Why ‘take it easy’ is the best policy!

Staying detached is the way to inner peace.

Someone I met last weekend told me that detachment is the “privilege of a select few”. “Most people who claim they are detached are kidding themselves. You can be detached only when you have renounced the real world,” he said.

I humbly disagreed with the gentleman.

Just because he is not able to cultivate detachment, he cannot conclude that everyone who is detached is kidding themselves. That is like saying if you can’t play cricket well, then Virat Kohli’s genius is a fluke, or that, worse, he’s a fraud!

I have worked hard enough to cultivate detachment in the past decade. So, from my experience, I can surely say that being detached is possible. Important, it is possible while living in this real world – which is, you can be here, in the throes of everyday living and challenges, and yet you can be above all of it!

There are no methods to being detached though. In fact, detachment is the way to inner peace. Understanding the true nature of Life is key to detachment. I have learnt, on a spiritual plane, success and failure, victory and defeat, mean nothing. Everything is transient, every experience is fleeting, and if you pause to reflect deeply, all creation is impermanent! Nothing will remain. No one will remain. So, what is the point in getting attached to anything you have or anything you do or to the outcomes of your efforts? Stay detached. In any situation, you have only your efforts to focus on and count on. Here’s how I deal with Life as it happens to me:

• When I get what I want – I take it easy
• When I don’t get what I want – I take it easy
• When I get what I want, without my asking for it – I take it easy
• When I get what I don’t want, without my asking for it – I take it easy

To me success and failure, have become irrelevant. I have come to realize that Life happens through me – not for me, not because of me, and often inspite of me! So, in any situation, I just make my effort and leave the result to Life. And I accept whatever comes my way!

So, if you asked me, I would say, please don’t take Life so seriously. After all, your human form and experience too will perish, will cease to be, soon. Therefore, stay detached. Stay peaceful.

Go easy with Life – Oh! Yes! Abhi!

Don’t take yourself or Life too seriously. At the end of the day, Life’s but a dream!

A couple of years ago, a young lady came to meet me and my wife, feeling totally despondent about Life. She was separating from her husband, she had two young children and her business was just not working out. She had accumulated a lot of debt – most of it from family. She was wondering if there was any meaning to Life. She asked me: “What’s the point of Life if there’s so much pain in going through it?” I am sure this is a question each of us has asked ourselves at least once in our lifetime so far.

I shared with her a story from the Life of the great Chinese mystic, Chuang Tzu (a.k.a Zhuang Zhou or Zhuangzi, 369 BCE ~ 286 BCE).

One morning, sitting in his bed, Chuang Tzu looked very sad. His disciples had never seen him so sad. And never after waking up had he remained in his bed, sitting. What had happened? Was he sick?

They gathered around and asked him, “Master, what is the matter?” He said, “The matter is really difficult, I cannot solve it; perhaps you may be of some help. I will tell you what is the matter. In the night I dreamed that I had become a butterfly, and I was moving from one flower to another flower.”

One of the disciples said, “This is nothing to be sad about. In dreams we all do strange things; and this is not a bad thing, to be a butterfly – colorful, beautiful, moving from one juicy flower to another juicy flower. Why are you so worried?”

He said, “You have not heard the whole thing. The problem is, now I am awake and I am wondering whether Chuang Tzu dreamed that he is a butterfly, or now the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming she is Chuang Tzu.”

This may well be ‘koan’ – a paradoxical anecdote or riddle without a solution, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and provoke enlightenment. So, are you who you are? Or is this Life that you lead a dream? In Sanskrit and Pali literature, in the ‘Vedas’ and ‘Puranas’, there’s this concept called ‘maya’ which really points to Life (and everything) as an ‘illusion’, and if you don’t get it and don’t understand Life’s true nature, well, ‘maya’ can also mean ‘delusion’ in such a context!

As Chuang Tzu shared his dilemma, his disciples remained silent. They understood the import of Chuang Tzu’s poser. This is what all the scriptures have been saying – that everything is ‘maya’. Everything is a dream. So, why the strife? Why worry, why the anxiety, grief, guilt, anger and sorrow? Chuang Tzu taught his disciples this: “Continue easy with Life and you are on the right path.” He didn’t say this way or that way was right. He said, whatever you are going through, go through it with ease, don’t resist, don’t fight, don’t aggress. Just go easy. Because whatever is happening to you is just a dream. It will soon be over. So, don’t gloat over your riches or your successes. It’s a dream that’s soon to die. Don’t bemoan your sorrows. But it too is a dream and will be over soon.

I met that young lady recently. We had been mentoring her, holding her hand and helping her understand Life better, over these two years. But in the past quarter we had not met her. So, when she came over, I noticed how much she had evolved. I saw a twinkle in her eyes, a radiance on her face and an enthusiasm in her step. I asked her how things were. And she replied: “Nothing’s changed – the marriage is still going through the final rites, the kids are a handful and the business is deep in the dumps. But I am taking it all easy. And so, I am at peace and I am very happy.”

Sometimes, Life can weigh you down. Things just won’t go the way you want them to. That’s the time to learn to take Life easy. As the famous song from the Tamil movie ‘Kadhalan’(1994, Shankar, A.R.Rahman; Hindi – ‘Hum Se Hai Muqabla’) goes, (have a), “….Take it easy, policy!” And have it now – Oh! Yes! Abhi!