Living intelligently and living stupidly are just a pause apart

When you ask yourself why you are doing something, you may well end up not doing it!

Wonder if you have thought of this. Why do people speak on the mobile phone while driving – especially when riding a two-wheeler in India, where they hold their phone between their shoulder and ear, even as they navigate through busy roads? Is it that these people don’t know that what they are doing is inherently dangerous – not only for them but for other road users? Or is it that these people are mindlessly doing it?

Of course, it is a cultural issue in India that if there is a law, the average Indian citizen will violate it. But beyond the general tendency to not be law-abiding, there’s a reason why people behave this way. That reason is best explained by understanding how the human mind works.

Most of the time, you are just doing stuff without realizing what you are doing. Because if you realize, if you evaluate, for instance, the safety hazards in speaking on the phone while driving, you possibly won’t drive when on the phone or you will stop to speak and then proceed. It is not as if you don’t know it is both legally wrong or unsafe, yet you go on doing this – speaking on the phone and driving. All the time. You don’t realize that you are not even present in the moment when you are on a call! Either you can be engaged in the conversation or you can be engaged in the moment. You can’t be doing two things at once. Which is why, speaking on the phone and driving is discouraged and disallowed. Let me quickly clarify that the issue here is not just about speaking on the phone and driving. In most contexts we are absent from the now, from the present moment, because we are either clinging on to the dead past or we are anxious about the unborn future. This is why, while we know many things are ruinous, we go on doing them. We know overeating is ruinous, but we overeat. We know worrying is futile, but we go on worrying. We know waking up late will kill the exercise regimen, but we go on snoozing the alarm. We know surely what is integral to our inner peace but we go on doing stuff that vitiates it only because we don’t immerse ourselves in the moment. So, pretty much, most of the time, we end up not being aware of what we are doing!

If you carefully observe yourself and your thoughts through a full day first, and then over a week, you will see a pattern. You will recognize that you know that you should not be doing several things that you are doing currently. But you will also realize that despite knowing it, you go on committing hara-kiri with your Life.

The rider on the two-wheeler, often not even wearing a helmet, with a phone clutched between shoulder and ear, with the head tilted awkwardly to prevent the phone from falling off, is but a metaphor. Of living stupidly – of knowing what must not be done and of going on doing it; simply because you are not aware, you are not living in the moment.

Living intelligently – knowing what you are doing and staying immersed in the now – can be achieved by consciously, and continuously, training the mind. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are about to do – maybe eat an extra helping of dessert, maybe drink and drive, maybe lose your temper on someone, whatever! When you ask yourself why, you often end up not doing what you were setting out to do! Training your mind means to learn to invite it to pause, soak in the moment and only then act – every single time! This pause is what makes the crucial difference between living intelligently and living stupidly!

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Hurry! Live Urgently! Now!!!

Your Life is ticking away and every second you don’t live, is a Life moment lost – forever!

My neighbor turned 60 yesterday. So we went over to greet and wish him. He said that all his Life he kept imagining that a shashtiabdapoorthi (the ceremony to ring in someone’s 60^th) happened only to other people. “Now to have it done for me, I feel strange,” he confessed.

I thought about my neighbor’s sentiment over coffee this morning. It reminded me of something that I have only now, in the last decade or so, learned to practice in my Life. Which is to live each moment fully with whatever is.

For the longest time, I lived my Life, striving hard to make it perfect. I slaved away earning a living, hoping that some day, in the future, I will put up my feet and be happy. And then the bankruptcy happened in end-2007/early-2008. And everything material, that Vaani and I had put together, got taken away from us. It was when we were mourning our losses, grieving over our fate, that the awakening happening. We realized that because we were attached to things and we has been trying to be very good at earning a living, in trying to make our lives perfect, we hadn’t lived at all. That’s why we hadn’t seen the beauty of Life, of our lives, and we had missed all that was flowing around us. It is only when we stopped expecting our Life to be any different, that we saw the perfection in Life’s ways, its timing of our lives’ events, our experiences, our learnings, our inner growth and our joys! In fact, I am eternally grateful to our catharsis, our bankruptcy, for helping us understand that living is more important that merely earning a living. And to imagine that this awakening emerged from our deepest sorrow, from our darkest moment! Since then we have only been living in the moment, and from moment to moment!

In Life, with Life, it is always, and only, what it is. So, stop expecting your Life to be any different from what it is now. And flow with it. Over time, Life will change. Your Life will change. And when you look back, you will find that had it not been for what you have gone through, you will not be the person who you are today and you will not have got to where you are too! So, don’t insist that your Life be any different, instead live it for what it is.

The truth is every moment that you invest in anger, worry, grief, guilt, hatred, fear or in any other negative, debilitating emotion, is a moment that’s gone unlived. Please don’t think you have all the time. Honestly, you don’t have time. So, hurry! Live urgently!! Now!!! Your Life is a limited period offer and it can and must be lived only when it, the offer, your lifetime, lasts!

Why “Kurai Onrum Illai” is an awesome way to greet Life!

Scarcity thinking, focusing on what isn’t, invites suffering that holds you hostage; abundance thinking sets you free!

At a conversation organized by the Indian Prostrate Cancer Foundation, Raja Krishnamoorthy, the moderator, asked us to reflect on the value of abundance thinking. He said a good state to be in, in Life, is where you can wake up and say “Kurai Onrum Illai” – no grievances or complaints whatsoever! I have a friend, who’s in his late 70s now, who uses this line as a response to the “How are you?” greeting! How beautiful, I thought,…if you can truly respond every time you are asked “How are you?”…saying you have no issues, no complaints with Life…“Kurai Onrum Illai”!

Honestly speaking, I could never get to this state until I learnt to rein in my mind. It wasn’t until I learned to practice daily silence periods – mouna – that I could see the abundance in my Life.

To be sure, the human mind thinks 60,000 thoughts daily. And, if the mind is untrained, it is pulling you in different directions – often illogically, randomly. From grief to anger to guilt to fear to insecurity to worry to anxiety the mind seesaws between the past and the future. By nature, the mind thrives only in the past or the future. In the present, as Osho, the Master, points out, there is no mind. There’s just you, the real you, immersed, in the now, in whatever is, in whatever is happening! So, the secret to celebrate Life, to soak in the abundance that you have, is this: you must bring your mind to attend only to the present moment. Like the physical body resists training in a gym, the mind will resist your attempts to train it. But the beauty is that just as you can train your body, you can train your mind too. So, over time, I taught myself the art of mouna, remaining silent (irrespective of the environment or circumstance I am placed in) for an hour daily. I can now drop anchor wherever I am – in a busy traffic signal, at an airport, in a courtroom or a boring business meeting and even when every shred of material security is absent. And, miraculously, when I am anchored, I see only abundance in and around me.

So, I can totally relate to Raja’s call to reflect there and to my senior friend’s greeting: “Kurai Onrum Illai”!

Actually, this approach to Life is neither philosophical nor is it metaphorical. It is a very real, very sensible way to look at your Life. Life operates on this principle of compassion towards all that it creates. So, the truth is, all of us, at any time, have everything that we need. It is only our desire that our Life should be different from what it is that makes us suffer. So, simply, we cause our own suffering. Now, my Life, for instance, is ridden with debt, and has been, for almost a decade now, despite our best efforts, often about struggling to meet and cover living expenses. There’s denial of work, rejection, public judgment (for our inability to repay our debt) and there’s so much pain caused by the legal and social course that a bankruptcy takes you through. So, if I look at what isn’t, if I allow myself to be steeped in scarcity thinking, I will end up being a nervous wreck – depressed and worthless. So will Vaani. Which is why, we decided to look at each other, our companionship, and our two children – who have grown up to be fine, well-anchored, young adults despite this time of intense strife for our family – and celebrate this blessing that we have – of each other’s presence! We reasoned that even if we have no money, we have the choice to be happy for just being alive and together. We also have the blessing of so many, many, many friends and some family members who love us unconditionally and continue to stand by us and support us – no matter what we are going through and however long it is taking! So, we see the need to be eternally grateful to Life. Just counting our blessings makes us deliriously happy! And we go about spreading awareness of this opportunity called happiness, that’s freely available 24×7, around us. We wake up every morning saying a big thank you to Life, and flow with Life as it flows that day. There’s no ‘like’ button or ‘dislike’ button in our Life anymore. There’s just a ‘be’ button. So, we just are.

Therefore, we know, “Kurai Onrum Illai” is a great way to greet Life and to live it fully – despite your circumstances!

PS: “Kurai Onrum Illai” is a famous song composed by C.Rajagopalachari and rendered by M.S.Subbulakshmi.

PS: Prostrate Cancer is curable and a simple blood test to review your PSA levels is all that you need to do for early action!

 

Is your quest for security and happiness leading you to bark up the wrong tree?

As long as you seek security from material things you will never be truly happy.

Back in 2002, someone introduced me to a ‘mover and shaker’ in Bengaluru. He was attached to the Shringeri Mutt. He is a Sanskrit scholar, a vaastu expert and an intuitive fortune-teller. He can accurately tell your past by merely looking at you. And he primarily worked with corporates in helping them ‘realign their energies’ for higher business performance. People usually paid him several thousand rupees as consultation fee. But the gentleman agreed to advise me and Vaani free.

In a few months, we became good friends. He advised us over phone, came and met us whenever he visited Chennai and promised to ‘engineer’ our business for ‘high returns’ in a few years’ time.

One day, I asked him why was he not taking any fee from us. He replied: “I have been told that you once worked at India Today (the magazine). I want a strong recommendation from you for being featured on their Most Powerful People in India list. Please help me.” It indeed true that I had worked in India Today group, in four stints, back in the 90s. It is also true that the magazine annually listed India’s Most Powerful People. But, given the magazine’s editorial protocols, I could not figure out how I was going to be able to recommend anyone to that list. But I pressed on with the gentleman and asked him why was it critical for him to be on that list. He replied, “I want to be seen as the most powerful man in India. It will make me happy.” “So”, I asked him, “Are you not happy with what you have now?” “No saar, I am not. I have money, I have position, I have a following, but I need power. And I must be seen as powerful. Only that will make me truly happy,” he replied.

Back then, I wasn’t as evolved as I am now. But I still withdrew from the gentleman and have since lost touch with him. I did not want to be obliged to him anymore because I was not going to be able to fulfil, in return, his expectation from me.

I am thinking about him this morning because I see a facebook post by a delusional friend in New York who claims he is happy because he is now the most influential Indian on the American poll scene! *$%*!!!!! And I am wondering what is it that forces us humans to go after all that is impermanent in search of happiness?

The truth is that nothing that is perishable, that includes this human body, can make you feel secure or happy. But the mind will convince you that just the opposite is true. So, you go on accumulating or trying to accumulate material stuff – a bank balance, jewelry, real estate and such – and the more you get, the more you have, the more you want, the more you are fearful and insecure. And, therefore, you are unhappy.

I met a farm-hand in Pune years ago who shared with me the secret of happiness. He was a very successful farmer owning several acres of land in the Bhandgaon area. He lost his only son in a road accident. So he gave away everything he had. And just took to living a frugal Life, working as an ordinary farm-hand. One day, I sat with him, on a charpoy, under a clear, starry sky, lit up by a full moon and asked him how he makes end meet, how he passes his time. Does he not, when he is old now, crave for some personal comfort, at least a health insurance? This was his reply.

“I enjoy living. I am happy.”

“Let me offer you some unsolicited opinion my friend. You can never be happy as long as you are restless. You can never be secure as long as you are attached to money, to fame, to social rankings and maintaining your stature in public. You think I have nothing. Indeed I have nothing that can be taken away from me. So, I don’t seek any form of security. At the most, I will die. Which all of us will have to, in any case. I am happy and I am living fully. I wake up each morning feeling great. I walk the fields that I work in. I pluck herbs and berries. I enjoy a fresh water bath in the stream. I sing to myself. I cook a hearty meal. I eat well. I sleep peacefully. I am living my friend, while all of you are earning a living!”

Our way of Life need not be as dramatic as the farmer-turned-farm-hand’s. We will do well to simply understand his message. Our material attachments, and our desires, are merely expressions of our continuous search for security in Life. The tragedy is that nothing that is impermanent can ever make us feel secure. Yet, because we are conditioned to believe otherwise, we keep on barking up the wrong tree. Only when we realize that we will feel truly secure when we have nothing, will we seize the opportunity and simply live!

Your unhappiness comes from your incompleteness

Anything incomplete makes you miserable and unhappy! And the horrible truth is that many of us are leading incomplete lives.

We recently met a manager who lamented the lack of fulfilment in his Life. He has everything material – two cars, a large apartment that’s free of mortgage, a globe-trotting job and lots of money in the bank that’s enough to ‘pay for retirement and leave behind some for the family’. “Yet”, the man confessed, “I feel incomplete. I am missing something. I don’t know what it is. I am searching for it.”

Many people around us are in a similar state. This happens when you reach that point in Life when materialism cannot satiate you anymore. So, you are seeking inner peace and happiness. And you realize that all that you have achieved – academically, professionally, socially and financially – is not fulfilling. This is the time to pause and ask yourself if you are indeed being yourself – not the super-qualified, brilliant engineer or doctor or accountant or singer that you think you are, not the parent, not the spouse, not the dutiful tax-paying citizen that you think you are, but are you really enjoying being who you truly are?

There’s a simple way to check this out for yourself. Are you saying what you really want to say in all your relationships? Are you doing what you truly, deeply, love doing all the time? Are you happy in all contexts of your Life? If you answered ‘no’ or ‘not quite’ for any of those questions (and these are not the only ones) then your Life is incomplete.

At the core of your unhappiness – both stated and unstated, but felt – with your Life lies your incompleteness.

You hate your job. But you go on doing it because it ‘provides’ for your family’s upkeep and maintenance. You are incomplete. Your don’t relate to your spouse anymore. But you go on suffering in that relationship because you don’t know how to get out of it. You are incomplete. You don’t like what someone in your family is saying or doing. You hesitate to speak your mind because you don’t want to hurt them, you want to be seen as a nice person. But you squirm in the person’s presence, because your value system doesn’t sync with theirs. You are again incomplete.

Remember: your incompleteness helps no one. Least of all you! German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844~1900) memorably said, “Life is not a dress rehearsal.” So it is! In a preparatory Life you can afford to rehearse, put off your best act for the final performance. But what is the point in living an incomplete Life when this is it? When this is the only Life you have?

Life is not an examination. It requires no preparation. It requires living. Living completely requires spontaneity. When you see a beautiful sunrise or a flower dance in the breeze or a child smile, you ideally don’t think of anything else – you just soak in the beauty of that moment. The moment you think of something else, you miss the moment itself! Then you are not being. You are not present. You are physically there. But mentally lost in worry, anxiety, guilt, anger, sorrow – whatever. Bottomline: you have missed that moment! You have missed living it!

This is how we end up remaining perpetually incomplete. This is how we miss living. Missing moment after moment after moment – and often an entire lifetime! All our lives we prepare for a tomorrow and then for another one and then another. Or all our lives we cling on to a dead past, a memory, a guilt – and we suffer endlessly.

I have nothing against theorists. But people who talk of karma and say that everything is ordained are encouraging, perhaps inadvertently, us to give up on living fully. Maybe everything is ordained. But to live the Life that is given to us, and not to suffer it, is still an intelligent choice we may like to exercise. You can’t be living incompletely all the time. Then you are not living. You are merely existing. To be sure, the moment you remove all the factors in your Life that leave you feeling incomplete, and start living spontaneously, you will be happy!

Zen and the Art of Taking Decisions

To live a complete and full Life you must be decisive. Without you taking a decision, you are going to make no progress.

But decision-making is not a very comfortable process. More often than not, it involves making uncomfortable choices. And you will try to duck taking the responsibility and accountability for your decisions.

The problem is not just with you. It is with all of humanity. And it is because of our upbringing, our conditioning.

As children, parents have taken all our decisions. What to wear, what to eat, where to go, when to play, when to watch TV and so on. And then teachers decide what to teach, when to teach, when to test and when to grade. Then it is the girlfriend or boyfriend who decides, and then it is the boss, and often it is the government too! So, in effect, if you have succumbed to that conditioning, that’s really the way you will remain. Indecisive, always shirking responsibility and afraid of taking risks. And which is also why you remain unhappy, muddled in the head and why you merely exist on the face of the earth. You are not alive to the moment, you are not living a full Life!

The reason why you also dither is because you are fearing the unknown. The known is so comforting. But an unknown experience, while it tempts you, is scary. Yet, if you want to live fully, embrace the unknown. Decide to do what you have never done before. Try it. And if you didn’t like it don’t do it again. And if you liked it, but felt it is not the right or appropriate thing to have done, then again, don’t repeat it! But if you enjoyed it and know that this what you want in Life, go for it. It is only through deciding to live fully, by venturing into unchartered waters, by experiencing the unknown and by deciding which part of it you want to relive, without guilt, without remorse, will you truly encounter inner peace and joy.

Apply this framework to any decision that you may have been dithering on. You will then realize what living fully really means!

Your experiences count – make them memorable

Between experiences and achieving goals or buying things, choose experiences. At the end of your Life, those experiences will matter most – both to you and to those you have had those experiences with!

Last evening, while on our walk, we crossed a young man walking with his two sons – one of them aged 6 and the other possibly was 9. The father was ribbing his boys and the three were having a good time laughing as they walked. I reflected back to the time, 15 years ago, when my own children were of that age. And I could not recollect a time when I had taken them on a walk like this. I was busy building my business and was chasing a dream to create a global consulting Firm. So I worked 18 hour days. And I worked on weekends too. If I was at home, I was either trying to relax watching TV or was going over mails and reports from my team members from all over the country. I remained available to my colleagues and my clients, 24 x 7, more than I was ever available for my own family. So, I missed my kids’ annual days and sports days at their school, on most occasions, though I never missed a client’s board meeting or Annual General Meeting of shareowners. Not that I was bad spouse or father. I tried to be the best provider but I guess I never made myself available. The only time I did something like “create a memorable experience” was when my son, then barely 17, suggested that he and I travel to Rajasthan – he decided not to join my wife and daughter who were going to the US to be with my wife’s sister who was having a baby. That four-day Rajasthan trip, when we visited Jaipur and Ajmer, remains etched in my memory. The year after that “father-and-son vacation” my son went away to pursue his undergrad education in the US. And he comes home barely once in two years. As he builds his career and grows his family, I guess we will be seeing him less frequently at home and for shorter stays. Awakened by my learning of missing much of my son’s growing up years, I made amends as my daughter went into high school and later to college. Whenever she has the time, I make it a point to goof off with her or share and learn from her. I have realized – ever since our Firm went bankrupt and we lost all our money – that achieving goals and buying things are important and relevant – but only momentarily. Our experiences create our memories. And the more beautiful experiences we have to reflect on, to lean on, the more fulfilled we will feel about the Life we have lived.

Earning money, buying a home, having a bank balance, saving for retirement – all these and more are important. But they are not more important than living your Life – everyday, fully, doing what you like doing and doing what’s more meaningful to you and to those people who you call your own! You are never going to be the same age again. With each passing moment your Life is growing shorter. Remember – every moment that you are living in drudgery or worry or insecurity, you are missing out on experiencing its magic and beauty.

Do this exercise. Take your age and multiply it by 365 to arrive at the number of days for which you have been around on this planet. Ask yourself how many of those days have been memorable. Now, if you start thinking, you have lost the game. You ought to be living each day of your Life memorably. That’s why you have been created. If you believe that your most memorable days have been only those when you vacationed or when you celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, you have lost the plot. Completely. But don’t despair. It is never too late. At least from now on concentrate on experiencing your Life fully. Even if it is about work – choose to do only meaningful stuff where you can enjoy yourself, create value and touch lives daily. And never, ever, miss an opportunity to be with your family – never kid yourself that you are working hard so your family can enjoy what you have created/provided for them. If you don’t believe me ask your family – they will much rather have you around than have all the things that you buy for them!

The most important point to remember in Life is that our experiences create the memories that we will need to last the evening of our lives. Let’s make sure that those experiences give us joy, are meaningful and memorable.