Why Being Trumps Becoming

Employ equanimity and happiness

An old gem swims in my head…and I reminisce on an awakening experience…!

It is only when you impose conditions on what is that unhappiness sets in.

For some strange reason, I woke up this morning with this song swimming in my head: “Aane Wala Pal Jaane Wala Hai, Hosake To Isme Zindagi Guzaar Lo, Pal Yeh Jo Jaane Wala Hai…” (Golmaal, 1979, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Kishore Kumar)

It is one of my favorite songs. It is also a song that holds a special meaning in my Life.

On the 5^th of January 2008, when we were struggling intensely to come to terms with our bankruptcy (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal), a friend insisted that we go with him and his wife to a live concert of R.D.Burman hits (performed by a fantastic national-level orchestra). The hall was full. And the audience was hysterical. About an hour into the concert, I suddenly realized I had not even known which songs had played until then. I was there physically. I was hearing everything. I was watching everyone clap, shout, whistle and sway to the legend’s unputdownable music. But I was not “in” the concert. I was not present there. What finally woke me up from my worry-filled reverie, was this song from Golmaal. The lyrics meant a lot to me that day: “The moment which is coming will go away, if you want to, live in this moment, for it will be gone soon too…” Not that I had not heard that song before. But that evening, that song stirred something within me.

As they often say, things happen in Life, when they must – never a moment earlier or later. The next time my thinking was provoked and I felt stirred from within was through an experience I had with Swami Sathya Sai Baba, which happened within a week of the R.D. concert. We were meeting a messenger, a medium, through whom Swami spoke. I confessed to Swami that I was very worried and anxious about the future. I told him I saw no way out of the problems that we were faced with as a family. I said, “I simply cannot go on like this.” Swami asked me what would it take for me to be happy. I replied that if someone could assure me that my problems would be taken care of, I would be happy. Swami then told me that I would never be happy if I thought this way. “To imagine, to desire, to wish that you will not or you should not have any problems is the biggest problem. As long as you have this problem, you will be unhappy. Being happy means simply being – no conditions can apply!” explained Swami.

That conversation with Swami changed my entire approach to Life. Over the next several weeks, I meditated on Swami’s perspective through my practice of mouna, my daily silence periods. It helped me discipline my mind. The human mind, I discovered, is like a dog. If you don’t train it, if you don’t discipline it, you will be led and controlled by your mind. But if you coach it and teach it to “stay still”, and to obey you, it will never stray. Swami’s inspiration and his awakening message to me, and my practice of mouna, has taught me to be happy despite the circumstances I am faced with in Life.

It is the nature of worries and anxieties to debilitate. If they are holding you hostage, it only means that you have allowed them to be that way. The human mind plays tricks on you all the time. It consistently strives to take you away from what is and gets you to attend to what once was or what may possibly be. Which is why, most of the time, you are not present in the now. And happiness is always in simply being present in the now! It is only when you impose conditions on what is that unhappiness sets in.

You cannot pursue happiness

In this Podcast I make a case for how you are the happiness you seek.

Listen time: 3:46 minutes

Experiencing Zen

On today’s Podcast, I suggest that we must learn to be mindful. Only through being in the moment can we be anchored and be aware. This helps us immensely in knowing what we are doing instead of just doing stuff mindlessly!

Listen time: 6:05 minutes

Zazen and the art of just being

To conquer the mind, you must learn to just be.

A lady called me frantically the other day. She was upset that her husband, who has not spoken to her mother over the last eight years, expected her (his wife) to look after his mother! She conceded that she didn’t see any value in having an honest conversation with her spouse. Even so, she was keen to understand how she can learn the art of being happy while living without expectations.

The lady’s quest is in the right direction. She has nailed her focus. What is the point in trying to change others if you believe they won’t heed the voice of reason? Instead, why not transform yourself? And if anyone can truly learn to be happy, living without expectations, and despite the circumstances, they would certainly have learned the art of intelligent living. For this to happen, essentially, one needs to train and tame the mind. You must learn to simply still the mind, you must learn to just be.

Just being may sound and appear to be difficult. But it is not.

In Zen Buddhist practice, there’s this concept called zazen. It invites the seeker to simply sit, “opening the hand of thought” – which means to drop all judgment and let words, actions, events just unfold, just flow. This means assuming the role of a witness of one’s own Life. In that witness state, you always see the futility of clinging on to emotions, things, opinions and relationships. As a witness you just are – you are not observing, you are not engaging, you simply are. Just being brings phenomenal clarity to you and helps you anchor within.

My advice to the lady who called me would be to embrace and practice zazen. She must learn to just be, to be a witness of her own Life and not be involved emotionally in the actions of her spouse. Learning this art of just being takes time and practice. It is like riding a bicycle for the first time – initially it appears tough and you need help, but, soon, you are on your own. And then you feel liberated!

How can I be a witness of my Life when my world is pulled at from different directions, you may wonder. Good question. But in some situations is Life, what else can you do? By trying to control the uncontrollable__Life__you are subjecting yourself to misery. Your suffering comes from this desire to control. Instead let go, you step away, be detached. The essence of detachment lies in just being. Not in controlling. Not in demanding. Not in becoming. So, just be.

Osho says it profoundly, “There is nothing to become. You are already that, it is already the case. Stop running after shadows. Sit silently and be. Sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.”

What a beautiful perspective. Step away from your Life. Let go and get some zazen into your day today!

 

On ‘The Happiness Road’ with Jayendra Panchapakesan

My conversation with Jayendra Panchapakesan, 59, filmmaker and co-Founder, Real Image Media Technologies for my ‘The Happiness Road’ Series that appears in DT Next every Sunday. Read the conversation on the DT Next page here. ‘The Happiness Road’ is also my next Book. Photo Credit: Vinodh Velayudhan

“Happiness is staying in the present”

To Jayendra, clarity about Life, its Purpose and happiness came very early. In 1978, as a 20-year-old chemistry graduate, he pounded the pavement in Mumbai seeking a career in advertising. He ended up changing 14 jobs in the next 8 years. The reason? “None of my employers could match my idea of happiness,” he says. “I value work more than I value money. To me, work must be purposeful, it must create value, it must do good, it must benefit people. Doing such work consistently gives me happiness,” he explains.

Over the last 31 years that he has been an entrepreneur and employer himself, his key message to his team members has always been this: “Quit, if you hate coming to work. The work you do is the reward in itself. There is no other reward to be got, no destination to be reached. So, if you are not enjoying your work, quit.” He adds that if all people saw their work as an opportunity to benefit others and not just as a tool to make money or earn a living, the whole world will be enriched and will be a much happier place!

Vaani & AVIS with Jayendra

As I am speaking to him, I sense an equanimity about Jayendra. Yet, over the last 30 months, he and his wife Sudha have been weathering a huge crisis. In November 2014, Sudha was struck by aphasia – the inability to comprehend language or speak due to brain damage from a stroke. Jayendra totally immersed himself in Sudha’s care. He says he draws great inspiration from her attitude – from her “unimaginable urge to be positive, to get better and to never feel less of a person”. And, he says, he discovered an “unlimited ocean of patience” within himself to trust the process of Life. How did he manage to stay anchored through all this time? “It was interesting that I never asked ‘why’ or ‘why us’. I simply kept doing what had to get done. I realized the value of being in the moment. I believe that’s what happiness is – staying in the present and not hoping for it at the end of the road,” he avers.

So, perhaps, this is the little secret behind why Jayendra is called Mr.Unflappable by most people who know him – do only what gives you joy and stay in the present doing what you have to do!

Uncork the happiness in you to let it flow!

Stop setting conditions on your Life and you will be happy.

A young reader pinged me on WhatsApp to ask: “Why don’t some people realize they are capable of being happy? Why do they only reflect back on old times and say that those were happy days?”

The one reason why people miss being happy is because they think happiness is conditional. “I will be happy if I get a raise.” “I will be happy if my boyfriend returns to me.” “I will be happy once I land myself a job.” This is how people impose conditions on themselves. They end up believing that they can be happy only if certain conditions are fulfilled. Often, their conditions are never met by Life, so they pine and they suffer. Sometimes, their expectations, the conditions they set for themselves, are fulfilled and they do experience fleeting phases of happiness. But very soon a new set of conditions has been set and the game of pursuit has begun again. That’s why such people are constantly searching for happiness or are almost always unhappy – they are leading unfulfilled, incomplete, lives.

The other reason why people are unhappy is that they are steeped in worry, they are frustrated and they are suffering. Happiness is when you have learnt to be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. Non-worrying means not given your worries any attention; because worrying is downright useless, it is futile! Non-worrying does not mean striving to be worry-free. Truly, you can’t have a situation of no-worry; you can only learn to be non-worrying. Non-frustrated means keeping the focus only on the efforts and leaving the results and outcomes to Life. When you judge yourself basis the outcomes is when you become frustrated. And non-suffering is when you stop asking why of Life; when you accept your Life for what it is and you go to work on it with equanimity. This state is possible. In fact, if you look back at times when you have been happy – when you have thought to yourself that some of the times you have lived through were happier times – you will realize that you were happy only because you were non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. The point worth considering is, how can you be consistently happy – despite your circumstances?

Now, there is no method to living Life. There are no mantras either. There is no formula that you can employ. The happiness you seek is available in you, to you, 24 x7 and it is free! You just have to uncork the happiness in you to let it flow, for you to experience it!! You simply stop setting conditions on your Life, you simply don’t let worry, frustration or suffering get to you – and you can only be happy. Then the circumstances don’t bog you down. And you are in a state of flowing, unbridled happiness. That’s how you experience happiness – in the here and now – no matter what you are dealing with!

Embrace uncertainty and you will thrive. Fear it and you will suffer.

The truth is that you can be certain about nothing in Life!

At my Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk the other day, a manager asked me if we became habituated to living with uncertainty, just as Vaani and I are living now, won’t we become complacent?: “Wouldn’t being in a perennial let-go mean that we will lose our sense of aggression and then we may not go after or seek opportunities?”

That’s a very relevant and important question. But let us first understand certainty to better appreciate uncertainty.

Certainty is a human-made illusion. Before you were born, where was the certainty that you would be? When you were an infant, where was the certainty that you would be provided for, fed on time, cared and loved? As you grew older you were tricked into this illusion of certainty __ you are sure to have a home, you usually have both parents with you, siblings, education is guaranteed, and you are bound to get a job, earn wages and raise a family! How much more simpler Life would be if only it were to progress in this certain, assured, linear fashion__one thing leading to another with such predictability and precision?

But does Life really proceed in this linear order – with one thing leading eventually to another logical thing?

Just to demolish this illusion, and wake up to reality, if you live in any part of urban India, go to a busy traffic intersection closest to you. And after getting over the shock of seeing so many homeless, destitute children begging there, strike up a conversation with any or some of them. You will soon discover how uncertain their lives have been. And continue to be. Maybe some were abandoned by their parents. Maybe some were kidnapped by organized racketeers in the begging syndicate. They live on and off the streets. Abused by people like us who despise their presence and by heartless cops who extort their meagre earnings from them. When you understand their Life’s design, you will awaken to the inscrutable, uncertain ways of Life. And when you think about it, you will just be grateful that you were born to your parents and not to theirs __ and there was no way ever you could have been certain of this realization until this moment!
It is also when you are faced with uncertainty for the first time, that you will stop taking Life for granted. A first layoff, a first health crisis, a first relationship break-down, a first financial crisis – that’s really when you begin to realize that perhaps you had read Life differently. That maybe, just maybe, you cannot really be certain about some things in Life.

The truth really is that you can be certain about nothing in Life. So, the only way to deal with uncertainty is to welcome it. Don’t try to wish it away. Because it ain’t going anywhere. It is always here with you. For instance, if you have a good job, enough savings and investments to take care of your retirement, where’s the certainty that your health will be all fine or that your companion still loves you? Of if you have a health complication and have the best doctors treating you, where’s the certainty that you will still survive? Where is the certainty that your family members will live long enough to be with you till your very end? So, don’t try to crave for a Life without uncertainty. If you accept Life as being uncertain, you will find joy in each moment.

The best way to live then is to approach Life with a ‘WHAT IS’ than with a ‘WHAT IF’. ‘What is’ is a celebration of the moment you are in now and there’s nothing uncertain about that moment. It is happening. So, there can be no fear of it. ‘What if’ is loathsome, fearsome and amplifies what is not yet. It is imaginary and breeds suffering. In the end, it is so very simple: only when you embrace uncertainty you will find immense joy and beauty in this totally unpredictable, inscrutable experience called Life!

What Dhoni and I think of living intelligently

The power of now is huge – it creates unputdownable value!

Last evening was pretty interesting.

A friend had invited us to a meeting of his Rotary Club where Arundhati Subramaniam, the eminent poet and writer, was delivering a Talk. As we settled down to listen to her, my neighbor, a Rotarian who knows us fairly well, leaned closer and asked me: “How are things with you and Vaani, AVIS? I hope they have improved?” (To understand the relevance of this question, read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal)  I smiled at him and replied: “Things are exactly the way they have been. We live in the present, from moment to moment. As of now, I have clarity that we will be able to manage for this evening and tomorrow. What happens for the day after, I will know only tomorrow evening.” The gentleman held my hand and said, “Your equanimity is amazing. Thanks for inspiring all of us.”

I am humbled by such sentiment. I don’t think Vaani and I have achieved something phenomenal and extra-ordinary. I am quite sure anyone is capable of developing equanimity. All this requires is for you understand Life’s true nature. Everything about Life is impermanent. Whatever is yours today, including your own Life, will be taken away from you sometime surely. So, there’s absolutely no point grieving over or worrying about anything in Life. Let go of what’s over and don’t be insecure about what is to happen. Just be present in the moment – living with what is. This is what equanimity is all about. Through practice, you can make living with equanimity, from moment to moment, a fine art. Simple.

Most people don’t believe this is possible only because they don’t want to invest – their efforts and time – in learning how this is done. Living in the moment is not at all difficult – you just have to train your mind not to delve into the past or race into the future. The mind will initially resist you. It will fight you every step of the way. Because the human mind thrives only in the past or in the future. In the present moment, in the now, the mind is powerless. But with consistent training, the mind will submit to your direction. It will obey you. And when it does, and when you start living in the moment, you will see what a beautiful celebration Life really is. Where there is no grief, anger, guilt over what is past and when there is no worry, anxiety or fear of what is to come, you can only be happy. Which is why being constantly in the now is a continuous celebration.

Interestingly, as we stepped out of the Rotary Club meeting, a friend called. He is visiting Chennai from London. He was at an event to launch Tekplay, a digital business transformation company. He invited us to join the launch event at Hotel Crowne Plaza. When we arrived there, we discovered that Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the chief guest at the Tekplay launch. And as part of the event, he was in conversation with the company’s executive director, Prabhuram Ramanathan. Prabhu asked Dhoni what he thought of “Dhoni at 45”. And Dhoni replied: “I always live in the present. How can I even tell you what it will be like 9 years from now…?”

Vaani looked at me at this point. We smiled at each other. Ask us, and we’ll tell you how much value the power of now can create; it helps us live intelligently, powerfully, meaningfully. Besides, it has surely helped us postpone worrying and be happy despite our excruciating circumstances.