When you don’t know what to do, just be

The only way to get rid of anxiety is to not give it any attention. 

In some situations in Life you may just not know what to do. Anxiety may then feed on your helplessness. You know that feeling anxious is not a solution __ but you go on fretting, fuming, worrying, fearing, because you don’t have a concrete action plan, a set of certified things you can and must do. This can be both habit-forming and debilitating. You are robbed of your inner peace and, over time, you become a complete wreck.

Several of us have ended up living Life like zombies – just going about things, wearily, while being held hostage by our own anxieties. It all began at some time with not knowing what to do. And it continues to be so, not knowing how to live and what to do about getting rid of our own anxieties!

There’s a way out. That way has always been there for you, in front of you, but you have not seen it because you have been preoccupied. Finding that way and getting on that path requires a simple appreciation and understanding of how Life operates. And how our human mind works.

First, know that there is no guarantee that every problem you face can and must be solved by you. So, accept that it is perfectly fine not to know what to do in some Life situations. Second, understand that your anxiety is always about non-existent stuff. You may be anxious about the past – having done something that you regret. But the past is over. It is done and dead. So what’s so intelligent about grieving the past and being anxious about it? Or you may be anxious about the future – which has not happened, so, in effect, it too is non-existent! What’s so intelligent again about worrying of a future that is unborn? But the human mind thrives on anxiety. It loves the past. It thrives in the future. And so it simply prefers to stay anxious. And you, if you want to get over your anxieties, you need to break that mind pattern of yours. You need to bring your mind to focus on the present. It is only in the present that the mind becomes powerless. It is only when you are living in the present moment that you will be free of all anxiety and you will find inner peace.

Bringing your mind to focus on the present and for you to gain mastery over your mind requires no rocket science. Osho, the Master, often told a Zen story to teach how ingenious some solutions to this universal problem can be:

Bokuju, a Zen Master lived alone in a cave. He would sometimes say loudly, “Bokuju” — his own name, and then he would answer, “Yes, I am here.” His disciples used to ask him, “Why are you calling ‘Bokuju’, your own name, and then saying, ‘Yes sir, I am here’?” Bokuju said, “Whenever I get into anxious thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my own name, ‘Bokuju.’ The moment I call ‘Bokuju’ and I say, ‘Yes sir, I am here,’ the anxious thinking disappears.”

Asking this question to yourself, calling out your own name, works. Because it breaks the circuit, it interrupts the anxious train of thoughts that are speeding through your mind’s highway. I have devised a simple variation of the same concept. I often tell myself, “AVIS, Steady! Steady!”  Or I repeat a simple mantram (this is what I learned from my guru Eknath Easwaran) or an easy-to-recall inspirational quote. Those approaches too work.

Use whatever method works for you and helps serve as your circuit-breaker. Once the debilitating chain of thoughts is broken, your mind, momentarily, arrives in the moment. Just hold it there, just be, and you will be free of all anxiety. So, in situations when you don’t know what to do, try just being! And feel the difference!

Why hurry towards an appointment with death?

Don't rush through Life. Go easy. Go soulfully.

It is another Monday morning. Perhaps a Manic Monday? Meetings. Deadlines. Delays. Mayhem! To not hurry through Life is a skill. It can be learned just as any other. Just look at ourselves. From the time we wake up, to the time we sleep, we are rushed. The way we read our morning papers, the way we bathe, the way we eat, the way we drive, the way we walk, all of it is gripped by a sense of busy-ness that ultimately will lead us to the same point that everyone will arrive at: death!

Why will you want to hurry towards an appointment with death? Well, that's what we are doing precisely!!

Ask anyone who's rushing why he or she is in a hurry and you will hear them say: "Well, I am saving time!" Saving time? The irony is, at the end of the day, everyone who's rushing always complains that there isn't enough time! Your rushing may help you cover the distance faster but will not enable you to enjoy the scenery. At the end of all the rush, when it is time to depart, you will regret never having lived, never having arrived where you intended to, never having smelled the roses in Life's garden!

Make 10 simple changes to your routine so that you can live and enjoy this experience of living: 

1.Reduce the number of meetings that you have to have in a day: one big or two small ones is all you can take

2. Arrive at the airport with 2 hours to spare before a flight

3. Eat you meals slower than you normally do relishing each morsel

4. Spend 15 additional minutes with your family each day; when you kiss your spouse and children goodbye, look at them just a wee bit longer. 

5. Take an additional few minutes in the bath thinking not of the day's schedules but of how rejuvenating bathing is

6. Read one inspiring passage over 30 minutes daily

7. Read it at least once more before you retire for the day

8. When you see Nature in full bloom__a sunrise, sunset or trees swaying in the breeze or birds chirping__pause, admire, soak in, before you proceed

9. Spend 15 minutes daily on Facebook connecting or chatting with childhood friends

10. Be silent for 20 minutes daily.

Spiritual thinker and my Guru Eknath Easwaran says, "Where hurry prevails, there can be no satisfaction for the doer." So, if you are not happy with the quality of your Life, you now know who is responsible and where to start!

Our compassion is urgently required – to heal the world

If you have been able to live today doing something proactively for someone, which cannot be repaid to you, then you have led a meaningful day.

This morning, while on our walk, we spotted a home, outside which someone had drawn a beautiful kolam (a design, a.k.a rangoli if it is drawn with colors, drawn on the ground using rice powder – a prevalent daily practice in south India and used in north India on special occasions). A hungry crow pecked merrily on the rice powder oblivious of the walkers who rushed past. My wife paused to admire this beautiful sight. She remarked to me: “Look, how meaningful is this ritual of drawing a kolam using rice powder. It serves the purpose of beautifying the front of the home no doubt, but it works as a simple method to feed ants and birds.”

As we continued on our walk, I reflected on the thinker-guru, Eknath Easwaran’s (1910~1999; it’s also his birthday today) book The Compassionate Universe that I had read some time ago. Easwaran had written: “My grandmother lived in a Universe filled with Life. It was impossible for her to conceive of any creature — even the smallest insect, let alone a human being — as insignificant. In every leaf, flower, animal, and star she saw the expression of a compassionate Universe, whose laws were not competition and survival of the fittest but cooperation, artistry, and thrift. . . .The earth was our home, she would have said, but no less was it home to the oxen that pulled our plows or the elephants that roamed in the forest and worked for us. They lived with us as partners whose well-being was inseparable from our own.”

And so, this morning, I learnt the value of the ritual of drawing a kolam with rice powder. Most people of today’s generation have given up on this practice as they perhaps find it boring or irrelevant or both. But this is a practice, as I understand it now, that sows the seeds of compassion early on and helps you to not just think for yourself but to think for the entire ecosystem. To be compassionate is to do something meaningful, proactively, selflessly, in such a manner that it can never be repaid to you. Compassion is when the love within you – for creation, for the Universe, for all beings – overflows. Even if you can’t do anything physical for anyone, just sending them positive energy is compassion.

Being compassionate in these times needs more intent than just reason. And our compassion is urgently required to make this world a better place. There’s something compassionate you and I can do today, right now, apart from possibly drawing a rice powder kolam outside our homes – we can send positive energy and a long distance hug to all those parents and families in Peshawar who lost their children in yesterday’s dastardly Taliban attack. If misplaced passion, as in the case of the Taliban, can continue to cause destruction, our compassion can and will heal the world! 

Employ ‘ahimsa’ for your inner peace

Learn to deal with your detractors with love and forgiveness. See how this approach helps you remain peaceful.

Ever so often we encounter detractors. Neighbors, colleagues, bosses, family, kids__everyone, at some time or the other, tries to throw a spanner in the works. Wantonly, inadvertently or even deliberately. And we immediately snap into the 'How Dare You?' mode. Our minds instantaneously start spewing negative thoughts, abuses (we may not always physically express them, but the mind goes on jabber-jabber) and we become, well, terrorists – albeit of a different kind. We start shooting off our mouths indiscriminately__at all and sundry__because one person has upset us. The issue__the reason why we are upset__is no longer important as the person that caused the upset becomes our enemy number one.

Gandhi championed and practised a process called 'ahimsa' to deal with such situations. Popularly misunderstood as his theory of non-violence, 'ahimsa' is today dealt with as a sexy ideal – something that you want to flaunt but don’t know how to practice. Many even believe 'ahimsa' is impractical. Actually, 'ahimsa' must be understood first for it to be practised right. What I have learnt from the thinker-guru, the late Eknath Eswaran (1910~1999), is that 'ahimsa' actually means the absence of violence. Which is, the state when even violent thought is absent and true love, our native state, prevails.

I have known from experience that it is possible to practice 'ahimsa' in the world and times we live in. When someone tries to derail your plans or attacks you, wantonly, inadvertently or deliberately, don't enjoin in the strife. The best way to win any battle is not to fight at all. Instead, remain silent. And wish, deeply from within, that person all luck. Wish that their deepest desire gets fulfilled. If you wish so, genuinely, any opposition/opponent will melt away! I have been practising this for several years now. And with each opportunity, my ability to harvest inner peace only gets better. I have come away unscathed from physically (when there has been a possibility of assault) challenging situations and emotionally excruciating circumstances by employing this method. I must confess that there are times when I have wanted to retaliate, but my awareness – honed by my daily practice of mouna (silence periods) – has always helped me.

To me, ‘ahimsa’ is a method. It is a process. It is a philosophy. It can be your way of Life too. Try it. It works! Happy experimenting!

Bliss is when you lose yourself to the moment

No job or activity is dull or boring. Something becomes boring only when your attention wavers.

This is what I have learned from my guru, Eknath Easwaran (1910~1999). He has taught “Passage Meditation” as a way to reign in the mind, so that it attends to whatever you are doing and experiencing in the present moment. I have understood, from my own experience, that this is possible. The key is to immerse yourself in whatever you are involved in. It may not always be what you love doing. But if you have to do something, do it with full awareness – lose yourself in the process. When you are lost in whatever you are doing – you are living fully, you are then (in) bliss!

A very accomplished musician once accepted a King’s invitation to perform in the royal court. The King had been inviting the musician for years. But the singer was always elusive and reclusive. Finally he agreed. But he laid down a condition – nobody should nod their head or sway or even move when he sang. The King was a maverick himself. He immediately announced that if anyone violated the singer’s condition, he or she would be beheaded. The people of the land, who were eager to listen to this singer, for it was indeed a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, were taken aback. Many of them felt that the condition stipulated was draconian and could not be fulfilled at all. How can you not nod or move when you hear great music? So, they backed out of attending the concert. Several people, however, still showed up on the morning of the performance. The King had stationed soldiers, who had their swords drawn, all around the royal court. The singer arrived. And he sang. It was magical – he sang with such purity, such class. Everyone in the audience froze. It was not hard to say if they remained unmoved because the singer held them in his spell or if they were that way fearing his condition and their King’s absurd order! Soon, as time went by and the concert became even more blissful, a few heads swayed, then some more and then some others even moved their hands and blew flying kisses to the singer. The soldiers made a note of every person who violated the King’s order. As soon as the concert ended, they rounded these people up separately and looked to the King for his order to behead them – then and there.

The musician however told the King to let these people go.

The King was not amused: “But these are the people who have violated your condition and my order. I don’t understand this!”

The musician replied: “They did. No doubt about that. But they did so only because they lost themselves to the music, in their inner joy! They are the true listeners. They risked their Life for their bliss. Those who did not move were always thinking about the order, fearing for their Life, and worried about the soldiers with their swords drawn. How could these people have even listened to my song, let alone enjoy it!”

The musician told the King that in future, whenever he visited, he would sing only to this select audience.

The import of this story is that when you are totally immersed in the moment, even Life becomes insignificant and inconsequential. When you are engaged this way, worry, grief, guilt, anger, fear – nothing can touch you. Because, in that moment, you are (in) bliss!

A lesson in love from a flower-seller

True love is when you can drop all conditions – including notions, opinions, premises and preferences – and think only about the other person!

A friend shared a story the other day. She is a doctor and was pressed into emergency service some years back – during a devastating cyclonic storm in southern Tamil Nadu, near Nagapattinam. As she, and her fellow healthcare providers, were driving to a medical relief camp one evening, they saw a man walking along a deserted road in the blinding rain. It was strange that someone could even muster courage to brave nature’s fury and be outdoors at that time. Interestingly, the man had a jasmine garland in his hand. My friend asked for the jeep, in which she was traveling, to pull alongside the man and offered him a lift. The man hopped on. And when asked where he was headed in this terrible weather, he shared his story. He was a flower-seller that made and sold garlands outside the temple in his village. Almost a decade ago, he had fallen in love with a girl from his village. She belonged to another caste and both of them knew that they would have to face a lot of opposition should they even attempt discussing their alliance with their respective families. Also, the man and his lady love had never spoken to each other. They knew of their love for each other through a simple, beautiful ritual they would perform daily. The man would make a jasmine garland every evening and take it to a desolate temple outside the village. At an appointed hour he would leave the garland on the steps leading up to the temple. The girl whom he loved would be waiting for him to do this and would come forward, look into his eyes lovingly, take the garland and go away. No words were ever exchanged. No love was professed verbally for each other. Yet they loved each other and it was all understood. For more than two years this “silent” courtship happened between the two of them. Then the girl was forcibly married off by her family into her own community. But the man still made the garland daily and left it at the steps to the temple. She came some days. But most days she did not show up.  But the man never missed leaving the garland there every day.Then he heard from people in the village that she had died while giving birth to her first child. That was six years ago. Even so, he continued the practice of making the garland daily and leaving it on the temple steps. The man told my friend and her colleagues that, this stormy evening too, he was headed to the same temple to leave the garland on its steps. My friend asked him if he was married. He said no. And he affirmed that he would never marry. When asked why he still went to the temple on the outskirts of his village every evening, especially after his lady love had died years ago, the man replied: “My lady love may have died. But my love for her is still alive!”

I thought this is a beautiful love story.

Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999), my guru, would often say that when you are truly in love, you don’t think of yourself or for your welfare. You always think for and of the other person. “If you want a relationship to blossom, you will do well to change the focus from me, me, me to you, you, you. Then selfish passion is transformed into pure love”. Osho, the Master, said this even more powerfully, “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. It is about appreciation.”

Learning to love really means learning to put the other person ahead of yourself. It means learning to appreciate that person’s needs, thoughts, opinions and preferences. What such loving does to you, from whom love flows to the other, is that it sets you free. In that freedom, you experience bliss!

You will never awaken unless you are felled by hubris

Beware, as you ascend in Life, in career, in society, in name and fame, of the Master Feller – Hubris!

Tarun Tejpal

Much is being written and told of former Tehelka Editor-in-Chief, Tarun Tejpal’s rise and fall this past week. Almost everyone who knows him is sure that he was struck by hubris – excessive pride and a presumption that one is infallible! Because nothing else can explain why Tejpal, now 50, and one of India’s finest thinkers, editors and writers, would want to allegedly sexually outrage his much junior colleague, who not only is his daughter’s age, but is also her best friend? As one commentator, Vijay Simha, wrote yesterday: “His argument that it was a fleeting consensual encounter suggests that he may be in a state of denial. He may be having difficulty processing the consequences of his actions. Friendly or hostile is not the point. Tejpal simply shouldn’t have been there. A legal victory, which he seems to think he will have, is a mere footnote. The only real authority a human being has is moral. All other forms of authority are fugacious. Tejpal has ceded moral authority.”

Tejpal was once my senior colleague. Indeed I am saddened by what has happened. But I am not here to preach morality in Life. I may hardly qualify to be able to do that. But let me warn you about hubris. Because I too have been felled by hubris.

There was a time when everything about my Life was just the way I had wanted it to be. I come for a middle-class background. So, as I grew up, for various reasons, I developed this urge to want to succeed beyond even the wildest imaginations of my family. I wanted name, fame and money. To be sure, I got all of that. By the time I was 35, I had it all. I had built a very successful consulting Firm, I lived in a premium neighborhood, I was famous in the industry we worked in and I had money. Then I made mistakes with the way we chose to grow our business. I was warned that this was not the way to go about growth – by my soulmate and partner, my wife. I was warned by senior advisors who we had on our Firm’s management council. I was warned by my colleagues. But hubris always strikes stealthily. You will never know that you are thinking of yourself as infallible. On the contrary, hubris will wear the mask of humility and complete down-to-earthiness. It will make you believe that you can conquer the world. It will make you think that all those who are offering you sane counsel are wimps. And just when you believe that nothing ever can go wrong with your Life, everything really will! My decisions blew up on my face. My Firm’s fortunes came crashing. And in no time we were bankrupt! All that I had painstakingly built up - from my career to my Firm to my finances – went up in smoke. Everything that I was attached to was taken away from me.

It was very, very, very difficult to accept whatever was happening to me. I resisted. I fought. I cried. I sulked. But Life only got more difficult to face. It hurt me so much that I had failed and fallen. I desperately wanted to let go of the past and I wanted to know how I could be peaceful, happy and content.

That’s when, by sheer accident, actually cosmic design, I stumbled upon my Guru, Eknath Easwaran’s (1910~1999) book Gandhi The Man. Easwaran talks about the evolution of spirituality in the ordinary mortal – who was pretty much like you and me – M.K.Gandhi, eventually making him a Mahatma. Easwaran shares a verse, and I reproduce a relevant part of it below,  from the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita that Gandhi meditated on each morning for over 50 years of his Life.

Arjuna asks Krishna: “What are the marks of the man who lives in wisdom, completely established in himself?” (Himself here means ‘his true, real, Self’). Krishna replies:

“….He lives in wisdom

Who sees himself in all and all in him,

Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed

Every selfish desire and sense-craving

Tormenting the heart. Not agitated

By grief, nor hankering after pleasure,

He lives free from lust and fear and anger.

Fettered no more by selfish attachments,

He is not elated by good fortune

Nor depressed by bad. Such is the seer…”

I too have found great value in meditating on this verse. As I struggled to get over my fall, and my losses, Easwaran’s commentary on learnings from Gandhi’s Life and this verse helped me immensely. I soon discovered that what’s more valuable and enduring in Life are not what we acquire for ourselves in our lifetime but what we will leave behind – by way of a message, by way of creating something that will continue to be useful for generations to come, by way of leaving the world better than we found it!

To be wise, to live intelligently, is not difficult. It is a choice. All of us – you, me, everyone – will be struck by hubris at some time or the other, in our own unique ways. When you understand that Life is far more meaningful than satisfying your sensory pleasures and amassing wealth or seeking fame, you will have built the best armor around you to protect yourself from that wily predator – hubris. But the interesting irony about Life is that – in big or small measure – unless you are felled by hubris, you will never awaken!

Trick your mind to get rid of anxiety

In some situations in Life you may just not know what to do. Anxiety may then feed on your helplessness. You know that feeling anxious is not a solution __ but you go on fretting, fuming, worrying, fearing, because you don’t have a concrete action plan, a set of certified things you can and must do. This can be both habit-forming and will cripple you. You are robbed of your inner peace and, over time, you become a complete wreck.

Several of us have ended up living Life like zombies – just going about things, wearily, while being held hostage by your own anxieties. It all began at some time with not knowing what to do. And it continues to be so, not knowing how to live and what to do about getting rid of our own anxieties!

There’s a way out. That way has always been there for you, in front of you, but you have not seen it because you have been preoccupied. Finding that way and getting on that path requires a simple appreciation and understanding of how Life operates. And how our human mind works.

First, know that there is no guarantee or requirement that every Life problem must be solved by you. So, accept that it is just perfectly fine, ever so very often, to not know what to do. Second, understand that your anxiety is always about non-existent stuff. You may be anxious about the past – having done something that you regret. But the past is over. It is done and dead. So what’s so intelligent about grieving the past and being anxious about it? Or you may be anxious about the future – which has not happened, so, in effect, it too is non-existent! What’s so intelligent again about worrying of a future that is unborn. But the human mind thrives on anxiety. It loves the past. It adores the future. And so it’s simply ecstatic to stay anxious. And you if you want to get over your anxieties, you need to break that mind pattern of yours. You need to bring your mind to focus on the present. It is only in the present that the mind becomes powerless. It is only when you are living in the present moment that you will be free of all anxiety and you will find inner peace.

Bringing your mind to focus on the present and for you to gain mastery over your mind requires no rocket science. Osho, the Master, often told a Zen story to teach how ingenious some solutions to this universal problem can be:

Bokuju, a Zen Master lived alone in a cave. He would sometimes say loudly, “Bokuju” — his own name, and then he would answer, “Yes, I am here.” His disciples used to ask him, “Why are you calling ‘Bokuju’, your own name, and then saying, ‘Yes sir, I am here’?” Bokuju said, “Whenever I get into anxious thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my own name, ‘Bokuju.’ The moment I call ‘Bokuju’ and I say, ‘Yes sir, I am here,’ the anxious thinking disappears.”

Asking this question to yourself, calling out your own name, works. Because it breaks the circuit, it interrupts the anxious train of thoughts that are speeding through your mind’s highway. I have devised a simple variation of the same concept. I often say, “AVIS, Steady! Steady!”  Or I repeat a simple mantram (this is what I learned from my guru Eknath Easwaran) or an easy-to-recall inspirational quote. Those approaches too work. As will yours.

So, use whatever helps you as a circuit breaker. Once the debilitating chain of thoughts is broken, your mind momentarily, arrives in the moment. Just hold it there and you will be free of all anxiety. To stay free forever, all you need to do is to practice to keep your mind focused perpetually on the present! Try this. And feel the difference!