anger or practice loving instead? When you practice loving, you learn forgiving__or, as Richard Carlson would say, you learn how not to sweat the small stuff. How you deal with the small things in Life is what determines how you deal with the big things. The interesting aspect of practicing loving is you don't have to become loving. You are love and you are capable of loving. The only thing that comes with practice is that you become more aware of this capability.

Just like Mother Teresa and Gandhi and now, Narayanan Krishnan, personify love, so can you. Because you are that already. Just that you don't know it. The love in you doesn't just need some lemon and honey, it needs practicing. Romance the travails of everyday Life, and see how loving you really are!

With acceptance there can only be inner peace and happiness

No one can make you unhappy or disturb your inner peace unless you allow them to!    

We often end up blaming others for the way we feel about the situations we are in. For instance, you order a coffee at a café and it arrives lukewarm. You tell the waiter to replace the coffee. He refuses. And you get angry. Till you arrived at the café and ordered that coffee you were in fine spirits. But that experience leaves you fuming. A friend who sees you stomping out of the café seeks to know the reason for your lousy mood. And you blame the café and the waiter. Now, while they may have served you bad coffee, the truth is you served yourself the lousy mood. Think about it – did the coffee or the waiter cause your unhappiness and anger or was it your expectation that the coffee be hot and the waiter be polite that caused you to lose your cool? The coffee arrived the way it did. The waiter behaved the way he did. You had an expectation that was different from reality. And so you were upset. In all situations in Life, if you choose to remain unruffled, no one can make you upset or angry, and no one can make you unhappy.

Happiness is always accepting, and loving, what is. In the example above, happiness meant accepting the coffee the way it came and accepting the waiter for the idiot that he is. This does not mean that you should not object to the poor service. Of course you can and you must. But don’t lose your equilibrium, your sense of happiness and inner peace, over someone else’s behavior. In fact, on a daily basis you can use the hundreds of provocations that Life throws at you, to train yourself to accept what is, the way it is and to be peaceful and happy. Someone cutting across the road as you drive, an irksome fellow passenger on a plane, a nasty auto-rickshaw or taxi driver, a shopper who elbows past you at the check-out late in a store, your rebellious teenager at home – each of these interactions offers you an opportunity to learn to be happy despite the circumstance, despite the provocation. Currently, you are succumbing to the provocation. You are responding with anger because you are questioning why someone is behaving the way he or she is. But if you let them be and if you agree that you are not going to lose your balance, your cool, you will find that you can be both peaceful and happy – all the time!

Responding to Life peacefully is a lot more sensible than reacting to Life. Reacting comes with impulse. Responding requires reflection. When you reflect over every event in your Life, even if it’s just for a moment, and then respond, you are giving yourself the chance to first accept your reality and then frame your action. And wherever there’s acceptance, instead of resistance, there can only be inner peace and happiness.

Anger drains the spiritual energy in you

Have you ever wondered what makes you angry? Is it the object or circumstance or outcome you desire that makes you fret, fume and lose control over yourself or is it your desire itself?

All the time, you will discover when you think through this, it is your desire that gets you all keyed up. Consider these situations: 1. You order a coffee and it arrives lukewarm. You get angry. Is the coffee to be blamed for your anger? Or is the waiter responsible for it? Or is your desire that the coffee be warm fuelling your anger? 2. You see a passenger cutting across an airline check-in queue. Who is responsible for your anger: your desire for decorum among public or the insensitive passenger? 3. Your boss doesn't give you an opportunity you truly deserve. Is your irrational boss to be blamed for your anger or is your perfectly rational expectation making you angry? Remember that the discussion here is on what makes you angry and not whether the circumstance or person in question is right or wrong.

The only way to deal with anger is to understand that it is your unfulfilled desire/expectation that causes you to get angry over any situation. And so start with yourself first on this journey to know how to manage your anger. All your efforts to change the environment and people around you will produce zero results. However, you can cover major ground when you seek within. When you go within, tempering your expectations, you end up learning to control your emotional outbursts, conserving oodles of energy, and, invariably, you will find more peaceful, purposeful, productive methods to change the environment, people and circumstances that angered you in the first place. Change every 'Damn!' or 'How dare you?' that arises in your mind, with, 'Interesting!' or 'How can I stay calm and help myself?' statements.

This is not as difficult as it seems. Most of the time we miss the opportunity to be calm in a challenging situation because we take a person or an event very seriously. Instead take everyone and everything lightly. If something happens the way you wanted it, great! If it falls short of your expectations – try to get it to your standards. If you can’t still get it to be the way you want it, shrug your shoulders and move on. Getting angry is only going to make you feel more miserable. Your anger may be directed at someone or something else. But remember it arises from within you. It has to first harm you, vanquish you, before it even strikes the other person or thing at whom it is directed.

I have read Osho, the Master, tell the story of a great Sufi mystic, Junnaid. Every evening, in his prayers, Junnaid  used to thank creation for its compassion, for its love, for its care.

Once it happened that for three days Junnaid and his disciples were traveling and they came across villages where people were very anti-Junnaid, because they thought his teachings were not exactly the teachings of Mohammed. His teachings seemed to be his own and people thought that he was corrupting them.

So from the three villages they had not got any food, not even water. On the third day they were really in a bad shape. His disciples were thinking, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to creation:‘You are compassionate to us; your love is there. You care about us, and we are grateful to you.’?”

But when the time to pray came, Junnaid prayed the same way. After the prayer one of his followers said, “This is too much. For three days we have suffered hunger and thirst. We are tired, we have not slept, and still you are saying to creation:‘You are compassionate, your love towards us is great, and you take so much care that we are grateful to you.’”

Junnaid replied: “My prayer does not depend on any condition; those things are ordinary. Whether I get food or not I don’t want to bother creation about it — such a small thing in such a big Universe. If I don’t get water…even if I die, it does not matter, my prayer will remain the same. Because in this vast Universe…it makes no difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”

That is a big learning for us. Don’t take yourself or anyone else or anything seriously. Be easy. Take it easy. Anger is one of the biggest source of draining the cosmic, spiritual, energy in you. If you can learn to productively channelize all the energy that you expend when you are angry, you will have scaled one of the highest peaks of self-realization.

A frustration is a clear sign that you are resisting Life

When you feel frustrated about something or someone, stop wanting to control the situation or person, and simply let it – the frustration, the situation or the person – go!

I spent much of yesterday battling with my laptop. My laptop was gifted to me by someone last year. For some vague reason, in today’s age and time, it has only an Intel Pentium processor. For that reason, it is an awfully slow machine. I also have a Norton anti-virus software installed on my laptop which further inhibits its speed. Yesterday, I discovered that the Norton anti-virus program had crashed and when I tried to trouble-shoot and fix it, it made my machine even more slow. Now, I am not a tech geek. I just know how to use my machine and that’s it. So, while I battled with my laptop and agonized over every click of the mouse, my frustration mounted. I realized that I was letting my frustrations get the better of me, when I took it out on someone who rang the door-bell mistakenly. Soon, I was also hopping mad at the maid and beginning to sound irritable with a business associate who had called up proposing something impractical. That’s when I decided to let it all go! I said to myself that if this is the way my machine is going to be, so be it. If this is the way the Norton anti-virus program is going to behave, so be it. If this is the way people – my maid, the person who rang the door-bell and the unreasonable business associate – are going to be, let them be. I shut down my machine and went for a long walk with my wife.

I was healed at the end of that walk. I then returned to my desk and observed 20 minutes of silence. I forgave myself for letting my frustrations control me. I simply surrendered to the situation. I decided to live with the machine that I have – than lament about its idiosyncrasies or its slow speed or pine for a better, faster laptop.

I am sharing my experience – and learning – here just so that you too realize that it is perfectly normal for frustrations to happen in everyday Life. But to allow them to govern and control your moods is to push yourself into a depressive spiral. You feel frustrated only when you dislike whatever is happening to you. A frustration is a clear sign that you are resisting Life. You can’t avoid frustrations from arising though – a flat tyre, a computer that hangs, a phone that loses its display, an unreasonable fellow passenger on a plane, a delayed paycheck – anything, or anyone, can cause you to feel frustrated. But if you refuse to get dragged by that frustration into depression and instead are aware that your frustration is an early warning sign of your resisting Life, then you can overcome the situation and heal yourself. On the other hand, if you let the frustration take over and control you for more than a day, chances are you will let anger consume you soon, and before you know it, you will be depressed. Funnily enough, if you watch your thoughts and behavior patterns when you are frustrated, you will realize that you often end up feeling frustrated about everything around you – and not just with the one thing or person that ticked you off in the first place.

So, at the first sign of a frustration arise, pause, take a deep breath and let it go. Let go of the situation or the person who is frustrating you. Awaken to the realization that your being frustrated with a situation is not going to make it any better. On the contrary, it is surely going to make you feel worse!

Your Life is more precious than your misery

To overcome betrayal, forgive and just wish the other person well. It is not difficult. It is simple.

Think of a situation when you have been let down, back-stabbed and left to feel like trash. It happened sometime surely in your Life. What was your response? Anger. Outrage. How-dare-you?: your mind keeps throbbing with this question. You sulk. You rant. You brood. At the end of it, your Life goes on. So does the other person’s. And what was the outcome of all that struggle? Pure misery for you.

Was all of this avoidable? Yes surely. All you needed to do was to wish the other person well and let that person be. You can also call this forgiveness. The person’s choice to betray you was their own. Why do you have to react to it violently? It is only when you react this way that you encounter misery. If you were to just accept the situation as is, wish that person well, I am not saying you will feel good, but definitely, you will not feel like trash or be miserable.

Know this: YOU WILL BE BETRAYED IN LIFE. Not ONCE, Not TWICE, but ‘n’ number of times! Yet, each time if you wish your detractor, your back-stabber, your betrayer, well, you can be peaceful. Ultimately, it is ONLY your peace that matters. When you are peaceful, Life in your circle of influence will be peaceful. When people see you peaceful they will retract from their positions of designed or happenstance hostility. Being miserable you cannot make the world a better place. Being peaceful you can make YOUR world better. You don’t have to be a martyr to do this. You just have to be human to see value in this proposition. Wish well, forgive and move on. The rest of your Life is more precious than you clinging on to your misery!