I started reading English books with mass-market fiction. One such book was The Carpetbaggers written by American novelist Harold Robbins (1916-1997). I was thrilled by the big life of the characters in the novel. “From New York to LA they brawled, lusted, and carved out an empire, blazoned in banner headlines and their enemies’ blood–only to learn that money and power, revenge and renown were not enough. . .The higher they soared, the more their ambition demanded . . . the darker and deadlier their fiery passions grew.”

“Carpetbagger” was a new word I learnt. In the novel, it was used by Southerners to describe opportunistic Northerners who had come down for business to the Southern States after the American Civil War and were perceived as exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, and/or social gain. I could see later, people rushing to first Mumbai and then Bengaluru, playing our own Indian version of carpetbagging. Even politicians moved to different states to acquire power at the Centre. 

A few years down on my literary road, I had I read The Prize, a novel written by Irving Wallace (1916-1990). This novel delves into the dreams and nightmares of people aspiring for the Nobel Prize, and others in the game of the decision making involved in the Nobel Prize, life in Stockholm, and the state of world politics in the years following World War II. Irving Wallace’s words, “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure,” were like a matchstick that lit the tinderbox of my young mind. I would walk and talk vainly. 

Providence saved me when I found Dr APJ Abdul Kalam who stripped me off my false notions about myself and put me on a spiritual track. He taught me about the negative power of Iblis (Satan) on the prowl in the mortal world and how he snares people by inflating their egos by false praise and bestowing upon them undeserving appreciation and rewards. I could see thereafter, scientists ruining their careers by believing in their unsound hypotheses without testing them and businesspeople investing in their fantasies. Thanks to Dr Kalam’s presence in my life, I remained grounded and modest. 

The lure of money can mask most people’s negative behaviors. It is easy for the financially strong and those in positions of power to get away by doing bad things when they are young. However, when they become old and face problems of their children, they often realize their folly. A whole lot of bad effects on their health like high blood pressure, diabetes, ulcers, and piles set in. One complication leads to another. I know dozens of my once-upon-a-time high-flyer acquaintances now suffering chronic ailments and living in miserable loneliness.  

I relished recently reading the spiritual classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come, written by English writer and Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628-1688). Written as an allegory, the book presents complex theological ideas in a captivating story form. As reported by The Guardian, a British newspaper founded in 1821, “there’s no book in English, apart from the Bible to equal Bunyan’s masterpiece for the range of its readership.”

The protagonist of the book is a poor married man with four children, named Christian, who feels the “burden” of his sins and undertakes a journey from his hometown, the “City of Destruction” (which means this world), to the “Celestial City” (the afterlife Heaven) atop Mount Zion. He faces difficulties, obstructions, and outright opposition from evil forces. The path of the pilgrim crosses the Town of Vanity. There is a festive market in which, every sort of vanity is sold, and it is open all year-long. It struck me that we all are living in a Vanity Fair, which is not only a year-long event but is open 24×7.

I had read some time ago, a beautiful novel written by Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) The Bonfire of the Vanities, portraying life in New York City in the 1980s, driven by ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed. It was later made into a Hollywood film of the same name, starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis in their early careers. “Bullshit reigns,” says police detective Martin in the novel. 

Dictionaries describe vanity as inflated pride in oneself or one’s appearance. It is something that is vain, empty, or valueless. It covers a very wide terrain – from dresses, cosmetics, to mannerisms, false appearances, and even outright superiority and arrogance. Vanity is essentially false and cannot stand a reality check. Flop films of big movie stars, the defeat of powerful leaders in elections, and the failure of sports heroes are so commonplace. 

English writer Jane Austen (1775-1817) in her famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, clarifies, “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” It gives a big clue. The whole purpose of vanity is a good public image. More important than what “I am” is how “I appear” in public. The number of “Likes” is the new measure of “stature” in the modern world.

Technology companies have very shrewdly snared billions of people through the Internet and established a robust consumer culture with their advertising messages that appeal to physical beauty, and vain achievements. “Honorary Doctorates,” “Life-time achievement Awards,” and “Person of the Year” are auctioned. There are surveys, bogus and dubious, declaring the highest bidder “award” for whatever. “Ratings” mean everything. Being amongst the world’s top 100 will also do if India’s top 10 is costlier.  

In 2010, public relations practitioners from 33 countries met in Barcelona, Spain and established seven voluntary guidelines to measure and evaluate communications activity in a meaningful and relevant manner. Known as the Barcelona Principles, these were updated in 2015 and 2020. The idea is that by measuring what is important, and continually testing and validating procedures, the industry can save itself from vanity metrics.

Life is all about outcomes and no output guarantees a peaceful exit from this world, which is essentially a Vanity Fair. Everything here is ephemeral, impermanent, and transient, including one’s health and life. So, be aware of your Immortal Self and mindful of not violating it by being a hypocrite and hankering after false objects, bogus positions, and sinful relations. Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) has declared the secret of a good life with the words, “Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.” Try it. 

This is the first blog of the New Year 2022. What is new about the New Year? Nothing, except for the fact that we start counting from the first day of the month of January. TheChinese count their year from the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February. In India, in the regions that follow the solar calendar, the New Year falls on Baisakhiin Punjab, Rongali Bihu in Assam, Puthandu in Tamil Nadu, Vishu in Kerala, Pana Sankranti in Odisha and PohelaBoishakh in Bengal, on the 14th or 15th of the month of April.For those following the lunar calendar, the New Year starts with the first day of the month of Chaitra, corresponding to March-April and is called Ugadi in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka, and Gudhi Padwa in Maharashtra.In Gujarat, the New Year begins with the first bright day of Kartik, which is the next day of the Diwali festival. So, every day is a New Year and your birthday as the start of your New Year is, perhaps, the most realistic event.

Change is the hallmark of existence. Nothing that exists is stationary. The entire world of substance, including stones and clay, are composed of atoms that are buzzing with electrons flying around the nucleus eternally. The sunlight is protons raining over the earth. The river changes every moment as the water keeps moving downstream. The gas flame in the kitchen is burning of new gas coming every moment from the cylinder. The 5-litre blood inside the human body gets renewed every 120 days. Lord Buddha was the first person to observe this dynamism 2,500 years ago and it was later recreated by the discoveries of modern science. The Electromagnetic Theory of Matter has established that all matter is radiant energy. All objects are transitory and are ceaselessly mutating and transforming. What is life but a series of manifestations of becoming and extinction? We are living as a stream, forever changing its coordinates in time and space.

The English poet Shelley (1792 –1822) writes in his last published poem, Hellas:

Worlds on worlds are rolling over,

From creation to decay,

Like the bubbles on a river,

Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

It is impossible for any process that starts to not end, anything that is originated to not be destroyed, and anybody who is born to not die. The difference is only in the degree of duration. A bacterium lives for a few hours, a flower for a day, a mosquito for a week, an ant for a few months, a mouse for afew years, a for cat for 10 years, a dog for 15 years, a horse for 40 years, a camel for 50 years, elephants for 70 years and a tortoise for over a hundred years. Human beings live for a wide range of years and identification keeps changing, from a child to a boy to a youth to an old man, for one life. The seed, plant, tree, flower, and fruit are all one. Any identity is a succession of change. A thing is only a series of states in a cause-effect chain; what came earlier, caused the later. The world is a sequence of events, ever–changing and being renewed at every moment. They appear, replacing the earlier set, only to be replaced by another set.

 We must not deceive ourselves into the belief of living forever with the people we have around us owning the things we have accumulated as our property. When we whirl a glowing stick,it produces the appearance of a disc. When we say it is raining, a very large number of water drops are falling in quick succession. There is nothing which is rain. There is nothing but movement, no doer but deed, nothing else but becoming. So, be alarmed when you find yourself stuck up, feeling pride in doing this or that and clinging to your honours and titles. Everything, our own life included, exists because of an origination (the parents), staying (community and family), and growth (education and livelihood). Know yourself in these terms and without losing sight of the inevitable end of all this.

It is pity to see the dance of stupidity in our public discourse. People are sticking to primordial identities which only exist in their minds and nowhere else. Leaders are talking about ideologies that are as fossil and obsolete as bloodletting is to medicine today and a steam engine is for pulling a train. The world is changing and those who do not change with it will perish as laggards and die destitute after running their appointed times here. There is no mechanical succession of movements in the right direction. Each one of us must feel the change, align ourselves with the change and move forward with the change. Lord Buddha identified 24 conditioning forces as causal energy, paccayasatti, which is forever creating the future. Those who are in harmony with these forces, flourish, and those who are at cross-purposes with them, perish.

So, what are the operational forces in 2022? I would like to share what I see.

At the macro level, the era of the West–dominated world is over. The Western civilization is decaying and their power,weaning. At the general level, technology singularity is taking grip over the state of world affairs. All leaders and political parties are haplessly dependent on social media. On the microlevel, people have turned materialists, out to acquireriches by whatever means.

Let me take another vantage point. At the macro level, there is a serious threat of climate change and the end of the world of an economy based on fossil fuels has begun. Virtual organizations are the new power structure. The real power moves through the Internet. At the micro level, there is a pandemic of despair and substance abuse. Anything which is done ignoring these forces would be superfluous and ineffective.  

So, what do we do? Anchor yourself in the immortal Self that is embedded in you. While the wheel moves, axel remains stationary. We must cease to live in the world of shadows before we can lay hold of eternal life. Sit quietly for a while every day and feel the Infinite outside (the sun and blue sky in the day and stars in the night) and the Infinite inside (by being conscious of your breath and other body sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings, rising and falling like ocean waves). Practice to connect to them. Even if you don’t succeed initially, the effort itself will bring immediate benefit.

Finally, stop intellectualizing things. Avoid news channels, if possible. The 24 forces are going to decide the future, and these are bigger than all man-made entities. By being anchored in the eternal and infinite, you will become a part of these forces and act upon the world, rather than the world acting upon you. These forces will ensure that you are part of the solutions and not the problems.

Life is an enigma. The randomness of events and the unpredictability of human nature make things complicated at times. Not only are people so very different from one another, even individuals change with time and their behavior with different people is tinged with many different shades. One can be kind and compassionate with one person and cruel and heartless with another. So, it appears that human beings indeed function as groups and understanding a person is best done by examining his behavior with the people around him. A mathematical term, “dyad”, meaning an operator which is a combination of two vectors, perhaps best defines the situation.

I felt this by observing my father, Late Shri Krishna Chandra Tiwari. He was the kindest and the most God-fearing person. But at times, he would use harsh words and not hesitate in rendering physical punishment when I erred. Hours later, he would be regretful and even making amends. Even as a child, I wondered about this switch in his behavior. Later when I grew up, I found that it was not my father alone, but a common trait in every human being. People carry multiple personalities, layers upon layers, and show up differently to different people at different times. And when I examine my own life, I can say for sure that there is a lower and a higher self, embedded inside me and it all depends on when, which one of them get activated, and takes over my actions.

In the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Lord Shri Krishna declared the twofold nature of God (VII. 4-5). One is the external fold made of five elements – earth, sky, fire, water, and air – and the mind, intellect, and ego—together as the eight components of material energy. Then, there is the inner energy, which comprises the embodied souls who are the basis of life in this world. So, it is the mind, intellect, and ego that differentiate a mortal man’s animalistic and divine nature.

Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273), put it straight and rather bluntly, “Hungry, you’re a dog, angry and bad-natured. Having eaten your fill, you become a carcass; you lie down like a wall, senseless. At one time a dog, at another time a carcass, how will you run with lions, or follow the saints?” [Translation by Kabir Helminski (b. 1947)]. Rumi sees the duality of human beings as their biggest challenge. “The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872 –1950) described human life as essentially divine. He sees all problems of existence as problems of harmony arising from the instinct of separateness of “I” from the rest of creation. Sri Aurobindo sees human existence as “…a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos…”.

I have learnt from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (1931 – 2015), the seven forms of Nafs, meaning “self” in Arabic, that one must overcome by conscious living and practice the fixation one’s “I-ness”. These are: Takabbur (pride), Tamaa (greed), Hasad (jealousy), Shahwah (lust), Gheebah (backbiting), Bokhl (stinginess), and Keena (malice). Dr Kalam said with sincere humility that with the grace of God and the blessings of his parents, he could achieve quiet early in his life an-Nafs al-Mutmaʾinnah, what he described as being at peace with himself.

Tolstoy (1828–1910) who had read best the human nature and left his observations for posterity through his novels, sees the emotion of love as the greatest mystery of life. “The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.” According to Tolstoy, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” In either case, a man is a traveler through this world – Musafir Hun Yaaro…   

American author, Neale Donald Walsch (b. 1943), published a series of books called Conversations with God, starting in 1995. Though the writer claimed he received personal revelation, to me, he was presenting Srimad Bhagavad Gita. Nevertheless, he wrote well. “All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by two emotions–fear or love. In truth, there are only two emotions–only two words in the language of the soul…. Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.”

Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926), lives in France and is considered an influential living figure in Zen Buddhism, a school of Mahayana Buddhism. He writes about Buddhist insights into the nature of the mind most eloquently. I am yet to find a better and more practical definition of compassion than that provided by Thich Nhat Hanh, “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”

The way to access one’s higher self is by contemplation – withdrawing one’s senses from the external and sitting quietly for a while – and then the higher self emerges out and embraces one’s consciousness. Know your mind and senses not only as instruments given to you to navigate through the world but also to access your higher self. A life lived without accessing your higher self is indeed a life wasted. In the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (II. 55), the truest existence of a human life is defined as “आत्मनि एव आत्मना तुष्टः” – satisfied in himself with himself. So, use your lower self to access your higher self, as a tailor uses scissors or a carpenter uses a saw, or a plumber, a wrench. Neither shun off the lower self, nor get captivated by it. If there is any art of living, it is this knowledge and this skill.

When I accompanied Dr APJ Abdul Kalam to Patna in Bihar State in 1999, he was the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. The Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), which Dr Kalam chaired, had initiated an agriculture project in Paliganj, 55 km from Patna on 2.4 hectares of land. He took me to see what could be done to help assist the healthcare system there, which together with livelihoods, were the two basic problems of the poor.

After becoming the President of India in 2002, Dr Kalam continued his tryst with Bihar, where he thought solutions to all problems of societal transformation can be developed. He made me a part of his entourage in his 3-day visit to Bihar in May 2003. We went to the Jain shrine at Pawapuri, the archaeological site of the ancient Nalanda University, the most sacred of Buddhist shrines – the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya, Takht Harmandir Sahib in Patna, and the Bihar School of Yoga at Munger. We traveled in the “presidential train,” a relic of the British Raj, from Harnaut to Patna. I felt as if I was living one of my past lives. 

President Kalam got entangled in the declaration of President’s Rule in Bihar in May 2005. The Bihar Governor had recommended the dissolution of the Assembly, the Union Cabinet approved it and forwarded it to President Kalam, who was on a visit to Moscow at that time. He signed it there. It was challenged in the Supreme Court and the five-judge Constitution Bench, in a majority verdict, declared the proclamation unconstitutional. President Kalam was penitent saying he should have rejected the Cabinet’s decision and thought of resigning from his office. He was persuaded to continue.  

My bonhomie with Bihar continued. In February 2010, I travelled to Muzaffarpur, pursuing my Don Quixotic mission of connecting all district headquarters on a telemedicine link, which we had restricted to Tele-radiology by that time. My student at Hyderabad Central University, where I was teaching MBA (Healthcare and Hospital Management) in School of Management Studies as Adjunct Professor, Dr Janki Raman, who was a native, escorted me. The picture is from the road trip from Patna to Muzaffarpur clicked by him. 

Bihar continues to struggle with backwardness, which was inherited like any other hinterland of the British-ruled India but then perpetuated by severe form of caste politics and finally, rampant corruption made the best of Bihari youth migrate out of Bihar. Dr Kalam used to say that unless we solve the Bihar development tangle, India can never be a developed country. And who would do the honors? Of course, the people of Bihar. The opportunity is that they are the best of human resources anywhere in the world. The challenge is their political division. 

To put things into the right perspective, Bihar, with more than 120 million people, is the third most populous state in the country after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. But there is scarcity of land. With so many people and not even 100,000 sq. km., Bihar accounts for 3% of India’s land mass but 9% of its population. This skewed population density, which is three times of the national average, is the root cause of the backwardness. Bihar was ruled from Calcutta by the British. It was already lagging before independence. The difference got exacerbated after liberalization in the mid-1990s. While the other states grew, Bihar languished. Bad became worse. But why?

The creation of Jharkhand in November 2000 to separate out South Bihar took away much of the mineral repository. All the industrialization done in Bihar since independence had gone in a whiff. The problems of persistent poverty, complex social stratification, unsatisfactory infrastructure, and weak governance are well-known, but not well understood. With 80 million people younger than 35 years of age, Bihar needs jobs and that needs investment. Now, investment would need SEZ kind of arrangements, roads, electricity and above all, law and order. It is very easy to blame the government but who elects it? The despair is palpable.

I am not a visionary, but I live by hope. I consider imagination more powerful than knowledge. For me, myths are more potent than history and dreams are more powerful than facts. So, it is time to go a little bold and ask for a medical college in each of the 38 districts of Bihar. It is hard to believe and yet true that half of the 38 districts in the state have no more than three government doctors for every 100,000 people. The situation in Siwan is most acute where there is just one doctor for 100,000 people I am told. To put this into perspective, the national average is 134 doctors for 100,000, a little better than the WHO-prescribed level of 1:1,000. Of course this would also mean a nursing college and a paramedic college in every district. 

Lack of funding is not an excuse for not doing what is needed. The government should show  political will, make a sound proposal, circulate it globally, invite partners and seek investment through bond schemes. The people from Bihar living outside the state themselves would contribute the necessary funds if an honest and transparent scheme is put in place. The same model can be used to create thermal power plants and smart water grids to mitigate the chronic problem of floods, especially in North Bihar. And there should not be any politicking on this. And the best way to do this is to make the system free of political muddling. 

Thomas L. Friedman, in his 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree writes, “You can be a rich person alone. You can be a smart person alone. But you cannot be a complete person alone. For that, you must be part of, and rooted in, an olive grove.” When I asked Dr Raman, currently living in Sydney, Australia, with his family, what would bring him back to Bihar, he said a Neurology & Plastic Surgery Speciality hospital, which he wishes to establish with his younger brothers, Dr Radha Raman and Gopi Raman in Muzaffarpur by 2025. 

And I have no doubt that he is not alone in his dream to return and serve his own people. Dr Kalam used to say that if we forget whom we belong to, and if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost. And after our return from our 2003 trip, he gave me Bertrand Russell’s 1951 book, New Hopes for a Changing World, highlighting the text that read, “Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” He indeed knew his country well. 

Tanya visited me on Diwali with her husband, Gopi Reddy. Fresh from a Vipassana retreat of ten days, she radiated joy – face lit with a smile and gait poised in serenity. I am familiar with this form of meditation, but I asked her to narrate her experience, which she articulated brilliantly. For the first four days, she practised concentrating the mind on her breath, at the tip of the nose, pinning her awareness to two square centimeters of the body, feeling the air going in and coming out of the nostrils. This ever-changing flow of breath, as it enters and leaves the nostrils, is the natural reality of everybody. 

The next four days, she used her mind, thus trained for pointed awareness, to scan her body for hidden sensations, during which, multitudes of hot spots, twisted muscles, palpitations, aches, and pains surfaced. During the last three days’ practice, she could see the energy-packets trapped inside her body, which started fizzling out, as bubbles do after the cork of a soda water bottle is opened. 

As loops of electrical current induced within conductors, called eddy current, these ‘formations’ of life energy are called “सङ्खार” in Pali and “संस्कार” in Sanskrit. If not dispersed this energy turns in to various ailments and diseases. What is high blood pressure? How ulcers get formed? Inner layers of blood vessels get inflamed hindering flow of blood into heart, brain, and kidney. 

It is believed in the Eastern Schools that there is immortal permanent essence exists inside-out the body. It enters physicality at the time of fertilization of the mother’s egg cell with the father’s sperm cell. It witnesses every moment of life and leaves at the time of death, rendering all cells fit to be disposed of. The ‘formations’ of energy residues even move along in the new body as fragrance with the wind, in the reincarnation cycle. I saw Tanya free of this internal formation and therefore, radiating bliss. 

Vipassana is a Pali word (विपस्सना); in Sanskrit, it is known as विपश्यना. The prefix “vi-” means “special” and “passana” means “seeing.” It could be seeing “into” or seeing “through,” but essentially, seeing in a special way. And what is that special way? It is about direct perception – not intellectually derived from study, reasoning, or argument. The insight gained from Vipassana enables one to see, explore and discern “formations” trapped in the energy body. 

Teachers at the retreat told Tanya that there are five types of “formations”: material images or impressions, mostly memories about people and places; feelings, received from these people and at these places; our understanding as perceptions; mental activity or formations; and the common ground to support them as consciousness. There are as many as 51 mental factors, like coins we keep carrying in our purses to buy our fortunes in vain. 

Tanya explained with the enthusiasm of a teacher, “When I have a desire, when I plan, when I like or dislike something or somebody, I am hoarding consciousness in a “packet.” This hoarded consciousness lands in my body and grows. Just as a seed that germinates in the soil eventually becomes a tree, these “packets of consciousness” become my fate. With time, I experience sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress and despair, not even knowing why these are happening to me.”  

My own experiences with Vipassana date back to the mid-1980s. I was working in the Missile programme, doing extremely challenging work without any prior experience and with the foolhardiness of a novice that brings unexpected success, but also makes one commit costly mistakes, which experienced people could have avoided. All this stress resulted in my developing migraine. There was not a single week when my vision did not blur for a few minutes, followed by intense pain in one half of my head, culminating in massive vomiting. 

I consulted many doctors, took many medicines, including Ayurvedic nasal drops, but my suffering continued. And then, my friend, Ravi Kumar, who sat beside me on the bus, gave me a book by Fritz Perls on Gestalt Psychology, and I landed into the art of introspection from that route. A few weeks of practice, in short spells, cured me of the migraine headaches, and they never returned to trouble me since then. Later, in 2005, I went to Myanmar and met Prof Kyaw Myint, a Fellow of the three Royal Colleges of Physicians of Edinburgh, Glasgow, in Internal Medicine, and then Minister of Health of Myanmar. Besides being an eminent doctor, he is a practicing Buddhist. He initiated me into Vipassana, the science of introspection. 

Dr. Kyaw Myint told me that the Vipassana meditator, after practice, becomes aware of how sense impressions arise from the contact between the senses and the physical and mental phenomena. The key is to know the impermanence of things, called “अनिच्च” in Pali, or “अनित्य” in Sanskrit, and the irrefutable law of dependent origination at work, both fundamental ideas in Buddhism

Everything in human life; all objects, as well as all beings, wherever or whoever they are, are always changing, inconstant, undergoing birth and death. Rupert Gethin (b. 1957) at the University of Bristol puts it brilliantly, “As long as there is attachment to things that are unstable, unreliable, changing, and impermanent, there will be suffering.” Nothing lasts! This worldly existence is in a constant state of flux and change. 

This change can be seen as a series of cause and effect. Everything and every person (as A or B) is linked through a causal process. Curd is made from milk; it is different from but dependent on milk. When there is no milk, there is no curd.

The realization of this principle of dependent origination, called “प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद” in Sanskrit, indeed clears one’s confusion – “When this is, that is. With the arising of this, that arises. When this is not, that is not. With the cessation of this, that ceases.” 

Putting it in simple terms, we store memories in our consciousness as names and forms. These memories can trigger feelings even after a lapse of many years. These feelings draw their energy from our likes and dislikes, like anodes and cathodes in a battery cell, through the electrolyser of our desires. So, with the practice of Vipassana, even if desires still exist, the attitude of equanimity prevents these desires from stirring up emotions. 

So, from that perspective, for ten days in the Vipassana retreat, Tanya was alone – all by herself: no phone, no contacts, no talking with the other participants around, and no activity. No bodily fabrications, verbal fabrications and mental fabrications were possible. The sense bases of her eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind (intellect) were turned inward like a laser beam. Like algae covering a stone can be scrubbed off, the wind of insight dispersed away the dark clouds; the “packets” trapped in her body were released. 

This cleansing, or emptying, helps one see things as they really are; it helps one to understand suffering as mind fabrications created by past impressions embedded in one’s body, and not created due to outside people, situations, and circumstances, as one would love to see them. Training and using one’s mind is a wonderful way to live. Even if pain is inevitable in life, suffering is optional.

One need not go to a retreat to disengage and can practice detaching from the world for brief spells while at home and work. Accepting life as it is, finding one’s way through it, rather than resisting and lamenting, is the secret to attain peace. As one rids one’s body from impressions of the past, one feels happy inside and a calm sense of tranquility envelops one, like a child experience in its mother’s loving arms. Indeed, one would be most unfortunate to ignore this simple tool available in life!