Be there in the Orbit, Love and Greatness Await You

 

There is an option for the best chance to survive, move and be happy. Choose your orbit and glide with perfect harmony. The objects that fall out of the orbit, presuming it to be a leap of freedom, go burning and crash-landing into smithereens. The destination is not into the depths of cosmos for you to get into hot pursuit like a burning meteorite. It’s always nearby, at some place in the same gentle periphery of your common journey.

No journey is common by the way. Extraordinary is just maintaining your hold on the ordinary. Love the gentle loops of your circular journey around the axis of your being: the axis of your small, small commitments and responsibilities. That is the mother planet for your individual self to revolve around in circles. It defines you. It keeps you in the orbit. It helps you in your happy journey. It stops you from escaping into the black guts of the cosmos like a rootless rock going burning and turning to ashes.

So choose your little orbit. Staying in the orbit does not mean being tied to a chain. It’s a grasp for lasting freedom. It is the life-force, this gravity that keeps you bound to your orbit. Your destination lies in the orbit itself. The day you get it, it becomes the loftiest orbit and the journey worth it.

Things as small as bunking office to be with kids, surrendering your right to the TV to allow kids to enjoy their cartoon show, letting the little one to play on your abdomen and suppress the discomfort to give a winsome smile and even laughter, laughing when the little one pees on you, going to office daily over the years to see that small world back home in the evening, saving money over the years to give the surprise gift of a car to your children, and many more. These are the forces that keep you in your orbit. They turn life into living. Unconditional love is the catalyst that propels this alchemical shift from life to living.

Love your orbit. Glide effortlessly. You will cover astronomical distances on the same familiar path. Love these common repetitions that go unnoticed and unrewarded. Loving these is the reward itself. Like your path. It’s strictly yours, stamped with the unique greatness of your unseen efforts to stay in the orbit. Just to stay in the orbit means to be great.

There are countless milestones that you reach. These are as shiny as the biggest stars. This universe started with a bang from a point. That was the explosion of potential for countless souls to carve out their orbits, to glide peacefully in their trajectory. Be there, smile, feel the goose-bumps of loving kindness, and give a victorious cry for you are already a winner.

Dig up your Treasure

 

It’s a beautiful, fresh morning. A fox is on hunt in the forest. The sun is verdantly casting long shadows from the east. The fox gets drunk with ego and pride looking at its long shadow.

Smitten with excited goose-bumps, it goes into self-bragging, “I must be really big and powerful to cast such a huge shadow! So little rabbits and tiny rats aren’t worthy of being in my big body! I have to hunt an elephant at least. That will do justice to my true status and standing.”

So all through the morning it roams around to get an elephant. Many small preys cross its path, but swooning with ego and pride it just ignores them. It’s not before the noon time it sees an elephant. The sun is hot and brightly overhead. The fox stands in the elephant’s path. But before it even realizes what is happening, the elephant swipes it away like a dust particle with its trunk. It lands at a distance very painfully. It now runs in panic.

While running it looks around its feet and sees the tiny shadow clinging to its scared self. “How come I’ve become so small after the fall?” it wonders.

Holding onto the impermanent elements on the shifting stage of life is the cause of pain and suffering. The externalities are the moving shadows. They give the impression that they define you. But how can such fickle, impermanent, transient, fleeting, temporary things and phenomena be the component of our real self? Peace and happiness lie in connecting with the essentially real self, the substance, the permanent entity. It lies inside all of us. But is of no use unless and until we spot it, observe it, realize and acknowledge it. If it’s not recognized, it’s almost of no use like the beggar who died wretchedly on a hidden gold treasure.

A beggar died in most wretched poverty in his hut. The place just reeked of misery and suffering. After cremation they just couldn’t bear up with the stench, so decided to dig up the place to remove the signs of wretchedness. To their surprise, there was hitherto unfound golden treasure under the hut. There was gold just a few feet under the surface and a man had met a slow, prolonged and painful death due to poverty on it.

Same is the case with the treasure trove of our real self, the essentially loving self. Find it, acknowledge it, nourish it to be happy and be at peace, or meet a painful, discontented death. Much as we run after the shadows, the centre, the pivot lies neglected. Shifting shadows never give permanent joy. So go down, unearth and lay bare the treasure you are sitting upon! The deeper you go, the more interconnectedness you will feel. This web of unity will land you in the zone of harmonic being where self-love is no longer separate from love for all. 

Author Interview (Sandeep Dahiya)

 

Author Interview

·         Can you tell something about yourself?

That’s my primary quest: To know more about myself. The real joy starts once we begin to be more aware about our real self. Most of the problems of life are born of our illusions, presumed fears and imagined insecurities. As a matter of fact, only 10% situations are objectively challenging and they need our methodical approach to resolve them. The rest are the phantoms of our mind. Now the question arises how to dispel the clouds that hide the sun of truth from us. Well, it’s an exploration, a kind of journey. This journey is what we call as our life. We learn from books, from others, from our own experiences, from observing this wonderful game around. The nearer we come to our self, the better we feel. So I would say, primarily I am a seeker of my true identity. I love travelling in the Himalayas. Reading is my full time occupation. I have decided to be a learner for life. In between, I write my version of truth under the expectation that it helps fellow travelers on the path.    

·         How are your books different than others?

All of us are unique products of mother existence. Genetically we may share a big pool with our fellow Homo-sapiens but our Karmic imprint related to our individual consciousness stands out, making you a representative of the entire existence. Writing is immensely personal. Every book has a message, so has this humble writer. I write with the intention that my word will reach someone who needs a message at some point in his/her journey. As a writer you have to be sensitive to the fact that by putting your creation on a public platform you are taking a commitment to the cause of wellness of all. All of us have our individual philosophy of life. We have our versions of reality. It includes what should be done as well as what we can avoid. I have seen a lot in life. I believe we are the products of our circumstances. But we have it in us to mould our circumstances as well. We know where we goofed up things. Through my fiction, non-fiction, poetry and sketches, I try to share my experiences. I write about small things in life. It helps in viewing life as a very simple process. I try to simplify the process of life through my writings about nature, little ironies, small tragedies and the interesting quests of human mind. The words, phrases and sentences are mere tools for us to forge our path to the next destination in life.

·         Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

From the book of life itself! It’s endless. I think observing things more closely is a habit that all of us can work on. The reality as it appears has multiple dimensions. It’s within our capacity to interpret life at a joyful level. Most of the time we are puzzled and our muddled thoughts create an imaginary baffling situation. Learn to simplify things. There is an inherent simplicity in the design of mother existence. Although there are agonies on the road yet there are many reasons to smile about. As a sensitive heart it’s better that we feel the pain beyond our own self. But I would also advise not to miss the smile of a lone flower by the path. I roam around and observe things. It triggers varied emotions. I observe my own emotional reaction to the stimuli and then write something that may help someone at some phase of his/her journey.

·         What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

That writing makes me instantly feel better. It’s a sort of catharsis. My Ikigai. Sometimes you don’t know where you stand. There is some deep discontent. Contradictory thoughts and paradoxical emotions pull you in different directions. That is the time when you need some support. It can come in many ways. You can talk to someone, read, play music, do exercise, get busy in painting or write. All of us have our means of feeling instant relief. Writing a few sentences helps me in getting my footing back. How can I expect others to feel better by reading my book if I myself don’t feel that relief while writing it? I am surprised to know and feel how writing instantly uplifts my mood. It gives a sense of purpose, of doing something beyond my own self.  

·         What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I don’t follow a strict routine when it comes to writing. Words, thoughts and emotions have their own sovereignty and I respect that. A particular routine makes it cumbersome and hence less joyful. Give yourself full freedom. But yes, I try to keep my senses open to what goes around. Writing something on paper isn’t an abstract event. It has a sequence of events. A lot many things are happening at the level of thoughts and demotions as you follow your routine. In my subconscious I have this resolve that all this flux is going to give me a nice, presentable version of reality that will not only help me understand life better but will help someone as well in his/her journey. But there are a few techniques I follow during that preparatory stage. I keep in mind outstanding keywords for the incidences and happenings that draw my attention. I keep them in mind. Sometimes, different keywords link up nicely to give me a story. As they say, nothing is fictitious in fiction except the names and dates. 

·         What do you think makes a good story?

A good story is an instrument of support to the reader. A broken heart needs some succor, a puzzled person needs some wisdom and practical advice, a sulking human needs some mood uplift through humor, someone going within needs some spiritual guidance to help reach the destination or somebody needs simple entertainment. All of us have the need for something or the other. That’s just to be human. Someone is lonely and a book is a nice friend. A good story will have one or more of these elements. It will add a positive dimension to the reader’s life. Someone has entrusted his/her time and money in reading your story, so it’s your duty to add value to the people’s life. 

·         What is your writing process like?

It’s a multi-pronged approach. Observing things more closely is a habit that all of us can develop. Once you know that you are working on a particular book of a specific genre, your idea of life comes to centre around the main theme. You observe life from the perspective of your characters and plot. You read the books that help you enlarge your perspective on the topics related to your work. You travel the places keeping in mind the subject of your writing. You talk to the people who may add some value to your pursuit. So basically you look at the world around you as the stage on which your characters will play a little drama. Creative people have a lot of emotional upheavals. It’s necessary to use that surge of energies. I work on multiple projects at a time. Sometimes the soul wants to sing through poetry, so I write a poem. Another time, the mind has hardcore analytical frame of operation, so I write some non-fiction. Sometimes I write stories. In this way, many books develop in a sweet parallel. It helps avoid the process from turning monotonous. 

·         What advice do you have for budding writers?

Avoid writing strictly to earn worldly laurels. Write only if it makes you feel better and joyful. Feeling the joy of writing is a reward in itself. It’s a lifelong process of learning to write. There is no retirement age. Read as much as you can. Maintain a journal. It helps in enlarging the perspectives on life and living. Listen to the inner voice what kind of writing helps you feel better. Keep the dream alive over a period of decades. Writing is just a portion of our experiences. So naturally all of us are sure to become better writers as we add to our experiences and learn more from life. If you have the real passion for it, you will definitely hit home some day. Till then keep observing, journaling, reading, and on top of that WRITING.

·         Tell us how the stories occur to you?

Even a wayside flower has a story to tell, so has a beggar on the railway platform, or a street puppy, or a rag-picker. There are countless stories unfolding every second around us. All we need is to be a good receptor. First we have to acknowledge the existence of something. Greet the wayside flower. How will it tell you its story if you just pass by lost in your miseries? Open to the surroundings. I keep myself open to the nice emotions and ideas and they just float in. Doesn’t water flow to an empty basin? Keep some space vacant inside you and welcome little things to enter your heart. You will have your stories. 

·         What are the books all about?

I have many books to my credit. I am lucky to have someone like Mr. Ajay Setia to publish my books. Kindly refer to my website www.sandeepdahiya.com to know all about my books. There is a separate ‘About the Books’ section that gives a gist of the books.

Repose, Rest and Creative Imagination: The Seeds of Love

 

Don’t be in haste, don’t run too fast, for in running too fast, always looking at the destination ahead in future, you lose the real charm of your journey. You forget yourself and identify yourself with what you are not. You snap your ties with your real self, and with broken ties with your true self, you hardly stand a chance to grow firm roots in the personal and professional domain around you.

As a speedster you miss the real fruits that were placed solely for you along the path. You hardly realize the real profits and boons coming across your path. You miss your present, the real you who can exist in the present only, the rest is just a mere mirage of ideas about incomprehensible future and regretful past. The unreal you has no tangible existence except as a bunch of insubstantial, phantom thoughts. Unfortunately, this phantom idea takes precedence over the real you, deriving a chasm between what you think yourself to be and what you are in reality.

So under the fallacy of identification with the unreal, you forget yourself, you overlook the present impregnated with countless things around waiting to be defined just by your look, your insight, your observation. Every phenomenon is incomplete without you as an aware observer. So by forgetting yourself, you ignore your role in the process of creation.

Forgetting yourself, eyes peeping into the hazy distances, leaving all the multi-hues of things and phenomena waiting to be defined by your aware look, you stumble so many times. And the blame game starts. You target destiny, you point out unfair forces against you, you crib about injustices and system failures. All these are but the projections of your unreal self on external circumstances. The things outside are simply the screens where you play the disharmonic drama driven by the wrong protagonist impostoring as you.

So you run very hard with all your might, your eyes mechanically glued to the so called target. But is it, in any way, better than a blind run? And mind you, no destination is defined in isolation, just in itself, something lying at a distance in abstract. Every destination is the sum total of the experiences coming across the way. The so called ‘reach home’ is just one more milestone like any other along the way.

The runner is always more important than the act of running and the so called finish line. So cool down. Take a pause. And move restfully with equipoise and respectful awareness. The things that light up your awareness at each step are as important as the goal to which you are dying to reach. The ever-giving trees, singing birds, cotton soft clouds floating as spectators, gentle breeze applauding your march, motherly soothing sunshine, restful ponds, naughty rivers, gracious people, charming conversations, and what not. The list is endless.

Not that there aren’t grey shades to the things around. There are, but they are mere appendages to the basketful of bounties. As they say, change your outlook and the world changes. Grey has just two factors of white and black. Multicolored probability, on the other hand, has a big rainbow of possibilities. However, it’s never complete without the participation of your prism, your heart.

The little wayside flowers have no meaning if you don’t pause to reciprocate their smile. A sub-atom of reality has an observer and the observed. Nature has played its part; now play yours by being a keen onlooker. These small milestones coming with each watchful step have their rewards and satisfaction, provided you don’t belittle them as mere steps to the so called final trophy.

Each step is a destination itself. I hardly see any final destination apart from dying without too many grudges from life. The rest are mere steps following one another. To avoid the final judgmental hammer-strike at the fag end of the journey, it is simply required to be just a journeyman. The journey itself is a reward. It’s an end in itself. Pain arises when we take it as the means to something. There is just one journey, life. There is just one destination, a regretless ending of the show.

Your each step carries the prospects of the pearls of happiness provided you slow down your time. The time that is yours, defined by you, not by the clock’s clicking hands or other’s expectations and your imitation of the conventionally safe pursuits. The latter give you a fake sense of security but leave your soul thirsty, depriving it of the adventurous nectar that could have been sipped from the flowering of your own self by gracefully picking up the pollens lying for you.

There is no absolute time, just relative fixations of it to serve tiny human purposes. That doesn’t mean it should become the master of your destiny, casting you in its cement mould, making you a caricature of your true self. Your time ought to obey you, not the vice versa. You can slow it down with your increased awareness. Stretch each second on the enlightened curve of awareness. Time then serves you, giving you more in seconds than you ever observed and experienced in whole days. As Abraham Lincoln mused: “In the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” So sisters and brothers, pump life into your days.

Do you think a journey is accomplished by the running force you propel into? Think again if you say yes. It’s not possible to run forever. A run has to depend on rest and pause to sustain itself. Do you think the accelerator paddle in your car takes you to the destination? Not at all! It’s the brakes intervening to give restful pauses for safety to give meaning and control to your speed, to make it an organized run instead of a mad rush ever accelerating and crashing into some fatality.

The break, the pause, the rest, these are the basic ingredients to turn any random movement into a meaningful, assured and safe journey taking us to some point further in the voyage. Miles and miles of mindless dash without intervening, restful pauses are meaningless crazy pursuits in a desert ending in painful mirages.

As you run without pause, rest and awareness, and with heedless hurry, you stress yourself out. This stress and tension kills the imagery. All tensed up and stressed, looking anxiously at the destination far, far away, you lose the dreamy imagery that makes each step a victory in itself. Do you think life is meaningful without restful reflections and creative imagination? It simply isn’t. If not now, you realize it later when unfortunately it is too late.

So guys watch your step. And look around you. Countless things and phenomena are waiting to enrich you. These are the things that make your journey fruitful and meaningful in the true sense. The destination stands defined only in terms of the process of journeying and the experiences gained alongside. And when you reach your destination as a victorious king, it’s only the experiences before the final goalpost that have turned the scale in your favor.

Dale Carnegie: “Today is life—the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”

The nutshell is: Enjoy the journey fella! Don’t just close your eyes to the surroundings thinking about the destination where you assume to become happy some day in future. Forget it. No destination can give you happiness if you haven’t been happy while journeying. And happy journeymen are all extremely loving in nature by default.

Happy journey! Carry on! Be loving! All the best!

One More Step, One More Breath and One More Sip of Love

 All you need to avoid a fall is to take one more step, then another, and then another. You should be bothered about just one more step. Forget about miles and more miles. These are meaningless without the step just about to define your current journey, your present. Being in league with one more step makes you the real journeyman. It means you are right there, still moving, still fighting. The chance of victory is always alive as long as you are ready to take one more step. And the possibility of life is active only and only because of the upcoming breath.

So mind your step on a beautiful dawn. One more day, one more step and the fresh dose of the next breath. These are the basic building blocks of a well-meant life, a purposeful journey. You look too far into the hazy distances, and you lose yourself in the puzzlement that lies scattered around. You mind your next step, and you immediately find yourself. You mind your next breath and instantly you feel the enthusiastic pulse of life throbbing in your veins.

Just like life means one more breath, living means one more step. Life and living are simply a beautiful symphony between the next step and the upcoming breath, laying the foundation for the next and then the next, and on and on. These set up the notes for the beautiful melody that life is.

Each meaningful, mindful step becomes the destination in itself. If you completely mind your step, you then need not look for destinations and their assortment of heartbreaks far away into the distances of time and geography. If you inhale and absorb completely the portion of life provided to you in one breath by the existential forces, you won’t feel the need to explore living in the farfetched quarters of make-believe concepts erected in the hope of a happy, contented life. If you mind your breath, allowing it to give you the most it has to offer, you won’t be running into many decades of longevity to feel the elixir that living is. You get it, right here, in an instant. Life then turns into living and a reward in itself.

One more step and one more breath, taken under tender observation and careful awareness, are the building blocks of life and living. They are the fabrics of your being. Work on them and you get a wonderful framework decorating your mind, body and soul.

Don’t fall, take at least one more step, then another, then another. Only this much! That’s all you have to do for life and living: one more breath, one more step. And your one more step becomes more significant than the endless miles and still more miles. Your step defines miles not vice versa. One more breath, one more step! Seeped in the awareness of this incredible duo, you will first surprise yourself in the effortless ease you have walked on the path of life and living. You create and retain countless chances to reach a point, where you astonish yourself the most in your achievement.

The darkness isn’t completely dark as long as the tiniest of a flicker burns steadily, unsteadily in any corner of the cosmos. It holds the chances of light, of a win, of a fight, sometime when the conditions are more suitable. Hold your light. Hold onto your chances of a full blaze. It can even be the littlest star reflected in your fatigued eyes from the farthest distances across stormy clouds.

Just look back and spot some small-time remark of appreciation, some grateful bow, some serious acknowledgment, some feeble smile, some tiny reward to the tune of INR 500, or some words of praise. Hold them. Cherish them. Pick them up from the dusty corners of your room. They are the treasure. They are the light. They are the breath. They are one more step. One more step is as important as the complete journey. Or even bigger than that! A tiny flicker of light, lost in the darkish wombs of loss, is as big as the big-bang of primordial light and fire that created this universe.

Long before you conquer the world, learn to be happy with the tiny rewards that hold your dreams in piece, which sustain the life of your goals just like one more breath sustains your life. A tiny word of appreciation will one day turn into a massive trophy, a huge applause, with camera lights flashing around and thousands of screaming fans. This little smile on your lips will turn into a broad grin of triumph.

Hold the littles in your life, acknowledge their role like one more step keeps the journey, and one more breath keeps life together. Do only this much and you will naturally find yourself taking your sips of love and kindness, turning you richer on any scale you weigh upon.

Spiritual Practice to be a Loving Person

 The virtue of working hard need not be emphasized any further. It’s already beaten down too much. Practice makes a man perfect. Same applies to love. The things that you most feel like doing are the ones you really love and like. The domain of such likeable things can be increased. Practiced love can definitely subdue hate and anger.

Shakira: “I think love is something that you have to work on, and it develops over experience and time. Love is a practice.”

It's not about being a God incarnation. It's merely about recalling your essential loving self as often as possible. Practiced love spreads too fast; faster than hate. You have to do it to believe me.

Satchel Paige: “Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.”

As we tend to forget our inherent kindness, it suits the purpose if we simply decide to be aware of it as much as possible. This awareness realigns the neurons in the brain, making goodness almost instinctive habit. If we can make rockets, we are definitely capable of this much self-engineering. 

Mass-produced Anti-love Pills: Bigotry

 

Manufactured, tailored hate is one of the vilest human creations. Caste, creed, class and religion are the evil threads of this fabric of organized hatred. The industry is for mass production of detestation and prejudice under standardized norms. People take sips of hate, anger and disgust and give battle cries for individual and collective salvation.

Bigotry is the biggest challenge against practicing collective compassion. The very air becomes vicious. The sense of reasoning gets blinded. We sleepwalk into the pandering arms of violence and take society away from love, sympathy, care and consideration. Beware!

Intolerance and narrow-mindedness are the symptoms of a sacred disease. Its affliction leads to a peculiar addiction and gives pleasure because it becomes the channel of all the pent up emotions, frustrations and stress. No wonder bigotry dwarfs the individual soul, keeping the rays of truth, and essentially love and compassion in its wake, from one's inner self.

Bigotry simply murders the larger possibilities of an enhanced self, fooling the individual to see virtual ghosts around. Very soon you hit the pinnacle of insecurity. Standing at the height of phantom fears, you drop your loving self to hold onto hate and malice. And mind you, bigotry is no copyright of a particular religion. All of the so called popular faiths have their patent claims to a lesser or greater degree.

Organized efforts promote fear, hatred is just the reaction. Bigotry is nothing but an effort to stifle truth to death. It's in fact the primal seat of the evil in the modern world. Tyranny, aggression, cruelty and injustices are the foot soldiers in its army. They attack the castle of truth where the treasure of love lies. And unfortunately, castles of truth are falling in society after society, unseating compassion from the throne and installing modern day tyranny in the form of racism, fundamentalism, casteism, sectarianism and sexism. No wonder, the world, despite trillions of science and technological conveniences, is as unsafe and dangerous as it was thousands of years back. Then where is the progress that we so proudly proclaim to have achieved?  

So my dear bigot, watch out, there is poison in your plate!

My dear terrorist, the epitome of hate and abyss of love, I have a very simple question for you. Why does killing come so easy to you? Each and every breath of a newborn is literally purchased by its parents and wards in lieu of love, affection and care that go beyond any monetary value. Why then you simply get ready to sniff out lives, the very same lives that have been taken care of tirelessly and unselfishly by parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.

Killings in the name of religion is what defines we earthlings as of now. Quite surprisingly, the fundamental tenets of every religion aim to make the followers better human beings, better not just for the self, but for others as well. Religious texts seem imploring a person to become an instrument of betterment, a heaver of humanity forward on its march to better days. The core of all religions is meant to be love and compassion. Why then so much of hate and blood-bathing in the name of religion?

The walk between good and evil is very dodgy and testing. Like a rope-walker is inclined to fall, with each step it’s about evading the fall. There is a natural pull for the fall. Only with each careful step and awareness one can move on. Goodness requires practice. It doesn’t come naturally anymore. There has been too deep a wound in Mother Nature. It has set into motion a vicious circle of stress, tension and frustration in the social systems as well.

Malice and cruelty have their own instinctive, convenient outlet through the little channels of ego pervading through our self-consciousness. Hate has its own natural pull. It just shoots off, gathering its own force once let loose, like a boulder rolling downhill. In hate you can do anything; it’s a terrific ignition. In anger you can rant endlessly.

In contrast, in love and peace you have few options. Love is going uphill. You have to hold it in your heart. You have to carry its weight. You pant and perspire. Man, it needs effort, simply because it does no longer come naturally. Thousands of years of struggle to survive has genetically ingrained fear, insecurity and hate almost to the core of our being. We are on the verge of fully losing the essential loving nature of our self forever. At both the individual and collective levels, altruism sounds an absurd concept. Things, situations, people, places, organizations, institutions and governments are on a hair-trigger alert. Slightest trigger and the arrow is shot.

Mention love and how many words you can speak out. Love after all is the single-word language of peace, silence and harmony. Try to make a list of the good deeds to be done around, you will twiddle your hair to find anything good to do around. Now mention hate, anger and destruction. And you have the options scattered around you to carry out the task ranging from verbally abusing somebody, slapping, screaming, breaking heads, throwing bricks to even killings.

Religion in practice is like bamboo in the hands of a rope-walker. It is meant to avoid the fall. It is supposed to prevent your collapse with each step. It does so by making you aware of your goodness, helping you take one step, then another and then another to complete the journey.

The religion in the hands of bigots doesn’t remain religion at all. It’s a poisoned pill. Condemn it in direct terms without fiddling with diplomatic maneuvering and falling in the clutches of impotent concept like secularism. Bigots are just plain murderers of religion. Throw them out of their authoritative seat. Hold them by their neck, kick them on their ass and spit on their version of religion that ordains killing innocent people. Not only they force a fall from the rope of life, they kill the soul as well. They kill the soul by sidelining love and replace it with hate. It imprisons the soul. It is skin deep addiction for some abnormal gratification of the senses. It pampers the evil side of the personality.

There is always a choice to be either good or bad. The evil book of bigotry robs one of this natural choice. Only dark force with its ghosts of hate, jealousy, anger, insecurity and frustration remain in the fray. It grips you and makes you an instrument of the evil, a foot-soldier of chaos. You don’t see the light from within. You are a blinded, crazy robot, ready to strike. And when you strike you just kill, without bothering about who you are killing. The victims are mostly innocents. Here lies the biggest tragedy.

When a child, who understands religion no more than the alphabets in her books, is killed in the unsparing spool of violence, what lines in the book of bigotry can justify the deed? When innocent people out for shopping, going to office and out there on the small stage of life get killed, which God in which heaven is appeased? If He is appeased, then to the hell with such a God!

There are many secular souls around who will point out the correlation between terrorism in the world and Islam. Aren’t most of the acts of terror perpetrated by Muslims, they say. Before we get into the debate, let us take a look at the plight of a Muslim boy. I can spot a few factors that allow the seed of bigotry to grow a bit faster than other societies.

Ever wondered why so many Muslim boys take to the self-destroying path of violence? In my humble opinion, polygamy may be responsible. Multiple wives, many children and family strife mean that children grow beyond the axis of love and affection required to groom a loving and caring persona. Long before you love the world outside, and become responsible to keep things in order, you need to have your own quota of love, your share of affection, your portion of trust within the family.

In polygamy you get tested. You get isolated when you need your near and dear ones the most. You end up competing instead of being loved and love in return. A polygamist family lacks the positives of a cohesive unit, nurtured by the sweet shower of parental and sibling bonhomie and affection. Life becomes a struggle at the home itself, the point you start from, and where things should be stable to groom a healthy personality. Your father abandons your mother at his mere fancy, gets a new wife, your mother either sulks as a secondary object in the same house, or leaves to either rot in poverty, or remarry, and you with your real brothers and sisters, get pushed around the corners. How will a young sapling take roots? Childhood gets uprooted.

All religions have adapted to get attuned to changing times. Religion according to me is just a set of adaptable principles to facilitate life and living as per the changing times. Muslim clerics and theologians should encourage monogamy. It will sow the seeds of trust, love and stability in the family, the point a child begins his journey. Islam means peace and monogamy will help the real spirit of Islam. With peace and trust in families, Islam will become the great religion it is meant to be.

Not that the problem lies within polygamous Muslim households only. It sets the trigger though by pushing young Muslim boys into the corridors of hate because they grew up beyond love and affection. The powers that be, the developed countries and those who nurture the wish to rule the world, set their geostrategic boats rapidly sailing in the fast paced currents of Islamophobia.

Women are the spring source of the fountain of love in the household. Women-centric reforms in Islam, giving females more free space on the open stage of life, will let loose the cool waters of love and affection that will surely douse the fire and fury of anger and hate.   

Fragrance of Love in Small, Sweet Stories

 

There are too many news stories going around with the alarming buzz of stinging bees. They strike, bite in fact, and spellbind our senses. Having pushed us into a spell of craziness, these unfortunately become the stories directing, misdirecting most of the time, the course of our lives.

Catching onto some good news is as good as maintaining hope and redeeming truth. Catch it, pamper it, and spread its soft message. Not just for truth but for a more loving self. We only get what we have been looking for and working for. Try to salvage good from the reams and reams of falsehood and propagandas. Pick it up. It may not be too shiny but its essential value is worth gold. Then please allow it to glitter a bit so that it imparts hope to some fading struggle somewhere.

Shallow, inconsequential earth-shaking impacts hardly bring fundamental changes. They rake up lot of dust though, which again gives you watery eyes. Slow, gentle warmth of almost intangible steps lets out the breezy pace of far deeper, effective changes than you think.

Anne Frank: “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

The real stories are very soft and small, beyond the big-staged melodrama. They lie buried under the shitty garbage dumps of bigger issues driven by hate, malice, discrimination, oppression and tyranny. And these real stories, having the morale of the story of creation, have love and harmony at the core. We just need to sieve these nuggets from the tons of useless sand to have our shining inspiration to lead a life of caring and compassion.

In anything around you, you won't find life's lessons put up on a hoarding as big-lettered scientific principles. These are the peanut seeds hidden in little stories and happenings around. You have to crack the story and eat the message. Lessons of hope and redemptions are packaged in tiny instances.

Massive occurrences have an earthquake type impact. They too have their messages, like war has message for peace. But it is indirect by showing the tragedy of blood and death. Here you learn your lessons from the fatality that has already taken its toll.

Small stories have a direct message of love and empathy. These even give clues to build up your tiny path of redemption. These are the songs of freedom and liberty. These guide you in searching your life's goal, help you in subduing your false fears and take to the stage of life with a bigger character than you are doing presently. These tiny morals ensure safe passage for the voice of your soul.

Jenova Chen: “I would say 'Flower' had a story. It is told through the environment.”

There is a fence separating the lesser us from the most exquisite version of us. The barrier comprises the posts and barbs of insecurities, fear, prejudices and anxieties. These small wire-cutters help you in cutting through the barbed fencing and help you in meeting the best version of yourself. These small lessons help you on the path of seeking truth. And mind you, no path to truth bypasses the garden of loving kindness. Each step dispels some rigidity, taking you closer and closer to your true self.

Ram Charan: “Life is one big love story with hundreds of little love stories within it.”

Forget about rockets, nukes, missiles, bombastic egos, skyrocketing sensex, high rises, malls, fashion, militaries, cars, bla bla bla. To me the tiniest story of love and compassion is bigger than any other story on earth.

I vividly recall the story of a stork with a plastic ring on its beak, an apt testimony to our crimes on Mother Nature. Among huge deluge of jingoistic battles of egos and power-aspiring super-species, this tiny story of our crimes against Mother Nature was unassumedly tucked in a corner. But then a run for redemption with still left out love and care in human heart made it up the best story. To me at least!

There are people who aren’t looking too high. They just look around for simple things. But their eyes are special. They have love and kindness. So this good soul clicks a two-and-half year old, male black-necked stork at Basai wasteland, some 34 kms from Delhi. On zooming the picture, the birder found a plastic ring stuck around the bird’s beak. The poor bird appeared on the brink of starvation, not being able to open its beak to eat or drink.

The Wildlife department set up three teams involving their own officials and people from Bombay Natural History Society. Apart from this, nature and bird lovers from Delhi and Haryana also volunteered. Hundreds of compassionate souls actually roamed around hundreds of kilometers in sweltering heat to undo a portion of our plasticized sins. It took these soldiers of love 5 days to save the bird.

In the last leg of the search, two young boys from Haryana, Rakesh Ahlawat and Sonu Dalal, ran for 4 kms to catch the bird just before the jaws of death waiting nearby in the form of hunger and thirst. Aren’t they and the others involved in the search real heroes? They didn’t do it for a small news item in the newspapers. They did it for love. To them a bird’s life matters. As long as there are such people, hope remains. And symbolism of such acts of love lays substantial foundations of collective efforts at long-delayed redemption of our conscience.    

I remember the two pictures: one with the stork having plastic ring around its beak and the other where it’s safely sheltered in a spacious cage with a tub of water and eatables in front. The transition from tragedy to motherly care. This, to me, is the real story.

Guys, high time we start undoing some of our collective sins. Imagine the pictures: the ring of death and the cradle of life. The first, our own doing; the second, some undoing on our part. Which one is preferable? Of course, the answer will be unanimous.

All of us can be loving heroes and heroines of such small stories. It doesn’t need special effort. All it takes is to accept your essentially kind and considerate nature.

Small Holds the Key to your Most Lovable Self

 

Mother Teresa: “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

If you want to have a ‘complete’ picture of beauty, you have lost it. Forget. You will never get one. Irony is that life is brimming with beauty. Just that you have to notice in small frames. Spring breeze, birds chirping, sleepy pastures, snowy peaks, solitary woods, wild flowers, solitude-seeped stars, floating clouds, smiles, kindness, love and what not. The list is endless.

Great visions are pieced together through small, small frames caught by heart. Try it. Otherwise all this vastness out there has no meaning.

As Matt Bevin says, “While it may seem small, the ripple effects of small things is extraordinary.”

At a more practical level, take Napoleon Hill’s advice: “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”

Everything is so cute in its smaller version. Try to remember how many times you got pangs of compassion and felt like hugging big bearded bad fellows. Not many, I am sure. And how many times you suffered the pangs to mollycoddle a little one? Many times, undoubtedly. Well man, small holds its charm. You can hold it. Take a pan shot of its vision. Reality gets more defined in a small frame. Take your shots. Love, compassion, harmony, grace and dignity are the lines that show you truth more realistically in a small frame. More importantly, small is never distant. It's near you in your day-to-day life. You need not be a gutsy voyager to seek it.

Simply observe small things. You bet it, the boons and perks are inversely proportional to their little size.

High time we realize the mammoth value of the small. Everything has an assortment of basic building blocks. Just that we are prone to ignore the constituents while staring at the larger picture. So guys let us dive into the world of micros. It’s full of wonders I tell you.

If you can't so much as smile back at a flower's innocent, selfless offer of fragrance and beauty, I doubt your readiness and ability to laugh and roll in pleasure over the bigger boons of life. Learn to love and like the small-small charms of life. These are the building blocks that get you the largest palace of happiness and meaning in life.

The palace of happiness never lies in totality. It merely lurks as the next milestone. We can never reach it. But along the way we can pick up little fragments of beauty, love and compassion that constitute the spirit of that palace of our dreams. So don't overstep a chance to light up your face with a smile. Don't miss a chance to bring the same curve of life on someone's lips who needs it.

Happiness always was and forever will be defined by small things. The bigger things are just mirages lurking fakely over the horizon. They exist only to delude us so that we keep running and stampede over our little chance of happiness. So guys pick up your tiny fragments of happiness lying there around you.

You don't have to run too far. Stay there. Smile. There are as many things in your life to be happy about as there are stars in the sky. But these are tiny, twinkling feeble spots with their ray of hope. These are not bombarding stars, dazzling the cosmos. Learn to love the tiny stars of your life, for they don't startle you. They just hold the tiny flicker of hope and happiness and well that's what life is: a small, hopeful, happy ray, gently twinkling, imperceptibly almost, for a journey from the unknown to some vestiges of knowledge and awareness. Best of luck travelers!

To Feel Lucky Observe the Misfortunes Around

 

Mahatma Gandhi says poverty is the worst form of violence.

James Baldwin: “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

Look around and you will see fire-pitted souls hammered on the anvil of poverty. See the sparks flying and draw your lessons. It fills you up with gratitude. You don’t feel like the pitiable most sufferer carrying the burden of this whole universe on your head.

Take some time out and observe those who daily put their physical selves in the furnace to earn survival morsels—laborers, peasants, daily wage earners, artisans, roadside vendors, hawkers, etc. Their whole body sheds sweaty tears day in and day out. So the salty sea of miseries pours out through the thick walls of their rough skin. It rarely finds an outlet through eyes! Why? Because these are glassy hard balls—the fiery pits where dreams, tears, hopes and dignity get burnt incessantly!

Plain hunger, of body and mind, in the long term, eats away emotions, which heart has retained so far as a shadowy solace to bear up with life defined by deprivations of all types imaginable. With emotions vaporizing off, leaving the pond dry, even the muddied past, having some motley stale water in heart’s pond, sounds a plain hypocrisy and then even the last traces of moisture hidden in bottom sands melts away like mud-banks get washed away under the fury of a spiteful flooded river. Robbed of the littlest treasures in their heart, they then face the naked truth. They are still the same person in public, but they are even robbed of that justification, that inner solace, which always came handy to support their fragile conscience. They are then plundered of even the rewards their conscience may provide. And then they survive almost mechanically. Well, that’s poverty!

Hunger always staring in the face, most of the common realities of life appear unachievable, wildest dreams. Every walk turns a struggle to survive. Every smile just a shadow of pain. Life simply comes to mean a wish to earn an extra penny in whatever you do, think, say or plan. That sums up the life. There is no respite. Hunger becomes your shadow, always with you, your inseparable companion. After a time you become used to it, and later get addicted to it. The starving shadow becomes the self. You love it more than even the real self. The personality becomes a hard-knotted dead wood. A dark hole that sucks its own light. A vacuum that sucks in air. A life that eats itself to appear more like death. An emptiness that chucks away any space needed for a normal self.

Yea, poverty turns one almost sub-human, a different species altogether among the homo-sapiens. Is one life-time sufficient to escape its clutches? You become a brute like the bull snorting, pulling the cart, staring at the road, tearing the hooves, taking one painful, tired step after the other. You cannot look up and see this wide, spacious world brimming with countless beauties. You lose the faculty of your finer senses because they are of no use. Your vision is limited to the grains in the sands around your feet that you have to pick up and eat to survive another day. There was no past, just like there is no present, and exactly like there will be no future. Well, where to go and what to do?

To make it worse, it makes one feel terribly lonely, which is the ultimate poverty. Your compassionate self gets buried under the day-to-day survival war. You then survive on the periphery without hope, without redemption. You lose respect for your own self. It’s the biggest loss. You just end up counting your days like a miserable, indifferent street dog. Numerous petty humiliations dictate the course of your life.

The mere fact that you are reading these lines is a proof that you are far better placed than the people you just read about. Kiss your luck. It makes you wealthy. Don't compare your riches to the billionaires, compare it to these dusted destinies. You will feel gratitude. And gratitude is a fine fertilizer for getting a feeling of love for your situation and placement in life.

The sea of misery over there should at least make you aware of your luck and empathize with the fate of the lesser lucked ones. This awareness itself makes you let go off so many illusions, without any reasoning.

Osho says, suppose you have been holding a snake, taking it to be a rope. And the moment you find out, become aware, that it's a snake, your instincts will simply find you dropping it suddenly. That's what happens to most of the disillusions of life. You hold them as long as you are unaware. The moment awareness strikes, you just drop them all of a sudden. A tiny lamp and the darkness gone.

So don't feign ignorance to hide apathy. At least see the sea of misery. It will make you feel how lucky you are. It will fill up your soul with gratitude for your situations, your relationships, for your luck by default for being born in better situations then countless unfortunates. The lamp of this awareness dispels the dark and throws light on your loving persona. Have your sighs and tears for the lesser lucked ones. If not a social revolutionary, you will at least become a loving, kind and considerate person.

Empathy: The Seed-bed of Love

 

Ever saw the paradox of killing with one hand and saving with the other? We do it man! Systematically, institutionally and with our collective social ethos.

How precious is a new-born life! It’s more precious than anything else on earth. You cannot find anything to weigh its equal in the opposite pan. Nothing matters more than the survival of a new-born child. It becomes the primary cause. You become its sky and earth, sheltering this water bubble to keep its shiny film of time-dome reflecting in your eyes. There it merges with your dreams and your dreams rush out into the broad daylight to shake hands with your destiny. You cup your hands over it to save this feeble light from going off even by the slightest whiff of air.

Look at the way the little signs of life in a just born, fragile, weak and soft infant, are picked up and held to heart with so much love, care and affection! You hold the tiny seed, so small that it can be blown away by a little whiff of air from the mouth, and see it growing into a big banyan. It becomes larger and more important than you, nourished by the dewy showers of your heart, honey-sweet sips of your emotions and defended by the ramparts of your protectiveness.

A new-born clings to survival like it is held to life just by an invisible string of a cobweb, which may snap at the slightest carelessness. So we dreamily hold dear life like dreams spread on our eyelashes. It’s our own image we hold, our chance to survive in future, a continuation of our journey, a furtherance of our hopes, aspirations, passions and the culmination of all our struggles. It’s a reward for all our perspiring work. It’s the medicine for all the ailments that plague us. A child, a new life, is a symbol of our belief in the freshness and meaningfulness of the journey, the great art of doing, of making, the story of continuing the march. That’s how we nurture a new life.

If not for this instinct, no child will ever survive. After all, it’s such a tiny lamp and the storms are so strong. Why is it that once that very life grows up, we grow so apathetic to it that its decimation and destruction hardly counts as anything more than a routine news item? Why killing becomes more expected and natural than saving lives? Why are there more people ready to kill than those eager to save lives?

It’s the futile game of doing and undoing. Just making and then breaking. It’s the mad, crazy force that has kept us to the level of mere struggling pack of humans who are as miserable like they were thousands of years ago. It is the bondage that holds us back, stopping us from becoming superhuman, which was otherwise our destination given the beginning we had in the loveable most and caring hands. But we first do and then undo: the nasty cycle of creating and destroying.

A part of us is making, and the majority is involved in destroying. And we remain where we started from. We nurture new life like the dearest jewel to the self, and then we get busy in the mad frenzy to kill and destroy those very dear lives. It’s self annihilation. It’s like raising crops with all the care and then burn them. Sounds nonsensical, isn’t it?

We are born as a tiny ball of love. That is the essential seed of love. Even suicide bombers were once innocently laughing infants. Why then love gets buried deeper and deeper as we grow? Well, a lot has to do with our collective values, education system and family set-up. We basically raise kids to be more competitive and not loving and considerate beings. The latter are taken as signs of weakness. No wonder you have too many fighters. Just try to recall the last time you tried to make your child learn the importance of empathy! In winning, goals, ambition, competence and technology you may have given hundreds of lectures. So don’t cry over the evil spin-offs. You systematically bury the blossoms of love and then cry over the prickly cacti.  

Don’t you think our formal education can absorb a bit of the element of empathy? You can make rockets through science, and you hesitate to inculcate few fundamentals of understanding others’ concerns. Science in the hands of inconsiderate, insensitive people becomes dangerous. On the other hand, in the hands of loving people, it becomes the common instrument of enjoyment, fun, laughter and life.  

On a positive note, all of us have our stock of empathy. Just that we try to keep it buried under apathy by pretending ignorance. We simply need a bit of courage to put it into practice. It's purely an unused resource with us. It is not a humungous task. All you need is to resonate with others’ feelings. That's it. It doesn't belittle you. It enlarges your persona. By opening, you grow only. It’s a simple natural law, a mundane pre-requisite to self-rewarding greatness. Don't expect laurels and citations from the government and other institutions out there. Your best judge, your soul, will give you one. And it won't disappoint you. Believe me.

In the rat race of high IQ, we have forgotten the beauty of soft talents like self-discipline and empathy. But these softest things make you the strongest of a person. It gives social and emotional intelligence. You simply cannot have loving, healthy relationships without it because empathy has a mysterious power.

There might not be too much of a correlation between empathy and IQ. Our brains after all have different parts for these. But then don't you think just developing the IQ is lopsided. Why has then nature given us the space for EQ in our brains? Nothing is redundant in nature, by the way.

Every man has a bit of woman in him, and every woman has a bit of man in her. Sexes are not simply biological brackets. It's basically about the broad nature of masculine and feminine qualities to complete the picture in nature. Masculinity (outflow, aggression, tendency to win, to take, spread, fast rush and overcome) and femininity (receptiveness, poise, stillness, acceptance, to give, to embrace, slow pace, geniality) are two broad qualities in nature propelling the cause of creation ahead.

So much as you cherish the headstrong machismo traits in you, the feminine power of qualities like empathy will only complete the picture of your persona. It gives you the healthy balance to walk the tightrope. So feel no shame in boosting your brain's right hemisphere for a bit of romance, artistry and empathy to broaden the picture. It only completes you.

Isn't it that broadening your sense of relatedness to include a bit of space around you, gives you a bigger identity? It does without any doubt. It becomes a pathway to freedom. Masculinity might be the sword in your hand, femininity on the other hand is the breast plate of hardest steel on your chest. Survival isn’t just about attacking. It also means having the capacity to bear the brunt of someone’s attack.