Go on, be a Buddha today!

To find peace, meaning and happiness in Life, all you must do is to stop searching.

When you are searching, you are missing what’s most apparent. When you just be, just the way you are, you will always find whatever you are searching for.

This has often happened to you or you have seen others go through this: people search for their glasses all over while they have raised them to leave them on their foreheads. They look high and dry, feel exasperated, and then when they are told that they have been carrying them on their foreheads, they feel stupid and sheepish.

So it is with Life too. You are the peace you seek, your Life has a Purpose, and you can be happy only in the present moment. These are unalterable truisms of Life. Also, you are a Buddha. The root word ‘Budh’ means to wake up, to understand. A person who wakes up and understands is called a Buddha. To grasp this wisdom, you don’t need to be a guru. You must just be willing to let the flow of Life take you in its fold. In any situation, allow Life to take over. Just go with the flow.

For instance, this weekday morning, don’t get stressed out if you are running a few minutes late. Watch your every breath, take your very step in peace. Look at your schedules for the day and ask yourself how you will be creating value and making a difference today. Choose to focus on only those items on your agenda where you can make a difference in the first half of the day. At lunch, review how you are feeling. You will be happy. Not because I have told you this. I am no soothsayer. This is no prophecy. You will be happy because you created conditions within you to be happy, despite it being busy day at work, despite the frenetic pace and stress of your working Life. When you stop running, and start feeling your breathing, you live. Most of us are alive, but we don’t think much of it. When you realize you are alive, when you celebrate each breath you take, anything is possible. When you live understanding the peace, meaning and happiness in each moment, you become a Buddha yourself. Go on, simply be, be a Buddha today!

Become the Buddha that you are born to be

Would you kill anyone? Then why would you kill an animal or bird for you to quench your hunger when there are several other options available?

The case for vegetarianism is neither a choice nor is it religious. It is an absolute necessity on the spiritual path. Just as a space vehicle needs to abandon its payloads at different stages of its journey to reach its destination orbit, so do we need to abandon our ways and methods as we grow up – not just grow old – and learn to live intelligently.

This is not about God and it is not about sinning, it is about winning in Life. The real victory in Life is about conquering ourselves. Go inward. Go find your Self within you. When you understand that there is no difference between you who abets the killing of innocent species, in a way, by being willing to consume them, and those that aid and abet the perpetrators of terror in the world, you will want to reconsider your meal preferences. Being vegetarian is not even a belief. Don’t believe anything. Just feel it. Feel the crudeness in wanting to eat something that has been killed to feed you.

What did Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts do? What happened on 26/11 in Mumbai? And in London, Greece, Indonesia and keeps happening weekly in Pakistan? Some ‘misguided’ few killed innocent living beings to feed their egos, to satiate their dogmatic beliefs that killing is religious retribution. You call them stupid. Then what are you? Feel the cruelty churn within you. Arise. Awake.

I too ate non-vegetarian food until about 11 years ago. And then one day I simply gave it all up. My trigger was my then 9-year-old daughter asking me: “Papa, why do you eat an animal?” I have since discovered that what you did so far need not burden you with guilt. What you will do now is important. When you fly international sectors, especially out of India, you often encounter a meal option called ‘Jain’. Now Jainism is an old religion. All their 24 teachers, who they call ‘thirthankaras’, were warriors and meat eaters. They killed for food. But when they became aware, through their awakening, they converted their primal energy to a deep love for all forms of creation. They even threw out God and prayer. Just as Buddhism did. As Osho, the Master, has said, “When you threw out God and prayer, what’s left of religion? I want you to understand it: the moment God and prayer are discarded, the only thing that is left is to go in. Buddha also was from the warrior caste, son of a King, trained to kill. He was not a vegetarian. But when meditation started blossoming in him, just as a by-product the vegetarian idea came into his being: you cannot kill animals for eating, you cannot destroy life. While every kind of delicious food is available, what is the need to kill living beings?” So, Jainism and Buddhism are not a religion in that sense. They are a means to an awakening. For thousands of years now, Jains and Buddhists are vegetarians. Not because they are a sect or a cult. But because they are aware.

Become aware. Know what you are doing. Go inward. Seek the cause of all creation within__within you. It is the same breath that powers your children and keeps them alive that chicken and lamb and cows and pigs and shrimp and fish__all need to stay alive. Would you want someone to take your childrens’ Life-giving source away? Then why would you want to take away the same source from other creations of Life? Drop anchor, find your Self, become the Buddha that you are born to be!

Budhhahood is a great pain reliever

Every pain, every unresolved relationship situation, every wound, is a disguised opportunity for enlightenment.

There’s a Buddha in you, in me, waiting to awaken. And extraordinary pain, believe me, is not a sign of your past sins and retribution happening to you, as some would want you to believe, but is a sign of extraordinary grace waiting to enter your Life. This entering of grace is what is called enlightenment. It is a state of being and not an event that happens at a specified time at a specified, glorified venue, like,  under a tree. For Gautama, it happened under the Bodhi Tree. For you it can well happen on a potty or at 30000 ft. while you are flying! Buddhahood is a state you will realize, you will awaken to, when you look deeply at what is causing you pain – and understand your pain. Whatever is, look at it intensely. Your first, human and normal, tendency is to resist pain. Instead embrace it. Invite it to tell you why it has arrived in your Life. And it will always tell you why. Be honest. Because pain is not like worry. It is not an imposter. It is a teacher. Initially, you will find external reasoning very powerful to the cause of your pain. As in, he cheated me. So I am in pain. She led me up the garden path, hence I am in pain. My competitor chose unethical means and so my business couldn’t cope and I lost all my money. Instead of apportioning the blame to an external agent, a foreign hand, ask yourself what have you done to have invited this situation? When you know how you invited pain into your Life, your learning will be complete. Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13^th Century, Persian poet says, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” When this awakening happens, you will be able to live with your pain, yet without suffering from it!

In reality, pain is powerless. If you look deeply at whatever is causing you pain at the moment and stay in this moment, in the now of reality, your mind will not even report the pain. The mind always exists in a past grief or a future worry. In the face of reality, the mind is inactive. Which is why people champion the power of now! So, if you want to profit from your pain, it is possible, by choosing to be aware. Something or someone is perhaps your source of pain, but by not understanding your pain, you are inviting it to stay over longer. All you need to do is look at it intensely, ask what have you done to have invited it over, internalize the learning and watch the pain just leave you alone! This state is called Buddhahood. And Buddhahood, indeed, is a great pain reliever! 

Happiness lies in accepting what is!

You are the happiness that you seek. You are always searching for happiness because you think it is a destination – not who you are!

The other day, a friend remarked that it was impossible to be happy and content in today’s world. “The state of our world and nation, and the state of our roads, are in shambles. To the extent that our lives are not in our control at all. How can one be happy when every condition around us is making us unhappy,” my friend lamented.

That’s precisely how we miss the point. If you start imposing conditions on what is, and say your happiness is subject to those conditions being fulfilled, you will forever be unhappy. You will always feel incomplete. You will be left searching for happiness – and you will never find it! To be happy, you have to do nothing. Just exercise the choice to accept whatever is, the way it is, and you will be happy!

A Zen story explains this beautifully. A man came to a Zen Master and asked, “I would like to become a Buddha.” And the Master hit him hard.

The man was puzzled. He went out and asked the Master’s disciple, “What kind of man is this? I asked such a simple question and he got so angry. He hit me hard! My cheek is still hurting. Is it wrong to ask how to become a Buddha? This man seems to be very cruel and violent!”

And the disciple laughed. He said, “You don’t understand his compassion. It is out of his compassion that he has hit you hard. And he is old, ninety years old; just think of his hand – it will be hurting more than your cheek! You are young. Think of his compassion, you fool! Go back!”

But the man asked, “But what is the message in it?”

And the disciple said: “The message is simple. If a Buddha comes and asks how to become a Buddha, what else is there to do? You can only hit him and make him aware that you are it. If a rosebush starts trying to become a rosebush, it will go mad. Because it is already the rosebush.”

So, this way, Zen teaches us that we are already the happiness, the Buddhahood, that we seek. We may have forgotten – because we have got so attached to our desires, our situations. We have started to identify with all material things and with all physical limitations. We have stopped seeing our true Self – seeing who we really are. Zen says we are in a state of slumber, we have forgotten who we are, that’s all.

Nothing has to be done about this. You have only to remember who you are! That’s where Zen comes in handy. It says stop searching. Simply be. Let things be as they are. Don’t try to control your Life or solve your complex problems which defy a human solution. When you accept things for what they are, the way they are, a peace will arise within you. That peace is what happiness is all about. When that peace becomes abundant in you, when you know how to protect that peace in the wake of everyday pulls and pressures, you experience bliss!

On just Being, Buddhahood and Bliss

Be yourself. Don’t try to become someone else. Drop the urge to “become” and simply “be”. That’s Buddhahood.

                            

Gautama, the Buddha, himself has said this: “Doubt everything. Find your own light.” What this means is that you shouldn’t get carried away by others’ experiences or philosophies. You have to challenge every assumption, question every logic, convince yourself how (your) Life works and accept your own convictions and beliefs.

But this is not the way we have been raised. Everything we do is what we have been “told” to do. There’s very little scope or opportunity to make our own music, pave our own paths and to live our lives as if we were explorers and not followers. Which is why, when you fare badly in academics, you are condemned. I, for example, was thrown out of school and that led to my parents feeling “embarrassed” on my account – their feeling so changed my Life forever. Society’s expectations from us are far removed from the way the Universe works or has planned things for us. According to the Cosmic Design, everything is in its place and everything’s perfect. The Master Plan has no flaws. Society – family, friends, community – says, however, you are not good enough. You must be this way or that way or like him or her. If you succumb to this pressure, you give up being who you actually are. You get trapped in the “becoming game” – wanting to become something that you are either not capable of or interested in becoming – instead of simply being. If you accept who you are, if you stop wanting to become (something, someone) and simply be, that’s Buddhahood.

This is not at all complicated. Simply ask yourself what gives you joy and go do it. You can keep your job, do whatever else you have to do to  discharge your “worldly” responsibilities, and still if you can devote some time to do what you love doing, you have made progress. Doing this, now that you have experienced inner joy, keeping doing more of that stuff. When you do more and more, and then eventually do only that which gives you joy, then you are yourself! You are not trying anymore to become someone else for society’s sake, for family’s sake or for money’s sake. When you live the Life that you enjoy living, that’s Buddhahood.

The Lotus Sutra is the most profound scripture in Mahayana Buddhism. And the defining doctrine in it is the belief that all people can reach an enlightened state. The key to this enlightenment, as I have learnt, is to drop all notions that your Life is imperfect and that you have to do something, become someone else, to make it perfect. Just accept your Life the way it is, accept yourself the way you are, don’t judge, don’t reject, don’t condemn, don’t try to become. Experience everything. Then choose what you love doing. And then keep doing that. Just being yourself.

In your acceptance of your Life the way it is and of yourself the way you are lies you Buddhahood – and your bliss!

Attain Buddhahood – by witnessing Life

Treat everything that’s happening in Life as not happening “to” you, but around you, and you will always be at peace! This is the witness state – Buddhahood, if you like. This way you will be in a perpetual state of equanimity within you, despite whatever turmoil that is going on in your external world. Just like the way it is at the eye of a storm. The storm is raging with all fury, all around, but at its eye, in the center, there is no turmoil. Through your witness-state you too can attain this level of inner peace.

Consider this: someone insults you. And you get drawn into that drama. This leads to an ego-play. He says something. You retaliate. He hits back. And you attack again. This goes on. And on. But what if you had let that insult pass? What if, like a lotus flower, you had not let the water (the insult) stick to you? What if you had continued to live in the muck (the dirty pond in which the lotus blooms, metaphorically, the turmoil-ridden world) but chosen to rise above it, untouched, unblemished?

This is true of, and possible, in every situation. Be it a conflict or a temptation or just a Life event__like a lay-off or a death or a break-up__happening to you! This does not mean that Life is to be resisted. But  means, in fact, that it has to be experienced dispassionately. Without getting embroiled or entangled in it.

Here’s a story from Buddhism. A bunch of drunk people picked up a prostitute and stripped her naked. They wanted to rape her. But they were so drunk they fell asleep – tired and exhausted by the high alcohol content in their blood. The woman escaped from their clutches by the time they woke up. Shocked at their loss, the men began to search for her. There was only one way out of the place they were in and on that way they found the venerable Buddha meditating. They did not know who this man was, but decided to ask him about the naked woman because from where the Buddha was sitting, there’s no way anyone could have gone past without him seeing her.

“Did you see a naked woman pass by sometime ago,” asked one of the men roughly.

“You are late. You should have come 10 years ago,” replied the Buddha, smiling, calmly.

The men looked at each other. Totally shocked. Is this man mad, they wondered? One of them even asked the Buddha to explain his “weird” reply.

The Buddha explained patiently: “Well, 10 years ago, I would have been distracted by someone walking in front of me. But now I have learned not to get involved. I surely saw someone go past here. But whether it was a man or a woman, whether naked or clothed, I did not notice, because I was looking for nothing.”

Buddhahood is not something sacred or the exclusive prevail of those who get to sit under a Bodhi tree. Buddhahood awaits you and me too. If only we can learn, through continuous practice, the art of choosing to simply witness Life, without getting embroiled in it, of learning to distinguish that events happen “around” us and not “to” us!