Sleep well or wake up?

Where do we go when we sleep? When we wake up we say we had a good sleep. In sleep we are in ananda- bliss. But we do not know it is bliss when we sleep. No grief what so ever even when all our problems with body, family and work remain the same when we sleep. When Rama, Krishna and Givinda sleep in a room together, Rama does not know that he is Rama. It is the same with Krishna and Govinda. They are also not aware of others around. There is no difference between them. They all must have gone to the same source. They are not aware of that. It is a wonder that when Rama wakes up he knows that he is Rama the very same person who went to sleep a few hours back. It shows the continuity of mind which was not functioning while in sleep. He also knows that he is the same Rama who lived in a different City ten years back.

Sleep is a great gift we got from God but we know very little about it. We all know a lot about what is happening when we are awake and tend to think and talk only about it. We identify ourselves with our body and mind in waking state by mistake. We are different from our body and mind. We have them and use them.Sometimes we remember our dreams and many times we cannot even recollect them.

As human beings we exist in three states -wake, dream and sleep (jagarat, swapna and sushupti awasta). We conveniently forget sleep. We are worried about sleep only when we cannot get sleep. That is why we say,” I spent sleepless nights” when we are annoyed.

In fact we are with Eshwara, karana shareeram-causal body and continue to get our energy when we sleep. We are intimate with our source. Our gross physical body and subtle body- mind are on rest when we are in deep sleep. It is like a mobile phone put on charge.

When we cannot sleep for days we do not have energy to move around. It is not just food that keeps us alive, we also need good sleep to be alive. The advantage of sleep state is bliss. But we are ignorant. This is disadvantage of sleep state. We are very close to God is the advantage. We have no differences, no hatred; no grief is the advantage. The disadvantage of sleep is that we do not know anything about us and the world. We are blissfully ignorant.

Just imagine a state where we are able to be as blissful as in sleep and also aware of it!

If this is possible in sleep why will someone come out of sleep? The problem is we cannot be sleeping all the time. There should be a way to remove this ignorance and get the knowledge. Luckily in waking state we can get this knowledge. We can work to get this knowledge. We will know more about this, when we study Tatva boda of Aadi Sankara under proper guidance.

-Arasu Ramanujam

Great opportunity

Each time I go back to India after a travel outside the country, I rediscover India.

I am thrilled at the speed in which the country is changing. At the same time some of our villages remain the same after 50 years of my visit there. This is great about our nation. Not only we have unity in diversity, we also have unimaginable difference in our way of life between villages and cities. There are many such observations different from what I would have seen from inside. I would like to share a few here.

Demand for everything:

One morning I called a service provider to get a driver for my car. My call number was 339. I called them after an hour. They said sorry, they could not get a driver for me that day due to overbooking. (They didn’t even bother to call me and tell this until I called them). They were so busy! Then I decided to drive, though it is not a pleasant experience to drive in Chennai during peak hours.

This is the case when we ask for a cab. Many times you will not get the cab when you want it. There is great demand for electrician. You won’t get a good one even if you try for a week. You can extend this to a carpenter, plumber and so on. Maid for housekeeping tops the list of demands! Every home maker becomes terribly upset when the maid does not turn up. What does this mean? There is great opportunity everywhere. You can make millions and billions if you are able to provide the right things in India. People are ready to pay for it. IT industry has changed India so much.

It is strange that on one side there is great shortage of everything and the other side youth are searching for employment. What are we searching for? Every mother wants her son or daughter to become a salaried person in some company. Who will become entrepreneur? There is a big difference between China and India. I have seen in China and Japan many youth willing to build their own company seeing the demand in a particular field. We can eradicate poverty in today’s India if our production, distribution and service system is done properly.

If you can see differently there is money everywhere. There is opportunity in every shortage. As in the above cases, can we not have properly trained electricians, drivers, plumbers and housekeepers?
We can talk of a hundred things that are in short supply. Just a few more:
• Drinking water in can(big demand)
• Train tickets(forget it)
• Plane tickets(mostly full)
• Hotel( wait to reserve rooms)
• Good restaurants (Saravana Bhavan is always crowded)
• Good play grounds and Gyms(very few)

The list is unending. However the focus is on mobile phones, cars, TV channels etc.etc. All from the stand point of the sellers and promoters. TV serial is something eating away the time of most people in the country! (So many channels in so many languages)

Cities and villages:

Even if the Government does a good job like developing roads and bridges it cannot solve the fundamental problem of our cities. Our cities and towns are many hundred years old, small and narrow. They are not designed to take the modern traffic with so many vehicles. We waste so much of patrol with our slow moving traffic. Whatever development done to our existing infrastructure, we cannot manage the traffic. We will end up in removing all platforms and finally we have to fly to our work place. We need to think differently and do what is needed to our country. One way is to encourage public transport. ‘Share auto’ is a natural development. It is not a planned one to solve the traffic. However it is a good temporary solution. We should plan new townships.

For heaven sake we should make all efforts to preserve our villages and village life. That is where the real man lives even to-day. I am not sure how long we can preserve it. But a simple life with self sufficiency is still in our villages. We should leave them alone and provide the basic needs. Most important need is water- to drink and cultivate. This time when I visited some villages like Patteswaram and Dharasuram in Tamil Nadu I could see our ancient culture. They really looked divine, nice and simple.

We can think of a different plan for our villages. UNESCO has done a great job in preserving the temple in Dharasuram. This was the most impressive place I visited this time. There are lot more such rediscoveries…..We can see them later.

-Arasu Ramanujam

My India

This is my India. I have a mantra of five words in my dream of India.

Our forefathers, our fathers and we were born in glorious India! We are lucky. Have we done something to make it glorious or we just consume and make it dirty? Let us think for a moment. We should say,” India was a glorious country and many saints lived here once” if we have done nothing about it. Are we proud of such India? What kind of India we want to leave for our next generation?

I thought of this mantra of five words: Clean, healthy, sufficient, strong, free India. Why? If you have done this you have done everything. Let us see how it works:

Clean India:
In fact this word clean is the key. Just imagine of clean India- litter free streets, pollution free air, clean water, no beggar on the street, disciplined traffic .You need to work very hard to achieve this. Not a few but, every Indian has to work for this. Otherwise we cannot be clean. Every person must be first internally clean to clean the surrounding. This is mentioned as one of the most important values in the 13th chapter of Bagavat Gita. ‘Soucham’-cleanliness, both internal and external is important. Internal is mind, external is everything outside including your body. If we have achieved this, other values like health,sufficiency,strength and freedom are easier to achieve. There is a saying in Tamil, ”Suttam soru podum”- Cleanliness will feed you. Perhaps this is to say if you are clean you get everything you want.


Healthy India:
Think of India where every child, every mother and every father is healthy. You need to be internally and externally clean to achieve this. Corruption free, greed free public institutions are necessary to achieve this. Everyone has to care for the other equally as you care for yourself and your family. We can see this care for society to a great extent in Japan. This is spontaneous without any coercion as in some other countries. Respect for fellow citizen and politeness in public place can be certainly learnt from the Japanese. No wonder Japan stands first in longevity. We can learn good things from others-in the way Japanese took Buddhism from India. That is the real way to be glorious, not just talking about our past glories. There is something really glorious about our system even today-In our traditional family system, we don’t claim our rights. When every member of the family does his/her duty, that becomes the right of the other member. This has to be followed in public life as well. There will be no need for any LIB movement.

Sufficient India:
Interestingly some historians have mentioned something unique about ancient Indian economy. They have observed that India had self contained villages for ages.They also have noted that India never had a slavery system as they have found in the rest of the world history.

India is capable of achieving self sufficiency. We should not automatically follow what the west does. We need to go back and refer to the values in our system. We can improve on them to suit the current world. Let us think-Why India needs so many cars when patrol price is going up every day? Why do we waste electrical energy for lighting when we have abundance of sun light? With so much of free sun light, what are we searching for self sufficiency? Can we design our houses differently? Can we get our food differently? We can be self sufficient if we work out our own way as even when we interact with other nations. Why don’t we lead the world in keeping it green?

Recycling is our way of life. In my early days I have never seen anything going waste! Banana leaf on which we ate went to the cow and it gave us milk. Effluent water went to the trees in the garden and we got bananas, mangoes and coconuts. We need not go back to ancient days, but we can think and act differently with our background-that is where we get our strength from.

Strong India:
The last two words of the mantra are for an India outside India- Image of an Indian in the world. This is possible only when you have achieved the first three. In fact all the five words in the mantra are closely related.I mean a strong India will have its currency respected in the world, a convertible Rupee.Now we have rupee symbol . It is good. However we should work for a convertible Rupee.

We should travel the world with Rupee and convert it anywhere in the world like Dollar and Pound. I am not talking about military strength here as it is obvious for any independent nation. However we will really be strong if no nation even thinks of a fight with us. I mean they all want to be friendly with us. This is possible when we are united as a nation. Our population can speak the rest of it. What else you need to be strong? Just imagine that India 30 years back with so many mouths to feed and India today with so many skilled youth to work for the world. We can do it with our young population!

 Free India:
Again by free India I think differently. A free Indian should travel to any other country without a visa. Now a British, an American, a Japanese can travel to most of the countries without a visa. Economic strength makes you really free to move about. All countries in the world should welcome us. If that happens I am a proud Indian. It is honorable only when others respect me. This would be possible only when we have achieved other four words of the mantra. I have not talked of political and economic freedom separately as they are any way required for any country to survive.

This is my India. I am proud as Indian if I have contributed to any of these.I am sorry if I have disappointed some of you by not mentioning about Industrial growth, Science and Technology etc. etc. These things will be imposed on us even if we don’t want them.

Let us not wait for somebody in the Government, some politician or some social reformer to do the magic. We can do it-Every one of us.

Let us contribute to be a proud Indian.

-Arasu Ramanujam

Who is superior?

Look at the plants and animals around us. Cows give us milk by consuming just grass. Trees give us fruits taking even effluent water. They all give more than what they consume. Only human beings can be greedy and get more than what they give. We can also save for the next generation! Can this make one really superior?

I am always amazed at seeing plants. From tiny seed they grow in to giant trees. They only have the capacity to produce food (annam ) form earth. We will only have stomach problem if we eat earth! Animals and human beings cannot live without plants. Taittireeyopanishad says, from annam alone all these beings are born, exist by annam and go back to annam-“Annadhyeva imani bhutani jayante, annena jatani jeevanti, annena abhisamvisanti”. Finally we become annam to annam. This is just a cycle when you consider only the body, whether it is human, animal or plant.

However plants only have the capacity to create annam from earth. Are they not superior to human beings from this stand point? If we consider our body as ourselves, we are not superior; on the contrary we are helpless without plants.

In Maneesha panchakam, Adi Sankara makes it clear that no person is different from the other as all are annam or atma. From which ever stand point you look at there is no difference. Finally it is atma alone. In this way one person can never be superior to the other. Purusha suktam says, everything here is nothing but Purusha, God-“Purusha eva idam sarvam.”

Then, where are we? If all that is here is only God, we need to first know that. This will help us to know who is superior and what superiority really is. Then we can reach there.

One of the important steps is explained in the 3rd chapter of Bagavat Gita- “Always perform well the action that is to be done without attachment because, by performing action without attachment, a person attains the highest. Further in 4th chapter, there is guidance to reach the supreme nature-,”Free from craving, fear, and anger, totally resolved in Me, purified by the discipline of knowledge, many have come back to My nature”.

By doing the right action and getting the right knowledge one can reach the highest. This is not just philosophy; this is very practical because when we work towards this goal we certainly have the strength to attain all other worldly goals with ease.

For more details to gain this knowledge and strength, we need consistent study of this teaching with proper guidance.

-Arasu Ramanujam

One tool to most problems

Is there a single tool to handle anger, fear and anxiety? If this is possible, most of our problems are solved. Luckily there is such a tool.To know this tool, we should know first the cause of anger, fear and anxiety. What happens to us in these situations?

Irritation- Yes. We get irritated because we do not accept certain things. What do we do to develop immunity against certain decease? Inoculate! Same thing is needed against irritation. Develop immunity to unfavorable situation. This is called “titiksha”-You may call it tolerance or forbearance. Adi Sankara in his famous book Viveka Choodamani gives this solution.He says titiksha is, “bearing all afflictions without caring to redress them”. (Living in India can teach you this. I learnt it here this time! Example: road traffic!)Take all unfavorable situations as favorable.

One of my friends had flu last week. He could not go out anywhere. He started studying Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa and Valmiki’s Ramayana at home. He really enjoyed it. He told me that nature had given him this opportunity to enjoy the best literature in human history- converting unfavorable to favorable. This has to be done naturally without murmuring.

The best way for your child to be immune is to let it play on the sand some times. Too sterile a condition may cause pain later. There is a difference between starving and fasting. Starving has mental strain as it is against your will. Fasting is willfully chosen by you. Exercise is willfully done, it is pain accepted by us for healthy living. All our problems are in our mind.

Now you have titiksha to make you immune from anger, fear and anxiety.Check your irritation level. When titiksha is more, irritation is less.You want to know more about this? Refer to Viveka Choodamani. Other ways may be long and painful and not sure of result…your choice.

-Arasu Ramanujam

Play like a child!

There was horrible noise coming from the TV serial in the hall. My wife was so busy giving instructions to the maid. I had a few minutes before my vedic classes. I went in to the study room to refer some books. I just looked out through the windows and fascinated by the vast sky above the trees. (We seldom look at sky in our city life!)

A flock of birds flying high above caught my attention. Fluttering their wings for some time, floating for a while, and going round, up and down, swing left and right. They must be enjoying their life. I was reminded of children. They are always playful. Happy when they play.

Mothers take a lot of effort to feed the children diverting their attention. Left for themselves, they want to play. I thought of the days when I used to play table tennis in the next house with my son and daughter. My wife used to shout at us as food was ready and we never wanted to end our game. This is very interesting. We all like to play! I was wondering about what should be the best way to spend time in old age? especially when you have no personal agenda and have reached a level of maturity of not to indulge in worldly transactions unnecessarily.

There are lots of similarities between great jnanis and children. Jnanis smile innocently like children all the time. Life is a game, entertainment to them. Most interesting thing for a child is to play. It has no hatred. It does not manipulate things, take things as they come.

Only human beings have to worry about spending the time. What do animals do? They are programmed to search for their food, digest, play, sleep and again search for food.

I was jealous of monkeys when I was in Rishikesh. What a wonderful life! They live in group, they get their food from the trees without much effort. They play all the time. They are also physically fit to jump from tree to tree with out going to any Gym, look smart and trim. They are also vegetarians! What else they want? Only these men must be away from them and not spoil their environment!

When you play, you forget your problems, forget yourself. You are like a child.

When the adult becomes child, he must be great! He has lost his ego the root cause of all problems. When you hate none, where is the problem? Is this the reason to start any game with a “love all”? Play like a child and enjoy like a jnani. Life is meaningful when you know how to enjoy it.

-Arasu Ramanujam