Update

Recently, I have been off my blog posts a lot! I know there are some of you who really look forward to my writings …So, for you, here is what I have been doing - I have been venturing shall I say, neck deep, in vedic astrology. I have been reading some great literature like the Brihat Parasara Hora Shastra, Varahamihira’s brihat jataka, Jaimini sutras, etc. Also, I had the opportunity and privilege to peek into the analytical minds of B.V.Raman and Prof. Suriyanarayan Row, and the ride has been amazing!

Sanskrit literature fascinates me. It overflows with knowledge. I had a chance to learn this language with my father-in-law was visiting us, but didn’t have the time to do so then. Now, I might start venturing out in that area. Honestly, it doesn’t seem that hard. For the time being, I am keeping myself content with the translated works in English.

Next in line are Srimad Bhagavad Gita (one more time), and Upanishads. I will try to post my understanding and interpretation somewhere in my webpage and put the link here.

So, what is my goal of reading these – The primary goal is to stimulate my mind with great literature and the secondary goal is probably to keep understanding myself more and more. It is an honor to be able to do that.

Intention

Intention does not mean anything unless it is translated into action. Action does not mean anything unless it is translated into consistency. Consistency does not mean anything unless is it is translated into enjoyment.

That is the hardest of all. Translating intention to enjoyment takes lot of discipline, understanding of one’s self and patience. It takes momentary letting go of dreams and focusing on the present. It takes  immense self-belief, full heart and a scarily empty mind.

Happy and fortunate

Happy and Fortunate! Are we?

Am I happy with what I am doing and consider myself fortunate to be able to do that?

I love writing and I am happy to continue writing. I am extremely fortunate to have a job to support my family and take care of basic needs so that I can happily write. Similarly, you might be doing something else that you love. But, the bottom line is to find ways to do things you love.

Sometimes, we might not be happy and consider ourselves unfortunate because life seems to be unsympathetically churning out something we don’t want. Look deep and try to find atleast one way to make best use of your situation. If there is even a single way, then you are fortunate. Start your journey on that single road of hope and you will be surprised to find that, that road is the road to your land of dreams. You just have to walk on it.

Who are they?

Who are “they” to tell us what we should feel about ourselves? Who are we to feel bad about ourselves because “they” told us so?

One of the gravest injustice we can inflict on ourselves is to doubt our intentions, integrity, qualities and character. I have seen several people go into a shell because somebody made them believe that they were not good the way they were! My question to those – “Excuse me! Do you even know yourself? How can you let somebody take your spirit and courage away?”

When you are pushed down, do you have the guts to stand up?
When you are low, do you remember the peaks you are going to scale?
Because, if you are, then your life is in safe hands. Nothing on this earth would take your success away from you!

A misfit? Really??

Have you ever been called a misfit, meaning you don’t belong somewhere like your workplace, church, community, etc. Is that because you are different from others?

Not fitting is actually very good. I just came across these amazing people who are changing how music is played. Computer programming combined with live music – check it out. Another classic example of carving a niche for yourself. The world needs your talent.

Seeing beyond

I was talking to my father-in-law the other day, and he asked me a question – what color is the rose? I naturally said – red. He told me that the color of the rose is everything except red. Red is the only color it does not have because it reflects it. It absorbs everything else. This struck me with a great force and I have been thinking about this simple and deep understanding of life.

Almost everytime, what we seem to perceive is an illusion. There is something beyond what we actually see. Knowledge exists if we are able to look beyond. This reminds me a great scene from the movie Patch Adams. Courtesy youtube, here is the video -

Acting to your reaction

Most of the times, our problems stem from acting upon our reactions to everyday situations. Reacting to an event or situation is common instinct, animals do that always. Aren’t we more capable than animals because of our ability to think? When we react to something, the natural progression is to transform into our reactions. For instance, when we hear that our kids do not listen to us or somebody hurt us, our reaction might be to get angry. Unfortunately, it does not stop there. This unmonitored reaction which may be originating from our free will transforms us into anger. We are anger now. Similarly, we become jealously, love, hate, pleasure, etc. Everything originates from the basic animal instinct of reacting to something and stops by taking us over completely. People seek counseling, therapies, anger management classes, etc for help.

I don’t believe these things to help permanently. They are temporarily solution that will keep appearing until the roots are present in the mind. The way forward in these situations is to not act upon your reactions. Just observe them, but do not act. When you act, do so consciously. Let us consider a simple taken-for-granted activity in our daily lives – breathing. How often in a day do you observe your breath or even realize that you are breathing. Breathing becomes a sub-conscious activity for most of us. Think about it, you will be surprised. Similarly your transformations into your reactions becomes sub-conscious when you don’t observe them. Next time you feel happy, angry, afraid, hungry…, take a moment and observe that thought before naturally acting. That moment you take to delay the natural action of your reaction will reveal to you about yourself more than any therapy or self-help course does.

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Changethis Manifesto

Hey all, I had submitted a proposal some time back for a manifesto on changethis.com. Please vote for it if you find the topic interesting. With more votes, I may get a chance to write this through changethis.com.

http://changethis.com/proposals/1610

Clarity

Clarity of self is when
the subject becomes the object, and
Mind is fully aware of its other manifestations,
but tolerant to their aspirations,
Clarity is when you observe yourself objectively,
and learn to love and live with your own self.
Clarity is simple and yet profound,
like a rain drop that contains rivers and oceans
but still remains a simple drop of water.
It is that clarity we should seek,
for that is when we see the Universe as it is,
and its connection to our self.

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Evaluate your progress after 10,000 hrs

I was listening to Malcom Gladwell on CNN couple of days back. Amazing guy, I love his take on simple things in life. Anyway, he was talking to Fareed Zakaria about his recent book “The Outliers“. If you don’t know what that book is about, here is a simple one-line jist until you read it sometime – “Behind every great person’s success there are two things – the time they are born and 10,000 hrs of sheer hard work”. The first factor of when you are born is pre-determined, I guess. You cannot do much about it other than make the best out of it. The second factor is interesting – 10,000 hrs of hard work. So, Gladwell in his interview said that he believed talent to be the desire to put 10,000 hrs of effort into something you want to do.

This is my take on this humdinger. Evaluate yourself after 10,000 hours. You might reach success before that or after that. In general, success is relative and cannot be accurtely quantified. However, after 10,000 hrs of work, you can start evaluating your progress. It will give you a _very_good_ overview of where you stand. Until the 10,000th hour, keep chugging. If our goal is to keep adding on quality hours to our project, when we hit 10,000, we would have accomplished lot of things. An easy way to remember this figure is – If we work 10 hrs a day on something, to reach 10,000 hrs, we need to work for little over 3 years.

Say for instance, you are writing a book. Your goal is to first finish the book and assume you finish the book in one year. The next two years you spend time marketing, publishing, doing book tours, etc. Everything is part of this grand scheme of getting your book published. At the end of the year three, if self-evaluation comes, it will give you a true insight.

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