Travel Notes

I am in US for a couple of weeks on work. I usually don’t have a jet lag when I travel to the west, but it was different this time. I was waking up at odd hours. Instead of fretting over it, I decided to utilize the waking hours by adding more rounds to my Yoga and Meditation practice and it has been wonderful so far.

Coming from India, one thing that strikes straight away is the lack of noise in this place. Just sitting and observing this noiselessness takes me deeper into meditation.

Aside:

I don’t drive in this country and that makes it feel like I am in a jail all the time. And I have to be dependent on someone or the other for all small errands. Wish they had better public transport. Maybe a case for exporting some Autos from Bangalore!

End of Aside

Update:  Just read this article titled Reflections on Stillness by Desmond Tutu in Yoga Plus

I am deeply thankful for those moments in the early morning when I try to be quiet, to sit in the presence of the gentle and compassionate and unruffled One, to try to share in or be given some of that divine serenity. If I cannot or do not spend a reasonable amount of time in meditation early in the morning, then I feel a physical discomfort—it is worse than having forgotten to brush my teeth! That is one way I know that I would be completely rudderless and lost if I did not have these times with God.

Meditate for success says CNN

The crowd of Harvard Business School alums who gathered at their reunion to hear networking expert Keith Ferrazzi speak earlier this summer might have expected to pick up strategies on how to work a room, remember people’s names, or identify mentors. But tactical skills, it turns out, aren’t what turned Ferrazzi into a bestselling author or sought-after speaker.

Instead Ferrazzi let his fellow alums in on a little secret. The key to connecting, he told the group, is “not being an a**hole.” And the most effective path he’s found?Exercise and prayer work too, he said, but meditation has been so effective that he now spends ten days every year at a silent meditation retreat. In other words, the man whose latest book is “Never Eat Alone” credits much of his success to alone time. Continue reading

Guidelines for Daily Living

The spring issue of The Blue Mountain journal is available here. The journal focuses on Guidelines for Daily Living. Sri Eknath Easwaran offers some simple but effective ways to transform our thinking process and create a brighter future for ourselves and those around us.

He writes:

India has a great festival called Dipavali, from dipa, light, and avali, rows. Homes all over India will be lit by rows of lights. It’s a beautiful sight, but in every religion the real festival of lights is the display within: patience, sympathy, good will, security, selflessness, love, wisdom. What a long row! We can go in the midst of people and they will receive the benefit of this light. One person being patient brightens everything around. Being patient with those who differ from us, with those who oppose us, with those who aren’t patient with us – this is the real meaning of spiritual growth.

We can start doing this from today onward. We may not have much to offer at the outset: two cents’ worth of patience, three cents’ of goodwill, and when it comes to the capacity to return love for hatred, all we may have is an empty piggybank we hope to add to later. It doesn’t matter. Next year, instead of two pennies, we will have five. The year after, we may have a dime. A year or two later, the dime has become a dollar. It takes a lot of hard work, but over a long, long period these capacities grow.

The important thing is to keep trying, day in and day out, in every relationship, doing your very best. Be regular and systematic in your meditation, and sustain your enthusiasm whatever happens. It may not appear that you are making progress. Sometimes you may even feel that you are going backwards. But as long as you keep doing your best, the Gita promises, you will get where you are going: “On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will yield protection from the greatest fear.”

The present moment

“Each moment of now is what we could call a branch point. We do not know what will happen next. The present moment is pregnant with possibility and potential. When we are mindful now, no matter what we are doing or saying or working on or experiencing, the next moment is influenced by our presence of mind, and is thus different from how it would have been had we not been paying attention, had we been caught up in some whirlpool or other within the mind or body or the outer landscape. So, if we wish to take care of the future that, when we get there, will also be now, the only way we can do that is to take care of this future of all past moments and efforts, namely the present. The only way we can do this is to  recognize each moment as a branch point and realize that it makes all the difference in how the world, your world, and your one wild and precious life, will unfold. We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.

Ample incentive to act with integrity and presence, and with kindness and compassion, for ourselves and for others. Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.”

- Coming to our Senses  - Healing ourselves and the world through mindfulness, by Jon Kabat Zinn.

I Weave a Silence

I weave a silence onto my lips.

I weave a silence into my mind.

I weave a silence within my heart.

I close my ears to distractions.

I close my eyes to attractions.

I close my heart to temptations.

Calm me, O Lord, as you stilled the storm.

Still me, O Lord; keep me from harm.

Let all tumult within me cease.

Enfold me, Lord, in your peace.

A Gaelic Prayer

Meditation

Something magical happened today during my morning meditation. Can’t describe it. A wonderful feeling of joy and happiness swelled up from deep within for a few moments and disappeared.

I don’t want any explanations nor any reasoning for this. It was a moment to savor. If this is the pleasure that meditation brings, I can’t wait to dive deeper.

Science unravels Spirituality

Code Name God by Mani Bhaumik -  is the latest edition to my bookshelf. I picked this up after reading a review in DeccanHerald. I breezed through the first half of the book pretty easily. When Mani gets gets into the later part of the book where he deep dives into physics to get his point across, I lost him. Now wait before you jump to conclusion, this book is brilliantly written. It is my lack of understanding of physics that has had me derailed. It is an opportunity to go back to the subject and get some funda' cleared. 

This book has received rave reviews from the Indian press and they are not off the mark.

Indian Express writes:

 This spiritual odyssey is intense in its drama and deeply revealing in its insight.Mani has a gift for explaining philosophy, cosmology and quantum physics in terms that anyone can understand. He weaves science and spirituality together to show their common thread - that a unified field of consciousness underlies all of Creation.

The Hindu Businessline writes:

Meet Mani Bhaumik, one of the pioneers of laser technology that made Lasik laser eye surgery possible. He is on a mission — after making "people see better with their eyes, I now want to help them see better with their mind."

Mani writes extensively about consciousness and meditation. One statement that resonates with me is when Mani writes: "Once you get a taste of the experience, you will know for sure that an innocuos process like meditation can bring a profound change in the quality of your life." I can vouch for this!