Still your mind and live in the now

Living in the past or being anxious, or hopeful, of the future, robs you of the present. To live in the present learn to still your mind.

The mind thrives in the past or in the future. In the present, the mind is powerless. Observe your thoughts closely, they are always of the past that is over and done with. Or they are of the future which is yet to come. Living in the past is easy because you have been there – it is predictable and you know what has happened. Living the future is again something that the mind tricks you into – one moment it tells you that the future is unknown and so it is scary. In another it says since we don’t know what will happen in the future let us hope for the best. So, you oscillate between fear and hope, imagining a future that no one has seen. In doing all this, which is living in the past, or in the future, you simply miss living in the present. In the now.

Life however is only in the present. We miss the beautiful opportunity to live in the present because we are held hostage by the mind. In Oriental philosophy they say that the real Buddha is one who has learnt to live in the moment – and one who goes on living from moment to moment. There’s then no guilt or grief about the past. In fact there are no thoughts of the past. And there’s no anxiety about the future. Who needs the future when the present is so beautiful?

To make your mind powerless, to still it, simply immerse yourself in whatever you are experiencing in the moment. For instance, if you are in rush hour traffic – be in it. Don’t think of the day ahead and your running behind schedule. Don’t think of the weekend and pine for it to come back again. In the most practical sense, when you are in a Monday, the weekend is still five days away. No amount of pining for it can bring it any closer. Living in the moment means knowing that Monday will have to be lived through for a Friday to arrive! When the mind becomes powerless you develop phenomenal focus – there’s no clutter, there’s no grief, guilt, fear or insecurity. You simply are. And when you are, you are happy!

Stop suffering and you will be happy

When you learn not to suffer, in any situation, you will be happy.  

A few weeks ago, a friend visited us. We went to the same college and were meeting after many, many years. When he called suggesting that we go over to his hotel to meet him, I cried out saying I did not have money to even use public transport, forget auto-fare. He understood our situation and graciously offered to come home. Over tea, he observed how much I had changed over the years. From being an aggressive, forever-restless, high-flier he wondered how I had now become calm, anchored and deeply reflective about Life (he’s been following my daily blogposts). “I notice that you are a lot happier living with all your financial problems than you were when you had lots of money and your business was flourishing,” he remarked.

I was humbled by his observation. He knows me very well and he is someone who is genuine, and never flaky.

If there’s one lesson I have learnt through this experience of being bankrupt – and penniless at times – it is to appreciate living in the moment, living accepting what is. This, as I have discovered, is the key to being happy. Suffering needs a cause. Happiness doesn’t need any cause. It simply is – all you have do is to be present, and accept whatever is, in the moment to feel happy.

You suffer when you expect things to be different from the way they are. I have suffered too. In the early years of my bankruptcy I have wished, in vain, for the situation to be different. Then, over time, as I learned to understand my Life, and living, better, I realized that cashlessness was not causing my suffering. My wishing that I had cash was causing me to suffer. It wasn’t easy to stop that wishing – who wants to be bankrupt? I had to train my mind, through my daily practice of mouna, to drop all expectations. For expectations bring agony. That’s where the suffering – in any situation – comes from. As I learned to do this, slow to begin with, but efficiently over time, I began to feel happier. Yes, there was pain. Of course, you will feel the pain when you can’t even buy vegetables or groceries, but the suffering ceased. Because, now, to me, being without cash is merely an event, a financial state – that I must focus on relentlessly to repair it. I don’t associate my financial state with my true Self. When I learned to accept what is – in my case, the cashless state – I was able to rid myself of all suffering. When my suffering disappeared, I could feel the happiness in me.

I have learnt that happiness is always there. In you. In me. We don’t feel it, because we are all the time focused on suffering. We are forever wishing for something or the other. When we learn to stop wishing, and instead start loving whatever is, we will be happy.

Be mindful in the moment

Whatever you are doing, be fully present in it. Then you will taste Life to the fullest, one sip at a time!

Earlier in the day, I was sipping some iced tea that my wife had made. She had topped it with some fresh mint. The tea was delicious. And the mint was refreshing. I enjoyed every sip of it. I simply loved the cold drink. I thought to myself that some tea-picker in Assam or Darjeeling or Munnar may have picked the leaf that was processed with utmost precision, then it must have been shipped to warehouses and then to a neighbourhood store before it ended up in our kitchen. My wife, while making the drink, must have taken so much care to ensure that there was just enough tea to keep the flavor mild – else it would have gone bitter. I was glad I was “present” and “mindful” as I sipped the tea. Because, there are times when I would have mechanically – just as you would have too – drunk it while checking facebook or reading the newspaper or working on my computer. When you are present and mindful of whatever small act you are doing, or are involved in, you see a great celebration of Life in it. When you are absent, you miss the magic in the moment, completely!

Osho, the Master, was, when he was a young boy, one day pulled up by his school principal.

The principal called him and said, “You are almost always absent from class.” 

Osho said, “That's where you are wrong.” 

The principal said, “What do you mean?”

Osho said, “I am always present wherever I am. To be absent is not my style of Life. And what can I do? – this one mile between the school and my house.... A magician was doing his tricks on the street, and I became present there. It was far more interesting than your teachers, and I learned more than I could have learned here – because whatever your teacher is saying I can read in the book, but I will never meet that magician again. And he did such beautiful tricks that when he was finished I followed him to his tent outside the city.

“He asked me, ‘Son, why are you following me?’ I said, ‘You are getting old. Don't you want your tricks to live on even when you are gone?’ He said, ‘That seems to be meaningful! – you can come in. Many people have asked me to teach them the tricks, but not in this way.’ So I have been with the magician. 

“Life is a bigger school than your school. And I am, each moment, present wherever I am. To be absent is not my style of Life, so you please take your words back.”

The principal said, “In that case I will have to see your father.”

Osho replied, “You can see anybody you like, but remember that my father knows me perfectly well. Just let me be informed when you are coming so I can also be present there. You both will be absent – because my father is continuously busy with his business, and you are busy with who is absent, who is present. At least let somebody into that meeting who is present!”

Osho then told his principal: “Be honest and sincere and tell me: Are you present right now?”

He said, “My God, perhaps you are right. I was thinking of my buffalo – she has not returned for two days.”

Osho said, “You need not be worried, I know where she is. That's the beauty of being present everywhere! I have seen her just by the side of the tent of the magician. Now what do you say: Was it more worthwhile my coming to the class, or finding your lost buffalo? You can go and catch hold of her.”

Osho’s debate with his principal may be a very unique instance of someone being able to challenge conventional thinking. But there’s a great lesson, an unputdownable takeaway in it. Which is, that when you are not present where you are, you often miss Life as it is happening to you. Whether it is in an important business meeting or when making love or when watching a movie or when driving – if you observe yourself closely, you will find that you are really not present. Which is why you are not at peace with yourself and your Life. Try immersing yourself in whatever you do, be mindful in the moment, and see how your Life transforms! Your problems and challenges may still remain where they are, but you will be drenched in peace and bliss!

Drink from the Cup of Life, one sip at a time!

Learn to be aware of what you are doing. It is through awareness that you become peaceful.

There are two ways of doing anything. You can do something mechanically. Or you can do it mindfully, with total involvement, with awareness. Try building awareness into your Life with simple things. Don’t eat, for instance, without being aware of what you are eating. We normally just eat – thinking of something else or we are checking our phones or we are swapping channels on TV or we are flipping through a book. We are eating alright, but we are not mindful of our eating. It is a listless, mechanical, to-do item on our checklist – you can’t avoid eating, so you eat! The way to eat with awareness is to eat with gratitude – for those several thousands of people, some of them nameless and faceless, who have toiled to make your meal arrive at your table – and to eat relishing every morsel. Enjoying food is a very spiritual experience. When you eat like this, mindfully, you train your mind to be in the present and not wander away. This is the way you can build awareness in everything – while walking, while drinking your tea or even  beer, while bathing, while gardening….in fact, while doing anything!

Now, be sure, the mind will protest when you order it to be present in the moment, to be mindful and aware. The mind doesn’t like to be in the now. Because when you are immersed in the moment, the mind cannot worry or grieve. And the human mind loves worrying and grieving! Think about this. When you relish each sip of your green tea – or any of your favorite beverage – in that moment of relishing, you will not be worrying about the future or be remorseful about the past. In that moment, there’s only the green tea, there’s only freshness, there’s pure, unadulterated joy! You will have the same experience if you were to take a cold bottle of water on a hot summer afternoon and drink from it. For those few moments that you quench your thirst, nothing will really matter. But this is where the mind will play dirty. It will draw you into the future – filling you with anxiety over something that is yet to happen. Or it will drag you into the past and make you feel guilty or sad about what has happened. So, for instance, how can you enjoy your meal or relish your green tea when someone’s dying in hospital (anxiety over a future event) or when you have had a massive argument with your companion (grief and guilt over the past)? Your mind will tell you that what’s more important than being in the now, is feeling anxious and/or feeling remorseful. And you will capitulate. This is what has been happening to you, to me, all this while. This is also why we don’t experience inner peace. But if you learn to tell your mind to back off, to allow you to experience the now, your mind will heed you. Surprisingly, with little or no protest. The mind though aggressive is very obedient. With consistent effort it can be trained. When you reach that state when you can learn to be fully aware and mindful, of whatever you are doing, you are actually free from the clutches of your mind. Then you are neither brooding nor imagining worst-case, yet-to-happen, scenarios. Then you are the peace that you seek!

Mindfulness is about being aware of whatever you are doing, by immersing yourself totally in that activity, consciously. It is through awareness that you can drink from the cup of Life, one sip at a time, one moment at a time.

Life goes on … you too move on with it

In each moment, Life is new, fresh. As long as you don’t cling on to the past, and instead move on, you too can enjoy and enjoin in this freshness!

A friend was chatting with me some time back. She shared what she called a predicament with me. Her husband had died some years back. She married again. But she was not happy in that marriage. She said she liked her partner as a person but she could not imagine a Life with him. So, she separated from him. She has two children, from her first marriage, who are young, independent adults. Now, she told me, two men were actively interested in her. She wanted to know what to do and if there was anything wrong, at her age (she’s over 45), for her to seek companionship.

I asked her to explain why she thought anything would be wrong in the first place. “I loved my first husband dearly. Somehow I feel it’s wrong for me to move on. I feel I will be betraying that relationship. Besides, when I tried with my second marriage, I failed miserably. So, I am not sure if anything will work out for me if I try again,” she replied.

I told her: “Do whatever makes you happy. If someone’s presence in your Life makes you happy, be happy. Don’t hold yourself back. Your late husband and your marriage with him – both are not there anymore. Don’t cling on to that. Just because your second marriage did not work out, it doesn’t mean you will not be happy in a new relationship. Don’t look to validate everything. Let your inner joy alone be your reference point. You have a lot of Life still ahead of you. Just do whatever makes you happy.”

I haven’t heard from her since. I hope she chose her happiness over everything else.

But her story, while unique in its own way, reminds us of a classic conundrum that all of us face – which is, how do we move on in Life? Let me tell you from my own experience – and from what I have learned from Life – that there’s only one way to move on. And that way is to let go of the past.

Life is reborn, afresh and new, in each new moment. But you are stuck in the past, so you are not seeing this freshness, this newness, even if you are seeking it. Think of a situation where an infant is playing with your cell-phone and you want it back because you fear the phone will be dropped. So, you offer the child a bright-colored rattle and the child quickly parts with the phone and accepts the rattle. There’s great wisdom in the child’s action. The child intuitively knows that unless she lets go of what she has she cannot get the new toy. As adults, we must revive this child-like quality in us. Only then can we see the magic and beauty of the Life that we have.

No matter how much you cling on to the past, no matter how much you postpone or avoid living the Life that you have, Life keeps going on. Someone you love dies, Life does not stop for you. It goes on. You lose your job. Life goes on. An earthquake happens. You lose everything. Yet Life goes on. Now, you can either move on with Life. Or you can keep wishing that things are different. The truth is that all your wishing will always be in vain. Only your moving on can make you happy.

A part of your Life’s gone with the moment

No matter what, the moment that you miss will never come back. In all your years here on this planet, if you can recall only a few moments of your Life as memorable, then the truth is that you probably lived ONLY in those moments. All the other time, you may have merely been existing.

The reason why most days of our lives are not memorable is because we are caught up with our worries, fears, insecurities and anxieties. We fail to see the mystical beauty of Life in our weary, dreary, troubled moments. We have somehow got conditioned to this thinking, and therefore have an expectation, that Life must go the way we have planned for it.. Despite ample evidence and our own individual experiences pointing to the opposite, we still secretly hope and fervently believe that our lives will ride smoothly. And then, when it doesn’t happen that way, we brood and agonize over the way our Life is. Or we become zombies – mechanically running from home to work, and from work to home, without pausing to even think why we are doing what we are doing!

I recall a simple Zen story. A minister asked Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others.

Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:

Not twice this day

Inch time foot gem.

This day will not come again.

Each minute is worth a priceless gem.

No moment will come back again. Irrespective of what’s happening. Sometimes, when you observe your grief (based on what people, events, circumstances have done to you) closely, intensely, you will discover a rare beauty in it. And that beauty is there because your grief is real. It is a pointer to how alive you are. Happiness, beauty and living in the moment are not concepts that follow your evolution and growth as a person. You grow and evolve only because you embrace these concepts, imbibe their lessons and live your Life based on them.

The nature of Life is to be ever-straddling the two worlds of joy and sorrow. And you can do that, finding joy even in your sorrow, if you learn to cherish each moment __and live it, love it intimately, because no moment is ever going to come back.

Be adamant about your faith, not about worrying!

The human mind feeds on worries. It simply has no other work to do than throw up newer worries when either old ones get resolved or become irrelevant. And because we have not learned to train and tame the mind, we have become obsessed with worrying. In a weird way, worrying is comforting. Because it keeps the mind engaged. But such engagement is ruinous because it takes us away from living fully, because it is not focused on the now. All worries pertain to guilt and baggage from the past or to anxiety about the future. So, while you may be anywhere physically, you are simply not present.

A man had problems in every aspect of his Life. From his finances to his health to his relationships, every part of his Life was in disarray. He was a great believer though and said his prayers without fail twice daily. Yet he worried a lot. All day he would walk around like a zombie – beaten, broken, bruised, hassled, harried and worried. One day God appeared in front of him. And this is how their conversation went.

The man: God, I am blessed you have appeared before me. I knew my faith in you will pay off one day. Now, please solve all the problems I am faced with.

God: I am afraid I can’t do that immediately.

The man: But why? I am your faithful devotee and pray to you daily.

God: But you also worry a lot. To me your worries seem more sincere than your prayers. So, I am confused.

The man: I don’t understand. How do I not worry when it is my problem?

God: When you have come to me, hasn’t it ceased to be your problem? If you knew you could solve it, would you have come to me? So, since you are in front of me and claim you have faith in me, then why do you worry? I would much rather solve the problems of those who are adamant with their faith and dither with their worries instead of helping those who are adamant about worrying and dither with their faith.

Think about it. This story applies to each one of us in our own unique ways. I am not sure if there is a God somewhere that runs the affairs of the Universe. Possibly there is. Maybe there isn’t. But one thing is for sure that worrying isn’t going to get any of us anywhere in Life. Look around. The same energy that powers and cares for all Life in the Universe, of which we are just a mere speck, possesses both the intelligence and capability to take care of us and our problems too. If we believe we have faith in that energy, the one that created us, then must we not be adamant, fanatic about that faith? We cannot claim we have faith and continue to worry. They simply can’t coexist. It is because we continue to worry that we miss the magical moments in our daily lives.

Each moment, irrespective of what you are faced with or are going through, is a miracle. To witness that miracle you need to be present in that moment. Worrying takes you away from living! Each moment that you worry is a moment that you have not lived!

Trick your mind to get rid of anxiety

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What time’s your appointment with Life?

The unforgettable 'appointment with death' scene from Agneepath

In the iconic, original, Hindi movie ‘Agneepath’ (Path of Fire, 1990, Mukul Anand), Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, played admirably, memorably by Amitabh Bachchan, tells the Police Commissioner, M.S.Gaitonde (Vikram Gokhale) that he (Vijay) has ‘an appointment with death’ at 6.30 PM that evening. The unforgettable dialogue is, ‘Apun ka maut ke saath appentment hai, kya?’.

I was reminded of that movie and that dialogue when I came across the concept of our appointment with Life. With some time to kill, I ended up browsing through the famous Nalanda bookstore at the Taj Mahal Hotel, by the Gateway of India, yesterday. There, Vitenamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn’s (Thay) book “Our Appointment With Life” stared back at me.

It is such a simple and beautiful concept. In our everyday Life, all through each week, our calendars are full of appointments. Technology has made the calendar universally compatible across multiple platforms – MS Outlook, Apple, Google, smart phones and so on. Reminders and alerts are possible too. Overlapping events are pointed out. And at a glance a whole month or quarter or year can be looked up. Many people I know have often displayed enormous pride in declaring that their calendars are full for many, many weeks and months.

But what about our appointment with Life?

Thay writes in his usual, inimitable, simple, soul invoking style: “Our appointment with Life is in the present moment. The place of our appointment is right here, in this place.” So beautiful.

Thay quotes The Buddha from the Dhammapada as saying, “Let go of what is the past. Let go of what is not yet. Observe deeply what is happening in the present moment, but do not be attached to it.” This, says Thay, is the way to keep our appointment with Life! To live perpetually in the present moment.

 ‘Agneepath’s’ Vijay Dinanath Chauhan famously demonstrated fearlessness by agreeing to keep his appointment with death, by venturing out to meet his detractors who were waiting to assassinate him. What about you and me? Of course, we all have an appointment with death – except we don’t know when it actually is! But we can choose to keep our appointment with Life by learning to live, with detachment, in the present moment – unburdened by the past and unmindful of the future. Simply, by being – engaged with present!