AVIS Viswanathan's Blog, page 34

Firewall your inner peace

Love your peace so much that you would want no one or nothing to disturb it.
Every incident or individual that frustrates you does so because you allow it or them to do so. Be selfish here for a change. Build a wall around you that is impregnable. A wall that is made of intelligence, forgiveness, love and awareness. What frustrates us? People not behaving the way we expect them to. Or when events that we least expected pop up to challenge us, to test us. Or when Life’s not exciting enough, has become a drag and nothings seems to work out. First, employ your intelligence. You are not dumb. You know that people are entitled to their thoughts, behaviors and opinions, just as you are entitled to yours. So, every time you are frustrated with the people, know that, that’s the way people will be. You must therefore rise above and forgive them. Love people and Life for the way things are. Because Life never promised fair play. It is our misplaced expectation that everything must be as we wish which causes us to feel frustrated. Live with the deep awareness that ‘it is what it is’. And additionally, love the peace that you are, that’s within you.                   Only when you allow someone permission will they invade the private precincts of your peace. It’s like a wireless network. Unless the network is password protected, anybody with a wireless device will be able to access your network. But if you have firewalled your network, having an access key known only to you, the network will be visible, but inaccessible. So, firewall your peace with love__love for yourself, love for all of humanity. Because when you don’t react to every frustration that comes your way, you are helping those that are frustrating you as well. You are helping conserve precious human energy which would have been lost otherwise in attacks and counter-attacks, reactions and retaliatory actions. Way back in the 17thCentury, Roman Catholic Saint and former Bishop of Geneva, St.Francis de Sales (1567-1622), taught this unputdownable lesson: “Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” Remember: you and I are not chemicals. We can think before we react, if we are aware that our inner peace is non-negotiable, non-tradeable and no one should be allowed to even touch it, let alone disturb it.

Living fully is more important than arriving first

Don’t compete with anyone or anything in Life. Life’s is not a race that you must aim to complete first. It’s not a battle either where only the fittest will survive. It is about living, letting others live too, and enjoying every moment that you are on this planet doing what you are good at and love doing.
For the last four weeks, the front pages of the Chennai editions of most leading newspapers have been taken by Kalyan Jewellers. Announcing the brand’s arrival in Chennai the ads claimed that Kalyan’s was the largest jewellery showroom in the world!!! A high-voltage star-studded campaign featuring Amitabh Bachchan, Prabhu, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Nagarjuna led the media blitzkrieg. But even as Kalyan opened their showroom last Friday, their rivals Prince, Lalitha and Joy Alukkas upped the ante splurging on full page ads. This morning’s Page 1 of The Hindu’s Chennai edition was taken by Joy Alukkas to claim that they owned the world’s largest jewelry showroom “as certified by the Limca Book of World Record”. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you are the first or the largest, what really matters is that you are great on service and quality, ethical and true to your customers. To me, this avaricious need to be “seen” in a certain way takes away the joy out of living and doing business!
Unfortunately, our education system and our social architecture promotes just the opposite sentiment. Both erroneously, irresponsibly, define excellence as being the first and getting on top of the world. So, in school you are encouraged to top the class and in society you are measured by the wealth, power and stature you have. Therefore, many of us are running a rat race, trying to outdo the others, wanting to be first and more importantly be seen as the first. A way to examine this perspective is to understand that ultimately, however fast we get anywhere in Life, our stories will all have to end . So, why are we rushing? Think about it. Our Life is ticking away, one moment at a time. So, does it make sense to run at all, worse, run faster and only to get to the end faster or is it prudent to savor each moment, drink in its beauty, help others with whatever we can and arrive at our story’s end, gracefully, peacefully?
Celebrated Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar, helps us understand this perspective by sharing why he chose not to direct the remake of the film that his father Yash Johar had originally produced. In 1990, Yash Johar, had produced ‘Agneepath’with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. While the film won a lot of critical acclaim and also got Amitabh Bachchan his first National Award, it failed to be a commercial success. This left Yash Johar personally heart-broken and financially broke. Karan Johar recalls that his father eventually died grieving his favorite production’s failure. As a token of respect to his father and to celebrate his memory, Karan has produced the remake of ‘Agneepath’ (in 2012) with Hrithik Roshan playing the role of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. Times of India asked Karan Johar why he chose not to direct the film himself: “Dad had pinned a lot of hopes on it as the previews had been full of praise, but when the film didn't do well at the box office it broke his heart. Dad always wanted to remake it. One day Karan (Malhotra), who was my associate director on ‘My Name Is Khan’, and I were chatting when I told him about my desire to make it again. Karan told me he was a huge fan of the original so I asked him if he would revisit it. He agreed immediately. I am incapable of directing a film like ‘Agneepath’. I can do only what I am good at, so I would have been the worst choice to direct it. It has aggression, action and an inherent violence in it - things I am not capable of directing in my films. Karan is an exceptionally talented and angry boy, and for this film one requirement was anger. There's an inherent sense of suppressed anger in Karan and ‘Agneepath’was the platform to express that.”
So beautiful. Karan Johar is such a successful director and has delivered several blockbuster hits over the last 15 years. There sure may have been a temptation to want to direct it himself had someone else been in his shoes. But that’s intelligent living. When you make a powerful choice of enjoying Life rather than proving or making a point. Because, in the end, to have lived__fully__is more important than to have arrived__first!

Living is a 24x7 job, a big responsibility – do it well!

All of us have an all-important, full-time job. And that is not being mom, dad, son, daughter, sibling, citizen, businessman, employee or friend. It is the job of living.
This is the job that will bring us unlimited benefits without us having to sweat, suffer and slog for it: good health, wealth, something meaningful to do in this lifetime and warm, loving relationships. Yet we do all other jobs diligently than focus on this high-return, zero-risk investment opportunity called living.
Living comprises of two parts: being happy and mindful action. Being happy is an individual choice and being engaged in mindful action is an individual necessity. Both responsibilities of the job of living require us to stop using external reference points while living our lives. Simply, we must stop wanting to remake the world outside of us. I am unhappy in this relationship, I want to move on. I am unhappy in this job, I want to make a career change. I am unhappy in this country, I want to migrate. I am unhappy with this Life, I want to end it. Each of these instances of unhappiness is linked to external conditions. I will be happy if so-and-so condition is met is the most stupid and unreasonable expectation__and so is sure never to be met. Instead, when the response changes to exercising the choice__mindful action, a necessity__to remain happy despite the conditions that affect it, the benefits not only accrue instantaneously, they actually multiply exponentially.
Imagine you own an orchard. And you have to work 18 hours a day to tend to it. And have to do this overcoming all odds, to just get a few hundred kilos of yield seasonally, annually. And imagine, if there was a guarantee that if you stayed happy, despite any provocation to be unhappy, and you managed your orchard with love and care, mindfully, you could get a perennial, unlimited, uninterrupted, bountiful supply of high-quality yield. Which option would you choose? Isn’t it a no-brainer? So, even in the relationship you are having difficulty with, you continue to give your best. You may choose to remain separate, distant, but send your energy, your prayers, to the estranged person. When you do that, selflessly, you will be happy. When you are not finding happiness in whatever work you do, don’t lament. Go discover what gives you joy. Don’t approach it with a sense of fear, but with the spirit of adventure.
We heard the story the other day of a young lady, who after qualifying for and working 10 years in the publishing industry, decided that she actually wanted to serve as a doctor. So, she quit her job, enrolled into med school and over the next 10 years, qualified to be a doctor. She says she is ‘alive and happy’ now. And that’s because she chose happiness by opting for medicine and engaged in mindful action by persevering over 10 years to qualify for it.
The second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita ends with a job description for the one who lives intelligently. Krishna, replying to Arjuna, says:
“He lives in wisdomWho sees himself in all and all in him,Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumedEvery selfish desire and sense-cravingTormenting the heart. Not agitated        By grief, nor hanker after pleasure,He lives free from lust and fear and anger.Fettered no more by selfish attachments,He is not elated by good fortuneNor depressed by bad. Such is the seer…
When you keep thinking about sense-objectsAttachment comes. Attachment breeds desire,The lust of possession which, when thwarted,Burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgmentAnd robs you of the power to learn from pastMistakes. Lost is the discriminativeFaculty, and your life is utter waste.
But when you move amidst the world of senseFrom both attachment and aversion freed,There comes the peace in which all sorrows end,And you live in the wisdom of the Self.
The disunited mind is far from wise;How can it meditate? How be at peace?When you know no peace, how can you know joy?When you let your mind follow the sirenCall of the senses, they carry awayYour better judgment as a cyclone drivesA boat off the chartered course to its doom….
He is forever free who has brokenOut of the ego-cage of I and mineTo be united with the Lord of Love.This is the supreme state. Attain thou thisAnd pass from death to immortality.”
A simple tip: please cut, paste and print out this verse. Carry it in your wallet, bag, make it your desktop wallpaper, save it under drafts in your message box on your phone, pin it up at your desk at work, in your car’s dashboard, on your dressing mirror__wherever. But see it several times daily. Apply each of your daily situations to this verse. You will find meaning to what you are experiencing, you will find solutions to your dilemmas, you will find an inner peace. You will soon be able to exercise the choice of being happy despite the circumstances you are placed in. You will discover that this choice and the need to be continuously engaged in mindful action go hand in hand and are a full-time, all-consuming activity. Know that it is a 24x7 job, a huge responsibility, this thing called living. When you do it diligently, keeping your mind, body and soul alert and aligned, to the singular objective of being happy, you will have lived fully. And will continue to live forever__through your Life’s work and message.

All ‘easiness’ comes from endurance

At every ugly turn that your Life takes, just remember this: you really don’t know what’s round the bend, so don’t despair, don’t conclude that Life is unfair, don’t give up. Just flow with Life.
Often times in Life, events unfold with seeming cold-bloodedness, that leave you socked. But Life operates on a plane of inner evolution more than what is evident. Every external event is designed to help you dive deeper to discover yourself, summon your endless inner potential and for you to awaken to the right way of thinking, living, working and winning. What we call ‘fate’ or ‘chance’ is actually a mysterious turn that always delivers a fruitful outcome in the end.
A friend recently suggested, in a lighter vein perhaps, that motivational speaking (with an obvious reference to my ability to inspire audiences) is easy. I thought about it. To churn out nuggets of wisdom perhaps is indeed easy. As easy as it is for Messi to score a goal or Tendulkar to have hit any of his 100 international centuries! But all ‘easiness’ comes only from endurance. I always like to clarify that I am more an inspired, motivated speaker than just a motivational or inspirational speaker. I am inspired from the way Life has dealt with me and motivated by the way it continues to challenge me. What the world sees as a post every morning, that invokes soul, provokes thought and hopefully inspires action, comes from the ability to live in each moment, fully, drink in the bliss it contains, and learn from the experience. All this, despite the external circumstances.
To be sure, I wasn’t this way at all. Just over 15 years ago, I was a man in a hurry: angry, foul-mouthed, chewing tobacco and drinking daily. Perhaps, arrogant and jealous too. Yet I led our consulting Firm well and profitably. We had six offices, 40 people, and 38 highly satisfied clients across the world. Then, something happened. From an evolutionary perspective, perhaps, hubris__that ugly English word!__set in. From a business point of view, a couple of strategic mistakes happened that led to our Firm going bankrupt and we, as a family, becoming insolvent. (More on this story and what the experience taught me is contained in my Book, “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money” ; Westland, August 2014) It was traumatic. But when I look back, without that ugly turn, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the value of this gift called Life. I wouldn’t have been inspired to unravel the meaning behind the two words: “Intelligent Living.” I wouldn’t have been motivated to plough on. I wouldn’t have understood what loving and relating, as taught by Osho, the Master, really meant. I wouldn’t have understood the value of relationships nor the impermanence of money and Life! I wouldn’t have experienced the kindness and compassion that is so intrinsic to the human race. I wouldn’t have learnt my Life’s most important lesson: always “serve” before you say you   “deserve” !

So, that’s a short autobiography to let you know that Life’s design is indeed as inscrutable for me as it is for you! Life deals with all of us__similarly. The events in our lives may still be different, but Life is always leading us to the same destination. Which is Self-Realization. And however difficult the road may just be, remember this too: Life’s Master Plan has no flaws. You will arrive and awaken, just as all of humanity, including me, has.

Understanding Purpose: an opportunity to create unique value in this ‘readymade’ lifetime

What is the Purpose of Life?
From a strictly biological and scientific point of view, it appears, that all Life exists to simply transfer information (genes) to the next generation. So, rationally speaking, the true Purpose of Life must be to perpetuate itself. As humans, we__you, me__are just a living organism that has a little more awareness than other living organisms. This is where, in my opinion, spirituality meets science.
I choose my words carefully: spirituality, and not religion, meets science. Now, if humans are endowed with a little more awareness, why is that so? Of what use can that awareness be? Truly, the awareness is visible, is evident, in the way the human brain develops and works, and has been evolving through the ages. But the truth also is that apart from transferring this evolutionary genetic code to the next generation, each human does not take away anything while leaving this planet. But delve deeper. Obviously creation has a design, a profound thought, which is why the human race is endowed with a greater awareness than all other Life on the planet. This awareness, when it awakens the human, and flowers within, is called spirituality. It is all about Self-Realization. When you realize your Self, you discover these simple truths: 1.Biologically, we will all grow older and eventually perish__albeit per different expiration dates! 2. Life’s repetitive cycles is just about transferring genes to each successive generation. 3. In the midst of such a pre-programmed Life, there’s still the possibility to individually make a difference. When you know how YOU can make that difference, you will have found your Purpose. When you are doing anything purposeful you will encounter joy, you will ‘feel’ the power of this ‘extra’, ‘higher’ awareness that we as humans possess.
Across the human race, just being kind, loving, compassionate and caring, can and always delivers this joy. So, that can be, and is, a common Purpose to all of us humans. But each of us also derives joy, feels blissful, doing somethings more than others. When we know what it is, which is when our awareness delivers laser-sharp clarity to us, we would have found the Purpose of our creation. This Purpose is beyond wants and desires, beyond wealth and assets, it is about serving, it is about giving up yourself, your profit and prestige, during this lifetime, to meet a higher end that delivers value to the following generations, to make this world a better place to live in, much after you are gone. To Gandhi it was equality and ahimsa, to Mother Teresa it was caring for the uncared, to Prof.Kachru, whose son Aman was ragged and murdered at a med school in Himachal Pradesh (North India), it is to eradicate ragging from the Indian University landscape, to Al Gore, former US Vice President, it is to awaken the world to the perils of global warming and so on.
Each human that pauses to reflect and gets beyond the insecurities and fears of everyday Life, infact anyone who takes a break from earning a living and even momentarily steps out of this rat race, will find Purpose. She or he will find that there is an opportunity to create unique value in this ‘readymade’ lifetime of ours. That’s when we will all know that we are not human beings going through temporary, feel good, spiritual experiences, but we really are spiritual beings going through temporary human experiences. And so, before this human experience ends, we must have touched a soul, provoked thought, inspired action, wiped a tear, loved, led, cared and made a difference.

When you are not playing well, go back to the basics

You may not always get what you want in Life, but happiness is wanting what you get!
Last evening I attended an interesting event. It was conversation between three writers – two of whom are former cricketers and have written books on learnings from, and memories of, playing the game. They are V.Ramnarayan (Third Man: Recollections from a Life in Cricket, Westland) and Harimohan Paravu (50 Not Out: Powerful Life Lessons from Cricket to Excel in Our Lives, Jaico). The third one was the moderator and anchor for the evening Krishna Shastri Devulapalli (Ice Boys in Bell Bottomsand Jump Cut, Harper Collins). So, as the conversation between the three men progressed, a question that Krishna asked, prompted Ram to talk about Life as a cricketer. He said, “There’s nothing called ‘out of form’ in cricket. A good cricketer is never ‘out of form’. If you believe you are ‘out of form’, you are actually playing bad cricket. And when you are not playing well, you need to go back to the basics. You need to examine how you are playing the ball, how you are delivering it and how you are picking it up.” I was amazed with Ram’s perspective that basically debunked the popular notion that cricketers do tend to go ‘out of form’ - at least once or twice in their careers. But when I mulled over his view, I not only agreed with it, I also found a deeper, spiritual, insight to dealing with Life in what he had to say.
When are you ostensibly ‘out of form’ in Life? When you don’t perform to your potential, when you don’t get what you want and are depressed and when, despite your best efforts, the results or outcomes don’t add up to what you had envisioned them to be. This is the time, to borrow from Ram’s cricket analogy, to go back to the basics. And the most basic, the fundamental, truth about – and in – Life is that Life happens on its own terms; it happens in spite of you and never because of you! Not realizing this, we go on questioning what is happening to us, we go on resisting the Life we have and so we keep suffering. This suffering manifests itself as depression, as bodily ailments, as poor performance at work and as breakdown in relationships. Going back to the basics in Life will help us also awaken to the reality that everything in Life is impermanent. As in cricket, in Life too, both success and defeat are imposters. This entire lifetime is transient. So, why cling on to anything that is impermanent? Why fear losing anything that we can’t take with us when we depart? This going-back-to-basics may not necessarily change the situations we are placed in, but our attitude of acceptance and non-clinging, of let-go, will help us deal with the situations better. It will help us play the game of Life better.

And playing the game of Life better simply means accepting what is, choosing to enjoy or endure what is, with equanimity. What you resist persists. When you stop resisting, the pain may be there, but there is no suffering. When you don’t suffer, your quality of Life improves dramatically; you are happy, despite the circumstances!  

Your age is a mere data point – it is not the focal point of your Life!!!

Age is but a number. Don’t ever get taken in by it!  
The other day I was sitting at a coffee shop enjoying my “quiet, me-time”. A bunch of 20-somethings sat at the adjacent table. And they were a riot. They ribbed each other, laughed loudly and were so full of Life. One of them even chided the others for being so noisy and said, “Stop behaving like teenagers!” To this, another among them asked her to how old she was, and she replied, “24”! And everyone burst out laughing!
I thought about those young folks at the café for a long time that day. And I thought about the question: “How old are you?” Closing in as I am on my 50s – just two-and-a-half-years away – this is a question that I have often found an interesting one to answer. To be honest, I never imagined I would be this old someday. Deep within me, I carry an image of me, of a boy wearing a blue printed shirt. I must have been 11 when that picture of me was shot by a Japanese guest who I befriended at the swimming pool at Taj Coromandel Hotel in Chennai – where I took my first swimming lessons. The gentleman, Yoshiro Kizuka, was a long-staying guest at the hotel and he liked me and my brother as he too had children our age. He snail-mailed me my picture when he went back to Japan (those days you had to process film rolls and print the pictures at a studio/film lab!!!). I still have that picture with me somewhere. It’s a picture that’s very school-boyish – a lot of curiosity and wonder in my eyes, the feel of being on the cusp of adolescence evident on my face, a certain innocence and an unstated ambition lend that picture a unique quality. Even today, within me, I feel the same way – curious about Life, naïve about how to deal with its trials and tribulations, despite having faced innumerable crises; and, importantly, I feel that I am still to grow old! I must confess, quickly, that with my progressives arriving last week, with my rheumatoid arthritis reminding me of the withering nature of the human body and with all the shades of grey that adorn the sides of my almost bald pate, I do have Life pointing to my biological age more frequently than I would like! Yet, I look around me and I have enough inspirations of people who are biologically older than me, but who are still young at heart and with all that they continue to do – Amitabh Bachchan, Apollo’s Dr.Pratap Reddy, Vyajayanthimala Bali (who at 80 performed at the Chennai Music & Dance Season last December), the dancer couple Shanta and V.P.Dhananjayan, my dear friend – the unputdownable and peripatetic Ejji Umamahesh, my father (who at 76 despite chronic diabetes remains active) and my father-in-law (who despite a stroke and Parkinsons Plus retains his zest for Life). And so, after unwittingly eavesdropping on the youthful conversation at the café the other day, I have decided to deal with my age as a mere data point from now on.
Indeed, your age is but a data point. It is when you make it the focal point of your Life that you miss the plot! This is what I have learnt from Life: the body is a vehicle, an instrument, to live and enjoy Life. Like all vehicles, all instruments, all machines, it ages and, through wear and tear, keeps withering away, until death, the inevitable end, consumes it finally. So, the body ages, the body dies. Not you. Not me. This is a natural cyclical process that encompasses all forms of creation from birth to death. No other aspect of creation, however, agonizes over aging and withering away or dying. Only man is obsessed with aging and dying. For instance, the leaves of a tree don’t agonize over falling off and being consumed by the earth. But we humans rue the same destiny, however intelligent we may be to know that such an end is inevitable. Which is why, we don’t live our lives fully. We are constantly, foolishly, fearing an end that we can’t really avoid or prevent.
Refusing to be taken in by your age, which is just another number, is an important step to live your Life fully! Nurturing this attitude to living does not mean you will not feel the body’s aches and pains as it ages. It only means that you will exercise your choice to live each day better, making it count, than pay heed to what you cannot change, what you cannot undo and what you cannot reverse. So, rather than crave for an ageless body, celebrate the timeless spirit within you. It is like pure wine – getting better and better as it grows older!  

Carry on living with whatever is, just the way it is!

Life is full of ironies, full of imperfections – don’t seek clarity, don’t search for meaning, just live in the moment with whatever is.
The Week magazine, in their latest issue, have run a cover story on celebrity love children – those born outside of marriage, and from an affair, that celebrities have had. The story features Masaba Gupta (Neena Gupta and Sir Vivian Richards), Prateik Babbar (Smita Patil and Raj Babbar), Aatish Taseer (Tavleen Singh and the late Pakistani businessman and politician who was assassinated in 2011) and Rohit Shekar (Ujjwala Sharma and N.D.Tiwari). While all these people have made peace with their ‘unconventional’ identity, there is an emotional, unstated, underpinning to the story. All of them seem to be asking: ‘why do we have to be judged this way?’ I totally understand that sentiment. Fundamentally, any social norm that labels and categorizes people must be expunged. If you view Life objectively, aren’t all children – all of humanity in fact – born as ‘love children’? The act of making love, having sex, that furthers procreation, is the same among our species. In a way, it is the same biological process that has caused all our existence. So, why label one set of progeny as inferior and another as superior just because the other has come out of a socially acceptable arrangement a.k.a marriage? The best way to deal with such an irony – where you are judged for no fault of yours by those who have no role or business to judge in the first place – is to simply be who you are. As Masaba Gupta told The Week’sShweta Thakur Nanda, “Yes I am a love child. So what are you going to do? Eat me up?”
Let’s face it. Life is full of imperfections. And ironies. Many a time you are confronted with situations that you did not cause or create. Yet, you have no choice but to live with them. You can’t understand why things are the way they are, you can’t explain the why of whatever is that you are dealing with and, often times, you simply can’t make meaning out of Life.
I talk here also from my personal experience. I have no explanation for why my mother called me a cheat or why my siblings remain estranged from me or why I can’t interact with my father although we all live in the same city (‘Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money’ ; Westland – August 2014). My faulty decision to borrow from the family, my enduring bankruptcy and poor chemistry with my mother have confounded an already vitiated environment. Things have now reached a point where unless I return the money I owe the family, none of them is going to – or perhaps is even willing to – have anything to do with me. As long as I tried to convince my family that I have integrity and the intent to repay, that I meant well, that I am a victim of circumstance (some of it caused by my poor decisions), I suffered. Because they just refused to believe me. As long as I wished that I was understood by them, and not judged, I grieved. But when I gave up all efforts to convince my family and stopped craving that I be understood by them, my suffering ended.
I am reminded of the way Osho, the Master, explains Krishna’s conversation with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t ‘be’– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why Krishna said to Arjuna: ‘Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there.’ Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it.’"  

If you look at your Life deeply, just the way it is, it is so beautiful. So, don’t try to escape the ironies and imperfections of your Life. Just be in a state of let-go. Whatever is happening to you, let it happen. Don’t resist. Don’t analyze. Don’t wish it were different. Let Life use you the way it deems fit. Whether you are labeled a love child or a cheat has no relevance to who you truly are. You are who you believe you are. So, carry on living, being available, unconditionally available to Life, with whatever is, just the way it is! 

Even mundane events can teach you a lesson or two on intelligent living

  Some of Life’s most trivial events offer an opportunity to learn to drop your ego.
Both our domestic helps quit on the same day last week. It was a very bizarre turn of events. They were well paid – despite our enduring bankruptcy – and the work conditions were above normal standards, meals, local conveyance and work-related incentives. But, as it turns out, they quarreled with each other and both quit saying they will not work with the other! Worse, both of them continue to be unreachable and I believe each of them assumes that the other is still working with us! This development comes at the most inopportune time for us. My father-in-law, who suffered a stroke two weeks ago, has been very ill and is being looked after in our home with 24-hour nursing care. The agency supplying the home nurses has been very inefficient, irresponsible and unresponsive. Resultantly, many a time, we are left without a nurse or with the same nurse doing more than one shift. The stream of (non-family) visitors calling on us to look up my father-in-law only confounds an already stressful situation.
This may appear to be a very trivial situation – a commonplace occurrence in most of our homes! But when I examined the event closely, it offered me some deep spiritual insights. 
The first one is that at the bottom of it all, Life is impermanent and illogical. Our domestic helps abruptly stopping to work, only reinforces that truism. What happens to you and in your Life need not necessarily be a function of how good you are. Anything can happen, absolutely anything, whether or not you caused it or contributed to it in any manner. The second one is that not everyone needs to share your value systems. The person who runs the nursing agency has no sense of customer focus and is only intent on demanding a steep fee for a service that he hardly delivers! Trying to make him see reason, I discovered, is futile. So, the only way forward in such a situation is that when the value systems don’t sync, you simply move on. Third, you can’t control people and their behaviors. At best you can control the way you react to people and situations. This is the only way to retain your inner peace and sanity. And finally, when you resist whatever is happening to you – whether it is fair or not, right or wrong, is hardly relevant in Life’s scheme of things – you will suffer. For a good four days, despite my evolved perspective of Life, I struggled to accept the reality that confronted us; that we were dealing with a bunch of people who were illogically, irrationally, playing truant with us! As long as I resisted this reality, I found myself stressed. But then when I sat down over the weekend and thought through all the developments peacefully, calmly, and accepted what we were faced with, I was able to regain my equilibrium.  

I finally concluded that this domestic crisis of sorts was actually a very humbling experience. It helped me drop my ego. Why do I need to demand that we must be treated better? Why do I insist that we deserve better? Why expect? I realized, yet again, that only when all expectations cease, can there be complete inner peace.  

Appreciate the sense of cosmic justice that prevails in the Universe

There’s a beautiful, mystical quality to Life. It has its own form of natural justice.
Everything that you or I do comes back to us in this Lifetime. One way or the other. You are kind to people. Kindness pervades your Life. You let down someone. And someone lets you down in return. You touch a Life with love, compassion and care. And people touch your Life the same way.
I was moved by a story Javed Akhtar, the famous and immensely soulful Bollywood lyricist, poet and story writer, shared on his TV show ‘Legends’ on Zee Classic recently. The year was 1966 and Javed saab was a struggler in Mumbai. He had no job and no money. And nobody wanted to check his work and worth out. In those days, he made the acquaintance of the then famous lyricist and Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi (1921~1980) and had begun to treat Sahir as his mentor. One day, he lamented to Sahir how desperate he was for a break and how he was on the verge of being thrown out of his house, because he had not paid the landlord for months. Sahir apparently took out Rs.200/- (a princely sum in 1966!!) and giving it to the young Javed said: “Keep this. You will get a break soon. Until then, this will help you survive. Return it when you are able to.” As luck would have it, Javed did get a break the following week and has never had to look back, financially at least. Over the years as Javed’s career in Bollywood peaked, he would often meet Sahir in parties and industry forums and even worked with him in a couple of movies __ where Javed was writing the story and Sahir, the lyrics. Javed would openly state that Sahir’s ‘shagun’ (goodwill money) of Rs.200/- had indeed broken the jinx for him and so, he would not return the money out of fear that his luck, and good times, would run out! Sahir, in return, would often rib Javed saying, “I know how to take this back from you. One day, mark my words, I sure will.” On October 25th, 1980, Sahir suddenly died of a heart attack at age 59. Since he was not married, and he left behind only two sisters, Javed and couple of other friends arranged for his burial. Sahir, in his last years, had really not had much work and so was out of cash personally. The burial over, as the friends came back to Sahir’s house and were reviewing next steps__of clearing up the worldly belongings that Sahir had left behind__the undertaker from the Juhu (a downtown Mumbai locality) Muslim cemetery came up to the door. Javed opened it and was told by the undertaker that the cost of the burial service was Rs.200/- and that he needed to be paid. Javed had rushed instantaneously upon hearing the news of his mentor’s demise, and so he had not carried his wallet, but he had exactly Rs.200/- in his shirt pocket! When Javed paid off the undertaker, he recalled with his eyes welling up on the TV show, the realization dawned on him: “Finally, Sahir indeed took back the Rs.200/- from me,” confessed Javed saab!
As it is said in the Bible, “What goes around comes around!” (Genesis 29: 1-30).
Osho, the Master, tells us this other story that highlights the same learning. There once lived a very skilled blacksmith in ancient Rome. His name and fame had spread to far-off nations. His creations were selling like hot-cakes, in far-off marketplaces. Gradually, an enormous amount of wealth began to gather at his doorsteps. One day, Rome was suddenly invaded. The invaders demolished Rome, and captured the top hundred citizens. Amongst the top hundred citizens, the blacksmith was one. All of them were handcuffed and chained, and were taken and left on a faraway hill to die or await their execution. Among the 100 prisoners, 99 were crying. Only the blacksmith seemed to be calm and composed. He knew that the moment the soldiers abandon him in the hill, he would easily unlock the handcuff and the chains. He had that skill. So, the moment the soldiers abandoned him and left the first thing he did was to look at the handcuffs and chains that imprisoned him. He was shocked with what he saw. With his handcuffed hands he started beating his chest and began to wail in remorse. What did he see in the handcuff and the chains? A very strange thing which he had never imagined he would ever see in his Life! He had a habit to emboss his signature on whatever he created. And that is what he saw on those chains and handcuff, his own signature. They were his creations, which had got sold in some far-off marketplace, and eventually had come back to him through the invaders. Now, for the first time he became nervous and paranoid. He knew it was impossible for him to unlock himself, because he had never created anything weak. He was well acquainted with his creations. He had always designed and created the strongest and the best objects. Obviously, he had never imagined or dreamt that that the handcuff and the chains he had created, would one day imprison him. Osho teaches us the moral of this story thus: “No man ever foresees the fact that the chain and handcuff he has been creating, will be the very chain and handcuff of which he'll be ultimately held captive. No man ever dreams that that the cobwebs he has been weaving are the very webs that he will eventually get entangled in, in his Life.”
So, appreciate this sense of natural, cosmic justice! Make sure you understand this and live intelligently__always doing good!