Nistha Tripathi's Blog, page 3

Back to Auroville

With so many places to visit, I rarely find myself excited about revisiting what I have already seen. But the love affair that began with Auroville this February has brought me back to the Neverland – this time, for longer duration with an open-ended plan. This is the place which introduced me to Mindfulness and Consciousness. After all, Dec-Feb are the most beautiful days here with lovely breeze and lush greenery. And I have heard writers and artists hang out here often

As I sit quietly in my serene Guesthouse, I ponder upon the last few weeks when Chennai floods hit, chaos ensued and my trip seemed in danger of abandonment. But choices emerged as they always do and I improvised as I always do. Sometimes, it is better not to plan too much and let yourself drift. I got a fresh loaf of bread from bakery this morning and some eggs. And there are these cute looking bananas. The idea of rustic meals, minimalistic living, and just reading and writing for the heck of it excites me more than a 5-star vacation. In the end, I am here and looking forward to what this visit entails. I distinctly remember the last special visit in February. Read this Quora answer to see how I fell in love with Auroville.

I am here on a creative break after working hard over last few months. Beyond that, there is not much plan. However, I did scratch few notes for myself. And perhaps, this is meaningful for you too when/if you go on a self-exploration or a new place.

Goals:
– broaden the perspective
– feel driven and refreshed
– reinforce peace and value of meaningful relationships
– meditate, yoga, be mindful
– discover yourself, cut out the noise. Awaken the dreamer and the artist

Do’s:
– Take a bike and explore everyday
– Talk to new people everyday (use solar kitchen, Auroville units, visitor center etc)
– Eat what you like, experiment (try new things)
– Get ‘your’ time. Relish the solitude
– Be thankful for this time

Dont’s:
– Coop up in the guesthouse room
– Waste all morning sleeping
– Overwork, this is your creative break
– Let fears take over
– Be stingy
– Finishing the book is not the goal but to write freely is

A dear friend reminds that having any goals is against the idea of free flowing. So yeah, chuck the goals, let things happen

 

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TMJ 4: 10 things I learned in 10 days of Silence and Meditation

This is the fourth post in The Meditation Journal series. You can read previous posts here.

I hear a faint bell at 4 am that signals that the day is on. I walk out in the dawn that is yet to come, clutch the blanket tightly around me and climb few stairs up to the Meditation Hall. In my assigned seat, I sit down cross legged on the meditation cushion, back straight and eyes closed. A day of Vipassana begins in that dark hall as my breathing goes slow and slower. My body rebels and so does my brain. They want to be in control as they have always been. They threaten me with aches and distraction but I know even the wildest bull can be tamed. So, I continue breathing, watching my body and observing the sensations.

10 hours of this exercise every day for 10 days – days that you spend in quiet, contemplation and a journey inward. You do not speak or communicate, you partake of a simple vegetarian meal once a day, you do not keep your phone, book or diary. You just be and observe. Perhaps, it is the first time when you really see yourself for who you are. And, this is what Vipassana is all about.

[Vishesh (special) + pashya (to see) = to observe things as they are]

It is an excruciating journey that has cured drug and cigarette addicts on one hand and scared the weak-willed away on the other. You get what you put in. At the end of 10 days at Dharamkot, Vipassana course, I came out although not with a halo but a subtle glow of self-realization. This is what I learned.

Vipassana Campus, Dharamkot
1. Experience is everything in the realms of spirituality

While we can learn how to make fire from someone else’s experience, reading about meditation can never make you an expert at it. Gautam Buddha’s achieving enlightenment does nothing to my spiritual growth. The people who have demystified the causes of human suffering can only give us a path to follow but unless I walk that path, I cannot eliminate my suffering. So, practice is the only way. While I had been reading about meditation and consciousness for some time, sitting 8-10 hours per day meditating for 10 days hammered down the concept in my mind in a way that intellectual discussions cannot.   

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.Gautama Buddha, Sayings Of Buddha

2. The best place to address a problem is at its root

At Vipassana, we are taught to sever the weeds of our suffering at its very root. Extending this practice to other aspects of life, I have started to re-examine why some relationships are stressful, why it is hard to work with some people, what kind of work makes me happier and vice versa. By trying to understand the causes, I do not dab superficially at curing the side effects. What I have noticed is that the act of realizing the underlying root cause itself (without actually solving it) can make half the problem go away.

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.Charles Franklin Kettering

3. Let go of a desire to control

While it helps to think you are in control of the situation, are you really? Looking back at the major events in your life, you would realize how little you controlled the course of events and the outcome. Instead of bothering over it, I find it helpful to go with the flow, know that I am trying my best but not be attached to the outcome. So, whatever happens, I can enjoy the moment. Remember that the eagle soars against the wind and not with it. In the course, I had no control over what I get to eat, who I am sharing bathroom with or who sits next to me. As long as I tried controlling it one way or another, I was tensed. The moment I accepted it and it even meant breaking some rules involuntarily, my self relaxed and not only did I enjoy my time there but also I got more out of it – my awareness and some delightful friends.

Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.Terence McKenna

4. We are over-communicating

This was most unexpected. Living without a phone and Facebook is easier than I thought. I spent 10 days with no access to phone, email and social media. For 10 days, I was supposed to not utter a single word and not even look others in the eyes – this is known as ‘noble silence’. It is better than it sounds. The end result was that I had so much active time in the day and my brain was less cluttered with information and opinions. While social media helps us being in touch with what is happening around us, I feel the downside outweighs the positives because our mind spends more time brooding on negative feelings than other way round. What I perceive as information and communication is, at times, nothing but noise. When cut off from these things, I missed the connectivity perhaps for a day and then my mind started using its creativity. It was like it came home after being lost in the noise and it was beautiful.   

One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

Noble Silence
5. When you are left on your own, your most negative thoughts surface up

Being in Vipassana is like roaming exposed in the wilderness of your silence. You are vulnerable to your own self. Your deep embedded insecurities, fears, hatreds, regrets have no place to hide anymore. You feel naked, shameful and ugly. Some react by running away from the course, some by crying out or some might even go in depression. The key is to let these impurities rinse out. Face them, acknowledge them and accept them. They will go away slowly and you will become comfortable with yourself. You will appreciate the beauty that is you. It is the best form of emotional catharsis you can experience. I know a fellow meditator whose tears did not stop for an hour on the 4th day of the course. Once you have acknowledged and understood these negative energies, you can empty them out and fill that space with newer and better energies.

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.Brené Brown

My room in Vipassana course
6. All you have to do is persist longer than the pain and failures

Life is nothing but a game of persistence. No matter what happens, what the odds are, the one who gives up first loses. When sitting 10 hours for meditation, at one point the pain would become unbearable. But as you persist, your tolerance grows. As you persist through the worst shooting pains and externalize your mind to observe the pain objectively, understanding that it is impermanent, the pain gives in. It might be still there but it stops hurting you. Instead of reacting to every little discomfort, sometimes it works to just acknowledge it and move through it. This way you are not spending unnecessary energy to confront and resist it and you can eventually beat it! This is how we train our mind in Vipassana course, taking one baby step at a time. While an untrained mind is our worst enemy, a trained mind can be our most powerful ally. And, it is fun to tame it because it resists. It wanders and you tell it to focus on a subtle thing like breathing. It rebels, it wanders and tries to distract you again. This tug of war continues until you or your mind surrender. The question is – who wins in your case?

O snail

Climb Mount Fuji

But slowly, slowly!Kobayashi Issa

7. Empathy is liberating

As we witness fair amount of ups and downs in life, it is easy to feel victimized and put blame on someone so as to give an outlet to our negative energies. I have done this myself but eventually those negative energies do not really go out, they keep smoldering in ourselves, burning us from inside, bit by bit. Another side of this coin is to constantly worry about our image in front of others. Most people keep feeling guilty or conscious about something or how others are seeing them but the reality is that no one has time to think about you. Once I started looking at others with empathy instead of a positive or negative bias, a burden shifted off my shoulders – it did not matter what they thought, I could just wish them well. It is liberating to not having to worry about judging or being judged.

No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.Theodore Roosevelt

8. I am the problem and I am the solution

It was important to understand the root of my misery. Is it that I lack something and if I can get that, my life would have no problem anymore? Is it true that if I can fix the other people, my boss or neighbor or partner, that I will get rid of pain? The answer is no, misery neither comes from externalities nor can it be solved by trying to fix those. It comes from our nature to REACT when something unwanted happens. While we cannot control externalities, we can understand that reaction is not helping. Our mind has a conscious(intellectual) and a subconscious (sensation+reaction) part. Conscious part can be trained to understand that we should not react but subconscious mind is where the reaction occurs and it cannot be trained. In my understanding, Vipassana helps expand our conscious mind and reduce the impact of spontaneous, rebellious subconscious mind.

Searching outside of you is Samsara (the world). Searching within you leads to Nirvana.Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style

9. Multitasking is a poison

My browser usually has 7+ tabs open. Leave apart the iTunes music playing in the background, Kindle lying around, word documents open, half written articles on scrivener and of course the biggest source of distraction, iPhone, buzzing every two minutes in the close vicinity. I would think, oh I can multitask and get so much done. The reality is other way around. Our attention spans are drastically shortening and that habit of checking Facebook every twenty minutes is costing our productivity dearly. At Vipassana, when all I could do was think or meditate, my creativity shot up like crazy. And whenever I was able to focus on just one thing – walk when you are walking, eat when you are eating, meditate when I was sitting for meditation and think when I was sitting in the break time, I felt fulfilled and accomplished. My mind was uncluttered, sharp and focused. Multitasking dulls out our brains, hampers our cognitive capacity and wastes time in switching contexts between the tasks. Bottomline is if you want to be productive, stop multitasking. Close those extra tabs, set up specific times for facebooking and be disciplined.    

I want to lengthen, not shorten, my attention span, and most of the material splendors of the twenty-first century bully me in the opposite direction. Fault is mine – I can’t afford the newest gadgets and I’m not a natural multitasker.Phillip Connors

10. This too shall change

We have all heard the phrase ‘look within’ so often that we fail to grasp the gravity of it. I have read the Bhagavad Gita and attended workshops on consciousness. I knew I was supposed to be equanimous and conscious but I could not find the answer to ‘how’. At Vipassana, I learned exactly that and for that reason alone, I became a believer. Here I was, spending hours objectively observing the sensations in my body and watching their passing nature. Suffering and pain result in similar impermanent sensations and what is the point of wasting my emotions on something that is fleeting? The same rule applies to feeling of addiction or attachment. How long do you feel happy about that new car you bought? One month? May be five, but it goes away at some point and you start wanting something bigger. No excitement and no suffering stays forever. It goes away. And this is how the numbness in my calf and prickling sensation in my back went away too. So, shall my cravings, aversion and anger.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.Jonathan Safran Foer

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.Alan W. Watts

Looking out from Dining Hall windows

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TMJ 3: Breath counting technique of Meditation

This is the third post in The Meditation Journal series. You can read previous posts here.

I had tried Meditation previously as well. But except for sitting with a quiet mouth, this was hardly an achievement. I tried to follow random advice including focusing on a physical object or focusing on a mental vision but it simply did not work for me.

In Auroville, Partho said something interesting. He brought every point back to ‘living in the moment‘. What did it mean really?

When we say that we cannot concentrate, we are simply referring to how occupied our mind is with our past and future. But if we can bring ourselves to focus only on present moment, there would be less running around for the mind to do. The former is known as the kshipta (scatter brained) state of mind and the latter is ekagra (one-pointed). After all, through meditation, we are trying to cultivate a calm/ekagra (one-pointed) mind so that we can think in a sahaj bhaav and then move on to niruddha mind (fully arrested in concentration). The very meaning of meditating is to engage in thought or contemplation. The first step is to prepare a mental environment conducive for such an act. This is also the step where most of us fail and drop out.

src: pinterest

Having failed at my previous attempts at meditating, I decided to follow a proven meditation technique after coming back from Auroville. I read about the breath counting technique (src: David Michie’s Buddhism for busy people) and it seemed to be a good starting point. To put it simply, you sit in a comfortable posture and try counting your breaths – as many as you can. Of course, it is hardly as easy as it sounds. The trick is to focus on the breath and count it. This is the precise procedure-

Sit in a comfortable posture (on ground cross legged, not necessarily padmasana, or even chair)
Close your eyes
Inhale and while exhaling, count your breath focusing on the tip of your nose
Every time you exhale air through your nostril, you increase your count
The moment you realize your thoughts have drifted away, you reset your count to zero
Do this counting for two minutes or as long as you can. The goal is to count at least 10 breaths in a go

The essence of this technique is to engage your mind in the process of counting so that it is not chasing other thoughts. But after counting 3 or 4 breaths, I started thinking of my work. ‘I have to pay the phone bill’, ‘I should call my CA’, ‘I haven’t yet booked my ticket’ etc etc. ‘Oh, I was supposed to count breaths, lets start again’. You get the picture. It is hard to even count 10 breaths sincerely in the beginning. What you can do is to make the process of counting even more engaging. So like we are counting on exhaling, start saying ‘and’ as you inhale. Thus, we have given our mind something to do both on inhaling and exhaling. Good. Remember, our mind is like an energetic pet Spaniel constantly looking for a new ball to fetch. Keep it occupied so that in the next step, we can start stilling it.

My first week was hard. I barely reached 6-7 breaths at a stretch. But then, it improved. This is how my next couple of weeks were like – I would sit for a minimum of 10 minutes and be able to count breaths till 10-15 at one time.

The main challenge is to not give up. You will have a troubled time counting breaths and you seem to be getting no where. It is easy to think of discontinuing this futile exercise. I had made up my mind to sit and meditate everyday whether I reach the desired goal or not. I began with a strong will and kept at it. Don’t look for results, just show up for your practice.

It reminds me of another beautiful quote Partho told us –

The thing about habit – if you take out ‘h’, ‘a bit’ remains. If you take out ‘a’, ‘bit’ remains; if you take out ‘b’, ‘it’ still remains.

So, make it your habit. Also, I did not fuss too much over the timing or rules. I decided that I will find my way of stilling my mind. I am not a morning person and I meditate around 1:30-2 pm. Who cares? Sit at night or spend five minutes in your office chair trying to do this. Seriously, who cares? The important thing is to keep doing it instead of trying to get it right. Buddha himself has said that he doesn’t intend that people take his word on the face value. He wanted them to try the process of awakening for themselves. Meditation is an intimate experience that cannot be learned through books or blogs. And what worked for me may not work for you.

src: blog.freepeople.com

At this point, it may still not be clear what we are achieving from this. Let it be. Keep a journal of your experience. How is this little practice of meditating impacting rest of your day? It’s ok even if we are not seeing any changes. How are you feeling? Just keep a note of it. You may not realize it but you have already started the process of transformation. Keep going.

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TMJ 2: How does Meditation help?

This is the second post in The Meditation Journal series. You can read previous posts here.

Many might think that Meditation is a fad, a new status symbol or God knows what. I mean what’s up with all those Buddha paintings and ‘zen’ talk? Why is everyone rushing to meditate these days? What do they do sitting there? For a long time, I had tried to meditate with little success. I felt a major change in my attitude towards meditation when I read actually what it is supposed to do. And, I got an answer to ‘Why should I meditate?’

I am summarizing few points from various books by David Michie on the subject of Buddhism and Meditation. So, following are not my original ideas but I can vouch for some of these after practicing Meditation over last couple of months now.

This is how Meditation helps you physically-
Stress Management

Practices around meditation identify body and mind to be a holistic system rather than separate entities. This helps you understand how controlling one’s mind (because that is what meditation is in simplistic terms) in turn, impacts the physical aspects of your body. Meditation causes breathing to slow down which decreases your blood pressure and in turn helps you relax. Do not confuse this with resting (sitting idle does not decrease the rate of your metabolism as meditation does).

When we meditate the lactate concentration in our blood also decreases by up to a third. Blood lactate level is associated with tension and high blood pressure, and the infusion of lactate in the blood produces symptoms of anxiety.

 

Meditation increases the production of endorphins on our body (same hormone released when we consume chocolate, indulge in sex etc). It causes a feel-good emotion and creates positive mind-body states.

Dr. Herbert Benson from Harvard Medical School said, ‘repeated activation of the relaxation response can reverse sustained problems in the body and mend the internal wear and tear brought on by stress’.

Reducing the risk of heart diseases

One clinical trial took 103 patients suffering from coronary heart disease, and over a sixteen-week period showed that the group which practised meditation did much better than a control sample who simply received education about their condition.

Their blood pressure had reduced by 3.4 mmHg (systolic) at the end of the trial compared with an increase of 2.8 mmHg for the health education (control) group.

 

Meditation also made the heart patients physically more robust and increased their exercise tolerance. Thus, the interplay between body and mind is clearly proven otherwise how can one explain such physical improvements by a practice which is considered sedentary.

Boosting immunity

DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) is another powerful hormone that has been shown to increase with regular meditation (it helps in improving our immune system). Regular meditators are known to be less affected (in some cases, also got past) by allergies, flu etc.

Fighting cancer

This is my favorite and the one which I hope many people can know about.

Melatonin, produced by the pineal gland in the brain, as well as other parts of the body,has also been shown in lab studies to stimulate cells called osteoblasts that promote bone growth. Lower levels of melatonin stimulate the growth of certain types of cancer cells, while adding melatonin inhibits their growth. While we have no definitive evidence right now that meditation helps prevent breast and prostate cancer, we do know two things: that meditation boosts melatonin production, and that people with breast and prostate cancer have lower melatonin levels. Until such time as further clinical work is completed, we can’t formally join the dots—but the dots are there.

 

Some personal experiences by cancer patients have been reported where in regular meditation helped in combating the side effects of chemotherapy to the extent that the patients showed no hairloss etc.

Lowering the rate of ageing

DHEA also has another bearing with age factor. It decreases as we age. As DHEA levels plunge, ageing related problems come to the fore more strongly. DHEA has powerful anti-inflammatory properties. Chronic inflammation is known to play a critical role in the development of many diseases of ageing, including heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis and certain cancers. It prevents atrophy, dementia, depression and many other age correlated problems.

The longer we maintain higher DHEA levels, the longer we put off the many problems that accompany old age. And the practice of meditation achieves exactly this.

 

A study by Dr Robert Keith Wallace showed that those who had been practising Transcendental Meditation for over five years had a biological age twelve years younger than their chronological age.

This is how Meditation helps you psychologically-

Use of fMRI shows that brain’s circuits in the right prefrontal cortex are the most active when a person is angry, agitated or depressed. Whereas, when people are happy, energised or up-beat, activity shifts to the left prefrontal cortex.

 

A neuroscientist Dr Richard Davidson ran the test on an experienced Tibetan lama and his activity showed to be positioned on the most extreme left of the happiness spectrum. Meditation also helps keep your mind at an even keel and preventing mood swings.

Meditation is closely linked to Mindfulness which means paying attention on the present moment. By doing this, we prevent our mind from living in past or future, pain or anxiety and thereby spending unnecessary energies on these. This is an extremely difficult thing to practice but can be miraculous in long run. Practicing mindfulness and consciousness also leads to reduction of negative thoughts and depression.

MRI images of the brain of a novice meditator show signs of pain nearly disappear (source: Robert Coghill/Wake Forest University School of Medicine)

 

I wrote this answer originally on Quora.

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Poetry returns Home

written a poem after a long time-

You do not choose to read

or understand poetry; it chooses

whether you deserve it or not

It finds its cradle and coffin

It finds the heart that bleeds

And when it finds a home, it tears

open all the doors and windows;

try shutting down you might

but it enters from the crevices

like a whiff of lady of the night

-Nistha

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Featured on Femina

I cannot help but wonder how unpredictable life is. When I graduated from University of Illinois, I envisioned myself working in hi-tech fields. But things changed and I found myself needing a business education which led me to NYU to pursue full-time MBA. Within one year, I had hustled my way into New York’s buzzing entrepreneurial scene and I dropped out of the MBA that thousands of students dream of. With more twists in life, I was back in India ready to build tech products and run a tech startup. Along with building 2-3 great products, I found myself publishing a spiritual fiction novel! I mean I was not spiritual or religious 4 years ago. To write it, publish it and then finding people loving it is something I could never ever have imagined. If this is not a testament to our higher consciousness that we don’t bother to harness and karmic cycle, then I don’t know what is.

This is an on-going process of self discovery for me. Interestingly, I am featured on Femina’s May edition to talk about this very journey. What I love about this article is its organic origin. It is not a PR piece. It is written by Kavita who loved Seven Conversations and that is why this holds a special place in my heart. Hope you will like it.

And, if you still haven’t read Seven Conversations, please get it right now and also pass on to your book lover friends! Here are some of it’s noteworthy reviews.

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TMJ 1: From chaos we begin

This is the first post in The Meditation Journal series.

Imagine a big musical drum and you are asked to make a beautiful rangoli on it i.e. on the flat stretched surface of the drum. Seems simple, right? You take the color powder in one hand and with a chutki, pick some of it. Just as you begin drawing on the stretched drum surface, someone comes and start beating the drum or rather playing it. What happens? The color powder that you are drawing with on the surface is all messed up, mixed and even thrown out. You can try all your patience but as long as the drum is being played and hit, you cannot draw your rangoli the way you wanted despite how hard you try.

This drum is your mind and your rangoli is nothing but your ability to focus, meditate or find your consciousness. The sticks are the worldly concerns (How am I going to earn more? How do I take care of my children? Should I move to another place?) and illusions that keep beating on our mind, never letting it rest for a moment. So, unless we learn to curb or control the sticks, we will never be able to draw the power of consciousness amidst the chaos that is created in our mind. The world out there is playing a cacophonous noise and your mind is itching to join in on the concert. Amidst all this, you are trying to focus and weed out the illusions and understand life. This can only work when you know how to stop being a drum and how to not let the useless worries play a stick to that drum.

Is it easy? Heck, no. Can it be done? Yes. Should it be done? It is the only rescue.

src: http://www.scrapbookgraphics.com/

This is how I have come to understand the chaos of mind. This is the blurry landscape from where the exploration begins in search of a symphony of light.

It brings me to the topic of Meditation and ‘why is it needed?’. Why is it so important to curb this chaos? We will get to it in the next post. For now, just let the most important journey of your life begin.

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Announcing ‘The Meditation Journal’

Last year, I did a personal photo essay project Tretar that I thoroughly enjoyed. It got too consuming at times but in the end, it was worth more than I could imagine. I wrote nearly 5000 words in those 24 posts. This year started on exciting notes and saw me traveling to a place I had always wanted to see – Pondicherry. What I did not anticipate was discovering the real gem – Auroville. Thanks to a Morpheus planned retreat on exploring higher consciousness, I found myself sauntering through the dusty red lanes of this very interesting town. I added couple of days extra to explore and spend some time writing. If you do not know much about Auroville, you should read about it and better yet, check it out! It is an experimental township that was created on a wasteland and harbors the philosophy of oneness as visualized by Mother (read about Sri Aurobindo and Mother) – “Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.”

From its organic food to spectacular architecture to the feel of community, Auroville has become one of my favorite places in India. It was in this serene environment that we began our 3 day workshop with Partho. There was no agenda and no goal. I did not even know what to expect. We entered this hall in Verite where the session was scheduled. It was a high and wide hall with magnificent windows and a big glass hole on the top that bathed the whole room with ample sunlight. The trees outside rustled and filtered the air. We took our seats on the cushions and chairs. Roughly at 9, the session started and Partho asked, ‘So what do you guys want to know?’. It was perhaps a weird way to open but it could not have been better. The whole 3 day workshop continued as a QnA after that. From 9 to 5, we just talked and talked for 3 days. I am not going to bore you with the details here but will pick up on some insightful threads in the series I intend to do for my blog this year – The Meditation Journal.

So yes, my Tretar project for 2015 is to unravel the mystery of Meditation. I am a novice at it and I shall transcribe my experiences of tackling it head-on. How far shall I go remains to be seen. My interest has been piqued since this workshop because some of the things we talked about seemed so right to me. It answered some of my questions, clarified many doubts and opened up a new direction of thought. And it also shed light upon something that has always intrigued me – How to approach Meditation? What is it? Why? How? And, I think many people have the same questions. After coming back, I further explored the topic and happened to read more on Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and even some Tibetan Buddhist approaches. I am thoroughly enjoying this exploration and I am sure other Meditation enthusiasts will too. So, if you are interested, join me in this voyage – let’s find out together if it demystifies you or is it just a hoax Either ways, we will come out enlightened!

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Can Intel power a Digital India?

When I was working on Wall Street back in 2007, there were talks of getting a specialized hardware processor designed for high frequency trading applications so that we could outdo our competitors by microseconds. It was the perfect example of achieving a specific goal by an intelligent marriage of hardware and software. With increasing population moving online, India is witnessing an outbreak in Internet penetration. Internet Users in India will cross 300 million mark by December 2014 according to ‘Internet in India 2014’ report jointly published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International and is expected to cross 500 million users before end of 2016. No surprise then, that the popular BJP government is taking more interest in Digital India than its predecessors. We all know that Internet services are the future and so does Narendra Modi. I smile everytime I receive an email from different Ministeries or the PMO wishing me Happy Independence Day or Happy Diwali.

But execution of e-governance is not an easy thing especially when you are talking about a population of more than 1 Billion. This is where the role of hardware and companies like Intel comes into play. Imagine a lightning fast website of IRCTC or SBI. Imagine you never having to step out to stand in long queues for Aadhar cards. On the lines of above example of Wall Street, India can benefit a lot from specialized hardware for processing higher traffic in a country like India. With so much untapped potential in healthcare data, energy related innovation, agriculture reforms, the time is ripe for a Digital India. To make a meaningful growth, the only option is to penetrate rural India with innovative solutions at low cost. I believe these sectors in villages can especially gain from such innovation:

Agriculture – As global warming is severely affecting the climate, there is a dire need for protecting farms from adverse and untimely weather changes. Recent rains in March as seen a lot of crops being destroyed and farmers pushed to suicides. Digitized farms with temperature control and mechanized irrigation can not only solve weather problem but also save critical resources like water. In this field, a big level collaboration between corporations and Indian government is the only feasible solution. Can Intel rise up to this challenge?
Financing – Farmers are forever running in debt to local lenders facing unfair interest rates and repayment conditions. Micro loans can ease this burden and with a push towards financial education and awareness, people in villages can be helped to start their dream businesses without worrying about unfair loans.
Healthcare – How do you keep a nation of 1 Billion people healthy? By connecting medical services and personnel between rural and urban India, by mining the healthcare data (only possible by digitizing), new insights can be developed and used to combat diseases like swine flu which are still claiming unacceptable number of lives.
Energy saving – While villages struggle with power supply, there is ton of solar and wind energy that is still under utilized. With its Claremont processor, Intel already showed promise in the field of solar powered computers. What country better than India for testing and using it?


Record keeping – A system like Aadhar if implemented intelligently can solve many problems – even corruption and black money. Giving access to energy efficient low cost computers in rural areas, government can try to make the biggest database of citizens that any country has ever created.

In all these areas, an offline education and training program backed by digital access can help connect the humongous web of villages and people that India is. With optical fibre layout to every panchayat, Intel’s digital literacy plan can actually solve multitude of problems. It is a worthy cause and effort – one that can change the lives of millions. Giants like Intel can not only help in hardware innovation but spreading awareness through online and offline services. We are at the cusp of a change and Intel’s involvement can provide the right support for a rising India, a #DigitalIndia.

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Power of memorylessness

For past one week, I am plagued by the unreliable internet at my home. I have been trying to download 5.18GB update of OSX Yosemite and since the update comes directly through the App store, it is like a game of roulette when you bet on a specific number – there is only one possibility of you hitting the number and if the ball settles anywhere else, you are doomed. In this case, the update can stop abruptly at any point before hitting the 5.18GB mark and all you can do is wiggle away in pain.

I have started calling it my screen of death. I tried to time the day guessing when is the internet appearing to be most reliable and downloading only then. I have tried pausing when speed slows down in the evening. However, the whole sequence remains as unpredictable as life. In total, I must have downloaded more than 12GB in different tries but a full successful download still eludes me.

As I was staring at this screen once again today, something hit me. I would start off happy and for the first 2GB, I wouldn’t even bother checking the progress of the download much because even if it failed, I would tell myself that I had not downloaded that much and can start over. Twice it happened that I had downloaded close to 4GB when it failed and it made me miserable because I was invested in it too much. Same thing happens when anything that you are invested heavily in life falls apart. The more invested you are (financially or emotionally), the heavier is the toll. But why should it be?

One of the points we discussed in the ‘Exploring your Deeper Consciousness’ workshop at Auroville recently was to be conscious of every moment and treat it as a separate entity without carrying the burden of past memories – simply be attentive to what is going on at that point of time. Imagine if you could start fresh every time with same energy, without correlating past failures or future anxieties. Imagine if ‘right now’ is the only thing you ever care about. Imagine the freedom. No past, no future, only the present state. How free your mind would be from unwarranted burden of memories and regrets? It would have more space for accommodating the beauty of ‘right now’. It is also called ‘Mindfulness’. Deep down in my heart, I know that is the only way to live but practice takes time

For now, I am prepared to start the download all over again even if it fails at 5.15GB (or to go for better Internet vendor!).

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