A Manual On How To Fly

Human beings have always been fascinated by all that is indicative to freedom. The minds of ours always wanted to be in liberation. Liberated from the shackles of weakness and fear so that we can live the adventures that is lying in the journey towards our destiny. So that we can realize the dreams which our heart has always longed for. So that we can fly free and high in the sky of life.

But to fly, one should first understand the mechanism of flight. And there can be no greater a teacher than a bird to give us lessons on the Art of Flying.

We are all like a bird. A little bird living in the comfort and security of its nest. Now this little bird has a dream. A dream of flying on its own wings to the unknown distant land. The land which seemed so eclectic from its nest that it felt for that Dream Land. So, one day this little bird, driven out by the demon of its desires-to fly to the unknown land-walks determined to the edge of its nest’s. But when it looked down beneath, the shine in its eyes faded, the excitement of its heart turned into a grey melancholy and its mind got clouded with fears. The reason of the uneasiness is the appearance of two thoughts in front of it:

“I am at such a great height. If my wings don’t open up I will fall and die.”

And the other

“I think I should try flying off for if succeed I will reach that Land:”

Thus a sticky dilemma pops inside the bird leading to indecision. Whether to take the risk and explore the passion or to stay unchanged?

As the little bird so is our mind. We also have certain dreams in our lives that we dream staying in our ‘Nest’ i.e. staying in our comfort zone. From our ‘Nest’ every dream seems to be an easy achievement. But when we make an attempt to throw ourselves out towards the dream obstacles starts occurring. We face a dilemma. Standing in the threshold of our comfort zone we find ourselves indecisive. Whether to leave all these comfort and security in which we lived so long for the sake of exploring untrodden paths towards the realization of our aspirations. Or to stay as before.

But birds are but meant for one thing and so is our mind. They are meant to fly. Fly free through the blue to that Dream Land. To fly the ‘Mind Bird’ must pull out the weeds of all the insignificant dilemmas and do the first thing necessary – taking the Leap of Faith from the edge of its nest into the air.

The Leap Of Faith is nothing but a step. The first bold step that we put in the road to our destiny. But the first step is the heaviest. Made heavy with our imaginary fear of failure. Its hard job to move the wheel for the first time but once it overcome the initial friction it keeps moving. So to make our ‘Mind Bird’ fly we need to make it take the Leap of Faith. We need to convince our mind that the road which our heart has chosen is the one destined for us.

Now when the little bird took the Leap of Faith from the edge of its nest it will find the air as an uncomfortable medium. Because it’s flying in the air for the first time. It may tremble down unbalanced a few feet in air. And it may seem to the observers that little bird is going to fall. But that little bird, with the dream alive bright in its eyes, will flap both of its wings. It will flap them hard. Harder and harder till it finds a rhythm in its wings. At last it will find the exact rhythm which is necessary for flight. Hurray! Our little bird has learnt flying.

Simillarly, after taking the first step in the road leading toward our dreams we will definitely meet with Defeats. Like that bird trembling few feet in air. Because we are walking this lonely Path of our Dreams for the first time. People may laugh at us and be sure that we cannot pursue our dreams. Even we may start doubting our potentialities. But these are mere trembling and not our complete failure. And like that little bird, we must start flapping our wings. We must start doing hard work. The desperate hard works with our goals always visible in front of us. And thus we get the rhythm in our wings. The rhythm which is necessary for successful pursuance of our dreams.

Congratulations! We learnt how to fly. Now even if we come down sometimes it will not be a fall but a landing. And the difference between fall and landing is in the later you can take off again. Always.

Solitude : A One Hour of Selfish Living

    I love to play flute. Since my childhood music attracted me and especially to this instrument. But then I didn’t know how to play it. During our graduation, I and a good friend of mine went to a renowned flute artist of our region and requested him to train us. It has been two years and now both of us play good (at least our friends and family members say so). We are still under training. And we are loving it.

My aim  is not to rattle about my musical talent rather talk  about  a minute thing which I had observed . Whenever I end playing a piece listeners make comments about the performance and how much they liked it. But usually these talks end up in that person expressing his/her urge for an obliterated passion that s/he left somewhere while working for a livelihood . They also express the desire to pursue that hobby again but this again ends up in the same manner as it did before. It ends up abandoned. Most of the times for our laziness. And I know most of us can relate ourselves to this situation.

We live in a loud and busy world. Yes it’s too busy. The moment we wake till we return to bed (and even after that) we remain so much surrounded by our duties and responsibilities (even texting back messages falls under the category of responsibility now a days). And lately we realize that we forgot to save few moments from the life for ourselves.

“All the worlds a stage. And man and women are merely players.”

We have lots of roles to play throughout the day. And the audience will not spare you if you miss out anywhere. They want you to act your role perfect.  So we keep on juggling those different roles day after day . And one day we find that in making our life better we stopped living it the way we should have. Sometimes we come across someone singing a melodious song , photographing serene landscapes or playing a good rhythm in guitar and we stop to look back into our life and search for the day when we last persuaded our passion or spent time in doing what we are really fond. Doing things we are  crazy about. We realize that we lived “selfless life” till now. A life for others.

It’s good to be selfless sometimes. But  in doing so we are deviating from a part of our own self that wants to express itself. We are, grain by grain, graving the person we are deep inside.

So, my dear readers, we should start living a selfish life from today.

Yes! I said selfish life.

Out of the 24 hours of a day we can, at least, gift ourselves a one hour. A selfish one hour. A one hour in which we will avoid the text from our lover or company of our spouse, calls from boss, naughtiness of our children, useless gossips on politics, movies or sports with our friends and colleagues or surrendering to the lazy couch or bed(with Facebook Whatsapp running over) putting the excuse of heavy work at office. And spend it  on that passion of ours which we have always wanted to pursue but couldn’t.

Just an hour dedicated to your own self with your guitar, with your paints and canvas, with your diary, with your books. And you will feel that it had relaxed your mind in an amazing way.

It’s like meeting yourself every day for an hour in your solitude. So are you starting today?

Regards. Sawmitra.

Work and Detachment -An Ancient key to our Modern Problems.

Work and Detachment -An Ancient key to our Modern Problems..

Work and Detachment -An Ancient key to our Modern Problems.

Human life goes by a simple calculation of effort and result. We are happy and successful when the amount of result of our efforts (rewards/prizes/fame etc) equals to our effort or sometimes exceeds our effort.

In a simple way of speaking we always want maximum benefit from minimum efforts.

But the misery strikes when the calculation falls down. The results get lower than our efforts. And when we are in a phase of our life where the calamity strikes our productivity starts decreasing. This calculation is same in almost all the fields of our life- academics, job, and relationship. Everything.

Lets us go through certain general scenarios of our daily life:

Scenario 1:

You have a girlfriend/boyfriend. You love her/him a lot. You put your effort in expressing your love.  When you get the result i.e. loved in return, in the amount you expected, your life remains bliss. But the moment the intensity of loving back decreases (which may occur due to many reasons like financial problems, family problems, time management, health issues etc.). The problem starts rising. The decline in the result, your expected result, has compelled you to take the decision of decreasing your heartfelt love to your lover. Gradually you attention moves to someone else. Your status changes from “Committed” to “Complicated”

Scenario 2:

You perform your duty well in your office and had the thing in mind that “Now my boss / co-workers will appreciate me for the good efforts I put in completing this project. Wow!” or “After this I will surely receive a bonus.” And when you are not appreciated a little, or not bonused, your morale and passion in your work comes down. And gradually you start to look at the negative sides of your work. Complaining about little things either vocally or mentally. This, further, worsens your problems. Ultimately leading to a decay of your productivity.

The very basic and common thing that leads to all these conflicts, complains, unhealthy competition in work and bad relationship have a name and it is called- “Attachment”.  Working with our mind attached to the results. We are attached to the result so much that we stop extracting the very essence of a work. And here lies the problem.

Your mind might be questioning  “How attachment is the source of these problems?” “How can I blame attachment for all these?”

Let me answer you:

In our life we make lots of plans. A plan for everything. Plan for workout. Plan for academic success. Plan for getting employed. Plan for getting a life partner. But does life follow our plans?  Were you successful in executing all of your plans? You know the answers.

In some planning we succeed but Most of the times our plans do not turn out as expected. And why it will?

Life is full of uncertainties.  Life is full of changes. Changes that occurs, surprising us. But we don’t want to change. We want that our life should go as we have thought for it and this stiffness of ours is “attachment”.

The problem doesn’t lie in our planning but the results of those planning to which we always want to remain attached.

So here lies a need of breaking this knot of attachment and this can be done by “Detachment”.

Work without attachment= work with detachment.

But we have a very wrong picture of detachment in our minds. When we say “detachment” we picture ourselves giving up everything that is social and letting ourselves go down in hibernation by not reacting to any situations and trying to remain as indifferent as possible.  But that’s just punishing us hard and nothing else. Such detachments don’t make out any logic.

Then what does “detachment” mean in its truest sense? And how can it help us out?

The answer lies in an ancient speech of a charioteer to his master.

Vasudev Krishna describes “detachment”, exactly, in the battlefield of Kurukshetra to Prince Arjuna as:

“By shunning action; nay and none shall come

  By mere renouncements unto perfectness

  Nay, and no jot of time, at any time,

  Rests any actionless; his nature’s law

  Compels him, even unwilling, into act;

  [For thought is act in fancy]. He who sits

  Suppressing all the instruments of flesh,

  Yet in his idle heart thinking on them,

  Plays an inept and guilty hypocrite:”- the Bhagavad Gita [Karma Yoga, verse 4-6]

“Detachment” means abstaining ourselves from ‘self-concentrated’ work and performing ‘selfless ‘work. “Detachment” means not to work for personal gains but to perform our duties selflessly. And when there is selflessness, there is true detachment.

“With spirit unattached gladly perform

  Since in performing plain duty man

  Man mounts to his highest bliss…” [Karma Yoga; verse 19]

Now let us go back to those two scenarios that we came across in the beginning and see how the theory of “Work and Detachment” is applicable:

Scenario 1:

The problem will not arise when we teach our mind not to be in the constant desire of getting something in return. I love her and that’s sufficient. I know she loves me too that’s why she is with me.”If our love for our partner would have been true, unattached from getting something in return, we would have spent time loving them simply and understanding their problems rather making calculation and balancing the scale on who compromised more.

Scenario 2:

In our profession or work place we should keep the thing in mind that “I am here to perform my duty well and develop my work to a better level than it is today.”  This detachment will help in abstaining our mind from getting attached to rewards, bonus, appreciation etc.  and when I am detached from desire of getting something in return I am diminishing the chance of getting disheartened when not appreciated.I keep doing my work, improving it every time.

And if I receive any reward or appreciation, it’s always a bonus for me.

When we perform our duties without the desire of getting appreciated or getting rewarded in return our mind just focus on the work and its successful completion. We don’t have to worry about whether the world accepted it or not. We just work for quenching the thirst of working out.  And that’s all.

The advantage of working in detachment is that if we fail in doing a certain work our mind will not suffer from guilt of incapability. We will have the motivation to start again from zero. Our mental calmness will remain intact. And mental calmness is very essential thing in today’s world. It accelerates our self-development. And the motto of life is nothing but to develop ourselves to a better state from the present one.

This is what we find in our ancient philosophies. Keys so perennial that it still opens many modern locks.

‘We never feel sorry for not getting what we never desired. We are not disheartened.

We always feel happy for getting what we never desired. We are motivated.’- this is the trick.

But we have to perform this trick honestly. We cannot just pretend to be “detached” on the surface while we remain tied inside.

“With meditation centered inwardly

  Seeking no profit, satisfied, serene,

  Heedless of issue-fight…” [Karma Yoga; verse 29-30]

Thank you.

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The BhagavadaGita

One can become whatever one wants to be [if one constantly contemplates on the object of desire with faith].

Pursuit of Dreams.

Why dreams exist in our life? Whats the need to dream?

There are certain basic elements that drive life of every living being. These elements are: food, shelter and sex gratification. The fulfilment of these elemental needs is what drives the life. How a species fulfil this needs and what it does to fulfil these needs directs and defines that species life; directly or indirectly.  On further narrowing our observation on the stated needs and on analysing we will find that the base of the need-fulfilment is nothing but the sheer impulse of survival that is deep seeded inside every living being.

We, humans, are no case exception. As we are also animals, survival instincts play the same game with us. It wants us to live more. It wants us never to be outrun by death. It wants us immortal. It wants us to leave mark of us behind.

But we are mortals, we all know it. We are with a limited time in this world of ours. So certain questions arises in our mind “what will keep me alive when I am dead and gone?” “How can I leave a mark behind?”  When such thoughts start clouding in our mind, our dreams starts forming. This is where the seed of desires, dreams germinate in our life. Because these instincts are so much into our blood that we don’t even realize that it’s because of all these drives and instincts we make wishes and follow dreams in our life. For us these appear natural.

Every work of man, whether grand or trifle is an expression of his desires, of his satisfaction, of his dreams. From the magnificent Eiffel Tower to the small apartment that you are constructing right now for your family, from the greatest literary works like Iliad, Odyssey or Paradise Lost to that little unpublished and unread poem in your diary, from the top most companies like Microsoft, Face book to the small business you have started recently. All these are nothing but expression of our dreams.

If we observe this world of ours we will find it filled with infinite examples of accomplishments that were or is nothing but fulfilment of someone’s dream, some ones wishes, and some ones desire of leaving that mark of theirs behind

But how many of us accomplish the dreams of ours? How many?

Having a dream and accomplishing a dream are two different things completely. In this society of ours there are only two kinds of people. One, the majority, who sees the dream. And second, the minority, who sees the dream like the  former but goes a step advance and achieves it. Whatever it is.

So what make this minority group become successful in achieving their dreams while others just dream on?

There are certain criteria’s for such achievement.

Let’s discuss it over a little journey. Comeon!.

Firstly,

In order to reach a destination what we need the most is to start the journey. If we don’t start then we don’t reach. Starting is the important step, it is the first step. A small first step repeating which time after time we reach that destination of ours. But this first step is the heaviest one. To rotate the wheel for the first time we need a lot of energy for overcoming the frictional force acting on it. Same is to life, for persuading our dreams the very necessary and basic thing we need is to start. Because the frictional force-the fear of failure acts very hard on the wheel of our dream-cart. Some of us don’t even start and at last they end without even starting. So whatever our dreams may be we need to take the first little step towards achieving it as soon as possible.

Secondly,

As now as we pulled our cart and covered a long road in pursuit of dream, we now starting to get tired pulling this cart and moving. So now we start to peep with our elongated neck , impatiently, to see whether we can see the destination,the end point. No. There is no sign of any end. Just a long road. Our mind begins to be clouded with thoughts. And the thought that occurs at this stage has very important work to do. They damage our patience and slowly reduce our sight and ultimately we turn out to be blind to our true potentiality about our powers, our talents and start believing that this journey that we undertook is completely a useless one. We start believing that it would have been better if we didn’t pulled this cart of our dreams so much, rather sat at our home and spend the sunny days without such hardship but in pleasure. This is the place on this road where most of our journey ends, where most of the dream dies. We start making excuses. We don’t want to pay the cost of our dreams. This is the milestone of this journey where the majority stops. But few people still continues the journey. And these few are those who end this journey by achieving what they wanted to. This is how they leave their mark behind.

And the last,

The most important thing about this pursuit of dreams in our life is that it is a single passenger journey. It has always been like that. We may have a supporting family, we may have that soul lover, we may that  best friend. But all they can do is to help us prepare for the journey. They can remind us to take the things necessary for our journey or at most they can help us in preparing our baggage but they can never undertake our journey. It’s us who has to travel the road, alone. We have to make the pursuit of our dreams by ourselves.

“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”

Colin Powell.

So its upto us , whether we are ready to pay for pursuing our dreams or not?

Its always have just two options.

Yes or No.

                                                                                                               –By Sawmitra Roy

The Dragon Killer

Sharing this story that I found while reading one of Paulo Coelho’s article.

Zhuangzi, a renowned Chinese author, tells the story of Zhu Pingman, who went after a master in order to learn the best way to kill dragons.

The master taught Pingman for 10 years uninterrupted, until his pupil was able to develop — to perfection — the most sophisticated technique to kill dragons.

From then on, Pingman spent the rest of his life searching for dragons, so he could show everyone his ability; but for his disappointment, he never found a dragon.

The story’s author says: “All of us prepare ourselves to kill dragons and end up devoured by the ants of details, to which we never pay attention.”

Failure… an essential element of our life.

By Sawmitra Roy

We can never find a person who has never stumbled in his/her walk of life. Failure is for everyone and it’s always there to bring you down whenever we make a step in a path, mostly when the path is uncommon one. But most of us fall in the trap that it has laid and stays webbed there, without even trying to defeat it. 

As a child I had problems with Arithmetic classes because when I was asked to solve a sum on the board I failed (later I realised that it was not due to my inefficiency in cracking a sum rather than the lack of confidence in presenting myself in public. And it also troubles me till now.). And each of these little failures had made clouds of illusions around me that I don’t know how to do Maths. Consequently I started to avoid it and ultimately it became my nightmare. However later a Maths teacher of mine shattered this illusion around me and showed me that my real problem was not Mathematics. It was something else. It was my lack of confidence in standing in front of the class. It was my self-made theory that my friends will laugh at me if I couldn’t get the answer correct, that I will not be able to make a good impression to my crush. He made me see what my actual problem was and how this problem hard to solve, but not impossible. This teacher of mine helped me score my personal best score on the Mathematics exam and I was convinced that I was not weak there. 

The reason I shared this little story of mine is to convey the message that most of the time we fear something that has no reality. Failure is just a state of mind. And sticking to this failure state of mind leads to depression. And this depression is nothing but the originator of illness and weakness. And it also makes you taste the feeling of guilty even if you are not actually guilty; it draws out a lot of your energy, leaving you with your weaknesses to focus on and veils the strength of yours.

Failure has another unique characteristic to it. It always come flashing, again and again when you are about to defeat it and most of the time it ends up convincing us that we can’t cross that point where we surrendered to it in our last attempt.

But In reality there is no failure, there are only lessons to be learnt. Everyday should be spent working on how to lead a better life than the last day. And not by merely worrying about the mistakes of the last day but to highlight the areas of weakness and to pin them permanently in our mind-board. So that next time we use the FAILURE of us as an EXPERIENCE. And each day we should add something in our life; something that is worth to be cherished in our later days or in someone’s memories.

Failure is of great importance in our life. Because it acts as a mirror. And without a mirror we will always live in an illusion that we are perfect.  There is a quote saying- “one who has not made mistake has not lived his life”. So making mistakes and failing is a part of life, if and only if not done again and again. If the same thing is done again and again then it’s a different story.

So when we face a failure. We should see it as a person rather than an abstract. And instead of fearing it we should first identify it in details and then plan to defeat it. Because no one else is our greatest competition in the way of fulfilment our dreams except our own fear that resides inside of us. And fear grows more when we stop after a failure and make an illusion that we can’t defeat it (as I did with Maths.)

This blog of mine may picture me as if I have experienced everything of life and defeated every failure. It’s not so. And you reading this know it very well (even if you don’t know me) actually this life of ours is single and very short. Because you never know when you are gone. So don’t be so harsh at yourself when you fail. Don’t punish your good soul so harshly that it turns to what it was never. If the failure, the mistake of yours hurt you much then cry, cry as much as you can and then when you are finished make sure you don’t cry for the same reason again. And if ever you cry for the same reason the second time. You be sure that you are going to spent the rest of your life crying for the same reason  again and again.

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

So friends it’s time we take charge of ourselves. Let’s try and experiment, make mistakes, learn from them and make sure that we don’t repeat them again.

Take control of your life and fail the failure. Thanks.