Hinduism celebrates spiritual progress as well as material prosperity, today is one day where material prosperity is celebrated, and any new venture started on this day is said to bring wonderful returns. So if nothing else, people just go buy gold.
All the same, it is important to know the rightful place of material prosperity. Recently someone I know confused ‘motivated by profit’ with ‘we all work for money’. What a dangerous lack of fundamentals, and unfortunately this seems to be a trend in India, not just in our generation. I even remember how my boss (when I was an engineer) sat my colleague down one day and taught her to fake bills so that she could get three times the compensation.
It is one thing to receive remuneration for your services. It is quite another to be dishonest, to take a bribe or be motivated by profit. Excuses like ‘everyone does it’, ‘It’s not harming anyone’, ‘I’m compensating by helping others’, etc, are all just pathetic. Like I said earlier, the light greys of our life turn to black before we know it. Believe it or not, it IS possible to live honestly, earning purely by honest means, and to thrive, to have plenty.
Money earned dishonestly will be lost to dishonest people – people who cheat in construction, greedy doctors who prescribe unnecessary medicines and procedures, fake gurus convincing you to part with your money, etc. When you eat food bought with dishonest money, it destroys your viveka, your capacity for discernment.
So a very Happy Akshay Tritiya to you, and may this day transform the way you look at material prosperity
Oh, and let us please look inwards and explore our own tendencies to be dishonest please, instead of thinking about others. Be the change; no use pointing fingers.
A friend said this on a phone call today morning. It was an interesting discussion.
It’s true, isn’t it? Think about everyone you know in your life, is there anyone who you really 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 like? And compare that with the love for your child. The love we experience for children is in most cases, quite unconditional. And that is not because we are capable of unconditional love, oh no not at all – but because we actively reject and deny every aspect of our child which we don’t like.
We allow the parts that we accept as ‘part of being a child’, of course, most parents go crazy at how naughty their kids are, how they drive them up the wall, etc etc, but no, that’s not what I’m talking about. As parents we actively reject the idea that our child may be the sort of person we wouldn’t really have liked hanging out with. It is an area we’re too afraid to explore. ‘I really don’t like you, but I love you because I gave birth to you’ – is really not an option. Some people, when they painfully realise that their adult children are people they don’t like, just reject the child outright as a waste of investment. Others try to force them into becoming what they thought they always were. “You’ve changed so much, your friends are brainwashing you.”
Even scientific studies show that parents have the least perspective on the true personality of their child. Because to allow yourself to love your child unconditionally, you’ve created and fallen in love with an illusion that does not exist. The person you are in love with is a figment of your imagination, not your child. Scary right?
It doesn’t have to be. If we felt free to dislike the person our child was, and didn’t expect the child to be what we wanted them to be, then we can teach them freedom and teach them how to respect differences between people – something that is starkly missing in the society today. And our children will also grow up completely self-assured that they are loved no matter who they are, and no matter how much their parents dislike their personalities or disapprove of their choices. Imagine that kind of freedom
Some years ago I saw a couple sitting together. They weren’t exactly young, but the way they were interacting with each other, it looked like they hadn’t been married a long time, maybe 3-4 years. There was so much love in the way they looked at each other. Then a friend mentioned they were married for 30 years.
THIRTY YEARS??? I’ve seen a lot of couples that love each other; no matter how deep the love, it always gets ‘old’ – familiarity sets in, there are aspects of the each other they’ve given up on, etc – what I was witnessing was impossible based on what I had seen thus far. So I had to investigate. I asked her what the secret was. “Never shut down to the other” she said. She gave a few examples but I don’t think I really ‘got it’, back then. As I’ve applied it over the years, I understand a little bit more.
It depends on what you’re looking for in a relationship. If security and longevity is your primary goal, scroll away, this is not for you. But if experiencing love more deeply and more powerfully, and connecting with your partner on deeper levels is what you seek, I have never found better advice than this. The prerequisite is that you are with a person who respects your space and heart, of course, and that you are capable of doing the same.
But the truth is, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, you ARE going hurt and get hurt. Normally we ‘shut down’ – build our walls and conclude ‘this person will never change’ and toughen up so that we don’t get hurt. But then you cannot feel the love that deeply anymore either. The door that lets in the pain is the same door that lets in the love. So you feel ‘settled’ in the relationship and there is hardly any pain anymore, but you also forget the intense love you experienced once.
So this Valentines Day, let there be pain. If you want to love more deeply, keep your heart open, knowing that there will be pain, for sure, but it is worth it, and you are strong enough to stand back up. Breathe it in, breathe it out, and hold it in the light of your love. And watch the magic come back to life again.
Happy Valentine’s Day my dear ones. May there be Love.
I’ve been asked many times how we know whether we’re being honest or being rude. The answer is not complicated but needs a certain level of intimacy with oneself.
What is the basic motivation for what you are saying? Are you saying it because you respect and honor the other person and believe they are entitled to the truth? Or are you saying it to get back at them or put them in their place?
Honesty is different from stating facts. Facts can be manipulated – it is what statistics routinely do – honesty on the other hand is about being vulnerable. If you are pointing out what you are feeling, or something about yourself, then you are being honest. If you are pointing out something about someone else, or blaming someone, then you are gossiping or being rude, depending on who you are talking about.
So, ‘I’m feeling hurt and angry that you didn’t come for my performance, just give me some time, I’ll be fine‘ is being honest. ‘You’re a hypocrite, you didn’t come for my performance‘ is rude.
I remember on my first day with my art teacher, he said one thing that stayed with me. As we spoke of copying vs. originality, he said “There’s a difference between a painter and an artist. Merely having technical knowledge does not make you an artist. That’s just a painter”. My head first protested because well, painters are those who paint walls, not those who make beautiful designs on canvases. But I did get the point.
And now, mingling closely with artists, I see so much more clearly what he meant. Again, I get my terminology slightly wrong here, because technically artisans are people who work in a skilled trade, making things with their hands. But you’ll get the point, won’t you?
I see so many artists who compartmentalize. And I guess this will be natural for most people without any spiritual background, because art without spirituality is dangerous. The mind is like a tank of water, mud safely settled at the bottom, the upper surface appearing calm and clear, giving the illusion that there is no trash. Art shakes things up, brings the dirt right up to the surface. And without a spiritual foundation, one has no idea how this needs to be handled. So we limit art to the canvas, or to the instrument, dance floor, or to the stage. And this compartmentalization works initially, and then starts to tear the system apart. Is it any wonder then, that India has a history of great artists, none of whom were mentally unstable, eccentric or suicidal, whereas Western artists have always been either or all? I don’t know of any Indian art form that didn’t establish a firm spiritual foundation first, and that is what made the difference.
What is an artist, really?
Someone who looks at something ordinary, something everyone looks at all the time, and sees something no one’s ever seen before. A fresh perspective, a new direction, a different approach.
Someone who is fearless in creating- or someone who is capable of setting any fears aside, in order to create.
Someone who is willing to see the truth as it is, and is willing to bear the brunt of expressing that truth. And more than anything else, someone who can do this in a creative, loving and beautiful way – in a way that the message will be accepted.
Our creative outlets give us this space – a space where we can be free of judgment – especially judgment of ourselves, a space where we can learn to set aside our fears of discovering and expressing the truth. But when it comes to taking this approach to our personal lives, we falter.
Almost all artists I know have trouble really fitting in with the society, because a part of them follows the heart – enough to not feel a sense of belonging in a mostly-zombied-out world. And this is a difficult thing, because it is human to want to belong. The bane of an artist is the fact that they will probably never belong. They try, to belong among other artists, but that doesn’t work out, because they’re all compartmentalizing too, and we all compartmentalize in different ways, which causes conflict and friction. The eventual consequence is a feeling of resentment, indignation and self-righteousness towards others, even more so towards ‘ordinary’ people. If you find yourself becoming cynical and angry (a masculine approach to unsolvable problems) or depressed and dejected (a feminine approach) over time, you know it is because you’re not taking art outside your studio or your stage.
Is there a way out? Yes there is. Every artist will tell you that art is their bliss. But we come back to the question we began with – are you an artist, or an artisan? Are you just learning a technique, are you just capable of creating when you pick up a tool? Or do you let yourself carry your wide-eyed, child-like wonder everywhere you go, and bring your vulnerability to everyone you meet? That’s the secret here.
Let your art take over your life. Allow yourself to listen just as deeply, observe just as wholly, and absorb just as effectively, in every moment, every conversation, every relationship in your life. Allow yourself to be brutally honest with yourself, and allow yourself to show your true self to others – in a beautiful, creative way that is easy to accept, while still being true to the message. More than anything, be open to letting life break you, and have faith that you will learn to rebuild yourself, putting the pieces back together in the completely different way. Sounds difficult? Since when did difficulty ever scare artists? Not only is it possible, it is also worth the effort. If a few hours of your art form can bring you such bliss, have you ever wondered what a lifetime of it can do?
I’ve always considered myself a feminist. But much of the movement in the name of feminism disturbs me deeply. It’s like today we celebrate when a woman ‘becomes a man’. Not that a woman should be forced to remain at home and care for her children, no. But it is like that just isn’t satisfying enough anymore. There was an interesting discussion in this context on my group recently, and I post it here because I thought it got interesting.
Ashwita women getting into air force.. fighter jets.. and all this concept of feminism…Isn’t current feminism trying to make women more masculine?
Is war masculine?
Yes feminism is pretty much dead. We’ve glorified and rewarded only masculine qualities and demeaned feminine qualities for decades. So it’s awesome for a woman to go out there and make money – we think she’s awesome, but when a man stays home to take care of the kids he’s somehow a lesser human being. The stars, the achievers, the providers have been glorified, the nourishers, the caretakers, the teachers have been trashed. A cricket star is bathed with money, a nursery teacher responsible for the future generation barely makes two ends meet. So you can see what we’ve prioritised as a society. In your own mind, if you were meeting a star and a nursery teacher, who would you be more interested in? That’s the problem.
And then of course the same gets applied within ourselves too, we prioritise our masculine qualities and downplay our feminine qualities. This works for women because they can get both. You see so frequently these days ‘be the man that you need’. Men suffer too here because then either they lose touch with their feminine altogether and become brutes or they move to the other end, becoming ‘the women that they need’. Now a days I see more kind and nourishing men than the women I meet.
War and aggression are masculine acts yes. Manipulation and brain washing are feminine.
(Someone else) I had a similar doubt. Each soul has different purpose. Should tasks be characterized just based on gender? Or one should put effort to look into soul of the partner/family member and support for its upliftment by doing for that soul (be it man being kind and nourishing)?
What makes you think that gender would limit the soul and take it away from its purpose? If the soul had a different purpose, it would have been born as a different gender.
The soul itself is colourless, odourless, limitless, property – less. It is only the mind that imagines a purpose, ideals, values, etc. If the focus of our life is simply to maximise each moment, we are already living out the real purpose of our life – which is for the soul to experience what it is like to be you.
My mom once said in this context. Go to a shop and look at plain cloth. You can use it for anything. But once it is stitched into a pant and shirt, then the pant goes on the lower body and the shirt on the upper body. Neither is superior or inferior.
Today in the name of freedom, pants want to be worn on the chest and shirts on the hips. To anyone looking at this objectively, it is nothing but ridiculous. We’ve turned everything into a chase these days, including experiences. Women want to become men, men want to become women and experience waxing and threading, the monthly cycles, labour pains, etc. Its insane. You’ll run out of your lifetime simply experiencing what it is like to be you, that’s how intense it is, but no, you’d rather abandon that and focus on trying to experience what it is like to be everybody else! (not you, I mean this generally)
(In response to ‘What makes you think that gender would limit the soul and take it away from its purpose?’) Frequently nowadays, people categorize the tasks, no males have to do this task, female have to do this task. So I thought, that does constant nudging can eventually take soul away from its purpose.
Yeah so who categorizes it? Like putting clothes in a washing machine is not a male or female task, it is a role assigned by the mind. Giving birth to a baby, breast-feeding, these are clearly female tasks. Chopping wood, clearly a male task. Opening a tight jar, clearly a male task 😁 the mind is screwed up for sure, that’s why our society is where it is today. If you’re confused, ask yourself this simple question – who would do this if I was alone? If you could do it, then it is your role too. If it wouldn’t have been possible, then it is clearly the role of the other.
If it is part of your life choices to marry and co-exist with another person (or even co-exist in another setting) then it isn’t about gender roles. It is about finding a balance and making things work more beautifully with that person. If we want to remain attached to your ideas of gender, then you need to be alone – and even then you might have to change them – a woman might have to pay the bills and fix the light-bulbs and a man might have to cook for himself and clean for himself. If you want to effectively function as a unit in harmony with another person, then you have to set your mental ideas aside and see how you can blend in and maximize the potential of that equation.
What about forgiving ourselves? How do we forgive ourselves for the decision we made?
Forgiving ourselves becomes an issue if we think that external situations control our capacity to be happy. If one choice could have made you happier and one less happier, then you are better off with the ‘wrong’ choice, because that wrong choice will help you learn much more effectively that choices – and external circumstances don’t have anything with your capacity for joy. When you realise this, forgiveness becomes redundant.
The second aspect is, if you are focused on a spiritual pathway, you are changing and growing everyday. So the person who made that wrong decision is not even who you are anymore, so who are you holding the grudge against?
I needed to hear this. But what if the decision is something not replaceable? Of course, all decisions are not replaceable, but for example, if we lose one job, we can get another job, or if we lose one lover, we can get another one. But what if the decision we made is something that we can never replace, then the it comes with regret. Yes it is true that we need to realise that external circumstances do not make us less happy… (ultimately), but how do we deal with such regret? Just see it as a “lesson”?
Then you ‘integrate it’ into your life. Ultimately we never chase things, we only chase how those things make us feel. So ask yourself what feeling you were chasing and remind yourself that you can feel that way without an external trigger
Almost every other day, I come across some article or person urging others to go out there and live life or follow your heart. Common people seem to be stuck in the rat race, miserable and incapable of having a life between paying off loans and raising children.
This reminds me of my mother’s Reiki teacher, who was a school teacher by profession. One year when they had exchange students come from the UK, they decided to do something different. The students were picked up from the airport and dropped off in the middle of the desert to live with locals in a below-poverty village. There were no toilets, they used broken pots for cooking, vessels were cleaned with sand and meals consisted of dry rotis (flat bread) with red chili chutney. Two weeks later when the school came to pick the children up, the children started crying, saying they didn’t want to go home. Never before in their plush, abundant lives had they experienced love, affection and bonding like this.
What did the village have that these rich British kids did not? What did they have that you do not? How could they be happy with so much less than you have?
While breaking free and pursuing one’s dreams just might be the answer for a select few that have lived oppressed lives in the fear of rejection from society, the fundamental problem in that approach is that it assumes that happiness lies outside. In a relationship, in a career, in material pleasures, in a new place. And that belief puts you on a fast track to misery. The more choices you have, the more miserable you are going to be, because you don’t know ‘which choice will make you happy’. If only you knew that the answer was ‘none’.
“Choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied” More details
Barry Schwartz
When not to Settle
While on the one hand people don’t want to ‘settle’ for mediocre lives, on the other they want to ‘take a chance’ on mediocre choices. Our generation was raised by over-involved parents, and most of us have refused to grow up and own up for our lives. If we invest our energies in growing up, we will start to see that each action has a consequence, and that will change the way we approach a fork in the road.
What choice we make isn’t about whether it will make us happy in the future – happiness is a choice we make this instant – but about what the consequences will be, and whether we can live with that. I’ve seen so many people settle for a lousy partner because they’re too afraid to be alone. Or settle for having a baby because of parental or societal pressure. Or move to an unpleasant place because they’re desperate to ‘get away’ from family or something else. These are exactly times when we shouldn’t be ‘settling’.
Don’t settle when life brings you to crossroads. If you are desperate and frustrated, seek healing and understand that getting into a different situation will offer only temporary respite, if at all.
When “Settling” is Important
We’re not just talking about relationships here, of course. But this quote is just so, so relevant. Once you’ve made a choice, stick with the consequences and make peace with where the choice has taken you. When you truly make peace with it, it is possible that looking at those beautiful couple or travel pictures on facebook or elsewhere might leave you a tad uneasy, but never will it empty out your heart of happiness.
So many people want to change their lives so desperately that they just cannot give the present moment their best. This is the same as being so unsure whether you’re on the right track, that you are unable to walk. But unless you move, you’re not going anywhere. If you are meant to have a different life, it will happen, and life will bring opportunities and openings your way. If you’re feeling stuck and frustrated in a completely unfulfilling life, it is time to understand that it is not life that is unfulfilling, but you who have stopped investing. Embrace your life for what it is in this moment and give it everything you’ve got. And that’s how you live.
“If you think it’s fame and money that are the key to happiness, you’re not alone – but, you’re mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, having unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction here are three important lessons” More details
The sacred Hindu texts state that the only real obligation parents have to a child is to bring it into this world. Every other obligation is from the child towards the parent because even with a lifetime of seva, the child cannot repay the debt for that one big thing the parents did for it, viz., give it an entry point into this world.
When heard an Indian ascetic tell me this for the first time, I was furious. To me it was like saying that all the bad parenting was fine! However, now when I think of it at leisure I think parent-‘crimes’ apart, there might actually have been some truth to this statement.
Every other day I read something along the lines of ‘what if you’re so busy earning money that you miss your child’s first steps?‘ – or something like that anyway. Yes, what if? How come I never read ‘what if you’re so busy at work that you missed your wife crying at home because your mother said something nasty?‘ Because your wife is not your ‘creation’ of course, and that by default makes her less special and less worthwhile.
Can you imagine how boring it might have been to be born about 60-70 years ago? You would be one among 4-7 children, nobody would know when you took those coveted first steps, had that first scratch, first fight, balanced on a cycle for the first time, and so on. Because you were probably playing outside with all the other kids everyday, since mommy asked you to ‘take the noise outside!’. When you fell, it was probably a sibling, a neighbour or even a stranger that might have helped. And surprise, the world would not have tweeted about this non-event and about your parents’ negligence.
Because that generation had one thing straight – that your child is just one among billions (only about 3 billion, yours will live to be one among 10 by the way). Your child is not the queen bee, just one among billions of worker bees – all unique but really no different from each other. Yes, they knew that they – you – are completely ordinary. And, more than anything else – they knew there was nothing wrong with being ordinary.
What a beautiful, liberating fact that must have been, to grow up with. That nothing is THAT special. Not your baby’s first steps, not your wedding, your first day at work, the first day of the year, because all of these are just another pearl in a gigantic string of events all equally special, or equally ordinary.
This is unfortunately a privilege our children might never have, because they grow up in a world where one has to market oneself to get anywhere and for that, the first prerequisite is a firm belief in a big lie – that one is somehow different, more special than everyone else.
Add to that the fact that they were probably born because their parents needed something to bring more value to their otherwise paling lives, and needed some hope that a little addition will bring that ‘special’ factor in. So they spend the entire childhood letting their life revolve around the child, packing it a different snack everyday, spending hours making it that special birthday cake, fulfilling every desire and leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that it has access to everything that it needs to become its special self.
Barring the abusive type, this is absolutely the worst type of upbringing a child can have. Because one can eventually have therapy to heal from the pain of abuse, but it will take a lot more than that to outgrow this sense of entitlement we’ve given our children. They will spend the rest of their lives moving from place to place, from job to job, relationship to relationship because none of them will make them feel special enough. They might spend their whole lifetime discovering that their entire existence was a lie – they are not special at all. In fact, no one cares.
And actually, people care a lot less today. One, because we are addicted to ‘special’ and the mundane is not care-worthy, but more importantly, because we were never taught to give unless there was some sort of reward. We were praised for every little insignificant thing we did. And suddenly in the real world, the boss, the spouse, the child or the mother-in-law don’t seem to acknowledge anything.
We weren’t taught that everything has to be earned, and that sometimes even after putting in everything you could, you will still fail, and that sometimes you will simply never get that one thing you wanted, and that that’s ok, and you can still be VERY happy anyway.
There is a simple secret to a happy life – one must give more than one takes. But our children might have to go through a great deal of hardship and suffering to come to realise this, because we have left them with so, so much more to unlearn first.
In martial arts, it is well known that you are more likely to lose if you are angry or hateful.
My spiritual teacher uses a word called ‘projection’ quite frequently. Obviously, it is not the same thing we learned in school. Projection is when we ‘project’ our own suppressed aspects onto others, and then proceed to label them.
Like for example, a person who never gets angry hasn’t acknowledged or integrated his own fear. Such a person will find himself surrounded by angry people – people that he is ‘projecting’ his anger onto. When he resolves his issues with anger, the problem will miraculously subside and in cases where it does not, it wont bother him anymore.
In our perfection-obsessed world, we refuse to acknowledge negative emotions, the worst of which is hatred and violence. We condemn any acts of violence and hatred, often trolling such a person and dousing them with…. hatred and violence.
And Eye for an Eye…
When there is a war, no one wins. Lives are lost and both sides mourn. And yet, war is what we crave for, as is apparent from the outpourings of hatred on social media. We want war. We want destruction. It is what draws us, it is what we thrive on. Can you imagine going a week without feeling indignant or looking down upon someone stupid, does that ever happen? Wouldn’t it be boring if it would?
Any kind of altercation leaves both sides wounded. In the very least, you have poisoned your body with nasty hormones that’ll eventually make you sick. In the worst case, it will ruin someone’s life or leave someone dead.
We are Just Like Them
We believe ourselves to be in a better place because we haven’t shot anyone, but do we really think we wouldn’t want anyone killed? Think again. Would we mind if we were told that maybe, 250 ISIS people died in a bombing. Would we lose sleep over that? No, because they ‘deserved’ to be dead.
It is this idea of ‘deserved’, that we use to justify hatred. A nice bubble we use to protect our fragile little egos. When someone talks about hurting a dog, we want that person to be treated like a dog. And we think we’re different. When someone rapes someone, we want that person to be castrated, and we think we’re different.
Why aren’t we really different? Because we believe in an eye for an eye. And the fact is, we’re very different from these ‘criminals’. We’ve grown up in very different set-ups, different economic backgrounds, different social situations, different exposure to abuse and maybe even different religions. But we share one thing with them. An eye for an eye. So when those people get abused, they want to hit back, in any way they can. So do you.
When someone causes someone else pain, you want to see them in pain too. If you had experienced the same level of injustice and trauma as the perpetrators, would you really have been any different from them? You don’t have any patience with injustice, living your cushy, comfortable lives. How would it have existed when you were broken repeatedly by others?
What’s the Solution?
Whenever I say that you cannot counter hatred with hatred, people assume that it also means there must be no action. It is not the same at all.
In many forms of martial arts, it is a well known fact that an opponent feeling intense anger or hatred is not stronger, but weaker. These emotions cloud our thinking. Only one who can remain calm can truly retaliate, because he is able to properly utilize all his faculties.
If we merely remind ourselves that people resort to violence when they have been subjected to so much of it that it changes their thresholds, we might want to think differently, and not worsen the problem by subjecting them to even more violence.
When Kiran Bedi took over Tihar jail, many prisoners who were repeat offenders stopped coming back to jail. When asked what caused the change, they quipped “Kiran Bedi treated us like human beings. We had forgotten that we were human”.
When we see something violent or stupid, the reaction it creates within us is nothing but our reaction to the unaccepted negativity within our own selves. Don’t use random news articles as an excuse to hate. Let us review the way we react to violence. Be the change. Be kind.
