An autism-blessed Buddha and an education-afflicted ‘ashadu’

True intelligence and distinction lies in your Buddhahood!

At a grocery store the other day, a couple we know had brought their son along with them. The young boy has autism. So, he is often reflective and lost in his own world. Someone seeing the child, smiling curiously at the ceiling, remarked in Tamizh to another: “Ashadu Sirikkarthu!” Loosely translated, it means, “The idiot is laughing!” Of course, it was a very insensitive, inhuman comment. And the person to whom the comment was made quickly whispered a firm admonishment. So, I did not take up the issue with them.

But the inappropriate remark kept me thinking. I concluded that the real ‘ashadu’, idiot, was not the autism-afflicted boy. It was the person who made that comment. Because only an idiot will see Life so insensitively, so inhumanly. To me, the young boy is a Buddha. He has, unwittingly perhaps, learnt the art of living with equanimity, in total bliss, happy being who he is. His autism is a blessing. All of us, educated, intelligent, all-faculties-intact folks, only aspire to get to that state which the young boy has already arrived in. Many of us even fail to understand what this Buddhahood is all about. We wrongly imagine that it is about religion and ritual. We think being educated and financially well-off means we are better than most people around us. But the truth is mere education and knowledge do not necessarily guarantee wisdom. Hear what Osho, the Master, has to say about this. It is brilliant: “Our whole education is absolutely unaware of the fact that growing up is a different process than growing old. Even idiots grow old; only Buddhas grow up!”

Academic education, in fact, when overdone, and over-relied-upon, is a disease. An affliction, that comes in the way of intelligent living! Which is why, I am all for Buddhahood. To be sure, each of us is capable of it. Except that we have to grow up. And for that we have to first awaken. Growing up clearly is not about knowledge and qualifications. It is about going within, connecting with your source, your core, your Self. When you delve deeper you will find value in the silence that will greet you there. And the peace that you discover inside you, in that silence, that peace makes you a Buddha.

So, in effect, the more educated you think your academic qualifications make you, the more wealthy you think your material assets make you, the more experienced you think you are because of your professional body of work, well, these mean nothing from a Life-fulfilment point of view. These only mean you have grown older. It only means you are now a bigger idiot! Being educated, being financially wealthy, being a subject matter expert are not sinful – but imagining that you are, therefore, better off than others is sinful! True intelligence and distinction lies in your Buddhahood. To attain Buddhahood, you must simply un-cling from all that its worldly, all that is perishable, and see the light, metaphorically, in the sky. As Gautama Buddha famously said, “When you see how perfect your Life is, you will look up at the sky and laugh!”

Well, isn’t that what the young boy in the store was doing? Pause and reflect: are you capable of looking up at the sky and laughing with such equanimity and honesty? When you do that, you too will be a Buddha. Until then, just be accepting of the ‘ashadu’ that you are!

PS: If you liked this blogpost, please share it to help spread the learning it carries!

Extraordinary pain is a sign of extraordinary grace pulsing through your Life

Only when you are lost in Life can you find yourself!  

Snatches from three conversations that we had yesterday come to my mind as I sit down to write this blogpost. A couple we know is building a new house. They find the burden of having to get the relevant approvals from the local civic body “nightmarish” – “Sometimes, when we pause and reflect, this trip to own a house seems so pointless!” A friend feels lost having been ‘dumped’ by his wife and having to literally “re-boot” his Life – “I don’t know what to do, where to start!” And a top manager at a large organization, whose husband is a very successful businessman, says she’s “trapped” in a job that she “hates” – “I am just biting my lips and enduring this suffering because I have no choice.”

Each of these people, like so many, many, millions out there, is trying to make sense of Life in their own unique ways. Nobody has any answers to Life. Life itself offers no explanations, no justifications, no reasons, no meanings. It just spews out experience after experience!

Now, the experiences of the people we spoke with yesterday appear to pale in significance when you consider stories of families who have lost a dear one or are raising special children or have someone who is dealing with a terminal illness situation. But no one’s story is ever less significant. The truth is, it is indeed Life’s inscrutability as experienced by you, it is your personal journey, that shapes your view of Life.

During my mouna (daily silence periods) sessions, in the early stages of our bankruptcy (that we are still enduring; read more here Fall Like A Rose Petal ), I struggled a lot. I was asking a lot of questions of Life – why, why me, why me now, what is the Purpose of my Life, why should all my talent and integrity be subject to such an intense ordeal by fire, why is God absent while this whole drama is playing out, and what is the meaning of all this? Quite obviously, I got no answers. But over days and weeks and months of mouna, I realized that the best way to live Life is to stop looking for answers or for meaning in Life.

I remembered Osho, the Master, teach this: “Meaning is a human invention. There is no meaning to Life itself, it is beyond meaning. One simply lives, for no other reason; one lives for Life’s sake. Then Life is not a means to something else, it is beautiful as it is. In fact, it simply is. Look at it, Life is full of poetry. What meaning does a rose flower have? What is the meaning of a night full of stars? What is the meaning of all that you are surrounded by? There is no meaning in any of all this.” And the Buddha’s teachings added this: “The inner emptiness is so beautiful, don’t stuff it with junk, leave it as it is.”

When I meditated on these perspectives during my mouna sessions, I discovered that living out of my emptiness, asking nothing from Life, living moment to moment for no other reason, just enjoying being alive, is what intelligent living is about. Intelligent living, I realized, was not applying my intelligence to my Life, but to love and celebrate the intelligence of Life, of creation, itself. Osho helped me along futher: “It is more than what you can ask for! What more meaning do you need? Is breathing not enough? Is the chirping of the birds not enough? Is the green and the red and the gold of the trees not enough? Is this vast existence with all its splendor not enough? Do you still want some meaning?”

I read these teachings over and over again. That’s how I discovered that your Life’s journey is uniquely designed for you to find yourself. Only when you lose yourself can you find who you really are and what you are here, on this planet, for. This lifetime is actually a minefield where you get blown to smithereens  by a landmine that you have stepped on, because of the choices you have made, only so that you can gather yourself again and find yourself to be stronger, happier and more content than ever before.

So, every time you feel lost, empty, beaten and defeated in Life, celebrate. Because extraordinary pain is not a sign of your past sins catching up or Life conspiring to fix you. It is a sign of extraordinary grace pulsing through your Life.  

PS: If you liked this blogpost, please share it to help spread the learning it carries!

 

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!

PS: If you liked this blogpost, please share it to help spread the learning it carries!

Awaken to who you really are

Strangely, we have come to a stage, in this time and age, when who we really are needs proving. Because we have started to believe that we are something else.

Think about this: we are all created as good, loving, patient, generous, compassionate, fearless, human beings. But we have become opinionated, confused, impatient, angry, jealous, anxious, fearful and self-centered. Look at children, aren’t they fearless? They are not scared of putting their hands into a burning candle flame or peeping precariously over a balcony railing? They wouldn’t have a problem sharing whatever they have with another. They would gleefully hug, embrace and kiss. They are simple and caring. And look at ourselves: we are complex and are afraid of every step we take, of every decision we make. We are jealous, silently pining to acquire what others have, and don’t have inhibitions demonstrating our hatred for others openly – especially now with social media offering everyone, virtually, ‘freedom to express’. We seek to earn a living but never a want to be living through anything we do. But we also are lost, we are searching for something. So, we enrol for “Bhagavad Gita” classes or church sermons, we read countless books on spirituality or attend Programs on self-improvement. Yet, while all spiritual thinkers and all scriptures champion and point to us going back to being loving, caring and giving as the most intelligent way of living, we demand proof. We ask if this will really work? Ironic, isn’t it? That we need justification and validation to convince ourselves of who we truly are. 

A spiritual seeker, like us, Wahiduddin, has this wonderful learning to share on awakening to who we really are: “The ultimate goal of spiritual practices is beautifully summarized in this centuries-old Zen teaching wherein Master Nanyue Huairang encountered his disciple Mazu Daoyi, who was deep in meditation, and asked him: 

“Noble one, what are you trying to do, sitting there in meditation?” 

Mazu said, “I’m trying to become a Buddha.”

Master Nanyue then picked up a nearby piece of clay tile that had fallen from the roof, and began to rub it briskly on a stone.

Mazu asked, “What are you doing?”

The Master said, “I’m polishing this tile to make a mirror.”

Mazu said, “How can you produce a mirror by polishing a piece of tile?”

Master Nanyue replied, “How can you make a Buddha by sitting in meditation?”

Oh what a wonderful little story this is! The goal of our spiritual practices is not to become something else. Our spiritual practices will never magically transform us into something that we are not. The tile will never become a mirror; that is an unrealistic goal, and an unrealistic goal will be met with failure upon failure. The goal of all our spiritual journeys is not to make us into something that we are not, but rather to awaken us to the truth of who we really are!”

Whether we get the proof we seek or we find ourselves by seeking within, one thing is for sure: unless we go back to the true nature of our creation, to who we really are, we will never find inner peace. 

Go on, be a Buddha today!

To find peace, meaning and happiness in Life, all you must do is to stop searching.

When you are searching, you are missing what’s most apparent. When you just be, just the way you are, you will always find whatever you are searching for.

This has often happened to you or you have seen others go through this: people search for their glasses all over while they have raised them to leave them on their foreheads. They look high and dry, feel exasperated, and then when they are told that they have been carrying them on their foreheads, they feel stupid and sheepish.

So it is with Life too. You are the peace you seek, your Life has a Purpose, and you can be happy only in the present moment. These are unalterable truisms of Life. Also, you are a Buddha. The root word ‘Budh’ means to wake up, to understand. A person who wakes up and understands is called a Buddha. To grasp this wisdom, you don’t need to be a guru. You must just be willing to let the flow of Life take you in its fold. In any situation, allow Life to take over. Just go with the flow.

For instance, this weekday morning, don’t get stressed out if you are running a few minutes late. Watch your every breath, take your very step in peace. Look at your schedules for the day and ask yourself how you will be creating value and making a difference today. Choose to focus on only those items on your agenda where you can make a difference in the first half of the day. At lunch, review how you are feeling. You will be happy. Not because I have told you this. I am no soothsayer. This is no prophecy. You will be happy because you created conditions within you to be happy, despite it being busy day at work, despite the frenetic pace and stress of your working Life. When you stop running, and start feeling your breathing, you live. Most of us are alive, but we don’t think much of it. When you realize you are alive, when you celebrate each breath you take, anything is possible. When you live understanding the peace, meaning and happiness in each moment, you become a Buddha yourself. Go on, simply be, be a Buddha today!

For your guru to appear, you must first be a seeker

“When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.” – The Buddha.

A conversation over coffee yesterday veered around the subject of gurus.  Do we really need a guru? Does someone else’s guru have to appeal to you? How do we choose a guru?

These are very pertinent and normal questions that arise in a seeker. But before attempting to answer them, we must demystify the word guru itself. In Sanskrit, ‘gu’ means ‘the darkness of ignorance’ and ‘ru’ means ‘the one who removes’. So, anyone, absolutely, anyone who makes you become more aware, who dispels the ignorance in you, is your guru. For instance, my daughter’s friend, Aneesh, is the one I turn to for all geeky queries. I just send him a WhatsApp message and pat comes the reply. In every sense, he’s my guru when it comes to tech issues. Or for all matters pertaining to law and legal strategy, we turn to our friend and mentor of several years, S.Vijayaraghavan – he’s our guru there. Or for anything related to music and sound engineering, we lean on a young composer and studio owner, Kumar Narayanan; he is always helping us learn something new every single time. So, in essence, this whole belief that a guruis a saint, a religious figure, matted hair, orange robes and such is, to put it bluntly, all rubbish.

Fundamentally, if you have the readiness and willingness to learn, your guru will appear before you. There is no need to search for one. Seek. Just seek within. And you will be connected to someone who can, at that moment, clarify, educate and make you more aware. There’s a difference between seeking and searching. There is always a frantic quality to a search. But seeking is subliminal. There is a yearning. There’s a pining. Not in a painful way. But with the curiosity of child, the thirst of a desert-weary traveler.

I have always found that when you seek deeply, within, with all honesty, someone comes to help you along. Always.

I remember, a few years ago, when things were horribly, horribly bad, on the financial, legal and business front, we were in our hotel room in Navi Mumbai. I had a series of workshops to run that week. But I had no energy, no inclination, to do anything. I was seeking a way to understand myself better, I wanted to know how to cope. That’s when one of the managers from the company that we were working with came up to our room and told me and Vaani the story of how he had survived 95+ % burns in a ghastly fire accident. He said, “You simply have to believe. Non-believing is not a choice. When you believe, you are at peace. When you are at peace, you can think with clarity. With clarity anything is possible. With confusion, and depression, and despondency, nothing is.” So, to me, to Vaani, that day, this manager was our guru. He removed the darkness of ignorance. He made us aware what believing really meant.

This is who a guru is. A genuine guru has no pretensions, peddles no methods and makes no promises. It is just someone who makes you aware of whatever you must know. But for a guru to appear, you must first be a seeker – ready and willing! 

Refuse To Get Stuck With Pain

Pain can have no voice if you can mute the suffering

Pain is a visitor. It will stay with you, serve a tenure and go away. If you focus on the pain, you won’t be able to enjoy the Life you have as long as the pain lingers on!

I had been postponing a series of dental procedures for a few years now. The reason has been simple: lack of money to fund them. As happens with most urgent and important matters, my dental situation started causing me discomfort over the last few weeks. After a round of opinions, and a full mouth X-Ray, my dentist, a very mature and reassuring lady, Dr.Aparna, advised that I get rid of two of my teeth. One of them at least required a surgical procedure. I am 48 now. And barring the ‘usual’ stuff like what most of us deal with – colds, virals, two severe bouts of rheumatoid arthritis and a now-benign asthmatic condition – I have never been in hospital with someone cutting me up. My diabetic condition too means that I must be be extremely wary of any invasive procedure. But we decided to go with Dr.Aparna’s advice. In preparing me for the procedure, she asked me: “Sir, how would you describe your ability to handle pain?” I thought for a moment and said, “My ability to handle physical pain is average, but I am very good at handling emotional pain.”

Indeed. While our bankruptcy has helped me become emotionally resilient and I must say I do deal with mental trauma very efficiently, I have, mercifully, not had much experience dealing with physical pain, especially on the health front. Yes, bouts of severe asthma and rheumatoid arthritis can be very painful – and debilitating. But I have not had any surgery done on me. So, this procedure was to be a different experience.

(The last time I had had a dental procedure done, at least from what I can remember, was when I was six years old. We used to live in Jaipur. And the name of the clinic was Mohan Dental Clinic. It was bang opposite Prakash Talkies. My dad bought me an ice-cream and took me to watch a movie playing at Prakash – it was called “Zanjeer”, a movie that not only marked the arrival of the Angry Young Man, and Superstar, Amitabh Bachchan in Indian cinema, it also marked the beginning of my fan journey, which still continues, with him! Interestingly, when I walked in for my extraction yesterday, I was reading a new book “Written by Salim-Javed: The story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters” (Penguin, Diptakirti Chaudhuri). The book, among so many other stories, looks at the evolution of Amitabh Bachchan, considered to be Salim-Javed’s protégé.)

This procedure was indeed a new one for me. The local anesthesia administered made the process simpler – and in fact “cool” and “enjoyable”! Dr.Aparna had told me to expect pain within an hour of the anesthesia wearing off. And surely it arrived. Initially, it seemed unbearable. But I decided to employ all my spiritual experience – and learning – to deal with the pain. I was reminded of the Buddha’s most powerful – and my favorite – saying: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I made a choice: I was not going to suffer. I was not going to resist the pain or ask how long it would be there. I told myself: let it be; and let me be. I guess it worked. I slept peacefully last night. I still have a nagging swelling and very mild pain – I feel both only when I think of the procedure and the wound it has left behind!

I can now totally relate to what Ramakrishna Parahamsa (1836~1886) once said. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in the beginning of 1885. During his last days he was advised not to speak – so as not to aggravate his ailment. But he preferred meeting, interacting and conversing with his followers. He told his doctors, “My disease and I peacefully co-exist in my body”. This is such a spiritual and evolved perspective.

Most of us see all forms of pain as traumatic because we don’t know how to detach ourselves from our situations or conditions. We also think that pain arrives in our Life with an agenda to make us suffer. Here’s what I believe it is: Pain is pain. Pain has no agenda.Whether it is the bankruptcy – and resultant complexities we are having to deal with daily on that count – or a dental procedure that I had to deal with or any other situation/condition that may come tomorrow, I will suffer only if I wish the situation/condition didn’t exist. Suffering is clearly a human creation. Pain is a natural process. In Life, what goes up will come down, what is gained will be lost, the human body will have its share of wear and tear and you will be faced with myriad grievous situations – physical and emotional – yet, all this pain can’t touch you, won’t affect you, if you just treat your pain as a visitor and choose not to suffer. Simply, pain has no voice if you can mute the suffering!

Life = It is what it is

Life can be both an irony and a tragedy at times.  This isn’t the problem. Because such is Life’s nature. The problem arises when you don’t understand Life’s true nature and expect Life to be in a certain way – as you wish it to be!

Prasanna, A R Rahman and Vivek Picture Courtesy: Internet

This morning’s papers carry the poignant story of Tamil comedian Vivek’s 14-year-old son Prasanna’s untimely death. The boy succumbed to suspected dengue and brain fever after 40 days in hospital. One of the papers pointed out the irony – Vivek has been an ambassador for the Tamil Nadu government’s dengue-prevention campaign! My auto-rickshaw driver amplified another angle to the irony: “Saar, Vivek made so many people laugh their guts out as a comedian. Poor guy, he is now having to cope with such a huge loss.” When I heard the news first, I remembered A.K.Hangal’s immortal dialogue (written by Salim-Javed) in Sholay (1975, Ramesh Sippy): “Jaante ho duniya mein sabse bada bhoj kya hota hai? – Baap ke kandhe pe bete ka janaaza!” It means: “The heaviest burden in Life is a child’s coffin on a parent’s shoulder”.

I am sure everyone today must be sending Vivek and his family a silent prayer and positive energy. Of course, beyond that none of us can do anything. The truth is, when our time comes, each of us has to deal with our own Life situations. This is perhaps why the famous Hindi poet, Harivansh Rai Bachchan (1907~2003), said this: “Jeevan ka matlab hai sangharsh”; “Life is a struggle, a challenge.” It doesn’t mean that Life is only full of pain and challenges. It means that you have to go through your share of challenges no matter who you are and no matter what you have done or not done, no matter whether you think you deserve it or don’t deserve it.

This is where the Buddha’s advice is very relevant. He said this: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Suffering is a human, self-inflicted condition. You suffer when you expect your Life to be any different from what it is, from the way it is. Someone dies and you feel the grief. That’s because your pain leads you to grief. And that is natural. But the moment you ask why should this person die or ask why should this person die now, then you have invited suffering into your Life. Who is going to answer your “whys”? Actually nobody has any answers. So, following any painful event or situation, only when you keep clinging on to the grief, do you suffer.

A friend, a retired Wing Commander from the Indian Air Force, who lost his grandson within a day of the child’s birth, had this to say: “Well, he came, he fulfilled his time on the planet and he went away. That was his design. We can’t do anything but accept his reality.” I agree completely with my friend’s outlook to Life. In fact, the simplest way to live Life is to be prepared for anything – and everything. And let us not ask the “whys”. Just take it as it comes. For it was what it was, it is what it is and it will always be what it will be. 

Live Unsoiled!

Learn to live unsoiled by the world.

There are enough and more temptations and distractions out there. And we are not talking about materialistic objects of desire alone. Or of ruinous addictions like alcohol, tobacco or drugs either. While these are deterrents to intelligent living, most certainly, what we need to be wary off also are the myriad ways in which we get dragged into brooding or worrying on a daily basis. Think deeply about this. How often in a day do you worry about a future event __ someone’s terminal illness and impending passing, a child’s graduation, someone’s wedding or loans to be repaid? How often in a day do you grieve over the past __ having experienced someone wrongly, an irreconcilable loss, a mistake you made, a hurt you caused someone? How often do you lose your patience or temper or both daily __ on a child or spouse or subordinate or with just someone on the street? Each of these episodes takes us away from living. Every time we worry about the future or fret over the past or get dragged into anger spells, every single time, we die a death.

The ultimate goal and measure of success of intelligent living is notto change your external environment and make it incapable of causing you worry or making you feel guilty or angry. It is about engineering your inner space and insulating yourself from the vagaries of the world. This is what the Bible says ‘living in the world but not of it’ and what the Bhagavad Gita advises of ‘being in this world but being above it’.

The Buddha enlightens us, making this perspective simpler and easier to hold, using the metaphor of the lotus, “As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world.” Imagine being like a lotus. You too must avoid letting your soul be soiled and live, unsoiled, in bliss!