Nature is meaningful.However,its meaning is read differently by different kinds of people.A poets expression of nature is different from the way a scientist interprets it.Both,however,try to see the truth in it.Truth is one and simple,but the paths to it are many and complicated.Each of these paths presents natures variety. If winter comes,can spring be far behind asked an English poet.This is true because some temporal events in nature are periodic like the seasons.Time spans like a day,month and year are periodic,too.A week is periodic,but it is not a natural period.It is man-made,so that at an interval of five or six working days we could get a day or two for relaxation and personal work.
Regularity in periods,whether natural or otherwise,sets a pattern and life could be systematised as it would be reasonably deterministic.Events of life are controlled by time and space.However,space is not periodic.Our environment and natural landscapes are not periodic.This irregularity also affects our lives.A person who continues to live at one place does not experience the irregularity of space and hence his life is reasonably predictable.However,this kind of life could lack excitement and challenge.On the other hand,the life of a perennial wanderer might be unpredictable and unfulfilling,and perhaps have little impact on society.
Nature being periodic in one aspect and not so in the other is not our doing.Perhaps it is so because otherwise life would have been drab and dull.Natural phenomena are tuned to instill a certain order in life,although at times these appear to occur with some degree of uncertainty.This tends to happen when nature is tampered with unnecessarily.
The situation in matter is somewhat different.A solid matter is largely periodic,so assuming periodicity in the arrangement of atoms in a solid could lead to the understanding of several of its properties quite satisfactorily.This is an example of periodicity in space,which is so useful.The pattern Again,again,again is true in matter spatially,but not so in life.In other words,there are no agains in life.The following throws some more light on this aspect.
Events in life are not periodic.Childhood,teenage,youth,old age and death all these occur only once in a normal life.Sometimes due to illness and accident,some might miss one or two stages.A wise person,according to the Bhagavad Gita,should not worry about these things.Different phases of life are meant for different roles.Just as childhood and teenage years are meant for education,youth is the phase of work.Periodicity gives rise to regularity;all aspects of life and nature,however,lack this regularity.
Through selfcontrol and discipline we can reduce the impact of irregularity and order our lives to some extent.However,life no longer follows simple laws.It has become complex because of what we call non-linear responses from the system.It can be chaotic.But once chaos reaches a critical point,the system reorganises itself and order is restored.The Gita says that whenever there is a rise in unrighteousness (chaos) and it reaches a critical value,the system becomes ready for the creation of a supreme process that restores order.But whether this is periodic,we dont know!
source:speakintree/timesof india
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Be Happy Even in Unhappiness
See the dictionary under the letter 'h' only there will you always find happiness. In life things are very mixed up. Like day and night,life and death,you have happiness and unhappiness. Life is rich because of polar opposites. The very idea that one would like to be happy forever is stupid, and the idea will only create unhappiness. You will become more and more miserable in your greed for elusive eternal happiness. Then who is the happy person The happy person is not one who is always happy. The happy person is one who is happy even when there is unhappiness. Try to understand it.
The happy person is one who understands life and accepts its polarities.He knows success is possible only because failure is also possible.So when failure comes he accepts it.I remember one incident of my childhood.A great wrestler had come to my town.Everybody was interested in wrestling,so the whole town had gathered.I have seen many people and many wrestlers in my life but he was really rare.He had something of Zen in him.For 10 days the wrestling continued,and every day he defeated a famous wrestler.Finally,he was declared the winner.That day he went around and touched the feet of all the 10 persons who he had defeated.Everybody was puzzled about why he did it.
I was a small child,i went to him and asked him,Why did you do that This is strange. He said,It is only because of them that i am victorious.If they had not allowed themselves to be defeated,i would not be victorious.So i owe it to them.My victory depends on their defeat,so really i feel greatly thankful to them.There was only one possibility: either i was to be defeated or they were to be defeated.And they are good people,they accepted defeat.
This is a very Sufi or Zen idea.Things are interdependent: failure-success,happinessunhappiness,summer-winter,youth-old age,beauty-ugliness they exist together.Then what should the attitude be When happiness comes,enjoy happiness;when unhappiness comes,enjoy unhappiness.When there is happiness,dance with it;when there is unhappiness,cry with it.That's what i mean when i say 'enjoy'.If you can accept unhappiness as smoothly as you welcome happiness,you will transcend both.In that very acceptance is transcendence.
Then unhappiness and happiness will not make much difference to you,you will remain the same.And sadness has something of depth in it which no happiness can ever have.Happiness has something shallow.If you want to be happy always you will become a superficial person.Sometimes it is good to fall into dismal depths of sadness.Whatsoever happens,go totally into it.
When crying,become the crying,and when dancing,become the dance.Then the ultimate happens to you.By and by you forget the distinction between what happiness is and what unhappiness is.You enjoy both! So by and by the distinction disappears.And when the distinction has disappeared,there arises something which is eternally there,which remains always there.That is witnessing.
The happy person is one who understands life and accepts its polarities.He knows success is possible only because failure is also possible.So when failure comes he accepts it.I remember one incident of my childhood.A great wrestler had come to my town.Everybody was interested in wrestling,so the whole town had gathered.I have seen many people and many wrestlers in my life but he was really rare.He had something of Zen in him.For 10 days the wrestling continued,and every day he defeated a famous wrestler.Finally,he was declared the winner.That day he went around and touched the feet of all the 10 persons who he had defeated.Everybody was puzzled about why he did it.
I was a small child,i went to him and asked him,Why did you do that This is strange. He said,It is only because of them that i am victorious.If they had not allowed themselves to be defeated,i would not be victorious.So i owe it to them.My victory depends on their defeat,so really i feel greatly thankful to them.There was only one possibility: either i was to be defeated or they were to be defeated.And they are good people,they accepted defeat.
This is a very Sufi or Zen idea.Things are interdependent: failure-success,happinessunhappiness,summer-winter,youth-old age,beauty-ugliness they exist together.Then what should the attitude be When happiness comes,enjoy happiness;when unhappiness comes,enjoy unhappiness.When there is happiness,dance with it;when there is unhappiness,cry with it.That's what i mean when i say 'enjoy'.If you can accept unhappiness as smoothly as you welcome happiness,you will transcend both.In that very acceptance is transcendence.
Then unhappiness and happiness will not make much difference to you,you will remain the same.And sadness has something of depth in it which no happiness can ever have.Happiness has something shallow.If you want to be happy always you will become a superficial person.Sometimes it is good to fall into dismal depths of sadness.Whatsoever happens,go totally into it.
When crying,become the crying,and when dancing,become the dance.Then the ultimate happens to you.By and by you forget the distinction between what happiness is and what unhappiness is.You enjoy both! So by and by the distinction disappears.And when the distinction has disappeared,there arises something which is eternally there,which remains always there.That is witnessing.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Focusing: To Connect with Oneself through Meditation
We often experience the feeling that we are unable to progress and grow in some areas of life and that we are stuck in certain problems and situations and cannot find a way out. Eugene T. Gendlin in his book "Focusing" offers us a way of working on ourselves to overcome the problem. He believes that in the traditional methods often used in psychotherapy and counseling people repeat their painful emotions over and over without knowing how to use their body's own life-centred and inherently positive direction and force.
Gendlin offers a new way of working on ourselves where the change process feels good. He says, "It feels live inhaling fresh air after having been in a stuffy room for a long time".
This process in which one makes contact with a special kind of internal bodily awareness. He calls this awareness a "felt sense". According to him, our body knows what our problems feel like and where their cruxes lie.
A felt sense for Gendlin is not a metal experience but a physical one. It is a an internal aura that encompasses everything one feels and knows about a given subject at a given time. A felt sense does not come in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single bodily feeling. This felt sense, does not come in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single bodily feeling. This felt sense, he believes will shift if one approaches it in the right way. It will change even as one makes contact with it. When one's felt sense of a situation changes, we change and therefore so does life. With the physical shift, knowledge that was hitherto in the subconscious becomes available to our conscious minds, and this pinpointing makes the whole body.
Gendlin offers a new way of working on ourselves where the change process feels good. He says, "It feels live inhaling fresh air after having been in a stuffy room for a long time".
This process in which one makes contact with a special kind of internal bodily awareness. He calls this awareness a "felt sense". According to him, our body knows what our problems feel like and where their cruxes lie.
A felt sense for Gendlin is not a metal experience but a physical one. It is a an internal aura that encompasses everything one feels and knows about a given subject at a given time. A felt sense does not come in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single bodily feeling. This felt sense, does not come in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single bodily feeling. This felt sense, he believes will shift if one approaches it in the right way. It will change even as one makes contact with it. When one's felt sense of a situation changes, we change and therefore so does life. With the physical shift, knowledge that was hitherto in the subconscious becomes available to our conscious minds, and this pinpointing makes the whole body.
Gendlin believes that focusing is a flow process rather than a step by step process. But to make it easy to understand and practice, he advises that we follow six steps.
The first movement consists in paying attention inwardly in one's own body and sensing one's main concern, but standing back from it as though making space for oneself in a jumbled storage room. The second movement consists i selecting a personal problem one is experiencing at the moment but at the same time standing back from it and not going inside it. One then gets a sense of what the problem feels like. The third movement consists in getting a handle on this unclear felt sense. The fourth movement consists in resonating and going back and forth between the felt sense and the word, phrase or image. The fifth movement consists in asking what it is about this felt sense, till a shift or release occurs. The sixth movement focuses on receiving whatever comes with a sift in an open and friendly way.
The philosophy behind this concept and method envisions a person not as fixed structure, but as a process, capable of continual change and forward movement, The "problems" inside one are only those parts of the process that have stopped, and the aim of focusing is to unstop them and get the process moving again.
This method is not merely useful for one's personal growth and forward movement but also helps in human interaction. As Gendlin says people live without expressing their inner richness. Much of what people do is canned routines or roles. For many people their inner selves become silent and disappear because they either do not open up their inward experiences to themselves or share them with others. Thus stuck relationships can revive and grow, once one experiences what human beings are in their inner reality and when one wants the reality of oneself as one really is seen, taken in and sensed by other persons.
Thus the method and tool of focusing can be an important spiritual tool of experiencing our real inward selves and communicating this to others. This is because every human being's experience at any moment have a specific unique shape. This cannot be expressed in a common label, but has to be met, found, attended to and allowed to show itself.
In searching for our own unique life and destiny and the realization of our own unique dream, while at the same time fostering and nurturing the unique dream and destiny of others, focusing can be an important way of unraveling reality changing is. One needs to be spiritual in life.
The philosophy behind this concept and method envisions a person not as fixed structure, but as a process, capable of continual change and forward movement, The "problems" inside one are only those parts of the process that have stopped, and the aim of focusing is to unstop them and get the process moving again.
This method is not merely useful for one's personal growth and forward movement but also helps in human interaction. As Gendlin says people live without expressing their inner richness. Much of what people do is canned routines or roles. For many people their inner selves become silent and disappear because they either do not open up their inward experiences to themselves or share them with others. Thus stuck relationships can revive and grow, once one experiences what human beings are in their inner reality and when one wants the reality of oneself as one really is seen, taken in and sensed by other persons.
Thus the method and tool of focusing can be an important spiritual tool of experiencing our real inward selves and communicating this to others. This is because every human being's experience at any moment have a specific unique shape. This cannot be expressed in a common label, but has to be met, found, attended to and allowed to show itself.
In searching for our own unique life and destiny and the realization of our own unique dream, while at the same time fostering and nurturing the unique dream and destiny of others, focusing can be an important way of unraveling reality changing is. One needs to be spiritual in life.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Happiness Through Head and Heart
Thoughts dodge you. Questions storm you. And you are lost in the jigsaw puzzle of queries and more queries. The question that troubles most rational human beings is, "Why am I born? My humble answer to that is the one given by Buddha, The Enlightened one to his disciple: When the house is on fire, first extinguish it with water. Don't just stand there in front of the burning house and reason out the cause of it. The cause would be known only when the fire is put out. Similarly, now that you are born and are living on this planet Earth, you must live in the manner which is most positive. For that you have to work hard.
Treat life not as an imposition but as a gift from God - to be loved and to be cherished. Move on the pathway of live with faith and courage. and the confidence that he is with you. Accept life with all its trials and tribulations. Acceptance of whatever is, will solve half of your problems.
Know that whatever your life is today, is your own making. It is combined result of your karma, in the previous birth and the exercise of your free will before you were born in this life. You yourself have shaped your life for your own good. So my mantra is: Accept your life with all its trials and suffering.
What do you seek is your day-to-day living ? Happiness. How many have experience happiness? How many can define happiness Yet everyone seeks happiness. That's ultimate goal. Few know where to seek happiness. Most of you seek happiness out-side of yourselves. You run after money, power, wealth, authority, status, name and fame. You are running after the shadows of happiness. True happiness comes from within, from the purification of mind and the ultimate intuition of heart.
Yes, there arises a question. Should you listen to the voice of the head or the voice of the heart?
My answer is simple. Listen to the voice of the heart through the head. Emotions lead us astray. We need head as much as we need heart. Develop both to an extent where both converge to a point of light, and your goal of happiness is achieved.
People are awed by the miracles of science as much as they are fascinated by the powers of spirituality. There is no competition between the two. Science is the discovery of one area and spirituality is the discovery of another area; in the final analysis there is no difference, both are discoveries, both are an experience of an 'awareness'. Our rishis had this knowledge of science through intuition. So where is the difference ?
As the New Age dawns, materialism will automatically lag behind spirituality. And people will live the 'Vedanta' in their daily lives. The verdant concept is spiritual. One life flows in all things. Therefore the future civilization will be built on reverence for life. All life is sacred. Therefore in your day-to-day living, show reverence for everything. The earth, the sky, the trees, stones, rivers, animals, flowers. The vedantic concept is spiritual but it is one which is scientific, for scientist tell us that there is life even in a stone and that the molecules in a stone are ever changing. Now the time has come when man must either make friends with nature or perish. This is the Truth.
Religion is life; it is fellowship, the mingling of the individual with the Great Life and it is not shut up in temples, it is moving in the market place. The great God is not somewhere in isolation. He is in procession of life. Greet Him there. You will not find him in the temples of marbles and stones, you will meet him in the sweat and struggles of life, in the tears and tragedies of the poor; wiping the tears of the poor and singing his new gita for the new age. So if you want to be happy make others happy.
Yes, my vision of life is secularistic. Secularistic in the spiritual sense and not the religious sense. The spirit of humanity is One. In this life we have to work for the unity of mankind. The coming civilisation will be built on a nobler thought, and that thought is, "You are Me, I am You". In that oneness, Joy, Peace and Love will grow.
Treat life not as an imposition but as a gift from God - to be loved and to be cherished. Move on the pathway of live with faith and courage. and the confidence that he is with you. Accept life with all its trials and tribulations. Acceptance of whatever is, will solve half of your problems.
Know that whatever your life is today, is your own making. It is combined result of your karma, in the previous birth and the exercise of your free will before you were born in this life. You yourself have shaped your life for your own good. So my mantra is: Accept your life with all its trials and suffering.
What do you seek is your day-to-day living ? Happiness. How many have experience happiness? How many can define happiness Yet everyone seeks happiness. That's ultimate goal. Few know where to seek happiness. Most of you seek happiness out-side of yourselves. You run after money, power, wealth, authority, status, name and fame. You are running after the shadows of happiness. True happiness comes from within, from the purification of mind and the ultimate intuition of heart.
Yes, there arises a question. Should you listen to the voice of the head or the voice of the heart?
My answer is simple. Listen to the voice of the heart through the head. Emotions lead us astray. We need head as much as we need heart. Develop both to an extent where both converge to a point of light, and your goal of happiness is achieved.
People are awed by the miracles of science as much as they are fascinated by the powers of spirituality. There is no competition between the two. Science is the discovery of one area and spirituality is the discovery of another area; in the final analysis there is no difference, both are discoveries, both are an experience of an 'awareness'. Our rishis had this knowledge of science through intuition. So where is the difference ?
As the New Age dawns, materialism will automatically lag behind spirituality. And people will live the 'Vedanta' in their daily lives. The verdant concept is spiritual. One life flows in all things. Therefore the future civilization will be built on reverence for life. All life is sacred. Therefore in your day-to-day living, show reverence for everything. The earth, the sky, the trees, stones, rivers, animals, flowers. The vedantic concept is spiritual but it is one which is scientific, for scientist tell us that there is life even in a stone and that the molecules in a stone are ever changing. Now the time has come when man must either make friends with nature or perish. This is the Truth.
Religion is life; it is fellowship, the mingling of the individual with the Great Life and it is not shut up in temples, it is moving in the market place. The great God is not somewhere in isolation. He is in procession of life. Greet Him there. You will not find him in the temples of marbles and stones, you will meet him in the sweat and struggles of life, in the tears and tragedies of the poor; wiping the tears of the poor and singing his new gita for the new age. So if you want to be happy make others happy.
Yes, my vision of life is secularistic. Secularistic in the spiritual sense and not the religious sense. The spirit of humanity is One. In this life we have to work for the unity of mankind. The coming civilisation will be built on a nobler thought, and that thought is, "You are Me, I am You". In that oneness, Joy, Peace and Love will grow.
Monday, May 3, 2010
A Small Introduction to Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his or her being, or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop an individual's inner life; such practices often lead to an experience of connectedness with a larger reality: a more comprehensive self; other individuals or the human community; nature or the cosmos; or the divine realm.Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life.It can encompass belief in immaterial realities or experiences of the immanent or transcendent nature of the world.
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