Tendencies of the mind - II

Back in the days, more than a decade ago when I did my very first Art of Living program, and then repeated multiple times, we were taught quite a few good behavioral aspects aka knowledge points, One of them appears to be circling in my mind for the last few weeks (if not months); It is the knowledge point about "Tendencies of the mind", one important tendency of the mind is to cling to the negative, other important tendency is to either completely in the past or in the future and never in the moment. I am sure the course taught a few more things.

That said, one other thing I realized is the tendency to categorize and label anything and everything (including itself). To elaborate, growing up in India and specially in south of India there were always few tensions between people, one had to do with  language (Kannada vs Tamil) and other with geographic location of your specific city in the Indian subcontinent (north vs south). As some one rightly put it, I became an Indian only after I left India. Living in America for almost 2 decades now, I have realized this place is no different, there are tensions between people but may be for slightly different reasons.

This made me think further and I realized, the human mind cannot and will not rest until it has categorized anything and everything around it. In the early days of civilization it wanted to categorize based on the color of skin, type of attire and then as civilization grew and expanded came  the division on occupation and with trade came the division based on location and later with the more industrial world and “intellectual” world, it became about the belief system (philosopher, intellectual, poet, activist, pacifist, communist, liberal, conservative and so on) then when the mind became even more evolved it started categorizing further and refining it even more, “fiscally conservative’', “religiously conservative”, “animal rights activist”, “women’s rights activist”, “right leaning”, “left leaning”, “extreme right wing”, “extreme left wing” and so on. Needless to say in between some where came the rich vs poor and my other favorite one “religion and culture” (I believe they exist together). I am sure I have missed a few categories and the timeline may not be perfect, but I am hoping the reader got the idea. 

It is fascinating to see the evolution of the human mind, to some extent one can argue that as a collective, human mind is evolving towards finer and finer divisions only to realize nothing exists in the end :). It’s all hollow and empty.  

ps: the game mind plays when combined with Ego is even more fascinating. I will leave it there :)

Science meets Spirituality

Ok, to put the disclaimer this is not the end and all is well but felt a great step. Other day I was driving home from lunch and on air was the program Think from Kera, Texas. I am usually not enthusiastic about this program but this time the interview was with Ian Roberstson, clinical psychologist turned scientist from Dallas TX.

At the time I tuned in they were talking about how people can perform better just by saying “I am very excited” to themselves even under extremely stressful situation, this truly caught my attention. For this was one of the mantras we had chosen almost more than a decade ago (when I had just finished my first Art of Living course), it went something like “Fake it, till you make it”. Essentially meant keep tricking your mind and retraining it to think positive and enable to achieve bigger things by keep telling it you like what you are doing. In those days it was usually related to Art of Living things. As I listened further it went on to how athletes can perform better by keeping the mind in present moment and not thinking about the very recent failure.

I was so excited with these snippets and tidbits and for the first time in my life I Googled the program and listened to the whole interview. he talks about importance of stretching out of our comfort zone, setting up small achievable goals and going at it and most importantly importance of breathing. People who have done Art of Living course will be able to relate to lot of things Dr. Robertson is saying.

I got so excited I even ordered the book in kindle edition. I am sure I will be posting one more post when I am done reading the book. 

http://think.kera.org/2017/01/10/stress-yourself/

Venue hunt - some learning

While searching for a new location for our weekly follow ups (Art of Living) in south Austin, I learnt a thing or 2 as with my tradition if it is worth sharing then it is worth writing.

• Google and Yelp were my best friends to find the space, there were days when I used to peruse craigslist but this time around it seemed like so old
• Cold calls always helps, mostly leaving a message or through email, if they are really interested they will come back in a day or 2
• There are way more number of independent yoga studios in Austin than one can imagine. Also, it so happens most of these studios run on sublease by the hour to different instructors
• Corporate structured studios like Barr3, Todd Pilates, Yoga Yoga don’t entertain renting to outsiders
• I did come across some yoga studios who refused for they were concerned about us competing with their philosophy
• Churches were my first priority to check but most of them said no for they would be busy with their youth ministry activities on Sunday evenings.
• School gymnasiums are nice but the rates are pretty high
• From my experience the going rate for a ~800 SQFT open studio space is somewhere between $25-$35, depending on duration and hours of the contract
• What sells is the pictures of the location both inside and outside. To a large extent Google takes care of the outside pics and it would become business owners responsibility.       

The best part, in the process of searching for a venue I did learn a thing or 2 about marketing our own Art of Living center. Let me see how much I can impact that in the last 3 months as secretary.  

Farwell dear Rajima

It is hard to believe that she is no more and she has said her final good bye, when I heard the news last night for a few seconds I became numb. Yes farewell my dearest teacher Rajima. She was a firebrand, intellect of highest order, devotee of the highest order, a true saint, kind hearted and one who knew how to effectively use carrot and stick.

Her sessions let it be Art of Living courses or the sessions of Bhagavata or Yoga Vasista were divine. She was one of those personalities which either attracted people like a magnet and kept them devoted to her or repulsed them from the get go, I don’t think there ever was an intermediate level. 

I still remember the day back in 2008 when she looked me in the eye and asked “why are you not writing down and where is your notebook?”, in the same course when I had asked a “hypothetical question”, she had shunned me off and pointed towards action. A true yogi who really understood the 7 layers of existence.

Here presence was enough to change energy of the place. I would not be an exaggeration to say that she transformed people for better, she believed in action and always lead from the front. One teacher in my experience who made no exceptions for the rules, including herself. 

May her soul rest in peace, we miss you Rajima.

Second International Day of Yoga celebrations

They say everything is big and better in Texas, so why should our yoga day be an exception? you read it right, Art of Living foundation in collaboration with HSS and ISHA foundation along with ~45 partners celebrated the International Day of Yoga on July 30 2016.  Did I tell you there were ~800 people in attendance doing yoga. 

Back in May 2016, when one of our teachers raised the point that we need to celebrate international day of Yoga and it will not be done on June 21st when the rest of the world celebrates but on July 31st, I admit, I was one of the few who was some what disappointed and didn’t want us to sign up to lead the effort for I didn’t see us becoming another event management  organization.

Thankfully they didn’t listen to me and took it up in a stride to organize the event, soon enough we had a Facebook page, a website,  few collaborators and lots of partners which kept on growing over the next month or so. In the end we had over 40 partners and 3 other organizations which were actively collaborating with us.

Within the limited budget we were able to flyer, conduct TV interviews and unlimited sharing and advertising on Facebook.  The only avenue I think we left untapped was Twitter. In the end, all of these created enough awareness amongst Austin crowd that we had ~800 people showed up to do yoga on a hot summer Saturday evening. Needless to say we are thankful to all those who showed up to do the yoga.

The event day truly saw each organization bring out their expertise to the game. We from Art of Living brought our expertise of overall organization and had our hand in every single aspect of the event, be it on stage with yoga, music and meditation or the ground work of  crowd management. HSS and ISHA had the man/woman/student power to handle the masses of people who were heading to the capitol  (on a side note, volunteers of HSS had come from Houston and San Antonio to help out/assist the event), Agni the dance studio handled the whole stage setup, microphones, speakers, the yoga dance and the other logistical side of the event, last but not the least our yoga partners who spread out on stage and all around the capitol grounds leading the Yoga.    

Yes we did it, the second ever yoga day celebrations was a grand success beyond all metrics. We do have a lot of people to thank both inside our organization and outside and more importantly he Counsel General of India, Houston. 

Keep an eye on this area for I will be posting the pics and videos as and when I receive them.

What it took for Google to fix our address

When our Art of Living Austin center relocated to a new location one of our over enthusiastic volunteer created a point of interest and in his/her enthusiasm entered the wrong address. Only a couple of days later we realized the mistake and I don't know what that person did but Google started to call our place as permanently closed even though we have been thriving and operating since February 2016. 

Every one searching online used to complain that our address cannot be found. As secretary it became my job to get it fixed. First I tried the crowd sourcing approach and requested multiple people to suggest to google that the place address needs an edit and also indicate that the place is open for business. I can't say that this approach was a complete waste of time and effort for Google had fixed our address and called us open (for couple of days) only to revert back to wrong address and close again.  

It was mind numbing to say the least, I was clueless. Google answered itself and pointed me to mapmaker.google.com and I started proposing edits there only to be rejected in a couple of days after suggesting the edits. But unlike other places, this one has a regional lead and whom you can contact by posting on a forum, the process led to some revelation. 

Per Google guidelines any change to an address would mean that they would call it permanently closed until they some how completely verify the new one and apparently that was what was happening to our location. 

They suggested I remove the present location and create a new poi,  I couldn't get that to happen and again went back to forum. This time the regional lead took mercy on me and looked through the history and after verifying with me that the first entered address was wrong and all we were trying was to get the right address in, he made the change happen and in less than 24 hours after that both Google maps and Google search had our place as open and we were in business. 

The other interesting thing I noticed was that Apple maps uses Yelp for its poi (luckily for me Yelp was an easy beast to handle). 

Podcast on Creativity

I am a recent convert to podcasts, turned to them specially after my good friends visit from California. Anyways, off the many things I subscribe to now one thing I am regular with is Ted Radio hour from NPR. The podcast runs for an hour or so in which they combine multiple ted talks on a particular topic, in essence it is a superset of ted talks. 

One such Ted talk that I recently heard were on Creativity, they covered few different aspects for creativity

1. Not being selfish, no me and mine 
2. Ability to fall on your face and make mistakes
3. Frontal cortex of brain or as we call Ego which monitors me and mine to be off
4. Practice a lot of it also helps
5. Creativity needs to be nurtured
6. Showing up every day and being consistent about the process

All good points, one thing I really loved if they had covered was aspect of meditation. For a good meditation more than a few criterion listed above are to be met and in my experience more and more creative ideas flow right after a good meditation. As Shri Shri Ravishankar says for a good meditation, you want nothing, you are nothing and then sit with that attitude and meditation will happen. 

Our Art of Living center here in Austin do offer Meditation courses among others. Needless to say there is the Happiness Program which is also offered on a regular basis which helps one with the awareness of interaction between the different layers of existence.

On other hand people say, meditate on the issue that you want to solve and I believe that is the most useless thing to do.

One world meditation

The title might seem off but no it was an actual event hosted by Art of Living foundation on January 17 2016. The event was a curtain raiser for the bigger event World Culture festival to be held in Delhi, India from March 11-13 2016. As you may already know we in Austin are also planning our own local curtain raiser and our folks decided a face to face meeting to be had right after the meditation.

My mind was completely occupied with the logistics for the event and how best we could make this event a grand success and so on, on top of it somehow we didn’t have the right link and when we tuned in for the meditation it had already started. This I believe was the first time that Facebook was hosting, unlike the previous times when youtube used to host and there were some delays in the audio. All in all when everyone else in the room was feeling wonderful after the meditation I didn’t pack the punch.

It was as though the universe heard my dilemma and on screen Sri Sri started talking again (we didn’t realize then but were re telecasting the meditation event) and out of curiosity the volume was increased and lo behold there was one more meditation to be done and this time with no breaks in the telecast and don’t know however many minutes later I opened the eyes and it was a peaceful and beautiful moment.

In case you missed the meditation and the Q and A that followed, don’t worry you can find it here. 

Christmas gift for the homeless

Yesterday while driving back from office I got stuck at a signal, I had barely missed the signal because the car in front of me had slowed down a lot to make the left turn. 

While I was silently cursing that car/driver and was in the process of accepting what happened, I noticed another car on my left which had a green but had stopped conspicuously. I started to wonder what was wrong with that car and then the car slowly made a right turn and stopped.  The lady sitting in the car was waving towards the homeless guy begging at the signal. My small mind was saying, "why is she waving towards the homeless?," and "doesn't she know that she is blocking the traffic?" and so on. To be fair, the traffic was fairly light and she wasn't really bothering the traffic movement. 

Once the homeless guy reached the car, it was my turn to be awed. Out of the car came a big nicely packed gift box and after asking the guys size a jacket too, I am sure she wished him merry Christmas.

I was amazed at the lady and her organization for doing this charity. 

Now I know why I was stuck at that signal for an extra 2 minutes.

Our Art of Living volunteers also took part in a similar endeavor few days before Christmas. 

Sri Sri yoga – a honest experience sharing

Two of my dear friends recently became Sri Sri Yoga teachers and have decided to organize a course here in Austin. I thought what better way to publicize to an event than to share my own experiences practicing the same. 

What is Sri Sri yoga?
In my humble words, it is a sequence of poses that would take around 30-40mins to complete and if done on a regular basis can improve the quality of the day and life in general

What makes it different from others?
I have explored other yoga studios in the past and none of them offered any take home practice and everyone wanted me to come back to the studio to practice in the studio. With Sri Sri yoga, we have a take home practice. The best part, in the 2 weekends (format could be different now), we were given enough knowledge to take our yoga practice as deep as we wanted to, essentially saying one can tailor the practice to their needs and time availability.

Can I elaborate on it’s impact?
I did the yoga course almost 3 and half years ago but never ever practiced it, let alone regularly. What was the excuse?, very simple, it is hard to find that 40mins of alone time to practice.

But, in 2013 when I was in some sort of low phase (relatively) and wanted to get out of it, upon a friend’s suggestion I took up the challenge to practice Sri Sri Yoga for 40 days and I saw the difference in my energy levels on the very first day.

Ever had the feeling of “floating in the air” or “things are getting done more efficiently” or the feeling of “I can handle this”, yes that is my state of mind after completing the practice and I carry that throughout (most of) the day.

Since then, every time I become aware that my energy levels are not up to the mark than what I expect them to be, I know the trick to get out of it.

If my memory serves right, somebody had asked the question as to what is the difference between this Yoga practice and Padmasadhana and SriRam-ji had said both have similar set of postures but one is designed for a healthy and happy state of mind while other is meant for deeper meditation. I have no knowledge about Padmasadhana but yes Sri Sri Yoga will help you to have happier state of mind. 

The blog post won’t be complete without thanking Sandhya, who pushed me to do the course. Rewind 4 years back, my excuse was, what is the point of learning something when I do not have time to practice?, but she proved me wrong and showed me that one needs to learn when they can as one never knows when it would come handy.

At the outset knowing your Ayurvedic body type and tailoring the yoga practice accordingly would make the practice better and enjoyable. More about that in a later post.

So, good luck friends and have fun co-teaching the course. 

ps: I was told the course has been renamed to Art of Living Yoga and no longer advertised as Sri Sri Yoga

International Day of Yoga Celebrations in Austin TX

Some came because Narendra Modi, PM of India had called
Some came because Sri Sri Ravishankar called
Some came because it's adventurous
Some came because they were organizing it
Some came because it is probably the one and only event they were looking forward to (for personal reasons)
Some came for they were tasked with documenting the event
Nature said, I can't be left out and it rained and poured before and after the event

Yes, I am talking about the first ever International Day of Yoga celebration at our city Austin, TX. In case you missed it, it happened on Capitol grounds on Sunday June 21st at 10:30AM.

75 odd yogis from Art of Living, Bea Love Yoga and more importantly from Austin showed up to celebrate the very first ever International day of Yoga here at the lawns of the Capitol of Texas.  

We have a saying in Art of Living, “from chaos comes creativity” and this yoga event was no different. On Thursday before the yoga event scheduled for Sunday we were not 100% sure of the logistics and with rain in forecast didn’t have a plan B, to top it off nature wanted to do some rain dance for the event and on Sunday around 10:00am it started raining cats and dogs.  

But, when 70 odd yogis decide to do yoga on the first ever International Day of yoga, nature had to listen and give way for yoga. Come 10:30, the rain turned to drizzle and the lawns started to drain out just enough for us to get on with the yoga. The parking was free and plenty (I guess the rain turned some visitors away) and all other finer logistics, didn’t really matter. Can you imagine the state senator joining us at the yoga event.

The yoga was beautifully led by 3 senior yoga teachers from Bea Love Yoga. I have full respect and regards for Bea Love for if there was 1 person who was 100% sure they will be doing yoga that day, I would say it would be her. Once the yoga started, the event moved on with clinical precision, the teachers taking turns to lead the yoga and before we knew it was time to do the chanting of om and final resting. At which precise time, nature decided to join the party and started to drizzle and it poured again.

Later the party was moved indoors where folks from our own Art of Living band filled the rotunda with ancient chants and hymns.

It wouldn't be fair if I don't speak about the precursor to this event, it was called the sun never sets yoga which happened a week ago Saturday as a gearing up event for the international day of yoga, around 20 odd yogis gathered on the banks of town lake in the morning at 7:00AM and an hour long yoga was lead by our own graduate yogi Ritesh Seth.

All in all, a grand successful event for the Art of Living Austin. Kudos to the team for pulling this off in a very successful manner in true Art of Living style.

ps: yes, picture speaks 1000 words and yes I will be posting them soon 

pps: here are the pics 

The tendency of mind is ....

Back in December, one of the parents from my daughter's playschool started the initiative of kids soccer. They said they were enrolling their kid to soccer camp starting in April, a 8 week camp played one weekend every week, they suggested if all kids could join in it would be lot of fun. We all got excited with the idea and jumped on it right away.

Since most of us were enrolling, we requested all the kids to be together in the same team. The wonderful folks at the camp honored our request. Even better, some of the dads became the coaches for the team. Keep in mind the whole idea behind was to let kids have fun outside school and some socializing for us too. The kids are truly having fun, specially since the soccer practice ends with donuts and drinks (snacks provided by different parent each week).

It's been 5 weeks, the kids are enjoying the games and having fun. I would definitely say, they have been improving every week, but our team hasn't won a single match. To put it bluntly we get our butts kicked by the opposing team each and every week. We would be lucky if our team makes 1 or 2 goals in the process and don’t self goal during the match.

I think the reason is simple, each team that we have played against so far has 2 to 3 kids who are much older than the kids in our team and also have played multiple years of soccer. If only we hadn’t made the request during enrollment, may be our team would have gotten couple of older kids too and we would be tough competitor too but if that had happened it no longer would have been team “Kangaroos”, would it be?.

Now, the real point of this blog post, I realized I am going away from the original intent of the whole exercise "having fun" and getting to the mode of winning and analyzing why our team isn't doing as good as others.

I think this is called awareness which my good friends were trying to drill into me a decade ago. Of course life is such "aha" moments and that's what makes it fun.The secret is simple, to breath, want more information visit artoflivingaustin.org

The secret is breathing . . . . .

I have been with Art of Living and practicing the breathing techniques taught by them for close to a decade now. By now I have come to understand and experience the value of breathing right, but always found it hard to explain to a 3rd person about the value of breathing and how it can help control emotions and how the secret to most mental ailments like anger, anxiety and stress can be associated with different breathing patterns and how they can be fixed by fixing the way we breath.  

All was true till I heard this show on NPR called 2 Guys on Your Head and the talk was about road rage. In the talk at one point one of the speakers explain “when you are stressed your breathing is shallow and shallow breath is associated with anger, so when in a situation that you need to vent the steam. Take a few deep breaths, relax your shoulders and . . . . . ”.  I don’t remember verbatim but this fairly close. I can vouch for this as I have personally noticed at the time I am venting my anger out my breathing very shallow (of course its in hind sight).

If you are interested in learning more about the breath and its modulations and how to lead a happier life. Then contact your nearest Art of Living center and ask them about their happiness program. I am sure its worth your time and effort.  

The Story of awareness

It's been a decade since my first art of living course, this is the story of how I got to do the course.

After coming to Austin, I was looking to do some sort of meditation course and was interested to start communicating with the Yogananda's organization. I had already visited them once in LA and had developed a liking for them. Then as a twist in the tale came the illness of a coworker who apparently didn't own a car. As a good Samaritan and free bachelor high on helping people, I had offered to help him with his doctor visits. To my surprise he asked for a ride only once and in that ride he started to talk to me about "doing the Art of Living course" (don’t remember how it started, sorry), me still more mind/ego centered at that time wanted to argue with him and “wanted to be convinced fully” before I took the jump.

So, we talked about this and that and at some point it was getting towards heated one (from my side) and I was determined to prove him wrong (don’t know why) and at point he told me the importance of awareness. I remember him pointing towards the windshield of the car and saying "there is glass here and one should be aware that the glass exists" by that time we had already reached our workplace back and we stopped it there. He even lent me a couple of books to read, which I don’t remember if I read or not.  

It didn't make heads or tails to me then. and took a good long while to comprehend what he was saying about “awareness”.

That was the very first conversation that pointed me to the course and if my memory serves right it took close to a year after this conversation and another interaction with another friend that bought me to the door step. 

Later in the week I came to know that somebody else also offered him the ride for the doctors visit that day but this guy refused all others and waited for me, don’t want to label it and diminish the value.

Its all Newton

Long long time ago, Sir Isaac Newton proposed 3 famous laws, one defined inertia another one defined momentum and the last one, I don’t know what it defines but it is pretty famous too.

When I learnt it first time and re-learned it again and again (adding more complexities each time) during various phases of my school/college life I thought the law only applied to inanimate objects. It was only couple of days ago it occurred to me that it applies to my life more than anything else.

Here are a few instances where I can relate

• In the years 2010 and 2011 I was pretty diligent about my blog and was posting an average of 3 to 4 posts a month. The momentum of posting kept me looking/thinking about new things to write and comment on. But in this year inertness has taken over and I am so far in that inert momentum that I am finding it hard to come out of it (Inertia).
• For those who know, once a week I compile the news and events listing for Art of Living Austin and send out to an email list and till a few weeks ago I was diligent in compiling and sending, now its been more than 3 weeks since I compiled the news letter.

There are quite a few instances like this I can post about and if I want more all I need to do is ask my wife .

The crucial point about inertia is that it takes an external force to change the state of being and then momentum takes over. While writing this post, It occurred to me that the real force for me has to come from within and not from external sources. You can call it self motivation, I would like to call it satva and the only way I am aware of is to get regular with my Sadhana.   

Sri Sri Yoga with the best

Every course I have attended with the Art of Living foundation so far, started with a disclaimer “all sessions are mandatory, miss one and you are out”. But here was one course that was a complete exception to the policy. This course had the policy, ”if you feel motivated and would like to come, please do. Else, not a problem (we already got your money :))”. At the same time here was the course that I was so motivated to attend and I wouldn’t mind waking up at 5:00AM on a Saturday just to be on time and not miss a single moment. Wondering what I am blabbering about, it was the Sri Sri Yoga with Dr. Sriram Sarvotham.

If you can, imagine a perfect blend of a yoga practitioner, an Engineer and a gifted teacher with an amazing sense of humor then you will probably get somewhere close to Sriram. A yoga practitioner who can bend and twist his body as though bones only exist for mere mortals, a genius who recites the yoga sutras of Patanjali and offers commentary on the same, a teacher who leads by example and can make you do asanas for nearly 2 hours and in the end you would wonder was it really that long?. I can keep talking about him but can’t do justice. I think Sriram should be called (Dr.)^2 Sriram Sarvotham, one for his PhD in electrical engineering and other for yoga studies. 

Now to the course itself, I was apprehensive when I found it was a “yoga” course and split over 2 weekends. The impulsive reaction and the follow up action so far had been to avoid the same. This time around I acted differently and I am happy I did the same. The course was a complete package and had everything for all the layers of existence (want to know more, do a YESPLUS or an Art of Living course). The postures were not new but what was new was the sequence and what kept it fresh was the teacher. The discourses were very original and I was blown away by the way (Dr.)^2 was putting the knowledge across to us.

By the end of the course, I now have a clear understanding of the Gunas(Rajas, Tamas and Satva) and the Doshas(Vata, Pitta and Kapha). I now know a few more pranayamas I have also become very aware of the importance of rest period after an intense yoga session. I loved the way Sriram led the yoga sessions and how he would indicate that some poses as pre-requisite poses for the next level tough poses. The answers to the questions would come out spontaneously and the knowledge flowed effortlessly. On the last day, most of us had sore muscles but all of us had soaring spirits.

Here is a piece of free advice, next time when Sriram is in town and teaching the Sri Sri yoga course, don’t think twice, free up your weekends and just jump in.

On a lighter note, wonder when will the name of the course will change to “Art of Yoga”, hmm . . . we will wait and watch.   

ps: if you thought yoga does not build body/muscle strength, next time when you are around babies/kids observe them carefully.

Wonder if Baba killed the Lokpal Bill

Remember back in April when Anna Hazare went on a fast until death at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and some of us did a token 1 day fast in support to end corruption. That was a time of excitement when even a pair of poodles supported the cause and the government agreed to work with Anna’s team to draft a Lokpal Bill. All was well and a joint committee was formed with members of civil society and parliament and the draft process began.

Out of the blue in comes our dear Baba Ramdev, who wanted to push his own agenda in the midst of this. I don’t find anything wrong in the noble intentions of our Baba but here is where I think he went wrong.

• He wanted to bring all the black money hidden in different parts of the world immediately, what was he thinking or smoking? its not like we can invade Switzerland and Cayman Islands and other tax heavens and loot the money that is stored and only take that is rightfully ours. If nothing this will be a long drawn negotiation between different governments and if they agree on something then we can hope to get some of it back.
• When Baba said bring the black money back, why didn’t he declare his 1100 crore assets which mostly owned by couple of his devotees (one of them being his relative) in the first place before asking further questions. I had no idea that Aastha channel was owned by Baba.
• When you go on  a crusade like this, you need to choose your deputies carefully. Baba’s deputy Balakrishna is the focus of controversy, he acquired an Indian passport while being born in Nepal and why would a deputy of a Yoga guru need a rifle and a pistol.
• His other demand of devalue 500 and 1000 Rupee currency is the height of stupidity.
• The other thing I don’t get is when he agreed with the government that he will not go on a fast and signed on a piece of paper, why did he go on a fast that same day evening?
• When the fast was disrupted why did he run away, one theory is he was scared of being encountered. So, being a revered yoga guru doesn’t he know that the soul is eternal and the body perishes some day and so what if that some day is today and if the mode is a bullet in the head (I am not supporting the governments action here). 
• His last demand of hang the people who are corrupt, I thought yoga leads to non violence and peace achieved through non violence and action from within is the only lasting peace every thing else is momentary.
• In the end I agree with Tehelka’s assessment that whatever Baba did was to show off his people power and increase his image and nothing more.

Thanks to the above, now Anna and team have to distance from Baba and the government can point play their cards and continue a war of words and stall the bill for ever to come.

Another week, another YESPLUS

It was close to a year since I did the YESPLUS and so when the time and opportunity came up, I jumped in. What a beautiful time I had, one of the best times and one of the most well spent times.

It wasn’t easy to make up my mind again, I had my own reasons, more notable amongst them are, the 5 day commitment, the whole weekend will be spent in the class, I have done it once and so on. Unlike last time when I was playing mind games and I had to get an external trigger, this time around the trigger came from within and I showed up. I am convinced at all levels that I did the right decision.

I interacted with some of the most amazing people, I witnessed the growth in my good buddies, I got to see my goofy side and witness the goofy side of others. Some of the sessions were riot (fun way). I witnessed the rigidness/uneasiness that was there at the beginning of the course giving way to smiles and happiness in the end. The workshop was a no participant left out workshop. It was one complete package of fun and learn.   

Last time I went in, I went in to learn and this time I went in to play the game called YESPLUS. Believe me there is a huge difference and both are fun in their own rights.

There are a lot of people to thank for making this event/workshop to happen, more notably are Nitin, Keya and Geetha.

Rajima tour update

As I have described in my other blog entries, she is tough, she is hard, she blasts the ego in all forms, she is a fire brand, she is one of the few who resides in the moment, she is one of the few who is well versed in scriptures and one of the few who fully understands the hidden meaning of the ancient scriptures and one of the very very few who can translate them in a way that they make it to the heart directly (it happened to me). Just her presence is electrifying.

It is true that her fire brand way could appear harder to accept but keep in mind it is the same fire that can transform. Some of us are fans of her knowledge while some others are fans of her presentation skills,  while others are fans of her singing  and as for me, I am a fan for she is Rajima. Experiencing her presence in Bhagavatam (2011) and the Art of Living course (2009), my conclusion is: go with an open heart and an open mind and you do not have a choice but to love her and experience the divine love and the presence.

For reasons inevitable, Rajima will not be teaching any more Art of Living programs in her current tour, that means you cannot be lazy like me and miss one event and hope to catch up with her on the next event. In a way it makes life simple, no confusion and no schedule conflicts and so on, just show up for her Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita.

Knowledge snippets from Texas Ashram

Yesterday was Rama-Navami and guruji gave a beautiful perspective for Ramayana.

Rama stands for light/shine inside us (or as Rajima puts it that which is shining in us is Rama)

Dasharatha is Rama’s father, the name means lord of ten chariots. We with our 5 external senses of 5 senses of perception form the Dasharatha

Kausalya is Rama’s mother, the name means skill (which can be attained by purifying, I will get to this later)

Hanuman is the breath

Sita is the mind

Ravana means the one who does not listen to anybody, he comes up with 10 different types of logic to prove he is right (stands for his ten head). He stands for Ego

So, if we look at the story of Ramayana in a nut shell, we (Dasharatha) with the skill (Kausalya) can give rise to the light (Rama) in us and this light with the help of breath (Hanuman) will rescue the mind (Sita) from the ego (Ravana)

Now the skill, the skill can be attained by act of purification, here are things we can do to become pure.

Seva – Purifies the action, self less action

Satsang – Purifies the mind

Sadhana – Purifies the thought/memory, he mentioned pranayamas, Kriya and meditation

Knowledge – Purifies the intellect, Ashtavakra Gita, Bhakti Sutras, Bhagavatam, Yoga Vasishta and so on

Charity – Purifies the money, guruji said at a minimum 1% of our money should be donated to charity

Fasting – Purifies the body, guruji said to listen to the body and fast 1 or 2 days every six months.

He also spoke about calm with in and action outside and not the other way.

ps: I may have Satsang, Sadhana and Knowledge jumbled, it doesn’t matter just do it all.