‘Learn’ to be content by appreciating what you have

Being content with what you have comes with a sense of gratitude, with a deeper understanding of Life.

We recently met a very successful, young, corporate executive, who, in his late 20s, heads a business division for a large MNC. This is the job he always wanted and loves. Yet, he confessed, that he ‘may not be happy’: “I find something missing in Life. It is nothing material. I have everything money can buy. But I am missing inner peace – is that what you call contentment?”

I don’t find the young man’s feeling alien. I have been there in his place and I have felt like him. In my late 20s I have globetrotted continents and lived out of the finest hotels but I have yearned for being with my family. And when I found the time to spend with my family I have felt insecure that if I am not ‘visibly’ working hard at my job, I may lose it. So, contentment – the sense of fullness, completeness with what you have – may appear elusive. But, over the years, I have learnt that it is important to learn to be content. Contentment is not something that will arrive subject to certain conditions being fulfilled. It will come when you are appreciative of what is, of what you have. It comes from gratitude.

Urdu poet Nida Fazli saab (1938~2016) says it so beautifully:

“Kabhi Kisiko Mukammal Jahaan Nahi Milta,

Kahin Zamin Toh Kahin Asmaan Nahin Milta!”

It basically means you are never going to get a complete, a perfect 10 on 10 in Life at any time. Something, somewhere, sometime is going to be unstuck. And while trying to fix that department in your Life, while trying to mend that situation, you have to find your inner peace by being grateful for what you have. Life is never going to help you here. You have to help yourself. And only you must do it – no one else can do it for you!

“‘Har Waqt Shukran’ – Gratitude is the password to Happiness!”

‘The Happiness Road’ is a weekly Series on this Blog that appears on Sundays where I share my conversations with people while exploring their idea of happiness!

This Sunday I feature Neerja Malik, 60, who conquered cancer twice over using the only ‘weapon’ she has – ‘Happiness’!!!

Photo Courtesy: Neerja Malik

When you finish meeting Neerja Malik, you feel like you have just stepped off a trampoline – you are left feeling so buoyant in spirit, so bouncy in your tracks and feeling so high, well, from laughing! You feel you have met a Bhangra dancer, a Sumo wrestler, a stand-up comic and a six-year-old – all rolled into one, all at once – that’s so much energy her mere presence injects in you; it has to be experienced to be believed!

We met Neerja for the first time at the InKo Centre in Chennai in August last year when she attended an event – Heart of Matter-Happiness Conversations – that Vaani and I had curated. Later, we were also at the launch of her book ‘I Inspire’ (co-written with Megha Bajaj, Jaico 2015) at the Odyssey bookstore. Both times, Neerja personified an uncommon joie de vivre. Here was someone who had seen so many storms in her Life: broken bones, multiple miscarriages, a still-born baby after yet another prolonged conception process and two episodes of breast cancer within six years of each other! Anyone else may have well crumbled. But Neerja is, we reckoned, and most people who know her will agree, different! She’s not different because she is a fighter and she’s not different either because has had the strength, the resilience, to endure her storms. She’s different because she’s happy facing her Life, no matter what comes her way!      

As soon as she settled down to chat with us at Chamiers Café, she exclaimed: “You know the best thing about having chemo(therapy)? No parlor visits – aha! Because no hair, you see! That’s happiness to me!”

Photo Courtesy: Neerja Malik

Neerja believes that the key to being happy in Life is in the way you look at it. If you keep thinking of it as a war where you have to soldier on, you will end up, at some point, feeling battle-weary. She encourages us to, instead, see Life the way her dad, who worked for the Indian Navy, has taught her to: “On the day I was leaving for my first chemo session, he saw me off, blessing me by touching my head, at the door. He said, ‘Beta, don’t fight Life. You can never win that fight. Instead, face it.’ I took that advice to heart. Any situation, I have realized, when I look it in the eye, it doesn’t scare me anymore!”

Cancer, Neerja says, has to be faced, not feared. And facing cancer has to be treated as ‘work’. “See, as long as you are alive, you will have problems of one kind or the other. If you keep fearing your problems, you will never be able to live fully. So whatever you are faced with – just go to work on it. In my case it was cancer. It was something that had to be treated. And the process of treatment had to be undergone – even if it meant dealing with pain, chemo, hair-loss and uncertainty!” she explains.

It’s been 17 years since Neerja started counseling people to face cancer. And she feels she is doing ‘God’s work’: “Everything is so beautifully arranged in my Life,” she says, adding, “I can’t but connect the dots backward. Each experience that I have been through has culminated in me being who I am today. My greatest joy is in being able to touch another Life and to inspire people to never give up.” Neerja tells us the story of a young lady, diagnosed with cancer, who came to her for counselling. The lady had just got married and one of the fallouts of her ailment, she feared, was that she would never be able to conceive. Neerja taught the lady the art of staying strong and, over time, the lady was cured through medical intervention and she moved on. Recently the lady called Neerja to say that she had just delivered her third child. “To me, that moment was ‘happiness’ – the fact that I had been useful to someone! I just looked up at the sky and thanked God,” says Neerja.

Photo Courtesy: Neerja Malik

“Har Waqt Shukran”: “Be Grateful Each Moment” – this is Neerja’s mantra. She vows that gratitude is the password to happiness. “Count your blessings yaar, instead of looking only at the problems,” she exhorts! She says she’s grateful to God for the way her Life has been so far – she celebrates that she was created a ‘tomboy, a Quick Gun Murugan’, that she’s always retained the ability to be gregarious, that she studied social work in college, that she has such a supportive family, that she is married to Mandeep, her husband of 37 years, that she has beautiful twins – Shivani and Siddharth, even that she has had cancer not once, but twice! Her perspective is both simple and profound: “You have to accept Life for what it is. Acceptance is very, very important. Then the jadoo – the magic – will happen! See, with so much going for me, if I don’t not live it up, won’t it be sinful? So, I don’t complain. I don’t lament. I take it as it comes. I say, ‘Aan De! Jiyo Dilo Jaan Se! Ji Lo Zindagi Dil Se!’”   

Vaani asks her what’s the one advice she has for people? She replies, “Never ask ‘Why?’ or ‘Why Me?’ Both questions are a waste of your time and emotions. It’s you because you are the chosen one. I believe that God is giving you some situation because you can handle it and also because you must learn that God can solve any problem. Simply, if there is a problem, a solution will emerge. So, I have learnt not to be ‘God-fearing’ but to be ‘God-loving’. I never ask ‘Why’ or ‘Why Me?’”

To me, the biggest takeaway from Neerja’s story, and from meeting her, is her personal, unputdownable, choice to be happy despite the circumstances! Her parting line, as she hugs me and Vaani tight, sums up her spirit and echoes in my ears even now: “Hameesha Khush Raho! Mein Khush! Ranga Khush! Mogambo Khush! Sab Log Khush!” This is a variation of a Punjabi saying and basically means “Always be happy! For it really, really, pays to be happy!”

To my doctor, with love…

Be grateful to all those who have contributed to you getting this far in Life. It may appear that you have achieved a lot on your own steam, but when you pause to reflect on how much others have contributed to your journey, you will be soaked in gratitude and humility!  

The obituary section in The Hindu caught my attention this morning. The doctor who had delivered me, 48 years ago, had passed on yesterday. Interestingly, Dr.Rukmani Sourirajan, had delivered all my mother’s three children – me, my brother and my sister. I remember meeting her last at her maternity home in Dhandapani Street, T.Nagar, in February 1978, when my sister was born. A wave of gratitude came over me when I saw her obituary announcement. Surely I have to be grateful for what she has done for me, my siblings and my mother – each of us could have been poorly handled, yet none of us has had any delivery-stage complications.

That thought led to me reflect deeper. There are so, so many people who have contributed, and continue to contribute, to my growth and evolution as a person. And that means if I started thanking each one of them, I would probably run out of time and space. This is not just true for me. It is so true for all of us – all the time! Which is why, as Meister Eckhart (1260~1328) has wisely said, “If the only prayer that you say in your entire Life is ‘Thank You’, it is enough!”

Yet, caught in the rat race of everyday survival, gratitude often takes a backseat. In spirit we are willing to be grateful, but in practice we are not – because we are so consumed by our Life and our problems.

I lean heavily on the Sanskrit phrase “Matha, Pitha, Guru, Deivam”  when I offer my prayer of gratitude each day. The phrase teaches us to offer our reverence in the order of mother first, father next, teacher after that and God last. It may appear – especially to those who know me or have read my Book “Fall Like A Rose Petal” – that I can’t be serious when I say I am grateful to my mother, especially when I openly concede that I have a poor chemistry with her. I see the issue of poor chemistry and the principle of gratitude as two separate things – just because I don’t agree with my mother on several counts does not mean I am not grateful to her for bringing me into this world, for teaching me the alphabet, for raising me and giving me a basic education. I find this practice of saying, “Mother, Father, Teacher, Life (to me, Life = God) – I thank you!”, during my daily mouna (silence periods) sessions, very, very liberating. It calms me down and keeps me grounded.

Undoubtedly, each experience in your Life has had another’s contribution in it.  It’s very humbling to know that you are not a sum of all your so-called achievements – your qualifications, your wealth, your material assets and such – but that you are actually a sum of all your experiences and learnings. When I saw Dr.Sourirajan’s obituary announcement this morning, I was reminded, yet again, that my efforts are so inconsequential and incomplete to my own Life – without the contributions of so many other people over the years! To that doctor, in gratitude today, I send all my love…!

On just being…grateful!

Thanksgiving as an event may be over, but as a spirit, let it thrive!  

To be blissful, just be grateful! And to experience bliss in a nano-second, just drink some water. But drink it slowly. Feel it travel within you. Drink the next sip. Feel it traveling. Don't think about anything else. Just feel the water. Feel it heal, re-energize and rejuvenate you. That feeling is bliss.

More than 60 % of the world is water. Yet 97 % of it is salty. Of the remaining 3 %, 2 % is inaccessible and is hidden among snowy mountains and frozen glaciers. The world's population survives just on 1 % of the water available in the world. Yet several millions of people across the world don't get even a bucketful of water for their ablutions, forget their potable water needs. By 2025, 1.8 Billion people across the world will struggle to get their daily quota of water, according to National Geographic. You just drank two sips of the world's most precious elixir. Feel blessed. May those two sips soak you in gratitude. You experience bliss when you just be__and are grateful!

“When there is gratitude, there can be no grief”

When you grieve for something – or someone – that you have lost, or don’t have, you are perhaps missing the bigger picture. You are missing focusing on what you have! 

We had coffee with a friend over the weekend. She recalled her visit to the Gandhi Ashram, on the banks of the Sabarmati, in Ahmedabad some years back and told us about how a quote on gratitude at the ashram changed her thinking completely. The quote, she recalled, read, “When there is gratitude, there can be no grief.”

I can’t agree with that quote more. The nature of Life is that what is today will not be there tomorrow. With birth, death is certain. So Life itself is a limited period offer. While it is natural to grieve over loss, of someone or some thing, grieving endlessly pushes you into a depressive spiral. Grief has to be understood as a natural emotion, a response that arises with any loss. But you must value that grieving over what isn’t is pointless. What is over is over. What is lost is lost. It is gone. Stay with the grief to mourn the loss. But move on. And if you can’t move on, learn to be grateful for whatever is (left), whatever you have with you. This sense of gratitude alone will help you overcome your grief.

To be sure, there is no harm in grieving. But there’s no use either. With every moment that you spend grieving, you are missing a moment to live. The truth is that Life is happening for you, around you, 24x7, irrespective of whether you are grieving or whether you are enjoying it. It is up to you to decide what you want to do with your Life. With gratitude, your problems don’t recede, they don’t go away, what is lost cannot be always gained back (certainly not instantaneously), but you can at least avoid missing – losing – the magic and beauty that each new moment contains.

Being grateful is common-sense. After all why would you miss what is, for whatever isn’t? 

Thanksgiving must be a daily celebration

Gratitude is magical. But only when we look back and see how far we have come in Life. Only when we look at our now and see what we have despite whatever we don’t have. And only when we look at tomorrow with a sense of hope.

Remember that even the ability to hope is not stemming from our own abilities. It is coming because we are blessed with that sense of hope by creation. I remember this definition of blessing somewhere. It goes somewhat like this: “If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than a million who will not survive the week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of five million people around the world. If you are able to walk around in your country without fear of harassment, arrest or torture of death, you are more blessed than several hundred million people in the world. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare.”

How true. It is this spirit that being grateful celebrates. Thanksgiving does not mean waiting for the last weekend of November each year to say your thanks for all that you are blessed with. Thanksgiving must be a daily celebration. Much as we postpone happiness, we postpone gratitude as well. We have in fact made gratitude conditional to happiness. ‘I can be grateful if I am happy’ has become the excuse we subconsciously keep giving ourselves. Remember that Life acts in ways beyond our comprehension. Yet every now and then you will find people who are grateful to Life for the opportunity they have to serve humanity. These are folks who rise above their current realities and problems and look at themselves as solution providers, enablers, who serve because another’s need is more than their own. If Mother Teresa is an ultimate example of selflessness, let us also know that there is a serving saint dormant in each of us. That saint within us will become awakened only when we practice gratitude.

In the Bible, the disciple Paul instructs, “In everything we give thanks.” What he means is that it is impossible to know the outcome of each event in our Life. But if we remain grateful for each moment, each experience that we live through, we will see the larger cosmic design, our Life’s blueprint, emerge. There is a very old Chinese story about a man whose son captured a strong, beautiful, wild horse, and all the neighbors told the man how fortunate he was. The man patiently replied, "I am grateful. We will see." One day the horse threw the son who broke his leg, and all the neighbors told the man how cursed he was that the son had ever found the horse. Again the man answered, "I am grateful. We will see." Soon after the son broke his leg, soldiers came to the village and took away all the able-bodied young men, but the son was spared. When the man's friends told him how lucky the broken leg was, the man would only say, "I am grateful. We will see."

Gratitude is like this. It is the key for unlocking the mystery of Life. When you practice gratitude with mindfulness, continuously, you will feel its magic liberating you. You will fly free. Unburdened, unshackled, unaffected by whatever circumstance you are placed in. Don’t wait to thank Life. Keep giving always and be thankful for the opportunity to serve. That’s the way to truly be grateful for this Life and this experience!

Eat well! Eat happily! Eat gratefully!

Every time you eat a meal, eat it heartily and happily, and please do remember to thank the Universe for it!

Last night we dined at Rajdhani – a Rajasthani thali restaurant. At the end of the meal, when the check arrived, I was amazed to see what they call their thali. They call it the Happiness Thali! It made me think. Isn’t every meal an opportunity to be happy and grateful to the Universe and its wonderful creations? Haven’t so many people toiled to make the meal possible for you? Isn’t the ability to have a meal, and digest it, a miracle – for, aren’t there so many people who are sleeping hungry or are having digestive disorders or are, sadly, dying of starvation?

The problem with most of humanity that is able to have a meal whenever they want – which includes you and me – is that they take the meal for granted. These days, even at meal-time, we don’t spare our mobile phones. Our meals are had with no or inadequate attention to the food. It is almost as if eating is a chore. Which is why there are so many lifestyle-led health complications that people face.

The right way to eat is to be mindful of each morsel, to enjoy the flavor and taste of what you are imbibing, to chew each mouthful and take it in slowly. As you do this, remain completely grateful for what you have. Even if you can’t count your blessings for all that you have in the other departments of your Life, feel humbled and grateful that you have this meal in front of you now. Know that unless an entire army of people – from the farmers who grew the crop to the workers who processed it in factories to the traders who sold it to you to your employer who pays you wages to be able to buy your groceries monthly to your family which gives you reason to have beautiful mealtimes to the person that cooked your meal to your parents who brought you into this world – had worked for you, you won’t be having food on your table.

Having food to eat is a miracle. Every time you witness it, be aware, and celebrate it. Eat well. Eat happily. Eat gratefully! 

Attend to your Life to see how perfect it is

Life is perfect. As it is, it is beautiful.

You don't notice how perfect your Life is, how beautiful it is, because you are not present in the moment, you are not attending to Life! Your body is here, but 'you' are lost in your own world. Think about it. A lot of your waking time is indeed spent worrying about what will happen or brooding over what has happened. From financial priorities to relationship issues to just a lot of anxiety over all the work that’s still to be done – you agonize over everyone and everything! And, therefore, your Life appears to you to be far from perfect. You imagine your Life to be imperfect because you want your Life to be different from what it is. This want holds you hostage – it prevents you from realizing this simple truth that your Life cannot be any other way. It is always what it is.

One way to participate in living and engage with Life it is to get up and walk. Every time that you find your thoughts are going astray, and dragging you into worry or anxiety, and are taking you away from the now, just get up and walk. Even if it is within your home or your office. Just walk. When you walk, you will find that your focus shifts from your current reality to your present environment. They may appear to be similar scenarios but they are two different things. Because you are so absorbed in your current reality, you don't pay attention to Life. When you pay attention, when you attend to Life, you notice its beauty and magic. You will notice the spider on the wall, you will notice the daylight streaming through the windows kicking up millions of dust particles, you will notice the dew drop on the leaf struggle to defeat the intensity of the rising sun, you will notice your child's scrawl on her desk, you will notice the fragrance of your beloved still hanging in your room long after she has gone to work… You will realize that Life is indeed beautiful – no matter what circumstances you are currently faced with.

The 19^th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844~1900) has so aptly said, "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking". When you walk, and pay attention, the greatest thought that can arise in your mind is one of gratitude. Because, very simply, you can walk! There are so many, many people out there who can’t! Isn’t that enough evidence of how perfect your Life is? When you recognize how lucky you are__to be able to walk, see, touch, feel and hear, you will soak in gratitude. When you are grateful, you will discover that, after all, despite all that you don't have and so badly want, your Life is indeed perfect the way it is.

Living prayerfully

Make your Life your prayer. And you will be soaked in peace.

The popular notion that we have, thanks to our upbringing and conditioning, is that prayer is an action that requires a time, a place and certain necessary and sufficient conditions. Each religion preaches worship through prayer differently. Therefore, while all of us have become adept at prayer, and praying, we have become completely incapable of living our lives meaningfully! Even when in prayer, the mind is distracted, often anxious, fearful and disturbed! How can merely, mechanically, by rote, chanting a mantra or reciting a hymn, compensate for intelligent living?

This is my humble, personal view. Over the years, I have learned that your entire Life, the way you live, think and work, can be prayer if you understand that this lifetime is a gift and that you must forever be grateful to Life for this experience! Choosing forgiveness over angst, love over hatred, postponing worrying than postponing happiness, serving others over seeking deservance for yourself, practising gratitude over harboring expectations and making each moment count are all ways in which you can live your Life prayerfully. When you do this, repeatedly, over days and months and years, you become the peace that you seek. This doesn’t mean that Life will not serve you any more problems. Problems – perhaps even complex ones – will always be there. But you will be able to deal with each of them effectively and efficiently, because you are now anchored in peace.

It is only because you relegate peace and prayer to a specific time, and do it with a ritualistic obsession and not with soulful fervor, that you are unable to escape fear, worry, anxiety, guilt, grief and suffering. But if you make your Life your prayer, always being grateful for all that you have, you will always be at peace – with yourself and your world! 

Gratitude can turn unpleasant encounters into blessings!

Be grateful to your detractors too – because they are teaching you what Life is! They are showing you a dimension you aren’t aware of and which you can learn from.

Often times when people are unkind and unjust to us, we end up disliking them. We carry anger and grief within us which soon turns into hatred. This is undoubtedly a natural response. But there’s another way of looking at such people. Be grateful to them – for they are teaching you what Life and people can also be.

There’s a story about a Zen Master. He was on a pilgrimage and he came to a village at sunset and begged for lodging for the night, but the villagers slammed their doors. They were against Zen. They didn’t allow the Master to stay in the village; they threw him out. It was a cold night, and the old man was with no lodging, nowhere to go.…he was tired and hungry. He had to make the cold stone steps of a dilapidated temple, outside the village, his shelter. It was really cold, and he could not sleep well. He kept hearing animal noises through the night – and that kept him on the edge too!

At midnight he awoke — because it was unbearably cold — and saw the reflection of the full moon in the temple pond in front of him. A few lotus buds floated in the pond. The moon’s reflection amidst these lotuses made the moment look very surreal. Overcome with the beauty of what he saw, he sat up and bowed in the direction of the village. “Through their kindness in refusing me lodging I found myself on these cold temple steps and saw this immensely beautiful sight of the full moon’s reflection in the pond’s shimmering water,” he thought to himself. He felt grateful. He thanked those people who refused him lodging, otherwise he would be sleeping inside someone’s home and he would have missed this blessing — the beautiful moon, and its magical reflection in the temple pond, amidst the lotuses, and this silence of the night, this utter silence of the night. He was not angry. He accepted his shelterless, cold moment that night. And he welcomed it with great gratitude.

Osho, the Master, while narrating this story, has said: “A man becomes a Buddha the moment he accepts all that Life brings with gratitude.”

I have found great value in holding this perspective. Every time someone is rude to me or criticizes me without knowing the full story or opinionates and passes judgment based on what they think I must be doing, I let that moment of anger and grief pass. I don’t deny that I feel anger and grief at such times. I do. But I let that moment pass. My awareness then reminds me that this painful moment is actually a blessing to practice forgiveness and patience. Like the Zen Master’s cold night became a blessing to witness the beauty of the moon and its reflection in the temple pond,  I too find that each unpleasant encounter with a detractor turns into a blessing when I treat it with gratitude. Doing this is not difficult. All it requires is awareness and practice. When you are grateful, and not agitated in trying times, you are peaceful.

Accept Life with a deep gratitude

Don’t question Life. Don’t ask ‘why’ or ‘why me’ or ‘why me now’? Simply learn to accept everything with a deep gratitude and everything will just be fine!

The key causes of suffering are anger, grief and guilt. When you are angry over what has happened you ask ‘why’ or ‘why me’ or ‘why me now’? In merely asking those questions you suffer – because you are not likely to get any answers from Life! When you are consumed by grief over what has happened, when you live in the past, you suffer. When you consider what you have contributed to the situation that you find yourself in you will naturally feel guilty. But don’t live burdened by guilt. If you do, you will suffer endlessly. Anger, grief and guilt are normal responses to Life situations. But you must have the ability, cultivated through your awareness, to drop these debilitating emotions. When you do that, you will see your suffering vanish.

None of us has a claim on our lifetimes. We have no claim on our existence. Life is a gift. We never asked to be born. This Life was given to us. So, whatever comes with this Life, kabhi khushi, kabhi gham, is a gift. So, we have no choice but to accept what comes our way. It is when we resist what we get that we suffer. Such resisting will make us grumpy, angry and miserable.

Stop resisting and accept with gratitude – whatever you have for now, and you will not suffer. When there’s no suffering, you will see the pristine nature of Life in each situation. A deep gratitude then will arise in you. And move you to be humble and accepting of the Life that you have.

Awaken the saint within with gratitude

Gratitude is magical. But only when we look back and see how far we have come in Life. Only when we look at our NOW and see what we have despite whatever we don’t have. And only when we look at tomorrow with a sense of hope.

Remember that even the ability to hope is not stemming from our own abilities. It is coming because we are blessed with that sense of hope by creation. I remember this definition of blessing somewhere. It goes somewhat like this: “If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than a million who will not survive the week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of five million people around the world. If you are able to walk around in your country without fear of harassment, arrest or torture of death, you are more blessed than several hundred million people in the world. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare.” How true. It is this spirit that gratitude, or thanksgiving, celebrates.

Thanksgiving does not mean waiting for the last weekend of November each year to say your thanks for all that you are blessed with. Thanksgiving must be a daily celebration. Much as we postpone happiness, we postpone gratitude as well. We have in fact made gratitude conditional to our wants being met. I can be grateful if I get what I want, has become the excuse we subconsciously keep giving ourselves.

Remember that Life acts in ways beyond our comprehension. Yet every now and then you will find people who are grateful to Life for the opportunity they have to serve humanity. These are folks who rise above their current realities and problems and look at themselves as solution providers, enablers, who serve because another’s need is more than their own. If Mother Teresa is an ultimate example of selflessness, let us also know that there is a serving saint dormant in each of us. That saint within us will become awakened only when we practice gratitude. In the Bible, the disciple Paul instructs, “In everything we give thanks.” What he means is that it is impossible to know the outcome of each event in our Life. But if we remain grateful for each moment, each experience that we live through, we will find ourselves being happy and peaceful with whatever is.

Of God, Prayer and Rewards

Prayer in the purest sense is an expression of gratitude for all that you have and is an offering, of anything, including yourself, to the Universe.

I know someone who is never available for any conversation or meetings. Every time we try to connect with him he’s either at work (which is for about 5 hours a day) or he is performing poojas, worshipping. He’s runs a small business and by his own admission, performs 8 prayer rituals a day, in three spells, over 12 hours. Is he happy, I asked him one day. “Hardly. Business is tough. A lot of money is stuck with debtors. I am continuously in prayer trying to seek a way out,” he said.

To each, his or her own way. Especially in matters concerning faith and prayer. But Zen offer a beautiful perspective on prayer. And it is worth understanding and thinking about.

Zen Buddhism says that true prayer is when no petition, no wish, is made, when no assistance is sought, but when mindfulness is practised. Through such practice, you offer whatever you have, a flower, an incense stick, or maybe even yourself, to something higher than yourself. What can be and is greater than you? Creation. Creation is the higher energy. So, offering yourself to Creation, makes you be one with the Universe. When you offer yourself you are expressing your gratitude for your creation and everything that you have. You are saying – “You created me. Thanks. I am offering everything I have, mindfully, consciously, with all my being, to you.” That’s when you truly unite with the Universal energy and are soaked in its brilliance and abundance.

The popular notion that prayer is an appeal to an “external, invisible” God is a by-product of how religion has come to be practised over many centuries. Maharishi Patanjali had demystified this in one of his works, perhaps at the beginning of the Common Era, where he equated God to be a mere clothes peg. Just as you would hang a coat on a clothes peg on the wall, we have been taught to pray looking to a “non-existent” God. He says, God is an invention, because, if God isn’t there, who will you pray to? But just as you would have learnt to hang your coat elsewhere if there were no clothes peg, you must learn the value of prayer, and develop the ability to pray, in the purest, truest sense. When you pray, as a means of complete surrender to Creation, then you don’t need a God, you are the prayer and you are one with who you pray to. God, he says is for beginners. Like when you are learning cycling, you need the small wheels on either side of the bicycle’s rear wheel to help you balance. But once you have mastered cycling, you don’t need those two small wheels jutting out – you discard them and that helps you ride freely. So, it is with prayer. The more you learn to pray, unconditionally, humbly, as a thanksgiving, the more peaceful you become.

True prayer is totally non-ritualistic and non-demanding. It imposes no conditions. It asks for nothing from you – not your time, not your offerings. You don’t need to fast nor do you need to give up or abstain from anything! It is not what you do out of fear (that God will punish you if you don’t pray) or out of greed (I want this or that – grant me my wish!). It is always about being in the moment. The moment that you choose to offer your gratitude to Creation for all that you have and are endowed with – that moment itself is your prayer. You can be anywhere in that moment – you could even be seated on the potty! Also, there is no price to be paid in prayer and there are no rewards to be claimed. When you pray, you pray. And that prayerful moment, when gone through with all humility and gratitude, is itself the reward, the treasure, the fortune!

                            

Gratitude is the only way to respond to Life

You don’t see Life’s beauty and magic in everyday situations because you are not present. If you are in the now, the only way you can respond is by overflowing with gratitude for this Life and this experience!

On this morning’s walk, my wife pointed out how beautifully the sun lit up the leaves of a tree. We walk along that route almost daily. I must have seen that tree several hundred times. Even so, this morning it looked exceptionally beautiful and full of Life. Was there anything different about the tree or the sunlight this morning? Or was it that I was looking at it differently?

I have learned that gratitude arises in you and overflows when you pause to feel Life’s energy in and around you. It is this sense of gratitude that makes you realize that everything about your Life is beautiful, everything is the way it should be – irrespective of context or time. When the Life energy in you is charged with an overwhelming sense of thanksgiving,  you are filled with joy and peace.

Yet, you don’t always feel this way because you are forever rushing through Life. Even a morning walk is a chore. You push yourself through it. You are constantly thinking of all the tasks and schedules that await you later in the day. Or you are lost in worry and anxiety over problems that you don’t seem to have the solutions for. Instead of enjoying, with gratitude, whatever is, you pine for what isn’t. That’s why, pretty much like the way I had been missing that tree and its well-lit leaves, you miss Life – and living!

On the same walk this morning I noticed an old man, with bent knees making a valiant effort to walk. He carried a bottle of water in one hand and tried to make slow progress with each step that he managed to take. We walked briskly past him, finishing more than two laps around the block, while he struggled to complete even half of one. That’s when I realized how much I too tend to take Life for granted. I realized that my briskness comes from a pair for legs and knees that are still strong. It dawned on me that it may not be too long before I may struggle to walk just a few steps like my senior fellow-walker.

Because you take Life for granted, it has come to mean a set of things that you don’t have or keep aspiring or searching for. Which is why you never feel grateful for what you have! Life’s far more meaningful when you appreciate the value of what you have and stop complaining about what you don’t have.

I am reminded of Baal Shem Tov (1698~1760), the Jewish mystical Rabbi and founder of Hasidism (a spiritual branch of Judaism), who implored his followers to drop all rituals, all methods and all practices and simply trust Life. He used to say: “Trust Life, trust God, and whatsoever has been given to you, enjoy it! Enjoy it with such deep gratitude that every small thing matters and becomes holy, becomes sacred, becomes God.” If you think about Life deeply you don’t have any other way to look at Life than with gratitude. This whole Life is a gift. The experiences that you have been through and are going through are unique gifts – that teach you and awaken you – too. When you realize this you will wonder why did you ever complain about Life, why did you have to struggle and endure Life – instead of celebrating it?

Life is happening in every moment. If you are not present you will miss the most spectacular show in, and of, your “entire lifetime”! You may define some moments of your Life as good and great and several others as plain drudgery. That’s perhaps because you don’t see the blessing in each moment. If you pause to look, every leaf looks beautiful in the sunlight, every cloud has a silver lining and everything around you, in you, is a miracle! When you do awaken to Life’s magic and beauty, you will know only one way to respond – which is, with gratitude!

“To Life!”….A Thanksgiving that never ends

If you must thank anyone, thank Life – for giving you this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn, unlearn and relearn….!

As Thanksgiving weekend begins, the energies are perfect to pause, to reflect and to feel grateful for all the blessings in your Life. It’s a great season – warm and compassionate, beautiful and soulful. Yet, gratitude must not be expressed seasonally. It has to be flowing perennially – oozing from your every pore, bubbling from the fountainhead within you. The reason we don’t always feel grateful all the time is because we take much of Life for granted. We have subconsciously come to believe that we have the right to demand, to seek deservance and to expect Life to be our hand maiden – pandering to our whims and desires. But just the opposite is true. Since you – or I – did not ask to be born, since this lifetime is a gift, all that you can and must do in Life is to accept whatever comes your way – and be eternally grateful for it.

I was at a south Indian Palaghattan (a community of Brahmins having its roots in Palakkad, Kerala) wedding this morning. The wedding feast is a must for all invitees. It is an elaborate multi-course meal served on a banana leaf. Today’s menu had over 24 items on it. But something appeared to have gone wrong in the kitchen this morning. Or was it with the service crew? Either we guests had arrived for the sadya, the feast, several minutes ahead of the kitchen being ready with the whole meal, or the service crew were short-staffed. Whatever may have been the reason – the food service was haphazard and woefully slow. The rasam arrived ahead of the sambar. And the thayir-pachadi (a curd-based vegetable side dish) came after the whole meal was over! Several guests did not even receive all the 24 items that were on the menu. Even as I felt sorry for one of the hosts, who was running around rallying the kitchen crew to fall into a systematic way of serving, I could not but help recall what Epictetus (55~135 AD), a Greek thinker and philosopher, had to say about Life: “Remember that you must behave in Life as you would at a banquet. A dish is handed round and comes to you; put out your hand and take it politely. If it passes you, do not stop it. If it has not reached you, do not be impatient to get it, but wait till your turn comes.” I would like to humbly suggest that when your turn does come, be grateful for whatever you get!

The wedding feast and Epictetus’ banquet metaphor perfectly sum up the spirit we need to nurture in Life! Not just around Thanksgiving but all the time. But in an instant-gratification, what’s-in-it-for-me world, where is the time to feel grateful for anyone or anything? Which is why we perhaps need a season to remind us of it.

One of the most inspiring examples of gratitude I have known is the way the inimitable Asha Bhosle, now 80, feels about Life. She’s had a roller-coaster 80 years! A bad marriage, being thrown out of home by her husband, struggling to get a toehold in Bollywood as a playback singer, a victim of her own sibling’s designs that prevented her from growing in her career, an eventful relationship with R.D.Burman before he suddenly died in 1994, the death of her only daughter who committed suicide recently. Such a Life, filled with pain and strife, could have numbed anyone. But not Ashaji! She was asked by Forbes Life a couple of years back what she thought of Life. She replied: “I am very grateful. If I had not married, I would not have had such wonderful children and grandchildren. If I had not married, I would not have left home. If I had not left home, I would not have started singing. If I had not met Bhosle (her estranged husband who ill-treated her), I would not have become Asha Bhosle!” What an inspiring take on Life? “If I had not met Bhosle, I would not have become Asha Bhosle.” How many of us can forgive someone who caused us immense pain and look at Life from this perspective – with absolute gratitude! Beautiful!!

Let us always remember that Life is a gift. The only way to live our lives is to celebrate Life in every moment! Every event we go through, each person we meet, is a teacher. Each experience is teaching us to live fully and happily – no matter what we have to face or endure. We are the ones who label each event as good or bad. From Life’s point of view, each event is simply a learning opportunity. It is for this continuous learning that we must be grateful – not just in this season, but all the time!

Happiness comes only from celebrating what “is”

When you learn to focus only on what you have, and not dwell on what you don’t have, you will find yourself soaked in inner peace. This understanding is the simplest way to attaining bliss.

Do this little exercise for yourself on your commute to work today. Make a list of all that you have. Flip the page and make a list of all that you don’t have. Spend a minute reviewing each list. Surely, the first “what you have” list filled you with joy and gratitude. And the second “what you don’t have” list triggered a yearning, an anxiety, a concern for having to still working on making that list a reality. The truth is, because you spend a lot of your time, subconsciously, on the second list, more often than not, the emotions connected with that list magnify, and manifest as anger, depression and/or restlessness. You simply are under the spell of that list – completely oblivious of what you have. Happiness and contentment are possible only when you celebrate what is. Neither happiness nor contentment can ever be experienced over what isn’t there. This is an irrefutable law of Life.

Obviously, goals, aspirations and ambitions, come from the second list. And without those, there can be no progress. So the import here is not to tell you to be less ambitious or aggressive. Please stay doggedly on the path of your ambition – but don’t sacrifice what you have on the altar of your aspirations. Love and keep celebrating what is, even as you pursue what you want! This you can do only when you learn to live in the moment. And you can live in the moment by accepting and wanting what is, than by wishing that what isn’t were actually there.

On the futility of merely wishing, here’s a story that Osho, the Master used to say!

Bryant, an Irishman, was out fishing. And he caught a fish that spoke to him! The fish said that it was actually an elf that could grant Bryant three wishes if he let it live. So, Bryant threw the fish back into the river and rushed home. He shared this piece of good news with his wife and the two of them decided to go to the market in town to look for three things they could “wish” for. The wife decided to open a can of beans so she could make them dinner. The can opener, for whatever reason, was not to be found. And the lady “wished” she had a can opener so she could get done with dinner faster. Bingo! A can opener arrived in her hand. As Bryant looked on, angrily, his wife felt sorry having wasted a “wish” on a stupid can opener. Bryant was vocal: “Why did you wish for such a stupid thing? I wish the can opener was up your ass!” Bingo! Again! Sure enough, that’s where the can opener ended up being. And you can imagine what the couple would have done next – they had to use up the third wish to get the can opener out of where it was!

So, wish, dream, pursue, by all means. But live with and love what is. Remember: being in the moment that “is” always far more valuable, enriching, and productive than trying to wish for something that “isn’t”!

Stop Complaining. Start Living!

Be eternally grateful for this Life and this experience! Life is a mixed bag. You often will get what you don’t want. And you will also often get what you didn’t expect. Every which way though the best you can do to be anchored in peace is to be grateful for whatever happens to you, for whatever you get!

Zen practitioners advise using this mantra in all contexts: “Thank you for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever!” This may not appeal to most people instantaneously because when you are caught in the throes of your everyday challenges, the last thing on your mind is gratitude. And this Zen practice seems almost escapist – as if you are choosing to deny what is, to deny reality! But if you examine Life closely, you will appreciate that there is no other way to respond to Life than with gratitude. Being thankful is the only way to live peacefully. And if you live without being grateful, for everything that’s given to you in each moment, you will never be in peace.

The human mind always craves for what is not there. And rarely appreciates what is there. Look at you: don’t you bemoan scarcity all the time, rarely celebrating the abundance in your Life? Years of living like this have conditioned you to miss the opportunity in gratitude. To break free from this self-defeating attitude, do a simple exercise. Make a list of all, absolutely ALL, the things that you are grateful for in Life. And make another list of what’s not there, what you miss, in your Life. Now, do a dispassionate assessment asking yourself: Do you really think what you miss outweighs what you have?  What you will discover through this exercise is the power in the Zen mantra we discussed above.

You will then conclude that the best way to live is to simple be thankful for everything that Life’s given you. And you too will stop complaining and start living!  

When's your bougainvillea moment going to be?

In reality, Life is pretty simple. And there’s beauty in its every moment. 

 

 

However we make it complex by worrying, fearing, grieving and rushing through it __ so we miss the magic in each moment!

 

 

They blushed at me from across the street

Pause. Close your eyes. And feel your breathing. Feel your heart beat. Hear the clock tick. Get up, walk over to your balcony and look out on to the street. Wait for a while and identify the most beautiful thing you see. I just did that. And I saw a burst of bougainvillea blushing at me from across the street. It’s a huge affair. But I had never noticed it until this morning. I am grateful I did. Because it made me come alive.

 

 

We often take many things for granted. Yesterday, my daughter suffered a ligament tear in her left foot, landing badly after attempting a mid-air split during her dance rehearsals. She’s out of action for at least a week and off dancing, which is her Life, for over four weeks. As she limped around, writhing in pain, I realized how ungrateful we are to our feet. Our cars receive more attention than our feet who have been with us longer and continue to serve us without protest, carrying our entire weight!

 

 

The way we behave, and the way we distribute our attention, is so unfair. For every problem we face, we have perhaps a 100 other reasons to celebrate. But our problems receive our biggest attention. Somehow, the fickle human mind loves misery. So, we celebrate our sorrows. Always thinking about what isn’t and feeling woeful about Life. Lamenting is convenient. It requires no effort. The mind can and will go on and on and on telling you that you don’t have this or that. Grief, to us, comes naturally!

Being happy, on the other hand, is hard work. You have to labor to take your mind off fearing and worrying to be happy. It is not that being sad is bad. When things don’t go your way, you will feel sad. But to berate yourself and live in a perpetually sorrowful state is sacrilege. That’s really when gratitude can help. When you are thankful for what you have, what you don’t have loses its relevance. Christopher Reeve (1952-2004), the man who played Superman, before he became a quadriplegic in 1995, after which he was consigned to a wheelchair and had to have a breathing apparatus, had this to say: “Some people are walking around with full use of their bodies and they're more paralyzed than I am.”

Indeed. We are paralyzed by our insecurities, desires and anxieties. As American author Cynthia Ozick says, “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” If only we spent a little time each day, to connect with Life, like my bougainvillea moment of this morning, we will see how simple, and how beautiful, Life really is. So, when’s your bougainvillea moment going to be?