Be in bliss: Enjoy your suffering!

There are three simple ways to reach bliss, three keys.

The first key is acceptance of life. Never grudge or grumble. If you accept, you will have the intelligence to accept life!

A middle-aged lady went to Buddha with her son’s dead body one early morning, and pleaded: please revive him. Buddha knew that what ever he might say would be unacceptable to her. He said: go and get a handful of mustard seeds from a house where no one has died. She went from house to house, and was unable to find even one such house. Just like her, everyone had lost someone. There is no house in this world where someone had not died.

You worry and you feel others do not have worries. If you realize every one else has worries too, you will not worry. You need to see others unhappy to reduce your unhappiness.

When the lady understood the truth she became a nun. She said, ‘Even if you had given my child life, my life would have gone on as usual. Now I am transformed.’

Giving life is not a miracle; transforming one’s life is the miracle.

If you welcome all that happens with intelligence, you will be ever blissful.

The second key is the conscious decision to live joyfully.

The great master Abdullah was always happy, in laughter, in bliss. Some one asked him: how you are so joyful? Please teach me the secret of your bliss.

He said: every day when I get up I ask Abdullah, ‘what do you want today? Joy or suffering?’ Mind says, ‘I want bliss.’ I say, ‘have bliss’ that’s all.

It is like the radio that is tuned to a particular station. You get what you consciously tune in to. If you tune to bliss, you will get bliss.

The third key is this.

Abdullah is asked what happens if the mind chooses suffering instead of bliss. Abdullah says, ‘if your mind wants suffering, enjoy the suffering!’

The problem is the conflict that you have when you want something and you cannot enjoy when you get what you wanted. It’s like ordering food in a restaurant and not wanting to pay the bill. You do not like the consequences of what you desire. You forget that pleasure is not forever; pain may follow.

So if suffering happens, enjoy it as your choice.

Follow these three techniques, and your path and goal will be bliss.

When worship become a chore!

If our heart is not fully engaged in an undertaking, it immediately becomes a chore.

Even worship becomes a chore when our heart isn’t in it. When we feel involved, all hard work becomes a joyful worship.

When our heart isn’t engaged in a task, we are distracted. Even as we pluck flowers, or prepare offerings for our favorite deity, our thoughts stray on something else, or someone else. We might be thinking about our office work or other events in our life. We fear that we will invite the wrath of God by not praying.

Many in India chant the 1000 names of Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi everyday. They are proud of our practice. They think they are doing a great job. They are proud that they don’t eat a morsel until we finish their prayers.

But, the truth of our chanting is different. From the moment we begin to chant or soon after we begin to chant, we are anxious to see the verse number. We are desperate to know how much more we have to chant. We want to keep ourselves happy by seeing how close we are to the end. Sometimes, we want to follow the verses to chase boredom away. We feel tired. Our mind has no rest, even when we worship. Chanting becomes another chore for us.

This is true even when we perform daily rituals. We perform the rituals regularly, automatically, thinking of something else all the time. We fear that our greedy desires will remain unfulfilled without these rituals.

We simply can’t focus on chanting, prayer or the spirit of worship. We have no awareness of what we are doing. We do it like automated robots.

When enlightened masters pray or chant they do it for an entirely different reason. They don’t make anything, even the seemingly insignificant task like plucking flowers, a ritual. They neither chant nor pray out of fear or greed. Worship isn’t another ritual for them. The only reason they do anything is because they want to. They do it because they have a deep urge to do it.

They do it from the depth of their heart. They express their love through worship. Their love, during worship, exudes out of them, from the very depths of their heart. An enlightened master is in love and in tune with nature. An enlightened master is in tune with God.

For such people, work and worship merge into one.

Where are you headed this time?

A traveler started his journey towards the holy city of Varanasi. He started from his hometown after making a few preliminary enquiries.

Having traveled far and fearing he may have lost his way, the traveler asked a sanyasin who seemed to be returning from Varanasi, Oh Master, how far away is Varanasi from here?

The sanyasin said: Before I reply, you must answer two of my questions.

The traveler found this strange, and having no choice agreed.

The sanyasin asked: Do you clearly know why you want to go to Varanasi?

The traveler felt that this question was foolish and the answer was obvious. He said: Oh, Varanasi is a holy place. I will be blessed if I go there, scriptures say.

The sanyasin asked the second question: Before starting, have you thoroughly enquired about the path to reach Varanasi?

The traveler felt that this too was irrelevant and said: Yes, I enquired a little bit. I left it at that, thinking that I can find out more as I travel further.

The sanyasin calmly said: If you had had clarity as to why you should go to Varanasi and had known clearly all the details about Varanasi, you would not have asked me as to how much distance you should travel further to reach Varanasi.

Thoroughly confused and irritated, yet still polite, the traveler said: Oh master, you have not replied my question at all.

The sanyasin said: You have already come forty miles beyond Varanasi.

We are much like the traveler not knowing where he is going and why.

We rarely question: Why we have taken birth in this world? Why do we continuously struggle and suffer so much? Where are we headed?

All of us lead our life in search of some goal or other. It may be any material goal like a good education, good job, fame or wealth, or it may be something different. One’s mental set up determines the type of desire one has.

The desires may be many, but the aim of all these desires is only one: Peace, Joy, Bliss. Every one journeys in his own way, only to achieve these goals.

There is nothing wrong at all in this journey, this searching. Problems arise when you embark on the journey without knowing the path.

Spirituality through meditation helps you define the path. Once you are in the right path, the destination happens by itself.

Free to Grow

All major religions say that they have derived their authority from the Divine. Founders of all great religions are considered to be realized Masters.

Scriptures are the communication media between these founder Masters and their followers. In most cases these scriptures are considered to be of divine origin, though they were committed to writing long after the Masters left the earth.

In Hindu religion, correctly stated as Sanatana Dharma and translated loosely as the Eternal Conduct, Scriptures are two fold, sruti and smruti. Sruti are the truths experienced by the great sages of yore. Though literally sruti means that which is heard, the right translation is that which is experienced.

Sruti is theoretical inner science, whereas smruti is applied inner science. One cannot exist without the other. Smruti are the societal regulations that follow from the experiences of the rishi, the great Masters. From the spirituality of the experienced truth that was sruti, smruti emerged as religion.

Sanatana Dharma is the only philosophy that says its scriptures can be changed. It provided at its very inception the freedom to change the smruti. The great Masters allowed this freedom to their disciples to add, modify, comment upon their recommendation by separating them from their experienced truth.

Vivekananda has said that without freedom no growth is possible. That is why even after nearly 10,000 years after these truths were expressed, they are still followed. Sanatana Dharma, the Vedic religion, now called Hinduism, gave this freedom and is the oldest philosophy and religion that is still practiced by such a large number of people. It is the only religion that has spread without coercion, conversion and proselytizing. That is the reason why it will survive and grow many more thousands of years.

Only people of courage and intelligence can say that their truths are open to be commented upon. The Vedic rishi were of that caliber. How can regulations that were relevant a thousand years ago be relevant today, when the societal structure has changed so dramatically, and with it the political and religious structures? In the Vedic tradition, no one was considered a true Master unless he had studied, internalized and commented upon the scriptures in an original and creative way.

Any philosophy that is bound and frozen in the name of divinity will die. A living religion must have the courage and flexibility to change based on the underpinning of its spirituality.