ennar’s blog

The World is a training ground and we should make the very best use of the short span of time given to us.

The worldly-minded and those who cling to their personal attachments alone are afraid of death. The spiritual do not lose anything.For them death is like passing from a gross plane of existence to a subtler one.It is the body that dies.The self never dies.Even if we fall in this battle of life,through newer and newer lives we shall work with renewed vigour.Step by step,stage by stage,we shall move onward until we attain life’s final goal.

On what does this whole life,our body and mind,depend?On consciousness,and not on any man form or woman form or child form.The moment the self leaves the body,the body becomes lifeless.All its charm vanishes.No body feels attracted to a dead body,even if it had once been beautiful.What really attracts us in the man form or woman form is the consciousness which we mistakenly identify with that particular body.If you love life so greatly,why don’t you look for that on which life depends? We should learn to love the self all the more because only owing to its presence is there any life in the body and the mind.But it takes people many,many years or even lives to see their mistake and realize the Truth.

GIVING THANKS FOR THE GOOD AND THE BAD

we might face many difficulties , hardships and disappointments in our lives. things do not always go our way. If we listen to the discussions of others and review our own words and thoughts, we find that many of them are complaints about how life is treating us. There is a bitter feeling.

A different perspective would reveal to us how fortunate we are.

During the Great Depression in early 20th century.  A representative of America’s Government agency travelled through some of the poorer parts of the country to provide financial assistance to farmers to buy seeds, fix their homes and run their farms. The agent came across an elderly woman living in a shack without flooring, she had covered the broken windows with tarpaper. She barely managed to survive. The agent asked ” if the government gave you 200.$, what would you do with it ?” The woman replied without hesitation : ” I would give it to someone who is homeless.”

There is a story of a king, who, one day while sitting with his most devoted servant, AYAZ, ventured to share a cucumber with him. Ayaz thanked him and happily ate the piece given to him by the king. When he had finished, the king then took a bite of his own half. “Yuk !” he cried, and he made a disgusted face, and spit out the cucumber. “This is so bitter ! How could you have eaten your piece if it tasted like bitter poison ?” Ayaz replied “My dear king, I have enjoyed so many favours and blessings from you all these years. Whatever you give me tastes sweet !”

A true lover of God lives in gratitude and so is able to consider the good, the sweet and the bitter as a gift from the Beloved. Ayaz had received so much from the king that he did not think it his place to complain if one of these gifts was bitter, he accepted all that the king gave him with love and gratitude.

If we could accept the cloudy days with the same gratitude as we do the sunny days, we would find our lives to be filled with more love, peace, and happiness. If we could appreciate the weeds as well as the roses, we would get enriched. Not only do we need to learn to be content, we need to expand our heart to enbrace all creation.

Like the poor woman from the Great Depression, in order to return to God we need to be compassionate and feel universal love. Most of us love for a small circle of people which includes our family and close friends. How ever, as we progress spiritually, our heart expands to embrace community, society, country, world and beyond. The ultimate state of love is having love for the cosmos.

The practice of meditation enables us to cultivate the qualities of compassion and contentment. The bliss and happiness we experience in meditation stays with us even after we come out of meditation. It is a wellspring of love and peace that we can tap into, any time we wish. The experience is so powerful and fulfilling that it helps us to transcend the pains and sorrows of life. No matter what happens to us in life, we have a fountain of nectar within us from which we can drink at anytime. This is the Gift we can achieve through meditation.

UNHAPPY  PEOPLE  CONVINCE  YOU  TO  BE  MISERABLE

(Some Questions and their Answers according to me.)

How can I get inspired? My Boss heaps abuse on me daily.                                                                                                                   One can give only from what one has. When you understand this, you will be kind. You cannot expect a scorpion to kiss you. People around, with their hurt bodies, create pain for others. Their minds are so noisy that they create noise. Quite often, we hold on to the pain for a week, a month and create a hurt body in us. We cannot shake it loose from our memory. The hurt body starts eating our joy. It starts reliving the experience of abuse and creates a mountain out of a molehill. We have a choice to nurture abuse within us, reliving those moments or we can simply shake it off and move on.

Why do we suffer pain by recreating it moment to moment ?             Thought creates energy. If thought is negative, then energy is negative and that creates pain. A hurt body looks at the world through pain. A hurt body will try its best to sustain pain. It is a matter of survival. So, it loves to attract pain and sustain pain. It will use logic to protect it. Look at unhappy people, they will convince you to be miserable.

All that you can do is to create a bliss body in you. There are five layers in you : the physical body, the pranic body, the breath body, the mental body, the intellectual body and the bliss body.                                          

All these layers in us have energies. It is in potential form. Just as there is latent fire in wood and by rubbing the wood it is invoked. In the same way you have to awaken the physical body through exercise, yoga, dance and a balanced diet. Keep the body alive and enthusiastic. You will then kindle a happy energy through the body.                                                   

The pranic or breath body has to be awakened. Breathe deeply by doing pranayama and find a different kind of joy surfacing in you. Shallow breathing creates lower energy field while deep breathing enhances one’s aliveness.                                                                                                     

The mental body can be awakened if you keep your mind calm. A calm mind has a different joy ; a noisy mind is an avenue for energy leakage. When your intellect is open and receptive, yet another dimension of blissful energy arises. One who is open and receptive is always learning. That’s why children learn very fast. In deep sleep, the bliss body opens up naturally. In the waking state, if one is commited to be happy and learns to look at life as a celebration, the bliss centre will be awakened.

Could opening these five bodies help improve a martial relationship ?                                                                                              If we are depleted, there is leakage of energy. We then try to draw energy from our partner. Each one starts sapping the other’s energy and we become dependant on the other. Both feel miserable. Then you become possesive. When there is resistance to restriction of freedom, the partner feels rejected and dejected. You wait to settle scores at the opportune time. There is a war of roses.                                                                     

However, if you have tapped all the five layers within you, you will overflow with joy. You will not sap the energy of the other as you are overflowing. You will not be dependant on the other but you can learn to be interdependent, then there is a sense of belonging. The relationship will reach new heights when you open your body, prana, mind, intellect and bliss centres.

The Present can be the chance we need to connect with ourselves, only if we take the time to ‘ stand and stare ‘.

The Popular belief goes that our mind and our material surroundings are impediments to self discovery. But I have found the opposite to be true. That’s a modest seeker’s perception. The crucial point is that mind and matter - when deeply touched by a moment as it unfolds - reveal our experience of connection with our true selves. The obvious question is how to go about finding spiritual experiences in our daily lives ? The answer lies in just one word, replacing the ‘how’ with ‘when’.

Let’s take a few examples. How many times do we wash our hands in a day ? Perhaps many times and usually with soap & water. It is a spontaneous and repetitive part of our daily routine, which goes unnoticed as we move from morning to night. But then, if the mind is brought suddenly to connect with the touch of ordinary soap and water on the hands,it becomes still. There is a sudden awareness about the feel of the soap, the washing away of dirt from the skin and the clean touch of flowing water.

In a traffic jam,we fret about getting late for meetings. Great believers in advance planning even work out the shortest route to our destination. It’s natural to feel frustrated but just look at the map lying on the passenger seat and it can be a moment of awareness because a map can plan the journey for you,not drive you to your destination.

Translating the magic of such moments into words creates a dilemma. Verbalization is a poor substitute for discription because part of any experience is also a moment of pure awareness, which remains indiscribeable.

But there is another part of such experiences that is easier to share, watching the spontaneous action of washing one’s hands with such care can make one aware of one’s personality. It can make a person realize how much he or she values hygiene and health. One can even wonder if one keeps one’s mind as clean ? If only we could wash our minds with soap and water every few hours.

Sounds simple and easy. Then’ why does this experience escape us much of the time ? The fact remains that we all live in successive units of present moments, but not with experience of the same. Our minds are permanently preoccupied with past and future thoughts.

Through our awareness, ordinary moments of life transmit deeper messages, which guide us to introspect on current paradigms and prejudices. These experiences may change our attitude and personality.

Meditative experiences may involve the good, the bad ,and the ugly in our daily lives. We can start by observing what we have in the given moment, then go on to embrace and amalgamate with the humour, the tragedy, the challenge, opportunity and learning hidden within each moment.

We can go through each moment with a new reverence, almost a romantic anticipation.

           QUOTABLE   QUOTES

• Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
• You can’t comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable.
• Laughter is the closest possible distance between two people.
• Imagination is more important than knowledge.
• A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
• One of the greatest tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

        Enjoy The Effort No Matter What The Effect

We have many desires and targets. We don’t always get what we want. Some of us are happy with what we get, and others remain dissatisfied.Still others don’t give up ; they keep trying. Which approach would be the right one ?

I would recommend another approach. You can have a desire.Put in your best effort to fulfil it.But make sure you enjoy the effort rather than its fruits. There are those who make the effort grumbling and are happy only when the desire is achieved.There are others who exhaust themselves making the effort to such a degree that they have no strength or enthusiasm left to enjoy the fruit. My method is : Enjoy the effort no matter what the effect.

My approach is to celebrate the march towards the destination. If the destination is reached,we will be happy.Even if it is not reached,nobady can take away the sense of thrill at having run the race,the delicious fatigue felt along the whole body. My happiness is derived not from reaching a goal,but from the struggle I wage as part of my attempt at reaching it.I am engaged in teaching the students now.Suppose I feel I will be happy only if they gave me a thundering ovation when I conclude my lecture. That means I am not fully enjoying my teaching, rather,my mind is set on a particular goal.That very concern may prevent me from giving my best to my teaching and thus act as a barrier to my attaining the goal.

Playing football is one kind of joy,winning is another kind.The problem is we identify joy exclusively with winnng. Classical musicians(like Pd.Hariprasad Chourasia) are so absorbed in their performance that for all practical purposes, they are unmindful of the audiance,the applause at climatic points, or the money they will receive from the organisers at the end.What they enjoy is their involvement in bringing the art alive,not the end result in the form of ovation or payment. So enjoy the process.Enjoy the travel.Enjoy the endeavour.

Ensure that you will be working smart,not just hard.Don’t go fishing in the bathtub.Don’t try to work up lather in a running stream.Instead,fish in a stream,and work up lather in a bathtub. Set and evaluate your goals,estimate the quantum and quality of efforts to be invested in attaining the goals,calculate the ROI (return on investment)quotient carefully,and then,if you are convinced the ratio is satisfactory,go ahead and work towards your goals.That is smart work,intelligent effort.

Failure is a fact of life.In all competative contexts as in sports,for example,one side has to lose.So why not enjoy the effort rather than exult at success or mope at failure ? I think it is better mental discipline to celebrate the success rather than brood on the losses. It is definately a healthier strategy for the future for anyone wishing to continue in competative endeavours.

There is also a spiritual lesson in every failure.Failures are necessary to remind people of their essential human vulnerabilities.An unbroken string of successes can create pride and a sense of invincibility about oneself in a high achiever. Remember the bragging,”I am the greatest” that comes out of the mouths of wrestlers and boxing stars ? As the common maxim goes,such pride always precedes a great fall. Surendering to the Lord is an act of bhakti — devotion, and surrender happens only in a spirit of humility. 

In Moving Images We See What Is Not 

What is vision ? We are able to see objects and other externalities because of our visual perceptive apparatus that has the attribute called as persistence of vision. A motion picture is made up of a series of still pictures. When each of these still pictures is followed by another in less than a sixth of a second, the brain interprets the sequence as a continuum. And so we see the sequence of images as a motion picture without realisisng that we think we see is just an illusion, a perception.

The continuum is implied. The continuum is enabled by a programme of the neurological apparatus. And we are actually deceived by “virtual reality”. Each individual and his constituents are all the while in a state of change. Even the skeletal system that we believe to be hard and which forms the infrastructure of the body is constantly being remodeled. Absorption and reformation of the bones are a continuous process. So, when we all are constantly being reformed as it were, the perception of our own continuity is mere hallucination.

Change is the only certainity. We all are constantly changing and so is the environment. So any perceived continuity or seeming constancy is just an illusion of our perception. If we wake up to the fact that every aspect of existence is in a constant flux, then the question that automatically arises is “what is unchangeable, permanent and eternal ?”

The constancy is in the perceiver; it is in the act of observing. All creation is comprised of three distinct entities ; the perceiver, the perceived and the act of perception. All the manifestations of the same universal consciousness. Saint Dhyaneshwara refers to this trilogy as ‘triputi’. The perceived is all the while in a state of flux and change. So the perceiver is the only constant in this apparent variable equation of creation. What is perceived all the while is changing.

Quantum physics expounds that if the observer does not observe as an event, then it never happened. Out of the infinite possibilites, when the observer observes an event, then all the other waves of possible events are quashed. Till the observer observes, all events are in a state of being possible. All perception is centered on awareness. To any observer, the universe exists only till the observer exists. Once the observer ceases to exist, then from his perspective, the universe also ceases to exist.

When ancient scriptures comment on the illusory nature of all creation, they are alluding to the impermanence and deception created by sensory perception. The continuum of existence is only a mirage. We are not the same entity at two discrete points in time. We as well as the environment are continuously changing and any continuity is just an illusion of the perspective apparatus. In deep sleep, there is period of non-perception of the outer world. On waking, this world reappears and the show goes on. Despite non-perception of the external world there does remain a certain am-ness, that is aware and says that i slept well. That awareness is the witness and the unchangeable and permanent entity, the immortal Atman.

In death, that personalised awareness again becomes im-personal awareness. In the state of realisation, the trilogy of perceived, perceiver and the act of perception merges into unity, into the paramatman.

Do  the  everyday  dance  (part - 2)

Alexander Lowen, the American psycotherapist, who developed Bioenergetic Analysis, a form of mind-body psycotherapy, wrote that “a person is in the state of pleasure when the movements of his body flow freely,rhythmically,and in harmony with his surroundings”. We can do so.We can begin to notice the daily ordinary movements of our bodies and open up to the flow of life’s continuous movement. This awareness of continuty brings a feeling of inner connectedness with the self. When we feel connected inside, we have the ability to reach out to others. Connectedness leads to greater understanding within the global community.Viewed through a wide lens, all subtle and not-so-subtle ways of interacting can be a dance.The rhythm to which we move in the pace at which we accomplish our tasks.

A tired person who has walked all day will have a pace very different from that of an enthusiastic kinder garten student. Someone in love or feeling happy will walk with a different step to one who is disappointed in love or otherwise. The way we feel affects the quality of the way we move. Our planet has many different kinds of terrain. Each has a predominance of certain elements, whether patterns and climatic conditions. This bio-diversity has always determined the food that is grown,the way people clothe themselves, the types of shelters they build and the way they move. Walking barefoot on sand is different from walking with shoes on a cement pavement.

Walking in an open desert is a different movement to walking down a steep ravine. The body’s challenge is to adapt. Sometimes people say,”oh,I’m so clumsy”,or “I could never be graceful” yet an overweight person serving a tray of tea can be extremely graceful if he is properly engaged in the action. There is something about paying attention to one’s action, as opposed to spacing out. Being aware of the each movement enables the flow. And isn’t that what we love about dance ? The flow.

When we begin noticing the way our body moves, we become informed. This understanding brings more awareness of physicality and feeling, leading to greater wellness and encouraging a lighter sense of being. So, it is important to accept the invitation to step into your own Everyday Dance.

Do the Everyday Dance     (part-1)

The ‘everyday dance’ of life starts the moment we wake up and glide out of bed. It continues when we put the kettle on and sip our morning cup of tea;when we greet the early morning and notice the colours of dawn;when we run out of the door to keep an appointment.

Do we pay attention to our everyday movements?Do we enjoy multilayered events,such as holding an object while walking and at the same time,keeping track of where we are heading? Very few of us take the time out to remember this everyday dance.

As human beings, we are born in a body that becomes our home as long as we are on earth.

From ancient times to the present, people have been studying and observing the way the body works. It is with its help that we accomplish all that we are here for.

One of our most important tasks is maintaining the health of our being. An inherent awareness about this organism of consciousness, motion and feeling leaves us with a sense of wellness. Due to the growing pressures of our fast-paced lives, many of us are adopting ancient as well as contemporary techniques of slowing down and becoming more “aware”.

Learning to slow down is not a one-time experience. Rather, it is a way to be in tune with time while being on the go. A good way to practice this might be to observe the sequence of everyday functions.

An example would be slipping one’s shoes on and off. We could notice how the entire body collaborates in this sequence of simple movements. Even if it is not immediately enjoyable, it could be interesting to notice. If one were to see the act of taking off one’s shoes as part of a dance sequence, each movement would appear connected to the next and with an underlying rhythm.

This may be a lovely idea but most of us have important things to attend to, leaving us little time to spare for a meditative approach to everything in our daily lives.

Even if one believes that there is too little time and too much to do, it is important to learn how the common movements we make everyday can help reach greater awareness of one’s health. When I am walking from my front door to the bus and I’m in a hurry, I try to remember to note the feeling of “being in a hurry”. This allows me to enjoy the speed while feeling the flow of the movements at that moment, instead of being controlled by the hurry of the mind. It is fun.I can sense the way the muscles enjoy the pace of “dance to the bus”.

(await for concluding part -2)