Spirited

From a spirited childhood

To a spiritual adulthood 

From embodied joy

To embodying stress

From the simplicity of being 

To the complexities of doing  

You move through

The first half of your life.

You become spiritual

Not to seek the Divine

But to fulfill your material desires 

And to cope with inevitable failures.

You accept the limited

In place of the unlimited.

What should have freed you

Instead imprisons you.

This journey continues

With many twists and turns

Your spirits rise and fall

With every ebb and flow.

Until that day

When you become aware

Of your true nature

That is Sat-Chit-Ananda.

For most of us

It happens slowly but surely

You get disentangled

From your self delusions.

One by one

You drop your masks

And the defenses

You had built over the years.

They had to go

Because they could not

Hide you from Yourself

Or protect You from you.

You feel a little vulnerable

But also much lighter

You shed the dead weight

And then the Spirit soars.

This is the beginning

Of a new journey

A return to your childhood

To a life of simplicity and joy.

Where you can move

Beyond false pretensions

Of being spiritual

To being spirited again.

Photo Credit: Robert Collins on Unsplash

Mastering Grace: Lessons from Our Ancestors

Mastering Grace

To come with grace, to grow with grace

To smile with grace, to cry with grace

To sit with grace, to wait with grace

To walk with grace, to run with grace

To speak with grace, to sing with grace

To play with grace, to work with grace

To consume with grace, to dispose with grace

To luxuriate with grace, to suffer with grace

To fight with grace, to unite with grace

To give with grace, to receive with grace

To love with grace, to forgive with grace

To laugh with grace, to grieve with grace

To win with grace, to lose with grace

To fall with grace, to rebound with grace

To pray with grace, to surrender with grace

To live with grace, to leave with grace...

For the art of living is nothing but to embrace

Both life's beauty and its inherent unfairness

And to allow ourselves to coalesce

With the boundless Nothingness.

Note: The art of living is to master the art of dying... gracefully. For those familiar with the Hindu tradition will know that we are currently observing Pitrupaksh, the fortnight during which we pay homage to our ancestors. The above poem is my ode to the departed ancestors.

Yogic High

YOGIC HIGH

Life is hard
But I am high.
That's the reward
When you unify.

© Paresh Mishra

3 Happiness Lessons from the Rath Yatra

Today was Ratha Yatra, a Hindu festival originating from my state of Odisha that celebrates the journey that the main deities of Puri Jagannath temple—Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Sudarshana—undertake every year. Also known as the Car Festival or the Chariot Festival, the festival is now observed across all major cities of the world.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Ratha Yatra of Lord Jagannath, you must have used or at least heard of the English word 'juggernaut' which refers to any huge, powerful and overwhelming force. This term came about when the British witnessed the Ratha Yatra for the first time in the 18th century and were completely awed by the size and grandness of the chariots being pulled by what often seems like an ocean of people.

There are many beautiful mythological and historical stories associated with Puri's Ratha Yatra, but I won't touch upon them in this article. Instead, I would like to highlight three psycho-spiritual lessons we can all take from this festival. As I have been researching and reflecting on different evidence-based approaches for wellbeing, I am amazed at how much wisdom lies behind many Hindu festivals and how we can literally transform our lives if we celebrate these festivals a little more mindfully.

1) Develop of a strong and healthy body: You may be wondering, “What does the Ratha Yatra have to do with a strong body?” No, I am not referring to the physical strength you would need to pull the ropes of the ratha, although that would certainly be very helpful. The importance of a strong and healthy body can be understood if we read the Katha Upanishad, which describes ratha (Sanskrit for a chariot) to be symbolic of the physical body. So the ratha yatra that we celebrate every year is essentially symbolic of our life's journey (yatra is a Sanskrit word for journey). We all want our life's journey to be a happy one. Does the ratha yatra give us any hints about how we can achieve this objective? Yes, have a strong and healthy body. According to yogic literature, the biggest impediment to happiness is a sick body. So it is very important to develop a strong and healthy body, the exact same way that so much of attention is paid every year to building strong rathas (chariots). Diseased and weak rathas (and bodies) cannot withstand the stress of the ratha yatra (life's journey).

2) Do not identify with the body: While a strong and healthy body helps us live a happy life, it is also important to remember that we are not our body. Again, according to Katha Upanishad, our true self is the Atma (pure consciousness) and the body is just the ratha (or the vehicle) that the Atma uses to complete the journey of life. This aspect is sometimes described through the quote, "We are not physical beings having spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings having physical experiences." The ephemeral nature of our bodies is beautifully represented in the cyclical nature of the ratha yatra: each year new rathas carry the deities from the Jagannath Temple to the Gundicha Temple and back, after which the rathas are discarded. Our life's journey is similarly cyclical, where we take up a physical body in one life, then discard it at the time of death, before moving on to another body for another cycle of life. Now the philosophical implications of this cyclical nature of life is enormous that is beyond the scope of this blog post, but from a very practical point of view, it means that most of our suffering is caused because we identify too strongly with our body. It is no wonder then that the most powerful meditation techniques (in terms of their efficacy on mental wellbeing) are all geared towards creating a distance between our self and our body. If you do not know how to meditate, it is worth your time to learn it, since it has been consistently shown across numerous research studies to have a positive impact on your wellbeing. 

3) Overcome distractions: There has been a lot that has been published about how our mental distractions impair our ability to be happy and successful in our lives. This insight is also beautifully illustrated through the festival of ratha yatra. Traditionally chariots got their power from horses. In Katha Upanishad, these horses symbolize our indriyas (or sense organs) through which we relate to the external world. The sense organs are the physiological basis through which we experience pleasure and pain. Correspondingly our sense organs become the driving force of our life. We live to keep them satisfied and free from pain. We get immediately distracted by anything that excites our senses. However, the problem with this approach of living (called hedonistic approach) is that we become literal slaves to our sense organs. Our lives become not very different from the life of an addict who compulsively craves and consumes substances but is still miserable. Also, how can you do a successful journey when you are distracted in all possible directions? The key is for the charioteer (symbolic of buddhi, or discriminatory intelligence) to take control of the reins (symbolic of our mind) and not let the horses (or in case of the Ratha Yatra, the devotees) pull in all possible directions. It is only then that the passenger (Atma) can reach his destination. In practical terms, the key to happiness then is not in repressing our desires, as is recommended in some religions. Desires after all are the life force that help us move forward with our life. But it means that we stay mindful and in control of our desires so that we do not get easily distracted by the countless meaningless attractions and move forward in the direction dictated by your buddhi. In neurological terms, this would be called training the pre-frontal cortex to take control over the lymbic system, again something that is achieved through meditation and mindfulness living.

A Hindu View of Scientific Skepticism

In my previous post, I talked briefly about how I am beginning to see the wisdom behind some of the traditional Hindu practices. I definitely don't mean to say that all practices are great and should be continued, because it is also true that over generations many of these practices have devolved into rigid mindless rituals that harm the environment and even our minds. Most mindless stuff end up harming us in the long run.

It was not always easy for me to understand and appreciate the value in Hindu rituals. However, over the years, as I have gained more knowledge in the areas of psychology, sociology, and different Western and Indian philosophies, I have come to appreciate how some traditional rituals must have benefited (and continue to benefit) the overall society and the individual members within it.

However, since traditions—even scientific ones—can easily become mindless and irrelevant over time, it is necessary to have a bit of healthy skepticism towards them. In the language of yoga, we need to use our gyana (knowledge) and viveka (the ability to discriminate between real and unreal) to scrutinize our practices with a scientific bent of mind. 

Unfortunately, many people's understanding of science is completely convoluted. In their minds, anything associated with so called modern life is scientific, and worse, everything traditional is frivolous and superstitious. At the other extreme, we see people who will declare anything traditional or ancient as scientific. This is not very different from the "appeal to nature" fallacy, according to which anything natural is assumed to be valid, good and beneficial.

In science, students are encouraged to develop scientific skepticism to everything. Unfortunately sometimes scientists also take this skepticism to the extreme. They become blind believers of their version of 'scientific method' and deny the existence of anything that hasn't been successfully measured and verified. That's why I like the ideas of gyana and viveka, because there are no absolutes in the concepts of gyana and viveka. These are faculties that we have to develop throughout our life, but even a lifetime will not be sufficient to have fully developed gyana and viveka.

So we will always act according to our extant gyana and viveka. What we consider appropriate (or inappropriate) now is only based on our current gyana and viveka, so as these faculties develop, we may later see things very differently. This doesn't mean that truth changed. It only means that our enhanced gyana and viveka is helping us see certain truths that were previously invisible to us. The important thing is to never stop striving to enhance these faculties within ourselves.

A Seeker's Discovery

There was a time
Love was the aim of mine.
To give
And to receive
That emotion
Which is fun,
Soothing and ecstatic,
And make us all tick.

But then as you know
Came the ego.
A small little word
But a huge hazard.
For relationships
It is a literal apocalypse.
So love got destroyed
And I went into a void.

I was mad,
I was sad.
I wanted to be bad
But I failed at that.
So what do you do?
I just withdrew
Into a cocoon
Rather than impugn.

Why was life so unfair?
I asked in despair.
But then I thought
Why be distraught
Over a shortchange
When I could change
My life my way,
If not others' screenplay?

So with determination
I began to brighten
My inner self
By emptying the bookshelf.
With steely resolve
I began to evolve
Through hardcore action
And silent meditation.

I practiced, not to impress,
But to find happiness
That was independent
Of any external event.
So when somebody was mean
I still stayed serene.
Essentially, in solitude
I found my fortitude.

No, I didn't become a loner.
I was just a seeker.
I sought with intensity,
But not a loving company.
Because when you realize
You were after a compromise,
You see, "You got shortchanged
But not b'cos of a deranged."

You realize that You deceived
Yourself by what you believed.
I don't say, "Romantic love is
Some kind of disease,
But it only gives you a glimpse
Of that feeling of bliss,
Before it degrades,
And then ennui pervades."

So I don't reminisce.
Instead, I seek my bliss
Just within me
And not in external beauty.
And what I have found
Is this truth profound
That I am the bliss
Finding which was my wish.

A good life

What is a good life?
The one without strife?
Having friends of your type?
Or living fit till age ripe?

Having a spouse supportive?
Engaging in something creative?
Earning a lot of money?
Or having a cute baby?

The wise say, "None of these."
Good life isn't about goodies.
It is about doing your duties
Like accomplished karma yogis.

And I do practice karma yoga
But being an amateur fella
I often fail to practice
Especially, when I go off axis.

Then like most human beings
I wallow in negative feelings.
Giving up on myself, I quit
Instead of living life with grit.

So now I strive to be at ease
Howsoever rough are the seas.
I may swim or may drown
What matters is I do not frown.

With this motto, I live my life
That I will never fuss and gripe.
For a good life is not outside me,
It is my soul and esprit.

Who is a Yogi and Who is a Dhongi?

First of all, my apologies to all those friends who have expressed that they have been waiting to read about the second half of my European backpacking trip that I completed last month. Since my return I have been preoccupied with a handful of "Important & Urgent" matters, and so haven't been able to write that post, but I promise to do it soon, may be even later this week.

Today's post is a quick response to a meme I noticed on different social network websites in connection with the International Yoga Day celebrations. As you all know, the first International Day of Yoga was celebrated all around the world yesterday. Thanks to the initiative of the Indian prime minister Mr. Narendra Modi, in December last year, the United Nations General Assembly had approved June 21 to be celebrated as International Day of Yoga every year. The celebrations were a huge success both in India and abroad. However, as is inevitable, the celebrations, especially in India, also generated some criticisms (for example, this was all a PR stunt for Modi, etc.). This post is not a critique or evaluation of those criticisms. My post is just in response to the meme below circulated by Modi-haters which reads as follows in English: "He can't even sit in padmasana (the Lotus pose)... Modi is no yogi; He is a dhongi (a cheat)."

Congress party's meme on Narendra Modi following the International Day of Yoga celebrations in New Delhi

When I saw this meme, I immediately did a Google search on "Modi and Padmasana," because it seemed a little odd to me that Modi can't do a padmasana. First, padmasana or the lotus pose might be a difficult pose for many Westerners but it usually isn't for most Indians who have the habit of sitting cross-legged on floor from childhood. Also, it seemed odd that Mr. Modi couldn't do a lotus pose, given that he had spent years as a pracharak for the RSS; yoga along with many fitness exercises are commonly practiced at all the shakhas (or branches) of RSS.

Not surprisingly, the Google search yielded many pictures of PM Modi sitting in perfect padmasana. When I shared one of these pictures with the friend who had posted the meme, I immediately got a skeptical response that the picture must have been photo-shopped. Now, I love healthy skepticism, but this seemed more like a prejudiced response to me, because the response was immediate. In other words, no time had been spent to verify facts. Also, I couldn't see any noticeable signs of photo-shopping. Lastly, at least one of those pictures (the second one below) came from a reputable source, specifically The Sunday Times, so I had no reason to suspect the authenticity of the pictures.

Narendra Modi in padmasana

Anyway, the point of this article is not to prove that PM Modi is a great yogi. First of all, I'm not a Modi bhakt (devotee), so I don't have any motivation to do prove anything on behalf of Mr. Modi; nor does he need me. Sure, I'm a fan of his on certain issues, but I'm also as big a critic of him. Second, and more importantly, I don't know Mr. Modi personally. So I have no basis of knowing whether he is a "true" or "fake" yogi, but nor do the people who keep sharing memes about Mr. Modi being a "fake" yogi.

The point of this article is to educate people about who could be considered a true yogi. As those familiar with Sanskrit know, the word yoga means being in union with the supreme spirit or cosmic energy. Today, most of modern yoga may have been restricted to poses and physical exercises, but yoga as a discipline goes much beyond manipulating the body.

Patanjali in his famous Yoga Sutras described eight limbs of yoga:

1. Yama: These are the five things that yogi must abstain from:
1. Ahimsa: Abstain from all forms of violence (including verbal)
2. Satya: Abstain from falsehood
3. Asteya: Abstain from stealing
4. Brahmacharya: Abstain from sexual misconduct 
5. Aparigraha: Abstain from greed
2. Niyama: These are the five observances
1. Śauca: Purity in thoughts, speech and action
2. Santosha: Being content with oneself and one's circumstances
3. Tapas: Persistent austerity
4. Svādhyāya: Engaging in self-reflection
5. Ishvara-Pranidhana: Contemplation on the nature of True Self
3. Asana: Literally means "a seat" or to be able to sit continuously for long periods of time. Later (in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika), asanas also came to mean the yoga poses that we practice today. But the point to remember is that they are still meant to help the body be still for long periods of time, something that is essential for samadhi.
4. Pranayama: Breathing exercises (literally means having control over one's breath and life force)
5. Pratyahara: Withdrawal of the sense organs from external objects or not being a slave to external attractions.
6. Dharana: Concentration
7. Dhyana: Meditation
8. Samadhi: Merging or uniting one's consciousness with the higher Self.

Among these eight limbs, the last one, i.e., samadhi is the most difficult to attain, and ultimately the goal of yoga. So, a true yogi is one who has mastered the art of going into and coming out of samadhi. In this sense, perhaps 99.999999% of the practitioners of yoga (and that includes me) are not really true yogis. Forget samadhi, most of us can't even keep our body (asana) and mind (dharana) still on our will for a few minutes.

Does that mean that we all are fake yogis then? No, I won't say that. We all may call ourselves yogis, but only in the sense of being learners or students of yoga. And as students, we are yogis only to the extent of commitment we have made to the whole eight-fold path of yoga, that which involves disciplining not just the body but also the breath, mind, sense organs, and subtle energies so that they are all in better alignment with the supreme spirit and/or cosmic energy.

In other words, there are essentially two ways to view the word yogi: 1) a person who has mastered the process of going into samadhi (yogic union with the higher Self), and 2) a person who has committed himself/herself fully to all the eight-limbs of yoga (and not just the yoga poses). Most of us practitioners of yoga have never reached samadhi, so we can't truly call ourselves yogis. Most of us have also not made a 100% commitment to all the eight limbs of yoga, so we can't even call ourselves as good students of yoga.

You may ask, "OK, so what are you saying about Modi? Is he a true or fake yogi?" My answer to these questions is that you are asking the wrong questions. Whether Mr. Modi is a true yogi or not is his business, not ours. Our business is to focus on ourselves. We should engage in repeated self-reflection (svadhyaya) and evaluate how much we have really committed to the process of becoming a yogi. That's all there is. Sincerely try to be a good yogi, but don't waste your time trying to prove to others that you are one. As a corollary, if you are trying to prove to others how true/good a yogi you are, then you are most likely not.