My dear friends
The gift of love,
The gift of peace,
The gift of happiness,
May all these be yours
DILIP
We grow up wanting to acquire more and more information and knowledge. Knowledge does enable us to gain high status, power and respect from society. But if we do not handle our success and power with due humility we soon get blinded by our ego. It is therefore important to achieve a balance between the heavy load of knowledge with a light mind.
Acquiring knowledge is tough but letting go of it is even more challenging. Lightening our minds is possible if we are prepared to surrender our ego of knowledge. And one of the way is to remove the clutter and calm our mind. Only then can we understand issues and problems with an open mind and by listening to our inner voice.
Please do share your views with our readers and visitors.
Thank you and have a great weekend. 
The story below in a simple way illustrates Rumi’s wisdom and the magic of silence:
“There once was a farmer who discovered that he had lost his watch in the barn. It was no ordinary watch because it had sentimental value for him.
After searching high and low among the hay for a long while; he gave up and enlisted the help of a group of children playing outside the barn.
He promised them that the person who found it would be rewarded.
Hearing this, the children hurried inside the barn, went through and around the entire stack of hay but still could not find the watch. Just when the farmer was about to give up looking for his watch, a little boy went up to him and asked to be given another chance.
The farmer looked at him and thought, “Why not? After all, this kid looks sincere enough.”
So the farmer sent the little boy back in the barn. After a while the little boy came out with the watch in his hand! The farmer was both happy and surprised and so he asked the boy how he succeeded where the rest had failed.
The boy replied, “I did nothing but sit on the ground and listen. In the silence, I heard the ticking of the watch and just looked for it in that direction.”
The story proves that creative thoughts and problem solving solutions emerge only when the mind is calm and uncluttered. Even neuroscience has proven that silence nourishes the mind and body. Its a good to practice to sit in silence for at least 10 minutes once or twice a day. Soon the mind when faced with a situation will learn to auto-connect with our inner silence and think with clarity to find a solution.
Cheers and best wishes to all my friends! 🙂
In life we would rather be teachers than students. But we have to be learners till the end of our lives. A regular churchgoer felt a prompting one Saturday morning to go to the church. It was empty save for a woman in faded jeans who did not seem well off and was dusting and arranging the benches. He concluded that she was doing this work to earn some money for her family. The man returned to his car and took out two fifty dollar notes. He waited till the lady was leaving the church and tried to help her by handing over his donation. She refused his offer, but he insisted and finally she accepted the offer. He accompanied her as she left the church. Imagine his consternation when they came to a brand new BMW and the lady entered the car. As she was leaving she handed him her card. The result of her humility was that now there are two people every Saturday morning in the church dusting and arranging the benches.
His lesson on generosity turned for him into a lesson on humility!
We need to be careful never to fall in the trap of generosity which may be couched in our ego. Let our generosity always be tempered with humility.
Cheers 🙂
Hello friends it feels good to be back after a refreshing break! Yes it’s that time of the year – December comes with all the joys of Christmas and the brightness of the New Year. In our fun and merriment lets also pause and give a thought and a prayer for our less fortunate brethren the gift of health happiness and love. Maybe a small act of kindness to bring a smile on their lips and in their eyes. 🙂
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year”. ~ Ralf Waldo Emerson
Cheers and best always 🙂
Our lives could be so much better, so much more peaceful and joyful if only we could become aware of our ego. Awareness is the first step to identify our deep rooted ego. Yet Ego itself is the most formidable barrier to awareness. Therefore instead of taking the elusive ego head-on it may be wiser to work towards achieving a state of awareness. This is because the ego lies couched in most of our actions even in our good acts like helping the needy or making donations. Why? because the ego makes us feel we superior like “playing God”! So we are back where we started.
“No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves”! ~ Hugh Prather
“If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed”! ~ C.S Lewis
Cheers dear friends and lets wish each other an ego-free journey ahead 🙂
Hello friends this year too my friend Brig. Chow’s (Chowdhry) home was blessed with the bloom of the Brahm Kamal flowers in his garden. Very gracious of him to share his thoughts and pictures as below:
“The gorgeous Brahma Kamal’s are so beautiful that they are glorified by different names two of which are The Star of Bethlehem and the Lotus of the Gods. Lotus symbolizes purity and enlightenment. These breathtakingly beautiful flowers bring with them an aura of such calm, peace and beauty, as if to say, that despite the present turmoil in the World all will be well. They are perhaps the most precious flowers in the world since they come as night visitors, and by morning are completely a spent force, as if to ratify a favorite quote of mine by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
I would like to mention here quite an amazing occurrence – a niece of mine in L.A. with geographical and climatic conditions, have these flowers blooming within a day or two of us in Pune. It is monsoon time here but no rains there! Lovely are ways of God.
With the plants with me having matured now over the last four years or so, they bloomed a number of times during the monsoons in clusters of twos, fours and sixes as the rains progress. The first bloom of two this season occurred just a few days before the onset of monsoons.”
So friends we wrap-up now with a big thank you to our guest writer and a quote by Alfred Austin which aptly depicts the Brig’s love for gardening ~
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul”.
Cheers and a have lovely week! 🙂
Zen Masters have a way of expounding great truths in simple ways. Who doesn’t want to be happy? yet happiness remains elusive to most of us. The Zen wisdom below simplifies the secret to attain happiness in just a few words. Yes to be happy or not is entirely our choice as our happiness does not depend on anyone else. If we consider each moment as precious we will not allow it to be frittered away in bickering and negativity. For this we need to be intensely aware of every fleeting moment which we have and savor it.
So lets make it a point to enjoy the heavenly bliss of nature in all its bounties. In beautiful forests and serene lakes and by helping the needy. In the smiles and wonder of children and being in love with humanity.
What if after you die, God asks you “So, how was heaven?” 🙂 🙂
These two young managers are in the business of selling happiness for free 😉
“Be the person who your dog thinks you are!” ~ J.W. Stephens
Have a wonderful weekend my dear friends!
Who doesn’t remember the school bell and the pleasant memories associated with it. And why does a school bell sound not so pleasant in the morning whereas the same bell sounds so beautiful at the end of school day closing.
The first bell signals a structured regimen of studies and discipline. Whereas the final bell is music to our ears as it heralds freedom fun and play.
How nice if we could start our day visualising the sweet sound of the second bell and have a wonderful day?
Come friends lets all “Live Life Less Serious” 😎 😎
