What is true maturity?

Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one’s own. It is never-ending, says Swami Kriyananda

Surely it is self-evident that in the way we raise our children, we should lead them somewhere. Where, then, should we lead them? Isn’t the simple, obvious answer: from immaturity to maturity? What, then, is maturity? Let me propose a definition: Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one’s own. Immaturity is a child throwing a tantrum because he can’t get what he wants. Children discover as they grow up that life isn’t always disposed to comply with their wishes. The process of growing up is one of learning to “play the odds” — to adapt to situations as they are, and not as one wishes they were. Immature people typically decry such adaptation as “compromise”. Many people mature a little, but not much, beyond the child with his temper tantrums. Much might have been accomplished during the time they were growing up to cure them of this infantilism. Instead, the very dogmas of our times feed their immaturity instead of curing it. Not long ago, during an economic recession in America, many hundreds of workers in the city of Detroit, Michigan lost their jobs. A considerable number were given psychiatric counselling to help them adjust. There were too many cases, however, to make this counselling available to everyone. Interestingly, those who were given counselling had a notably more difficult time adjusting to their new circumstances. How to explain these results? The report said that the “beneficiaries” of counselling were encouraged to dwell on their predicament, and to consider various theoretical means of coping with it. Those who missed the opportunity for counselling wasted no time in theorizing. They accepted reality as it presented itself to them, and set themselves to rebuilding their lives. Maturity is not a finishing line reached automatically at a certain age. It is a neverending-process. We sail towards expansive horizons of awareness until we find infinity.

What do you do when you do?(PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA)

Psychologists say that a person living in western countries never sleeps for more than 14 minutes at a stretch - more often it is less. After 14 minutes he comes back to the dream state or wakeful consciousness or just floats in the dream level. Again he goes back to sleep for a maximum of 14 minutes. Then he comes back to the dream level. Again he goes back to sleep. They call this the rapid eye movement or REM sleep pattern.

You never sleep totally even when you sleep. There are levels of mind in which you will never have dreams. You never need to have any dreams. You can directly enter into deep sleep, if you know how to live in the now, the present moment.
If you know how to live in now, you will know the art of eating, the art of sleeping, and the art of doing everything. That is the art of living.

Can you try to remember one incident from your day in complete detail? You are more dead than alive even when you are awake. You almost live like a man in half sleep. You do things without fully knowing what you do. You do recall brushing your teeth; but do you remember the sensation of cold water in your mouth? Do you remember the feel of the taste of the toothpaste in your mouth or the pressure of your toothbrush upon your gums? And how did you feel after brushing? Or how was the water being poured on your body in the shower? How did the whole thing happen? What is happening after you have eaten your food? Look at your life; look at your face; you are all almost bored. Somehow you are pulling along. Life is just a drag. Why? Because, all you do, all that you know to do for everything is how to postpone. Your mind never sits with your being. Your mind never lives in the same moment that you are in. You are always in the space of tomorrow or in the space of yesterday. It is never in the space of today, now, the present.

Live in the present. This is the secret art of living.

Of Goodness, Intimacy and True Sharing(Swami Sukhabodhananda)

A crow found a piece of meat. The moment it picked up the meat, the other crows and eagles began chasing it. The crow soared higher and higher to safeguard the meat. The others chased it relentlessly. Then, suddenly, the crow dropped the meat; the crows and eagles left the chase, and dived towards the meat that had fallen to the ground.

Now that the crow was free from its pursuers, it realised a great truth. "I lost the meat, but then, i have gained great freedom!" Similarly, if we drop our ego, our life will get released from tension. Just as the crow could fly at will in the vast sky, we too can soar in the beauty of life!

Vedas have four sections - Moksha Shastra, Artha Shastra, Kama Shastra and Dharma Shastra. The Moksha Shastra says: "Only when we drop our ego, do we realise the bliss that is within us!" The Artha Shastra advocates: "Earn money out of love; not out of greed". Greed can never satisfy us. The Kama Shastra advocates: "Convert sex into prayer". The Dharma Shastra says: "Let goodness, not ambition, be the foundation of life". Out of goodness, let ambition arise.

Our parents, siblings, spouse and children deserve our love and care. But while we do not share everything with them, we confide freely with a few friends. Over a period of time, a feeling of intimacy develops.

To help intimacy grow in your marital relationship; treat your spouse as your friend. Let there be transparency in your words and deeds. Some declare with pride, "I do not discuss office matters at home!" The reason given by couples is, "If i share office matters with my spouse, it might not be understood. It might lead to confusion and worry". This may be true to some extent. But it is not so difficult to overcome this simple hurdle, it is to prevent a wall rising between the two of you.
When you share your troubles, dreams or worries... what will a good friend do? He would just listen, letting you unburden yourself. He would create an atmosphere for meaningful sharing. Mother Teresa would say: "Don't spend your time in judging others; then you will not have time to love them!"

It is absolutely essential that such an intimacy exists between husband and wife. It is worth looking at an advice provided in Christianity to nourish the intimacy between husband, wife and children. "The family that prays together stays together!"
In married life, you have to compromise on certain issues which you may not really like or enjoy. One should learn to accommodate the other's likes and dislikes. Intimacy is bound to develop in the environment of such readiness to accommodate.
You receive as much as you give. One is more blessed in giving than in receiving. One should develop an attitude of giving in to the taste and interest of the spouse on less important issues.

You have to learn to like what you dislike too and even dislike what you like; so that you are above likes and dislikes. Then you will have likes and dislikes, instead of likes and dislikes having you! This is true mastery. Be a master of likes and dislikes.

The fallen Tomato Cart ......SUBROTO BAGCHI

Not my post...but amazing article to read...

I pass through this very intersection every morning with so much ease. Today, the pace is skewed. There is a sense of disarray as motorists try to push past each other through the traffic light. The light here always tests their agility because if you miss the green, you have to wait for another three minutes before it lets you go past again. Those three minutes become eternity for an otherwise time-insensitive nation on the move. Today, there is a sense of chaos here. People are honking, skirting each other and rushing past. I look out of my window to seek the reason. It is not difficult to find because it is lying strewn all over the place. A tomato seller's cart has overturned. There are tomatoes everywhere and the rushing motorists are making pulp of it. The man is trying to get his cart back on its four rickety wheels and a few passersby are picking up what they can in an attempt to save him total loss. Though symbolic in the larger scheme of things, it is not a substantive gesture. His business for the day is over.

The way this man's economics works is very simple. There is a money lender who lends him money for just one day, at an interest rate of Rs 10 per day per Rs 100 lent. With the money, he wakes up at 4 am to go to the wholesale market for vegetables. He returns, pushing his cart a good five miles, and by 7 am when the locality wakes up, he is ready to sell his day's merchandise. By the end of the morning, some of it remains unsold. This his wife sells by the afternoon and takes home the remainder, which becomes part of his meal. With the day's proceeds, he returns the interest to the money lender and goes back to the routine the next day.

If he does not sell for a day, his chain breaks. Where does he go from here? He goes back to the money lender, raises capital at an even more penal interest and gets back on his feet. This is not the only time that destiny has upset his tomato cart. This happens to him at least six times every year. Once he returned with a loaded cart of ripe tomatoes and it rained heavily for the next three days. No one came to the market and his stock rotted in front of his own eyes. Another time, instead of the weather, it was a political rally that snowballed into a confrontation between two rival groups and the locality closed down. And he is not alone in this game of extraneous factors that seize not only his business but also his life. He sees this happen to the "gol-gappa" seller, the peanut seller and the "vada pao" seller all the time. When their product does not sell, it just turns soggy. Sometimes they eat some of it. But how much of that stuff can you eat by yourself? So, they just give away some and there is always that one time when they have to simply throw it away.

Away from the street-vendor selling perishable commodity with little or no life support system, the corporate world is an altogether different place. Here we have some of the most educated people in the country. We don the best garbs. We do not have to push carts; our carts push us. We have our salary, perquisites, bonuses, stock options, gratuities, pensions and our medical insurance and the group accident benefit schemes. Yet, all the while, we worry about our risks and think about our professional insecurity. We wonder, what would happen if the company shifted offices to another city? What would happen if the department closed down? What would happen if you were to take maternity leave and the temporary substitute delivered better work than you did? What would happen if the product line you are dealing with simply failed? In any of those eventualities, the worst that could happen would still be a lot less than having to see your cartful of tomatoes getting pulped under the screeching wheels of absolute strangers who have nothing personal against you.

All too often we exaggerate our risks. We keep justifying our professional concerns till they trap us in their vicious downward spiral. Devoid of education, sophisticated reasoning and any financial safety net, the man with the cart is often able to deal with life much better than many of us. Is it time to look out of the window, into the eyes of that man to ask him, where does he get it from? In his simple stoicism, is probably, our lost resilience?

Drop the ego for enlightenment(Swami Sukhabodhananda)

Life is filled with truth, auspiciousness and beauty (satyam, shivam and sundaram) but our self is filled with a false ego. As long as the ego lives, we may not experience true beauty but our mind will be filled with dreams of expectations that define beauty in a subjective way. Ego is nothing but a self image of who we truly are.

This self image projects a reality defined by the expectations of the ego. When these expectations are not fulfilled, it creates its own resentments and regrets. These create a life of deficiency called 'samsara' and life becomes a movement from incompleteness to incompleteness.

If one increases one's awareness, which is a part of meditation, one realizes that resentment is nothing but a mental resentment to what has happened. It is a negative emotional fight of some unalterable past. Like a broken record one replays, relives the past injuries. Then they become mental constructs which project a subjective reality and hence we never see the objective reality. This mental construct act as a thermostat. To change the temperature of the room one has to reset the thermostat, to change the temperature of the internal room one has to drop the ego.

While listening to the chirping of the bird or music hear the foundation or the backbone of the sound. Look at the bird or the musician and see the formless presence in the form. Every form exists in a formless presence. A form is defined by the formless. It is only in the contrast the forms gets defined. This formless is the backbone of the form. Thoughts are moving. Any movement is change. Change happens in the changeless presence. Thoughts are internal sounds. See the soundless space while noisy thoughts are moving. When one deeply "sees" which is called 'Darshan' in Sanskrit, then one sees a formless, soundless, changeless presence as the backbone or foundation of life. This principle cannot be contained in any self image and hence self image is a prison in which most of us live. To drop this prison is enlightenment.

Tere Bin(without you) from album bus ek pal(just a moment)

This is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever come across in youtube.
I really love it.
Can't put it in words.
It's deep.
Here it goes.Enjoy.
(Note:the translation too is not original.taken from some online forum and modified to make it better)

tere bin, main yun kaise jiya, kaise jiya tere bin
without you, how did I live, how did I ever live without you

tere bin, main yun kaise jiya, kaise jiya tere bin
without you, how did I live, how did I ever live without you

lekar yaadein teri, raatein meri kati
with memories of you, my nights were spent.

lekar yaadein teri, raatein meri kati
with memories of you, my nights were spent.

mujhse baatein teri, karti hain chandni
the moonlight is talking to me about you

tanha hai, tujh bin raatein meri
alone are my nights without you

din mere, din ke jaise nahi
my days are no more like days

tanha badan, tanha hai ruh
lonely is my body, lonely is my soul

nam meri aankhen rahe
nor have my eyes remained

aaja mere ab rubaroo
come back now

jeena nahi bin tere
don’t want to live without you

tere bin, main yun kaise jiya, kaise jiya tere bin
without you, how did I live, how did I ever live without you

tere bin, main yun kaise jiya, kaise jiya tere bin
without you, how did I live, how did I ever live without you

kab se aankhen meri, raah main tere bichhi
for so long are my eyes, laid on your path

kab se aankhen meri, raah main tere bichhi
for so long are my eyes,laid on your path

bhule se hi kabhi, tu mil jayen kahin
even by mistake sometimes, you might be seen somewhere

bhule na, mujhse baatein teri
I can’t forget, your words

bheegi hai, har pal aankhen meri
my eyes are always wet

kyun saans loon, kyun main jiyun, jeena bura sa lage
why should I breathe, why should I live, living feels wrong

kyun ho gaya tu bewafa, mujhko bata de wajah
why did you become faithless (in me), tell me the reason

tere bin, main yun kaise jiya, kaise jiya tere bin
without you, how did I live, how did I ever live without you

The Opinion You Form Is Always Relative

If you truly respect sacred teachings, it is necessary to practise than merely preach. Among the beautiful teachings of Jainism is Syat Vaada. Syat Vaada says everything is relative and nothing is absolute.

For example, if one is practising Syat Vaada, and he hears someone say that a person is stupid, then he will say his stupidity is relative and not absolute.

This is because they believe that nothing has absolute characteristics. Our perception is always influenced by various factors. So whatever opinion we form of any person or thing can only be subjective or relative.

When an opinion is formed of a person, the question to be asked is: "Is it absolute or relative?" Whenever you form an opinion of others and consider it as absolute, then you stop seeing the person as a flowing being. Nobody is static, everyone is a flowing being.

By forming an absolute opinion of someone, you are destroying the basic quality of an individual as a flowing being. How does this concept help in our daily lives?

To me the quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships. Keeping the perception of our relationship relative is keeping it open. Being open gives ventilation to life. If someone says Mr X is stupid, then he is not practising Syat Vaada. But if he says, "As far as i know, Mr X is stupid", then he is not labelling the person and at the same time validating his perception, and being open to other variables which do not make the other person stupid.

So often, we are prisoners of our own knowledge. So by saying "as far as i know", i am not making my knowledge as absolute and at the same time not deleting whatever i know and being open to other variables.

In this process, i am setting myself free and others free by not labelling the other. We label others and see only the labels and not the persons. This is an ignorant way of living. A wise person creates happiness around and an unwise one creates unhappiness. Practising Syat means 'up to a point'. If i can make statements like 'up to a point this person is bad', then i am allowing myself to see beyond my limiting perception. Any person is bad up to a point. Even a thief is bad up to a point, but he will do good acts for someone he cares for. So how can we say that the thief is bad in absolute terms?

This principle can be applied as 'to me'. In our perceptions and in our opinions of others, we could tell ourselves that 'to me' a person is bad and not that he is bad in absolute terms. Such a perception is more factual. We suffer in life for we make absolute statements about others and ourselves. We can set ourselves free and others by practising this principle, which says 'maybe' for things are relative. When we operate on a relative plane, we are open to other possibilities.

Creativity happens in the space of openness. When we are open, we see opportunities. There are far more opportunities than we think. When opportunity knocks, a wise person is open to opportunities, whereas an unwise person complains. So openness is a great virtue and this is the result of the practice of the principle of Syat Vaada.

Discourse: Swami Sukhabodhananda
www.prasannatrust.org