AVIS Viswanathan's Blog, page 48

To discover your true power, just let go

We often think we are powerless and our problems are all powerful. This is the paradox of Life. The truth is our problems are powerless in the face of the grace and blessings in our lives.
Swami Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836~1886) said it so beautifully,"Hoist your sails, for the winds of grace are blowing." Those winds are always blowing. Your Life__and mine__is always blessed. But in the throes of problems, in the epicentre of your personal maelstrom you forget to do the simplest thing, to hoist your sails__which is to open yourself up, to surrender and to let go.
In the Danny Boyle film '127 Hours' , Alan Ralston prepares to die of hunger, pain, thirst and hopelessness, when he makes a last attempt to save himself__he lets go, literally, of his lower right hand. That act of letting go in his case was both physically painful and metaphorically liberating. For us, the metaphor alone should suffice and hopefully be awakening.

Each moment in your life has been waiting for you since you were born. The trajectory of your Life has been pre-cast and the problems you encounter too are the hurdles that are set up there to make you aware of your true power. To discover that power, you must just let go. When you let go, you actually invite boundless grace into your Life. It may bring pain, the thought and the act of letting go, but eventually, it leads to freedom, joy and bliss!

Drop all disappointments. Live free!

Live Life without regrets, without disappointments. When you live this way, you will see how magical and beautiful your Life is.
A friend invited me for a drink a few days ago. Along with him, at the bar, was his boss, Hemant. After the introductions were made, Hemant was keen to know what my Book, ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content without money’ (Westland, August 2014) , was all about. So, I gave him a background and said that my Book’s message was really about accepting Life for what it is and learning to be happy despite the circumstances.
Hemant heard me out. He looked away for a while as we three sat silently at the table. He then picked up his glass, drank from it, leaned forward and asked me, “What is your biggest disappointment?”
I replied, instantaneously: “I have no disappointments.”
“But how can that be,” protested Hemant, “when you are in such a terrible financial state, when you have no money to cover even your living expenses, when you owe so much to so many people. How can you say you are not disappointed with Life?”
I smiled, and explained my perspective to Hemant and my friend. It is not that I had not felt disappointed before. It is not as though I don’t feel disappointed when our efforts to put our business back on track fail every single time that we try. But you learn, I told them, to not carry a disappointment in you when you realize its futility. What is a disappointment? Simple – an unfulfilled expectation is a disappointment. A lost opportunity is a disappointment. But Life does not bother whether you have an expectation or not. If you have an expectation from Life, and it goes unfulfilled, it is your problem. Life just goes on. Similarly, you got an opportunity, and if you blew it, it’s your problem. Life gave you that opportunity, you did not make use of it. Who is to blame? And what is the point in holding on to the blame, the guilt, the disappointment – the lost moment, the lost opportunity is never going to come back. So, why feel disappointed? In my case, there’s a lot of scope for disappointment – I need not have taken some business decisions that led to our Firm’s bankruptcy and to my family being pushed to the brink of penury; I ought to have saved money for our children’s future, when our business was doing very well, and when my wife used to implore me to do so. That time’s gone. Those questionable decisions were made. The opportunities were lost. Events happened and we are in the state we are in. What has happened is irreversible. What’s the point in being disappointed now about whatever has happened in the past?
Understanding and avoiding disappointments helps in any context in Life. A disappointment always brings grief and depression along with it. Together they make a debilitating cocktail of emotions that can hold you hostage forever. Instead of being a slave to these emotions, be free. Learn from your mistakes, your choices, your decisions and let go of all disappointments and guilt. Forgive yourself for what you did. Forgive others for what they have done. When you do this, you will feel phenomenally peaceful. When you anchor in this inner peace, you will experience the beauty and magic of each moment.

On making this ‘absurd’ Life worthwhile!

Despite the absolute meaninglessness of Life itself, its absurdity, you have to make it worth living.  
Abbott cradles Hughes after the bouncer felled him
Picture Courtesy: Agencies/InternetIn today’s Hindu, noted sports writer and columnist, Nirmal Shekar, writes an open letter to New South Wales’ fast-medium bowler Sean Abbott, whose freak bouncer critically injured Phil Hughes last Tuesday  – an accident that claimed Hughes’ Life a few days later. Shekar’s letter is poignant and is an essay on Life itself. Urging Abbott to treat the incident only as an accident, Shekar talks about the absurd nature of Life. He writes: “…If the ball had climbed an inch higher or moved a shade wider, the world would be a different place for you (Abbott) today — as it would be for all of us, as cricket lovers. It was the rarest of rare accidents that cost Hughes his Life and you just happened to be at the wrong end of one of Life’s devilish deals…How can a person make sense of something that lies beyond all conventional powers of explanation, you might ask. After all, you chose to play a sport — and one of the most culturally sophisticated ones at that. And you might not have killed a fly in your Life…Why me, you might ask…But that’s Life Sean. There are no answers for certain questions, except that much of Life is down to sheer chance. And viewed from this standpoint, Life does indeed seem absurd…”
Shekar’s writing is simple and the wisdom he offers Abbott is profound. There is indeed no point in asking ‘Why me?’ in Life. People, events, situations, moods, attitudes, opportunities and challenges – most of them beyond your comprehension or control when they happen – conspire to take your Life forward. Your Life’s path is never your own doing alone. Some believe it is preordained. Others try to disagree, intellectualizing their argument with rational thinking and evidence. But whatever happens in Life, simply happens. Abbott’s and Hughes’ case is just another one in point. Two young cricketers, both of them in their prime, readying to play a big role for their national team in the upcoming World Cup – and suddenly one of them dies and the other is buried in grief and guilt; all this while playing a game that was their raison d’etre!. What did they do wrong? Nothing! They were simply playing a game! Therein lies the answer to the various contexts and situations, where we find ourselves entangled, in Life. We must recognize that we are just playing this game called Life. The only right we have is to keep playing this game well, being true to ourselves and the spirit of the game, no matter what happens to us.
And everything that happens to us will be – and is – meaningless. We came with nothing. And we will go with nothing. So, why then go through the travails of an academic education, why earn, why raise families, why create assets and why work? If none of what we acquire – degrees, wealth, name, fame and experience – is ever going to matter, why go through the grind of ‘earning-a-living’? So, evidently, everything’s meaningless.
But the purpose of Life is not to make meaning out it. It is never about you alone. And which is why you must often pause to reflect on what you are doing. Your upbringing teaches you that you must be self-obsessed with your grades, your money, your family and your career. But Life’s beauty lies in going through the unknown – called this lifetime – while being useful to others, to humanity. Life’s essence lies in being able to serve before you say you deserve! Only this attitude can make Life meaningful for you. Without this understanding, you will remain self-centered forever. And the more self-centered you are, the more you will resist the Life that is happening – and will happen – to you. That how you end up suffering and agonizing so much.
Life is just a series of events and experiences. The only way to live it well is to go through each of them with a child-like innocence and a student-like curiosity, serving humanity selflessly at every opportunity. Along the way you will learn to live your Life better and better. Every bouncer from Life will then not torment you and every fall will then not finish you. Because you will have learnt to get up, dust yourself and move on … playing on, and making a difference, until the last ball is bowled!

Learn to accept and celebrate the non-negotiable, inevitable, part of Life – Death!

Accepting and celebrating death is an important aspect of learning to live intelligently.  
Picture Courtesy: InternetCricketer Phil Hughes’ tragic accident on the field, and his passing away so suddenly, has shocked the entire world. Cricket Australia (CA) has confirmed that the first Commonwealth Bank Test Match between Australia and India, scheduled to begin on Thursday, December 4, 2014, will now be rescheduled. CA says three of its senior players, Shane Watson, David Warner and Brad Haddin, are among those who have said that they are not in the perfect state of mind to return to competitive cricket. Now, contrast this view with those expressed by two former Australian captains, Ian Chappell and Mark Taylor. They feel next week's first Test in Brisbane should go ahead as it would help the cricketers and the fans to come out and share the loss of Phillip Hughes. Taylor feels it will be difficult for the players to deal with the massive loss but “cricket is probably the best medicine to heal the pain”. Chappell, too, echoed Taylor's views, saying going back to the game is the best way to deal with the loss. "In a strange way I think it'll be best for the players if they play the first Test," Chappell was quoted in an agency report. I tend to agree with Taylor and Chappell. When someone dies, the best way is to celebrate the person’s Life – and what she or he stood for. To Hughes, cricket was his Life. And what better way to celebrate his Life than play a fascinating game of cricket?
I remember how Carnatic musician Nithyashree Mahadevan returned to singing within a couple of months after her husband committed suicide in 2012. The famous Chennai music season was on then and Nithyashree was booked to sing various concerts through most of December 2012.This sudden development shocked everyone and most definitely Nithyashree. The pictures that appeared in the media made everyone’s heart go out to her. They showed a forlorn, distraught Nithyashree and most people, while sympathizing with her, wondered how she would cope. But just two months after her tragedy, Nithyashree was back on the concert circuit. She was singing better than she had ever been. And, most importantly, she was not in grief. She presented a picture of complete acceptance and inner peace. I remember The Times of India carried a picture of her singing at that concert. The picture was captioned ‘Like A Song’. Indeed Life’s like a song. It has to be sung, and sung well, no matter what’s going on! What Nithyashree has done is truly inspiring. She has shown all of us the way that we must continue to live our lives, doing what we love doing, irrespective of what happens to us.
I believe that the human ability to cope with death is hugely crippled by the way society treats death. Death is not some gory end that society makes it out to be. It is the only thing that you can be certain of in Life. If you are born, and are alive, as you are, you will die. Period. So, you must learn to accept and appreciate death. Every one of us will die. In fact, we are all speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. So, death must be accepted as a logical end, and, as some would believe, as a new beginning, of yet another journey through another unknown. But let’s not lose our focus in over-intellectualizing death either. Simply accept death as a reality. And do everything that you can to celebrate the Life of the person who has died in your midst. Do not grieve. Do not mourn beyond a point. Recognize that death is inevitable. Take inspiration from those who live in the slums of Chennai.These people get drunk and dance as they go to cremate their dead. Reason, as one rickshaw-puller once told me, “The dead have been liberated from living on this planet! And that calls for a celebration!”

Wise words those are. And we will do well to learn from them. For, only when we accept that death is a constant, an unavoidable, non-negotiable part of our Life, that we will actually begin to live fully! And only then will we learn to celebrate the lives of those who are no longer with us! 

Get better, not bitter, from Life’s experiences

Each moment in Life has a reason for it being there__to make you complete and to help you reach and realize your ordained potential.
Of course, some of those moments are challenging, and at times, the aggregation of such moments can become a phase lasting several years. If you see it as Life's conspiracy to torture and beat you to pulp, that's how you will feel__trampled upon, betrayed, despondent and bitter. But if you treat it as a part of a larger Cosmic Design to make you stronger, skilled and resourceful, you will feel better, liberated and energized each day.
Two days ago I was at an event where my teacher from Junior and High School (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan), Chandra Srinivasan, was being given a Lifetime Achievement Award for completing 51 years as a teacher. It was a special moment for me. Way back in 1978~80, when I was her student, my parents had to move from Chennai to Gulbarga, Karnataka, on account of my dad taking up a job there. They decided to leave me with my grandparents so that my academic career doesn’t get disrupted. But I didn’t cope with this separation well. Always an outstanding or above average performer until then, I started doing badly in most subjects. It was Chandra who noticed that I was perhaps homesick and she summoned my parents to take me out of school – and with them. My mother did not take kindly to my teacher’s perspective. She felt that my teacher had dumped me because of my poor grades and that I had failed the family by being a bad student. This led me to rebel as a teenager – I just did not focus on my academics from then on. This, naturally, caused a lot of anxiety for my parents and I often felt humiliated at school and at home. To escape all of this, I began immersing myself in reading and writing. Over the next seven years, I evolved to be a writer – a self-taught trait that helped me start a career in journalism. At the event to recognize Chandra, I was called upon to felicitate her. I was honored. And I thanked her profusely for her wisdom and insight. Without her (rightly) advising that my parents take me out of school, I may have perhaps never become a writer – it is not relevant anymore the journey I had to take to become one! I feel if I am author today, of “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money” (Westland, August 2014), it is because of what happened in my Life around 1980, 34 years ago!
I remember reading an amazing story in Forbes magazine on the 81-year-old, unputdownable, pop Diva, Asha Bhosle. Asha 'tai' opens up in that story on the tumultuous years of her first marriage with Bhosle, when he used to often beat her and made her feel worthless and unwanted. She eventually left him and her home. However, looking back on that phase in her Life she says, with no rancor or ill-feeling,"If I hadn't gotten married, I wouldn't have left home. I wouldn't have become a singer. If I had not met Bhosle (and married him), I wouldn't have become Asha Bhosle!!!"
Think about your Life. You__and I__are the sum of the experiences we have been through. To be bitter from them or better from them is a personal choice we must exercise. We will do well seeing each moment__with its opportunity or challenge__as one that is designed exclusively for our learning and evolution. That's when we will discover joy in the now and our lives will overflow with happiness.

A Life lesson from the humble bitter gourd

If you want to change anything about your Life, change yourself first – from within!
Here's a fable to illustrate this point.  A bunch of disciples invited 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. 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 the disciple finished saying the, the moral of the guru's abstinence from the “pilgrimage” dawns on all his disciplines.

Transformation in you cannot happen by changing the environment or by being ritualistic. Transformation has to happen from within. A holy gip or 'Ganga Snan'cannot change who you are unless you choose to change yourself. Only when you change from within will your Life change!

#PainTeachesYouPatience

The biggest role that pain plays in our lives is that it teaches us patience and acceptance.
A post on facebook by Chennai Live 104.8 FM RJ Jane Jeyakumar, that I saw this morning, got me thinking. Jane, it appears, has injured her left thumb (hope she gets well soon!). She hash-tagged her post reporting the injury saying #PainTeachesYouPatience. She said it – and has said it so well!
We often think that Life is conspiring against us when we are confronted with pain. It might through an injury like Jane’s or it can be a graver health challenge or a relationship issue or death of loved one. Through any of these or similar situations, what we must recognize is that Life has no agenda. It just keeps on happening. Sometimes what happens to us meets our expectations. And sometimes it does not meet our expectations. Often, in fact, we are neither ready for nor are we wanting what happens to us. That’s when we experience pain. Who wants a cancer or a pink slip or the death of child or separation from a loved one? But chances of pain happening to us exist as long as Life is happening to us. As long as we are alive. And the only reason, this is my personal, experiential view, pain exists is to make us all better human beings – to make us more patient with and more accepting of Life.
I remember in the hey days of our business, when as a start-up consulting Firm, we were clocking revenues of Rs.2 Crore+, I used to be so impatient. I would jump at every situation that did not meet my expectations – a delayed client inflow, a poorly groomed team member, my children waking up late for school or a comma or a full-stop missing in an email. I was nicknamed chiefscreamer(my business title is chiefdreamer) by my team members at work. And then when my Firm went bust and we had to shut down our offices, I learnt acceptance of our new, painful reality – the hard way. I remember sitting in our office one afternoon, as we were winding down operations, tearing up posters of our Firm’s Vision and Mission. We had no place to put up these posters elsewhere or even store them. So they had to be shredded lest they end up in a garbage dump somewhere. It was such a painful exercise. Heart-wrenching for someone like me who loved my Firm so much. But I went through that entire exercise patiently that day – physically letting go of everything that my Firm once stood for and looked like. That’s when it struck me that, over the years of our tumultuous bankruptcy, I had learnt to be patient. I had become stronger in being able to do what had to be done without being emotional about it. Indeed, all my pain had helped me grow and evolve both as a manager and as a human being.

The lesson here for all of us is that pain is not a choice. It is inevitable. But when you accept and embrace pain, you have the opportunity to learn and evolve from it. If you resist it, on the other hand, questioning its presence and wishing it away, you will suffer. Respect pain as you would respect a teacher. And it will teach you to be patient in and with Life!  

Anger drains the spiritual energy in you

Have you ever wondered what makes you angry? Is it the object or circumstance or outcome you desire that makes you fret, fume and lose control over yourself or is it your desire itself?
All the time, you will discover when you think through this, it is your desire that gets you all keyed up. Consider these situations: 1. You order a coffee and it arrives lukewarm. You get angry. Is the coffee to be blamed for your anger? Or is the waiter responsible for it? Or is your desire that the coffee be warm fuelling your anger? 2. You see a passenger cutting across an airline check-in queue. Who is responsible for your anger: your desire for decorum among public or the insensitive passenger? 3. Your boss doesn't give you an opportunity you truly deserve. Is your irrational boss to be blamed for your anger or is your perfectly rational expectation making you angry? Remember that the discussion here is on what makes you angry and not whether the circumstance or person in question is right or wrong.
The only way to deal with anger is to understand that it is your unfulfilled desire/expectation that causes you to get angry over any situation. And so start with yourself first on this journey to know how to manage your anger. All your efforts to change the environment and people around you will produce zero results. However, you can cover major ground when you seek within. When you go within, tempering your expectations, you end up learning to control your emotional outbursts, conserving oodles of energy, and, invariably, you will find more peaceful, purposeful, productive methods to change the environment, people and circumstances that angered you in the first place. Change every 'Damn!' or 'How dare you?' that arises in your mind, with, 'Interesting!' or 'How can I stay calm and help myself?' statements.
This is not as difficult as it seems. Most of the time we miss the opportunity to be calm in a challenging situation because we take a person or an event very seriously. Instead take everyone and everything lightly. If something happens the way you wanted it, great! If it falls short of your expectations – try to get it to your standards. If you can’t still get it to be the way you want it, shrug your shoulders and move on. Getting angry is only going to make you feel more miserable. Your anger may be directed at someone or something else. But remember it arises from within you. It has to first harm you, vanquish you, before it even strikes the other person or thing at whom it is directed.
I have read Osho, the Master, tell the story of a great Sufi mystic, Junnaid. Every evening, in his prayers, Junnaid  used to thank creation for its compassion, for its love, for its care.
Once it happened that for three days Junnaid and his disciples were traveling and they came across villages where people were very anti-Junnaid, because they thought his teachings were not exactly the teachings of Mohammed. His teachings seemed to be his own and people thought that he was corrupting them.
So from the three villages they had not got any food, not even water. On the third day they were really in a bad shape. His disciples were thinking, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to creation:‘You are compassionate to us; your love is there. You care about us, and we are grateful to you.’?”
But when the time to pray came, Junnaid prayed the same way. After the prayer one of his followers said, “This is too much. For three days we have suffered hunger and thirst. We are tired, we have not slept, and still you are saying to creation:‘You are compassionate, your love towards us is great, and you take so much care that we are grateful to you.’”
Junnaid replied: “My prayer does not depend on any condition; those things are ordinary. Whether I get food or not I don’t want to bother creation about it — such a small thing in such a big Universe. If I don’t get water…even if I die, it does not matter, my prayer will remain the same. Because in this vast Universe…it makes no difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”


That is a big learning for us. Don’t take yourself or anyone else or anything seriously. Be easy. Take it easy. Anger is one of the biggest source of draining the cosmic, spiritual, energy in you. If you can learn to productively channelize all the energy that you expend when you are angry, you will have scaled one of the highest peaks of self-realization.

Let your sadness make way for joy!

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 expect. 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, often times even shocking, events has thrown up. A loss always points to a gain in the future. A loss also teaches you, through your grief, what is more valuable to you 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, not grief and sorrow!
If someone insults you, you must celebrate because you have now the opportunity to learn to live with an insult. A capability that you never thought existed in you. 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!

So, in effect, there are no sad endings in Life. Why then be sad about the interludes over which we have no control? A beautiful song from the John Abraham movie 'Jhoota Hi Sahi' (2010, Abbas Tyrewala, A R Rahman, Javed Ali, Chinmayi) comes to mind. It is among the most spiritual songs to emerge from Bollywood recently. The message is simple: Why Cry! Life's too short to be spent in sadness and worrying!  

Be alive in each moment by being present in it

Every once in a while step aside from your Life and observe yourself. As a third party. You will then discover how much you have to change for your Life to change!
We met a young lady recently who is obese, has hypertension and complained of her inability to stay focused. She said she is simply not able to prioritize and manage her time and tasks effectively. Many people are in this young lady’s situation – grappling with their home and work schedules, unable to find time for themselves, coping with lifestyle-related challenges like diabetes and hypertension and, overall, just going through the paces of Life, never really being able to live it fully! There’s only one way such people can “re-engineer” and “reinvent” themselves. They have to learn to be mindful. It’s an art – and it can be mastered with understanding and practice.
Mindfulness is the ability to be, to stay in the present moment. Many a time, we keep doing stuff – cooking, cleaning, driving, smoking or eating. We don’t concentrate on what we are doing. Our mind is elsewhere. Our activities then are just chores. Which is why we are unable to “see” that what we could be doing is “ruinous”. We know, for instance, that smoking is ruinous, over-eating is ruinous, not exercising is ruinous. But we go on doing these things. Mindlessly. Which is why observing your own Life, and viewing it dispassionately as a third party, helps. When you observe yourself you will realize how mindlessly you go through your days. You simply are going through hurried motions. You are not present in any of your actions. You are merely activity-driven. You are never in the moment. For instance, you are working overtime to send your kids to school – but never pausing to celebrate and enjoy their innocence. You are rushing to finish your bath – but are never enjoying your body. You are eating in a rush – but are not tasting and relishing your food. You are texting away madly – but are never celebrating how much smaller the world has become thanks to facebook and WhatsApp. It is only by being mindful in each moment that you can really understand what about you needs to change.
Try a simple exercise in mindfulness. Make yourself a cup of green tea. And drink it patiently enjoying every sip. Feel the tea energize you as it enters your body. Don’t let your thoughts wander. Be focused on the experience of drinking that tea. Examine how you felt while drinking it. This experience of being one with the tea, this feeling, is what mindfulness is all about. Follow this method in everything that you do. When cooking, focus on the recipe and its preparation. When driving focus on the road and the joy of navigation. When on facebook, celebrate the opportunity to connect with the world, your world. Every time your mind wanders, to a past event and makes you feel guilty or to a future event and makes you anxious, bring it back to attend on whatever you are doing now. Remember the human mind is like the human body. It will resist any change first. But repeatedly bringing the mind back to focus on the present, you can train it to let go of the past and to not indulge in the future.
When you are fully present in each moment, you are alive in it. It is only then that you are living the moment fully. When you live each moment fully, you will realize its value. And through this realization, you will be able to transform yourself – your work, your schedules, your health and your Life!