The Wisdom Park

One of the game changing mindset of high achievers and successful people like Gandhi, Lincoln, Mandela or Steve Jobs is that they dared to think big. Some people may be skeptical of this idea. Their argument is - after all how does mere act of thinking big, lead us to achieving big? Let's try to analyze this question. Guided imagination First thing we need to know is that thoughts are not mere thoughts as we think them to be, but they are the seeds of reality for us. Our thoughts slowly turn into beliefs, attitudes, habits, behavior and finally our destiny. So, if we start to think big, slowly but surely it will become a reality. Secondly, we need to know a little of the functioning of our minds. The mind has two parts - memory and imagination. 'Memory' is part of the mind which is a storehouse of previous experiences and 'imagination' is part of the mind that just dreams. 'Memory' is formed by the experiences we have had and 'imagination' ...

Everyday there is a different reason for not being happy. Someday, it is because someone hurt us and we keep thinking about it, someday our health is not good. Someday it's simply because we are not in a mood. Someday, it's because a plan of ours didn't work out....and the list goes on and on. Very rarely are we happy. All these reasons are valid and true. But the question is 'when will there be a day when the mind will offer no reasons to be happy?' Material world is a place of continuous drama and happenings, and the mind knows how to perfectly en-cash on it. Even if all our problems went away, will we be happy? A new set of problems will come or even if there are no further problems, the mind will make one. After all it's expert at it - creating problems where none exists.  Happiness, joy, peace or love are unconditional, which means that they are not dependent on any conditions. Waiting for the perfect condition to be happy or peaceful is a gre...

Rivers are considered lifelines of humanity. They not only nourish us physically but also emotionally and spiritually. No wonder, our culture has rightly given them status as mother's. Imagine, if rivers could speak, what message they would like to give us. Here are few lessons that we can learn from them. In fact if we remain in the mood of submissive students of life, there is so much we can learn even from "so called" inanimate objects. Many of these lessons are from Radhanath Maharaj's memoir - 'The Journey Home'. Lesson 1 - MAGIC OF SETTING GOALS The river is so desperate, so determined, so focused to reach the sea that nothing can stop it. It goes over, under or around all impediments. It never gives up. It has learnt the art of overcoming all obstacles. In fact it is said that, obstacles are those things that you see when you loose focus of your goals . The river teaches us that the first and most important key to overcome obstacles in lif...

One of the greatest power a human mind has is the power of absorption. Absorption means to fully give ourselves to the task at hand, doing things wholeheartedly, with focus and attention. In fact a high sense of absorption means complete immersion - a kind of loosing oneself. Absorption is the key to true experience of life. What is the subject matter of our absorption? For children it may be a favorite cartoon serial or an engaging video game. For teenagers it may be cricket or the latest blockbuster movie. For some the topic for absorption may be a new romantic relationship building in their life. Irrespective of the subject, this sense of absorption makes one feel exhilarated, the senses come fully alive and there seems a sense of purpose to live. For many the subject of absorption is not the physical plane - the level of the senses but their own minds. People tend to be wrapped in their mental stories, their mental movies. Problem with absorption in matter - in the life o...

Bhagvat-gita 2.71 vihaya kaman yah sarvan, pumans carati nihsprhah nirmamo nirahankarah, sa santim adhigacchati "A person who has given up all desires for sense gratification, who lives free from desires, who has given up all sense of proprietorship and is devoid of false ego - he alone can attain real peace." This is one of those verses of Gita that is very deep and profound. In fact, every verse of Gita is a storehouse of wisdom. In this verse Lord Krishna mentions three enemies of peace. These are three mentalities that destroy peace. 'Want' mentality "Wants" is one of the primary reasons for our peace to be destroyed. If our mind is considered to be like pond, desires can be compared to be stones which when thrown into the pond of our mind, agitate it. The problem with desire is there seems to be no end to them. One is fulfilled another arises. In fact the mind has countless unfulfilled desires stored in it. How many can we be fulfille...

We all have areas in life that we need to work on. These are our weak points in life. Many times we unintentionally believe that our strong points will substitute for the weak ones. But it doesn't work that way. As the saying goes - A chain is as strong as it's weakest link . We need to face our weaknesses, work on it, not run away from it. We don't want to face our faults because we feel it will require a lot of hard work to rectify them. And sometimes we summon all our courage and start to work on them by changing our behavior but we seem to keep failing and lapsing back to our old habits. We finally resign to thinking "I have tried, it doesn't work, this is the way I am." If we want to alter our behavior for good then we need to alter the attitude behind the behavior. What years of struggle and effort can't do, can be done by a small flip in attitude.   One such attitude that is responsible for us holding on to our weaknesses is called the ...

One of the main pastimes of the mind is to label. It loves labeling, in fact it thrives and exits on labeling . Labeling is a wonderful tool to learn concepts by making it simple, but when it comes to experiencing life, it doesn't work so well for us especially if our labels of life are negative. Simple words, labels affect us in ways beyond our wildest imagination. They shape our views, color our lives with different perspectives. These mental labels affect practically every aspect of our life - be it personal, relationships or our experience of life in general. The mental labels start right from our birth. We identify ourselves as our body, our name, our gender. Then as we grow older, so many other labels add up to our identity. Our education, our profession, our economic status. What others tell about who we are slowly become important to us, our new labels. If someone repeatedly calls us ' useless ', slowly that turns into a label. It's not that only others ...

If you want to increase the speed of your success in life then learn to slow down. One may argue, either you speed up or slow down, how can one speed up and slow down simultaneously. It looks like a contradiction. But often life is about reconciling opposites, finding the mid-point, the balance between two extremes. I would like to explain two meanings of ‘ slowing down ’. The first meaning of slowing down is to regularly take time to analyse, introspect and recheck our direction in life. Somehow in today's high-tech world where so much value and stress is given on speed, we many times overlook the direction of our life. As Stephen Covey, the famous author aptly put it by saying - ' The difference between a leader and manager is that, a manager is one who knows how to efficiently climb the ladder, but a leader is one who knows if the ladder is on the right wall. ' Most people spend their entire life in efficiently climbing the ' so called ' ladder of success only ...

We all have heard the saying "The grass looks greener on the other side". The mind by nature is never satisfied, always looking for "what others have that I don't have". It is always curious to find newer and newer ways of enjoyment and material nature seems to understand our mind by offering us unlimited varieties to enjoyment. There seems to be no end to the fascinations that are available in this world. Why is the mind always looking for newer ways to enjoy? Because it soon gets bored of what it has. It looks for release from this boredom through newer experiences. But the problem is that as soon as we get the new experience that we are looking for, it's not a long till that also becomes old and boring. The point we miss to understand is that " the newness that material nature provides in its variegated forms are all the same oldness packaged in new ways. " As they say - Old wine in a new bottle. But we never really believe this fu...

These are few questions which will put us in touch with our true self, our essential nature. The following can be a simple, but powerful daily meditation. - Are we the constantly changing life situations that we go through or are we the constant underlying life below the life situations? - Who are we? Who were we before this life, who will we be after this life? - Who are we without our names and our life stories? - Are we human beings with a spiritual experience or spiritual beings with a human experience? - Are we our feelings or the feeler of our feelings? - Are we our thoughts or the witness of our thoughts? Answers to these questions are beyond the grasp of the mind and intellect, they put us in touch with our true spiritual nature, our very soul.  As long as our sense of identity comes from our life situations, thoughts and feelings, we will be constantly tossed around, face constant anxiety and instability of mind. But if we derive our sense of identity...