Stay Cool – “Thand Rakh”!!

Just surrender to the Universe’s energy, to Life, don’t fight it!

I love the Punjabi phrase – “Thand Rakh”! It means “Stay Cool”! Not just in situations when anxiety grips you, or when you are provoked by someone, but stay cool, at all times! This is not a state that is beyond your reach. If you just understand how Life works, and how it is working for you, you will learn the art of dropping anchor and staying unflustered despite Life’s upheavals!

Consider this: don’t you agree that if there indeed is a Master of the Universe, who was controlling, coordinating, delivering, granting, blessing and driving whatever is happening in the world, in your Life and mine, then this person is mighty intelligent? So intelligent that zebras have stripes while horses don’t, that when the East has daylight, the West has stars in the sky, that there are four seasons that keep switching as if someone is operating the switches in a Master Control Room, that mangoes are different from oranges and the Himalayas are different from the Rockies! None of these have been or can be controlled by you or me. Yet they happen! And so, we have to admit that the Universe’s energy, which, in my humble opinion, powers our lives, is far more intelligent than all of us put together. Yet why don’t we trust this energy?

Think about it. When things go per your expectation, you don’t have an issue. When they go against what you wish, you immediately start fighting Life. Why? For instance, let’s say, your DVD player doesn’t work when you sit down to watch a movie. You feel frustrated. Even so, it is a small thing, you will eventually get over that setback! You will fight your DVD player for a while, then chuck it out the window and move on. Now, take a more serious situation. Let’s say you are out of work and out of cash. What do you do? You begin, of course, by fighting, by hating, by resisting the Life which you currently have to endure. You sulk, you brood! But does that change anything? Or what if your liver malfunctions or your heart suffers an attack? That’s a situation you can’t even mentally fight! When you realize that you are dealing with situations beyond your control, you learn the art of surrendering to Life. Now, think, if we could consider surrendering to Life in all contexts, how much more simpler and easier to live will our lives be?

In Hindu scriptures, they talk of surrender as ‘saranagati’ to a physical God, an idol. I am suggesting that we learn to surrender to Life, the energy that keeps you – and me – alive! The truth about Life is, no matter what you do, what is to happen (alone) will happen! What I have also learnt from Life is that the Master Plan no flaws. Whatever is happening to you just now is what is ordained to happen. Therefore, intelligence demands that you and I don’t fight Life. Fighting and resisting Life is what causes all your suffering! So, simply, “Thand Rakh” and surrender to Life!

Prayer, seriously, does not require any time, place or rituals

Make your entire Life an offering to the Universe, and you will be the prayer yourself.

Last evening I was caught in the middle of an artificial traffic jam caused by motorists thronging a Shirdi Baba shrine. The mess was artificial because it was time for the arathi and everyone inside and outside the temple was shoving, elbowing, honking and pausing to catch a glimpse of the deity. Chaos is a mild word to describe the situation, it was complete mayhem!

And I caught myself thinking – do we really need to be so demonstrative with prayer and worship?

To be sure, my perspective on the subject too has evolved over the years. There was a time when I wore rings on my fingers and visited temple after temple seeking solutions to my problems and answers to my questions. I visited Tirupathi on the trot for 17 quarters, on the first day of each quarter – Lord Venkateswara was the corporate deity, as I had understood, and paying obeisance to Him at the beginning of each earnings cycle was mandatory. I visited Tiruchendur and Sabari Malai once every year. I even went with Vaani to Tirucherai, to offer special prayers to the Runa Vimochana Lingam (the Shiva shrine dedicated to debt relief). I have also visited Ajmer and gone to the dargah of the Garib Nawaz, Khwaja Moinudeen Chisty, there. I have been to the Vatican and to Velankanni, to Gurudwara Bangla Sahib in New Delhi and to almost all the churches and temples in Kerala and Goa. I have visited Shirdi several times and, at one point, I even used to fast on Thursdays – considered to be Sai Baba’s special day. While I did feel energized at each of these ‘pit-stops’, I still found something missing within me. I was still restless and disturbed. Worry, anger, grief and guilt haunted me despite my best efforts to be pious and prayerful. And I always wondered, ‘Why was I not finding inner peace’?

It was my practice of mouna – daily silence periods – that led me to understand that peace came from within and not from any external source – however holy and haloed the source is hailed to be. I realized that our conditioning has led us to look outside of us than within us. There is a popular notion that we have, thanks to our upbringing, that prayer is an action that requires a time, a place and certain necessary and sufficient conditions. Each religion preaches worship through prayer differently. Therefore, while all of us have become adept at praying, we have become completely incapable of living! Even when in prayer, the mind is distracted, often anxious, fearful and disturbed!

How can merely, mechanically, by rote, chanting a mantra or reciting a hymn, compensate for intelligent living? This is my humble, personal view – born out of my own evolutionary experience. Over the years, I have learned that your entire Life, the way you live, think and work, can be prayer if you understand that this lifetime is a gift and that you must forever be grateful to Life for this experience! Choosing forgiveness over angst, love over hatred, postponing worrying than postponing happiness, serving over seeking deservance, gratitude over expectation and making each moment count are all ways in which you live your Life prayerfully. When you do this, repeatedly, over days and months and years, you become the peace that you seek.

This doesn’t mean that Life will not serve you any more problems. There will be problems; perhaps even more than you would imagine! But you will be able to deal with each of them effectively, efficiently, because you are now anchored in peace. It is only because you relegate peace and prayer to a specific time, and do it with a ritualistic obsession and not with deep fervor – immersion in the moment – that you don’t escape fear, worry, anxiety, guilt, grief and suffering. But if you make your Life your prayer, being grateful for all that you have, you will be always soaked in peace!

Living a lie makes a “familie” – dysfunctional, fractious, unhappy!

Mutual trust, respect, space and brutally honest conversations make a family a home that people can come back to!

Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921)

We watched Shakun Batra’s very sensitive, brutally honest, Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) yesterday. It had more than fifty shades of what some families witness – imperfection – written all over it: everyday squabbles emerging from a lack of trust, absence of honest conversations and an incessant tendency to interpret rather than understand each other. Most important, three of the four members of the Kapoor family were living a lie. The only one, Arjun (Siddharth Malhotra), who was honest with himself and with rest of the world, was suffering from a huge inferiority complex, having been constantly ‘branded’ ‘the imperfect one’.

I come from a dysfunctional family. And I have always been ‘the imperfect one’ – son and brother. The reason why I was branded so was, as I perhaps realize now, because I was always calling everyone’s bluff. So, I can relate to the big message that Batra so matter-of-factly, unpreachingly, delivers through the film: if people in a family are living a lie it makes them a ‘familie’ – dysfunctional, fractious, unhappy!

Fundamentally, we must review our understanding of what a family must be. A family is not just a congregation of people – which, in fact, it physically is. A family is an opportunity for this congregation to be home to its people. It is where people must disagree, agree to co-exist, come back to each other, be there for each other, hold up mirrors to each other, fight, break-up, make-up and move on. It is where people must be allowed to be who they are. And where they must be invited to be true to themselves and to each other. So, conceptually, a family is never going to be perfect. It will have its share of upheavals. And these upheavals do not happen because of one person or the other. Upheavals are a part of Life – of the passage of time – and are inevitable when people live together. Just as they happen in – and to – communities, they happen in – and to – families too. Yet, a family becomes dysfunctional when its people cease to have honest, brutally honest, conversations and choose to always interpret, than understand, each other. Mutual trust, respect and space are integral to nurture a family. If people in a family cannot offer each other the space to be who they are – and sort out themselves whenever they feel lost, while being available for each other no matter what – then the very idea of family becomes irrelevant. Then people may as well live in a ghetto or in isolation! But the unkindest cut of all that a family can ever be subjected to is when people are dishonest with each other to the extent that they live in denial, live a Life of lies and, worse, imagine they are the perfect family – because all families are imperfect; imperfection is the new perfection, you see!

Batra’s Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) is unpretentious even in its last scene when it makes a very fervent appeal – do not squander away the time you have together in pettiness, for we are all speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds! In my opinion, since I come from one, dysfunctional families are beyond redemption especially if people continue to be dishonest and manipulative. But if an honest conversation can salvage your family please go ahead and attempt having one – now! But if you try and don’t succeed, at least step out of such a ‘familie’ – so you are not living a lie anymore and so that you exercise your opportunity to live happily ever after!

Everything happens in its own time and at its pace

Patience with Life is a key ingredient for inner peace.

We met a gentleman yesterday who has made a significant career shift. He’s moved out of Information Technology to pursue Art. He wanted a dispassionate, outside-in perspective on how he was doing ‘on the path’. We shared with him what we – Vaani and I – felt. I added one more point as we saw him off: “Don’t be in a hurry. Life happens in its own way, in its own time.”

I reflected on what I had to say for a long, long while after I had said it. Just 20 years ago, I was sounding so different – I was a champion of raw aggression and I believed that everything – and everyone – must be bulldozed if you must want your way. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that thinking or theory. To be sure, it works; for much of my youth it worked! But there will be times, as I have discovered in the past decade or so, when all your kicking, all your bulldozing, all your raving, ranting and your wanting, doesn’t yield results. Life’s doors don’t always open when you want them to – and definitely not the way you want them or expect them to open.

Yet, the magic and beauty of Life is that everything happens in its own time, at its own pace. And sometimes some things that you want may well not happen – however hard you try – because they are not meant to be!

Osho, the Master, defines patience as “the fragrance of trust”. Which is, if something is not happening when you want it to happen, the way you want it to happen, trust the process of Life. Just because you are going through self-doubt and are feeling hopeless over whatever you want to achieve, it doesn’t mean that Life is not at work. “Nothing’s working out” is a common lament you will hear coming from within you in such times. Ignore that sentiment. Let it arise and in due course it will fade away. You focus on trying the doors. The key is to keep at the doors without feeling frustrated, without giving up. Patience really means not giving up, but giving in – giving in to the way of Life; if this approach is not working out, try another route and another and another. And when nothing is working out – as Vaani and I have learnt from the already-8-year-long, enduring bankruptcy in our Life – keep trusting the process of Life.

Patience is not a quality that you must develop for others’ sake. Nurture it in you for yourself. It is only when you are patient with your own aspirations that you will feel peaceful within. If you don’t have inner peace, then the entire journey of Life becomes miserable, it becomes pointless.  

Witnessing is when you can soak in the suchness of what is!

Over time, become detached with yourself. Become a witness of your Life!

Last evening we noticed the amount of litter that had piled up on the streets around the Mylapore Tank owing to the Arubathimoovar festival at the Kapaleeswarar temple. Makeshift stalls had come up all over serving food and buttermilk to devotees who have been thronging the temple for the past week. The litter was created because the stall managers, and the devotees, both were being irresponsible with the way they disposed of waste – paper cups, plates, spoon, plastic gloves and such. I grieved looking at the state of affairs – no ‘Swach Bharat’ campaign can ever change the way we Indians think, behave and live, I thought. I was slipping into an anger – with the entire system – spiral, when I looked up at the sky and spotted the moon. It isn’t full moon yet, but the moon looked majestic and beautiful. I decided, for the rest of the evening, to soak in not what lay on the ground but what lit up the sky. I decided to be a witness – it helped me calm my nerves and enjoy the rest of the evening despite the chaos and mess around where we were!

To be sure there is great value – and power – in witnessing. Almost all our suffering comes from wanting to control our lives – people, events, things. In every situation that you find yourself in, if you imagine you are a mere fly on the wall, a witness, see how your changed perspective changes the way you feel and respond. When you are a witness, you are more detached than an observer. An observer has an agenda. But a witness merely happens to be there. So, as a witness, you are not involved with the drama. It is like watching a movie – when it is on, you watch it on the screen; but you are not one of the characters. You may relate to the story and the characters but you are not in the story, you are not them. When the movie is over, you just get up and come away.

The key is, can you get up and come away from your Life, without necessarily responding every single time you are seduced or provoked to respond in a situation?

Most people misunderstand the practice of meditation to be an act of silencing the environment around them. It is clearly not that. You can say you meditate only when you have learnt to still your mind, drop anchor, and remain silent. The Buddha rightly called meditation “witnessing”.

Witnessing is when you can soak in the suchness of what is – without necessarily responding. When you are a witness, you are more aware than involved. In the witness state, you learn to not immediately respond emotionally to any situation. You are there, but you are not there either. So anger, grief, guilt, anxiety….none of these emotions hold you hostage; they may arise, but your awareness will remind you not to succumb to them. When you are a witness, you are detached from the screenplay of your Life. This clearly does not mean inaction. In fact the detachment helps you choose when – and how – you must act.

 

 

 

What others do, seriously, does not make your Life tick!

You can’t control what someone else does. The day you stop agonizing over other people’s actions, you will experience inner peace.

Sometimes people may choose to consistently, continuously, systematically misunderstand, misinterpret and not relate to you. When these relationships are with people that you are close to or with immediate family, the situation gets confounded and it becomes very difficult to accept the reality. Our biggest grief is not that we are being misunderstood. We feel betrayed because the people misunderstanding us are close to us, those whom we imagined as our own. Relax. You are not alone. It happens to all of us at some time or the other in our lives. It has happened and continues to happen to me too! I can relate to your sense of anguish if you are in or have been in a similar situation.

Simply, there are two contexts for a misunderstanding to arise. One kind is when it is truly a situation of an understanding that has been missed, that has been overlooked for whatever reason – imagination, suspicion, poor communication or whatever. This category of misunderstanding can be addressed and clarified through an honest conversation – a coffee or beer can surely help resolve this issue. But the second kind, when someone doesn’t want to understand you, rarely gets resolved. And if you are grieving, wishing, pining that such people understand you than misunderstand you, then please don’t waste your time anymore. The truth is such people are not true to you. Because true friends, true family, will believe despite evidence to the contrary. It is the flippant lot that will insist on misunderstanding no matter what evidence you place, in your favor, before them! So, why waste your time and emotions on them?

This lifetime is too precious to be squandered on other people’s choices. How someone looks at you or treats you is their problem. You be focused on who you are and how you want to feel. If you want to experience inner peace – and protect it – then stop stressing and sweating over how other people are behaving. What others do, seriously, does not make your Life tick!  

Abandon your tentativeness, embrace Life’s uncertainties

Don’t be tentative about Life. Take the deep dive and live fully with the faith that Life will take care of you!

A manager with a large MNC met us the other day. He said he was indulging in too much negative thinking and worried incessantly about his employment contract which was due to expire next year. “I know what I am doing is stupid. But I simply don’t know how stop being anxious and worried,” he confessed.

This gentleman’s predicament can be anybody’s out there. Many, many, many people are living in fear, worrying about the unborn future. And to live this way is sacrilege. We are squandering the opportunity called this lifetime if we are not living our lives fully. We must understand that the whole idea of Life is uncertainty. And our response to Life has to be to display amazement at the way each moment unfolds. Whatever happens, choose to be amazed by each moment! Life is not to be lived in fear and anxiety nor is it to be lived with prayer and hope. It must be lived with complete faith that if you have been created, if you are breathing, and therefore are alive, Life will take care of you!

The reason why you don’t necessarily believe in the view that Life will take care of you is that you have been conditioned to control your Life. The education you have comes in the way of your letting go. You think since you are educated, and you earn an income, you must know the answers to all that is inscrutable about your Life. Or you believe that you must be solving all your problems yourself. The truth, however, is that you were never in control. Life has always been in charge of you. So, when you come certain points in your Life, when you don’t know what will happen, when you don’t know how to handle a particular situation, you feel fearful and anxious. Instead of being steeped in worry, this is the time to trust Life, this is the time to be amazed with whatever is happening and to let go!

So, abandon your tentativeness, overcome your fears and embrace Life’s uncertainties with amazement! Watch then, how Life takes you to where you belong!!

 

 

The way to live through a crisis is to engage with the NOW

When you don’t know what to do, allow Life to take over!

Often Life will push you to the edge of a precipice. You will not know what to do. Fear then is a natural response. But the way to overcome fear is not to avoid it. But to feel it and face it.

What is fear telling you? It reminds you how horrifying the situation is. And it tricks you to respond to such a situation intellectually. But the very fact that you are on the edge, at Life’s mercy, is a sign that your intellect has not worked. Because, had it worked, you wouldn’t be this way, in this place, at this moment! So please don’t intellectualize any grave situation. Please don’t respond with guilt either. ‘I caused this mess’, ‘I hate myself’ or ‘I am bad’ are wasted responses. Poor self-esteem cannot help you overcome a tough situation. And fear solves no problem; it, in fact, compounds a problem.

When you have tried everything, every solution and every approach, and when nothing seems to work, when Life’s become chaotic and turbulent, just sit back, relax and let Life take over. You must understand that you don’t necessarily have to know how to solve each problem that you are faced with. Know that Life is all powerful – more intelligent than you are. So, let Life handle situations that you don’t know how to handle.

No matter what your situation may be, remember, the simplest and easiest way to live through a crisis is to just be engaged with the present, with the NOW. Because a crisis anyway means all else is already lost or is being lost. So, prudence demands that we live with what is left, which is the present moment!

 

Acceptance is the only antidote to suffering

Suffering comes from wishing, pining and insisting that things were different than how they are. 

The way to live Life is to simply live it – don’t ask any questions, don’t resist, don’t protest. Keep doing what you must in a situation, face whatever comes your way and let whatever is be!

Yesterday was the fourth death anniversary of my classmate from school. I thought about him briefly. I had just met him once in our adult years, almost 30 years after leaving school. He was a fun guy – warm and affectionate. We shared a last name. Yesterday, I thought about his parents. I had last visited them during the Chennai floods in December 2015 – just to look up how they were doing with all the upheaval that the city was going through. They had coped well and practically. In fact, after losing their son, every other upheaval may simply be so inconsequential, I had thought after visiting them.

I have come to understand that death is a great teacher. In encountering it in our families and in our circle of influence, it teaches us to face Life. Fundamentally, it teaches us to be accepting of the true, transient, impermanent nature of Life! It reminds us that pain is inevitable. Important, it teaches us that we have a choice not to suffer.

Whether you like it or not, deserve it or not, want it or not, Life will give you problems, challenges and pain. Now you can do nothing about what comes at you. But you can do everything within your means to ensure you don’t grieve, agonize or suffer over what comes. Know at the same time that what causes you pain now will fade away with time. It will eventually be replaced with extraordinary and boundless joy. Only, in some more time, for the whole cycle of Life to be repeated again. So, why suffer at all? If you drop all resistance, if you stop asking why or why me, you can live without suffering anything: a bad relationship, an ailment or injury, emotional stress, poor or even zero income, poor form, injustice or death of someone you love. You, in fact, are responsible for all your suffering. Suffering comes only when you wish that your Life is different from the way it is.

Acceptance then is the only antidote for suffering. Life’s nature is full of duality. What goes up will go down soon. And what’s down will go up too. When we don’t understand this duality and refuse to go with the flow of Life, we will grieve, suffer and agonize over every twist in our Life’s journey! Give up insisting that your Life be different and start accepting what has come your way. You won’t suffer.

Whatever disturbs your inner peace has to go out

You don’t have to win every argument that you end up getting into.

Last evening we sat with someone who was willing to consider our business plan and help us with finding potential partners who may be interested in working with us. He is a person with a genuine interest in wanting to help us. However, Life doesn’t operate with logic alone. Our story particularly defies logic at many points. It is at the same time both miraculous and absurd. As the conversation progressed I noticed that the gentleman was coming down with a scathing critique of our Life so far which bordered on being dismissive of our efforts to rebuild our business and implored us to ‘get out of our comfort zone’. It soon became apparent that my efforts to explain why some things have not worked out the way they logically should have were not being considered. Beyond a point, Vaani and I did not see value in justifying what has been or envisioning, with this gentleman, what will be. We sat back, smiled and remained silent.

I have nothing against this gentleman. He has the noblest of intentions. And what he suggests we do is something we have already been trying to do – with often limited or no success. So, while we see synergy in the direction and options proposed, I still gave up trying to explain and justify because it is not my trip in Life – not anymore – to convince anybody of who we are or what our intentions are. I find arguments and debates totally worthless. It does not matter if you are not seen as doing right or being correct. At least to Vaani and me, it doesn’t matter at all. We know who we are. We know what we are going through. And we know what we are doing to get out of what we are going through. As long as we are true to ourselves, as long as our efforts are genuine, we really have stopped getting frustrated, anxious over wanting – and failing – to convince someone of our intentions.

Whatever disturbs your inner peace must go out of your circle of influence. Even if it is your desire to be seen as doing right and being correct. So, whenever you can’t convince someone, don’t fret, simply smile, fall silent and let things just be!