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.

Pests of Criminality in the Love Crop: Apathy

 

Helen Keller: “We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.”

The moment one succumbs to apathy, one surrenders a considerable portion of his/her loving self. To nurture our indifference, we feign ignorance many times. Allowing the bug of apathy to bite you is an open invitation to get caught in the quagmire of stinking mediocrity. It robs you of your chance to be great in your own ways because no greatness is complete without a kind, considerate and loving heart.

Leo Buscaglia: “I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.”

The best in you is unfortunately buried under a layer of apathy. It needs to be dug out. Changing the world means basically changing our own self. Look outside and you find it the most daunting task. Look within and you find the key.

Handle apathy, and you can avoid the creeping bugs of skepticism, which will definitely save you from becoming a cynical being. After that nothing matters too pointedly to burn your self in agony.

And now for a clearer picture, look around. Beware, murderer and robber are just an arm-length away!

Long before we see outright criminals, there is a low intensity, almost intangible process at the mass scale that eats into common psyche, facilitating mass apathy, boosting millions of transgressions. It makes an individual careless of his step, as long as it helps in reaching the perceived objective, and so many times this tiny step carries the massive effect of spoiling someone’s journey altogether.

Feeling lucky not to have come across a real-life murderer with blood-ridden hands and a dagger in hand? Feeling at ease not to have faced a robber, with muscular barrel chest, eye-patch and devilish beard running away with yours and others’ money? Well think again for you might be grossly mistaken. There are murderers and robbers on the prowl around. And in far more numbers than you can ever think even in your wildest of horrifying imagination.

There is a lot more violence hidden under masks than you see in actual battles, street quarrels and brawls. Fire of hate on the surface may not actually give clue to the smoldering heat under the surface. 

It can be your sheepish looking, harmless milkman, holding the potent weapon of slow death over the years. Yes the milkman with his passable crime, with little doses over months and years. In India the fight for self-survival is so brutal that poor milkman won’t flinch an eye before mixing urea and adhesives like Fevicol to make adulterated milk. It breeds death, slowly over months and years, with no sign of a murder committed. To the milkman all that matters is a successful day with all the pots empty and sold out. What happens later is none of his concerns.

It can be the sweet-tongued sweet-maker pampering your sweet-tooth with an affable smile and still honeyed words. Yes the sweet-maker with his shortcuts to profits with fake milk derivatives and cancerous chemicals and colors. And there are many, as many as you count the sweet shops, except for the few moralistic ones. India is crammed to the guts, and the mere struggle to survive, at any cost and through whatever means, justifies the end to get more bucks in the wallet.

It can be the poor-looking harmless fruit vendor. You even end up having sympathy for him. Little do you realize that the fruits you presume to add to your life are in fact cutting into your days. Their expertise to survive the cutthroat competition lies in artificial, cancerous, chemical-catalyzed ripening, waxing on the surface to make stale fruits look fresh and scores of other devil-devised machinations to get some more bucks at the cost of disease and destruction in others’ livers.

These are the murders on the safer side of law. Nobody dies instantly. Death comes slowly. It’s a visibly causeless disease. Nobody can be blamed. They vend out poison slowly, in mild doses. They add a day to their survival at the cost of years from the lives of those whom they serve.

There are robbers around as well, in clean shirts and socially respected avatars. Law cannot touch them because they don’t rob outrightly like the condemnable criminals barging into a bank and running away with the whole vault of money and gold. They do it in slow sips over years, as invisible cogs in the corrupt machinery. In both governmental and private institutions and departments, these legalized robbers sit on their desks with an affable smile and clean slate. It’s facilitation money. The extra money has to land invisibly into their pockets to move the process stuck at their check-post.  

Then there are countless petty criminals and transgressors, stomping their way to their destination at any cost. It’s an ant-swarm. Law never looks more impotent than in the face of such brazen frequency, everywhere, every moment: spitting, urinating, defecating, shouting, molesting, eve-teasing, raping and countless other forms of violence from the mildest to the heinous most. It makes it seem as if the rulebook is just a draw of lots for all the criminals around. Only a few are unlucky to get their name taken out as legal offenders. The rest clap over their luck for being left out.  

So there are murderers and robbers all around. And law cannot sneak into each and every soul to arise either fear or conscience to think of injustice done to others’ in the struggle to survive. Poverty and greed make a person too thick-skinned to be sensitive to the world beyond the self. The only option is to hope for a generational shift when more people will be aware of the issues beyond the limited self. Don’t you think we need to have the topics of kindness, consideration and civic sense in our curriculum?

Unfortunately with the Indian population ever-exploding, and more people fighting for diminishing resources, it seems a dream to visualize a society where the milkman, the fruit-vendor, the sweet-maker, the government officials and rest of the horde will become humane enough to be self-responsible and follow the laws even if there is no apparent risk of getting caught.

Law-abiding instincts get honed over a period of time. It’s like stopping at a red light on a totally empty road, in the depths of night, with absolutely nobody around, and no fear of punishment, but you still put up breaks, and smile. It gives a strange sense of contentment to be self-responsible for such tiny transgressions. Just looking forward to a day when majority of the Indians will come out of the pit of self-obsessed survival and be self-responsible not just for their own existence but for others’ convenience as well. 

Considerate individuals make a loving society where you at least take care of your fellow journeymen’s interests, or at least try not to stomp over neighborly feet. In this manner, we can avoid a stampede at least. With our little caring outlook in traffic, in parking lots, in bazaars, and everywhere, a small rectified step is far more effective in changing the system than you believe. If you still have any doubts about the effectiveness of your considerate, caring step, which in effect mathematically add to loving kindness, then I take some time to narrate an Arabic story.

A fire broke out in a city. Everybody was running around to salvage as much as possible before escaping to safety. From the wealthiest to the poorest, from the strongest to the weakest, all appeared in a mad frenzy to take something more from the pits of fire. A small sparrow but was seen scurrying back and forth between a pond nearby and the burning city. It would take a beakful of water and drop it into the fire. A powerful man saw this and laughed, “O little sparrow, when the world is burning, and so high and mighty find themselves helpless to do anything, what will your tiny drops do?” The sparrow said, “It might not mean much to the fire, but on the day of the judgment I will have the freedom of saying that I did what I could.”

Well, I don’t think we need to say more on this to emphasize the point.

Chronic Self-seeking: Love’s Enemy

 

Selfishness is the mask we wear to hide the vulgar lines of our fears and insecurities. We, self-pitying, covering our self-fulfillment, justify our self-conceit under the stated principle of practical tools of survivability in a dangerous world.

Long before you fight to earn respect, try it with self-respect. Self-respect increases with decreasing selfishness. But most often we stand for self-pity, taking selfishness as the mark of our achievement. Mark my words, it’s nothing but an effort to maintain a false position.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

Well, selfishness is the real life manifestation of an inconsiderate nature. And the symptom and the disease both point to a bigger reality, lack of loving kindness.

In the natural scheme of things, it's a walk on the tightrope of giving and taking. Trees draw nutrition from earth and give back fruits, foliage, oxygen and more. We humans have a tendency to take more and give less. It’s perhaps an off-shoot of our oversized brain. But then don't you think being take-oriented has turned it into an unnatural stampede, toppling natural cycles and dislodging natural laws. It's literally a big house on fire and everybody running around to gather as much as possible.

Quite ironically, we term such mad frenzy as the mark of progress and development. Guys, most of the time we are simply running away to find solutions to the problems created by us only. If you put greed in the forefront as a collective goal at the largest level, all endeavors turn counterproductive and leave us with two more problems with every solution we find. After a time, the pool of problems becomes so large, having crossed the critical limit of sustainability, that progress and development amount to be mere futile efforts at finding solutions to the mountain of problems.

Little do we realize that salvaging petty things doesn't matter anymore if the house itself has burnt, another matter that we always contrive morally better-sounding justification for our chronic self-pursuits. But it requires no brains of a mathematical genius to realize that in a scenario where everybody is shooting off to grab the cake, what will be the result.

My humble words might sound dull in front of the dazzling sun of enlightened selfishness. But believe me it has turned the scale too lopsided to survive. Loving kindness is the counter-weight. Policies at the institutional level should drive cumulative excellence instead of pandering the inconsiderate self-seeking mad rush. We need to learn to give away, let it go beyond a point for our peace and larger gains at the collective level.

Joyce Meyer: “If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!”

Self-restraint carries its own type of sensuous luxury. Try it. You will find it better with a less full tummy than a burping, gas infested glutton. Centurions are the ones who are meager eaters, not gluttons. Nature gives signals. If a bit of self-restraint in eating can add decades to one’s age, why cannot restraint in your life's force turn your path into the shady, wooded, luxuriant vales where happiness and love are in abundance? Here you find your soul. There you were definite to lose it. And the biggest loss is not to feel, know and discover one's soul. That is why chronic self-seekers die a miserable, regretful death. They realize what have they missed.

Sharing my friend's message during a metro ride in the morning on her way to office:

“Started my day on a good note by offering my seat to a heavily pregnant woman....she was leaning against the pole and looking so exhausted at the start of the day....such robust young and old men, shameless enough not to even ask whether she would sit...they just pretend not to have seen....such small things tell you to what extent people are selfish for their own comfort....Even other women are so insensitive....looking away so that they don't have to offer a seat....”

Do you find such petty selfishness worth it? I think most of us find it repulsive while reading. Unfortunately, we flow along the tide apathy while we get tested for this in real life.

Believe me, an act born of such loving kindness keeps our day fragrant. Ask those who decided to look the other way. They will need more effort to keep the truth buried under false pride and petty vanity. They will have to divert the gaze from the real self to retain the false ego. 

Well that proves my diagnosis of the commonest of the common Indian trait of petty selfishness. A result of too much of population and forever falling short resources, I suppose. Everything falls short of expectations including metros, buses, roads, jobs, bread, butter, forests, water, land, sky, etc., etc. The list is endless. Overpopulation is one of the biggest social maladies. People just never have enough. It breeds discontentment. A sinister apathy for the cause of fellow sufferers in the crowd creeps in. It narrows the vision. It clogs the spirit. It veritably dehumanizes the collective self. Individuals merely follow the suit.

Caught in the tentacles, you just cannot see beyond the small platform of your own struggle. It breeds very unhealthy personalities. Clinging to their own little grabs is the skill they get versed in over the years in their lives. Then it becomes a very selfish mass, the terrible self-seekers incapable of grasping the civic sense of any cause that lies outside their own.

People get basically so absorbed in their own world that the senses, which allow them to perceive the world around, don't work at all when it comes to their fellow human beings. This attitude is criminally callous. Very unfortunately, we Indians seem to be very tiny hearted. There are hundreds of little incidents daily that prove it more and more.

Herein exists our chance to grab greatness. The mere fact that you decide to come out of the inconsiderate club, and be more sensitive, considerate and loving for a bigger cause, will set you apart, making you an achiever in itself. Come, grab your chance of greatness! Only this much triumph will be carried forward by the karmic DNA of your soul in the journeys next. The mountains of gold will remain on earth to be recycled and claimed for a false sense of victory over the generations.

Desert Palm and Mountain Oak are Great in their Own Ways

 

Every seed carries the potential to be the mightiest, luxuriant-most tree. The powerful force of creation provides the potential for the maximum in seeds and species. Nature doesn’t want it to be a world of half-smiles, half-growths, half-blossoms and half-potential. There is a tendency for fullness. It draws the process of evolution for the maximum.

There is a natural drive for completion, for what we humans call greatness. You, me and all of us are born for greatness. There are seeds of greatness in all of us. And there is no better barometer of evaluating greatness than realizing one’s loving kindness.

A desert seed has the potential to grow in its own way, in harmony and adjustment with the harsh environment. A seed in a lush green rain-forest has its own level of potential as per the rich soil, water and nutritious weather. Does it mean a date palm can never reach the levels of greatness because there is sand, burning temperatures, dry winds and no water? Does it mean that only a mountainous oak has the right to greatness because it has the best climes, abundance of water, cool temperatures and cradling lush green mountains?

A desert palm is great in being the signatory of life in the lifeless sand. It is great in merely surviving. In being there where life has almost no business to be. It is great in standing as a milestone of hope for some lone traveler who might come and rest under the shade for some time and then take the journey onward. It is great in throwing a piece of shade on the burning sands. It is great in showing the light after a long time and prompting the traveler to carry on and reach out to the oasis full of life. It’s a major link in the chain of hope.

Like desert palm you might be born in the poorest of poor conditions. But that doesn’t mean you are not born with the potential to be the greatest. You are! Just that your greatness is different from the mountain oak and the people lucky enough to be born in somewhat better circumstances. Greatness shouldn’t be compared. When we do, we just cannot appreciate the worth of our journey.

We are born in the predetermined soil of our destiny. We have our own individual destinies. Destinies are but not bigger or smaller. They are just about realization of the full potential one is born with. Nature is kind enough to give us the maximum potential to grow as per the conditions.

A desert palm can be a mighty achiever and feel proud if it doesn’t compare itself with the mountain oak.

Strive hard, rake up the soil of your situations, nourish it with the moisture of your sweat and actualize the potential you are born with. And be great in your own way. Don’t compare your greatness with anyone around. Instead of comparing the tiny size of your prominence with the tall structures of success around, look at your own growth from the dusted toughness around the place where you took hold and rooted yourself to grow.

You might be happier in tough situations with lesser growth than unhappy people with taller growths in best soils. The moment you realize you have sucked out all the potential that was given to you since birth to grow and survive, you acknowledge the progress you have made. A proud feeling sinks in and you can’t help smiling.

So isn’t it natural that the date palm can be happier than the mountain oak? 

Need not retell that such genuine happiness is a fertile ground for the seed of your compassionate self to sprout forth in full luxury.

Barge through the Traps of Self-annihilation

 You must be really happy. You take pride in the fact that you don’t smoke, don’t drink, exercise daily and keep up the best diet plan. So everything is supposed to be OK on the health front. O wait! You may still be ingesting toxins into your body, suffering slow poisoning stretched over a period of years.

Long after the symptoms become visible, quite ironically, the thing responsible might still stand unaccused, putting blame on more tangible things like lifestyle, diet, pollution, biological accident, etc., etc. It’s better to know this unseen source of suffering. It’s the uncontrolled mind. It’s as potent a risk factor as any other visible agent of ill health like smoking, drinking, imbalanced lifestyle or accidents. To make it really dangerous, it directly obstructs the emergence of real compassionate you on the stage of worldly affairs. Its turbulent waves disturbing the surface like wind tosses the pond waters on a full moon night thus breaking the moon’s full reflection. You see broken pieces of its beauty scattered over the surface.

The consequences of an uncontrolled mind are no accident. This self-destruction takes a long and winding route to its destination. The spin-outs of an uncontrolled mind—hate, anger, greed, jealousy, impulsiveness, anxiety, worries, illusions and false assumptions—are as bad for our body as they are for the social life we lead. Although not advisable to say this, but I would prefer to be an alcoholic or smoker than having an untamed mind. An unkempt mind fluxes toxins into our blood stream, corroding the basic principles of self-preservation. It’s unnatural.

What is mind? It’s just the operational aspect of our brain. So we have to put up the operations in order. The brain will save you from becoming a self-destroyer. Long before there is any outside enemy, we have to spot the enemy inside, i.e., the treacherous trait of being utterly irresponsible towards our mind. That is the real enemy. It stops you from loving your own self primarily. After that the talk of loving kindness for others remains an unachievable hypothesis. So put the runaway mind in order. The outer world is a mere reflection of the invisible world inside. Hold the reins of your mind firmly and you become the master of your destiny.

The challenge lies not in trying to control the external environment. The real task lies in managing the mind. Isn’t it sheer folly that the thing that keeps the potential to limitless happiness is allowed to go out of loop and spin into a chaotic trajectory where it releases poison into our organs?

We spend literally 24 hours to control the external things in life and hardly anyone tries to control the ticking time-bomb of our doom inside. The fire that is supposed to power us to excellence is hardly managed. No wonder it becomes the pyre of self-annihilation. You fight so hard to manage the worldly affairs. And you hardly care about the management of the world inside you. The guiding flicker of life, the patronizing beam having limitless potential to infinite happiness, goes out of control and becomes a wild fire. A fire out of control is destructive. It’s useful as long as it’s managed. The mind is like that fire. Tend it. Manage it. Keep an eye on it. And you will have its life-giving warmth and path-showing light for you.

It doesn’t take too much of an effort. It’s nothing in comparison to the huge effort you put in managing the world outside. It doesn’t need your sweat and blood of worldly battles. It just needs half an hour of quiet contemplation, the time even less than you might spend in thinking about your enemies out there and visualize doom and destruction to them.

All it needs from you is to stop running, close eyes, put up a smile on your lips, look inwards, feel your breathing and walk silently to your real self. The closer you reach that core, the foundation of your real self, healthier you become in mind and body. The better the inner world, the better still will be the external circumstances related to you.

Inhale peace and tranquility. Douse the ravaging fire. Turn it into a soulful bonfire and you like a fatigued traveler basking in healing warmth and peace by its side while the snowy blizzards hit around. Dive deep. Leave the turbulent and disturbed surface and move towards the unmoving bottom. You will discover the futility of just wasting life in the storms on the surface.

Once you come out on the surface after the deep contemplative dive, the world outside will not be the scary choppy sea of earlier. It will be a playground of excitement. Life will be fun. Struggles will become just a sport to be enjoyed. Life turns into an enjoyable game instead of an agonizing struggle.

All it needs is just a daily dose for the mind. Some quiet moments when you leave the visible and go into the embrace of the invisible. When you go into the source of your creation and emerge almost reborn. With loads of love, of course.

Come out of the Cave (sic) Grave

 Some day you have to choose to come out of the tunnel. And see light. I do the same and have never fallen short of congratulating myself for doing so. I smile and have a restful inhale of the fresh air. I open my arms and embrace this world, my world. It welcomes me back with a brotherly hug. I smile again and close my eyes to look inward. I take a sip of peace from the sea of tranquility and open eyes. The world has changed. It’s far better now. I have changed my eyes to look at it differently.

It was dark and intimidating. It was as much frightening and menacing as it was painful. The tunnel was as much dug by the external circumstances as the negative tools of my own mind. I had entered a cave. A little recess in the mountainside of life. An anguished escape from the routine troubles in life. Then I became my own enemy and started digging earth in the direction I shouldn’t have. I was digging a tunnel. An aimless futile struggle. My depressed, bruised mind removing earth faster and faster. It was taking me deeper into the womb of darkness. It was like digging my own grave. A bruised brain and injured mind are the potent tools of a self-grave digger.

With sweating body, soiled clothes and aching limbs, now I come on the other side of the mountain of life. Out of the self-dug cave that almost became a grave. Life has changed its meaning. The poles have reversed. I take credit for the small act of having kept on the digging job.

It’s a new beginning. I know myself better. It’s a new sun. The air is so fresh. The earlier life seems a little book of lessons. This entire self-grave digging job can make or break. There is a very thin line. One can have a threadbare escape if the realization strikes in the nick of time. I feel blessed and lucky that it did in my case.

As I close my eyes, a feeble smile on my lips, and inhale the essence of a new, redefined life, the journey seems worth it. Life is almost on a pause now, so slow in motion that I see the marvels of nature around. They are for me as much as they are for anybody. The spring sun kissing the winter-beaten leaves. Songs of birds. Gentle breeze and the swirls of a footloose bird in the sea of cool air. Bits of peace lying around. Watch closely, there are countless pieces of beauty floating around in the eternal sea of time. All we need is to stop to observe and own the great artwork of existence waiting to be possessed.

I inhale the fathomless fragrance of peace, harmony and integrity from the farthest part of the cosmos. Cosmic harmony. Endless orderliness in orbits. Ever-going periodicity. Supportive synchronization. Fury of explosions and astronomical speeds tamed to harmless, slow acts of space-time continuum. Me and my environment feel like an iota of this cosmic harmony.

I allow myself a gentle smile. Ripples of peace cascade through my soul. I close my eyes again and look inwards, deeper than the superficial world of my body and the worldly circumstances. I can travel far deeper than I ever thought. There are undisturbed paths leading to my true self. It’s a replica of the cosmic orderliness. I am on the path to meet my true self, the self that is destined to be happy and at peace with itself.

It awaits there, the self, with unlimited dose of happiness, comfort, compassion and peace. We only deny ourselves the dose of this cosmic healing pill by looking out on this world, the superficial world of frustration, jealousy, hate, futile rat race, mundane cravings, illusions, assumptions, fears, apprehensions and cravings. It doesn’t allow us to smile, to close eyes and start the journey inward. No wonder we have hardly travelled in the real sense even if we are lucky to spend hundred years of chronological time in a lifetime.

The journey to the real inner self, on the other hand, is not bound by the puny limits of time and funny horizons of space. It’s open and there are unlimited dimensions. In minutes one covers cosmic distances. And when you smile and look at this world outside, you see a replica, a reflection of the inherent beauty. You are better now and happier. You look at this world with a healthier mind and sturdier brain. More importantly you have a better heart. You are capable of loving more and hating less, the hallmark and definition of a real human being.