Be A Lotus In Life - Barkha Dhar - Hindustan Times

My latest article Be a Lotus in Life has been published in the Inner Voice section of The Hindustan Times, India's leading Newspaper.

A Gift Called Life

A zest for breathing in and breathing out is what we call life. Its exquisite motley lies in living it with maximum resonance to realize its immaculate glow. As a keepsake of memories and a prose of emotions, life is a journey through time. Its magnificent opus lies in changing from autumn to spring, in rhythm and beats, in dancing to joy, in the aura of abode, in playful and innocent enchantments, in finding your love and espousing it, in being a mother, in working together to work it out, in playing your part as an adventure of cheer and glee, in being confident of your abilities to bend your flaws into potential strengths, in trying to score deftly with each past failed attempts. So let’s raise a toast to life for not living it alone but celebrating it together to move with its flow to live in now. This drive called life however shouldn’t limit here. It may begin its opulent journey now by sharing our blessings with others, unveiling humility to give hope to others on this mystical route to tranquility and Karma. 

As Gautam Buddha said, “So let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful” for this eternal gift called life.

Copyright (c) 2010 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot
Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarkhaDhar

Peace of Mind

Our Mind is an enigma of desires. It’s the abode to infinite thoughts and ménage to potent emotions. In its oscillations through day and night it empowers us with behest. Its astounding power is the beehive of sensation. As a rendezvous of events and experiences, it’s also the stimuli to life’s uncountable expressions. Even while asleep, our mind unearths hidden pleasures and deep aspirations in dreams. Like a bubble it blobs ideas and illusions, imagination and entity, Truth and false, actions and repose, silence and sound, joy and sorrow, anger and calm, fear and strength, angst and ease. In all these bearings, mind’s lore remains the enchantment of our existence. To feel and understand this dynamism requires sobriety and self control. 

In it’s longing for more, either bounty of material or lush of spiritual, our mind travels to great extent. Sometimes its quenchless soars are overwhelming for the senses that disturb the bliss in simple pleasures of life. Our mind’s such state consequently navigates us to aggression, ego, hatred and jealousy thus disturbing its serenity. However, realizing our mind’s benevolence makes us aware of our strengths in being empathetic, compassionate and balanced.

Some of us may remember the primary grade story of ‘Thirsty Crow’ that one by one dropped pebbles into an earthen pot to raise the level of water inside to quench his thirst. Practically, we are like the crow, the earthen pot is our mind; the level of water is our conscience and the pebbles are our thoughts, emotions and actions. With each good deed we incrementally help raise the level of our consciousness to embrace positivity and change. Eventually we attain peace and inner freedom to release ourselves from any resistance. Such state is also known as ‘bodhi’, the supreme enlightenment in Buddhism. However it could be practiced or initiated even through humanitarian state of mind to promote altruism and social conscience.  

As the mind starts such passage, our life gains unique and ubiquitous momentum. 

We ask ourselves who am I? What purpose does my life serve?

Is my net worth more important than counting on my self worth?

Do I need to slow down in my rush to exist?

Does my conscience hurt when I speak lie, defame others or purposely hurt someone?

Am I equal in sharing love with people irrespective of their abilities?

Do I believe that my mind has the power to dwell in peace?

On answering such questions life becomes meaningful to live and peace of mind becomes integral to achieve world peace. 

Copyright (c) 2009 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot

Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarkhaDhar

Greed Is Contemptuous

On the Wall Street greed and fear may be the psychology behind an investment portfolio that helps analyze social, cognitive and emotional moves behind a financial decision but on the main street, greed is simply a social evil. As a ramification of a scornful mind, greed is a derisive act, which pushes us to an overwhelming desire for more and an unending hunger for money, temporal pleasures to faking relationships and hurting other’s emotions. Greed is not about acquiring wealth and getting richer. It actually is like entering a glittering passage to experience the darkness of ignorance and concealment that robs us of our moral values and good deeds to ultimately make us poor.

If King Siddhartha, more commonly known as the erstwhile Gautama Buddha had been greedy, this world would have been deprived of Buddhism’s spiritual teachings and awakenings. If Aristotle had been greedy, a comprehensive system of western philosophy of morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics and metaphysics would have remained obscure. Had avarice been the motive behind Wright brother’s gliders and jet plane inventions, long distance travel would still have been a mystery. Moreover, had Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and other revolutionists been grabby, freedom would have remained a word coined just in encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Greed is a negative emotion that has multiple hidden faces and can lead to pseudo-behaviors that spoil the harmony in relationships and sanctity in humanity. Power through unethical means, satisfying lust through extramarital affairs, breeding violence and extremism through terrorism, wealth maximization through stock scams and fraudulent practices, reaping higher profits margins through selling fake and defected products, are some common illustrations of greed. One of the fundamental principles of greed starts with ‘I, Me, and Myself’. Knowingly or unknowingly such feeling is the greed for control, the home of ego and the state of prejudice.

Like other negative emotions, greed too can take any form and slowly alienate us from valuable moments and small pleasures of life. Joy and gratification that we experience in love or a hearty laugh can be viciously eaten by greed. To illustrate further on this, trading educated and professionally competent sons for material wealth is a common practice that revolves around the concept of marriages in India. Unfortunately even if the girl is well educated, cultured and belongs to a respectable family, she still is weighed against money and material assets in a greedy trade-off. Predominance of such behavior in the form of greed in a sacred institution like marriage disturbs the theme and belief that marriages are made in heaven. More importantly, such behavior blots the initiation of new relationship between two individuals and two families that can otherwise begin with a positive note and on a leveled turf. If greed is the culture our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are made to breed, then our society is certainly heading fast towards an apocalypse of hope, optimism, trust and respect in human relationships. An educated and matured women once said to me, ‘Do you think dowry death cases that are reported in the press and media are really true? I don’t believe it.’ Her conscious statement perhaps had a subconscious message. She may have been sailing the same dowry boat when she married her son and her statement was a mode to conceal her emotions and greedy self.

Bitter, yet true, such is the veil of greed that superimposes the real us. It takes us to a no-return point in life and in relationships to ultimately distance us from our family and children. Greed also takes us to a mental and emotional level where genuine love, impartial actions, honesty and sincerity seem inferior to abounding wealth. Erich Fromm, a German social psychologist and humanistic philosopher rightly said, ‘Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction’. Some of the ways to get out of greedy shackles is to limit our desires so that aspirations today do not become over ambitions tomorrow. Also, valuing relationships more than material assets is yet another way to track greedy behavior as relationships may be broken just in seconds but it takes a life to mend them back. Most importantly, as parents we should be cautious of not deterring from our morality and ethics. If we have greed nesting in us today how would we stop our children from such an unhealthy contagion tomorrow?

Copyright (c) 2009-Present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
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