The Wisdom Park

A few days ago, I was traveling from Mumbai to Govardhan Eco Village (GEV), our farm at the outskirts of Mumbai. While on the way I somehow remembered about a unique spiritual personality, Punchari ka Lota Baba. I don't know how I remembered about him, but sometimes Krishna gives sudden remembrances. This was of course a pleasant one. Just by remembering him, I felt elated. There is a fascinating story of this great soul from Govardhan Hill at Vrindavan. I had gone to his temple at least 14 years back.  Something more interesting was that as I was walking in GEV, I came near the replica of Govardhan Hill which the devotees have made at GEV, and to my amazement, I was right in front of the replica shrine of Lota Baba. How Krishna fulfills spiritual desires is just amazing. This was nothing short of a miracle for me. I just thought of him a day back and now I am in front of his shrine having his darshan. I was in ecstasy seeing Lota Baba and remembering his life and example. I woul...

Reading this topic, our mind naturally challenges - How can a pure devotee have defects? Shouldn't he, be free from defects? The 100% perfect person! The Mr. Perfect! The point is that a pure devotee can't be seen with material eyes and material logic. Just like Lord Krishna can't be seen with material eyes, so also His pure devotees. You need spiritual vision to appreciate God, His abode, His name and His devotees. Thus Bhakti Vinod Thakur, one of the greatest spiritual teachers of all times quotes the following verse from the Mahabharata which is generally sung before honoring prasadam. maha-prasade govinde, nama-brahmani vaishnave, svalpa-punya vatam rajan, visvaso naiva jayate. " Those who don't have sufficient pious credits cannot develop faith in Maha-prasadam, Lord Govinda, Holyname, Brahmanas and the Vaishnavas. " Sometimes Lord Krishna puts an apparent curtain of imperfection in front of our eyes, so that only those with faith can appreciat...

The theory of oneness with God is something that is not very appealing to Vaishnavas, in fact it is the one thing that they vehemently oppose. But the oneness I am talking is not about loosing our soul - it's about gaining it. Losing oneself in any activity means to fully absorb ourselves into it or as they say, "to get into it fully". In the pages of the Srimad Bhagvatam there is mention of an Avadhoot Brahman who had 24 gurus. One of his guru was an arrow maker. This arrow maker was so absorbed in sharpening his arrow that he didn't even recognize the entourage of the King passing by. The Brahman learnt the quality of absorption from this arrow maker. If there is one word that is of utmost importance in spiritual life - it is ABSORPTION. In order to truly experience happiness in spiritual life, we need to fully absorb ourselves into the practice - kind of forget our present identity . We identify with so many things that we are not - our various aspects...

Courage is sometimes the silent voice at the end of the day that says - "I'll try again tomorrow." - Shubha Vilas Life is all about learning the art of balance . Balancing various aspects of our lives be it our physical, social, spiritual or professional life can itself be a struggle, what to speak of balancing opposite forces in our hearts. Lord Krishna explains in the 16th Chapter of Bhagvad-Gita entitled 'The Divine and Demonic Natures", the opposite qualities of these two natures and how there is constant struggle between these two forces. The interesting part is that both these natures exist within us. That's the reality of being a conditioned soul. Life is about, how we nourish the good within us and deal with the bad. Just like a magnetic field is held between two opposite poles, similarly the truth is many times held between two opposite forces. Answers to questions in life lies in the middle, not in extremes. Coming back to our topic - how d...

In a play written by Shakesphere, King Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?".  Gloucester, who was blind answers: "I see the world feelingly." Shouldn't we also see the world and others with feeling of love and compassion. The problem is as soon as we become selfish and identify ourselves with our mind and senses, we disconnect ourselves from our own feelings and thereby we disconnect ourselves from the feeling of others too. This is when, we reduce people to mere commodity whose only purpose is to satisfy our selfish desires . Selfishness makes one insensitive to the needs and feelings of others. History is filled with stories of people like Ravan and Kamsa who didn't mind inflicting pain and suffering on people because of their own selfishness. In the Ramayana, there is the character of Queen Kaikeyi. When she became selfish and started to think of her own interests and enjoyment, she became so ruthless and hard-hearted that she coul...

Time and tide wait for none. Time is one of the most powerful feature of this world. In fact, Lord Krishna introduces Himself as time in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. However powerful a personality one may be, at the end everyone has to bow down in front of time and surrender to it. History is the proof of the power of time. Big, big people reduced to dust by time. Time is so imperceptible in it's working that we don't even realize how days, weeks, months and years pass away - until it's too late . Our life can be compared to a video game with a timer on. Only, the one who wins the game before the time runs out is declared the winner. The only difference between the video game and and the game of life is that in the video game, you know how much time is left but in the game of life, you don't know how much time is left. If while playing a simple game we have to be fully focused and conscious not to waste time to win it, how much more, we hav...

" When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. " - Elon Musk Many times we look for solutions everywhere but overlook what is right below our nose. We expect that the solution to our complicated problems has to be equally complex. But many times, true solutions are counterintuitive that means complex problems could have simple and straight solutions. If we carefully observe our life, we will see that we have only those things that we consider important and those things missing in our life is because we feel they are not important. When I say important, it is not important in the general sense but the attitude that "it's important to ME." You see, once something is important to us, we will find every way to get it and overcome all the obstacles, just because "it's important to me." Another angle to see this is in when we have something in life, we are sending a signal to others saying - "so and so thin...

The quality of answers in our life depends on quality of questions we ask. Special prerogative of the human mind is that it can think and ask questions. Given a problem, we have the ability to find solutions. The ability for making inquiries is in-built in us. That's why one of the most important medium of knowledge comes through questions and answers. It's not astonishing then to understand why both the most important Vedic scriptures - the Bhagvat-Gita and the Srimad-Bhagvatam are in a question-answer format. But not everyone is interested to ask questions and find solutions to problems that they face. Most people prefer to embrace a life of unthinking - "of playing dead", they prefer to run away from problems rather than find solutions to them. Why? For the simple fact that the answers - the truth may not always be palatable and the more difficult part is that, it may be demanding of us. We may have to leave our comfort zone and tread an unknown path. The e...

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...