Drop the urge to “become” and simply “be”. That’s Buddhahood!

Be yourself. Don’t try to become someone else.

This morning over a call from Sweden, a friend told me that he had developed his own philosophy for Life. He felt that living Life without worrying about what others felt about him, without having to do what others wanted him to do, gave him a lot of inner peace. He wondered if he was right in “being” this way! I told him that there is no right or wrong in the world. Each of us has to find what works for us, what helps us be peaceful within and be happy.

Gautama, the Buddha, himself has said this: “Doubt everything. Find your own light.” What this means is that you shouldn’t get carried away by others’ experiences or philosophies. You have to challenge every assumption, question every logic, convince yourself how (your) Life works and accept your own convictions and beliefs.

But this is not the way we have been raised. Everything we do is what we have been “told” to do. There’s very little scope or opportunity to make our own music, pave our own paths and to live our lives as if we were explorers and not followers. Which is why, when you fare badly in academics, you are condemned. I, for example, was thrown out of school and that led to my parents feeling “embarrassed” on my account – their feeling so changed my Life forever. Society’s expectations from us are far removed from the way the Universe works or has planned things for us. According to the Cosmic Design, everything is in its place and everything’s perfect. The Master Plan has no flaws. Society – family, friends, community – says, however, you are not good enough. You must be this way or that way or like him or her. If you succumb to this pressure, you give up being who you actually are. You get trapped in the “becoming game” – wanting to become something that you are either not capable of or interested in becoming – instead of simply being. If you accept who you are, if you stop wanting to become (something, someone) and simply be, that’s Buddhahood.

This is not at all complicated. Simply ask yourself what gives you joy and go do it. You can keep your job, do whatever else you have to do to discharge your “worldly” responsibilities, and still if you can devote some time to do what you love doing, you have made progress. Now that you have experienced inner joy, keep doing more of that stuff. When you do more and more, and then eventually do only that which gives you joy, then you are yourself! You are not trying anymore to become someone else for society’s sake, for family’s sake or for money’s sake. When you live the Life that you enjoy living, that’s Buddhahood.

 In your acceptance of your Life the way it is and of yourself the way you are lies you Buddhahood!

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Simply be. Drop this urge to constantly become this or that.

Life simply is.  There is really no objective to Life; there are no goals to be achieved, no responsibilities to be fulfilled. Nothing. You are born. You live. You die. Period. This is the truth – so simple, so uncomplicated. It is only society that brings in expectations of goals and outcomes, and labels of success and failure or joy and sorrow. You take away the social denominators from Life – starting with money – and suddenly Life simply is.

The other day, we were sitting at a coffee shop. I was thinking of something I had seen on Facebook, I was looking up from my phone and I was smiling – staring blankly into space. A friend walked up and tapped me on my shoulder and asked, “Wow! What are you thinking deeply about? What next creative idea are you pulling out of your hat?” I replied, “Hardly…No creative idea or such…I am just in the moment, enjoying it, savoring it.”

Our friend, and his wife who was with him, were hardly able to comprehend what I meant. They smiled and waved their goodbyes and walked away. I can understand what they must have been thinking about – “how can anyone not be doing anything?” And they are not alone. I believe the whole of humanity thinks this way and so is missing this beautiful opportunity to just be in the moment – because everyone is trying to become someone, by trying to do something or the other.

I am not saying you must not work or that you must not earn money or that you must not raise a family. But don’t get so caught in earning-a-living that you miss the opportunity to live itself. Look at nature around you. The trees, the birds, the flowers, the river, the ocean, all of them simply are. They have no concept of time nor do they have any targets or goals to achieve. It is only man who has time-bound goals in focus. Nothing wrong with that. But if the same goals start haunting you, when they make your Life miserable, then you have a problem. Earning money is not a problem. But complaining or worrying that you are not having enough is a problem. Working is not a problem. But feeling stressed out over your work is a problem. Having a family is not a problem. But sweating over the behavior of your family members is a problem.

Osho, the Master illustrates this point with the example of a rose and a hundred-rupee note. “Life is not a logical process. It is poetry, it is a lovesong — without any meaning, yet it is utterly beautiful. In fact, when something has a meaning, it can’t be beautiful – it is utilitarian. The rose is beautiful because it has no utility at all. Its sheer being is enough; it need not have any other significance. But a hundred-rupee note has no beauty; it has utility, it has meaning, it is a means to some end.”

The nub is this: to live your Life fully, celebrate each moment. Simply be. Drop this urge to constantly try and become this or that. Don’t try to desperately make a meaning out of your Life. Meaning is a social requirement. Life doesn’t care about any meanings. So, why don’t you also live your Life for what it is, as it is? Don’t seek meanings. Don’t get keyed up. Don’t complain. Be alive, be with your Life – as is!

Stop becoming and start being

What have we done to our lives?

We have become so mechanized. So robotic. We are trying to constantly ensure our incomes go up, our families are provided for and yet we are not even bothered if we are happy? In fact, our unhappiness has become so much a part of us that we have stopped knowing that we are unhappy. We imagine that running the household, driving the kids to school and back, preparing reports and presentations, taking the annual vacation, IS Life! Is that really so?

Step off this treadmill. For a second. Take a brief moment. Focus on a flower in your neighborhood, in your garden, in a vase in your home. Just find a flower this morning. Look at it intently. Examine every aspect of its creation __ the color, the shape, the texture. Feel its pollen with your fingertips. Smell it. And ask yourself, how often have you stopped, even paused, to look in the direction of this flower? How you have chosen to ignore this flower represents the way you live your Life. You are doing everything else except living, my friend. When you are in front of the mirror, getting ready to rush to work, you have time to examine that pimple on your forehead, the dark circles beneath the eyes, or to certify the quality of your shave. But you don’t have time to look into your own eyes and ask yourself how are you?

As people we are becoming more and more efficient. There’s an App, an application, for everything on our smart-phones. From music to medical tests to running our schedules to buying stuff. Our phones can get us anything and everything we want. Despite all this efficiency, why are we still so lost? What are we searching for? What are we trying to complete in us?  Ask anyone__yourself to begin with__as to what will make them happy, and you would hear people express it differently of course, but most will say that they would like to live a different Life from what they are leading currently. Then why is it that nobody is willing to make that change in the way they live?

Remember: to go back to being who you are really are, you must stop becoming something. Our entire efficiency race is about becoming: successful, rich and, eventually, happy__as if it were some destination. How would your Life be, if you just focus on being happy, being rich, being the way you are __ with WHATEVERyou have? Have you ever tried that? To find your Self, you must stop running this rat race, and make the journey within. Pause. And dive within. Listen to what, Osho, the Master has to tell you this morning: “Constantly remember that you are not here in Life to become a commodity; you are not here to become an utility, that is below dignity; you are not here just to become more and more efficient — you are here to be more and more alive; you are here to be more and more intelligent; you are here to be more and more happy, ecstatically happy.”

 

And that you will surely be, my friend, when you stop becoming and start being! 

Get off the “becoming treadmill”, just be!

Stop competing, drop all comparisons, and you will live happily ever after!

We were having tea with a friend who was visiting us with his family after many years. Our friend was schooled at the famous Rishi Valley School, founded by the thinker-philosopher J.Krishnamurti (1895 ~ 1986). It’s a school that spurs the spirit of inquiry in children and lets them enjoy the process of learning than drive them to acquire knowledge that can showcase them as achievers to society. Our friend told us how much he valued the Rishi Valley way and said that his whole Life and career had been blessed by his experience of learning at that school. Naturally, we asked our friend’s children, who were in high school in Doha, Qatar, if they ever wanted to go to Rishi Valley School. Our friend’s daughter answered that question. She said: “I love Rishi Valley and the ambience there. But I don’t think Rishi Valley prepares you for the real world.” Her mother, our friend’s wife, piped in, “Well, schools like Rishi Valley don’t make you street smart.”  

What could have been an intelligent conversation sadly ended there as samosasand dhoklas were served and everyone got distracted in the direction of all the food and tea.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the observations that were made that afternoon – one by a child and the other by a parent! And I wondered if we really need to be street smart and prepare ourselves for the real world?

Think of what the real world really is: a place where everyone is busy running a rat race, where the spirit of inquiry and learning is stifled very, very early on in Life and people are only keen on their GPAs and placements, where top draw salaries are a means to acquire all material comfort and where innovation and enterprise and sacrificed on the altar of quarterly earnings and wanting to be seen as the number 1 and not necessarily striving to be the best! Competition has become the very basis of Life. No doubt competition, like in sport, brings out the best in a person. But to obsess oneself with competition, being street smart and constantly compare with others can ruin the joy of living. In fact, Krishnamurti has said, “Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.” And he has also said, “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” So, in effect, in the so-called real world that we have created today, there is no more learning. We have lost all our learning ability trying to grow our earning potential. And, obviously, at the cost of not employing our intelligence, we have begun to love, and therefore cling to, things and use people, whereas, it should be the other way round!

It is this obsession with comparing with others, with competing with a desire to vanquish others, that has made our world, this real world of ours, such a cold place to live in. Driven by the hunger to be successful you have stopped celebrating your uniqueness. Instead of just being, you are on this ‘becoming treadmill’ – wanting to become someone else or wanting to become like someone else. Running on a treadmill has an inherent pitfall – you keep running harder no doubt but, in the end, you are still at the same place! Comparison with others, being in continuous, endless, competition, breeds ambition. No problem with being ambitious. But when ambition makes you combative, restless and subconsciously violent – where you are fighting continuously with who you are because you are wanting to be someone else – then your inner peace and happiness are destroyed.

Krishnamurti urged us to look at nature. He used to say that the flowers bloom for the joy of blooming; the trees don’t compete with each other, they simply enjoy each other’s presence and growth; the sun rises and sets because it simply has to – there’s no attitude to nature’s magnificence. Osho, the Master, went a step further to clarify: “All that is divine is non-competitive – and your being is divine. So just sort it out. The society has muddled your head; it has taught you the competitive way of Life…when you are non- competitive, only then can you be yourself. This is simple.”

So stop trying to become – something, someone. Just be. Then, whether in the real world or not, whether street smart or not, you will always be happy and at peace with yourself! 

Transition from becoming to being to build a better world

While trying to become someone, devote some attention to being who you are!

The other day I met a cabbie who seemed over-qualified. His English was impeccable and he looked every bit out of place being a cabbie – including the fact that he didn’t know his way around the city! I chatted him up and soon discovered that he was a civil engineer. What was he doing then, driving a cab? He told me that his family wanted him to be an engineer, while he wanted to be an entrepreneur – running a cab service and owning a fleet of cars. He said that having completed his engineering degree to please and placate his family, he had now struck out on his own, driving a cab, so that he could learn the “tricks of the trade” live – and on the job!

My conversation with the cabbie got me thinking.

Haven’t we often been asked what we want to be? And haven’t we asked young teenagers or adults graduating from schools and colleges, what they want to be? Pilot, engineer, doctor, scientist, writer, photographer, actor, journalist, lawyer, we hear these myriad aspirations being voiced. And sure enough, we ourselves in our early, formative years, have talked of being this or that. But never do we hear someone say, I want to be humble, I want to be patient, I want to be understanding, I want to be giving, I want to be loving. In fact, we never do. Despite the fact that, you, me, all of us, are born humble, patient, understanding, generous and loving. To validate this perspective, just look at a child, less than 5 years old, and convince yourself. Have we ever wondered why is it that we stop being who we are, and instead work hard to become someone else? The reason is simple. We relate to and therefore champion the act of becoming more than the state of being. All our lives, and therefore, all our childrens’ lives are concentrated on becoming this or that.

A caring human being is more scarce, more urgently needed in today’s global context than a brilliant student or an awe-inspiring professional. And to be a caring human being, you__and I__just need to be human. Humility, love, generosity, patience and understanding are wired in our creation, naturally. To let those dimensions of our personas to surface, we must stop wanting to becoming something and just be. From becoming to being, if we make the transition, we would have changed our world.

From Becoming to Being

Being alive is a gift.  To experience Life as it is, is a blessing. And just being is an art!

But many of us miss this opportunity. We don’t see Life as a gift. This is so because there is a continuous effort to become something. The process of becoming, truly, is at the core of all human stress and strife. But there’s no point in blaming anyone. That’s the way we have been raised. We have been told that if we accept status quo we will lose the game of Life. So, there’s always a rush to move from one thing to another. From one state to another. All such movement is measured by how much more we have made or earned or saved or created.

No one seems to be satisfied with the way she or he is. At times, society reminds you that you need to become something that you are not to be more acceptable. For instance, many of the clubs in India, mostly those that were founded in the days of the British Raj in India, even now will not allow you inside without proper footwear or collared shirts. So, if you landed up there wearing your sneakers, jeans and a round-collared tee, you will turned away. The club does not want you to be who you are but wants you to become what you are not – a “prim and proper”, old-fashioned, colonial! This applies to the emotional side of Life too. Someone who has lost her husband must look mournful. She cannot smile. She must be crying. But what if she is relieved her husband is dead, after years of suffering – like the mother in the Hindi film The Lunchbox? The mother merely says she is hungry and wants aloo parathawhile sitting beside her dead husband’s corpse. She just wants to be. But she must drop the way she is and become “serious” about the loss of her husband, at least this is what her daughter seems to be thinking!

But what’s the point of becoming this or that? To become something you have to stop being something or someone else. Is such becoming worth it?

Life’s not a 100-metre race. It is not only about how much money or assets you have. It is about how much time you have left on the planet and what you intend doing with and in that time. If your career is costing you a relationship, is it worth it? If your relationship is costing you your bliss, is such a relationship worth it? These and many more difficult questions need answers. You may not always find your answers either. But in asking such questions, you will find yourself thinking more in terms of simply being, than wanting to become something!

Pause and reflect. Think deeply about your Life. Has all your effort to become made you happy? It might have made you successful and wealthy. But has it made you happier? If the truth is that you believe you could be a lot happier than you currently are, stop becoming or wanting to become and simply be. Just being is a surer way for you to feel happy than trying to become something or someone that you simply are not!

See Life for what it is and not as you are!

Everything’s so perfect about our lives. We just don’t see it because we insist on seeing Life not as it is but as we are!

Just reflect on how you perceive Life on a daily basis. It is always about you. About your needs. Your wants. Your worries. Your anxieties. Your fears. And you fear, sometimes, about losing everything, because you are attached to them. So, on a daily basis, your Life revolves around you. Right from your maid not showing up to work (more prevalent in an Indian context!) to your commute to work being affected by a lousy traffic snarl to your meetings running behind schedule to your child having to be driven to the evening’s game to your report having to be readied for your customer __ everything, absolutely, everything about your Life is about you! And when you look at Life so myopically, the imperfections loom large in front of your eyes. Things are amazingly dysfunctional. Maids are thankless, so you believe. Traffic management in our cities is getting from bad to worse. You find the work-Life balance too hard to maintain and sometimes want to quit working but without the double income, the family cannot afford all the small luxuries it presently has! Arrrrrrrrrrrggggghhhh! And damn those reports. You wonder whether your customer hardly reads them __ but they want it because they are the ones who pay your bills! It is such a hard job living in this harsh, mad world!

There’s a way out of this tyranny. You just need to zoom out. Take your attention away from yourself for a while. And see Life as it is. You will then discover that you are having a hard time living, because you are trying hard to simply earn a living. You are making an effort. And there’s imperfection in every effort. Instead allow yourself to flow with Life. Look at nature. It just exists despite the scars on the mountain faces and the undulating depths of lakes and oceans. Or despite the stark contrasts of seasons. Or the waning and waxing moon leaving more nights dark than aglow. Nature doesn’t protest. But you and I do it all the time. We complain about what we have to do or what we don’t have. We protest. We resist. Therefore we see a whole Life of imperfection. Because the focus is on becoming something, than on simply being.

There is a Zen story that I once read in a book by Osho, the Master:

A Zen Master was making a painting, and he had his chief disciple sit by his side to tell him when the painting was perfect. The disciple was worried and the Master was also worried. Because the disciple had never seen the Master do anything imperfect. But that day things started going wrong. The Master tried, and the more he tried, the more it was a mess.

In Japan or in China, the whole art of calligraphy is done on rice-paper, on a certain paper, a very sensitive paper, very fragile. If you hesitate a little, for centuries it can be known where the calligrapher hesitated — because more ink spreads into the rice-paper and makes it a mess. It is very difficult to deceive on rice-paper. You have to go on flowing; you are not to hesitate. Even for a single moment. split moment, if you hesitate — what to do? — missed, already missed. And one who has a keen eye will immediately say, “It is not a Zen painting at all” — because a Zen painting has to be a spontaneous painting, flowing.

The Master tried and tried and the more he tried — he started perspiring. And the disciple was sitting there and shaking his head again and again negatively: ‘No, this is not perfect.’ And more and more mistakes were being made by the Master.

Then the ink was running out so the Master said, “You go out and prepare more ink.” While the disciple was outside preparing the ink, the Master did his masterpiece. When he came in he said, “Master, but this is perfect! What happened?”

The Master laughed; he said, “I became aware of one thing: your presence. The very idea that somebody is there to appreciate or to condemn, to say no or yes, disturbed my inner tranquility. Now I will never be disturbed. I have come to know that I was trying to make it perfect and that was the only reason for its not being perfect.”

 

So beautiful. In our trying to become something, like the Zen Master, we obsess with ourselves. And the myriad dimensions of our lives. Because we are attached to things and people in our lives and in trying to be very good at earning a living, providing, in trying to make our lives perfect, we don’t live at all. That’s why we don’t see the beauty of Life, of our lives, and we miss all that is flowing around us. We miss the perfection in Life’s ways, its timing of our lives’ events, our experiences, our learnings, our inner growth and our joys__which always emerge from our deepest sorrows! In Life, with Life, it is always__and only__what it is. So, stop expecting your Life to be any different from what it is now. And flow with it. Over time, Life will change. Your Life will change. And when you look back, you will find that had it not been for what you have gone through, you will not be the person who you are today and you will not have got to where you are too! So, don’t see Life for the way you are, but for what it is. Then, only then, will the Life that is waiting for you will unveil itself! Only then, as the Buddha said so famously, you will look up at the sky and laugh __ because everything, everything about this world and your Life, is so perfect!