Knowing how limited I am!

When I first got in touch with Chat GPT. I felt like God stood infront of me and said I cannot give you anything, but I can answer any question you have that you can go ahead and use the response for whatever you want. It was such a tremendous feeling realizing that you have got so much power now but didnt even know what to do with it or how to use it. All I could ask is how to plan a vacation. That made me realize how limited I am that I even didnt know what to ask. 

Tree of life

I always had the question in mind if karma is pre-determined or is it a result of free-will. I always used to think that if its pre-determined there is no point for god giving us all this beautiful life with all the faculties that we enjoy or have at our disposal. There is another school of thought where if karma is a result of our actions, then the actions itself are pre-determined. Is it possible to break out of that?

If you observe a tree, it's very synonymous to our life. We always start at the root. They are no branches near the root. As our intelligence is developing (synonymous to we moving upwards along the trunk), the branches appear in the form of choices. Later on at every point in our life, we will be presented with choices about various aspects of our life. If we make the right choices and keep travelling along the trunk, we will reach the top. Every human being born is destined or is perfectly capable to reach the top. But somewhere along the way, because of the choices we make, we may end up in a different place on the tree.

But if you think about it, it is perfectly possible to find our way back to the top of the tree. Tree will teach us that possibility. Now the real question is how do we know that we are travelling along the trunk. The most fundamental thing to remember is that if you make a decision and be able to not remember anything regarding that ever again, then you can be assured that you are moving along the trunk and its just a matter of time before you reach the top. If not, we just need to deal with the after-effects of our decision

Letting go

Recently I had a chance to do snorkeling. It was a beautiful experience and it was scary as hell both at the same time. The snorkeling gear we had wouldnt let us drown and the ocean current was normal. You just have to trick your brain to get used to the gear. But there is one important thing I noticed, even though I have trained my brain with the gear, and even though I am perfectly capable of floating in the water, it was extremely hard to let go of the surfboard that brought us to the ocean.

This made me think about how much we are used to the things that we are used to and its not easy to let go of familiar things in the pursuit of new experiences

Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya

This is one of the very common and famous prayers in our scriptures which means "Lead me from darkness to light". I always have a problem with this line. When people say this line, I always used to argue what's wrong with darkness. Darkness did not do anything wrong. We always make our room extremely dark to be able to sleep properly. The movie theaters have to make it very dark in order for us to enjoy the movie. When we are really down, we tend to sit in dark places, because darkness is really helping us cope up with whatever we are dealing with in our lives.  So there is nothing wrong with darkness. Both darkness and light are equally important.

Most of the times, the meaning is not straightforward in our scriptures. Its hidden somewhere in the nature or other random places. We need to have the time and motivation to gain insight, otherwise we will end up with wrong interpretations. 

If you observe, the way we see the colors on a surface depends on what color the surface is reflecting. If we are seeing green color frog, the color we see is the light reflected off of the surface of the frog's skin perceived by our eyes. If we are seeing a yellow fruit, the surface of the fruit reflects the color yellow. If some surface absorbs everything, then we perceive it as black color (synonymous to darkness). If some surface reflects everything then it is perceived as white color (synonymous to light). So what this line is actually telling us is "Lead me from the state of absorbing everything to the state of reflecting everything", meaning, lead me to a state of being a witness to everything that's happening in the world. 

This is definitely a prayer that we all need

Discipline - Creating constants in a day

People associate discipline with time. Actually discipline has nothing to do with time. Discipline is all about three things. Effortlessness, Perfection and Constancy. If you do a task everyday in the exact same way, in course of time it will become effortless. If you continue doing the same task, you will experience perfection which means you have understood all the possible boundaries of that task. If you still continue to do them, you will be able to experience constancy using those tasks. Irrespective of whatever circumstance you are in, or whatever is your state of mind, doing those things that you do every day will let you experience the calmness and those tasks will become your support in life.

We go through so much each day in our modern world and it will be a good idea to keep atleast few tasks in a day that will never change, that will act as a support in times of crunch. This is extremely hard, but it can also be a pillar of support once achieved. The so called people who are great at embracing changes definitely have a few constants in a day. 

We are living in a world of instant food, instant result, instant gratification. So there is a sense of urgency created in our brain that will keep us away from discipline. Because this will take time and consistent effort. And we are not able to even handle simple pressures in life. We are waiting for a bus, bus takes few more minutes, we will check our phone 10 times. We are waiting in traffic, we will listen to the traffic news on radio or look at the alternate routes. We are watching a series and the first episode ends in a suspense, we cannot stop. We have to keep watching. The instant result culture created by the technology is preventing us from having  lasting friendships, lasting relationships etc. Keep atleast few constants that we can do every single day that can eventually become our support

Character and Self respect

I believe that endurance builds character and the reasoning that you develop in your mind for that endurance becomes your self-respect. And that self-respect is what brings clarity/humbleness in speech. Based on the circumstances that you are facing in your life, sometimes you may have to endure a lot of things. You have to develop a certain reasoning in your mind to develop that endurance. It’s not at all easy. 

Different people develop different kinds of reasoning based on their brought up, circumstances or compulsions they are living in, or the kind of knowledge they have or acquired over the period of their life. Sometimes, reading about history or knowing about what’s happening around us can certainly help in developing that reasoning in your mind. The drive for this reasoning is that you need it because without that you have no endurance and without endurance you cannot live. So the desire to live creates purpose (or even the other way, purpose creates the desire to live) that will help us build the reasoning that will lead to developing endurance towards what we are going through in life

For example “I am living a life based on dharma” can certainly be a reason to develop that endurance. It need not always be based on a philosophy. Lets take the case of a janitor, if they think that they are creating a healthy environment for people to live, that itself will create a purpose in their life, which in turn creates the reasoning for endurance

Bring your day back to life

We keep seeing people and asking them "how are you", "whats up" etc. and most of the times we are used to getting responses like, "fine", "going on" etc or some other mediocre answers. 

The life that we have every day is the microcosm of our entire life or Our entire life is the macrocosm of our every day life. If you observe your everyday life and see what you feel about it. Most probably thats exactly what you feel about your life

So the overall outlook of your life will change if you are really interested and excited about your daily life. This is the secret. So if you really want to improve your life, improve your everyday