There is a path to happiness...

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There is a path to happiness...

There is nothing called tomorrow as far as life is concerned , it  is only today. Our friend brought to me a sheet of paper in which he wrote (not scribbled) about his fears, hopes , aspirations and also his strength and weaknesses . I was surprised and was pleased with the sincerity with which he did it in one day.

When I looked at the paper I found that he was very serious in writing those words and I was sure that much thought must have gone into every word of it. He had actually done a 360 degrees analysis , that is , he made an assessment of all conceivable aspects surrounding him .

But when I went through it and found that he had dealt with both his external and internal states. I was really surprised at the inherent ability of man to make an attempt to discover himself ,his realities .The paper was a  concise critical spiritual autobiography of my friend ( Our friend ) with his own perceptions of his actions.

He had used three different colours on the paper. On close scrutiny I found to my amusement that he used blue colours for all the things he did which he thought was right ,the red colour was used for all the things he should not have done or said, according to him and the  feeling of guilt attached to it .Green colour was used for writing what he wants to be and what he aspired for now and in future – He wrote only one sentencethere.. “I feel relieved now and I want to be happy, but how ? I am not sure . but I may get an answer ,from within or without” ... he had written at the end of the second page ...there is a path ,he must have thought, for the first time ,towards real  happiness which he was yet to experience ... 

Did he find an answer or did somebody gave him an answer? 

Let us  see... what happened to him next .......

TOTAL EMPTINESS

Total Emptiness happens when you have nothing to hold on to. When you become  a sort of puppet controlled by somebody else you will have a sort of  internal vacuum which will affect your total personality. It is all a matter of choice which is under your control

It is this moment that counts and that is the only reality. As one saying goes “yesterday is a cancelled cheque ,tomorrow us a promissory note , today is CASH “ Hence extracting maximum of today’s possibilities is the only way to be happy. My friend ,who fell from the pedestal he created for himself, was really living in the past and thinking about the unknown future. What will happen to him ? But the truth is that what will happen to him tomorrow could be the result of what he does today .. may or may not be.. it is uncertain but everything is uncertain in life. 

You have to live your life and you have to make your choices at every step and you are responsible for your actions. I f you live and act according to the plans made for you by others you lose out on everything and you will feel that you have accomplished anything lie And at last you will think about the uselessness of the life that you had been living .This exactly was the case of our friend who went on living looking outside without looked within himself as to what he really wants .Tolstoy makes this point clear through one of his characters, IVAN ILYCH as he awaits his moment of truth .Ivan contemplates on his past thoroughly dominated by others opinions which he thought his own and gave up control of himself and thus living a “false life “.Our friend was also making an attempt to fit into a system which was not his but which others made for him and hence falling down into a chaotic situation. Freedom to choose has been a tragedy for him because he did not exercise his choice well, and hence ends up in regret . Now read what TOLSTOY says :

“

What if my whole life has been wrong ?”It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before ,namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done ,might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely noticeable impulses ,which he had immediately suppressed ,might have been the real thing the rest false .And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interest, might all have been false . He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend...

Happiness is our right and you alone can deny it to yourself. Hence you cannot blame anybody else for your unhappiness. I told our friend to write down on a sheet of paper whatever comes to his mind about what he really wants after careful thought .This is to effect a sort of catharsis ( Because he will definitely think about some significant things in his past before he thinks about the future)..

Then what happened ?.... continues

You are the sum total of your CHOICES

       

You are the sum total of your CHOICES

The greatest gift and the greatest tragedy of human beings is that every one of us has been vested with the power to choose between any number of choices.

The gift is a real one and great one is because we can consciously accept or reject things ,ideas ,people, and what not! But the greatest tragedy is that we find it extremely difficult tot exercise this power to choose when occasion arises .Our dilemma is always Hmalet-ian one TO BE OR NOT TO BE ... TO DO OR NOT TO DO.. TO ACCEPT OR NOT AND IT CONTINUES as long as life continues. We regret our decisions too often ,and engage in blame games often trying to find out a scapegoat when things go wrong. But the fact is that we ourselves are the culprits for our own suffering.

Everybody wants to be happy but have you ever thought how you can become happy. Happiness is relative and the cause of happiness changes every moment .Just reflect a while to find out when was the last time you were happy. You may vaguely recollect some incidents in the past which made you happy ( and this can happen only if you know what is happiness , which I doubt many of us may not know ).

I know a person( who owned a two-wheeler for a long time )  thought that  buying any car ( a four-wheeler ) will make him happy. He worked hard and entered into real estate business ( he was an employee in  a small finance company).there was a boom and he entered the business on a full time business and money flowed in as he bought and sold lands .And fro his first car ( Maruti 800) he reached a BMW in less that five years . I used to meet him frequently during his Maruti days but I do not meet him in his BMW days as before . But when I met him once he casually told me that he would like to buy a ROLLS ROYCE car !! My jaws dropped not because he wanted to buy a RR but because the kind of dynamic desire a man can have .But the anticlimax is that he retraced swiftly back to a  Maruti Swift D Zire and I heard that he lost somewhere in his journey stumbled and fell.

After one year I happened to meet him in a marriage function and he tried to move away from me but could not. I asked him how he was and he drew me to corner , we sat on plastic chairs and he told me his tragic story  of losing everything due to his indulgence in luxury .I asked him whether he was happy .. he reflected for a moment and asked me back .. what do mean by happiness ? I think I was never neither I am now “ But I am not sure what happened to me and what is happening to me. Nobody asked this question to me till now” "To be frank with you I do not know". He was about to break down when somebody came up and addressed him .

I left him and walked away.

Then what happened..   read on... to be continued ....

Live a Better Life

Live a Better Life 

Photo. Varma

“ Do not blame people so much as the environments into which they are born .Their surroundings and circumstances force them to become worse than they  really are .That is true of both EAST and WEST. Society must be brought into tune with a higher note. Materialism must be balanced by idealism ; there is no other real cure for the world’s difficulties. The troubles into which countries are everywhere being plunged are really agonies which will force this change ,just as failure is frequently a sign-post pointing to another road”

PAUL BRUNTON… A Search In Secret India  

Brunton was one of the twentieth century’s greatest explorers of the spiritual traditions of the East. He was also a journalist with a healthy regard for critical impartiality and for commonsense. These characteristics ,together with a rich inner life ,made him a superb writer on spirituality of the ORIENT .

A Search In secret INDIA is one of the great classics of spiritual travel writing.

“ Paul Brunton was surely one of the finest mystical flowers to grow on the wasteland of our civilization. what he has to say is important to us all”

..George Feuerstein

THE STATEMENT and MY understanding

Brunton is a fine writer( WITH SPIRITUAL LEANINGS ) who wrote convincingly about abstract things in a very clear, understandable language Though he was initially confused about the contradictions he found in Hinduism , he pursued the subject passionately and discovered very satisfying answers. This passage deals with two important aspects which haunt us even now. We are not able to decide what is more important : Materialism or Spiritualism in the modern situation. but the thing is that materialism has tremendous limitation  whereas spiritualism has no limits .

Materialism is nothing but pursuing material things and pleasures which becomes and end in itself. this usually ends up in frustration and disappointment But the problem that arise out of our material pursuit could be solved by spirituality which has the power to pierce to the root the problem and solve it permanently. Many think that idealism is madness but it is not. Idealism  is “the cherishing or pursuit of high or noble principles, purposes, or goals” . This means that we have to aim high to achieve something in life.

” Hitch one’s wagon to a star To aim high, to have high ideals, to be idealistic. Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently coined this metaphor which appeared in his Society and Solitude (1870):

Now that is the wisdom of a man
… to hitch his wagon to a star.

  

Just read  the following words by SAINT GURU NANAK

Self -willed fools crave for peace,but 

find it not.

The God-oriented are exceptionally

joyful ever

the worldly folk are engrossed in

false pursuit

But in the hereafter,the account of

one's actions is taken

Says  Nanak,never forget the 

True lord

remember His name with Love

And He shall bless you with the

mark of His grace

Photo. Varma

HAPPINESS ...harmaony of mind ,body and spirit

 Who does  not want to be HAPPY?  

Happiness is not finite it is infinite .It is so because you cannot have any boundaries for it. You cannot define it .The normal definition "it a state of mind " is too general and true but not perhaps a definition. This is again because it has many dimensions and often too elusive and most often very temporal. 

But one thing is certain in the midst of the uncertainty of life. The positive thing about happiness is that we can experience it if we really wish to have it .This is very true and there are many people people around you who will be experiencing happiness in the same context you find yourself unhappy

To live a happy life is not   a rocket science or nuclear science ,instead it is very simple. It does not need great spiritual education to practice this art of making yourself happy. Happiness is nothing but a feeling a sort of well being on a minute by minute basis( if one takes a minute as the smallest unit ; a second also can be taken....).

The simple test to see whether you are a happy or not is to watch for 5 to 10 minutes whether you are happy when yon do some work or whether you are happy while you are talking to somebody really happiness is the normal state and unhappiness is an aberration. Normally our mind and the thousands of thoughts they ply through it is nothing but the product of the mind which absorbs these through the senses. 

Our brain works continuously in processing these inputs through these and the brain works through the millions of firing of neurons  that happen  continuously which are wired and rewired in a very complex way.The mind goes on swinging in all directions when the firing fails to stick to a pattern. This is  only a very crude way of putting it,

But the point is our brain is part of our body rather the most important which controls all our thoughts and actions .Fortunately all parts of the body ,including our brain is subject to our control in one way or the other through various methods. 

We do exercises to give sufficient strength to our muscles and there are many systems that have been developed all over the world across all cultures to accomplish this In India it is YOGA that has provided a very comprehensive system . the specialty of YOGA is that it deals both with body and mind very effectively. 

The real we are our mind  and soul which inhabits the body and which is the TOOL to realize the SPIRIT within us .our mind and body should be made to work in harmony to achieve a better balance of our thought process."You are not this body and this body too is not yours .You are the spirit that enlivens this body."

The functioning of the great tool gifted to us by GOD can be qualitatively enhanced and it can be rewired for better performance and if needed can be corrected ( if the wiring has undergone some changes for the worse) by simple methods : EXERCISES ,YOGA,MEDITATION,AND MINDFUL MEDITATION: THE LAST IS VERY IMPORTANT 

Just read ahead  on....to get into the subject

Life-energy Your body is a temple

“You are all Buddhas

There is nothing you need to achieve

Just open your eyes”

Siddhartha Gauthama

I hope my last article gave you a new insight and a new understanding, which can be interpreted as the ‘awakening’. Did it set your thought process going? With that we have just completed step one. That means you have started stirring your mind a bit. Good! How do we get our thoughts shaken a bit?

One thing you should remember all the while is that your mind, body, soul and spirit has to be integrated, has to be one entity. When you achieve a perfect balance of this, you achieve absolute bliss. One cannot exist without the other, as it forms a symmetry. Each has to be dealt with differently and separately. Mind and body are inseparable and they contribute to our overall wellness.

Let’s start with our body. It’s the universal truth that our body is a temple. It has to be worshipped with utmost reverence and care. It has to be energised regularly. There cannot be any change internally without your body being energised. How do we do that?

Recharge

Can you use a mobile phone without recharging it? Drive a car without fuel? Our body needs energy. Who creates this energy? We do. God has given us an internal mechanism to create limitless energy to keep us going. How do we do that? By a regular physical activity and a balanced diet to energise our body which will in turn energise our mind, our moods and feelings and keep it going!

Exercise

What kind of a physical activity do you think you can do and enjoy on a daily basis? The choices are plenty. You can take a brisk walk, jog, play tennis, join some dancing classes, karate, aerobics, join a gym and more. Let me take a wild guess what is your mind saying? God…I have no time! As it is after a days work I am ‘soooooo’ tired! I am too old for this! I am too sick! Endless excuses! Doesn’t matter. This too will pass.

Now the answers- it’s not the question of having no time, it’s the question of making time. You can only combat physical fatigue with physical activity, you are never too old or sick! You just have to do it. Come what may. So what are you waiting for? Choose any one and start now. NO PROCRASTINATION!

Yoga

Practicing Yoga maintains the state of equanimity at all times, calms the mind and integrates the body and mind leaving you with a feeling of peace and happiness. It increases self awareness both physically and mentally. If you haven’t trained in yoga, sign up for a course. Make yoga a way of your life and experience the difference.

Consult your doctor if you have existing medical condition before starting any activity.

Healthy eating

Have a proper eating plan. A healthy balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulse, dairy, poultry, fish and meat products will ensure essential vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre. Make sure you drink 9- 12 glasses of water in a day. Restrict your intake of oil and sweets. Never binge or indulge in comfort eating.

You will see the change in yourself in three days time. You will feel refreshed, alert, charged and disciplined. If you look within, you will see your mind, soul and spirit are charged.

Make this a part of your life. Watch the change in you- shaping you up in more ways than one. But stay committed to yourself, be disciplined and don’t lose focus. Remember if you cheat, you cheat yourself and no one else.

When we meet next, you will have a great physical activity regime going combined with healthy eating.   BABITA NARAYAN

       

Why GOD permits Evil and How to Rise Above It

Good and Evil must ever be complements on this earth. Everything created must bear some guise of imperfection.How else could GOD the SOLE PERFECTION,fragment HIS one consciousness into forms of creation distinguishable form HIMSELF? 

There can be no images  of light without contrasting shadows.Unless evil had been created,man would not know the opposite, good.

Night brings out the bright contrast of day,sorrow teaches us the desirability of joy.Though evil must come,woe to him by whom it comes'he who is enticed by delusion to play the villain's part must suffer the sad karmic fate,while the hero receives the hallowed reward of his virtue.

 Knowing this truth,we must shun evil; becoming good,we ultimately rise to God's high estate...beyond both good and evil....

                                                  ..Sri Sri Paramahamsa Yogananda

A HAPPY RAPE FREE... WORLD

A new beginning ,brings HOPE
The SUN rises everyday 
And our hopes bloom everyday
When the SUN sets , the MOON rises

The SKY is never empty , so is LIFE
There may be clouds ,dark or colourful
But always there is a hide and seek
Between the SUN , MOON and clouds

Life is so colourful , so vibrant
"LIFE is perhaps not in our hands "
But LIVING is , in our hands
Live it beautifully ,everyday

Let us wish for a free world
Without violence of any kind
Let ALL WOMEN  be safe
LET US PRAY FOR A RAPE-FREE INDIA

Fathers rape their daughters

Brothers rape their  sisters

Grandfathers rape their granddaughters

Lovers rapes their lovers

Young men rape very old women

Strangers rape strangers

In the house, on the road

In the school ,in the college

Age no bar, nothing bars them

From raping .going alone or in gangs

LET US STOP THIS ,LET US STOP THIS!!

LET US CHANGE THE MINDSET

WE CAN , YES WE CAN ,IF WE WISH

LET US WISH FOR IT AND PREVENT IT

AND CREATE A NEW SOCIETY

A WORLD FULL OF RESPECT FOR WOMEN
LET US HOPE FOR A GREAT WORLD FULLOF PEACE

                  LINES ... PROF. RAMA BHARATHA VARMA

The Sun
The Sun is the greatest , the most powerful DISC
That gives the world light ,gives us colour and life
At ,least man may not be able to Destroy the Sun
He will spare The SUN from his evil destructive eye
The Sun plays hide and seek everyday with us
Every morning and every evening ,and it is never boring
See the Sun in the morning and also in the evening
Learn the lessons of selflessness and sacrifice
We are nothing in the Universe if the Sun does not rise
The brilliant Sun is the epitome of confidence
Let us be the blessed Sunflowers looking at him
                          PHOEM (PHOTO+POEM) 

  “ LOVE”

LOVE is perhaps the most powerful and intoxicating COCKTAIL we all experience in our Life at different times. This invisible feeling is the core of the Universe which hold it together. When we do not honour it or when we challenge it, everything gets disturbed and  things go awry resulting in frustration and destruction at all levels in our relationships.

The COCKTAIL called LOVE has its own highs and lows and hangovers and life becomes more colourful if we can understand its true nature and we can  enjoy every shade of it with full commitment an resulting enjoyment

The scientists ,all over the world ,are elated over the “discovery of the GOD  PARTICLE

 and they say that 99.9% of the secret of the Universe has come to light except for the .1% which ultimately holds the world together .That intangible super power pervades the whole of the Universe and may never be discovered . Let us call that GOD PARTICLE “LOVE” which has the power to hold together everything and it cannot be touched or seen but can only be EXPERIENCED.

I met Ashok in a shop which sells mobiles and I decided to ask him his opinion on LOVE . After exchanging some words I abruptly asked him What do you mean by LOVE. He was surprised at the unexpected question but answered “ Love is a feeling I get when I am with somebody with whom I have a special bonding. I asked him to explain  the word “special” to which he smiled at me and walked away but not before shrugging his shoulders .According to Sudha who studies for MBA, LOVE is something which she used to experience when she is in her home .But Mahesh is in love and he loses his  sense of time when he is with her.

 When I asked  a middle aged lady Rema  who  is working in  a government office  to comment on LOVE ,the reply was “ I believed in it once when I was in love but now I do not believe in it much because something “important has gone out of it “ after my marriage . I asked Joseph  who is in the software industry and he said” Love is like a wild fire, no one knows where and when it starts and it is warm in the beginning, hot as it grows and destroys as it spreads consuming everything.” I asked Suraj who dissolved his marriage in the crucible called family court and he said in a dispassionate tone “Love is a fine feeling that sprouts and blooms  before marriage and dies with divorce for hundreds of reasons,of which (90%)of the cases are based on silly reasons ”.  The love of parents for children and vice versa has a different flavor at least for some years .Here we are mainly concerned with LOVE  ( in the romantic sense )

The theme of love has been there from the beginning of the Universe and every religion in the world  celebrates it in very colorful ways .Love and Death are said to be the two sides of the same coin. The shades of love that we find in literature all over the world  are countless and it is perhaps the only word that has almost lost its meaning or has acquired newer and newer meanings over thousands of years across the world ,across culture ,across populations of all descriptions .

The theme of Love between Krishna and Radha ,Adam an Eve, Shajahan and Mumatz, Romeo and Juliet , Othello and Desdemona ,Dushyanthan and Sakunthala ,Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and many thousands of other characters give us the archetypes of LOVE. To understand the word LOVE , at least to a certain extent ,we have to deconstruct it in the present context. the core of love remains the same but its manifestations vary widely. The list of famous lovers is very long ,both in real life and fiction. But these lovers had their own tough times but it disappeared in the real passion called love between them . the colour of Love changes at every level of relationship right from BIRTH to DEATH.

But in recent times LOVE has become very dynamic and one can see many manifestations of it ,sometimes finding a space in the public life. Love has , in many cases deteriorated mere Lust and which survives only for  a short time .Love has become a real butterfly , beautiful with a short life span .It has deteriorated , in many cases into mere sex with the infatuation  becoming a cause for it.

Love is really circular which should reach completion once it starts moving . But now , in most cases , it has become very casual and never reaches completion even after marriage. Love often takes off as a tangent and spins off and the so called partners spend years as YAYATHIS’ searching for the final act of SEX ,the GREAT MIRAGE that leaves both the MAN and the WOMAN involved, full of scars ,guilt and depression .This slowly pin both the feeling of having committed sin, and ends up in a dark pit of suffering.

Technology has invaded the privacy of life and what could have been a boon to human relationship slowly has started slipping into the abyss of destruction. Internet ,mobile phones , I Phones ,blackberries are all good and necessary “evils” of modern society but its “intrusion” into the sensitive area of man-woman relationship is proving to be frightening . Many relationships and marriages are on the brink of destruction. There are a large number of technology addicts who are losing their grip on life and its very tender threads. Shiny , a young wife complains that “ Facebook, e-book , and I pod has become his first wife (or wives !) and he has no time for me. “ Online chatting and virtual sex and visits to the porno web sites have taken away( in many cases) the real romance out of their lives. Psychiatrists and counselors’ say that a large percentage ( more than 50% ) of couples who end up in their rooms for treatment blames technology as the villain in their strained relationship. this is because men and women  ( when they  face the realities  of life) seek solace in the comfort zone offered by the virtual world .

 Alternate relationship can be made and broken at will without accountability but there also someone’s life  at the other end gets broken forever but the warmth of the tears are never felt  . Here LOVE becomes a terrible VICTIM for lack of proper communication between the TWO . When something interferes we have to face it squarely –with a determination – LET US FACE IT and see through it !. You should tell your partner “ Let us face it , YOU and ME ; the world is nothing but WORDS ,let us talk it over across the table ,watching FRESH flowers in the decorated vase ; let us meet eye to eye ,to break the ICE ; across the table polished to shine ;let us punctuate our dialogues with pauses and full stops ; and let us create a PRIVATE WORLD behind OUR PRIVATE WORDS ; before the hands of the invisible clock strangulates us at its will.”

Treat LOVE and MARRIAGE as serious things and the pleasure and bliss the meaningful relationship gives us is something no wealth ,drink or adultery can give . Make your life long INVESTMENT in real LOVE and enjoy the fruit of it and the joy of it will sustain   for generations to come . Respect for each other is the key in relationships .

A bunch of recent MALAYALAM films like  SPIRIT,22 FMALE,DIAMOND NECKLACE  etc. show the recent trends that we see in our present life. They make certain statements in a powerful way. Love is the basis of all relationships . It is very simple but we can make it very complex and complicated .Love has tremendous power to hold us together and the whole UNIVERSE is maintained and held together because of that great power LOVE which we may sometimes call GOD  - sometimes in religious phrase GOS IS LOVE  AND LOVE IS GOD . The .1% particle is perhaps the most intangible but the omnipresent experience that everybody can feel is perhaps LOVE – the greatest force in the UNIVERSE . LET US LOVE and enjoy all the things connected with it !

LOVE  is  like the great SEA

The deeper you go

The more colouful it becomes

It is calm, it is rough

It is beautiful, it is unpredictable

LOVE is a strange word

Or a common word

You find in a dictionary

Shorn of all its complexities

Until it finds its CONTEXT IN OUR LIFE 

Man (or woman) is basically an animal ; man is a thinking animal; man is capable of intense LOVE; but when he falls to LOVE ;he becomes a guilty animal; he needs redemption; she needs redemption; but they are far away; HE and SHE become strangers; they start speaking in different languages ;one fails to know the other; they pray for redemption; but they never hear each other; each remains a mystery to each other. they start feeling like the two hands of a clock; tethered to the spindle of fate… only LOVE can save this situation .

Let us sustain our LOVE at any cost : When one is in LOVE ; every morning and every evening wears a FRESH look and every THOUGHT is as FRESH as a FRESH dew drop on THE lap of a colouful  FLOWER .

                                                                                                                  Prof. Rama Bharatha Varma