Did I tell you, I love you?

Once again as I embarked on a long journey, without my wife, I felt the pang of separation from my love and friend. I was filled with thoughts and emotions. 

When our being overflows with emotion it drives thoughts out of the mind emptying it, even if only for a brief moment. Then in this emptiness many thoughts surge in.

What if I never get to see her again? 
Its strange, that I have surrendered to Mohini, yet rather than becoming less I am further enriched, physically, emotionally and intellectually. This I guess is the power of love and friendship.


I always want to tell her that she means the world to me and I love her,  and a thousand other things. Words and thoughts which a man and woman, friends, and lovers  should be sharing with one another, but for some inexplicable reason almost never do so. 

Soon after leaving I usually sent her a message from my phone. The message could reflect care, love, regret, a joke, something romantic, advice, maybe even a reminder, whatever it is I feel at that moment. True friends and lovers never adulterate their feelings with too much thought. 

I asked myself, 'If you love her, why did you not tell her directly?'
For one my wife never believes me, after all the grief I give her. 
Secondly the last time I hugged and told her I loved her, , she spun around and confronted me, "Are you having an affair? "
"Of course not, I replied." 
I thought to myself, "By God! what a delightful thing that would be."  

______________________________

I like to converse with myself. 
Why do we seek to cling on to what we have? Maybe this is all that we have. 
There is God I am often told. 
But where is He?

God, He seems so very far away. The more I approach Him the more distant he seems to be. How many steps more must I travel to reach Him? And there are so many middle men.  My wife and my family, they are here and now. I have invested so much in these relationship, of course I have a right to expect a return on my love and devotion.

This is nonsense. If we expect something in return for our love and devotion then it's not love, its business. A commercial deal of give and take. 

Again I asked myself, 'what if I never saw her again?'  The survivor would be devastated. Really? Why should it be so?

From experience and understanding, realisation is born which blooms into acceptance.
Worry never robbed tomorrow of its sorrow, it just robs today of its essence.

We come alone into this world and alone we shall leave it.  How silly we humans are, that for the brief time we spend while we are here, to gather so much?  As if we will live here forever. Things, relationships, wealth, position, status, all we should relinquish voluntarily or they will be snatched away from us anyway.  Give and give with joy and without expectation. Share and share with compassion. 

Love is not a demanding but a giving. Only an Emperor can give with magnanimity. Where as a beggar is exacting, expecting his or her due in full, and if possible even more.  

Love and friendship fortunately are unlike money.
If we give and love unconditionally, the more we give the more we are enriched. 
Maybe I have evolved, maybe I have just grown too comfortable and lazy, maybe I am trying to fool destiny. I am lucky that I live like an emperor, I treasure just the moment, and I never send her sentimental messages anymore. 

Genuine and happy

When you buy something because you like or love it, then value comes not from the price you pay but from the joy or satisfaction it brings to the heart. However if you obtain something for a commercial reason that essential quality, that joy is missing. You always fret because you always know the cost etc. and rarely realise it's value. 

One day a man looking to make a financial investment bought a painting supposedly made by the famous painter Pablo Picasso.  Since this man had bought it merely as a commercial investment with no attraction towards it, he was a worried man.  "Did I pay too much for it?  What if the value does not increase?  The greatest fear, was it a fake?"

He had spent a lot of money and now felt ill with worry. A few days later a friend met the buyer and remarked, how bad the man looked. The man confided in his friend on what was eating him up.

Unlike many great painters who were recognised only after their death, Picasso was very famous and wealthy even while he was alive. The friend reassured him, "If it worries you so much let me help you. Pablo Picasso happens to be well known to me. We will take your painting to him directly and ask him to verify if it is a fake or not."

The man thanked his friend profusely for his assistance. They set a date and time when they would go to meet Picasso himself after the friend had secured an appointment with Picasso. 

After receiving the visitors Picasso examined the painting. After a brief while in a rather dismissive manner, Picasso declared, "This painting is not genuine."

The buyer clutching his forehead the buyer collapsed onto the floor as his knees buckled under him from the shock. moaning, "I should never have trusted that seller, that cheat. Why did I have to buy it? What have I done? I have bought a fake." 

Picasso helped revive the sobbing buyer and said" I never said it was a fake, I said it was not genuine."

The buyer and the friend were  now thoroughly confused. The man asked, "What is the difference? Fake or not genuine, why play with words, is it not the same thing?"

Picasso said, "No, there is a big difference. A fake is something made by someone else. I actually painted this myself, therefore this painting is not a fake. However when I made this painting, I was not really in a creative mood.  A man had come to buy a painting and I had none to show him. I told him to come back next week.  This man would not take a no, he wanted to buy something and he wanted it right away. So I painted something for him in a few hours. This painting is a copy of another painting I had made much earlier. **I say it is not genuine because, I never put my heart and soul into it, just some physical and memory work. "**

This painting it is not a work of art, it is not genuine. It is just some colours on a piece of canvas which lacks passion and a soul. "
                                              

______________________________________________

This incident probably explains, why people fall out of love with artists and their creations so quickly.  Why does the song or poem fail to create the magic after some time?

When first produced, it is born out of passion, the story, painting, dance or song has a soul, a life. When we repeat or duplicate it which we often do, it becomes just a mere copy. 

Copies lack a soul, and without that a soul art is just noise, a piece of canvas or paper. Every work of art, or creativity is invaluable. The moment we assign a monetary value to art we give birth to a business and in the bargain we destroy both the art and the artist.

Whenever something is created or prayers offered or friendship made, to earn money, it ceases to be genuine, for it lacks that special quality which it possesses when it is born out of passion and love.

This is also why many relationships personal, social or professional last only for a short period of time before disintegrating. Fakes die soon and genuine endures for long.

               ______________________________________

Living genuinely is not difficult, all it requires is integrity, to be honest with oneself. Yes it requires courage to be true to oneself, but it is very worth it.

I have discovered that living genuinely and not as a copy, has enriched my life and made it vibrant. My soul and I are now closer to being one, and nothing can beat that.

                               

Power of Yoga, explained.

Who is my best friend?
Should it not be me, myself?
For how can I befriend or love others when I cannot love or befriend myself?
How can I know the eternal, when I don't know myself?

But who am I?
I don't know.
My impressions or understanding of myself is what others have communicated to me.  Even my name is given to me by someone else.
I am this and that and a thousand other things, but I always remain that being, who is defined by others.
Then who am I?

_____________________________                                

Who am I?
To find out, I must ask none other than myself.
But how can I know myself?

Man the animal has his senses trained to handle the external world. The eyes, the nostrils, the ears etc, all are directed outwards.

Man the divine being, lies within us. We should journey inwards into our being, and that journey has to start with the mind.

But my mind is not one. There is always a crowd within my mind and all of them are clamouring for attention. I need to silence them all and still all thoughts, so that I can listen to and observe myself.

This listening and observation is meditation.

This is why it is imperative for me to spend some time alone with myself, to meditate. Concentration does not work, because the more I focus, the more I am strained.

 When I try meditating, I find that sometime my body and most of the time my mind dominate my being.  I tried to fight the thoughts but the more I battle them the stronger they bounced back.


This is why it is imperative for me to spend some time alone with myself, to meditate.

When I try meditating, I find that sometime my body and most of the time my mind dominate my being.  I tried to fight the thoughts but the more I fought them the stronger they bounced back.    

I try not to judge or fight my thoughts, I try just to observe them. Like clouds in the sky, they waft in and fade away, I am often swept away by the clouds or I go a chasing them.

The answer lies in performing yoga.

Yoga is not just contorted body postures, and exercise. It is an ancient and complete science. It has remained a gift from India to humanity for thousands of years.

The more I perform Yoga, the easier it is to meditate.
The more I meditate the more I discover the foolishness of being busy just for the sake of keeping myself uselessly occupied, trying to satisfy and keep entertained that insatiable factor, the human ego.

With each passing day, grows the harmony of my being. The less my mind strays, more healthy and alert I feel. I have traded useful action for useless activity.



Harmony cannot be explained it has to be experienced.


Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word 'Yuj', means to join. I prefer to describe yoga as a confluence, the coming together of the flow of the body, the mind and the spirit.

Yoga offers, possibly the simplest and best path for individuals and humanity to be to be truly holy*.  Holy because the mind, body and spirit of the individual will be in harmony with each other.  Blissful, aware, active and healthy people.

Could we ask for anything more?



*Holy comes from the same word, meaning, 'to be whole'

This is good

This is good

There is a tale of an African king who had a childhood friend. That friend was a constant optimist, and no matter what happened in life, he always said the same thing: "This is good!" It occured that the king and his best friend went hunting, and on that hunting trip the friend would prepare the weapons and load the guns for his friend and king. But he misjudged, and while shooting, the gun exploded and took off one of the king's thumbs with it. The friend, seeing this, exclaimed: "This is good!" "How can this be good?" Fumed the king. "This is NOT good!". And upon their return, he ordered the friend thrown into the deepest jail cell. Some time later, the king went on another hunting trip, but not far from his destination, he was caught by a group of  cannibals, who took him back to their village to prepare a feast from his flesh. But, when they saw his thumb was missing, they sent him on his way, because it is bad luck to eat an unwhole person in their culture. Upon the king's return, he immediately had his friend freed, and as the friend stepped out of his jail cell, blinking at the light, the king said: "I am sorry my dear friend, you were right all along, it WAS good that I lost my thumb. It was wrong of me to put you in jail." "No, no!" Laughed the friend. "It was good!" "How can you say it was good?" The king was surprised. "Becuase if you hadn't, I would have been with you on this trip."

Spiritual Courage

We were surprised to receive an invitation from Smokey and Patricia James to celebrate the life of young Judah who left this world about a month ago.

Judah's father, Pastor  Smokey James is a dear friend and we have spent our childhood together. I know so much about what he was him but on that day I learnt that I knew so little about what my friend had become.

It is said by the Gurus and the Saints that we many will share in our time of joy but hardly anyone will be there in our time of sorrow. With a heavy heart we went with a few of our common friends.

In India we have a word for the truly spiritual person,  'Sant', born of two words 'Sa' and 'anth', literally translated into 'end of breathing' and to become unattached from the material world and to submit oneself to the ocean of energy and love which we call God.

People that submit themselves to God appear to encounter many difficulties and trials to other normal people, but, the spiritual persons themselves remain unaffected. They see it as His will and accept everything with joy, a joy born out of gratitude.

As we gathered and met with Smokey and his wife Patricia, they embraced us with smiles. I was embarrassed for I had a long face. Smokey explained, "Why should we mourn our loss of Judah when he is with our Lord in paradise? How fortunate is  our Judah and how blessed are we to have had this pure, loving and angelic child so close to us for 17 years."

The entire James family went up to the stage and sang hymns, praising the Lord and instilling love, and surrender in our hearts. We sang along, the kind of singing that comes from the heart and not the lips.

Smokey then delivered a sermon which filled our hearts with love and respect, for we saw not Judah's father and our friend but an extraordinary man.  A man much like us but who had transcended his pain and sorrow to make great progress in his spiritual journey.

Great sorrow can either completely destroy the spirit or make a person immensely strong.
The latter path is for the blessed for they become fearless. They have touched death and returned and come to realise that there is nothing but goodness beyond this life.

That day we learnt another aspect of life and death, and experienced a demonstration of immense courage which is born of true spirituality.

Experience is not what happens to us but what we do with what happens to us. May God bless the James family for they have surmounted their pain and emerged stronger and in doing so, have inspired us.

330 Million Gods & Goddesses.

Topics such as politics and religion never fail to raise tensions, generating lots of heat and often very little light.  Maybe it is not the topics per se but how we deal with them.

Not long ago a potential customer living overseas came to visit us in India. He was aggressive about his religion as was apparent in his attire, manner and speech. Our guest never passed an opportunity to lecture me on the wonders of his faith.

'Athithi Devo Bhava'  is an ancient Indian tradition  meaning 'our guest is like God'. This gentleman was pushing his welcome to the maximum and it was all getting a bit tiring.  

Our work took us to several cities all across India and our guest got to see a bit of our great country. I tried to show him the kindness and spirituality of our people, the depth of our compassion and knowledge and the beauty of our land. What he chose to see was the squalor of our cities, the bazar like manner of our driving. He was particularly fascinated and confused by the existence of so many cultures, religions and also the  temples devoted to  so many different Gods and Goddesses.

Our guest can be forgiven for he had inherited a very successful business, He was very wealthy  and was also a prospective customer. This combination produces a heady mix which often breeds arrogance and blinds people.

During a tour, one of our flights was delayed for a while and as we waited in the airport lounge he asked me a question "Exactly how many Gods and Goddesses do you Hindus have?". 

I told him that we had 330 million of them.

"Incredible", he said "no wonder there is so much confusion in your country". Then he went on to deliver a long lecture on what was wrong with India and Indians. He eventually asked, "Why do you not believe in only one God like we all do? ".

Is it not puzzling that even though we grow up in age and like to believe we are all grown up and mature we very often behave rather childishly? 

We are always squabbling, arguing about silly things and trying to outdo each, boasting about what we possess. We are always comparing with others in silly ways. 'I am bigger and wealthier than you, my country, my family, are greater than yours' and of course we must not forget that to mention 'my religion is better than yours and my God is the only true one and greater than your God'.

Had this conversation taken place a decade ago I might have reacted with anger and entered into a fruitless debate. Now I was older and a bit wiser, thanks to the teachings of my Guru. I merely smiled.

I responded by asking him a question " Can you tell me with confidence that there is no violence, nor disagreement nor strife between the followers of these religions that believe in one God you so proudly speak off?"

He replied " of course there are differences, but this cannot be helped."

I informed him that even though there were 330 million Gods and Goddesses that are worshiped by a billion Hindus  across the world, there was no strife, nor hatred nor any disagreement between the followers on account of the Gods. They have existed in total harmony since time immemorial.

"There is only one God and he is known by countless names for He manifests Himself in countless forms", I explained

No conversation took place after that  until we arrived at our destination.  My customer was lost in thought. En route to our hotel we drove past a  temple lit up with lamps for the evening prayer and people were singing hymns joyously. My guest asked if we could stop for a while and enter the temple. We removed our shoes and washed our hands and went in. We sat there for a while enjoying that feeling of closeness with The Almighty. Then we took the 'prasad' and left for our hotel.

My customer looked at me and said sheepishly "I have behaved rather insensitively.  I did not realise that it is the same one God we all believe in, it is just His countless forms that you worship. I am very sorry for much of what I have uttered"

No business was transacted between us but we became friends.