A heartbreak is a blessing from God. It's just his way of letting you realize he saved you from the wrong one. ~Author Unknown

But don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

I just don’t think it’d understand... goes the Billy Ray Cyrus classic!

Touchy!! We all have done it at some stage in time. Breaking hearts for me has been equally heart wrenching as much as getting your own heartbroken. Call it being sensitive or empathetic; I could almost always feel the pain of a broken heart. We don’t break hearts willfully, except it’s a pre meditated for undisclosed agenda.

So as always the one you love needn’t be the same as the one that loves you (many a people do get lucky and don’t have to take the complicated path). And for centuries man & woman have been playing this game of love, the one of rejection and acceptance. Whether we like it or not each one of us comes close to doing their bit. We don’t always get what we wanted but always what we need. So who gets to decide what our soul ‘needs’? Is it fate, destiny, God or just another mortal who gets to make a choice?

Our life is all about choices, where pain staking decisions are made, many a hearts trampled for better or for worse. There are two things to understand that if you are one who has to be sensitive to the other person after all there is no anesthesia for a broken heart. And if you have to do the inevitable just pray and wish well that they couldn’t be a part of your life. Maybe be grateful to them that they found you worthy of their love.

Now the hardest part, when you find yourself at the receiving end.  It may seem as the most difficult thing to do, but you have to forget those who forgot about you. Loving is all about letting go and forgiveness. And know that these trying times will only make you stronger as you grow. Believe there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is rainbow after the rains, and every cloud has a silver lining. And eventually you will find the good in goodbye J

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes ‘round in another form’ ~ Rumi

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night ~Kahlil Gibran

The Dark Side….

All elements in the universe are a combination of positive and negative energies. So how could we mortals be spared from this divine intervention? As humans we experience all emotions in their highest and most complex forms, both the forms. Let’s just see what these contrasting emotions are, to name a few…

Anger - Compassion

Hate - Love

Pain - Pleasure

Jealousy - Admiration

Fear – Love

Despair – Hope

Darkness - Light

So for every negative response there is an equal and opposed positive one, must I say. All through our journey of life, we experience these and many more emotions in varying degrees. All but essential for man before he reaches ‘nirvana’ where he goes beyond all of them.

Society has by far criticized and condemned all the negatives that have surfaced upon the face of earth. The dualities of life by large can never be ignored, so how could we break out this law that has governed our lives for eons? Is there any escape route with which we could transcend this duality within us?

Ever since we are born and bred, we have always been given the rules of the society to abide by. The do’s and don’ts, where your do’s are being all that is perfect and good & the don’ts are to repress all that is wrong and bad. And turning us into some “phony puppets” or worse “les misérables” (and miserable we sure are ;)). But don’t we all love those who are nice and dispel those who are bad (according to us).

Just like the moon each one of us has a Dark side, which we either choose to conceal behind the veil of goodness and fake personas or revealing it only in . Why do we condemn this part of us that is a part of nature? Why do we denounce when nature accepts it. I am but trying to delve further deep in to my psyche and find what’s buried deep in there that I so deny being a part of me. There are times when I want to tell this ‘miss-goody-two-shoes’ in me to go take a hike, literally. Times when I just can’t explain why I need revenge, or when I want to punch someone in their face really hard, or just be plain mean(read bitch). There are times when even if I want to I cannot hide this expression of me, however dark it might be. I am not trying to promote criminal citations here, but just trying to come to terms with this fraction of my anatomy.

 

Into my heart's night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day.
~Rumi

Without darkness you can never experience light, like day we need the night too (a night to give our false persona a rest). If there is no bad, how can the good exist? There is a balance in nature so it’s imperative that there has to be a balance somewhere within us too. We need to attain that sense of balance, since excess of any whether good or bad, right or wrong could be harmful to you if not others. How do we regain our composure? The simplest thing would be to be aware of your intrinsic nature. The moment you are aware there is a faint chance that your actions would be fatal to you or anyone around you. And then the darkness dispels not by force or set of laws, but by your own inner wisdom.

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” ~ Og Mandino

Birth of Enlightenment...

 Blessed is the birth of the Buddhas; blessed is the enunciation of the sacred Teaching; blessed is the harmony in the Order, and blessed is the spiritual pursuit of the united truth-seeker

Buddha… a man... a god… an entity… a beautiful embodiment… an enlightened soul… whose self soul searching engendered a spiritual wave across the universe… And even today encompasses millions of followers, devotees and meditators’ globally.

For the uninitiated ‘Buddha’ was a prince called Gautama Siddharth, the Buddha-to-be, who lived more than 2,500 years ago. His father was the Rajah of the Sakya clan, King Suddhodana, and his mother was Queen Maha Maya. They lived in India, in a city called Kapilavatthu, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Prince Siddhartha was a healthy and happy boy. He was always considerate to others and was popular among his friends. Even in his growing up years he was kind and compassionate to all living beings. He learned that although he was happy, there was a lot of suffering in life, so he felt deep sympathy for all creatures. To distract him, the king built Siddhartha a beautiful palace with a lovely garden to play in. But this did not stop the prince from thinking about the suffering and unhappiness that he noticed around him. Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young man of great strength. He was now of an age to get married. To stop Siddhartha from thinking of leaving home, King Suddhodana arranged for him to be married to his own beautiful cousin, Princess Yasodhara. King Suddhodana built a pleasure palace for Siddhartha and Yasodhara. Dancers and singers were asked to entertain them, and only healthy and young people were allowed into the palace and the palace garden. The king did not want Siddhartha to know that everybody gets sick, grows old and will die. But an impromptu visit to his town changed his destiny.

Siddhartha saw a white haired, wrinkled man dressed in rags. Such a sight surprised him, as he had never seen anyone old before. Channa explained to him that this man was old and that everyone will be old one day. Then he witnessed sickness and death and realized that he too will have to suffer some day. So a disturbed Siddhartha asked Channa to take him back home. The prince then decided to leave the palace and go in search for freedom from sickness, age and death. One night, when everyone in the palace was asleep, Siddhartha left as Yasodhara and their newborn boy Rahula slept.

At the age of 29, Siddhartha began the homeless life of a monk. In his fervent search for truth Siddhartha practiced various forms of asceticism for six years. He reduced his eating more and more until he ate nothing at all until one day when he fainted. A shepherd boy fed him goats’ milk and revived him, then he realized that he would have died before enlightenment.

Siddhartha accepted an offering of straw from a straw-peddler, made a seat from it and sat down to meditate under a large bodhi tree, facing east. He made a promise to himself: "I will not give up until I achieve my goal, until I find a way of freedom from suffering, for myself and all people."

As he meditated, Siddhartha let go of all outside disturbances, and memories of pleasures from the past. He let go of all worldly thoughts and turned his mind to finding the ultimate truth about life.So, at the age of 35, Siddhartha became the Buddha, the Supreme Enlightened One.

The first Noble Truth - to the unenlightened, life is filled with dukkha. The second is the cause of suffering (desire, anger, and ignorance); the third was that it is possible to eliminate suffering; and the fourth explained the path to be followed if you want to end suffering. And those are the three gems.. the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha.. This is recited as below.

Buddham Saranam Gacchami, Dhammam Saranam Gacchami, Sangham Saranam Gacchami

This is about the entity who has somewhere touched and still touches a million lives. His teachings and scriptures like the Dhammapada, the Heart Sutra, the Wheel of Dhamma; all imbibed the true essence of his being. He gave us the gift of various meditations, the most significant of all is the Vipassana meditation (which every meditator has experienced at some point in their lives), Zazen meditation, Lotus meditation, . I feel blessed today that such an enlightened master graced our lives. Buddha not only attained nirvana on his own but also initiated millions of followers to this path.

After his death, the fire of Buddhism spread far and wide, even to far east, where today it manifests in the form of Zen (Mahayana) Buddhism in China & Japan, Tantric (Vajrayana) Buddhism in Tibet.

Where he rightly articulates that ‘each one of us has the potential of attain buddhahood’ and in his own words... "Blessed is the birth of the Buddhas; blessed is the enunciation of the sacred Teaching; blessed is the harmony in the Order, and blessed is the spiritual pursuit of the united truth-seeker"

Even if you are not a seeker and you are ignorant of the koan’s (zen stories with deeper meanings)… you still might have your own “Laughing Buddha” gracing your work table, home entrance, your office which mightn’t initiate you in to meditation, but certain to bring forth wealth, prosperity and happiness in your life. The wandering monk, who is ready to take your sadness in his bag, provided you drop it!

In pursuit of a Mirage…

Everyone one of us has dreams, aspirations, ambitions that give us good enough reason to live for. Without which we would be questioning our whole existence. So time and again religions, society all have transpired to instill at least one of those in us. 

The first few years of our life after birth are an eternal process of the society to make us civilized and fit enough to be part of the society... The next few years post puberty are the ones where we decide (or not) what will set us apart from the rest... All fantasies and day dreams are now replaced by ‘real’ ambitions and aspirations of the world. All the innocence replaced by knowledgeable smartness. No moment spared for plain idiocy; but all efforts channeled to make you a master mind or super brainy robot.

In pursuit of mirage of dreams and goals, in this modern world, have we somewhere missed the knack to be content with the simplicity of life itself.  The million dollar question is, what is it that defines us? Is it having innumerous and infinite aspirations vs. being complacent and allow nature take its own course? I would have to go with maintaining a balance between the duet. While it’s a handful who are fortunate to cope up with this unattainable quest in their lifetime, the lowly barely manage to squirm out of this web.

I would say, just hold on to your own dreams and aspirations, which even if unaccomplished, should dazzle you with their beauty and make you believe in them. Coz dreams are like stars… you may never touch them, but if you follow them they will lead you to your destiny. And at no point should disappointment overwhelm you if discover a mirage ;)… since Mirages will be there and bring about momentary bliss, but they will also be a constant beckoner that you yet have to reach for the stars!