A Life lesson in minimalism from Comrade Bardhan

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The best way to be happy and content is to want nothing, cling on to nothing and just be!

A.B.Bardhan (1924 ~ 2016)
Picture Courtesy: Jitendra Gupta/Outlook

Three weeks ago, veteran Communist leader (CPI), A.B.Bardhan, passed away. I am not a communist. But I admired Bardhan’s simplicity, integrity and down-to-earthiness greatly. Even so, I was surprised when I saw a picture (see below) going viral on social media. Shot by someone called Bhupinder and shared by Bardhan’s close associate Vineet Tiwari, a writer from Indore, the picture shows the only possessions that Bardhan left behind: a rusted almirah, some clothes, a pair of shoes and a red suitcase that he used while traveling. Bardhan, I gleaned, did not even own or rent a house – after his wife Padma passed away in 1986, he moved into the CPI headquarters in New Delhi, Ajoy Bhawan. I have never known Bardhan personally. So, I am not sure if he was happy or what his idea of happiness was. But going by the tributes that flowed upon his passing, I believe that he was a much loved and respected man.

Picture Courtesy:
Bhupinder/Internet/Vineet Tiwari

My own admiration for Bardhan grew exponentially when I saw the picture. I have learnt from Life that minimalism – the art of living with bare essentials – is the key to happiness. Isn’t it a great idea to live with just a few sets clothes, and perhaps a passport if you love traveling, a mobile phone and a laptop with high speed internet connectivity? You may want to consider owning a house if you can afford one, or perhaps just rent one. After all, at the end of the day, you just want a roof over your head, meaningful work to do and some food to keep your body nourished and healthy.

I am reminded of a Zen story. A visitor arrived at the home of a Master. The home was just a small hut. It was absolutely barren. No furniture. No bed. The Master sat and slept on the ground. He ate fruits from the orchard in the neighborhood and drank water from a stream nearby. He had one robe which he washed and re-wore every day.

The visitor was intrigued. He asked: “Master, how come you have nothing here. How do you live without anything – no furniture, no utensils, no clothes?”

The Master looked at the visitor and said: “Sir, you too have come empty-handed – no furniture, no utensils, no clothes!”

The visitor was surprised with the Master’s remark and exclaimed: “But I am just a visitor!”

The Master, beamed a big, glowing, smile and replied: “So am I!”

That’s what we all are. Mere visitors on this planet. And to live here – and be happy – we need nothing more than the bare essentials! For almost 7 years now, my wife Vaani and I have been following a simple principle: anything, barring our passports and important documents, that we have not used, we have been giving away – every six months. This process helps us sustain a free flow of positive energy while keeping our home clutter-free. This energy, we realize, is the key to inner peace and happiness. Each person’s idea of peaceful living and therefore their version of the bare essentials will vary. But our experience has been that the lesser we want, the lesser we cling on to, the happier we are.

Letting go of your wants can magically transform your Life

Choose what you need, drop your wants, and you will always be happy – despite the circumstances!

There was once a time in my Life when I did not know the difference between what I wanted and what I needed. I was driven by an urge then to gratify myself every single time that I thought of acquiring something. I wasn’t a spendthrift exactly, but yes, I indulged myself a lot in acquiring material stuff that enhanced the quality of my Life’s experiences. Then, Life’s Master Plan pushed me and my family to a state when we could not, on our own, even afford what we needed – bare necessities like food, clothing and a roof over our heads. Yet, with amazing grace, we always got what we needed. Our needs were eventually fulfilled, each time, in the nick of time. One moment it would appear as if we did not have something and suddenly someone would walk into our Life and give us what we needed at that moment – this never happened in ways we could have imagined, but it certainly did happen unfailingly. This experience of being cared for and provided for by Life has helped me understand the difference between want and need.

To be sure, intrinsically, all of us are simple folks. We know what we need. But it is when we start confusing our wants as our needs that we become dis-satisfied with the Life we have. In the days when we owned cars, I ensured that our Hyundai Accent and Santro were maintained in top-notch condition. Every time the cars got dented beyond an acceptable level or the upholstery got worn out, I would just sell the cars and buy new ones. I did not buy luxury cars. I simply bought the same models – Accent and Santro. And when I felt my cars needed to be changed, I was restless until I actually did that; a process that often took weeks. Over a 7 year period, I had changed my cars four times. This prompted one of my friends to quip: “Hey AVIS! You change cars as if you are changing your shirt!” I realize now that it was my want, my desire, to have gleaming new-looking and great-smelling cars that I was confusing in my head as a need to maintain them in “top-notch” condition. Today, I am car-less. The last car we had, a 15-year-old Mitsubishi Lancer, a gift from a friend in 2009, had to be disposed of in January 2014 because its maintenance costs were huge. Having got used to living without a car, using auto-rickshaws, Uber or Ola, to get around, I understand now that I don’t even need a car! Life is far simpler without one. I am not saying I will not acquire one. I well may – when I feel the need for it, surely not because I want it!

Our wants actually enslave us, holding us hostage. Clearly when something is possessing you, like your want will, how can you be happy? The way to ring in happiness and inner peace is to understand what you need and be content with it. Even if you don’t have what you need, always trust Life to provide it for you. Letting go of your wants can magically transform your Life. Here’s a Zen story to illustrate the point. Someone asked the Buddha: “I want happiness. Please teach me how I can get it.” The Buddha replied: “Drop the ‘I’, drop the ‘want’, you will be left with ‘happiness’!” Beautiful, isn’t it?

Life always gives you what you need

Life’s pretty amazing! It may not always give you what you want, but none of what you need is ever denied!  

This is true for each one of us. Irrespective of who we are and what we are going through.

A lot has been talked, in the past week, about Prithvi Shaw, the 15-year-old batting prodigy from Mumbai. There have been comparisons to Sachin Tendulkar’s brilliance and origins as Shaw amassed a mind-boggling 546 runs off 330 balls in the Harris Shield tournament. The media has gone ga-ga over this boy wonder. But one story in The New Indian Express yesterday, by sports writer Sandip G, caught my attention. It talked about Shaw’s background.

Sandip wrote about Prithvi Shaw: “His mother died when he was four. Soon, his father, Pankaj, a small-time readymade garment retailer, fell on hard times. By this time though, Prithvi was already regaling his neighbors with his batting. ‘Even when he was only six, he used to play better than bigger boys. Whenever he used to bat, neighbors used to flock to the maidan,’ recollected his father Pankaj, who still escorts him to and from Bandra. But the more Prithvi’s talent manifested, the tougher his father found it to sustain his son’s ambitions. ‘I was about to close down my business and I didn’t even have money to buy him a bat. I didn’t know what to do,’ Prithvi’s father said. Luckily though, former English county cricketer Julian Wood chanced upon him and convinced the (local) MIG Club to induct him. Three years later, former Indian spinner Nilesh Kulkarni spotted him and signed him up for his sports management firm for Rs 3 lakh a year. Another well-wisher gifted him an apartment in Santa Cruz.”

Shaw’s story reinforces a truism about Life. Not knowing what to do in Life, as Pankaj Shaw has confessed, is a great state to be in! That let-go is what Life requires from you in order for it to give you what you need. I have found this particularly true in my Life. Whenever I have reached a state of being clueless, and helpless, I have always found people walking into my Life, on their own at most times, and offering to support me and my family. One moment I would see no way ahead in a Life-and-death situation. My Life would be surrounded by total darkness. And in the next moment, I have found myself soaked in abundance and the milk of human kindness. This has happened again and again and again. When I connect the dots backward, as Steve Jobs famously said, I have found that Life gives you all that you need, when you let go! I have realized that miracles happen to you not because you pray hard or your faith is stronger but they happen because at one level you are a miracle yourself and, at another level, you need a miracle to move forward in Life!

It’s a beautiful Life really. You and I make it miserable by wanting it to be different from what it is. Drop all your wanting. It’s perfectly alright to not know what to do with your Life or in it! Let go! And, magically, you will find that Life manifests the right people, the right connections, the right situations, which will take you onward, giving you all that you need! You cannot live your entire lifetime in one nanosecond or moment. Life’s moves from moment to moment. Living Life, one moment at a time, savoring what you have, without question, without resistance, will always lead you to whatever you need.

Seek within and ye shall find

When you have nowhere else to go, when you have tried everything else__and nothing has worked__it is time to go within! The journey within is not one that most of us seeks willfully or gleefully. Sometimes, we are forced into it by Life. The Bible says that God instructed Abraham to “go forth” – to leave his father’s home, to depart from the unknown and go forward. Interestingly, the literal translation of the words in the Bible, ‘lech le’cha’, is “to go inside”. It is only after going inward, seeking within, that we discover the “key to the kingdom”!

My own inward journey happened after a series of blunders I made in the material world, and perhaps, out of an unsolicited moment of awakening! Years ago, on my office door, I had stuck a little yellow sign that read ‘Seek Within and Ye Shall Find’. I vaguely that knew the phrase had a Biblical connotation. But I didn’t bother to check or learn more. I simply purchased it from the bookstore where I found it and stuck it on my office door. At that time I led a team of 40 and the sign, I believed foolishly then, was to signal to my team members that I was Mr.Know All and they should never hesitate to walk in and seek clarification or approval. Those were the heydays of my ego trip as I was to realize later. In a few years after that, my business came down crashing like a pack of cards and I soon found that every effort I made to resurrect my tottering Firm was coming a cropper. Past the phase of temple visits, worships and rituals, wearing stones and rings, following vaastu and feng shui, I leaned on mouna – a practice of observing silence periods. mouna did not make my problems go away. But it sure gave me inner strength to deal with them. One day, in 2007, as one of, among the last few, my team members was leaving my Firm, I stood alone in my empty office (the support staff too had left for the day) and was reminiscing on how much things had changed. What used to house over 25 team members was on that day people-less. I was alone in that office at that time. Yet I was not grieving. I was not filled with sorrow. I was in fact at peace with my new, though extremely painful, reality. At that precise moment, I paused to reflect on the signage on my office door. Then, as if it was a Eureka moment, the signage made profound sense to me. I realized that the larger reason why me and my Firm were subjected to such disruptive change was to force me to go within, and to discover the higher purpose of my creation. I smiled to myself, locked up my office and left for home.

The truth and essence of Life, including the God we desperately seek, is within. There are possibly many ways to go within. Some are even well-advertised methods! But the destination for everyone is the same. All roads, methods, paths, ways, lead to the same home – within! The reason why we first think this to be mumbo-jumbo or initially believe “it is not for me” is because we are forever seeking outside. Just look at yourself. Look around you. All the wants that you and the people you know, and they people they know, are chasing are outside of us. Someone wants a new car, or a new house, or a new job, or a new spouse, or a new laptop, or something or the other __ hoping that by attaining it, happiness will prevail. However, no one has been happy by either chasing or achieving wants. The seeking outside has never rendered anyone peaceful and happy. At the same time, those that have sought within, have had no more need for the pursuit outside, have had no more wants and have already learned to be happy despite their circumstances.

Instead of spending a whole Life in vain, seeking outside and finding only impermanent and unfulfilling wants, when Life’s situations seem to check-mate you, simply accept them and make the pilgrimage within. For it is only within that you will find peace that is lasting, joy that is total, and bliss that is enduring!

Allow the Universe’s abundance to drench you

What you don’t have will always torment you. And what you have will always be taken for granted, often forgotten. If you can swap these two patterns of thinking and living, you will be in bliss! Which is, take for granted, and if you will, forget about what you don’t have and instead rejoice over what you do have!

Staying wedded to what you don’t have is staying steeped in scarcity thinking. Celebrating and loving what you have is abundance thinking! Noted author and speaker, Dr.Wayne Dyer, 72, explains it so simply, so powerfully: “Abundance is not something we acquire. Abundance is something we tune into.”

Abundance, despite its glorious potential, is still a poor contender in the cosmic sweepstakes. What hogs most of human attention, most of the time, is the negativity that we ourselves create around us. And from within us. Everything seems to be wrong with the world. Hunger, Disease, Suffering, Terrorism. Everything also seems to be wrong with your own world too. You have so many problems that an immediate shortlist is, well, impossible! It is always a long litany of woes! Then there’s your view of the world. Where you imagine that someone is better off, happier, wealthier than you are. So, that comparison unleashes a whole set of new problems __ both perceptional and real! With so much negativity, how can one tune into abundance?

Yesterday, my wife and I had to walk through a crowded, noisy street __ full of people, vehicles, hawkers and litter! We had just finished a rather exacting day__having had to examine a fully blown, 70mm, version of our Life and our immediate, attendant problems. By the evening we were exhausted, battered and bruised. But the busy street necessitated deft negotiations with its other occupants to create enough room for both of us to walk. At one point, I realized, my wife was holding my hand. It was a beautiful moment of discovery. It was energizing. I realized how blessed I was, in these times, to have a companion that, literally, was willing to walk hand in hand with me. I was drenched in the abundance of that moment, in the beauty of that realization! All my problems seemed momentarily insignificant. What mattered was the joy of knowing how blessed my Life is!

Indeed, to be happy, peaceful and blissful we have no other choice but to celebrate the abundance in and around us! And to celebrate abundance, we must align our intention, attention and energy! All of us have the right intentions. Because none of us wakes up planning or wanting to do a bad job. So, from an intention perspective, we are all winners. Each of us wants to do good, be happy and be successful. But where is our attention? Almost all of the time, our attention is not on what we want to do or what we want to become. That is, our attention is NEVER on our intention. Our attention is on what we don’t have, on our wants and on what worries us. So, fundamentally our attention is steeped in scarcity while our intention is to be soaked in abundance. Isn’t it jarring?

That really explains why we are all caught in the world wide web of depression, pain and suffering. Being grateful for the blessings and abundance in your Life is a sure way of driving out depression. None of us forgets to brush our teeth in the mornings. But how many of us remember to be grateful when we wake up for another day to live, another day to love and be loved, another day to serve and be served?

Look at your Life afresh. Look at what you want done in the remainder of your lifetime. Look at what’s AVAILABLE __ than what is MISSING! Discover the abundance in your Life, love it, than brood over what’s scarce, and allow yourself to be drenched by it!

Learning to live when you hate Life

We all know that not all our wants are ever going to be met. So, even though, often times, we do plunge into despair and grief over unmet expectations, we have the ability to overcome, repair and revive ourselves.

But what do you do when your basic needs are not met? What do you do when you are not loved? When you are not understood? What do you do when you don’t know where your next rupee or dollar in income is going to come from? What do you do when it is a special day in your Life, your child’s birthday, and you can’t even afford a new dress for her? What do you do when the only person you can relate to in the world has been taken away by Life, in a ghastly, unexpected accident? What do you do when you know you are dying of cancer and there’s so much pain that it feels like your whole body is on fire __ and yet death seems so elusive?

What do you do when you must live though you wish you could actually die?

Contrary to what you want to do is, often, what you have to do. And to do that, to live when you would much rather die, you must look your situation in the eye, and despite all your grief, choose to live, LIVE, in that tormenting, torturous moment. That’s when you will find that despite all the pain, you feel no suffering. When you have learned to overcome suffering, you have learned the way to joy, you have learned to live!

Yesterday, a close friend called. He is going through a painful phase in his Life where his brother and he are separating as business partners. The separation has turned messy. My friend says he has tried to be completely giving and has agreed to all terms and conditions stipulated by his brother, however outrageous they have been. The idea was to ensure a peaceful, amicable partitioning of the business. Even so, said my friend, his brother was taunting him and provoking him. My friend did not want to blow up and confound an already vitiated situation. So, he called me asking for advice on what I thought he could possibly be doing.

I was reminded, even as my friend spoke, of a similar situation I encountered some years back. My entire family had concluded that (my wife and) I had cheated them in a transaction involving family property and some substantial cash borrowings. In fact, they still do. Just hearing them say what they did, and reading some ghastly text messages from my siblings, was both humiliating and traumatic. I must have died a thousand deaths in the days and weeks following that episode. Then, call it a revelation, call it enlightenment, I suddenly reasoned that I sought my family’s understanding because I needed it badly. It dawned on me that to understand me (and my wife) did not appear to be on my family’s agenda. Instead misunderstanding every word and action of ours appeared to be on their agenda. So, what was the point in demanding understanding when it was not likely to be given? I looked at the scenario dispassionately and came to the following conclusions:

1.  What was the basis of the misunderstanding? – My family believed that my wife and I were faking our bankruptcy and so were feigning an inability to settle money borrowed from the family

2.   Where was my grief, my suffering coming from? – That I, a son of my family, was being misunderstood, was not being trusted. My ego demanded trust. Whereas the situation completely lacked it because my family simply did not give it or me any trust!

3.  What was the way to end my suffering? – Settle my family’s money for which I didn’t have any means then (or even now) or let go of my need, my craving, for understanding. I chose the latter.

4.   Despite what I felt or experienced, I realized my family had a right to its views and opinions. They didn’t fulfill my need, but surely they believed their reasoning to be sound and so backed their behavior!

I shared this learning with my friend yesterday. I told him to give up his need for his brother to understand him. I told him that at the root of all our suffering is a cause. The cause often has little to do with what may have led to a situation. Instead it has everything to do with our need for the situation to be different. So, let me clarify, it is not even about a want. It is about a need, a more basic, often elementary, non-negotiable, human requirement. For instance, a son, a child will need a family’s understanding and not merely want it. A brother will need his sibling’s understanding and not merely want it. A companion will need her partner’s love and not just want it. A cancer patient will need a cure or death and not simply want either of them! If money be a common denominator for a standard of survival in the world, a basic income is then a need for the qualified, skilled and experienced, and not just a want.

Yet, as is with my story, or my friend’s, or even your own, Life, sometimes, will put you in a place where even a basic need is not fulfilled. You will initially hate such a Life. Because unhappiness__when wants are not met__can perhaps still be endured. But insecurity__when needs are not provided for__suffocates. And yet you have to live! That’s a difficult place to be in. This is when you must learn to live fully with what is__without grief or angst or rancor or suffering. When you do that, your own definition of what is it that you need will undergo a tectonic shift. Then, you will realize that Life is so benevolent. Because all that you really, badly, immediately, need to live is always available, in abundance, to you! Then some of your needs become wants and you reconcile to them not being met. Such an awakening and reconciliation delivers inner peace unto you. You then learn to surrender completely to the moments that make up your Life and you live, fully, freely, peacefully, joyously, in them!

Don't let your money matter more than you!

Employ money to make your Life comfortable. Don’t let it enslave you!

This morning’s papers had a shocking story of girl from Kochi suing her father for gifting her ‘fake jewelry’ at her wedding. It’s yet another instance of how money keeps us from being human! It got me thinking.

Money is important. No doubt. It can buy you many things that will make your Life simpler and comfortable. But letting money buy over your peace of mind is hara-kiri.

Our entire attitude to Life has become money-oriented. Life decisions are being taken basis whether it can help make or save money. Not basis whether it can give you joy! Another dimension worth considering is that you can never say what people want of you. Do they want you and respect you for what you really are? Or do they want your money and respect how much of it you have? So, when money, which anyway is impermanent, stops coming your way, you suddenly discover that your durbar has dispersed. People don’t want you anymore. Because you don’t have what they want with you. You feel lonely, unwanted and unhappy. That’s when your big realization happens. That money is just a means. It must not dominate your Life, your emotions or your actions. Instead if you let happiness dominate your Life, emotions and actions, you will still make money. More important, you will then know how to use it!

I remember the movie Forrest Gump, which has a very relevant line that Gump says: “Don’t own nothin’ if you can help it. If you can, rent your shoes.” This whole desire to amass more and more in the hope that we will be secure and happy makes us slaves of a lifestyle we have long stopped enjoying. It fills our lives with grief every time something goes wrong with our Life __ as it often will and does! You lose your job or an important business contract and you imagine it is the end of the road. You plunge into depression. Or you lose your sanity over trying to protect what wasn’t worth protecting at all in the first place. I love LAMY pens. And I collect them as well, besides using them. A few years ago, when on a flight, I lost my favorite blue LAMY pen. For weeks I agonized over it. I felt a part of me was lost. I hunted high and low for one in India. At that time, Indian stationers did not retail LAMYs. And so I couldn’t find one in India. Years after this incident, my Firm went bankrupt and we entered a phase of complete pennilessness. One day, while practicing my daily silence period, it suddenly struck me how stupid I had been in agonizing over the loss of a pen, when in reality, my family and I had lost everything material __ all our money, all assets. And what remained was just us and our love for each other! It was a beautiful moment of awakening. The light that appeared in that moment continues to drench my Life with its brilliance!

Azim Premji: Keeper not Owner

A recent issue of Forbes India has Azim Premji, one of the wealthiest Indians, and chairman of Wipro, share his views about ‘employing’ his wealth to make a difference to others. His son Rishad, who works with Premji, both in the corporate and also on the board of Azim Premji Foundation, the Group’s philanthropy arm, says that they (the Premji family) are only keepers of the wealth (estimated to be $ 12 billion) and not its owners. “He’s (Azim Premji) always told us, ‘I am comfortable giving you something in Life but if you want anything above that, you have to earn it for yourself. The rest is meant to be given away, it is an obligation to give it away’,” says Rishad to Forbes India’s Mitu Jayashankar.

Important perspective that. You or I may not have the billions. We may be giving. Or we may plan to give. But the least you__and I__can do is to not grieve over money or let it enslave us. Let’s put it to good use __ to make our lives comfortable and to make a difference to someone else’s!