The beauty of silence

There is constant noise in the world around us. And then there is constant noise inside us too: the mind which does not stop. If you’re like most people, you’ll notice your mind is making judgements about everything. Before you even realise it, the mind has flown to this place and that, and you’re definitely not in control of where it goes.

Sometimes the noise outside is a comfort. It distracts us from ourselves, and it stops us having to face our own thoughts. Sometimes we contribute to the noise by talking and judging, gossiping without even thinking about what we are saying. At night, everything comes back to us in our solitude and we might find it difficult to truly rest. This is the nature of the adult human mind.

Very young children don’t have the words and ideas to make constant judgements in their minds; they tend to live from moment to moment. They are more at peace with themselves, but they are prey to the outside noise too, and they become restless living in a restless world.

For our own mental health and for that of our communities, it’s important to learn both silence within and silence without. This does not mean stopping communication; it means deepening our ability to community so that fewer words and gestures can achieve more expression. There is time to speak and reveal, and also time to be silent and observe without judgement.

Silence is beautiful because it allows us to see things we might have missed. There are patterns in nature which we can observe in silence. Love communicated without words is one of the most powerful expressions of silence.

It’s hard to change habits. The habits of judging, gossiping, getting irritable and complaining have become second nature to a lot of us. But people can change the way their minds work, with repeated practice. Even ten minutes a day observing thoughts as they come, and then letting them go is enough to give you an idea of how your mind works. And then gradually, thoughts will pass more slowly and sitting in silent observation will become more pleasurable.

My three favourite Indian-English words

1. Timepass
‘I am doing timepass’, meaning passing the time.

2. Tension
‘No tension,’ meaning no need to worry.

3. Preponed
‘We preponed the meeting’, as in ‘we brought the meeting forward’.

Being vegetarian

As a young child, I used to eat all kinds of meat and fish. In fact, I don’t even like to mention some kinds of meat that I happily ate. But as the years wore on, I began questioning meat on every level. Now I’ve been 100% vegetarian for about eleven years.

I honestly don’t know why meat began bothering me in the first place. I used to love the taste, but at around age seven, I began disliking the flavour. After that, I began associating meat with the act of killing and bloodshed. A lot of people argue that it’s natural for humans to be omnivores, but I feel we’ve reached a state of consciousness in which what we eat is a choice, not just an instinct. It may feel ‘natural’ to start a fight with someone or to be promiscuous, but we make conscious decisions which instincts we should follow through with – that’s what makes us responsible individuals and allows societies to progress. Even primitive societies display such traits of consciousness – it’s the hallmark of human evolution. I think being vegetarian is an important choice, both for the individual and for the ecological systems we contribute to. Animals live on instinct, but in a way which is in sync with nature. The way in which we consume meat these days is definitely not in sync with nature.

The meat industry keeps and produces livestock in a very ecologically-unfriendly way just in order to make money. The natural balances of the food chain are disrupted and the proliferation of diseases becomes much higher. I realise that vegetables are grown in artificial ways too, and that there are now options to buy organic meat, but despite all this, the risks of producing meat are always less natural and more detrimental in terms of self-sufficiency, the environment and individual health. A lot of people think that vegetarians miss out on vital food elements, specially protein. But this is simply not true if someone follows a balanced diet. For all these reasons, I think it’s worth being vegetarian.

Where to live – east or west?

My husband and I have been living in India for over two years now. After being settled in the UK, we relocated to the east for work reasons. Now we’re about to have a baby, I’ve been thinking a lot about which society is best to settle in – the east or the west?

Our background is that we’re both British Indian (Indian origin but were brought up in the UK when our parents emigrated there for their careers). Now our parents are retired and resettled in India, which is an unusual trend even today (migrating back to the homeland after 30 years working and living abroad). My husband was born in the UK and I was born in India; his family is originally South Indian and mine North Indian – but apart from those differences, we have a very similar cultural identity. We were raised in a British society, with British friends and pastimes, but our family life was Indian. As a result, we’ve become very mixed in our cultural outlook, and open to living in different societies.

There are so many considerations when it comes to deciding where to live. One is work and finances, then there’s the environment, social values, education, family life and, the all-important, everyday lifestyle. In almost every category, the west has a more established infrastructure which we find easier to live with, but then again in every category, the east offers more variety and unpredictability which makes life more exciting. In terms of health and safety, environmental awareness, education, I prefer the west’s sense of order. But our family is now mainly in the east, so social values and everyday lifestyle are better for us in India right now. I also like the fact that the sun comes out everyday, as it does have an uplifting effect. It’s a very difficult decision between logic and emotion (west=logic, east=emotion).

To some extent, as the recession looms, the decision is not entirely up to us. We’ll have to consider the work situation at the end of the year and that will be one of the priorities for where to settle. I think raising a child in a safe and secure environment is important, but a bit of unpredictability and a richer family life are important too.

Michael Jackson and vitiligo

There have been so many controversies surrounding Michael Jackson, and one of the biggest ones is that he turned himself from black to white on purpose. Only in his interview with Oprah Winfrey did he finally reveal that he had vitiligo, a skin condition in which the pigment, melanin, gradually breaks down, leaving white patches. It’s likely that he went through some treatment which sped up the depigmentation process, so that he became uniformly white much faster than is normal. Repigmentation is also an option, but this is only possible if the vitiligo is contained to a small area and is not progressing unpredictably. Both depigmentation and repigmentation are difficult procedures which I don’t think MJ would have opted for unless he really had a condition he felt uncomfortable with.

Around 3% of the world’s population has vitiligo, and there is no cure for it. It does not usually harm a person’s general health, but it can have psychological effects because of the uneducated, colour-conscious society we live in. We already know that Michael Jackson was very self-conscious from the amount of plastic surgery he had done, so something like vitiligo would have bothered him. Obviously, any sane person would say that there was no need for MJ to have had any plastic surgery or to try to disguise his vitiligo – people would have loved him anyway and he would probably have looked better and healthier. But it’s one thing to be an objective observer and another thing entirely to live in someone else’s skin. With so much media frenzy and exaggeration around him, MJ is likely to have had a distorted picture of himself.

Everything I’ve learned about Michael Jackson over the years has made me come to the conclusion that he was an emotionally vulnerable musical genius. His unusual openness to children and generosity made him prey to all sorts of allegations that were likely not true. I will always remember MJ as a great artist whose beauty and gift were thwarted in a harsh world.

What India means to me

I have developed a very strange relationship with my motherland.

I was born in India, but my parents took me to the UK when I was five years old. They tried to come back and settle in their homeland twice during my childhood, but it never worked. They were absorbed in their medical careers, which required them to be in the UK.

My sister and I spent a couple of brief school years in India, looked after by grandmothers and other relatives while my parents went back and forth between continents, trying to manage work and family life. For both my sister and me, India was our first home, our native country, undisputedly. As a young child who had known no other territory, ‘Mr India’ was my favourite film. But gradually, everything I took for granted as my natural identity became questionable.

As I struggled and succeeded to learn British English in London, my grip on Hindi began to falter. As I became accustomed to my friends’ ways of being and doing things, the memories of my childhood home began to fade. Those brief spells in which we tried to come back to India were like a temporary reawakening – a door to the past that would open and pour its wisdom into me for a short time before shutting again. My relatives thought I had become ‘angrez’, even thought I hardly thought of myself that way. In India. I became ‘different’, and in the UK, I was ‘different’ too.

So now, years later as I write this, I am very aware of what India represents to me. It’s more than just an idea; it’s a reality that I feel everyday. It’s huge and complex, something that I won’t ever be able to explain fully. Every time I feel a sense of ‘Indianness’, I am aware there is a ‘Britishness’ which rests uncomfortably alongside this. After all, the countries struggled against each other historically, precisely because their identities could not integrate fully with each other.

Whenever I am in India, it’s tempting to see stereotypes all around me: spiritualists, poverty, chaos, consumerism. Only when I actually talk to people personally – the rickshaw wallahs, relatives and their neighbours, dry-cleaners and taxi drivers – I see the reality behind the overpowering image of India. The authenticity of other people’s cultural behaviour allows me to see what it means to be Indian.

Despite this feeling of idenitfication, I disagree with the concept of national identity (the idea that an individual can be defined by which country they come from). I see my identity as drawing from, yet separate from, nationality and culture. What I understand about India is cultural rather than political, although I’m aware that there is a connection between culture and politics which cannot be ignored. Even the naming of a country is political and represents a territorial division.

Jesus and the rest of us

According to Christianity, Jesus was God made flesh. He came onto Earth in order to lead a life of pain so that humans who accepted him could go to heaven instead of hell in the afterlife.

Since Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they had become sinners. Their punishment was infinite suffering carrying on for generations, death and hell. Sin became human nature, ingrained into the human condition (natural sin). All of creation became marred by sin. Jesus came to suffer immense pain although he was guiltless, in order to pay the price of human sin – a karmic exchange of sorts, he paid the balance. Humanity became indebted to him, and by accepting him Christians say we are freed from our debts to enjoy heaven after the Day of Judgement.

I do not believe this story word for word. I see it as a metaphor about knowledge and experience.

Human beings are born in a state of ignorance about their very nature (’who am I?’) and they enter into an experiment with opposite forces (good vs. bad) in order to understand themselves. They finally come to see themselves beyond dualities, come to identify their inherent nature in connection with God (source of consciousness). All creation goes through this journey in some way, and it is its own kind of struggle. BEING IGNORANT TO OUR OWN IDENTITY YET HAVING THE ABILITY TO QUESTION IT is hard. But we choose this suffering in order to experience the reward of reuniting with God and realising ourselves. This happens cyclically over and over again, perhaps through lifetimes.

Jesus was a good man who understood God. He was innocent yet he was punished – he therefore took on pain that was undeserved, which goes against the law of karma (you reap what you sow, what goes around comes around etc.) As a result, the world owes him for his pain. How the world balances this karma is unclear, because it’s very hard to see exactly how karma works. Perhaps to respect and understand Jesus’s teachings is the answer.

I don’t believe all the things about heaven and hell. Heaven and hell are all here on Earth as an experience of duality which we subject ourselves to. I only believe in knowledge versus ignorance. Jesus shed some light on the knowledge of who we are, but then a lot of interpretations were made about what he said which are not necessarily what he intended. Nevertheless, it’s up to us to create and understand what we can on this Earth, and the words of spirtual leaders can guide us in our personal (not political or social) search.

Absolute peace

Absolute peace is the opposite of… relative restlessness.

In most places today, we see visions of relative restlessness, with some creatures more restless than others. OM is the sound of absolute peace, which is what we all crave after having lived in restlessness for too long.

Absolute peace does not mean complacency or laziness, it means a quietness of mind which allows you to act more effectively in the world. If you have resposibilities like caring for others or managing a project, attempting them through an attitude of peace will bring greater rewards than attempting them through stress, pressure and restlessness.

There are many practices that help to instil absolute peace, but by far the most effective is meditation and self-hypnosis. This involves techniques for controlling thoughts and making us the masters of our own thought processes. One simple meditative technique is observation without judgement. Observe the breath, sounds, sights and watch thoughts come and go.

OM means that which is absolute (’I am’) and SO HAM means destroying relative awareness (realising that  ‘I am that’). We have all come from the same substance that created the universe and will all change through various forms through our evolution in this cyclical universe. Understanding the interconnected oneness of all things creates an awareness of abolute peace with everything and everyone else. It allows compassion.

Understanding karma

The concept of karma is a science, just like Newton’s law that ‘each action has an equal and opposite reaction’. Every spiritual system has some reference to karma – even the Bible says, ‘whatever a man soweth, that shall he reap’. Karma is often linked to reincarnation, but karma can exist with or without physical rebirth.

Karma cannot be wiped out by a statement or a ritual – it is the science of accountability. We are accountable for everything we have done, and there is no saviour for us except knowledge. Knowledge gives us the ability to deal with the effects of our karma. Quite simply, karma means that whatever I have done, whether I consider it good or bad is irrelevant, because whatever form of thought, words or actions I have given out into the world, that is the energy that will come back to me. It’s like an echo: whatever is given out will be received back from the world.

A lot of people are afraid of ‘bad’ karma. In some cases, the consequences of our actions can be changed, reduced or even wiped away if we make enough effort to instil the opposite action. The exact science of this is very diffcult to work out. Prayers and rituals cannot wipe away karma, but they can help create the consciousness to carry out actions that may help one resolve their past karmas. We can take the support of a Higher Source, but they are there to guide us, not to wipe the slate clean for us. God gave us free will so that we could create and understand ourselves, so we have to be accountable.

We come in innocent ignorance into the world, and through exposure to senses and desires, we create karmic relationships. This keeps the world play alive and is no bad thing until we let it overtake us. Then we realise that pain and pleasure are an inevitable consequence of having desires and attachments. We begin to feel that pain and pleasure are impermanent and don’t really satisfy us deep down. There comes a point where we want peace. That is when we start to make efforts to reduce our karma, turn into ourselves and towards God so that we can escape the world of action, pain, pleasure, attachment and restlessness. But avoiding the world totally disconnects us from the reality we have to live in, and it ironically makes us incapable of handling our karma.

We have to participate in the world, but with the right kind of consciousness. Through prayer, meditation and compassion we can create the consciousness for reducing our ‘negative’ karma yet still living peacefully in the world. If everyone does this, the consciousness of the world will change and the karma of the world will be uplifted. According to ancient religions, this turn from knowledge to ignorance and back again happens in a cycle continuously. Some say the whole point is to realise ourselves as souls, which we all do once physical things no longer make us happy. Others say it is just a creative exercise that God wants us to participate in in order to realise what exists beyond. Through this entire exercise, seemingly separate identities are acting together in what Confucious called ‘reciprocity’. That is the law of karma.

What is Enlightenment?

Being and not being all at once.

Discerning without judgement.

Relishing the luxury within simplicity.

Not needing another’s gaze to behold one’s Self.

Being at one with every other, but apart from everyone.

Dying in each moment before being reborn.

Being enriched by solitude, but finding solitude within company.

Observing the action, playing the part, but watching one’s self as you play.

Embracing afflictions as a test of endurance.

Being compassionately detached.