What Cyclone #Vardah teaches us

If you can still your stormy mind, you can face any situation in Life – any time!

Of course there’s the obvious lesson that we must all pick up – that we are powerless in front of Nature’s might and fury. But over my morning coffee, as the birds chirped outside my balcony, signifying that they have moved on, embracing a new day at the office for them, I reflected on Cyclone Vardah. And I gleaned a couple of additional, significant, learnings.

It is not often that we get to experience being in the eye of a physical storm. Yes, we have all heard of the adage that it is always calm at the center of a storm, in its eye. But yesterday, Chennai experienced it. Between two bouts of being ravaged by Vardah, the city experienced total calmness for about an hour. Eerie alright. But calm nevertheless. This is what Swami Vivekananda meant when he said these words: “Live in the midst of the battle of Life. Anyone can keep calm in a cave or when asleep. Stand in the whirl and madness of action and reach the Centre. If you have found the Centre, you cannot be moved.” I found his perspective both unputdownable and inspiring when I read it first in 2004. My Life was in utter chaos (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal) then, when I set out to find my center through the daily practice of mouna. Even now, a storm endures in our professional and material world, but Vaani and I continue to be calm. This is why we believe that the biggest lesson from Vardah’s crossing of Chennai yesterday is that we can – and we must – find our center. So that no matter what the circumstances be that we are placed in, we remain unmoved. This is the key to inner peace and happiness.

The other lesson I pick up is from a scene I witnessed in my backyard. A tall, huge tree was felled by Vardah as it resisted the storm’s fury. The tree snapped at its trunk. Around our building, and across the city, several trees were uprooted. But the blades of grass everywhere remained intact. Look at the size and might of a tree and the meekness of a blade of grass. Yet the grass survives and the trees fall in a storm? There’s a Life lesson here: when faced with the onslaught of a situation that you cannot comprehend or solve, yield, don’t resist. The grass yielded, so they survived. The trees resisted so, despite their size and strength, they were felled. In Life, therefore, it is important to yield when you don’t know what to do or when you can’t understand what’s going on. Yielding to Life is not abdication, it is not inaction, it is not being irresponsible. It is, in fact, the most sensible action you can take, the more responsible choice you can make, so that you survive, you last another day – so that you can start afresh to solve the problem that confronts you.

All day yesterday, as Vardah impatiently savaged Chennai, I could only think of it as a metaphor for the stormy human mind. We cannot really do anything about the storms that ravage our outer, material world. But if we can learn to still the mind, we can learn the power of equanimity; then we will learn to yield when we don’t know what to do, and we will learn to be happy despite our circumstances!

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

 

Sahir Ludhianvi’s Life anthem for Dev Anand can be yours too

The key to living happily is to be willing to experience Life in its myriad forms.

A young actor I met the other day wanted to know why we can never understand Life. He asked me, “The spiritual path excites me, but I am not sure it offers us an explanation that can be reasonably, logically understood. So, is Life really a mystery or is it a scientific process?”

The answer is that it is neither. It is a grand experience made up of several million experiences.

As the famous song sung by Kishore Kumar from ‘Safar’ (1970, Asit Sen, Indeevar, Kalyanji Anandji) goes: “Zindagi Ka Safar…Hai Yeh Kaisa Safar…Koi Samjha Nahin…Koi Jaana Nahin…” It means, “what kind of a journey this is, of Life, it is so inscrutable…” So, surely, the debate will rage on, on what Life is. But that debate’s immaterial to the reality that Life will go on, giving each of us myriad experiences in our lifetimes.

The Greek word ‘philosophy’ means love of knowledge. From an ancient Indian point of view, we have not used the word ‘philosophy’ much. Here, we seek ‘darshan‘ or we attempt to ‘see’, to awaken in realization, to the truth of being part of a larger whole. To scientists, Life is about conquest, about unraveling and controlling, replicating the method behind what is; to philosophers it is about reasoning the mystery of what is. Spiritual insight implores us to know that because there is, something, a whole, that there is a conquest possible or a mystery surrounding it exists! Ultimately, all disciplines teach us to learn and evolve from, in and through Life.

Interestingly, I was among the audience yesterday at a conversation centered around Akshay Manwani’s biography on poet and songwriter Sahir Ludhianvi (1921~1980). Yesterday also was Dev Anand’s death anniversary. As I write this blogpost, the song that Sahir wrote for Dev saab in Hum Dono (1961, Amarjeet/Vijay Anand, Jaidev, Mohd. Rafi) comes to mind: “Mein Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhata Chala Gaya, Har Phikr Ko Dhuein Mein Udaata Chala Gaya…” It means, “I just went with the flow of Life, letting go of my worries…” I am told that Dev saab retained this song as his Life’s anthem till he passed on in 2011. It can be yours too. It’s a beautiful reminder that the key to living happily is to be open and willing to experience Life in its myriad forms – good-bad, bitter-sweet, bright-dark, summer-winter, ups-downs, happy-sad, bliss-sorrow – and to go on experiencing it. The more we experience Life, and the more we accept and learn from each experience, the more it becomes easier and simpler to live. It is because we resist some experiences that we suffer. Life is like the beautiful, seductive, bountiful ocean. Each experience we go through is like a wave; it may perhaps be right to say a wave has ended by crashing on the shore, but it also marks the beginning of a new one. And that’s why the ocean of Life itself remains inscrutable, magnificent and infinite!

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!

 

Zen amidst all the Scotch and shor in a party

When you are immersed in the moment, you are happy – irrespective of what’s happening around you!

Last evening we were at a party to mark the launch of The Art Bistro at Grand by GRT. The organizers had arranged for a casual lounge conversation, anchored by famous RJ Devasena Subramaniam, between film-makers Gautham Vasudev Menon and Venkat ‘VP’ Prabhu. It was an unplugged conversation alright, and the two famous men were talking to each other as great friends would – laughing, ribbing each other and, at times, being candid too! Those who managed to listen to the conversation felt enriched with the perspectives they heard. But few people actually did that. As celebrities kept pouring into the Bistro, people greeted each other, clamored for Seflies, some even called out aloud to each other across the room, while others scrambled at the bar. At several points during the evening, the organizers kept inviting the guests to listen to the conversation between Gautham and VP. But in vain. Seeing one of the exasperated organizers make one more valiant effort to quieten the room, Gautham piped in reassuringly. He said, “It’s okay! They are having their conversations. And VP and I are having ours.”

To me that was a deeply spiritual view of how to deal with the chaos around you and still be engaged in the moment, in its beauty and its magic.

Anyone else in Gautham’s or VP’s position may have refused to continue with the conversation – not just because they are intelligent celebrities whose views on their films and Life merit attention, but also because it is very poor etiquette to drown a show that has been got together by your hosts in mindless din, senseless shor.

But this is the way Life is. There is always a lot of stuff happening to us, around us. If we wait to sort out our Life in order to do what we want to, we possibly will never get a chance. Someone, somewhere or something, always, will remain undone, unstuck. If we really want to do something, we must go ahead and do it, inspite of the circumstances. And that’s one learning I picked up from Gautham’s Zen-soaked stance last evening. Second, there wasn’t a trace of any holier-than-thou attitude or ego among the two men. As they answered Devasena’s carefully curated questions or as they ribbed each other, it was very evident that they were enjoying the process thoroughly. It didn’t matter to them if anyone listened in or not. To them, what mattered most was that they were in conversation with each other. And I believe there’s yet another significant learning for all of us here.

In inviting the organizer to chill, Gautham, perhaps unwittingly, showcased his Zen. Had he and VP brooded over why nobody was bothered about their ‘celebrity conversation’, had they wondered what people would now think of their celebrity status, they would have missed the beautiful opportunity that was available to them – which is, engage with Deva, and each other, in an uplifting, meaningful conversation! I felt there was art not just on the walls in the room, but in that conversation too. It was indeed very, very Zen.

Zen is not a method. It is not a practice. It is a state of being. It is total immersion in whatever is happening in the moment. If there is only one quality in you that you want to hone, let it be Zen. Because only your Zen can make your mind powerless. The human mind thrives only in the dead past or in the still-to-be-born future. It loves clinging on to anger, grief and guilt from what’s over, what’s past, and it revels in magnifying anxieties, fears, insecurities through worrying about what has not happened yet. In the present moment the mind is powerless. Osho, in fact, called the present, the now, as the ‘no-mind zone’.

Simply, you don’t seek Zen. You are Zen. You just have to drop all the layers of non-Zen that you have accumulated owing to habits, social conditioning and debilitating emotions to realize your Zen. When you are Zen, you simply are, you are happy – no matter what your circumstances are and no matter who’s watching and who is not!

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!

Living in a let-go means accepting that Life happens inspite of you!

Unhappiness = Clinging on! Happiness = Letting go!!

At a grocery store the other day a friend tapped me from behind. We exchanged greetings and generally caught up. He then went on to say that while he found my daily blogposts “interesting” he “seriously doubted if it was indeed possible to live the way Vaani and I are living”. “How can you live in a let-go, when you have a problem to solve, a situation to fix, responsibilities to discharge and especially when you know you are intelligent, capable and driven,” he asked.

This is not a new question. I used to ask myself this question until some years ago. And people often ask me this question at my Talks or workshops.

The simplest way to live in a let-go is to understand that Life does not happen because of us. It happens inspite of us. Just because we have got ourselves an academic education, we are skilled, we are ethical and sincere, and we are earning an income, we imagine that we are in control. No we are not. We never were. Life has been and will always be in control. So, let-go really means to go with the flow of Life.

Now, when Life happens to a plan that you have conceived you think you are in control. Fair enough. But ever so often Life will change, in such a manner that you will be reminded of and made to realize that you are not in control. You can fight it and resist it, but unless you accept the Life you have and unless you flow with it, you will feel miserable.

I talk from personal experience. For almost close to a decade now, we are trying to fix our business situation with no progress. I have a health condition that requires surgery but we don’t have the means just yet. Every material aspect of our Life requires mending in some form or the other – human beings can survive a bankruptcy, we realize, things cannot! So when we examine our Life closely, Vaani and I see so many, many, many dimensions that are beyond our control. And yet Life just goes on – whatever we need always finds its way to us. Incredibly, miraculously! The best way to live, therefore, we have learnt, is to live in a perpetual let-go.

Yet living in a let-go is not inaction. It means living in total acceptance, living in faith that you will be taken care of and provided for no matter what the circumstances are, living in gratitude, and living fully, making a sincere effort even when the results are not adding up. Now, that’s a lot of action!

Living in a let-go does not require any practice or preparation. To be sure, anyone can live this way. It just requires an understanding and acceptance of the impermanence of Life. It requires living with humility, acknowledging that Life is more intelligent and more powerful than you. Think deeply. Your frustrations come only from your subconscious desire to be in control of everything you have and of everyone you know. In a way, you don’t want your things or your people to be taken away from you. Technology has only made you seek more of instant gratification. If something is broken, it needs a fix immediately. If something is not working out, you agonize over getting it to work instantly. If you lose something, or someone, you grieve over that loss endlessly. But there are times in Life when fixes won’t work, won’t be available and when you will have to wait endlessly till they arrive! In such situations you will end up being unhappy. Happiness, on the other hand, really is about getting rid of – letting go – whatever you don’t have, isn’t there, can’t fix or have not got. You are unhappy only as long as you cling on to something.

This is as true about our material assets as it is about our relationships and our emotions. When we get rid of the thought, the expectation, that something, or someone for that matter, should always be with us, we will be free. And happy. So being in a let-go is really about celebrating impermanence. Life’s most well-kept secret is this – as long as you are not clinging on to anyone or anything, you will not suffer!

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

Live-in, be BFFs, make lots of love, have children – do you really need to marry for doing all this?

Marriage is a hollow, irrelevant institution – it is perhaps the singular cause of gender inequality.

Last night, over dinner, Vaani and I had an interesting conversation with a friend’s daughter. We talked about marriage – and its increasing irrelevance.

This young lady is in a long-distance relationship. Her boyfriend comes from an affluent, conservative family. The boy’s parents are keen to have the engagement done now and the wedding sometime next summer. The young lady is not sure what she must do. She is wary of walking into a family which does not believe in the bahu, the daughter-in-law, following her own bliss and career. The girl’s brother is advising the couple not to rush into a marriage. His view: “Understanding each other is very critical before you end up in a marriage.”

I agree with him. In fact, although Vaani and I are married, I have come to see marriage as a totally avoidable practice. Here’s why I feel so – and this is what I shared with the young lady too last night.

In the garb of according societal approval and fulfilling religious norms, marriage actually, unnecessarily, limits Life between two people. Clearly, the reason why two people relate to each other for long periods of time is not because they are married. It is because there’s a friendship between them, they understand each other and are willing to be non-judgmental about each other despite the circumstances. This relating is continuous, and is never limited by gender, class, religion, nationality or language. Of course, to build and sustain this companionship, two people need not be necessarily married. On the other side of this view, people can stop relating to each other after being together for a considerable amount of time. It is very natural. But as we see all around us, it is only marriage that makes any divorce painful and messy. So, if you place societal requirements aside, marriage is irrelevant. What people do today while they are still in a marriage they can and will do even otherwise. They will either relate to each other and be great friends or they will grow out of liking each other and move on or they will stay together and have other relationships that will make them feel complete and fulfilled. But when they do all this without being married, they will do so while being a lot, lot more, happier.  Simply, they will experience total freedom and zero guilt in doing what they really want to do! If you examine society around you, there’s isn’t unputdownable evidence that supports the utility of marriage as a social contract – it has neither aided the building of great companionships nor has it prevented people from exploring Life outside of its framework. This is why, I believe, marriage is irrelevant.

The other problem that marriage has created is that it has, again unnecessarily, made a very basic human need, sex, appear illicit and salacious whenever it is indulged in outside of a marriage. This is outright ridiculous. As Osho, the Master, says, the bees, the birds, the fish, and every other species don’t find the act of having sex illicit. They do it freely. They don’t have any rules that promote monogamy and condemn polygamy. So, why are we humans outrageously supportive of this regressive framework called marriage that restricts free access to a basic human need, to a beautiful spiritual expression – sex?

Also, it is the imposition of the draconian code of conduct of marriage that has singularly led to gender inequality. This is particularly true in Indian society even though it is evident in several other cultures world-wide. Consider this: the moment she marries, a woman must serve the interests of the family, often at the cost of her career, her passion, her bliss. She must rear children. She must not step outside of the marriage, the relationship, even if she finds someone that she can relate to. But the man she married can do what he pleases, with whomever he chooses. And because she agreed to be subservient, and often just a doormat, if at all she dares to seek a divorce, she has to be at the mercy of her estranged husband and seek alimony for survival through an inert legal process, that’s always messy and emotionally draining! Doesn’t all this sound so stupid, so repulsive?

I would any day champion that people just develop great friendships while living together. If they grow out of liking each other, they can, and must, move on. And if they want to procreate and have children, let it be a mutual choice, not a necessity. Yes, for reasons like securing passports or buying material assets, if there must be a piece of legal documentation, let there be. But don’t get wedded to the legalese. The real contract is in the spirit of togetherness – of a friendship, of relating to each other, of enjoying each other, of giving and receiving, of always being there for each other, no matter what the circumstances are. As I share in my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal  and in the film Rise In Love  (that a young film-maker made to understand how the companionship between Vaani and me thrived in the face of adversity), Vaani and I are friends first and then a married couple. In fact, if I was meeting Vaani now, I would not have chosen to have a marriage. We would have lived-in together and would still be loving each other as much as we do now. Our marriage has not helped us stay together. Our friendship has.

So, my (unsolicited) advice to my children, Aashirwad and Aanchal, and to anyone wanting some perspective is this – marry only if you want to; please don’t marry because society or family wants you to. It is a meaningless, irrelevant, practice. Between being stuck in a relationship and being able to relate to each other no matter what, relating to each other is more valuable. Between your marriage and your happiness, obviously, happiness wins hands down any day, doesn’t it?!

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

Doing what you love can heal you

Your physical and emotional well-being are a function of what you choose to do.

I have a rheumatoid arthritic (RA) condition. It is very painful at times and the pain often radiates from my upper back and travels to my shoulders or limbs.

Last week, I was throbbing in pain most nights. I also had to travel by road on Friday last for three+ hours to Chittoor to address students. My session at a medical college there was for eight hours. While I was in a great amount of pain even when I arrived there, during the day, despite it being physically taxing – being on the floor, addressing a 100+ audience without a microphone – I healed. My pain had vanished by the time I finished the session closer to 6 pm. Yes, I was tired. But I was not in pain.

The RA condition resurfaced by Tuesday this week. But yesterday I spent a lot of time doing housekeeping chores around my home. I love cleaning surfaces, dusting cobwebs, polishing toilet fittings, wiping down tiles and making even furniture or photo-frame crevices dust-free. In the hour I spent doing all this work, I healed again.

I have noticed this time and again. In fact, I talk about a similar experience, that happened in 2010 – again in Chittoor interestingly, in my Book, Fall Like A Rose Petal (Westland). Every time I have an immersive experience doing what I love I heal.

People ask me how I manage to find the time to write my Blog daily. Honestly, I don’t have to work too hard. I enthusiastically look forward to writing daily. It is very therapeutic. In the time that I am writing, there’s a communion, through a confluence of my innermost feelings with thoughts, with words, with my fingers tapping away on the keypad – with the way everything flows and appears on my laptop screen. There is an effortlessness. There is a flow. In the time that I write, I guess there is no ‘I’, there is no AVIS, there is just a oneness. This happens to me every time I address audiences as well. And whenever I am doing housekeeping. Of course, I lose myself in music or nature too. But nothing matches the feeling I experience, of total immersion, with writing, speaking and housekeeping. This is not just uplifting, it is therapeutic and healing.

The only reason I can attribute to why I lose myself, or heal, is that I am, in those times, doing what I love doing the most. Osho, the Master, refers to this as immersion. He says, “When the dancer becomes the dance, magic happens!” So I guess I become the expression – whether I am writing, speaking or cleaning. This healing is not just at a physical level. You also heal at an emotional level. The only way to experience this personally is for you to consider how you are feeling just now, drop whatever you are doing and immerse yourself in whatever you love. In just a while, you will feel infinitely better. Now, if you can replicate this feeling consistently, by doing only what you love, then you will be a lot healthier and happier than you are currently!     

An inspiration in loving Life from ‘Anarkali’ – ‘…zindagi hai bewafaa, loot pyaar ka mazaa…’!

Go beyond the predictable and celebrate Life, love Life!

The other day, while addressing a bunch of students at a Medical College in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, I asked them: “How many of you are in love? How many of you have been in love?” Interestingly, no hands went up. It’s possible that they students were too shy to share openly or it’s also possible that they have not been in love yet. Whatever it was, I felt our social conditioning makes us look at love as something that is governed by age, gender and, sadly, also by economic criteria.

I feel if you are not in love you are not living. You may be existing. But you are not living, you are not alive. I am eternally in love. So, in the context of a romantic liaison, and companionship, I am in love with Vaani for over 29 years. But I am also in love with Life. I just find its inscrutability, its mystique, its challenges, its highs, its lows, it magic and its beauty irresistible. So, to me, love goes beyond the physical surely, it also goes beyond the love I feel for a soul-mate, or for my children, or a friend; love, as I have, is the ability to immerse yourself in the moment and celebrate it!

So I was delighted that the day after my Talk in Chittoor, at a friend’s Navarathri Golu party, another guest, the well-known singer Janani Madan, chose to sing Yeh Zindagi Usi Ki Hai  from Anarkali (1953, Nandlal Jaswantlal, Lata Mangeshkar, C.Ramachandra, Rajendra Krishan). Janani brought her own to this classic. She was simply brilliant. When she sang, “…zindagi hai bewafaa, loot pyaar ka mazaa…”, I was reminded of my questions to the students and of my own perspective on love. Rajendra Krishan was one of Hindi cinema’s most talented lyricists and writers. That one line sums up the attitude that we must bring to Life every single day –  “…zindagi hai bewafaa, loot pyaar ka mazaa…” meaning (loosely) “….Life is a traitor, it will let you down or end abruptly, so, steal the joy of love, make time to love, when you still have Life and are alive…”!

This is what I have come to believe in and live by. There is no better time than now to live fully. Immerse in the moment, love what is. Do only what you love and that will make you happy no matter what circumstances you are placed in. And of course, if you can love someone, be in love and rise in love, continuously, you can really, really celebrate Life!

Someone once told me that to be expressing love appeared to be phony and impractical. And I laughed off that observation. What is the point in being born human if you cannot live the Life you love, and love the Life you live, if you cannot love and be loved, if you cannot be loving whatever is? To me, this is what living means. If you are not living this way, loving, you are merely existing!

Why faith in relationships is over-rated

The best way to have wonderful relationships is to do two things: never expect anything from it or from the other person and always respect the other person’s choice.

When we expect someone to be what we want them to be, we are not respecting the person as a special, unique individual. Where expectation comes, respect goes out, and agony comes in! Much of the problem in marital or personal relationships is because there is an expectation of faithfulness. While it is important that deceit or cheating must be avoided in any relationship – so honest, open conversations are always the best way forward in such situations – the nature of the expectation of faithfulness is an indicator that we have stopped respecting the other person. To be faithful cannot mean living someone else’s Life. Or you cannot insist that someone live their Life as you want them to for you to be able to call them faithful. To be faithful means to be true to yourself, first doing what you want to do as long as it will not harm anyone else. When all people in a relationship are true to themselves, and don’t harm each other, a harmonious environment is born that respects each individual in it. That’s when relationships become meaningful and stand the test of time.

Osho, the Master, argues this perspective immensely well: “Who are you to demand faith from anyone else? Demanding faith is like demanding slavery. There’s a misconception in people that love must be permanent. Only stones are permanent. To ask for faith is wrong. There was a season__the spring, the faith, the love arose in you. You did not create it. It was just a happening. Just like a breeze it comes and just like a breeze it goes. When it comes, rejoice. And when it goes, say good-bye. Millions of couples in the world know there’s no love between them anymore. But for the sake of society, reputation, for respectability, they go on pretending they love each other. This pretension is the real sin, the real crime.”

This is not to conclude however that love cannot be eternal between people. It can, as long as there is respect for the other person and there are no expectations, while being true to yourself first in the relationship.