Month: March 2010

Embodiments of Wisdom! Who will take the Mantle?

A lot of the great spiritual masters of our time are reaching over 65 plus in age and have matured to provide the world with fabulous teachings and understandings – Ram Dass, Ram Butler, Krishna Das and many others whom I am not mentioning here. On these shoulders we stand. These teachers have been students as well, have gone through the fire of doing their sadhana, applied the teachings they have learnt over a lifetime to their everyday lives, taken the commitment of their relationship to great masters to transform themselves and the world around them, and have become embodiments of wisdom to the world.

As this decade moves ahead, who will come forward to take on this mantel and make sure today’s world, today’s youth see the same grand vision they saw inside. How will this amazing process move on? How will the teachings be passed on over the next decade, so that the world we live in still retain these lights (new lights) whose presence, fire, devotion and understanding have woken up many. How will the universe ensure there are individuals who will chose the path of silence, understanding, knowledge, beauty and wisdom, and channel those to others in the world through a state of non-doership?

Are you over doing It?

Often people are “overdoing” it. What I mean is people get obsessive about their jobs, careers or businesses. They act like that is what defines them. They go out of balance trying to prove to their bosses, stakeholders, partners how hard they are working, by putting in uncalled for and unreasonable hours pretending to “work”. They ignore their families, friends, the rest of their soul – hobbies, music, nature, mountains, meditation, poetry, art and silence. Then when its gone…the job, business etc., they are sitting at pubs drinking, mopping and feeling sad for themselves, utterly lost, as if that is who they are.

A better solution would be to: Continue reading “Are you over doing It?”

Addicted to “Feeling Rushed”

There are very few things in life which are absolutely time and mission critical. Usually these are life or death situations or situations where you are performing or have an appearance at a particular time and place. Outside of that (and a few others) I would say almost 80% of things in our daily life are not time and mission critical. But we still make it so. A client always wants things “yesterday” for no real reason or rhyme, cars refuse to follow the red light (almost like everyone is rushing for an emergency to the hospital is it?), people sit in a restaurant and want food immediately (even if they are not in a hurry). We are addicted to “feeling rushed” and in fact have fallen in love with that feeling. It has become so endemic in our culture (especially urban India) that when a person is relaxed, calm and joyful and apparently in no real hurry, to either execute his or anyone else’s work or to get from one place to another, people almost look at that person with a sense of shock; almost to say “Hey buddy, which planet are you from”. And it’s not just individuals who behave like that – some of the chief culprits are businesses, who live on the edge of insecurity, which fuels this culture of “rushing” around.

Don’t Sprint the Marathon

Raghunathan V has recently released his 2nd book titled “Don’t Sprint The Marathon”.

I read his first book “Games Indians Play” and found it apt for the Indian population and the way we think and function. While I have not read his new book,  based on an initial preview I did, it looks good and appropriate for parents with kids.

“Don’t Sprint the Marathon”…obvious as that might appear, as proud and ambitious parents, we often push our children to excel in ways that may help them achieve some early successes – but may sap their stamina to endure the more difficult challenges which life may throw at them. What is more, our obsessive rush to get our children off to a good start overlooks at the fact that in life, as in a marathon, an early lead hardly matters, but being too intent on coming first may leave our children lacking in many of the life skills that a normal childhood would teach them.

V. Raghunathan, best-selling author of Games Indians Play, offers an alternative approach that can be even more rewarding: life he avers, is not a sprint and it does not in the long run matter very much if you missed out on the best school, college or job as starters. As long as you give yourself the time to develop your personality and skills, you will still get where you want, at your own pace and perhaps far more happily. To illustrate, based on first-hand interactions, he gives numerous examples of many achievers, famous and not-so-famous, among them N.R. Narayana Murthy, Dr. Kallam Anji Reddy, Dr. P D K Rao, V. Mani, Ashwini Nachappa, G.M. Rao and Ila Bhat. For those helping their children along for success in life, or rethinking their own approach to it, Don’t Sprint the Marathon will prove an invaluable guide.

You may order in online from any of the well-known bookshops or online stores.