Sorry Sadhguru, I humbly disagree with you!

Don’t be waylaid by religion, tradition or rituals. Just celebrate yourself and go do what you want to do – as long as it makes you happy!

Women in Maharashtra have raised the demand of wanting to enter the Shani temple in Shani Shingnapur – which currently does not allow women inside its sanctum sanctorum or chauthara. Even as the issue is being hotly debated, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s elaborate – and what some people call ‘brilliant’ – explanation on why women should indeed be disallowed from entering certain shrines, is doing the rounds on social media. Vasudev’s premise – available here  – is that certain temples have consecrated energies that are likely to have a detrimental effect on women; he explains that it is a biological thing and since ‘in the very nature of female biology, occult forces can have a deeper impact on their system’, women should not be exposed to such places.

I find all this drama totally avoidable.

At a very basic level, as we of course know, there are men and there are women. And there is a higher, inscrutable, energy that shapes our ends. Some call it divinity. I call it energy. Yes, there is a science behind planetary influences on people, places, events and things. But that science and its understanding are beyond the grasp of a majority of us. More often than not we ordinary folks are being misled in the name of tradition, religion, the occult, superstition and rituals. Even if there are influences of a particular planet – the one in question here is Shani or Saturn – on someone or some place, so be it. Isn’t it always what it is? To claim that the female biology responds differently to Shani’s energies – as Vasudev professes – than male biology does, represents primitive and unevolved thinking. It is also highly improbable that this theory can be proven without invoking evidence from another, questionable, dimension – which is purely a human invention – religion.

I believe it is time to drop all this human-made diversity and resolve all this confusion that confounds our co-existence. Let’s learn to simplify our lives and unify humanity in the process.

The best way to live is to celebrate who you are. Male. Female. Whoever you are, just celebrate yourself. After all, the Life-giving source – the breath that you and I take and what keeps us alive – is the same. For the same reasons, religion is totally avoidable. It is unnecessary in fact. Yes, there’s a higher energy that governs all of us. It is both the creator and the destroyer. But such is Life’s nature – where there is birth, death will follow. So, as part of celebrating yourself, if you want to go some place to celebrate that higher energy (if you believe the energy is location-specific) – Shani Shingapur, Sabarimalai, Mecca, Vatican, wherever – simply go. Don’t get waylaid by people who tell you what religion dictates or what rituals demand or what their understanding of planetary influences is. Do what you must. Just be sure to be happy doing what you are doing. Nothing else – no one else – really matters! 

Happiness is accepting what is available to you

Face Life unconditionally and you can endure anything

Whatever happens just don’t give up on Life!

There will be times when Life will be very, very challenging. You will feel defeated and deflated. But don’t ever give up. Because the entire essence of Life is to face whatever comes your way. It is your conditioning that makes you want only what you want. You want comfort, care, compassion, love, good health, money and, perhaps, an easy Life. But there are no guarantees that Life’s going to grant all that you want. So, often times, you will have to encounter huge discomfort in your surroundings, neglect, hatred, misunderstanding, cashlessness, disease and a very, very tough Life. You will believe that it’s impossible to live such a Life. You would want a way to end all your suffering. And the way to do that is not to give up on Life, but to accept the way your Life is, face it and live in the moment.

Maya Angelou (1928~2014)

Maya Angelou (1928~2014), American author and poet, who passed way yesterday, said it the best: “‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.’ In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure.” Her Life itself is a testimonial to human endurance – she having been raped at the age of seven and having had to face rejection and untold hardships to survive for many, many, many years.

I have always found great solace whenever I reflect on this quote of Maya’s. It says everything about Life. So simply.  

I am reminded of a lesson that my guruswami (the one who leads a group of pilgrims) shared with me on my first pilgrimage to Sabarimalai (the hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa in Kerala) years ago. He said that the climb was going to be very tough – it’s a distance of 5 kms up very steep (at one point up an almost 75-degree incline) hills, to be covered by foot. We would all suffer, he said, if we kept thinking of when the climb would end. “Instead keep your thoughts on the destination, with wanting to see the Lord. Feel the air in your lungs. Enjoy the scenery. Don’t think about the climb and you will be able to make it with great ease,” he advised. All your suffering comes when you think of what you are enduring and wish that you didn’t have to go through what you are going through. Instead feel the experience. Feel the pain, the sorrow, the uncertainty, the fear, the anxiety – feel everything without wishing it away. Through this continuous feeling, your ability to withstand anything, and endure, will be greatly enhanced. Your problems may not go away. But you will be able to deal with them better.

Life, I have understood, is just a string of experiences, from birth to death. As long as you do not impose conditions on what you are experiencing, at any given moment, no matter what, you can face it.

Go bell your Ritual Cat

A mind that is free and anchored in peace requires no conditions to be fulfilled to stay that way. It is only in the absence of inner peace that we insist on following rituals and being superstitious.

Some years ago, I was wedded to numerology. I needed numbers to add up in names before we named a product or service offering in our Firm. If I did not get along well with some of my colleagues, I would add up the numerological value of the alphabets that constituted their names, and often conclude that we were numerologically incompatible. I would not stay in hotel rooms whose numbers added up to 4 or 8! I don’t remember how I got hooked on to this practice. But I followed it religiously for over a decade. The times that I ended up getting only rooms whose numbers added up to 4 or 8, especially while traveling in the US where front office agents at hotels were least interested in meeting my room number preference, I found my stays always going wrong! I would be anxious the moment I entered a room with an incompatible number total and would stay frayed at the edges up until when I eventually checked out.

Then, in 2004, when on a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Sabarimalai, in Kerala, I was forced to stay there overnight because of inclement weather. While Sabarimalai is sacred and the temple itself is beautiful, the way pilgrims, and the temple’s callous administrators, manage the mountain paths leading to the temple, and its surroundings is pathetic. The hygiene quality is abysmal. Since I had to stay overnight, I got myself a room which turned out to be adding to a total of 8. It was the dirtiest room you will ever find on the planet – unkempt with a stained, stinky toilet (Indian squatting type) attached. Although I was exhausted after the 4 hour road trip to the foothills at Pamba, and further after the gruelling 4 hour climb to the hilltop, I just could not get sleep. My body ached and craved for sleep. But my mind was restless and resented being in a number 8 room – dirty and stinking to boot!

I sent my wife a text message wondering why was I being ‘punished’ despite all my piety!

Pat came her reply: “You are punishing yourself! Think of the number ‘8’ as the sign of infinity, of the Lord himself….you will get sleep instantaneously!”

Her message struck me like a bolt of lightning. I suddenly awakened to the futility of my beliefs. The number 8 was not causing me any agony. My belief that it was unlucky was bringing me grief. I realized that my decade-plus-old practice was coming in between me and an opportunity to be free. I let go! I resolved, in a nano-second, to free myself from the shackles of my belief in my unfounded number 4 and number 8 theory, put my head down, and slept peacefully for 8 (!) hours at a stretch!

That day I feel a part of me awakened forever! Not that I disrespect the science of numerology or intend to impune its practitioners. I have simply realized that I didn’t need it in my Life anymore!

Years later, I read this Zen story of the ‘Ritual Cat’. When a spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.

This is how, I would imagine, almost all rituals and superstitions have come up! In the garb of tradition they hold us hostage. For the one who truly strives for inner peace, nothing can be a source of distraction. And for the distracted, there can be no inner peace!

Think about this. Which is the ritual cat that’s holding you hostage? Go bell that cat and be free….forever….