Category: Zen
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!
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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!
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Life only guarantees surprises and unpredictability
Get on with the business of living
‘Chop Wood, Carry Water, Be Happy’
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Image Courtesy: Internet Copyright with original creator |
When you don’t know what to do, just be
A Life lesson in minimalism from Comrade Bardhan
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A.B.Bardhan (1924 ~ 2016) Picture Courtesy: Jitendra Gupta/Outlook |
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Picture Courtesy: Bhupinder/Internet/Vineet Tiwari |