Stillness ...

We should be careful that we don't create a culture where only perfection is rewarded and every failure is punished. We should not burden kids with our expectations of success. We must create an environment where every effort, every attempt is appreciated, irrespective of the outcomes. Our intent should only be to encourage completely genuine, sincere and honest efforts from kids. Failures should be welcomed if the attempt was honest and sincere. 

While making a choice either about the course you wanna pursue or kind of career you wanna have for yourself: 1. Look inward and not what everone else around you is doing or what the trend is. 2. Treat education as part of your career and donot delink the two. This is the no income phase which is followed by a low income phase when you land up with a job. 3. Base this decision on who you are and what you want to do in life. 4. Listen to your heart and do not get driven by money. At the end of the day, almost everyone makes money but believe me very few are happy. 5. Donot get pressurized by what others want you to do. Society is the biggest nuisance. Ask parents or elders to guide you but donot ask them or anyone else to decide.

In whichever domain of activities you are engaged in, believe that you are good, appreciate that there are few others who are better than you and understand that you always need to improve from your current level. First will give you confidence, second peace of mind and the third will give you a purpose.

You must have heard of internet of things. But have you heard of internet of beings? Can you imagine, can you feel? I feel for quite some time that there is an internet to which all of us are connected. May be there is a port to be opened, and the right protocol and messaging format to be followed. It may be quite similar to Wi-Fi that we all use. But this is a feeling only. If there is no internet then where do we get the ideas from which come to our mind like a spark or flash. Many a great discoveries or inventions are also possible only because of this. Another underlying thought is that may be it is not possible to create any new thing, but it is already present in the universe in the form of an idea or knowledge. May be this internet is a mind. A mind of someone. May be the mind of God. May be the cosmic mind. May be we are inside someone's mind. Matrix reloaded! As we create our own world in our dreams, may be we are part of someone's dream. Our dreams take place in ...

Kabir. How cool his name sounds even today! He also said some super cool stuff, few hundred years ago. F or me, he was a cool dude, a true rockstar! Not because of his name, which by the way, comes from Arabic, but because of what he said and how he lived his life around that. He challenged the established religious beliefs and social practices of his time, which were full of ignorance and we're being followed blindly, generations after generations, without being questioned. And he left none; took both the Hindus and Muslims equally to task. He made fun of the religious leaders who were taking the ignorant masses for ride. Well, if you think about it, this is not a mean achievement even today. But the more important reason for him being a rockstar is that Kabir knew the truth. He knew his Ram and he knew that despite being so near, how far He actually was from the temple and mosque visiting people. Kabir was great because he knew the truth and he had the courage to call a spa...

The ultimate destination of this seemingly enigmatic journey called life is Shunya . A life is a chain of endless doing. This doing never stops. And if we believe in re-birth, then a person is on an endless journey of lives, one after the other, with brief pauses in between, known as death. But as Upanishads tell us, this chain of events can stop. The main import is this that there is a state after reaching which, possibly there is no return, i.e. one is not born again. This state is the state of shunya , which is the final destination of our journey. Shunya is when nothing remains. When we lose everything that we have, we enter that state. We need to get rid of our personalities and our possessions, such as desire, attachments, passion, greed, fear, everything. We need to drop the three qualities of our being, which is sattva, rajasa and tamasa. We can do that only when we realize that we have these possessions. We can have this realization only when we watch ourselves and make an...

Desire is the tree that grows in the fertile soil of the mind. But there is also a wall surrounding this tree. This wall is of wisdom, of understanding. The wall prevents one from reaching the tree and pluck and eat its fruits. If the wall is short or weak, one can easily overcome that and reach the tree. But if it is high and strong, this becomes difficult. One must work towards strengthening the wall which can help him keep away from the tree.

A man has truly arrived, when he finds himself in a situation where he can steal something but he does not. He has the power, abilities and the opportunity to take whatever he can desire, but he turns his back to all the lure and walks away.

Success is the meeting point of satisfaction and happiness of two parties. One who is acting , delivering, working, performing or doing something and second, for whom, one is doing that. Only when both are happy and satisfied, the work done can be called a success. From the perspective of the first party (who acts), the person should should place himself in an arena where everything that he does or everything that is required to be done, merely becomes a play for him. Few conditions need to be satisfied in order for an act to become a play: 1. The person is totally absorbed within and is completely cutoff from all externals. He is not simply thinking about anything which is not connected with the subject. The act becomes as natural to him as driving, which he performs effortlessly. 2. He has learnt all the skills, done all of this a number of times and has seen it all. Only when he knows the stuff from the core, he can master it and can even change the method at will, or improvi...

Prana is the life energy. It is linked with Shwaasa (breath). Shwaasa is easier to understand and grasp, compared to Prana . Prana has a still state and a dynamic state. The mind is a form of dynamic Prana . Mind is the thing which makes a man run helter-skelter. This mind has to be stilled. Brahman (the supreme being) is infinite. Mind is finite. Finite can not lead to infinite. Everyone, all of us are behind that infinite. We all want to catch hold of it, but we may not be aware of it. Infinite can not be reached or touched using finite, such as mind. It is only when that the finite drops, the infinite remains and reveals itself. Hence, a mind has to be dropped if we want to get a glimpse of the infinite. The still state of Prana , which is the consciousness (the basic essence of our being) is infinite, as it came from the same infinite. Mind is a dynamic state of Prana . Hence this dynamism has to be dropped, if we want to attain the stillness. The sage Patanjali refers to...

There is no God. What I mean is that God is not someone sitting somewhere on a throne with a crown on his head or someone who has descended down from heaven. It was something I was confused about for a pretty long time. But then there is God. This may sound a bit esoteric but this is experiential. Our Upanishads have proclaimed "Aham Brahmasmi" (I am God) and "Tat Tvam Asi" (You are that i.e. God). Further on, Jesus said, "be still and you kow that you are God". It is true that we ourselves are God or God is inside all of us but we can realize this truth only when we are still or when we are in the state of stillness. This stillness is God which means that God is a state of being when we are completely still. This state is also called Shiva. So, Shiva is stillness. This can be experienced. So, if God is stillness, what is religion then? Religion is that which can reveal God to you. So anything that makes us still is religion or Dharma and anything ...

Know that there is no particular thing to achieve in life. There is no chase because there is nothing, absolutely nothing getting which you will say that the chase is over. The only thing worth pursuing is your own happiness and nothing else. And that is a state of being, which is totally internal. The goal should be to be in that state permanently. In the beginning, we use to think that money is the most important thing in life, because it can buy the comfort and luxury which may make the life look like a very successful one. After some time, the feeling dawns (at least for some) that time is more important than money. But the final realization happens that our own happiness is the most important thing. It is our fundamental duty (towards us as well as people around us) to be happy. But at the same time it is our responsibility to be materially comfortable ourselves. Money is still important. This may sound like a cliche but the secret to a happy life lies in finding your true ca...