Indeed, you cannot be serious about Life!

A key factor that inhibits progress on the spiritual path is our tendency to take Life too seriously. Everything that we do, it appears, seems to key us up. Every small conquest seems to be a moment to claim superiority and every failure is seen as a numbing, lethal, final blow! So much so, when a hard-earned victory comes our way, we fritter away the moment in showmanship and bury ourselves under a heap of unsolicited critique and free opinion, when we fumble and fall.

So, it was with great interest that I read noted columnist Nirmal Shekar’s views on Indian cricket captain M.S.Dhoni in yesterday’s Hindu. Celebrating Dhoni’s legendary equanimity, Shekar made a case for sportspersons having the ‘right perspective’ to their game. That perspective, wrote Shekar, is to understand that a game is just a game. “…Sport is not really a matter of life and death. Sport is enjoyable only so long as we can get our perspective right and put it in its place, put it where it really belongs in the big picture. If we let it become too important, then what was sought as a pleasurable experience will turn out to be a pain.”

I completely agree with both of Shekar’s views: on Dhoni’s attitude to the game and on the nature of sport itself.

My two-penny worth learning from this lifetime’s experience so far is that Life is no different. In Life too the right perspective is very important. And we must place ourselves, and our perspective, where they belong in the big picture. Else what could well be a pleasurable experience may well turn out to be a pain!!!

The past week, I have been limping around, literally, owing to a nagging, painful condition in my right leg. Even a small step forward, at times, requires a big effort. I felt, at several times, crippled unable to carry out my routine normally __ like a bath, or driving, or going out for my daily walk. However, on my visit to the hospital the other day for a review with the doctor, I found a young lady seated on a wheel-chair. She seemed fine, for all practical purposes, laughing and joking with her family and nurses. So, I even wondered what she was doing seated cross-legged on a wheel-chair. Only when I looked closely did I realize that all her limbs were deformed. She didn’t have legs to speak of! Her lower limbs had shrunk abnormally owing to either a disease or birth deformity. Her hands were not normally formed either and her fingers seemed to be sticking out, without a palm, on both hands. I reflected on her spirit. And on my condition. I felt ashamed about the brouhaha I was creating over it! The right perspective and its place in the big picture fell in place immediately. I laughed to myself, much to the surprise of the nurse attending on me. When she insisted I tell her what the joke was, I said, “This leg, this painful condition, is the biggest joke! I find it absolutely funny!”

So it is with everything in Life! What seems like a grave problem momentarily, over a period of time, surely turns out to be laughing matter!  The key, I believe, is not to get keyed up about Life. The operative word and sentiment here is equanimity. Equanimity is simply the ability to deal with both success and failure, victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, dispassionately. Dhoni has it. You too can. The second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita ends with the highest state of consciousness a human being can attain. Krishna, replying to Arjuna, says: “…He lives in wisdom…Who sees himself in all and all in him…. He is not elated by good fortune…Nor depressed by bad…Such is the seer…!”

Whatever you are going through, take it easy! This Monday resist the temptation to get wound up any further. Invoke the right perspective and place it where it belongs in the big picture. To quote Swami Sathya Sai Baba, “Don’t we sometimes wake up from a dream, ponder over our conquests and defeat in our sleep-state, and shrug it all off thinking ‘it was but a dream’? We need to bring the same approach to Life as well. Because this lifetime is nothing but a dream.” Indeed. Maybe you will not understand, appreciate or accept this perspective just yet. But, may be you will at the end of your journey on this planet. Just maybe. That you really cannot or should not (have ever been) be serious about Life!

To get more out of Life, get out of Life’s way!

Almost everyone wants more out of Life. But sometimes in Life, nothing seems to work! When nothing works, miracles will! Miracles happen not when you want them, but when you need them. Miracles don’t happen from your logic, they happen from the Universe’s magic. Not through rituals and mumbo-jumbo and god-men or god-women but from complete, total surrender to the Universe. They happen from letting go. They happen when you get out of Life’s way and allow Life to lead you the way!

Someone I know told me his Life’s story a few years back. He had lost everything in Life. His most recent marriage too had ended in a divorce, with the court granting his wife much of his estate. His business had suffered owing to the protracted legal proceedings. His children from an earlier marriage too had staked claim to his estate. They too had got what was left through the court settlement. His partner of several years had schemed and finally forced him to sell out his stake in the business ‘as-is-where-is’. He had barely got a few months’ survival costs out of that deal. That too had run out and all he had was about 200 pounds with him one morning in March! He was staying with a friend. He woke up, left a note for his friend, who was still asleep, and took a cab to the nearest rent-a-car service centre in East London. He hired a car for two hours but paid for five with the money he had. He just had enough to buy himself a burger and a Starbucks Coffee. He started driving out of London. He told himself he would drive as far as the gas in his rented car took him. He would step out where the car stopped and find a way, then and there, to end his Life! “I didn’t see a point living anymore. Nobody loved me. I had no money. And I was old, 58! I thought what was the big idea in struggling with a Life I didn’t want,” recalled my friend. So, when his car sputtered to a stop on an incline, en route up a small hill, he stepped out and walked up to the hill top. He managed to get to edge of a precipice that lay waiting for him. It was easily a 50 feet drop to a hard, rocky, certain death, he thought, as he surveyed the ‘last mile’ or so of his Life! He looked up at the sky. And noticed it was dark and cloudy. He spent several minutes staring at the clouds __ and wondered if there really was any silver lining in any of them. He thought all that he had gained, lost, learned and unlearned in Life. He confessed his mistakes to himself. And, in a ‘subconscious act of benevolence’, he thanked the Universe for what had been a tumultuous but eventful Life. It was then that he realized it was raining. Not heavily. But just so. He started enjoying the rain and told himself that since this was the last rain he would ever feel, he might as well wait for it to stop and relish every moment of being drenched in it. He closed his eyes and focused on each rain drop that fell on him. There was a certain beauty and a rhythm with which they fell, he noticed. Soon, he thought he heard music from the falling rain. It was like a very soothing Jazz piece, from his favorite, Louis Armstrong. Soon the music ended. And he could feel the rain no more. He opened his eyes believing that it was time he jumped without any more ado. When he opened his eyes, there, in front of him, where only gloomy, dark clouds had loomed large less than an hour ago, he saw the most beautiful rainbow ever! “I thought it was a rainbow created only for me! And if the Universe was creating such a miracle for me, I realized I had no business taking my Life which too the Universe, creation, whatever, had ‘given’ me. How could I take something which wasn’t even mine,” he recounted. He took a deep breath. He walked back to the road, hitched a ride. And decided to live a new Life!  He has since rebuilt his business, mended his relationships with his children, and lives Life to the fullest. What would have been the end of a sob story, continues to inspire!

When I heard him tell this story, my own Life was filled with darkness. His story gave me an opportunity to understand the magical quality of Life. I too, just like you perhaps, have come to such moments of complete hopelessness. Many, many times! I have learned, each time, that Life’s best when we don’t come in Life’s way! The truth is Life is playing a game with each of us. And since this Life has not been given to us because we asked for it, and since it is only a gift, we must not look a gift horse in the mouth. Our games and the rules are different__and unique to each of us. Metaphorically, each of us has been given a unique version of, let us say, ‘Angry Birds’. The rules vary and the levels of difficulty vary. It gets tougher as we start playing the game better. Every conquest of a new level is an ‘aha’ moment! Just as with a game, if you can’t crack a difficult level, flinging the phone or the iPad, in frustration, isn’t going to help, there’s no point absolutely getting angry with Life! Life has to be met, played with diligently and learned from daily. As you learn to play your Life’s game better, your level of difficulty may well increase, but as you let go and get out of Life’s way, you will see the beauty and magic in it!

Getting in Life’s way is something that we all do all the time. Not that we succeed. But our vanity, our ego, wants us to solve the problems that Life has placed in front of us. This is when despondency and depression sets in. This is when you feel you can go on no more. This is precisely when you must learn to get out of Life’s way! That’s only when you will get more out of Life too!

No matter what you are dealing with right now, learn to enjoy and feel the rain. Or if it isn’t raining yet, simply open your window and let some fresh air caress you. Hear the music of Life. Dwell in the beauty of that irreplaceable moment. Watch yourself coming alive. Witness a rainbow brighten up your Life. Your rainbow may well be a bird chirping, a dew drop falling or a child smiling on the bus. That moment of magic, that reaffirmation that Life’s beautiful, despite the circumstances you find yourself in, is your miracle!

Here’s hoping you get out of Life’s way and get more out of it this Sunday!

Transform from within and when no one’s asking!

Many of us want to change the way we live our lives. But we plead our inability to break away from our ‘worldly’ responsibilities, from our day-to-day challenges and to decide that what we have earned and saved is enough for us to last us for the rest of this lifetime! So, we continue living our incomplete lives, fraught with our insecurities, pining for a better day tomorrow. Each new year or birthday or wedding anniversary there is a resolution. To change. To transform. But it just stays a resolution. And when it is broken, there is more despair, more hopelessness.

For you to truly transform yourself two conditions need to be fulfilled:

• You must be wanting to change for yourself, not because someone wants you to change
• Whatever you are changing into gives you joy, then you begin not by thinking about what to do, but by doing it!

Without these two conditions, no personal change or transformation initiative, will succeed. Whether it is kicking a ruinous habit or starting a healthy one, changing your job, learning  a new skill, losing weight, letting a relationship go or reinventing your career. Everything must first happen within you. You must want to do it. Not because there’s money or opportunity or pride or position in it, but because you will be happy doing it. Then transformation becomes possible, and certain, even if it is not really going to be easy. Remember: no amount of resolutions or drawing up deadlines or enrolling into ‘transformation’ programs will be useful unless there’s a hunger within you!

Here’s a good old fable that illustrates this point.

A bunch of disciples invite their Guru to join them on a pilgrimage to take a holy dip in the Ganges at Haridwar. The Guru politely declines. But the disciples insist saying they have gleaned from the scriptures that such a dip in the holy river will cleanse and transform each of them. They believe that if their Guru would bless them and be by their side during this transformational ritual they would be doubly blessed. The Guru counsels them but to no avail. Finally, he advises them to take a bitter gourd as his mascot with them. He advises them to also dip the bitter gourd in the holy river when they bathe. The disciples grudgingly agree and set off on their pilgrimage. A few weeks later they come back and report to their Guru saying how good their journey and experience was. The Guru calls for the bitter gourd. One of the disciples promptly pulls it out and presents it respectfully. The Guru demands that the vegetable be sliced and each disciple taste it__without cooking it. With much difficulty the disciples taste the bitter vegetable, their contorted faces exclaiming with anguish as the vegetable's juices enter their system. "Did you not dip the vegetable in the Ganges, the Holy River,"asks the Guru, demanding "Why then is it so bitter?" "We did Guruji. But how can bitter gourd stop being bitter because it was dipped in a river, however holy it may be,"reasons a disciple. No sooner had he finished saying it, the moral of the Guru's abstinence from the pilgrimage dawns on all his disciplines.

We are like that bitter gourd. Our inside is what must change for our external reality to change.

Following a ritual for the sake of doing it or attempting to change the environment around you cannot lead to personal transformation. Even before the physical effects of your transformation emerge, something within you must have changed. The light within you must have come alive, lit up. Its radiance can then show you the way forward. Personal transformation is possible, successful, only when you lead the change, from within, because you want it, are happy doing it and when no one’s asking you to change!

You create more problems by wanting people and things to be different!

Intrinsically, there’s nothing wrong with Life. Or with people. Life is the way it is. And people are the way they are. It is your wanting them to be different, your wanting them to be the way you want them to be, that causes YOU__and often others__pain, suffering, misery and angst!

Any home with a teenager will understand this perspective the best. As a parent you would want your teenager’s room to be maintained well. But your child just doesn’t want you to even enter her room. Now think about this deeply. Is there something wrong with the room? Or is there something wrong with the way your child thinks she is maintaining it? Or is there something wrong with the way in which YOU WANT it maintained? In reality, nothing really is wrong. Simply, your WANT, your expectation, is what is causing you all the grief!

So it is with people everywhere. The teenager at home perspective is simple __ so you can relate to it. Also, you may be willing to forgive a teenager__because the kid is still not ‘mature or worldly-wise’ in your view! But you are not always so understanding of others! Here’s why….

If you review your Life, particularly your relationships, almost all the time, all your problems have come from wanting people to be different. Take any relationship where you have a problem and replace your want with acceptance and see how you perceive the relationship now. Let’s say, you have a colleague or a friend who is unethical and scheming. You cannot trust this person at all. Now, if you accept this person as someone who is not worthy of your trust, there will be no problem at all. The problem arises ONLY when you continue to trust this person, expect this person to live up to your trust, and this person keeps betraying your trust every single time! Who is to blame. Your friend? Your friend’s unethical behavior? Or you __ for continuing to trust someone who is NOT worthy of your trust? The answer is so simple. It is you who are responsible, and your expectation that your friend lives up to your trust, for the stress and strife in the relationship. You have to either trust this person and be content with betrayal or you have to stop trusting this person. The in between path__that I will trust and expect him to live up to it__is a foolish one and is paved with grief at every step!

This is so true of any situation, any relationship in Life. Yesterday, I watched a British film ‘Life Goes On’ (2009) directed by Sangeeta Datta. This is a simple story of an Indian doctor, Sanjay (played brilliantly by Girish Karnad) who comes home one evening to find his wife Manju (Sharmila Tagore) dead. She had suffered a major cardiac arrest. Sanjay’s grief is soon overshadowed by some facts, bigger, more shocking and more painful, he stumbles upon about his three daughters and his wife. His oldest one, he finds, is breaking up with her British husband. His second one is in a lesbian relationship. And his third one is pregnant with the child of her Muslim boyfriend. He further discovers that his best friend Alok (Om Puri) is the father of his first daughter because Manju had sought out Alok’s companionship in the early years of Sanjay’s marriage to her, because Sanjay could not take time off from his medical studies and practice to nurture their relationship! Everything that Sanjay had created in Life__a family, built on what he thought were Indian values, a culture of discipline and a tradition of being conservative Indians and staunch Hindus__seems now blown to smithereens. He is plunged into deep grief. And even roams the streets of London one night looking for answers. Then Alok confronts him with the truth: “Your wanting is not going to make anything different or better. It is the way it is.”

Life’s beautiful ONLY when we stop wanting people and things to be different. The moment a want creeps in, rearing its ugly head, a perfectly peaceful Life can become traumatic.  You can’t do much to prepare yourself for the rest of your Life. You can only deal with what you are dealt with! So, the best thing you can do, for now, is to simply, stop wanting people to be different. If it is someone you deeply love, try having a honest conversation. If it works for you, fine. If not, just let people be. You be who you are. And, believe me, your Life will be peaceful ever after!