Absorb the change (3 of 3)

Young people appear to take for granted all the comforts and luxuries provided by parents. Often enough, one hears parents claim that they have brought up their kids in the best possible manner — even if it meant bribing someone, or lying or being dishonest. But shouldn’t parents stop and think about the dangerous effects of their children indirectly benefiting from dishonesty.

Parents need to confront these issues. They have nothing to do with changing times. They have everything to do with sound basic values. Such matters need to be thrashed out delicately with children. This can only happen if a parent spends enough time with his/her child.

As any parent will agree, it is always easier to say “yes” than “no” to one’s child. It is easier to agree than disagree. But it is unwise to take the easy way out. It is wise to recognize how exactly society has changed. Sometimes, money has replaced family time. Sometimes, modern parents are too self-absorbed to pay attention to their children. Whatever the problem, the best parenting is by example. Give way on everything else, but not on fundamental values. Howsoever fashionable the values of the day, it is only the basics handed down the generations that can keep society rooted and on the right path.

Change is inevitable but it should be positive. There is no argument but that change must occur. But change must never be allowed to affect core moral values.

HOME TRUTHS

The early years are crucial to instill fundamental universal values in a child. It is these values that will last him/her a lifetime.

Children increasingly tend to question authority and this change must be accepted — and handled — by parents and teachers.

In our modern times, the authoritarian parent has had to move into the role of friend. The openness that comes with this is an advantage. – The Times of India

(As a former diplomat’s wife, Shobhana Balakrishnan has been associated with schools and social organisations in many countries across the world)

Money creates a false sense of independence (2 of 2)

On the other hand, some people blame money for all the ills in society. There are others who even consider it an evil. Just as possessing money brings arrogance, rejecting it too makes one arrogant. Some people who renounce money take pride in their poverty to draw attention and sympathy.

However, ancient sages honored money or maya as a part of the divine and transcended the grip of its illusion. They knew that when we reject or hate something, we can never transcend it.

They honored wealth as Goddess Lakshmi, the consort of Narayana. She is born out of yoga. It is yoga that transforms the bad karma and brings out latent skills and talents. It also brings up ashtasiddhis, the eight perfections and nav nidhis, the nine wealth.

Yoga helps one move from arrogance to self-confidence, meekness to humility, dependence to interdependence, from craving for freedom to the recognition of unboundedness and from a limited ownership to oneness with the whole.

\When people lack faith in the Divine or in their own abilities or in the goodness of society they suffer from a deep sense of insecurity. As a result all that appears to provide security is money. They rely on something that is not certain, and end up getting upset. Uncertainty causes craving for stability.

The world is of change; the Self is of non-change. We have to rely on the non-change and accept the change. This is like perceiving the real as unreal and unreal as real. In fact, all miseries are unreal. A wise man knows that happiness is real, as it is our very nature. Unhappiness is unreal because it is inflicted by memory. When we see everything as a dream, then we abide in our true nature — love, joy and peace. We then understand that money is not all-important. Values, sense of belonging, love and care are more important. – The Times of India

Website: www.artofliving.org.

Going back to the pure, loving nature (2 of 2)

When a child is born he is in maitri bhavana; it means a great feeling of friendship, love, compassion. A newborn knows no hatred; it knows only love. Love is intrinsic; hatred, anger, jealousy, possessions and envy he will learn later on. Society will teach him how to hate.

When the child is born he is simple love; he has not known anything else. In the mother’s womb he has not come across any enemy. He has lived in deep love for nine months, surrounded by love, nourished by love. He knows nobody who is inimical to him. He knows only the mother, he knows her love. This love he brings with himself; this is the original face. Then there will be trouble, with many other experiences. He will start distrusting people. A newborn child is simply born with trust.

Children are trusting, but by and by there will be experiences in which they will be deceived, in which they will get into trouble, in which they will be opposed, in which they will become afraid. By and by they will learn all the tricks of the world. That’s what has happened to everybody, more or less.

Maitri bhavana is creating the situation at the time of your birth: it is a de-hypnosis. It is an effort to drop hatred, anger, jealousy, envy, and come back to the world as you had come in the first place.

If you go on doing this meditation, first you start loving yourself ^ because you are closest to you than anybody else. Then you spread your love, friendship, compassion, your blessings, to people you love friends, lovers. Then, by and by, you spread these to more people that you don’t love so much, then people to whom you are indifferent ^ then by and by to people you hate.

Slowly you are de-hypnotizing yourself. Slowly you are again creating a womb of love around yourself. – The Time of India

Going back to your pure, loving nature (1 of 2)

Good morning friends.  Nature is one of my favorite things.  I love to see the nature specially the green nature.  For me it has a good and cool feelings.  Whenever I’m tired, even if I don’t go far place, I tried to sit on the chair in my garden as it has a lot of plants there.  It always feels relaxing when going back to the pure and loving nature.  I want to share you about the article I read.  It’s a nice article. 

Maitri bhavana is one of the most penetrating meditations. You need not be afraid of getting into some sort of self-hypnosis; it is not. It is a sort of de-hypnosis. 

It looks like hypnosis because it is the reverse process: you have come to me from your home; you walked the way; now going back you will walk the same way. The only difference will be that now your back will be towards me. The way will be the same, you will be the same, but your face was towards me while you were coming; now your back will be towards me.

Man is already hypnotized; so the question is not one of whether or not to get hypnotized. The whole process of society is a sort of hypnosis. Somebody is told that he is a Christian, and it is continuously repeated so that his mind is conditioned and he thinks himself a Christian. Somebody is Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan ^ these are all hypnoses. You are already hypnotized. If you think you are miserable, this is hypnosis. If you think you have too many problems, this, too, is hypnosis. Whatsoever you are is a sort of hypnosis. Society has given you those ideas, and now you are too full of those ideas and conditionings.

Maitri bhavana is de-hypnosis: it is an effort to bring back your natural mind; it is an effort to give you back your original face; it is an effort to bring you to the point where you were when you were born and society had not yet corrupted you.

 

Transform the world, start from within (2)

If you look at how full of life and joyful you were when you were five years of age and how alive and joyful you are today, has the level gone up or gone down? For most people, it has gone down. It need not be so. With age, physical agility may go down but the level of joy and sense of being alive need not go down. If your level of joy and aliveness is going down, it is as if you are committing suicide in instalments. This happens because you only focus on certain aspects of life, but without including every aspect, you cannot live a full life.The Times of India

Unfortunately, most of the time, belief systems are passing off as spirituality. The moment you believe something, if you believe “this is it”, you are bringing a certain degree of rigidity into the very life process that you are. This is not spirituality.

The spiritual process is always a quest, a seeking; that is why when you say, “I’m on a spiritual path,” you say “I’m a seeker.” When you say “I’m religious,” you say “I’m a believer.” There is a significant difference, because believing means you have assumed something that you do not know; seeking means you have realised that you do not know, which brings an enormous amount of flexibility. Whenever you say, “I do not know something,” you are flexible. Whenever you think, “I know it,” you become rigid. This rigidity is not just in attitude; it percolates into every aspect of your life. This rigidity is also the cause of an enormous amount of suffering in the world.

How human beings are, that is how the society will be. So, creating human beings who are flexible and willing to look at everything rather than being stuck in their ideas and opinions definitely makes for a different kind of society. And the very energy that such human beings carry will influence everything around them. –

Discourse: Sadhguru

The Advantage of Solitude – 1

I was attending a Conference in one of the University here in our city.  The topic of the discussion last month was the writing of poetry.  The thirty or so participants were mostly teachers.  The conference attempted to the nature and importance of the craft of poetry as practiced in many country.  On my part, I could not help being pessimistic.  Poets are the neglected constituency of the society; most people hardly reads poems; there is no money in the poetic profession-in spite of these, there are still many who are attracted but the wing beats of Pegasus.  Perhaps it is poetry’s very disadvantaged state that draws them to it-the quaint quality of a cabala promising exciting membership.  A lonely pursuit, really, meant for the Wang Weis and Bashos of the human society.

But solitude has its beneficent effects on us when we wish for some respite from the travails of daily existence.  A metaphysical cloud depends on us and changes our perception of the human condition, so that forest, we can shape and reshape the practical and nebulous realities of our life.  Our mind acquires a poetic capacity for profundity and we surprise ourselves with discoveries that we miss under ordinary circumstances.  Though still recovering from the rigors of struggling for a survival in the inhospitable world, our cogitation is purposeful, clear, and responsible.  It may not end in a definite conclusion or resolution, but it will give  us the satisfaction of being in control of our mental process.  And that is the crucial thing—the feeling that, in spite of being isolated in time and space, we are not totally weak or utterly demobilized.  We verbalize that feeling in metaphoric language that my lead to poetry.  This pleasure of being alone-even of being lonely-begins and ends in an intellectual situation.  Sometime, the surplus of time enables us to ambulate in our mind without any definite objective.  Almost randomly, we fly from one thought to another,  catching its significant facets and turning them over and over in the light of our imagination.  It is a form of thinking without thoughts, filling the mental void with tentative and unlinked ideas that have no preconceived plan.

Optimism

 

Optimism is an outlook on life such that one maintains a view of the world as a positive place. It is the philosophical opposite of pessimism. Optimism is individual views believes that world is good and people in the world are positive people. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good, so that most situations work out in the end for the best.

 

A common conundrum illustrates optimism-versus-pessimism with the question; does one regard a given glass of water, filled to half its capacity, as half full or as half empty? Conventional wisdom expects optimists to reply, “Half full,” and pessimists to respond, “Half empty” (assuming that “full” is considered good, and “empty”, bad).

 

Another paradox sometimes associated with optimism is that the only thing an optimist cannot view as positive is a pessimist. Pessimism, however, as it acts as a check to recklessness, may even then be viewed in a positive light.

 

 

 

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