Wednesday, 28 September 2016

Raksha-bandhan : Needs Redefinition

Raksha-bandhan is celebrated in most parts of India as bonding of love between brother & sister. Another festival which is similar to Raksha-bandhan is Bhai-Dooj.    In spite of such a pious festival being celebrated, how can there be so many incidents of sexual harassment, rape, murders etc.  In the context of increased violence against women and violence in general, this festival needs serious redefinition.

Quoting Wikipedia: "It is an ancient Hindu festival that ritually celebrates the love and duty between brothers and their sisters. The sister performs a Rakhi ceremony, then sister prays to express her love and her wish for the well being of her brother; in return, the brother ritually pledges to protect and take care of his sister under all circumstances." 

We mostly agree with the above definition. There is one thing, we can observe in above definition, that it seems to be relationship between one brother with one sister. This seems to be bottleneck, that is why, the fragrance of the festival is not able to flourish in society.

Sister worry about them and their brother, while brother worry about them and their sister. It just does not take into account of the others. It seems individualistic. The 'society' (or 'sansar' or 'world') component is missing from the festival. One of my senior colleague mentioned, that whey you pray, you should pray for others and not for yourself. Then only, your prayer will be listened too.  It also reminds of Vivekananda Chicago speech. He began his speech with salutation, "Sisters and brothers of America!".

In the light of above discussion, this festival needs to be re-looked and redefined such that it includes all. A sister should pray for the well being of all other brothers as well, while at the same time a brother should pledges to protect all other sisters as well. In this model, one sister worries for rest (n-1) sisters as well, and will be protected by rest (n-1) brothers as well.  At the same time, one brother will get the wishes of rest (n-1) sisters as well, and need to protect rest (n-1) sisters as well.

All brothers and sisters, if they abide to this model, and insist to their sisters/brothers to do the same during the festival, then there will no scope of violence against women.    


Thanks for reading. Your comments are most welcome.

Saturday, 24 September 2016

When we evaluate others or ourselves, we are actually inviting stress and pain

The statement seems strange for many.   

We continuously evaluate others, events etc.  It is strange but true, that our evaluation of anything external actually tells more of us. Putting it more bluntly, it tells, who we are?

This discussion is not about mundane practical evaluations such as exams, appointment interviews etc. These are mostly rule based with little subjectivity.  This discussion is looking into aspects of more broad evaluations, such as evaluating others and ourselves, with respect to life, possessions, colour, caste, events (such as political, personal) etc.

Societies operate by evaluation. Any evaluation needs a reference point. We can see that, the whole world seems to moving, because of one or other evaluations. A person is expected to be the best employee/businessman, best father/mother, best brother/sister, best son/daughter, best husband/wife etc.  Why there is need to the best?  When they will finally become the best, after which they can relax? This depends on with whom/what they are compared with (the reference)? And reference points are generally unreasonable, and also dynamically varying, in such a way that, they will be mostly unreachable.

Society wants you to be the best, so that you can be enslaved. Not for your personal growth.  It wants you to be unsatisfied, so that you can be put to work for the purpose laid by societies.  Most of us are unsatisfied, because there is fear of rejection by the society, which makes us do whatever we do.

A person, who is unsatisfied at the present, will always be unsatisfied. The reason is that: they are choosing to be unsatisfied now. Similarly, the person who chooses to be contented now will always find a reason to be contented. Generally, the choice is ours. The tendency or the mind-set generally remains the same.  Also, the person who is contented will not fear their evaluation, as it does not bother them. Also they will try their level best not to be in the business of evaluation. On the other hand, we have seen that unsatisfied persons always fear evaluation, when they are below par. But they wish to be evaluated, when they are above par. They will be mostly seen involved in the business of evaluation.

An unsatisfied person is suffering from dis-ease, while the contented person is at ease.  An unsatisfied person suffers from stress that will surface up in the form of various medical ailments. That is why, it is said that, never be in the company of ambitious people. They generally go to any extent to fulfill their ambitions. Why they are so ambitious at first place? Because they are so unsatisfied. Their ambitions lead to stress and their concentration in everything is weakened, and hence their outcome will be of lower quality.  On the other hand, a satisfied person will generally do the best in everything they do. It is simply because; they are not carried away by the outcome, while doing anything. They work with more concentration, and they generally produce best quality in almost everything they do.

Best dad, generally means, someone who had all the money of the world. Why so much money is required? So that all the wishes of family can be addressed. What are the wishes of the family? Big home, bank balance, good health, good family time etc. Big home & bank balance requires slogging for earning money. The side effect will be sacrifice of health and quality time. So it seems that the some goals defeat other goals. Balance might be the key.

If we are in the habit of evaluating others, it implicitly means we are actually evaluating ourselves also on those parameters. Unknowingly, we are sowing the seeds of stress for ourselves. So we should try to abstain from unnecessary evaluation. Life has already given everyone almost infinite reasons to be contented.  But we always find few reasons to be unsatisfied. The choice is mostly ours.


Thanks for reading. Your comments are most welcome.

Sunday, 18 September 2016

Whatever happens is the best that can be.....

This is a profound statement. It is the secret of the sages.

Just imagine, if this statement is true, then we will be in bliss. The statement meant that, 'whatever happened in the past is perfect and whatever that will happen in future will be perfect'.  Many of us will not agree with this.

A scientific or logical mind will ask, What is the proof?  The proof is extremely simple. So simple, that it will be unbelievable, initially.

The proof is, 'since it has happened, it should be the best'. 'If it is not the best, how it can happen'. 'The happening itself is the proof'. In science, we believe in happening, and take that as truth. Most of the times, we may not know the reason. That is why, science continuously explores, the reasons of the happenings.

If everything is best, there is no reason to go away from peace of mind.  

With birth, death is certain. What about life? Life is not certain. Life is a probability. No of probabilities is infinite.  It is like a game of dice. One output will come. If we start evaluating the output, we are unnecessary troubling ourself.  What it means: if we think whether it is favorable or un-favorable? It simply means, we are playing a game of poker. If we are taking life as poker, we will surely be the loser.

Sages always talk about death. Most people complain, why they always talk of death. We came with a hope that they will talk about life, and probably they are trying to frighten us with death. Sages always talk of certain things, they do not talk of probable things. But had we ever thought: why do we avoid discussing death? It is simply because we fear death. We are living a fearful life. But sages talk of death, so that we can become fearless. If we become fearless, then only we can live. Otherwise, we are more dead than alive.

One question that will arise, if 'everything that happens is the best', then how it can applied to someone who has just lost a near and dear one. It will be difficult for him to accept that this the best that could have happened.  The answer cannot be given in isolation. It just poses one more question, why such a doubt do not arise, when the same near & dear one takes birth. That moment we take the event for granted. Why we do not complain that why unknown person has come to our life. The problem is we have taken life to be so granted. We never thank life, that such a person was our companion for some time. If we start thanking life, we will stop complaining.

Some people will immediately try to argue that, so we can do anything whatever we like, since it will be the best. Everyone is free to do anything, but he/she should not complain what life brings to him/her in the later moment. Why we do or don't do something ? We mostly do everything out of fear.


Thanks for reading. Your comments are most welcome.

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

We are already blessed with the infinite....

We have everything that can be given to anyone. It may seem, like a joke, if someone feels limited. Then why we feel limited and what can be done about this?  Let us try to understand.

Let us start with mind-body level.  Most of us consider our self to be mind-body. So let us see, how many aspects of mind-body is in our control. Consider the body first. Breathing with nose, cleaning of blood by kidney, pumping of blood throughout the body by heart, functions of liver & pancreas, digestion of food by intestine and many more. How many of these functions are we controlling?. Laughter!!. None. They are happening on their own, thanks to unknown.  It is amazing that, all this body functions, happens on their own, including breathing, even when we sleep.  If one of the functions go little haywire, our life will come to stop.  The fact that body is bound to weaken and diminish over time, is known to all of us.  Anyway, we are not controlling it, even if it diminishes, we should not complain. We should be rather be thankful, that it has sustained us for so long.

Then why we consider our self limited.  This job is done by our mind.  Mind will create insecurity, fear, anxiety etc., of the future, guilt etc., from the past and make us believe we are limited. It make stories, and make us believe that there is something more to be achieved, so that fear/guilt etc will be satisfied. But since these things cannot be mentioned in numbers, and that is why it will never be satisfied.  We will discuss more on this in future blogs.

So it seems neither our mind or body are in our control. So what we are actually doing here.  Laughter !!

We find most of the people look for peace of mind. That means, the unwanted chattering of mind needs to be stopped. But one will find it very difficult to achieve. This is the reason, why everyone needs awareness, just to achieve peace of mind.  

What is this awareness? The awareness that we are not this mind-body. That we are actually infinite consciousness.  We will discuss on this in future blogs.


Thanks for reading.  Your valuable comments will be helpful.