AVIS Viswanathan's Blog, page 25

In Life’s fairy tale, there are no sad endings

Don't approach anything that happens in your Life from sadness.
A loss. Pain. A heart-break. An insult. All of them are not what we ever want in our Life. And so we respond with shock, anger and sorrow. But after we get over the initial response, we must develop the attitude to shift the attention to joy.
Exult in the opportunity that each of those surprising events has thrown up. A loss always points to a gain in the future. It has also taught you through your grief what is more valuable in your Life. You grieve a loss because you attach a value to it. This awakening to the realization of what's important to you must call for celebration. And joy. If someone insults you, you must celebrate because you have now the opportunity to live with an insult. A capability that you never thought existed in you. Again, it calls for joy! Your spouse tells you that she or he can't carry on in the relationship with you anymore. Beneath the obvious layer of shock and tears, it actually opens so many more opportunities to start afresh in Life. To explore newer horizons rather than be stuck in a bad relationship in grief, in sorrow, in pain. Joy here means the suffering for both of you has come to an end. Yes the pain of going through the process of separation will have to be dealt with. But eventually it too will lead to joy!

What is certain about your Life and mine is that it will end one day. But interestingly when your Life ends you will not even know it. Only those who you leave behind will feel sad. And again you will not know that they are sad! So, in reality, in Life's fairy tale, there are no sad endings. So, why be sad about the interludes over which we have no control? 

Hissssss…when you must!

To be spiritual and loving does not mean to be meek and submissive. On the other hand it means to be firm, stoic and resolute in everything that one does.
An interesting story from the Life of Gautama Buddha should throw some light on what seems like a challenging paradox. Gautama was once walking through a village with some of his disciples. A snake crawled up to him and falling at his feet begged of the Awakened One to help him. The snake pleaded, "Those kids out there don't let me play with them because they think I am poisonous. So, will you please rid me of my poison and transform me?" Gautama smiled and blessed the snake, who lost his poisonous self instantaneously. A few weeks later Gautama and his disciples were passing through the same village, returning from their travels, when the snake came up to the Buddha once again. He was sad and completely heart-broken. Gautama petted him and wanted to know the cause of his agony. The snake lamented, "Those kids, O! Learned One, still don't believe that I am not poisonous. They don't let me play with them and worse, they are hitting me with a stick." The Buddha quizzes in response, "So, why didn't you show them your fangs?" "But you removed them O! Buddha and made me non-poisonous," replies the snake. Gautama smiles and chides the snake thus: "Sure I did my dear one. But I didn't also ever advise you not to hiss!" 
By being loving you don't need to necessarily allow anyone to trample upon you or take you for granted. Be calm. Be caring. Be forgiving. But be sure to hiss when you must!

Don’t do anything that will rob you of your sleep

Whenever in doubt, lean on the side of your inner peace. Do only that which will give you a good night’s sleep.
I was speaking to a young man yesterday who shared with me his story. Very inspiring! He wanted to be a police officer. He was selected to join the force but there was a catch. He was asked to pay a bribe of Rs.1.50 Lakh to be recruited as a Sub-Inspector in the Tamil Nadu police force. The man was in a dilemma. To be a cop was his life’s dream. Here he was on the threshold of becoming one but the demand for bribe rankled his conscience. He was raised in an upright family where they worshipped not Gods and religious texts, but worshipped Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography “Sathiya Sothanai” (The Tamil translation of “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”). Even as he was contemplating what to do, some of his extended family members made overtures to him saying they would offer him a dowry if he married into their family – this could have helped him pay the bribe and get his dream job. But the young man asked himself some simple basic questions:
Is being a cop more important to me than being an honest citizen?Is my dream more important to me than a good night’s sleep?Is that dowry more important to me than really marrying the person I truly love and want to spend the rest of my Life with?
These questions gave him immense clarity. And he leaned on the side of his inner peace. He told me, “I decided that I did not want to forsake my inner peace for the sake of my dream. In fact, when I look back now, I realize I was only infatuated with wanting to be a cop. What matters most to me is being true – to myself and to all the people I know.”
Of course, this young man faced several challenges on his way to finding a stable career in an NGO, where he currently works. But he says has no regrets: “I earn enough to provide for my small family. I am happy. And content.”
I share this story for two reasons. One, we must all have the clarity in us to be discerning – to know what will give us peace and what will disturb it. The other is that we must be prepared to journey along, without regret, whatever be the path we choose. For there will be many times and situations when you will rue the choice you made. But if you believe you would have been unhappier not making that choice, then plough on. Live with your choice. And it will always end well.
Yes, in the end, everything works out just fine. So, why trade your inner peace for petty shirt-term material gains?

Get some ‘zazen’ into your day today!

To conquer the mind, you must know the soul. To know the soul, you must be silent. To know silence, you must just be.
Just being may appear to be difficult. But it is not. And to keep it simple and silly, just as it sounds, don't try to be. Just be. In Zen Buddhist practice, there’s this concept called 'zazen'. It invites the seeker to simply sit, opening the hand of thought__which means drop judgment, let words, actions, events just unfold. A friend who is going through a troubled marriage was advised by her other friend to just be an observer and not be involved emotionally in the actions of her estranged spouse. I believe she was getting the most valuable advice. How can I be an observer when my world is falling apart, you may wonder? What else can you do? By trying to control the uncontrollable__Life__you are subjecting yourself to trauma. The suffering comes from this desire to control. Instead be detached. The essence of detachment lies in being. Not doing. Not becoming. Just being.

Osho says it profoundly, "There is nothing to become. You are already that, it is already the case. Stop running after shadows. Sit silently and be . Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself." What a beautiful perspective. Try and get some ‘zazen’ into your day today!

Look into the mirror before you opine

No one is good or bad. Everyone is a product of the time that they experience/go through.
There's so much talk about corruption in high places in India today. And the lack of morality in power centres. All of us lament of a basic erosion of value systems. Social Media offers the perfect platform for people to give free, unsolicited advice and opine on how other people must be leading their lives. So much time and energy is being expended on hashtag activism against the political class, the corrupt and those who invite public scrutiny and attention. Let's divest ourselves of indulging in such wasteful opinions and invest in introspection instead. We are all as corrupt as anyone else is. If you pay a bribe to have a cop let you off for breaking a signal, if you drink and drive, if you support a communal (anti-human) point of view, if you pollute the environment by indiscriminately using plastic, if you private ogle at someone, you are as corrupt as the people who are accused of financial and criminal wrongdoings. Period.

True character is who you are when you are in a dark room, alone, when no one is watching. So, before rushing off to opine, let us look into the mirror. As someone famously said,"Every Saint has a sinful past and every Sinner has a saintly future!" Amen!

Focus on what matters than on matters that don’t

Just consider the irony of our lives. We keep trying to increase the value of all the unimportant things in our Life, instead of trying to reduce the values (parameters) of what's most important for us to live.
We worry ourselves to death trying to increase our wealth, our real estate, our fame; we lust and crave for rewards and recognition, and want more and more people to appreciate us. Even as we are doing this, we don't realize that things more valuable than what we are chasing are also increasing in value. Our weight, our blood pressure, our heart rate, our triglycerides, our sugar and cholestrol. The irony: if we worked systematically to reduce the values of our body parameters and bring them to acceptable levels, we will be able get more of what we want without as much effort as we are struggling to invest now.

Phil Crosby, the Quality Guru, wisely said, "Health is the only Wealth. And it's Tax Free!" So, doesn't it make sound financial sense to focus on what matters than on matters that don't?

It is possible to discover newer ways of following and living your bliss

Life is never a black and white saga in that sense. It is never only this or that.
There can be various permutations and combinations of this and that if you are a bit creative while still retaining the focus. Learn to discover newer ways of living in bliss. Indeed, when we make joy and service the focal point of our lives, we will find newer means of encountering and staying blissful.
Olivier Roellinger
Picture Courtesy: InternetMaster Chef Olivier Roellinger retired from his own three-star Michelin restaurant in 2010 owing to health problems. His love is food and ostensibly his must have been a painful decision to make when he had to exit a line that gave him joy, fame and money. But in less than six months he found a way to follow his bliss by setting up a chain of spice boutiques called Epices Roellinger which doesn't have the stresses of running a fine-dining place but has the potential to reach a far greater number of people. While his boutiques stock and sell the most exotic varieties of spices, some of them long forgotten, from across the world, Roellinger is intent on paying the farmers, many of whom are currently struggling, at fair-trade levels which is currently four times higher than existing market prices. Roellinger's story is a humble reminder to us that making money while doing what one loves may not have only one way of doing. That we can all do better than what we are currently doing if we throw in an element of service and create a flavor that's both unifying and yet distinctly different. "We must increase our capacity to embrace what's different until one day it becomes a part of us. Ultimately, the intermixing of aromas, flavors and cultures (as in the spices trade) is what's beautiful about the story of humanity," says Roellinger.
If we reflect on that thought of his, we may find more meaning to our individual pursuit of following our bliss.

When you embrace your problems, they make you stronger

No problem goes away until you have learnt from it and know how to deal with it.
This is the simple truth we all fail to get. And so, we keep denying problems or keep hoping the problems will go away. Only when we stop denying or wishing our problems away, only when we embrace and welcome our problems with open arms do we find them mellowing down, or easing their stranglehold on our lives. Even so, what happens then is that the problem still remains as it is, where it is, only, our ability to deal with it gets better. When we are able to deal with a situation better, we play the game__in this case, of Life__better. When we play anything well, we experience joy. When there is joy, nothing remains a problem.
The Bible says,"And God said, let there be light; and there was light." The light that God is referring to is the joy in us. Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of Light, problems cease to exist in their draconian forms when we experience inner joy and peace. This essentially means that when we are anchored, our problems don’t frighten us, they don’t make us insecure. We then learn to co-exist with our problems.

Let us stop making pimples seem like cancers. Let us un-darken our lives by opening our souls to the Light within. Let us embrace our problems and discover the joy of having them in our lives__and be grateful for the opportunity they give us to learn from them and become better, stronger people.

A lot can happen over an honest coffee!

Honest conversations are the best means to grow relationships.
Underline honest . Most of us are in one relationship or the other at any point in time. Parent-Child, Husband-Wife, Boss-Team member, between siblings, Teacher-Student, between companions, whatever. And we love most of the people in those relationships. We may not see it this way all the time, but all these relationships need nurturing. And almost always, we fail to say what's on our mind, because we are worried about hurting the other person with our honesty, transparency and opinions. Yet, we yearn for that other person to understand how we perceive her or him. In all these situations, it is always important to have these honest conversations – perhaps over a coffee. As the Café Coffee Day tagline goes, “A lot can happen over coffee!”
It may also be true, in some cases, that an honest conversation may not necessarily lead the other person to see reason and change himself or herself or their attitude towards you. It doesn’t mean your integrity hasn’t helped. It has. It gives you the opportunity to move on, now that you have shared what you honestly felt and always wanted to.
True love really means saying what you must, when you must without mincing words. Out of this an opportunity emerges for the relationship to get stronger, for the person you are having the conversation with to evolve into a better human being and that really is an important part of serving humanity.

To serve another, you don't need to necessarily get involved in an NGO; all you need to do is to just have honest conversations.

Zen and the Art of Celebrating Life

Don't grieve anything. Celebrate everything. Success. Failure. Defeat. Crisis. Tragedy. Joy. Sorrow. Everything!
Celebrating when we are successful or happy, we all know how to do it and do it very well. But celebrating failure and defeat? Well, you first overcome the initial sense of shock and surprise from each setback in your Life and replace it with celebration. How can we celebrate a loss __ of something, someone __ you may well wonder. Here’s the nub - you don't (have to) celebrate the loss itself. But you can always celebrate the times you had with that something, that someone. You can celebrate the learning that you are now being subjected to through experiencing this loss. You can celebrate the opportunity called this moment.
Harnish Patel, 35, was among the victims of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. A British-Indian, he was on a backpacking trip to India and was at the Leopold Cafe that evening when the terrorists struck. At least three bullets passed through his legs and chest, skimming past his bones and major organs. 7 years ago Harnish was lying in the ICU of Mumbai's Jaslok Hospital with tubes sticking through his legs and chest, not knowing if he would ever walk again. But with determination and grit, Patel, who narrowly escaped death, has not just overcome his injuries but also astounded doctors, family and friends by running in a marathon and joining the British Royal Navy. Just four years after the gruesome attack that left him debilitated, he was the flag-bearer for England in the team-welcome and victory ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympics! Simple learning: do you think Patel would have even gotten out of his hospital bed had he stayed grieving?

Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861~1914), has said, “If you cry that the sun has gone out of your Life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.” To grieve is to see Life through a myopic perspective. To celebrate Life is to see it on a 70mm or an IMAX canvas! When you zoom out and see your Life from a higher plane, you see each event as a blessing!