Ikigai

Dear Smt. Jayasala:

As usual, it is a thorough response from you. It is always a delight to read your responses. I wish you a belated Deepavali as well. It is interesting coincidence that you had mentioned about the Japanese girl learning Bharathanatiyam which came up in a response here in this snippet from Vani.

In our culture, anything we do with devotion and love with no personal expectations is always perceived as not only a liberating moment but also meditation 24/7. Even though the word love is missing in the diagram, I noticed that there is an outer circle with a title, "What the world needs". I assumed it referred to love and compassion for the fellow beings and pleasure derived from seeing others happy.

I agree passion may not feed us. In most cases, we may not get an opportunity to do what we are passionate about as a career due to other circumstances. Some may be good in writing poem or writing stories when they are actively a homemaker. When they send those for publication and they are well received, they will realize their full potential as a writer.

I couldn't agree more "Karma Yoga" teaches us exactly how one should choose every action and carry it out with proper mindset. Krishna taught Arjuna, "It is your duty to fight to establish righteousness" even though war may not be perceived by many as desirable.

Both passion and obsession has emotions except the intensity varies. Each culture come up with their own version of finding the purpose of life. When I read Rick Warren's "The purpose-driven life", it teaches how to effectively use the teachings in The Bible to drive our lives. His assertion that "We are created to become like Christ" is equivalent of the four Mahavakyas taught by the four Vedas in Sanathana Dharma.

Viswa

 

Dear Sabitha,

Thank you for your comprehensive response. Most responses reproduced below suggested to love what we do regularly.

Sri HariLakhera:

Smt. Jayasala

Sabitha

If we do work with devotion and love with no expectation, it makes our mind achieve meditative state while at work 24/7. This is what Karma Yoga suggests as the way for salvation. Do our duty with love and no expectation of the fruits.

However, the tool that we possess I passionately call as BMI ("Body, Mind and Intellect") is encrypted with some passions that unfolds on its own from time to time in the form of thoughts. The learned people suggest that instead of resisting such temptation and continue to do what we do regularly, we need to identify them and saturate that desire to remove that encryption. You may call it as a passion that comes out of our encryption.

My youngest uncle (mother's last brother) and I were born six months apart. When we were raised together, my mother and grandmother noticed that we both have some passions but they didn't know how to let them manifest. My uncle had a passion to dance, drama and musical instruments when I had passion for listening to devotional music and singing along and attending spiritual/religious discourses. We both were asked to focus on education and leave all these passions aside without proper nurturing. My uncle left school and pursued education in School of Arts in Egmore, Chennai and was focused on painting live models.

Later, he became friends with some notable cinematography students in the film institute. Eventually, he went on to become a director in Tamil film industry and continues to do smaller roles in Tamil movies even today. On the contrary, I pursued my academic education with no formal training on singing or spiritual education and became a Chartered Accountant. My family was full of Engineers and hence technology attracted me more. But even today, reading spiritual books, listening to spiritual discourses and singing bhajans excite me the most.

I am not questioning the fact that we need to love everything we do in life. However, there are somethings that are first among the equals. It is my humble view that your passion for enjoying the nature and living in the present moment, educating the children, pursuing Yoga and your marathon running come naturally to you.

Viswa

 

Dear Smt. Srinivasan:

Thank you for your kind comment and I am truly humbled.

Golden words. We need to be on a mission to load ourselves with a lot of spiritual wealth with good deeds. Automatically, we will leave a very strong foot print when we are gone. As I mentioned the words of praise should be met with sense of gratitude and the words of advice should be reviewed carefully to improve our character.

Viswa

 

Dear Sri Thyagarajan:

Thank you for your response. Squeaky wheel gets the grease is the saying. If we focus on advice and criticism, the rest will fall in place. Criticism has no axe to grind whereas praise could be genuine or may be intended to stroke the ego.

Viswa

 

Dear Syamala,

Thank you for your wonderful feedback and without your response, my snippet would feel orphaned. We never know what thought would come out of our mind at what age. I read about a man who was analyzing the medicinal effects of branches, leaves, flowers and fruits of trees and was able to successfully segregate them for various human diseases. Another man who was very interested in studying about the animals never got a chance to study at an young age and at the age of 60, he started accumulating books about animals and their unique behavior patterns and their way of communication and so on.

Dr. Abdul Kalam was very impressed when he was taught about how the birds fly in his seventh grade. The teacher took the entire class to the beach to show how the birds take a flight. It triggered his passion forever and when he finished his aeronautic engineering in MIT, Chrompet, Chennai, he applied to become a flight engineer in the Air Force. He was wait listed but everyone joined resulting in him wandering the Himalayas and eventually visited Shivananda's Ashram. After that, his life changed dramatically and he became the leader of the Missile Technology in Defense Research Development Organization.

An ordinary man in Madurai saw a few people wandering the streets with no hygiene and no food, suddenly something struck him to leave everything he was doing to pursue aggressively to help these homeless people every day. He cooks meal for them, cut their hair, give them bath and so on everyday. He never envisioned to become a super human being to appear in Ted.com or rewarded by American organizations. He said when he is helping the poor, he forgets himself and all his problems and even how he is going to find money to support all these poor people. He said his will power attracted so many people to voluntarily help him both physically and financially to execute his goal.

Today, we all know Mother Teresa is a noble prize winner who treated with great love those who were suffering on the streets of Calcutta. When he came to India from Albania, she was an ordinary woman with no name or fame. Why would a Westerner with great life style dedicate her life to help the poor in the streets of Calcutta and what triggered her to do that? As she rightly said, "Everyone can't do great things but they can do small things with great love".

I agree with the thought that we should be happy and do every one of our actions with all our heart and soul with great love with no expectations as taught by our scriptures. However, there are encryption embedded in our frame with which we came into this world. In the western world, there is a belief that those who keep exploring new things, their life turns into one of exciting opportunities as opposed to those who are contented with what they do. Contentment should be applied for our desires, attachments and wealth and not what we like to accomplish. Even in quality management, they teach that one should always believe that there is more scope for improvement of the product/service. If one likes to move from good to great, one should constantly dream about new things that would bring a great sense of fulfillment. Pushing ourselves to achieve new things and setting new standards is the key for the sense of fulfillment. Age is not the limiting factor and it is just our ability to think and execute.

Viswa