Girish's Blog

  Photo Credit: Brianna Wilkerson Enjoy Life in Abundance Modern life is full of extremes particularly when it comes to the rat race that we find ourselves in, in an all or nothing world! We work excessive hours for those extra corporate bonuses regardless of the effect that it has on our personal lives. To take care of the resulting stress we go on extended holidays to break away from it all; we end up eating junk food resulting in bad health, then we go to the other extreme and revert to severe detox regimes. Then are those people who burn the midnight oil six days in a week and try to balance things out by resting for the whole day on Sunday. If you listen to modern conversation, that too is in the extremes – it is either “super awesome”, “fantastic”, “amazing” or “the worst thing ever”, “the shit has hit the roof”, “have hit the bottom of the pits”, etc. And then we have the internet, which drives us to extremes, we now have FB live shootings, suicides and what have you. Look...

  Photo credit: liturgicalyear.wordpress.com | Spiritual Works of Mercy Forgive Over and Over Again In 2014, the year my mother passed away, I had seen her just staring blankly out into space with a kind of frown on her face. I asked her what’s wrong and then told her to forget the past and forgive all those who had hurt the family. I guess I hit a raw nerve, because she snapped back, “I have not taken any Guru, I cannot and will not forgive.” The words were so intense that I let go and did not push her. These incidents had happened more than 40 years ago but I guess they were imprinted in my mom’s psyche and every memory recall opened the wounds afresh. The only way one can get rid of such intense hurt is if we learn to forgive over and over again – every time the memory comes up we should consciously forgive all the players in that particular drama of life! In Vedic literature, ‘Kshama’ describes the concept of forgiveness, and is combined with ‘Krupa’ (kindness), ‘Daya’...

  Photo Credit: Steven Webb Solution for Most of our Suffering I remember when I was about 12 years old, I had joined a library – I was a voracious reader even then – and one book a day would not satisfy my appetite for reading. So, I had started taking two books, one officially and one hidden inside my trouser. I would come the next day and return the official book and while looking for new books, quietly remove the second book and put it back on the shelf – this went on smoothly for about a month or so. Then one day while I was slipping the second book into my trouser, I got a very strong sensation in the small of my back that someone was watching and my inner voice telling me not to take the book. But I didn’t listen and went to the counter for signing the official book I was taking – the man at the counter asked me to step back and I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach – he asked me to raise my shirt and when I did the second book was visible, the guy slapped me...

  Photo Credit: Anglican Alliance | Troubled Waters How to Remain Calm in Tough Times Bhagwad Gita (2:48) says – ‘Be steadfast in the performance of your duty, abandoning attachment to the rewards of actions while steadfastly remaining equipoised in either success or failure.’ I am sure all of you have seen jugglers in a circus – someone is throwing them balls, plates, knives and what have you, they catch one throw it, and so on, when the number goes beyond a point then the juggler has to either ignore the object or catch it and gently place it aside; in doing so he remains focused on his act, if his attention is lost even for a fraction of a second, he will drop or miss his object thus ruining his show! This act of his requires focused attention just as it does in real life situations. But we don’t work in circuses and don’t juggle objects for a living, hence practicing to do this is not on. A person with an equanimous nature can help cultivate the presence of mind to juggle o...

  Photo Credit: HighWallpaper.com | Love & Heart Kindness Stems from Unconditional Love I was having a discussion with a friend who mentioned that if people can’t get into a meditative state, then what is the other way to progress. He said that Swamiji told him that the alternative is unconditional, selfless love. This morning during meditation I was ruminating on kindness and I got the sense that the source of kindness towards one and all originates from the feeling of unconditional and selfless love which is created from within. Again, the question is how does one develop this sense of unconditional and selfless love! For the last several years I have been praying to my soul to develop unconditional love within myself and that the same should flow continuously from within me. The reaction of people who have come in touch with me during this lockdown phase have expressed that they feel very nice and good while talking or discussing things with me. I personally feel that th...

  Photo Credit: Inc. Magazine Being Kind is God-like There is a saying by an unknown author – ‘In a world where you can be anything….be kind’. There is nothing which can beat kindness, it gives you such a good feeling about yourself that I am sure most of you would have experienced it. Human nature is basically steeped in kindness, and as we go through life’s experiences and its ups and downs, this basic nature gets hidden under layers of bitter and bad experiences. One of my best memories of kindness was when I was bringing my ailing grandmother home from my uncle’s house in Thane about 25 years ago. It was late, past 9pm and it was raining cats and dogs, maybe elephants and rhinos – you know how heavy Mumbai rains can be. When we came near Sion hospital the right rear tyre got punctured. I got out of the car, took the jack and placed it beneath the car, I took the wheel-spanner and tried to turn the bolts – no luck, the spanner just kept turning it wasn’t catching its grip. B...

  Photo Credit: Quora | Do Black Swans Exist? Black Swan When we think of swans, we picturise a very graceful, huge, gentle bird which is pure white and it is also considered to be an epitome of love. The black swan was discovered in Australia in the late seventeenth century and till then the black swan was just a myth. A black swan is a metaphor that describes something rare, impossible or non-existent. Now, if we consider human beings in comparison with the size of the Universe – would we then call ourselves Black Swans? It is said that there are more than 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, there are about a 100 billion planets our Milky Way galaxy, Earth is just one of those planets, there are 10 million species of life on earth and the human population is 7.6 billion! Just being alive is a blessing, a rarity when you compare it to the vastness of the universe. So, considering the above as Taleb in his book ‘Black Swan’ said that all humans too are black swans. This is bec...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest | Paramhansa Yogananda Changing the World We have read and continue to read a lot about people who are trying to change the world. The world which is so diverse having people of different, cultures, races, religions, ethnicities, languages and so on – if you ask me this is well nigh impossible. Can we change the world to become a better place to live in, or is it like Steve Jobs says, “The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do?” What Steve Jobs is referring to is changing the lives of people through technological innovation, basically it is about making life easier and dumber to live – but is that really making the world a better or a more peaceful place to live in? Na! Swamiji has explained this beautifully – when we talk of changing the world, all the Masters referred to changing our own world, that is our own energy body which we carry around with us 24x7! We can only do this through our own spiritual...

  Photo Credit: SoulVeda | Breaking the Karmic Cycle What goes Around comes Around I am sure everyone is aware of the Zig Ziglar saying – ‘Life is an echo, what you send out comes back to you, what you sow, you reap, what you give, you get and what you see in others exists in you’. Right from our childhood we are told to be good, do good so that in return the same happens to you. In many ways this is true and is similar to Newton’s third law of motion that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Law of Karma is somewhat similar. Karma is a Sanskrit word from the root ‘kri’ which means to do or to make. It also refers to the principle of cause and effect where the intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). Good intent and good deeds contribute to your good karma while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to your bad karma. Most people think that karma is akin to fate, actually it is not – it is i...

  Photo Credit: AwakenTheGreatnessWithin Succeed or Fail but Try you Must Within all of us lies the story of mankind – vast experience, deep-rooted fears, anxieties, sorrow, pleasure and all the beliefs that man has accommodated through the millennia – you are that book – Jiddu Krishnamurti. He has summarised the substance of human existence so beautifully. There are all kinds of people in the world – those who work hard, those who hardly work, those who prey on other people’s work, those who do nothing and so on. But whatever you do or don’t do – there are always those who will criticise you. Look at the modern world – whether it is politics or any other field – criticism both warranted and unwarranted is offered by those people who themselves cannot stand the fire of criticism – but that is the make-believe world we live in today. If one has to achieve any level of success in life it cannot be done without putting in an honest effort! It is definitely not the critic who is im...

  Photo Credit: Readbeach | Uncertainty Quotes Life is Uncertain If life had a monotonous quality to it then we would all most certainly have gotten bored to death! The beauty of life is that it is uncertain. If you look back at 2020. who would have guessed that a virus which is 1000 times smaller in diameter than a human hair would have brought the whole world down to its knees! Our best laid plans for that year went out of the window with a whooooshhhhhhhhh! Things we think that should happen – often do not and those that shouldn’t happen, do happen. This is the uncertainty of life – and the good thing about it is that it teaches us patience and provides us with the ability to become better at dealing with – guess what – uncertainties! Lolz! If you look back at evolution – we have come a long way from the cave man – our genetic features have changed over centuries and our souls have survived multiple shocks and succeeded over thousands of years and here we are today mindful o...

  Photo Credit: Platform thing | Neuroscience of an e-book The Brain is like an Attic – Protect it Our brain contains so much of information, most of it useless, which we absorb through the five senses that it assumes the role of a mental attic! When I was growing up, we went to nursery school at the age of 5, today in India, children are bundled off to play school at 1.5 to 2 years. They are being literally deprived of the fun years and parents too are losing out on watching the child grow, its reaction when introduced to new stuff, its love, its tantrums, etc – I personally feel that the growing child teaches us a lot more than we can teach the child. When your mind is filled with useless information it starts overflowing, the compartments in the brain get stressed with information overload – the best way to get rid of it is to put in a mental filter to chuck out unimportant information. As Charles Hannel said, “The subconscious mind does not engage in the process of proving....

  Daily Pioneer | Of Spiritual Mindfulness Be Mindful Daily Why do we do anything? Have you asked yourself this question? Most of us run through life with our daily routine which becomes so monotonous that we end up looking for means to break the monotony. This invariably leads to shortcuts to obtain highs – drugs, tobacco, drinks and what have you. The more adventurous think of outdoor sports or adventure sports which take them into nature. We all find ways to break the monotony – some negative and some positive. The thing is that the positive acts to break the monotony can happen only sometimes during the year because none of us can find time regularly to go out and do what we love because of our job and business commitments! But those indulging in vices for breaking their monotony can do it every day, because such intoxicants are available freely. But what if we can learn to live our ‘monotonous’ life without doing either of the above? Confucius had said, “We have two lives,...

  Photo Credit: Discover a Hobby Make Meditation your Hobby! ‘Football, Tennis, Basketball’ – all these sports bring a glint into your eyes, and if your favourite team or player is in the fray, your blood races with excitement and anticipation. Even though you may have never participated in any of these sports, nevertheless you do participate when you watch the sport live in a stadium or on TV – even though that participation is vicarious! You do it because you have a love for it, a passion for it and it makes you feel good. If your team wins you go into an emotional high and if it loses you are down in the dumps! But that is the beauty of sport, you always live to play another game, another day! When it comes to yoga and meditation, we tend to put it off to another day. Who wants to wake up early, let me sleep some more, I’ll get up in ten minutes and start – and by the time you actually wake up it is too late and you decide to start the next day and so on! But like Swamiji sa...

  Photo Credit; Pinterest || Life is short, heaven is forever Life’s Short! I had seen a video which showed earth as a part of the universe and how insignificant the planet earth is in relation to the vastness of the universe. As individuals too we are so insignificant in relation to the size of the earth and we might as well not exist when compared to the vastness of the universe! But we are part of the same consciousness that pervades the whole universe and we live in complete ignorance of this reality. When we take birth with the purpose of attaining moksha or liberation, we have a fixed amount of time at our disposal. As Jack Kornfield said, “The trouble is you think you have time.” More than a third of our life is spent in sleeping, what we do with the remaining two-thirds will decide on whether we set ourselves free or remain bound to the chains of the birth-death-rebirth cycle! There are 86400 seconds in a day and with each passing second, that time becomes history, it i...

  Photo Credit: Dreamstime.com People are Verbs not Nouns Osho had said, “Life is a verb, life is not a noun; it is really ‘living’ not ‘life’. It is not ‘relationship’, it is relating’. It is not a ‘song’, it is ‘singing’. It is not a ‘dance’, it is ‘dancing’. See the difference, savour the difference.” If you really decide to think about what Osho said, you could find yourself going deep within yourself trying to find out exactly who you are! In our spiritual quest can we just be what we want to be or instead of restricting ourself can we be anything that life offers? This is a fundamental question. If our parents say we should be doctors, engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc. – this is like a thought is put in our mind and we are working towards that whether we like it or not. Knowingly or unknowingly we now have blinkered vision. We are on the way to ‘becoming’ someone as defined by someone else. We generally should keep our options open and become what we want to become, or wh...

  Photo Credit: Speaking Tree || Childhood Memories Preserve the Good Moments in Life We all live our life more or less on our own terms, and as we set out on our journey, we choose to remember mainly the scary and traumatic moments which we come across during this journey. Why is that? This, I feel, is because our minds are trained and attuned since childhood to remember and to preserve deep within our consciousness all the bad incidents and people that we come across in life. Some of the memories come from past life experiences – some of the phobias for instance – past life regression techniques help us get over such phobias and deeply entrenched memories. If we want to progress spiritually, we have to surrender all these bad memories at the Lotus Feet of our Satguru if we have one, or to any higher power whom we believe in or to nature – basically giving back to nature what we got from it. The tribals performed all their healing in nature itself, and in many remote parts of ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest || Osho Maitri Life without Meditation is Useless Gurdjieff had said that if you don’t meditate you will die a dog’s death. What did he mean when he said that – what he implied was that your life is useless, it is wasted without meditation. We spend time and think a lot on the most useless of things. We plan holidays, we think a lot and spend sleepless nights on which car to buy, time is spent on decisions to buy a new house, in short, we are directing our attention outwards to indulge ourselves in things which are so impermanent and which will give us happiness for the moment only. In fact, we go to the extent of borrowing money to indulge in our desires. While doing all this we are absolutely unaware that with each passing day, nay, with each passing moment we are approaching our physical death. What use is all of this if we are to die without being able to enjoy any of our material belongings? We all live our life moving from one goal to another, fr...