Balance of The Left and Right

Balance is a wonderful quality to be developed-often ignored in life.

The balance I’m talking about can be   physical , mental as well as emotional .

The Buddhists advocated moderation in everything, a sort of  an in between path.What they probably meant is maintaining a balance in life.

In Hinduism there is the Triguna terminology…. All matter is either Satvic,Tamasic or Rajasic ,not in an absolute sense but in a balance of the three.To reach the absolutely satvic state ,you have to go through a state which contains all the three in the proper proportions or in balance.

The Chinese Yin and Yang is also a sort of Balance-between male and female- between the left side and the right side.

Even the body has a biological balance between the left side and the right.Understanding this balance is crucial in understanding health and well being.There is a delicate balance between sanity and insanity and understanding balance is vital in remaining on this side of sanity.Medical terminology also uses the word unbalanced to denote a mental state of a patient.

The left side of the brain and the right side of the brain are known to have separate functions but the balance between the two is important.

So become more aware of the left side  and the right side of your body and always maintain a physical balance of the two.Even yoga recognises the value of balance and if you see a perfect yogi,all his asanas will convey  BALANCE if you are  a keen observer.The Natraj Asana,of Lord Shiva standing on one leg,is also a perfect example of perfect balance.Garuda Asana is another important asana of Balance or Ek Pada Pranamasana.

So recognise the importance of balance between the left and the right, and practice it at all times.Sitting ,standing , lying down or moving around-be aware totally of the  balance in you.

Start with the physical.The outlook  change  will also happen mentally and emotionally gradually.

Does a sixth sense make sense?

The Sixth sense? What is it?

If you develop the five existing senses with the help of meditation,maybe you may also discover your sixth sense.

When you start your meditation, get into your favourite meditation posture and close your eyes.Give your eyes total rest.Enter the blackness and feel the eyelids getting heavy.After meditation,every image  looks sharper.Feel the nerves behind the eyes relaxing.

Now focus attention on the nose.Smell all the smells around you.Feel the warm air as it enters the nostrils.Try and feel the nerves from the nose to the brain.

Now focus on your lips and move your tongue around it and move it at the top of the palate.Feel the nerves behind the tongue.

Now focus on your ears and the sounds all around you.Isolate each sound and then collectively listen to all of them.

Finally,focus  on the skin in contact with the ground or on sensations all over the body as done in Vipaasna meditation.Let the sense of touch become more and more sensitive/awakened.

Do each sense individually and then collectively.

Do this short  meditation of sense awareness at different times  whenever possible.

If you develop the five senses,you may discover the sixth sense.

According to me the sixth sense is a sense of intuition.And this is in a very undeveloped stage in our brain structure.

Why do scientists not work on developing intuition…?

A Bird’s eye view of your life

In period war movies of ancient times you often saw the Commanders on top of a cliff ,with a bird’s eye view of the battlefield,planning their modus operandi for battling the enemy.It made it easier for the audience also to understand and enjoy the battle better once you know which side are the heroes and which the villains.

Its the same in life.Its very necessary  to have an overview or bird’s eye view of your life to answer or clarify various questions.

Are you going in the right direction? Where are you now in relation to where you wanted to be?

Are the major relationships in your life working out to your satisfaction?

What changes would you like to make in your existing life?

What were the major turning points in your life so far?

What do you want to be doing for the coming portion of your life?

Its like a recap of the story of your life so far and the strategies you should follow from here onwards.

This quality of having a bird’s eyeview is an important quality to develop…..Of being a witness to your own life unfolding.

The parable of the escapist.

Once upon a time…there was a prison…in a very beautiful place in the  world.
There were strong prison bars all around the prison,but people  inside the prison were free..
The prisoners were fed good food,and were looked after so well that no one thought of escaping from this prison to a life of  freedom.
No one except one person.
This person tried to escape by squeezing between the bars,because he was thin.But try as he would ,he could not squeeze through.If he could not squeeze through then no one else could as he was the thinnest of all the prisoners.But this man was desperate to escape.So desperate that one day he discovered a way he could escape.He started fasting quietly,all on his own.Day by day, he started loosing weight.One day,after fasting on and off  for four weeks,he tried to squeeze out between the bars.Lo and behold.He was out of the prison.

He called all the prisoners,told all of them that he could squeeze out of prison and escape.They asked him how he did it and he told them the secret.He said goodbye to all of them and squeezed out.Some of the prisoners were happy that atleast one amongst them had become free and  cheered him and wished him good luck.But there were others who told him how could he run away leaving them behind and told him he was selfish.The man turned around to these people” I have told you the secret and I will be very happy if all of you follow me in my freedom.” And this man escaped.

End of Parable.The question is Was this man right in escaping or should he have stayed back in prison for the rest of his life with his other colleagues?

The second question is were his colleagues right in calling him selfish or should they have been happy that atleast one of them had found freedom?

Enlightenment Level ?

I had earlier written about Spiritual level and asked what is your spiritual level?
In the same vein,I would like to think of what is enlightenment level?
How close are you to enlightenment or really how far?
But before that I would like to ask the following questions .
1.Is enlightenment total or can it also be partial?
2.If one is partially enlightened or totally enlightened,is it permanent or it could be temporary?
3.Is enlightenment obtained gradually or suden ? If gradually is it over a long period of time or a short period ?
4.Does enlightenment appear and then disappear if you dont know how to hold on to it properly or if you misuse it or brag about it ?
The questions are serious and not in a lighter or sarcastic vein.
Coming back to the main issue of enlightenment levels ,I am making the following hypothetical measuring scale.
Lets assume that the scale is from 0 to ten,going on a reverse scale.
Zero is the level that Buddha reached,that is,full enlightenment.
In Buddhist terminology,Shoonya is an important word which means emptiness,or void or a zero.Thats why I have kept zero as the ultimate in enlightenment level.
Lets keep level ten the highest level of unenlightenment.
Each person has to ask himself this question what is my level? if he is into setting himself on the path of enlightenment.
Most of mankind is not into this.How much money have you made,how successful have you been in your career,how famous have you become,how happy are you with your family,how compassionate are you,how much you have returned to society,how environment friendly are you,these are the types of questions generally asked.How much have you refined your inner being towards enlightenment is hardly ever asked.The science of the inner world has not been investigated enough.Why not?

Jottings on Shoonya

Shoonya in Sanskrit could mean many things.

The common translation could be empty or emptiness.

It could mean the void.

It could be zero (a component of the computer language)

It could be vaccum,or non-existence,or even indifference.

Shoonya is full of meanings.My jottings on Shoonya are on Shoonya as void.

Jottings are thoughts on paper.Question marks.Shoonya is quite a popular concept both in Hindu( including Kashmir Shaivism) as well as Buddhist religious literature.

Could the Universe be an expanding Shoonya? With portions of it a contracting shoonya?

Can a void grow larger or smaller?

Can there be a void within a void ?

Is a dark hole in space  not a shoonya ?

Can a shoonya not explode ? Or implode?

If darkness is an absence of light,is not Shoonya  an absence of light as well as  space?

The big bang was born from Shoonya  and will end in shoonya.

The sun as well as the solar system as well as the planets and the earth have all emerged from  the void.

All humans too are a part of this void.

Death is accepted but the void is not.Why is this so ?

Enjoy and improve the present

“Look upon every day as the whole of life,not merely as a section,and enjoy and improve the present without wishing through haste to rush on to another.”
Richter.

“Your talent lies in your choices.”
Stella Adler

Look Back On Anger

Everybody gets angry and everybody feels bad about getting angry.
What happens when you get angry?
These are the visible signs of anger I have seen in myself as well as other  people.
1.Breathing goes all haywire.
2.The mind gets clouded,so speech pattern gets affected,volume level of voice increases and this in turn gives rise to more anger.You start to sweat and sometimes to suffocate.You will also tend to snort and flare your nostrils.In short you will get ugly and emnate bad vibes.
3.If the person you are lashing your anger on gets provoked this will increase your anger level.Anger escalates very easily.
4.Anger can throw the normal mind pattern out of control.The eyes will widen and be filled with venom.
5.When anger is caused due to an ego problem,then anger is likely to remain,even in a suppressed state,for a long period of time.
6.When anger is combined with frustration then it can lead to uncontrollable  violence.
7.When anger is combined with sex/lust,it can lead to rape or even murder.
8.Anger can be reduced if you anticipate it or learn the art of seeing it coming.
9.Anger can be slowly removed from your system totally with awareness.
10.When anger is caused by the other person’s stupidity, you can minimize anger by  compassion for that person.
11.If you look at the cause of your anger and mentally say to yourself”This too shall pass” you will get less and less angry.
12.Anger can be minimized if you think of people you know whom you have never seen get angry and using them as role models.

Anger is as bad as violence…anger is nothing but violence within oneself created by yourself.No matter what the cause is,there is no need to get angry.

Just as there is non-violence,there MUST be non-anger.

Be cool is a great phrase and that is possible if you decide never to get angry no matter what happens.

In praise of retirement

The biggest fear in most humans is death and the second biggest fear is retirement
I can understand fear of death but why are men so scared to retire?
Even if they are financially secure,men will not retire at 60,the earliest retirement age.

There must be something wrong in the very basic fundamental attitude that society breeds of a retired man-an image of boredom or of uselessness or sick and diseased or a parasite .
“You’re too young to retire” is the most common reaction you will face.
“What will you do the whole day?” everyone asks.
The women would worry about having a man on their hands to look after the whole day,and worry that their freedom would get curtailed.And you will find few women encouraging retirement especially early retirement.
And the men dont wish to retire because they have just started earning huge salaries with great perks so retirement would suddenly cut off all that power,the money etc. and would alter their lifestyle totally.
So greed keeps them going on and on and on.Work till you drop dead.

I think its sad that the system is such that a person becomes so productive only at such a late age that society would not want to give up the services of that person at the age of sixty.Its sad for the individual concerned,not for society.Its the individual who is missing out on the golden age.You have studied and then worked all these years,and you need to enjoy the remaining years of your life after sixty.Who knows when the end is going to come?
If all the top posts were to be given to men in their late forties then they could retire at sixty.
If all mortgages were planned so that by 45 you have no liabilities,you could plan to retire by 60.Wishful thinking,but possible ,if a whole generation is taught the value of time spent on yourself without feeling guilty or insecure.

What Bill Gates has done by retiring at 52 is simply amazing.Not for anybody else but for himself.
What growth he will discover in his early retirement ,only he will know.But I am glad he has set an example to the world.I hope many many others follow him.If the senior staff in Microsoft follows his example, en masse,it will be a revolution.The younger generation would all get promoted, and the retired seniors can help the juniors and also work towards making the world a better place.

There are so many joys,so many pleasures that life offers-and all these dont require a lot of money.But they do require time.
You have to take time off.And grow within so that you become richer and richer from inside.This richness cannot be measured by society.But a society which is full of Buddhas is obviously going to be a rich society.
I would like to end the post with an extract from the Tao:
“It is important to know ” When to Stop”,
Otherwise there is danger of becoming overfull.
If you keep on sharpening a sword endlessly
It is bound to become useless.
If you keeping on filling a house with gold and diamonds,
It is bound to fill you with tension and fear of being robbed.
The way of the Tao
Is to know when you have Enough.
To know you have Enough
Is to be filled with Joy and Contentment.”

When You have done your job…Retire.

Unmess the mess.

 

A word I really love is “simplify”…..to make everything simple- relationships,emotions,routine,work,whatever.
The opposite of simplify is complicated….but complications coloquially means to make a mess….and I love the word “mess” as much as I like simplify because it goes hand in hand ,because by avoiding a mess,you can simplify…..

The word mess is used in many ways.A few of them below,just to make my point:
My room’s a real mess.
The traffic…the noise …what a mess.
I’ve messed up  my girlfriend.
I’m all messed up in my head.
And the whole world is  messed up.Over population,global warming,oil price escalation ,they’re all messed up.There is no end to it.

What I am talking about is mess at the personal level  in your emotional physical(including financial) and spiritual life.

How is mess created?And how to unmess?
Mess starts slowly.It creeps up on you little by little.
Choices are made,decisions are taken without consideration of their implications.But if you believe in living in simplicity,if you believe in minimalism,then there are less chances of a mess.
Everything in its proper place,proper time and the taoist principle of tackling problems when they are small before they become big.

Becoming aware, before, that a mess may be created later on with a certain choice ,is a big preventer of mess.

And meditation,knowing and stilling your own mind,will help to clear the mess inside your head.If there is less mess inside your head it will follow that there will be less outside also.

Meditation will calm your mind,make you more aware ,and help you make right choices.
Its not that easy as I make it sound.
But “to simplify” is a good antidote to “messing up”.