Immerse yourself in whatever you do to find bliss!

When you do something from your inner core, for yourself, for your joy, you don’t have to work at all! Then work become a prayer, an offering of yourself to the Universe. Then what you do always delivers bliss unto you!

Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan: Abhimaan

Last night I was watching Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1973 classic ‘Abhimaan’ starring Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan. Both play singers and in the early stages of their romance Uma (Jaya) asks Subir (Amitabh) about his singing. He says he sings for a living. She is quite startled with that answer and says: “So, you don’t sing for your own joy? My dad who is also my guru always says true music is created only when it comes from your inner joy!”

(Here’s a brilliant song from the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAb-ru6rjXs! Enjoy!)

So it is. Only what you do for yourself, and that which arises from within you, from your inner core, leads you to bliss.

This is not the same as concentration. When you concentrate you are still employing a thought of getting something done. When you are simply doing, without employing any thought, but are becoming one with the doing, with the action, then work becomes worship and you experience bliss.

One of the Emperors of Japan had gone to see a great Zen Master, Nan-in. He asked Nan-in, ”What have you learned that makes you a great Master, known all over the country?”

Nan-in said, ”Very simple: when I chop wood, I simply chop wood; and when I carry the water from the well, I simply carry the water from the well.”

The Emperor said, ”I had come to listen to something spiritual. What nonsense are you talking? Chopping wood, you simply chop wood? Everybody does it; what is special in it? Carrying water from the well, you carry the water from the well? I have come a long distance, and I am your country’s Emperor. You should at least give me some spiritual advice.”

Nan-in said, ”That was my spiritual advice, and I want to make it clear to you that everybody is not doing that. It took me years to chop wood without any thoughts: to just be there, chopping.” And it is tremendously beautiful: the sound in the valley, the chips of the wood flying all over, the wind blowing through the trees, their song, their music. And I am utterly silent, just chopping wood. Carrying water from the well is the same. ”My whole day is the same. I have given you, in short, my basic approach of Life. Be where you are. Don’t let mind go away.”

This is the key. Not letting the mind to get dragged away in different directions. The human mind, on an average, thinks 60,000 thoughts daily. None of those thoughts often, on most days, pertain to what you are doing. Many of them are focused on the past__on remorse, guilt, anger, grief__and many, many more are steeped in worry, anxiety and fear of a future that is yet to arrive. This happens all the time. When you are drinking your morning coffee, when you are driving to work, when you are in meetings or even when you are talking to someone on the phone. Which is why most days have become dull, drab, monotonous, listless and boring! Which is why bliss seems so unattainable. Why, even happiness plays truant and you imagine you have to pursue it to find it!

Make a simple shift this Sunday. Choose one activity. Maybe it is reading. Maybe it is spring cleaning your home. Or maybe it is gardening. Immerse yourself in it like Nan-in says, being silent, and simply doing that one thing. Don’t focus on getting it done. Just do it! Do it for 15 minutes. If you like it, extend it for another 15 minutes. Examine how you feel after this immersion session. That inexplicable feeling of peace, calm and happiness, is called bliss.

Live a blissful Sunday today!

 

Be honest, be upfront, and you will be peaceful!

In every relationship, exercise your right to be honest about how you feel. Have open, transparent conversations. Set the contours of the relationship. State what’s done and what’s not done. Spell out what works for you and what doesn’t. You will then ensure peace for yourself and for the other party at all times.  

Yesterday, my 18-year-old daughter returned at midnight from a friend’s birthday party. As I opened the door to let her in, her phone rang. I was curious when she didn’t want to take the call. I told her it was fine for her to answer the call because I was anyway going to sleep and she could speak to whoever it was in private. She said she didn’t want to take that call because it was her friend’s mother calling to check on where she (the friend) was. So, I too asked where that friend was. My daughter explained that her friend had had one drink too many and had to be dropped off at another friend’s place for the night because she was scared of going home and facing her parents, who apparently did not approve of her drinking at all.

I completely empathized with the distraught parent trying to ensure if her child was safe. Yet I could not help but wonder why things come to such a pass between parents and their young adult children.  

A principal reason is that while almost each household does have its own dos and don’ts framework, honest conversations are not normally had. It is fine for a parent to not encourage or allow a teenager to drink. But it is also important for the parent to understand that the child may not necessarily follow that advice or diktat__whatever. In such a scenario, perhaps a good expectation to set would be to ensure that communication doesn’t break down between them. Imagine the plight of the mother, wondering all night about what’s happening to her daughter? Imagine the showdown that will have ensued in the morning when the daughter got back home. So much acrimony and anxiety could have been avoided if both parent and child understood the contours of their relationship. From a parent point of view: That we don’t support drinking and yet be sure that this expectation may well not be met. But breakdown in communication, being unreachable, not messaging back when pinged, is simply non-negotiable. From a teen/young adult point of view: Communication is non-negotiable but a bit of adventure, as long as it doesn’t turn reckless (like drinking and driving, doping and such), is always fine! Especially in the context of a parent-child relationship, one honest conversation may never be enough. You may need to have them several times often reminding each other that there’s equal opportunity to share, to converse, to resolve and to agree!

Even as I was thinking about this episode I read an interview that Times of India had carried this morning with the young Hindi movie star, Aditi Rao Hydari. Aditi’s parents separated when she was just two. Her father is a close friend of our family. So, we know a bit of their story. I was both impressed and happy to see Aditi, now 26, having evolved into a fine, mature person. She did admit to Times of India that she had had a difficult relationship with her father. She said her father, who is in the last stages of lung cancer, recently wrote her an email sharing all that he wanted to. She said she had written back saying she did not want to hear either his story or her mother’s. And that she preferred they all focused on the present and what they had of and for each other. She said she did care for her father having overcome the initial phase of turmoil and uniqueness of their relationship. Now, that’s what an honest conversation is all about. Where you say what you feel__so that you continue to be in peace!

Obviously, honesty doesn’t apply in a parent-sibling context alone. In any relationship, the slightest whiff of dishonesty, and this does not mean breach of trust or betrayal alone, when you refuse to say or share what you feel, can be destructive. If you really seek to be peaceful, and badly want it, you must invoke it in your relationships by always expressing yourself honestly. By always saying what you feel about someone or something without worrying about either circumstance or consequence.

We have become dishonest with each other because it is a lot more convenient. Dishonesty often helps keep the external environment peaceful. But is that pretentious peace more important than what you (want to) feel within yourself?

A young manager reached out to me recently asking for advice on how to handle his two bosses who were at war with each other, playing ping pong with him, his career and his emotions. He said he was afraid to red-flag either of them lest he be thrown out of his job. I asked him what he would do if job was guaranteed. He replied saying he would have spoken his mind, appealing to the two bosses to be considerate to him and his career, and recommending a working arrangement where everyone won. I advised him to simply carry out that plan saying that if he did lose his job then probably that wasn’t right place to be in, in any case! He, of course, hesitated. But eventually, after thinking through my advice for over a month, he executed the plan. Last week he called up to say, his honest conversation with his two bosses__one an Indonesian and the other a Spaniard__worked wonders. And they were now working in complete harmony with both bosses giving him more empowerment and responsibilities!

We often sacrifice our inner peace on the redoubtable altar of dignity, etiquette and decorum because we fear imaginary consequences. The truth is that those consequences are never going to ensue because no one likes being dishonest. Simple. Dishonesty often gets practiced though because it is easy. It is easy for the parent to dictate that the child shall not drink. It is difficult for the parent to see that the child, in spite of the diktat, may well drink. It is easy for the child to avoid the parent’s calls. It is going to be difficult, in fact scary, to pick up the phone and say that I have had a drink and so the best thing for me to do is to stay over at a friend’s. It may have been easy for Aditi to tell her dad, who is sinking, that it was fine for things to have happened the way they did between him and her mother. But she would have been dishonest__principally, with herself. So she chose to be upfront and said let’s focus on what we have left with us. It may have been difficult doing that but she did that for her own inner peace. The young manager did not find peace the easy way, allowing himself to be played ping-pong with! He found it only when he exorcised his demons and confronted his bosses!

Dishonesty and honesty, always deliver this logical outcomes, when practiced. This is true of any context, in anybody’s Life. Examine your own relationships. Wherever you find your inner peace being compromised, be sure that you are not being honest enough. To become peaceful, simply be honest, be upfront!

           

To stop suffering, embrace your insecurities!

Fear of the unknown often kills you in each of your living moments. Many of us have already died a thousand deaths in our lifetimes, worrying stiff about what will become of us, if this or that happened or did not happen to us. Anxiety and insecurity hold us in their vice- like grip. We are all like the character Thenali, in Kamal Hassan’s comedy movie ‘Thenali’ (2000), who is fearful of everything in Life. In one epic dialogue he tells his psychiatrist that he is scared of the sun, the stars, the moon, the sky, the water, the earth, Gods, angels, demons and just about everything in the Universe. He confesses that he has become a nervous wreck and some way, any way, to get out of this fear-trap! So it is with you__and me!

You may not be fearful to Thenali’s bizarre extent, but there’s a lot you worry about. Principal, and common, among your anxieties are:

• Will I ever have enough money?
• Will I be successful__with money, business, career, academics, love, relationships, whatever?   
• Will I be respected, recognized, famous?
• Will I die sooner than I want to?
• Will people cheat me, betray me?
• Will the people I love be around me as long as I want them to?
• Will my health be good?
• Will my children be happy, healthy, successful, safe?
• Will I get all that I want?

Obviously, the list can be endless. And a global list may be close to Thenali’s too!

Anxiety breeds insecurity. Insecurity causes suffering! Understanding insecurity can help us deal with it better. Fundamentally, insecurity haunts you because you dislike it. Instead welcome it. Anything that you resist persist. If you are feeling insecure about something don’t hate it or fight it anymore. Just accept it. Because insecurity is the very essence of Life. Life is all about change, impermanence, uncertainty. So, it is perfectly fine not to know what’s your Life all about or how things will be or what will befall you. You are suffering only because you demand security in a compulsively, naturally insecure scenario. Yet you insist on being convinced that you are secure and will be secure forever. So, when that sense of security is unavailable__because it can NEVER be available or given to you__you grieve. You plunge yourself into worry, anxiety, depression and enslave yourself to such dark, debilitating emotions.

Someone I know was telling me that he has saved over a million dollars in cash in his bank accounts. Besides these he has invested in shares and real estate. He has two apartments. One in the heart of Chennai and another in an up-market suburb called ECR. Yet he said to me on his 60^th birthday a few weeks ago that he was feeling insecure. He said, post retirement, his monthly inflow had stopped. And that gave him sleepless nights. He confessed: “I feel so incomplete and insecure. I wonder what will happen if my wife or I fall gravely ill and all our assets have to be liquidated to meet our healthcare expenses. So, I am desperately trying to create an income stream by seeking a retainer assignment with a couple of companies I know so that I can feel confident that the money I have saved will not be touched and will be available for an emergency on a rainy day!”

A family we know insists that their 22-year-old daughter must marry before she gets into grad school in the US (for a post-graduate program). Since we are reasonably aware that the young lady is not interested in anyone presently we asked why is marriage a pre-condition to her academic pursuit? “So that we can feel secure that she’s with someone she knows and also to ensure that we complete her marriage before something happens to us,”explains the girl’s mother. The girl’s parents are in their mid-40s and they don’t necessarily believe it is important their daughter be with someone she loves than someone she knows!

This is how most people define, and perhaps invent, their insecurities. They define them through demanding a sense of security in an environment, in Life, where none can be guaranteed. Demanding means you insist Life should be the way you want it to be. But Life works only the way it IS and never works like it SHOULD. And how Life IS you can only say in the moment, in the now, in the present. You cannot create a Life by aspiring it, anticipating it, fearing it or demanding it! You can only live the Life you are given in the moment. So, there will always be a fuzziness, a certain insecurity, a cluelessness that you will always experience about Life. You will have to yield to this insecurity by welcoming it, by accepting it and by living it!

Referring to our prolonged bankruptcy, a creditor asked me and my wife the other day how is it that we have managed at an emotional level when we see no evidence of Life improving for us financially.

“It must be very fearful__living the Life that you live,”declared this person.

I replied speaking from, and sharing, our experience: “It used to be fearful. It used to be scary as long as we demanded that evidence__that semblance of security. It is only when you want to seek the light that the walk up to it becomes fearful. Supposing you don’t want the light anymore? Because you have tried you damned best to get to the light but it hasn’t happened. All your attempts have come a cropper. And the fear of what-will-happen-now suffocates you every single time, makes you insane, leaves you to suffer. It was such a horrible, reclusive existence we led. So we broke free. We gave up on seeking the light. And accepted the darkness and began to love it instead. We have accepted that we will never know what will happen to us next! We have also realized by now that we wouldn’t have known any better had we been financially secure. So, we live in a newfound awareness__call it happiness__having made peace with our insecurity. The light of our awareness makes it possible for us to love our insecurity and live in it peacefully!”

Accepting and embracing insecurity in any Life situation does not mean inaction. It simply means stopping to look for or demand evidence that comforts or reassures you. It means to know that such evidence does not exist in the first place. So, it is foolish to demand it. Instead it means starting to live with the insecurity and working through it, with it. It means realizing that nothing is permanent. Nothing is certain. Nothing is secure.

When you embrace your insecurities, all your suffering will magically, instantaneously, cease! So, don’t demand security from Life. Learn to love it for what it is. Then, and only then, will you be able to live it in peace, joy and bliss!