Of success and failure

It is better to play to win than to lose; it is better to wear out than to rust out. It is better to aim for excellence and not get lost in success. When one puts oneself on the track of excellence, it brings out inherent talents to light. It is said those who have never angered anyone is a failure in life. Similarly, a person who has never lost has never found the joy of winning.

No doubt there is a joy in winning and pain in losing and if one does not accept both then it is like expecting the river to have one bank, the river is contained by two sides of the bank, is it not?

Winning involves four important dimensions: Self-confidence, mental toughness, winning-oriented thinking and the ability to innovate. Self-confidence stands on three important pillars: feeling good, taking responsibility and developing skills. One has to learn the art of feeling good even in moments of pressure.

The quality of life is the quality of one's consistent emotion. One has to master the art of keeping emotion in a state of well-being; search for such a state of consciousness. At moments of pressure, the mind tends to validate itself unconsciously on incidents where one is in pressure.

In cricket, when wickets are falling, new players are under great pressure. Past failures will influence present situations. So we are not living in the present but we are living in our past. In my interactions with cricket players i tell them that when they are under pressure, they should consciously recreate their future and not their past. How can one do that? That is the responsibility and discipline one should have.

Create your future from the commitment to win and with the wisdom gained out of your past failure. Recollect in your mind incidents for example, in cricket when a particular player was under tremendous pressure and faced with failure and yet how the player has bounced back. You should have these references ready and alive in you even before the match. One has to train one's body to be in the peak state, one's emotions to be in peak state and one's spirit also to be in a peak state. In such a peak state, a different quality of energy emerges and will influence one's action.

Mind has to be tough for doing so. One has to teach and value a mind so as not to be disturbed. Once when you value it, action emerges from such an action. Your actions are an extension of your values. At the end, one also has to understand that failures are fertilisers to success. In fact, failures are postponed success. Don't fear failure but learn from failure.

In failure there are recipes for success. By worrying and fearing, you miss learning. But observe and be unaffected by failure. With such a self-esteem one's winning and losing will only enhance one's talent and value.

Cultivate interest in innovation for that is what will encourage and inspire you. Innovation will happen through focus, practice and inspiration. All that one can do is to put in consistent best efforts consciously. Success and failure are two sides of the same coin; irrespective of the best effort one puts in, you will have to face both success and failure at different times. There is no need to get discouraged by failure or unduly elated by success, for the time will come when the successful face failure and those who have failed will taste success.

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Courtsey: Speaking Tree, Times of India

Author: Swami Sukhabodhananda

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Mind, body and self

There are three aspects to an individual. His persona as people think he is, as he himself thinks he is, and what he actually is.

People judge you mostly by your outward manifestation in terms of your personality, attire, the way you carry yourself and your status in society. You judge yourself by what you think you are capable of doing, while others judge you by what you have already done. An individual's perception about himself is mostly coloured by the twin conditions of self- importance and ego, albeit in varying degrees. Very few are keen to find out the real Self hidden within to ascertain one's true identity. Knowledge of the Self is one of the most important fundamentals of philosophy.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states, "Whosoever departs from this world without having realized his own inner world, to him, life has been of no service. It remains unlived, like unrecited Vedas or any other undone deed.

"It seems to me ridiculous", said Socrates, "when I am not able to know myself, to investigate irrelevant things." Augustine puts across the importance of Self-Realisation a bit differently in his `Confessions' to convey the same meaning, "Men travel to gaze upon mountain heights and the waves of the sea, broad-flowing rivers and the expanse of the ocean, and pass by themselves."

In Self- awareness there is immense joy. The Self is chetana, supra- consciousness, the knowledge of pure existence. All the pain and misery is a result of not knowing the Self. The divine in us manifests itself only when we subject ourselves to certain disciplines. The divine operates in us, but it requires an effort to make it shine forth. The epistemological corollary is that man gets knowledge by looking inward, either at his own consciousness or at the revelations it receives from another superior consciousness.

What is the difference between man and animal? When we look at animals, with their perceptual and instinctive consciousness, we observe the inadequacy of the principle of life. As life outreaches matter, so does the mind outreach life. There are forms of life without consciousness but there can be no consciousness without life. The mind in an animal is of a rudimentary character. As humans, we have the play of intelligence. Intelligence frames concepts and ideals, plans means for realisation.

Conditioning of the mind is the most important theme of Indian philosphy and the first step towards Self-realisation.

The body is called kshetra, the field, and within it dwells the owner of the body and the Supreme Lord, who knows both the body and the owner of the body. Perfect knowledge of the constitution of the body, construction of individual soul, and the constitution of the Super-soul is known as jnana. To understand both the soul and the Super-soul as one, yet as being distinct, is knowledge. According to the Bhagavad Gita, one who studies the subject matter of the field of activity as well as the knower of the field can attain to knowledge.

The prayer of every heart is outlined in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad thus:

"Asato maa sadgamaya, / tamaso maa jyotirgamaya, / mrityorma amritamgamaya." -- "Lead me from the unreal to the real, /Lead me from darkness to the light, / Lead me from death to immortality."

Courtesy: Speaking Tree, TOI - Mar 12, 2011,

Article By: Prabhakar V Begde

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The flower and its fragrance

The most beautiful thing on earth is our gratitude to divinity. Children always see more beauty than grown-ups do; because of their tremendous inner purity they see beauty in everything. Therefore we have to appreciate and admire them because they are still in the world of the soul.

When the mind is "developed", it also goes through conditioning and so begins to find fault. We love to see ugliness and impurity even in things that are really beautiful and good. If an artist has created something, we look for anomalies. The child, however, regards everything as his very own, so he sees beauty in everyone and in everything. He feels that there is nothing in comparison with other things. In the inner world everything is beautiful.

Divine love and divine beauty are inseparable. Love is the flower, beauty is the fragrance. They go together. A flower is an object, God's creation. But the flower has to offer its quality, that is, its fragrance. Only when you come near a flower will you see and appreciate its beauty. But even when you are far away, its fragrance can permeate the air. If a flower does not have any fragrance, half its divinity is gone. Beauty comes forth from the flower which is love. Flower and fragrance are inseparably one.

When earth's cry and heaven's smile meet, beauty's perfection dawns. Joy is a bird that we all want to catch. It is the same bird that we all love to see flying. What is the difference between pleasure and joy? Pleasure is followed by frustration, whereas joy is always followed by peace and more joy. There are two kinds of joy, outer joy and inner joy - there's a subtle difference between them. We feel that the possessor of outer joy is somebody else, not ourselves. Very often we want to snatch this joy from others.

Inner joy is not like this. When we meditate or contemplate, at that time we feel that we are the soul of joy. This joy that we possess inside is like a fountain; it comes spontaneously. Inner joy has no fear. It can, if it wants, transform our human nature in the twinkling of an eye.

If we can experience true inner joy even for a second we will feel that the world is totally different. Now, we feel that we will have to change our attitude towards certain aspects of the creation if we want to have joy, because the world is constantly fighting and doing all undivine things. But if we can look at the world with our inner joy, we will see that the world has already changed?

How can we get this inner joy? If we really feel that inner joy is the breath of our life, if we feel that we cannot exist without joy and we will die at this very moment if we do not have it, then God showers his choicest blessing, which is joy, upon us.

Real joy comes from the feeling that we are constantly in the lap of the Supreme. Twenty-four hours a day we cannot meditate. But on the strength of our imagination we can feel that 24 hours a day we are in the lap of the Supreme.

Excerpt from Sri Chinmoy's The Spiritual Life.

Courtesy: SPEAKING TREE: The flower and its fragrance, Sri Chinmoy, Feb 2, 2011

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