Why this ‘kolaveri’ against Sanjay Dutt?

You must have walked their path if you must offer an opinion about someone.

Sanjay Dutt leaving Yerawada Prison in Pune
Picture Courtesy: Internet

I am appalled with the quality of social media/public opinion being hurled at Sanjay Dutt over his release from prison earlier this week. I like Sanjay, the actor. But I love him for the courage he has displayed to face Life, go through a legal process and serve a jail term. Yes, it can be argued that he tried to avoid the jail term as much as possible; he used every legal option available to him. And it can be further argued that while in jail he kept seeking – and getting – paroles. And now, he’s walked out eight months ahead of schedule. So, it’s natural that people ask: will others accused of a crime or prisoners get such a differential, preferred treatment? I guess that question is more relevant when posed to the government and the prison authorities. As far as Sanjay is concerned he only did what anyone in his position will do – which is, explore all legal avenues available to first avoid a prison term and then to reduce it. After all who wants to be in jail?

This is my personal view.

I say this not as a means of offering just yet another opinion. I say this because I have come close to incarceration on more than one occasion. Like Sanjay has admitted to having made mistakes, I too, in the context of the poor financial decisions that I took, have made mistakes. And while there is a realization today of follies having been committed, I did not see anything inappropriate about seeking and utilizing legal counsel to stay away from jail. I believe apart from being a constitutional right, it is also a normal, human urge to not want to go to jail. I can totally relate to Sanjay declaring, upon his release, “It has been a long walk to freedom.” I haven’t had to – so far – face a situation of my physical freedom being taken away. But since I have come close (I share one such episode in my Book ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal’; Westland, August 2014), let me tell you, even that is something that I wish no one should ever have to experience. Which is why I salute Sanjay for not running away from the country or hanging himself from a ceiling fan – he could have done either long, long back; and many in his shoes (may) have done that surely! – instead he stayed on, faced the 23-year-process stoically and served a sentence that the highest court in the land ordered him to.

I am not trying to be preachy here. I am just sharing what I deeply feel. I know the pain of being judged by public – and private – opinion. I know what it is to be called a cheat (by my own family). I know what it means to be unable to redeem yourself, your credibility, when Life check-mates you, only because you blinked and made a couple of lousy decisions. Most people who are hanging Sanjay in a public trail have, mercifully, never had to go through a situation that he has faced. Perhaps they would have crumbled long, long ago had they ever had to face one themselves.

Here’s the nub: if you haven’t walked someone’s path yourself, please don’t rush to offer an opinion about them. Please respect the other person’s right to dignity!   

Never come in the way of your child’s Life choices

When your child makes an unconventional choice, celebrate, rather than worry!

Yesterday we met a gentleman who said he was concerned that his son, after his 12^th grade, wanted to pursue a career in art. What the man was perplexed about was that his child had never “demonstrated artistic talent” and yet he wanted to join a foundational undergrad program in art and follow it up with a two-year Master’s degree at some point.

I asked the gentleman what exactly was his concern.

He replied: “I wanted my son to have a basic qualification before he embarked on a career in art.”

By basic, what the man really meant is, doing a conventional degree in medicine, engineering, pure sciences, math, law or literature and such. And why does such a basic qualification matter? Because, as popular perception defines it, starting career plans in these fields are more stable and income, earning a living, doesn’t pose a challenge.  

But what about doing what you love doing? What about passion?

“Well,” said the man, “Passion won’t go anywhere. You can always pursue passion later on in Life after you earn some money and save enough to last your lifetime!”

The gentleman is not alone. This is how most of the world thinks, works and lives. A majority of the people believe Life must and will progress linearly. Which is you finish school, go through college, get a job, earn an income, raise a family, build a house, put your kids through school and college, retire and post-retirement you try to follow your bliss – health and time (on the planet) permitting – and, eventually, you die. Even assuming that this linear progression and its attendant monotony is sufferable, there is no guarantee that anyone’s Life progresses along this straight path. A health challenge here, a relationship issue there, a career low or a fundamental skills issue (because you have opted to do something only because it pays you and not because you love doing it) – all this and more makes your Life path look like an ECG reading, often even treacherous to survive! So, after battling Life’s ups and downs, when you finally have reached a point when you can afford to go do what you love doing, you are either too exhausted and Life-weary or you just have run out of time! 

Now, this perspective is not just about the career choices that your child may make. It is the best way forward for you – for your own inner peace – for all your child’s Life choices.

A fundamental principle of good, mature, intelligent parenting is to not try to live the lives of your kids. Simply, don’t come in their way. Don’t try to protect them. Yes, it is a natural tendency to tell them what you believe they must be doing. But say it suggestively and be done with it. Don’t impose your views. Don’t sweat over them. Don’t worry for them. Remember that they are individuals in their own right. They have an independent, intelligent mind – after all, they are your children! So, they want to go out into the big, bountiful world and experiment. They have a right to do what they love doing. And we must never come in their way.

What is the worst that can happen to your child if your child’s choice – of career or relationship or whatever – doesn’t work out? Critically time would have been lost during the tenure of the “experiment”. But how can you ever compute the value of the learning the experience will give your child? The experience of immersing in what she or he loves doing, the experience of selling a value proposition to the world, the experience of being rejected, the experience of thinking out of the box, the experience of stumbling, struggling, falling and standing up again. And how can you even put a value to whatever is making your child happy?

Yes, if a child is embracing a ruinous habit or when, for whatever reason, the child is straying on the wrong side of law or going against the principles of humanity, it is your duty as a parent to stand up and red flag that moment. But again, there are no guarantees that you will be heard or that your sane counsel will prevail. So, we come back to the same principle – suggest, advice and be done with it. Remember, in such cases, when you are not heard, you have not failed. It is just that your child’s learning curve is steeper!

I believe we can give our children only two things – roots, foundational values, on how Life can and must be lived and wings, freedom, so they can fly away. Why would you want to keep your child entrapped in your shadow? Why would you not let her or him just be, let her or him free, to fly away and touch the sky?

What I learnt chasing Foo Dog figurines

Superstition always leads to fear and worry. Or just the opposite may happen too.

The other day a friend visited us. The conversation hovered on Vaastu and Feng Shui for a while. Then we talked about the merits and demerits of following rituals and believing in superstitions. After my friend left, I reflected, with amazement, on how I had grown out of “investing” in Vaastu and Feng Shui. I have nothing against these practices – I strongly believe they are sciences in their own way – or those who follow them. To be sure, I was, until a few years ago, very superstitious and heavily reliant on Vaastu and Feng Shui to determine how – where and with what – I must live.

Once, while on a three-day trip to Bangkok, Vaani and I spent over three-quarters of a day, in Chinatown, searching for Foo Dog figurines. Foo Dogs are the ancient sacred dogs of Asia who guard Buddhist temples – our Feng Shui consultant had advised us to get those figurines so that our home could be “protected”. Imagine, hunting for Foo Dog figurines in Bangkok, when there are possibly so many more entertaining, enriching, energizing things to do in that amazing city?!

Over time, with the practice of daily silence periods, I realized that relying on “external reference points”, however scientific they are or may have then appeared to be to me, are signs of a weak mind, one that is not self-aware. The ones with courage, I discovered, are the ones that know themselves. And if you know yourself, I soon learned to ask myself, why do you need to lean on a crutch __ a talisman, a figurine, a ring or a number? All these crutches are ostensibly to help you navigate better through Life. But Life is not the issue. It is your fear which is weakening you. And the best way to deal with fear is to look it in the eye and face it! These crutches cannot possibly help you face your demons, your fears. Never!

My evolution and learning has also taught me that what scares you often has the power to liberate you. Almost all of us have a good luck charm, a lucky number, and believe in something, often absurd, that we have been conditioned to. Nobody wants to do anything with the number 13 for instance. Or we prefer our favorite colors or numbers. There’s a view some people hold that if you bang into a piece of furniture when you are leaving to get something important accomplished, you must treat that as an early warning sign of something terrible that’s on its way. People that champion a scientific temperament will reason against this, intensely. And which is why those who want to believe in superstitions and premonitions will resist all rational arguments, however reasonable they may be. But here’s a simpler take. If everything is an event in this lifetime, a mere data point, including your birth and your impending death, and since the soul is imperishable, eternal, then what consequence does a furniture that comes in the way or a cat crossing your path or a mere number have?

In anyone’s Life, three things are absolutely inscrutable:  birth, death and soul. Now birth is without choice, death is unavoidable and the soul is not visible. What else is important when these three dimensions of your Life are beyond your control? When I look back, I feel that being superstitious, being ritualistic and being wedded to mere methods does make you fearful. And lonely. When I let go of whatever was controlling me, I felt free.

Enjoy being liberated. It’s a beautiful world out there. A stumble here, a fall there, a number here and a cat there, nor Foo Dogs figurines at your door, can make no difference to you, if you choose to feel the air in your lungs, being present in this – the only certain, happening, available, magnificent, miraculous – moment of your Life! 

The idea of living is not about obsessing over earning-a-living.

At the end of the day, if you can’t sleep well, you need to examine what’s it that’s disturbing you. And you must weed that factor out of your Life. 

This morning I met someone who says he isn’t able to get a good night’s sleep. “I used to love my work. I still believe I love it. But I don’t know why I am unable to enjoy what I am doing, and of late, I am even unable to sleep well. The stress keeps me awake,” he confessed. I told this gentleman that if he is unable to enjoy whatever he is doing, and if it has reached a point where he is unable to sleep well, he must seriously pause and reflect. I advised him to step out of his “work-work-work zone”, take a vacation and think through his Life!

This is the nub: nothing, nothing at all, is worth losing your sleep over. If you can’t take your mind off work it means one of three things: 1. You don’t have enough reliable support (staff, material, resources) to do what you are doing 2. The system (colleagues, bosses, clients, work culture) at your workplace is highly disorganized and stress-ridden. 3. You are a lousy leader and manager. There could be other reasons. But these three are principal among them. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, then you must go do what you love doing. Simple. And if you enjoy your work but if any of those reasons is/are prevalent in your work Life, you must get down to fixing them. Simple again!

The idea of living is not about obsessing over earning-a-living. It is not about slogging for 40 years and then hoping to find happiness, inner peace and freedom to do what you want to do at the age of 60. You have been given this Life so that you can be yourself, so that you can go do what you love doing. Now, when something disturbs your equilibrium, you must zero in on what it is and weed it out. Rather than suffer and endure a Life that you don’t want, you must make choices that help you with your inner peace, and help you to find and follow your bliss.

I simply loved what Svetlana Alexievich, the Belarusian author who won the Nobel for Literature yesterday, said: “I do only one thing. I buy freedom for myself.” Indeed! What is the point of this Life if you cannot be who you want, do what you want to do, live the Life that you believe in and, at the end of the day, get a good night’s sleep?  

When you simply be, giving up the need to become, you are FREE!

The true meaning of Life is being free!

And to be free you must just let everything be. When you wish that things were different is when the shackles of pain, agony, suffering, sorrow, guilt, anger, jealousy, remorse and fear imprison you.

How do you let it, or anything, be?

This question has to be answered by understanding why it is being asked in the first place. What is the difficulty in letting things be? One clear idea can be that if you don’t do something about some situation, you will have abdicated responsibility. Or if you don’t do something, something worse will happen. Or that you may grieve later that possibly you could have done something. So, for these reasons and perhaps a few more, you will find it difficult to let things be! And you want to get back into control.

Let’s also be clear about what situations call for action and which ones call for letting them be. Your house is on fire, obviously, you can call the fire service. Your teenage child is taking to drugs. Surely you can counsel him and take him to a de-addiction center and work on getting him back. So, you act when you can act and must act. No issues. But there may be situations in Life when you cannot do anything. Someone close to you is dead. What action can you take to bring the person back to Life? So, let it be. Or someone is seriously ill. The doctors are trying. But they too say only a miracle can save her. What can you do to work that miracle? The best you can do is to let it be. Or a relationship is suffering because someone is hell bent on interpreting whatever you say. You have clarified, apologized, fallen at their feet, but the person keeps on bludgeoning you. What can you do? You want the situation to heal, but what can you do? Healing takes time. So, you just let it be. Or you try your best to resurrect a failed business and your Life, but every single attempt meets with zero success. It’s not that you lack talent or purpose or values or ethics. But still the business doesn’t happen. Money just refuses to come to you. You have tried getting an employment but nobody even wants to meet you, let alone hire you. What do you do? Other than letting it be, do you have a choice? So, when you have tried everything and nothing works, while you may still want to try newer approaches to dealing with a Life situation, you just let it be.

When you let things be, the mind will make matters worse. It will remind you that you are doing nothing about a grave situation. It will amplify every small fear into something draconian, gruesome. But fear has to be dealt with head-on by facing it. Only then can you overcome it. Once you have crossed the threshold of fear, all other emotions become manageable. If you are not scared of what will happen, how can worry even exist? When the future doesn’t worry you why will the past haunt you anymore? Your entire being slips into just being.

So, to practice letting things be, take stock of your Life:

1.     Make a two lists: areas that you can act on and areas you cannot act on

2.     Act on all areas that you believe there are options available to act on

3.     And on those areas where you can’t do anything anymore, where you don’t have any more options left, just let them be. Watch your emotions as they obsess with you. Meet them head-on. Only that way will you transcend them.

4.     When you transcend your emotions, beginning first with fear, you will slip into just being

5.     This may take days, weeks, months, years, but only through continuous practice can you arrive at that state of just letting your Life be

6.     And once you have let it be, you have given up the need to become, you are NOW free!

That’s how you experience true freedom. Freedom means a certain inexplicable blitheness of the spirit. You feel alive – because fear, anger, worry, guilt, everything, every uninvited guest who was residing in you, holding you in their grasp, has taken leave. The house is empty. And what resides there is a lot of free spirit and light. It’s pure. It’s beautiful. And that is what the true meaning of Life is __ being free, unshackled, unencumbered, detached, being alive.

Surrender to Life and be free!

Surrender to Life. This is the only action required of you. When you surrender, you will be free.

When you are free, you are peaceful. When you are peaceful, bliss follows. With bliss comes abundance. With abundance comes all that you need. When you are in that state, you are radiant.

It’s possible for all of us to be resplendent, radiant like the idol at Tirupati. Those who have been to that temple shrine in southern India will agree that they are speechless, they are thoughtless when in front of the main deity. Many confess they have even forgotten how to pray or what to seek when in the sanctum sanctorum for those few nano-seconds. They speak of divinity and they speak of a super power. They are mesmerized by the glow radiating from the idol, their Lord. They believe it is a superior energy that is embracing them when in proximity of that idol. I don’t wish to challenge their beliefs. But I want to say that you too can radiate that kind of energy. Only if you surrender. Only if you submit yourself to Life’s situations.

All your pain comes from fighting, from resisting Life. All suffering comes from expecting your Life to be different from what it is just now. When you give up the fight and when you stop expecting, you will be at peace. In that state you will be bereft of all wants and yet be abundantly endowed with all that you need. In such a moment, you are one with the Universe, with creation. This is where you begin to radiate the energy that created the Universe. This is not just spiritual thinking. This is metaphysics.

Linji Yixuan, a Buddhist Zen monk, went to his Master and said, “Give me freedom!” The Master said, “Bring yourself. If you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you free? You are already free.”  “And freedom,” his Master said, “really is not the freedom you think of. Really, freedom is freedom from ‘you’. So go and find out where this ‘I’ is, where you are, then come to me. This is meditation. Go and meditate.” So the disciple Linji goes and meditates for weeks and months, and then he goes back to his Master. He tells his Master, “I am not the body. Only this much I have found.” So the Master says, “This much you have become free. Go again. Try to find out.” Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that “I am not my mind, because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed – I am not my mind.” He comes and says, “I am not my mind.” So his Master says, “Now you are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find out who you are.” So Linji went away thinking, “I am not my body. I am not my mind.” He had read, studied, he was well informed, so he was thinking, “I am not my body, not my mind, so I must be my soul, my atman.” But he meditated, and then he found that there is no atman, no soul, because this atman is nothing but your mental information – just doctrines, words, philosophies. So he came running one day to his Master and said, “Now I am no more!” Then his Master said, “Am I now to teach you the methods for freedom?” Linji said, “I am free because I am no more. There is no one to be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness.” Osho, recounting this story often, concludes: “Only nothingness can be free. If you are something, you will be in bondage. If you are, you will be in bondage. Only a void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. Linji came running and said, “I am no more. Nowhere am I to be found.” This is true, real freedom.”

And this freedom comes from surrender. Try it. See what you are enslaved by. And break free. When you realize the nothingness of your creation, the emptiness of your ‘self’, you will be filled with abundance, drenched in a radiant energy. Then you don’t need anything….because you have all that you need, you have freedom! You are free! 

Own up your mistake, drop the guilt, be happy

Beware of the one you see in the mirror. Because you can never hide the truth from those eyes.

When you feel naked in front of those eyes, humbly accept your mistake and reform yourself. To make mistakes is human. It is but natural and an integral part of growing up. But never allow yourself to get carried away by the power of your own arguments that make you justify your mistakes. To try to justify them to others is bad enough, but don't try to kid yourself with your own misplaced logic. A mistake is a mistake. It has happened and it is over. And it ceases to hurt or come in the way of progress and inner peace when you fundamentally accept it as one. That's when it becomes a learning opportunity. All transformation__within or otherwise__happens when you recognize the transgression you have made, accept its outcome, and are willing to move on.

However, when you accept the truth to yourself, you cannot escape feeling guilty about what you have done. But with acceptance and introspection you can overcome guilt. Undoubtedly, guilt is a way of being truthful. But holding on to guilt can be debilitating. Feeling constantly guilty for what you have done means that you are living in the past. When you are in the past, you are not present in the now. But Life is happening in the now. Which is why, guilt often holds you to ransom and prevents you from enjoying what you have. When there's no guilt, happiness follows.

To find your peace, look at yourself in the mirror and accept, acknowledge, own up humbly before those eyes. Drop the guilt when it surfaces. This is the way to happiness.

Be smarter than your smartphone – use all your features!

We are all endowed with equal potential at the time of our creation. But most of us lead our lives completely ignorant of this endowment.

Just knowing you have potential unlocks it for you. You are like the smartest of smartphones in the market that has several, unique in-built features. But if you instead choose to remain technology phobic or even technology agnostic, you will end up merely using the smartphone for voice__which is its commonest use. And so you will be deprived of benefiting from its various other value-added features like internet access, blue-tooth and video-conferencing! Who is to blame for your inability to use the smartphone efficiently? Are you to blame or is it the manufacturer who is to blame? Now, step back and think about your Life. You spend so much time worrying and complaining that you don't have the ability to do things that you want to do, and often end up blaming the Creator, your manufacturer!!! This is the reason why you don't make progress and find yourself in a rut!

Liberate yourself. Know that you are just as endowed as anybody else. Just as the most successful, the most wise and the most caring, most peaceful people you know of in the world: If you think Mark Zuckerberg is endowed, so are you; If you think Indra Nooyi is endowed, so are you; If you think the Dalai Lama is endowed, so are you; If you think Rajnikanth is endowed, so are you. Know that everything that you need is already with you and everything that you seek is within you. Go, discover your true potential. Be smart. Smarter than your smartphone – use all the features that you are endowed with! That's when you will create your own world in this same world that you think you have to live in!

Awareness is the key to uproot debilitating emotions

The only way you can go the root of your emotions is by simply being. Through experiencing total awareness.   

A close friend pointed out, after reading my blogpost of yesterday, that while it is easy to suggest that we must uproot whatever causes debilitating emotions in us, it is very difficult to actually do that. Indeed there are no methods. But uprooting the cause of anger, fear, anxiety, worry, jealousy, grief or guilt, from within us, is not entirely difficult. If you learn to be aware, through consistent training of your mind, you can go to the cause of your emotions and uproot them!

The human mind thrives in the past and in the future. It keeps on reminding you that a worry of an unborn future is more important than the present moment. It drags you to bemoan a dead past instead of being present in the now. This is why you are continuously trapped with all these emotions. Awareness means being present in the now. This doesn’t mean anger will not arise in you. It will. But your awareness will remind you that being angry is futile. Because your anger is directed at what has happened. It is directed at a past – which is over, which is dead. So, you realize the futility of your being angry. It is the same with fear. You fear someone or something because you are afraid you will lose someone or something. Fear concerns a loss most of the time. Your awareness will help you understand that fear of a loss is inconsequential in the endgame. Because anyway when you depart, you will go empty-handed. When you are aware you will realize that there is no loss and no gain in Life. Everything is just an experience.

Awareness is a state of non-doing. In awareness, you lose all subjectivity. There is no witness, only witnessing remains. Since you drop the ego, the mind becomes powerless. You are now witnessing each of your emotions, and in the larger, expanded consciousness, you are realizing how futile they are. That’s really how you uproot these emotions and live freely. This requires continuous effort and training of the mind. Over a period of time, being totally aware, simply being, becomes your natural state. That’s when you will experience total bliss!

Of freedom from insecurity

When you accept insecurity, it disappears.  

A friend called a couple of days ago. He is the head of operations for a multinational company. His company is very conservative and every single decision is controlled by the top management sitting in their global headquarters. My friend had over a decade built a reputation for himself within the company as a reliable and responsible manager. Therefore, he was allowed a higher degree of empowerment. He was, exceptionally, allowed to lead a couple of crucial processes in the India operation on his own. Which meant that he did not have to seek approvals for these processes from the top brass. But just this week, these processes too were taken over by senior managers at the corporate headquarters. My friend called me to seek my view on making sense of this development. “I am very uncomfortable that my empowerment is withdrawn. I have asked my boss why this has been done,” he told me. He was sounding very disturbed and the feeling I got was that he feared for his job. I told him: “You are feeling insecure. Which is natural. Accept your insecurity. Talk to your boss or senior manager and ask them upfront if the reason for this change has anything to do with their view of your efficiency as the process owner. If your insecurity persists, despite that conversation, go look for another job. If you get one that you like, move. If you don’t get one or don’t want to move even after getting another offer, at least you would have realized the value of  what you have on hand and you will be able to be more productive and efficient. Important, you will stop feeling insecure and disturbed.”

For various reasons, in myriad situations, each of us encounters insecurity. The best way to deal with insecurity is to accept that it is there.

Insecurity is a normal human response to situations that you can’t immediately make sense of. Metaphorically, you are groping in the dark. There is no light. Suddenly you feel lost. Lonely. You are filled with fear. What do you do? Well, you can shiver and shudder. You can cry in despair. But soon you realize that none of that can drive the darkness away. What you need is light – and you don’t have a source like a torch or a matchbox or such. So, when you understand and accept the hopelessness of the situation, when you embrace your insecurity, you will be able think with greater clarity.

When you think about Life deeply, you will recognize the truth that there is nothing called security. On the vast cosmic plane, the human being is as powerless as an ant is in front of humans. One event, and in under a moment, a Life is snuffed out. So what security are you and I seeking when we can never really escape the inevitable end, death? When you understand this quality – its impermanence – about Life, you will stop seeking security.

In the course of a lifetime, there will be a million, or more, occasions when you will feel insecure. Accept your insecurity every single time. When do that, your awareness, through your acceptance, will remind you each time that the security you crave for is a myth. Then insecurity will not hound and haunt you. You will be free from it. 

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!

Living free – from Fear

The best way to deal with fear is to understand it. Go to its root. When you get to the bottom of what’s causing you fear, you will be free from it! Important – fear cannot be mastered or conquered. Only understanding it deeply can set you free.

We are all scared of different things – of joblessness, of losing someone we love, of losing money or health, of losing the assets that we have built up, and, of course, of death! Each of those fears connects back to a desire – to be employed, to possess someone, to keep having money, to prevent the biological ageing process, to cling on to what we believe is ours and to not die.

Now examine each of those desires and understand how irrelevant they are in the end. Consider this perspective: Why is it important to be employed? Why is it important to earn money? Do they really matter in the larger scheme of Life when ultimately you have to die leaving behind all your experience, all that you have created or acquired in this lifetime, and all your money?

The truth is also that as long as you fear something you cannot enjoy it. Your job is seeming monotonous because you are insecure in it. You are unable to enjoy the money you have because all the time you fear that you will lose it. You are not enjoying Life because you are consumed by fears of death. The Buddha taught that fear is a manifestation of a subconscious resistance to the impermanent nature of our human existence. When we accept that our entire Life, as we know it, is transient, we will be free from fear.

Here is a Zen story that illustrates this point. A fierce and terrifying band of Samurai was riding through the countryside, creating fear and causing harm wherever they went. As they were approaching one particular town, all the monks in the town's monastery fled, except for the Abbot. When the band of warriors entered the monastery, they found the Abbot sitting calmly, in a perfect, meditative posture. The leader of the Samurai band took out his sword and said, "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know that I'm the sort of person who could run through you with my sword without batting an eye?" The Abbot, a Zen Master himself, responded, "And I, Sir, am the sort of man who could be run through by a sword without batting an eye."

You may like to say that the Abbot displayed a rare courage – fearlessness. But, in reality, he may well have been fearful within. Yet his fear did not surface because he did not mind the outcome of the Samurai’s rage if it came to it! Courage and fearlessness are not the absence of__or denial of the presence of__fear. They come when you develop an intimacy with fear, when you look fear in the eye and face up to it! When you do this, you are actually telling yourself – “What are you afraid of? After all, everything has to be over with one day. So let me let go!”

When you let go, this way, you also let fear go. And you start living – free from fear!

When you are fearless, you are free!

Life’s arduous situations can break you physically, can make you immobile, can cripple you – but they cannot break your spirit, they cannot puncture your conviction, if you simply choose to remain strong from within! But how do you remain strong from within when there’s absolutely no respite from the outside? Say, when your Life is hanging by a thin thread owing to a terminal health condition, or when you are caught in a legal maze and there’s no way out, or when your business has gone bust and you simply don’t have any money to even meet your daily needs, or when your separation from your spouse has drained you emotionally, financially, physically and you have lost your will to live? Where do you draw strength from in such, and other debilitating, circumstances, where you are consumed by fear, self-doubt and hopelessness?

Interestingly, you must leverage your fear to gain courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is what you get by looking your fear in the eye, by accepting it, and deciding to face it. In reality, a courageous person is also fearful of consequences that logically appear to be on the horizon. But while she or he is fearful from within, she or he is able to pull herself or himself together on the outside. A coward, on the other hand, is both fearful from within and on the outside. But if you can leverage your courage, while becoming more aware, you can attain fearlessness. And fearlessness is not an outward emotion. It is the complete attainment of freedom from fear – within! That will happen, that can happen, only when you realize the true nature of your inner being. When you know that your soul is untouchable, unbreakable and immortal.

Let’s understand this better. All the world’s scriptures talk of this truth. Yet why do you still fear things, people, events in your Life, despite perhaps, knowing and believing this doctrine to be true? Because you haven’t allowed your inner being, your soul, to experience this truth. Examine all your fears. They are always about losing all that you already know as impermanent – your job, your money, your health, your relationships! What kind of intelligence are you, the much educated you, displaying when you are fearful of threats to any of these impermanent aspects of your Life? Someone says you will die because of your health condition – and you are afraid of death? Someone says she will leave you for whatever reason – and you are afraid of losing her? Someone says you will be sacked for non-performance – and you are scared of unemployment? Someone says you will be convicted and sentenced – and you are afraid of imprisonment? But aren’t you already imprisoned, held hostage, by your fear(s)? Think deeply about this. Everything about your Life so far and the rest of your Life will be taken away from you sooner or later. If it is the fear of losing all that you hold on to that’s keeping you anxious, agonized and fearful, then know that your fears are fully justified. What you fear most will surely happen to you. Sooner or later. Including your death! It is only when you experience this realization, this awakening, at the core of your inner being, in your soul, will you be free from fear. Will you be fearless from within. Will you be free.

Review whatever’s making you insecure. Focus on what you fear. And peel away each fear by asking yourself, ‘So what if this (that which you fear most) happens?’ When you get an answer to this question, ask yourself this question again, in the context of your answer, and so on. Keep going until you have no more answers. For instance, ‘What will happen after I die?’ does not have an immediate known answer. Yes, conjecturally, from what the scriptures tell us, the answer could be that ‘your soul is set free’. And so what if the soul is set free? Or if it is trapped somewhere, someplace? Will it matter to the person that you are currently? Since it won’t, why labor over your fears? So, whatever be the situation confronting you just now, don’t resist it, simply accept it for what it is. And know that since your spirit can never be broken or taken away from you, anything that’s happening to you, therefore, is not at all relevant! So be fearless. Be free!

To be free of guilt, be free of yourself

To be free of guilt, be free of yourself. Your guilt is not going to make things any better. Cognitive action will. We all feel guilty of our actions at times. We feel remorseful. And we seek forgiveness. When we are not forgiven, we feel even more guilty. Guilt is a debilitating force. It can make you feel depressed, pity for yourself and wasted. Guilt thrives in you because of your ego.

There's no use allowing your conscience to be ridden by guilt. The awakening that you have made a mistake is the first step to offload your guilt. When you are awake to your misdemeanor or impropriety, you will want to seek forgiveness. That's the right step forward. However, when you are not forgiven by the other party, don't let your guilt and self-pity consume you. Feel good that YOU recognize your mistake. Heal yourself by loving yourself. Use that love as energy to propel you to affirmative action. Unless you act on your resolve not to repeat the mistake or make good a situation, you will not transform. The process of transformation requires you to not only focus on what you WILL do but also on what you WILL NEVER do. Remember, you can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. You HAVE to do it. And you can't do it if you continue to feel guilty of your past actions. So, be free, awake, arise and act!

Forgive, forget, act__but don't avenge!

This may well sound counter-intuitive. Contradictory too!  How can you forgive and forget, still act, but not avenge? Doesn’t action, or reaction or revenge, come from remembering__and not forgetting__the pain of an injustice, an injury? How can one forgive and act__without avenging?

Let me share some learnings here. One sure learning is that we have made it complex with the way we deal with injustices and injuries in Life! This is not as difficult to achieve or as complex to understand as it sounds.

I met a friend recently after 20-odd years. I knew she had been divorced from her husband (whom I also knew very well__all three of us were colleagues at one point in time) for some years now. So, when we met for coffee, I did not bring up any reference to him, choosing to hold conversation over her son, her work and her interest in my work. Then, after hearing some of what I do and what I plan to do with our business, she quickly suggested that I should meet her ex-husband. I was quite surprised. I had known through common friends that in the years she been separating from her husband, things had been pretty rough for her. And so I had concluded that there might still be much acrimony between them. My first response was one of amazement when she said she would speak to him and re-connect me with him!

I asked her: “If you don’t mind, what led to the two of you divorcing? And how’s it that you both are still in touch?”

She replied: “Well, after the initial euphoria of the physical attraction had died down, we discovered that we could be excellent colleagues but never be good soul-mates. We enjoyed discussing work. But the moment we looked at each other as spouses we found we could not relate with the other on expectations, roles and responsibilities. Our sex Life had virtually ended in a few years of the marriage. But we went on with the charade of a marriage, first for family, then for society and then for our child. Every day was a nightmare__fights, followed by long periods of sulking. I always got the feeling he wanted me out. And I thought he was also interested in someone else. So I became both combative and possessive. This led to more fights. Then, seven years ago, I reasoned to myself, why am I holding him and me, and our son, to ransom in a relationship which is dead? It was so evident that it doesn’t exist. I reckoned that while I demanded him to be my husband, I had long ago refused to treat him as one. He was a doting father. But I could not accept him as my husband. While the early attempts to let go of him and our marriage were complete with mature reasoning, at the execution stage__when it came to speaking my mind__I faltered. Each time I tried, the beast of betrayal consumed me. I wanted to avenge him. But later I realized it was meaningless. It dawned on me that the reason he was interested in someone else was that he was no longer interested in me. So, I forgave myself, forgave him and decided to act! We sat together and agreed that we needed to dissolve this meaningless framework of marriage. We agreed to separate, divorce, while continuing be good colleagues. We are very good friends even now. He’s a good father to our son. He’s remarried and has a child from his second marriage. And there’s so much peace for all of us.”

I am impressed by the mature, practical approach my friend had taken in place of action that could well have been acrimonious, full of pain and suffering for all parties concerned.

My learning is that everyone who has been treated unjustly, unfairly by Life, or by someone, will initially want to dwell in the following two realms:

• How dare ____________  do this to me? Fill in the blank with he, she, person’s name, company name, team name, Life, country name__whatever suits the context.
• I will avenge this come what may!

Thinking within these realms is normal. So, relax if you have thought this way! But also know that both these realms thrive in the dark epicenter of your ego. If you are feeling hurt, feeling vengeful, about anyone or anything, it is because of your ego. The ego controls all negativity in you. The antidote for ego is awareness. When you are aware that the nature of Life is inscrutable__that anything can happen, including injustice, to you, you will be unmoved. When you realize that people act unjustly, causing untold suffering and misery to those around them, because they themselves are suffering, you will respond with empathy than react with anger.

Look around. There’s so much injustice that’s happening to you or to people around you! Even before the memories of the gory end Nirbhaya met with have died down, the Suryanelli rape case (of 1996) has come back into focus. If you read the facts of the case, your heart will ache with compassion and grieve with helplessness. If you understand truly how the ‘collective conscience of the Indian people’ led to the questionable trial and redoubtable hanging of Afzal Guru, you will feel your blood boil.

So, in a way, I don’t think either the world or Life is going to get any more just or fair. Every such episode can unleash in you a torrent of anger, anguish, suffering and misery! There’s no way you__or I__can escape being touched by the ripples of everyday Life. But you can, with awareness, refuse to be moved by them. Seeking vengeance always delivers more suffering than there already is. Awareness, on the other hand, delivers forgiveness. Understand the true implication of practicing forgiveness. Forgiveness is for you to feel free, liberated, because it is important you get away from what is causing you the suffering! It is only when you think forgiving someone is letting them go scot-free, that you hesitate, you cling on. Instead, focus on your freedom. Your liberation. Only then can you detach from what or who is causing the injustice and instead focus on the act of injustice itself. When you are free, detached, you are unmoved by the happening. It has touched you and left you unmoved. Like the way a wave touches the shore and recedes. You are then (like the shore) a mere witness, an observer, of your own Life, of people, of events (like the waves) in your Life. You will then be, and in, bliss.

This does not mean you should not act. If Gandhi had not acted on the injustice that was meted out to Indians, we would not have become free as a nation. Action, however, need not necessarily, in this context, connote revenge, violence and acrimony. Gandhi acted with monomaniacal focus, with ‘ahimsa’ (where he championed the absence of violent thought in the first place) as his main theme. Forgiving, forgetting if you can, acting, and not avenging, really means this: keeping the focus, replacing all violent thought with concerted action to change a current reality__that you find hard to accept__into a future state which you believe is the best for all concerned.

This is what my friend did. You too can try this in any situation you are faced with in your Life. Changing your approach to injustice, changes how you feel within yourself. How you feel within has a huge impact on what you will do to make things better. This is what intelligent living is all about __ making your Life better by living it better!