Making the most of a holiday

 

Rest and happiness make a real holiday. Often people go on a holiday and they come back tired and tanned, needing a few more days to recuperate! A real holiday is one that energizes you and does not wear you out. Nothing energizes you like wisdom, so remember: 

• Doubts and complaints are impediments to rest. 
• The moment you set out on your holiday, know that it has begun. Often people expect to find a pinnacle of happiness. Enjoy every moment of the journey as children do; do not wait for the destination. 
• If you cannot be happy in one place, you cannot be happy in any other place. If you do not know how to row one boat, you will not be able to row any other boat. 
• To get maximum satisfaction out of your holiday, you need to do something creative and to engage in seva. Do not ever forget to make meditation and prayer a part of your holiday. 

If your days are holy, then every day is a holiday!

How and why of meditation

 

A strong tendency to keep doing something, whether important or unimportant, becomes an impediment to meditation. “Doing” starts first with an intention and then translates into action. 

Though intention springs from Being, when it becomes “doing” it does not let you settle down. All intentions, good or bad, important or trivial, need to be dropped for meditation to happen. 

But isn’t dropping all intentions itself an intention? Yes, but that intention is necessary and it is the last. Dropping intentions is not an act. Just the intention to drop them, itself serves the purpose. 

Dropping all intentions even for a moment brings you in touch with your Self and in that instant meditation happens. While you sit for meditation, you have to let the world be the way it is. 

The repetition of meditation is to habituate your system to stop and start activity at will. The ability to consciously do this is a very precious skill.

Erasing impressions and improving expression

 

Do not make an effort to impress others or to express yourself. Your effort to impress someone will be futile. Your effort to express yourself becomes an impediment. If you do not try to impress, expression comes naturally. 

When you come from the Self, your expression will be perfect and your impression lasts for ages. 

Often you do not seem to have a control over your impressions and expressions. Wisdom is selecting your impressions and expressions. Enlightenment is when you do not have any impressions at all, whether good or bad. Then you “master” the art of expression. 

Many impressions in the mind cause confusion, distraction, chaos, an inability to focus, and ultimately, derangement of the mind. Nature has built into us a system through which we release some of the impressions – through dreams and meditation. 

You lose depth, luster, and your serenity with excessive expression. Meditation erases the impressions and improves the expression.

Cleanse your body and cleanse your soul. Cleanse your body with water, your soul with knowledge and your spirit with pranayama and Sudarshan Kriya. There is no penance higher than pranayama. It is the greatest penance.

To be or not to be, attached and detached

 

Do you know why the earth is shaped like a globe? So that you can kick it and it will roll away! 

From the moment you wake up in the morning, you are always with people, and your mind is caught up in worldly thoughts. So sometime during the day, sit for a few minutes, get into the cave of your heart, close your eyes, and kick the world away like a ball. But as soon as you open your eyes, hold onto the ball because you need to kick it again in the next session. 

During the day be one hundred percent attached to your work; do not try to detach yourself. But when you sit for meditation, then totally detach yourself. Only those who can be totally detached can take total responsibility. 

Eventually you will be able to be both attached and detached simultaneously. Kick the ball and be in the goal. This is the art of living, the skill of living.

Dissolving into one Divinity

 

When a river meets the ocean, the river no longer remains a river. It becomes the ocean. A drop of the ocean is part of the ocean. 

In the same way, the moment a devotee meets or surrenders to the Divine, the devotee becomes God. When the river meets the ocean, it recognizes that it is the ocean from the beginning to the end. Similarly, the individual “I... I...” dissolves into one Divinity. 

Now some of you may ask, what about backwaters? Sometimes the ocean goes into the river to greet it. Sometimes it seems that the ocean is pushing back the river. Similarly, the Divine puts questions and doubts in the mind or provides an amazing experience to bring you back home.

Understanding "sacrifice" and the paradox of it

 

All the scriptures of the world glorify sacrifice. But what is sacrifice?

It is giving up something you value. You can only sacrifice something that you would like to keep for yourself, something that gives you pleasure and joy. You cannot sacrifice something that you dislike or disown. 

Sacrifice is always related to a higher cause for a greater good. At the same time, when your love for the greater good is so strong, nothing else assumes any value. Sacrifice here becomes irrelevant, because love alone is your strongest driving force. When there is so much love, there cannot be sacrifice and when there is no love, there is no sacrifice. 

If a mother has made plans to see a movie and she realizes that her child is sick, she does not say that she sacrificed the movie to care for her child because she simply did not want to go. Nothing else charms the mother besides being with her child. 

You do not sacrifice something for someone you love. Sacrifice indicates that your pleasure has more value than the cause for which you are sacrificing. When love is lukewarm, then sacrifice assumes meaning. Yet sacrifice purifies the human mind and reins in selfish tendencies. It can also bring pride, arrogance, self-pity and sometimes even depression. 

You can sacrifice only that which you value. For a wise man nothing is more valuable than truth, values and the Divine, and he will never sacrifice those. 

God is the greatest, and if someone values the greatest, how can he sacrifice God? This is the paradox of sacrifice.

Commitment brings strength

 

Why is it easier for some of us to commit to our own welfare rather than to the welfare of others? Because you do not know that whatever you are committed to brings you strength. If you are committed to your family, then your family supports you. If you are committed to your society, you enjoy the support of society. If you are committed to God, God gives you strength. If you are committed to truth, truth brings you strength. 

Often people are not aware of this and that is why they are hesitant to commit to a greater cause. They also fear that commitment weakens people or takes away their freedom. But your commitment to a cause is bound to bring you comfort in the long run. 

Commitment in life will certainly move you toward a higher cause. The higher the commitment, the greater is the good for all. 

When your path is charming, commitment is effortless and is part of your nature.

Commitment vs convenience

 

What should you do if your commitment is boring? Commitment has value when things are not so charming. When things are interesting you do not need commitment at all. You never say you are committed to doing something that is very interesting or charming.

A commitment can only be felt when it oversteps convenience. When something is convenient, it is not called commitment. If you are driven by your convenience, your commitment falls apart causing more inconvenience! 

If you keep dropping your commitment because it is inconvenient, can you be comfortable? Often what is convenient does not bring comfort but just gives an illusion of comfort. Also if you are too stuck in commitment, and it is inconvenient too often, you will be unable to fulfill your commitment and it will only generate frustration. 

Wisdom is to strike a balance between convenience and commitment because both bring comfort to the body, mind and spirit. A seeker of knowledge should forget about convenience, as should soldiers, rulers, students, seekers of wealth and all essential service providers. Those who want to be creative and adventurous need to transcend convenience. Those who are ambitious and have a passion for a goal will not care for convenience.

Commitment is comfort to the wise. Whenever their commitment is shaken, their comfort is also shaken. To the lazy, commitment is torture though it is their best remedy. In the long run, commitment will always bring comfort.

Are there any commitments that can be given up? Yes. Sometimes when you make a commitment without a vision, you feel stifled when your vision expands. Such commitments made with shortsightedness can be given up. A smaller, less important commitment can be given up for a greater commitment. Commitment to the means can be given up for the sake of a commitment to the goals. When in the long run, your commitment brings misery to many it can be given up.

The actions that can take you to infinity

 

What can you do for eternity? You definitely cannot do anything that is big or great because that requires effort and effort tires you. So, doing something great is a temporary state. If you can think of one thing that is far beneath your capacity and agree to do it for eternity, that becomes puja. 

The willingness to consciously do trivial things for eternity unites you with eternity. This is an antidote to ego. Ego is always ambitious and strives to do the toughest job, like climbing Mount Everest. Simple acts like watching a butterfly, watering the garden, observing the sky can bring deep relaxation, and relaxation connects you with your source. This does not mean that you should do trivial things all your life, but consciously agreeing to do trivial acts for eternity opens a new dimension and brings immense peace and restfulness. 

To find rest in activity, choose an activity that is far below your capacity and agree to do it for eternity. Doing a job far below your capacity and being satisfied, will then make it possible to do a job much beyond your capacity. 

Know that all actions are born out of infinity and that which is born out of infinity can take you to infinity.

There is only one way to experience real pleasure

 

There is pleasure in rest and pleasure in activity. The pleasure in activity is momentary and causes fatigue while the pleasure in rest is magnanimous and energizing. 

So, to the one who has tasted pleasure in rest (samadhi), the pleasure in activity is insignificant. All activities that you do, you do so that you can have deep rest. Activity is part of the system.

However, the real pleasure is in samadhi. In order to have deep rest one must be active. The proper balance of both is essential. 

Many seek pleasure in this or that, but the wise man just smiles. The real rest is only in knowledge.