Embrace the suchness of Life!
I read a report in The Hindu the other day where former McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta, charged for insider trading in the US, described his 19-month prison term as far more positive than he had imagined. The Hindu’s Vikas Dhoot carried a letter, verbatim, that Rajat had written to his friends on January 1, 2016, four days before his prison term ended. To me, the most important line came at the end of the letter when Rajat writes: “…As they say, Life is a series of experiences. None is inherently good or bad. It is what you make of it….”
This perspective is so ordinary at one level – we all have heard it so many, many, times in so many, many contexts. Perhaps, its ordinariness kills its value. Yet, nothing is more true about Life. It is a series of happenings, experiences. And whatever you have to go through, however tough a phase may be, even if it is a Life-threatening crisis, only makes you stronger, wiser and happier.
People ask me if I have any regrets about my Life. And I always say, only half in jest, yes, I wish my bankruptcy (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal) had arrived 10 years earlier in my Life. I would have saved 10 years of living in stupor, chasing success, I would have lived 10 more years with awareness and lived them happily too.
I always tell people now, embrace your challenges. Welcome them. They are here to teach you how to live more meaningfully. The untrained mind will kick around in frustration. It will instill fear in you, it will make you believe that a crisis will kill you. But if you can get past your mind’s antics, and see the truth about your Life you will realize that all the choices of your past have brought you to your present. And what you do now will seed your future. So, you can either continue to be a victim of your crisis or you can be its student. I suffered as long as I was in victim mode. But the moment I chose to learn from my experience, my suffering stopped. To be sure, there is enormous pain. But no suffering. I am only stronger, a trifle more wiser and a lot, lot more, happier from what I am going through. This is the suchness of Life. So, embrace it for what it is, the way it is. This is what makes it magical, mystical, beautiful – and inscrutable!