Wednesday 31 December 2008

MANOVIKAR

MANOVIKAR form iLand blog

तनाव प्रबंधन के कुछ सटीक सूत्र
तनाव मनः स्थिति से उपजा विकार है.मनः स्थिति एवं परिस्थिति के बीच असंतुलन एवं असामंजस्य के कारण तनाव उत्पन्न होता है. तनाव एक द्वन्द है, जो मन एवं भावनाओं में गहरी दरार पैदा करता है. तनाव अन्य अनेक मनोविकारों का प्रवेश द्वार है. उससे मन अशान्त,भावना अस्थिर एवं शरीर अस्वस्थता का अनुभव करते हैं.ऐसी स्थिति में हमारी कार्यक्षमता प्रभावित होती है और हमारी शारीरिक व मानसिक विकास यात्रा में व्यवधान आता है. इससे बचने का एकमात्र उपाय है -परिस्थिति के साथ तालमेल रखना , जिससे तनावरूपी मनोविकार को हटाया-मिटाया जा सके.

परिस्थिति को स्वीकार न करने पर तनाव पैदा होता है. यह तनाव कई प्रकार का होता है. पारिवारिक तनाव , आर्थिक तनाव, आफ़िस का तनाव ,रोजगार का तनाव, सामाजिक तनाव. मनोनुकूल परिस्थिति-परिवेश के अभाव में व्यक्ति उद्विग्न ,अशान्त एवं तनावग्रस्त हो उठता है. इसमें केवल एक व्यक्ति प्रभावित होता है, परन्तु यह सीमा जब व्यक्ति को लांघकर परिवार में पहुँच जाती है तो परिवार तनावग्रस्त हो जाता है.पारिवारिक तनाव से परिवार के संवेदनशील रिश्तों में दरार एवं दरकन् पैदा हो जाती है जिससे छोटी-छोटी बातों को प्रतिष्ठा का प्रश्न बनाकर कलह एवं कहासुनी जैसी उलझनें खड़ी कर दी जाती हैं. सुन्दर व सुरम्य पारिवारिक वातावरण व्यंग्य और तानों का दंगल बन जाता है.

वैयक्तिक एवं पारिवारिक स्तर पर संपदा व संपति के सुनियोजन एवं सुव्यवस्था के अभाव में आर्थिक तनाव का जन्म होता है. उपभोक्तावादी अपसंस्कृति के कारण अपव्यय एवं जीवनशैली की अनियमितता में वृद्धि हुई है,जिससे यह संकट और भी गहरा हुआ है.सामाजिक तनाव समाज के विभिन्न घटकों,समूहों एवं वर्गों के बीच तालमेल के न होने से उत्पन्न होता है.आज का व्यक्ति , परिवार व समाज तनाव के इस विघटन,टूटन एवं दरकन् से ग्रस्त हैं. व्यक्ति हो या समाज,आज ये इस कदर तनावग्रस्त हैं की उन्हें अपना भार भी असह्य लग रहा है. वे अपने ही बोझ से दबे-कुचले किसी तरह अपनी गुजर-बसर कर रहें हैं.

तनाव परिस्थिति से नहीं मनः स्थिति से उपजता है.अगर ऐसा नहीं होता तो विपरीत एवं प्रतिकूल परिस्थितियों में भी आशा,उत्साह एवं उमंग की परिकल्पना नहीं की जा सकती. जीवट के धनियों एवं मनीषियों ने प्रतिकूलताओं में जीवन की राह खोजी है,अपने गंतव्य,लक्ष्य को प्राप्त किया है.सूरदास,अष्टावक्र,सुकरात आदि मनीषियों ने शारीरिक विकृति को हिनताजन्य तनाव नहीं माना और इसी समाज में उत्कर्ष व सफलता की बुलंदियों को स्पर्श किया.सन्त तुकाराम का पारिवारिक जीवन तनाव के घनघोर कुहाँसों में घिरा हुआ था,परन्तु वे इस कुहासा-हताशा के आवरण को चीरकर भक्ति की भावधारा में सदा सरोबार रहते थे.कबीरदास के जीवन में आर्थिक तनाव सघन घन बनकर बरसा था, परन्तु प्रभु के अलावा किसी के आगे उनने हाथ नहीं पसारे,याचना नहीं की और अलमस्त एवं आन्नदपूर्वक जिंदगी जीकर दिखा दी.सामाजिक निंदा,अपमान एवं तिरस्काररूपी गहन आंधी-तूफान के बीच मीराबाई ने कृष्णभक्ति की ज्योति जलाई. विपरीत परिस्थितियों में इन महामानव ने जितना कर दिखाया,उतना तो सामान्य एवं सहज परिवेश में भी संभव नहीं है. इसका एकमात्र कारण है,मनः स्थिति की सुदृढ़ता-सशक्तता. अतः तनाव परिस्थितियों में नहीं दुर्बल व अशक्त मनः स्थिति में वास करता है. मनीषियों व मनस्वियों को यह स्पर्श नहीं कर पाता है.

तनावजन्य मनोविकारों का आक्रमण केवल दुर्बल व कमजोर मानसिकताओं पर होता है. परिस्थिति तो सबके लिए समान होती है.एक ही परिस्थिति में रहने वालों में से संकल्पवान अपने इच्छित लक्ष्य को प्राप्त कर लेता है और विकल्प तलाशने वाला केवल विकल्प तलाशते रह जाता है. परिस्थितिजन्य तनाव ही प्रमुख व प्रबल होता तो एवरेस्ट के शिखर पर चढ़ा नहीं जा सकता था . जिसका मन परिस्थिति से तालमेल नहीं बैठा पाता उसी के अन्दर तनावजन्य विकृतियाँ अपना जाल बुनती हैं. ऐसे व्यक्ति का तंत्रिकातंत्र मन के आवेग को संभालने हेतु असमर्थ होता है.कष्ट-कठिनाइयों का हल्का झोंका भी इन्हें तार-तार कर देता है.

तनाव मुख्य रूप से नर्वस सिस्टम को प्रभावित करता है. तनाव से यह तंत्रिकातंत्र अत्यंत सक्रिय हो जाता है. इसकी सक्रियता हृदयगति एवं शर्करा के स्तर को बढ़ाने में सहायक होती है. इससे घबराहट होती है एवं सिर भारी रहता है. ऐसी अवस्था में नकारात्मक विचार उठते हैं और मन में निराशा-हताशा के बादल मंडराने लगते हैं.

तनाव मन में उत्पन्न होता है.अतः तनाव से मन प्रभावित होता है. तनावजन्य नकारात्मक
एवं निषेधात्मक विचारों से शरीर की प्रतिरक्षात्मक प्रणाली पर भी विपरीत असर पड़ता है. तनाव की अवधि
में श्वेत रूधिर कोशिकाओं की सहज सक्रियता कम हो जाती है.ये कोशिकाएँ शरीर की रोगों से रक्षा करती हैं तथा शरीर को स्वस्थ एवं निरोग बनाए रखने में अहम भूमिका निभाती हैं,परन्तु तनाव इस प्रतिरक्षात्मक
प्रणाली की मुस्तैदी को कम कर रोगों को प्रवेश करने का अवसर प्रदान करता है.

तनाव से मन में कई प्रकार के मनोविकार अपना स्थायी आवास बना लेते हैं. तनाव
से चिड़चिड़ापन पैदा हो जाता है. ऐसे व्यक्तियों का मानसिक संतुलन लगभग गड़बड़ा जाता है,परिणामस्वरूप नींद न आना,

हताशा-निराशा,कल्पनाओं में खोए रहना, डरना आदि मनोरोगों का प्रादुर्भाव होता है. ऐसे लोगों में निर्णय करने की क्षमता नहीं
होती है.

तनाव प्रबन्धन का प्रथम सूत्र है- वैचारिक खुलापन अर्थात आग्रह ,पूर्वाग्रह का अभाव . अच्छे विचारों को स्वीकृति एवं समर्थन देना चाहिए.इसी के आधार पर
सहयोग- सदभाव की भूमि तैयार होती है. सहयोग से स्वार्थवृति मिटती है और सेवा का भाव पनपता है,जिससे अपना विश्वास
प्रगाढ़ होता है. विश्वास ही विकास का मूल मंत्र है,उन्नति - प्रगति का साधन सोपान है. इस स्थिति में आकर ही स्वायत्तता की परिकल्पना की जा सकती है और स्वतंत्र रूप से अपनी योजना को कार्यरूप प्रदान किया जा सकता है.इसी में आंतरिक चेतना के परिष्कार तथा
वाह्या उन्नति की समस्त संभावनाएँ सन्निहित हैं.संभावना जब मूर्तरूप लेती है तो प्रामाणिकता के रूप में अभिव्यक्ति पाती है.
प्रामाणिकता आत्मविश्वास को जन्म देती है, तभी महान कार्य हेतु स्वयं का योगदान सम्भव हो सकता है और दूसरों का सहयोग मिल सकता है.तनाव प्रबंधन के इन सूत्रों में तनाव का समाधान समाहित है.
इसके साथ आवश्यक है सर्वशक्तिमान ईश्वर के प्रति श्रद्धा-आस्था की भावना. ईश्वर सर्वसमर्थ है, वह हमारी सभी समस्याओं का समाधान ,हताशा के कुहासे में ज्योतिर्मय पथ प्रदर्शक है.
वह हमारे तनाव का निवारक भी है. वह हमारे सभी मनोविकारों के सघन जंजाल को काटकर उत्साह,आनंद एवं प्रकाश से भर सकता है.अतः उसकी स्मृति को हृदय में बनाए रखने के लिए
गायत्री मंत्र की एक माला का न्यूनतम जप करना चाहिए.प्रत्येक दिन अपने नये जीवन का आत्मबोध एवं प्रत्येक रात्रि अपनी मृत्यु का अनुभव तत्त्वबोध भी तनावमुक्ति
के लिए रामबाण साधन है. यही तनाव का एकमात्र निदान है और उच्चस्तरीय जीवन का पाथेय पथ भी है.

साभार :- अखण्ड ज्योति

TRUE BLISS IS WITHIN YOU

TRUE BLISS IS WITHIN YOU

Placing your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment, says Donna Thomson



The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet,” said James Oppenheim. True happiness cannot be sought outside of yourself — not in your relationships with others, the groups you belong to, or in the things around you. Unless you can stand alone in your own shadow and feel happiness from within, true happiness may always elude you for external things come and go like the tide. The only constant in your life is you. Love you, admire you, value you and be happy to be you.

Why do we seek happiness from outside of ourselves? From His Holiness The Dalai Lama: “Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.”

So we learn from a young age to rely on others rather than on ourselves. If we rely on others for our food, shelter and other needs, why not happiness? Well happiness of course does come from many things and our social relationships and other external factors can bring us much joy, but many of us have not connected with ourselves as we have connected with others. The negative side is that placing all of your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment throughout your life.

No matter how much you love a partner, a child, or a friend, you cannot make your happiness conditional upon them. Why? Because you will have certain expectations of others and when those expectations aren’t met, you may feel hurt, betrayed, misunderstood, taken for granted, invalidated, confused and so on. Everyone is individual. We have each grown to develop our own sets of values, beliefs, attitudes and ways of looking at the world. Our views may not be exactly the same as our loved ones. However, we often expect those loved ones to know what we want from them.

When someone else’s actions don't live up to your expectations you are let down. Often the other person won’t even realise they’ve done something to cause you pain because they don’t know your expectations unless you have explicitly shared them. Often we don’t even realise our own expectations until we feel someone has hurt or disappointed us.
For example
, you may unconsciously expect your partner to show their love in a particular way such as saying “I love you” regularly and when this doesn’t hap
pen you start to wonder if they truly care for you. You may feel unacknowledged and unloved. However your partner may feel that they are showing their love through their actions. You have one belief while your partner has another. Is there a lack of love? No. While you let your feelings build into a stressful negative state within you, your partner would probably be very surprised to know you feel that way.

It’s unrealistic to expect another person to know what's in your head — your values, beliefs and expectations. Thinking “Well they should know!” is not good enough, yet most of us would have thought this of someone else at some stage. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. They see you become sad, angry, unresponsive to them, or upset and don’t know what they’ve done, or if it’s even them who has made you unhappy. This leads to negative feelings from both sides and possibly arguments that could be avoided through open communication.

Rather than looking to others for your needs, begin by looking within yourself. When you feel a sense of disappointment in someone, use it as an opportunity to analyse your own expectations. The only person who should truly be able to disappoint you is yourself — when you are not being true to yourself in some way. You can take that disappointment and turn it into a positive — a pledge; an action that you can take to better yourself.

Analyse why you are disappointed or hurt. You may find your initial thoughts or statements begin with “Because he did” or “Because she didn’t”. Now look deeper to the true reason for your disappointment. Such statements will start with “Because i expected”, “Because i wanted” or “Because i thought he or she should”.

You truly only ever have control over yourself and realising this can save you a lot of pain. Of course you can be disappointed in others but you have no control over their actions and reactions. You can share the reasons for your disappointment but you cannot expect the other person or situation to change because the other person has free will.

When you realise that you are responsible for your thinking and expectations, you will start to see that you’ve placed much of your happiness in the hands of others. You can now take your power back by recognising that you have the choice to react to something either negatively or positively. By making your happiness conditional upon another person, you hand your power over to them. You feel a ‘victim’ whenever things don’t go as you want or expect. In doing this, you set yourself up for pain, but you can now turn this around and instead set yourself up for happiness.

The key is to not expect a particular outcome. What happens next is up to you. You can choose to wallow in negative feelings which may further damage a relationship, or you can try to place a positive spin on the situation. Perhaps you can find your happiness in the fact that you’ve done your part in dealing with the situation by getting your issue out into the open. Realise that it may not be an issue to the other person, but ideally you will work together to reach a compromise. You can also decide to be happy for the other person and the pain they show you because it helps you to grow. There are always choices and different ways of looking at the same thing.

It puts things into perspective when you resign yourself to the fact that people do make mistakes — they forget things, they don’t think properly, they don’t always consider how others may be affected by their actions, they can act selfishly at times, and so on. We are all humans and we are designed to make mistakes as they are our greatest opportunities to learn. As Horace Friess says, “All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.”


Some nice quote from iLand blog

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
Robert Frost

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
Lana Turner

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.
Mae West

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
Oscar Wilde

Women and Cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it. Robert Heinlein , Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
Charles Wadsworth

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.
Anonymous

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
Anonymous

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
Anonymous

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Wolf

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

We do not remember days; we remember moments.
Anonymous

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright


virag sharma

Contentment in Life

from iLand

Benjamin Franklin said, "To the discontented man no chair is easy." What is contentment? Is contentment happiness? Contentment has been defined by words like satisfaction, happiness, pleasure, gratification, ease and peace. So I would express the thought that contentment is basically happiness but maybe not entirely all that happiness may contain.
Happiness is now being defined in two ways. The first way is happiness as it relates to having good humor. The second is happiness as it relates to inner satisfaction. It is here under the second definition that contentment is properly defined. Smiling and a sense of joyfulness are some of the things that happiness contains. You can be content without showing signs of a smile or feeling joyful. These aspects of happiness are not exhibited in contentment, yet contentment still remains a strong aspect of happiness.
Contentment is a strong sense of well being. It could be a state of being satisfied, or a source of satisfaction, such as the contentment of seeing children playing.
Contentment is happiness with one's situation in life. When we talk about satisfaction regarding contentment, we have to make sure we are receiving satisfaction from our own feeling of liking something; as opposed to the satisfaction we would feel from getting approval from someone else. This is an important distinction because in one case you know how you feel about yourself in relation to anything else. Doris Mortman said, "Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."
Seeking approval from other people in order to feel satisfaction, creates many problems. We have all heard about people who try to become famous so they can be happy. They are trying to feel good about themselves through the approval of others. No matter how much approval or fame you receive, it will never be enough. The more you get, the more you think you need. So satisfaction is never found out there, or by the approval you receive from other people.
Lillian Eichler Watson said, "...true happiness stems from a quality within ourselves, from a way of thinking of life. Of all the millions of words written on happiness, this is the oldest and most enduring truth. If the principles of contentment are not within us, no material success, no pleasures or possessions, can make us happy."
Pleasure is certainly an aspect of both happiness and contentment. But many people think that pleasure is happiness and contentment. Although it is certainly a part of both states of being, it is not all of it. Pleasure can never be all of it because pleasure is a passing thing. Once it is gone the question becomes, how do I get it back or how do I get more of it. So pleasure in this sense very quickly becomes an addition, unlike happiness or contentment. The fact that you need and want more, and you are not content, proves that it is an addition.


Socrates said, "Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty." Contentment means that you feel you now have enough of something and you are enjoying what you have, rather than needing any thing more. Happiness is the very same thing, when you have enough, you have enough. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor." Gratification is another word for contentment. It also means satisfaction, fulfillment, indulgence, enjoyment and delight. These are all words that mean and describe happiness and contentment.


Another word that describes contentment is the word: ease. This is one of the reasons that contentment and happiness is so important to practice. The benefit of being content is to enjoy all the things that you already have when you practice ease or contentment. Ease is a really great word because it means effortlessness, easiness, no difficulty, straightforwardness and simplicity. All these characteristics can be yours with "ease," when you practice contentment. "For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." - St. Paul: Philippians 4:11


Finally the word peace has been used to describe contentment. This is one of the most powerful words of all. It is true that peace is also happiness as well as contentment. Look at the opposite of the word contentment: discontentment. The word and the state of discontentment are actually the state of experiencing dissatisfaction, unhappiness, restlessness, displeasure and disgruntlement. Not a very pretty picture of what can happen when we are not using contentment and happiness as strategies for better living. As Doris Mortman said, "Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."


We have words, like: self-content, self-satisfaction and self-gratification to describe what we can choose to do and to be. Maybe this is a good time to introduce you to self-happiness. Og Mandino has said, "Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself."


Happiness is like a do-it-yourself project. Like self-contentment, you can do it for yourself and help yourself to as much as you'd like. If you get too much, you can always give away a little happiness and share it with others. Greg Anderson said, "...the supply of misery, pain, and suffering is unlimited. But so is the supply of pleasure, contentment, and fulfillment. It is we who do the rationing. Ration no more! Capture wellness this instant! This instant is all there is. Live it!"


I read this article in an online magazine called Happiness, and found it informative.

Positive Thoughts for Self Empowerment

When you say you don't like abc ..... you set filter in mind and try to search same in all the instance.

Following is from iLand post

Positive Thoughts for Self Empowerment

I read the following article online and realized how true it is for most of us:

These days, normally everyone is aware of the power of positive thinking theoretically. However, when it comes to practically being positive in life, one finds it difficult to do so. Most of the times, even though we may be thinking of ourselves as a person of positive attitude, but we end up reinforcing negativity.
Let me give you an example of that. Once, I asked one of my friend, what kind of people she likes. She answered, “I don’t like hypocrites and liars”. I told her that I had asked her what kind of people she liked and not what kind of people she did not like. Obviously she became angry on this and banged the phone.
This set me thinking, how often we attract negativity in life and think of it as positive attitude. We try hard to push the negativity away, but still it shows up again and again. But actually we are not being positive. We are just trying to fight negativity, which not only turns out to be futile, but also has difficult consequence. Someone who says that she doesn’t like hypocrites and liars, is bound to end up with the kind of people she doesn’t like and will face difficulties because of that.
Why does this happen? Because universe always responds to whatever image is stored in our sub conscious. So when one has a strong image of hypocrites and liars, such people are eventually attracted and she end up being not liking them. Instead of this negative thinking, if she thought like “I like authentic and honest people”, then she is bound to attract such kind of people in her life.
I have heard people using negative statements very often. For example “I don’t want to hurt people” But I have experienced that such people often end up hurting others, even if they don’t want to. Instead of that, they should use the affirmative approach like “I care for people” or “I love people” .
Let us understand, we can’t fight with the absence. You can’t fight with the darkness, however powerful you may be. Why? Because darkness does not exist, it is simply the absence of light. You can not drive the darkness away, you can only switch on the light and darkness will run away on its own. Same way, one can’t fight with negativity. One can only cultivate positivity.
Using affirmative language can turn your life around. From now on, I invite you to watch yourself, when you use negative language and realize that your thoughts are centered to negativity. Be aware of your negative thoughts and discover the positivity you are longing for. The moment, you start to think, feel and speak positive, you would experience ecstatic energy arising from your within, which will attract joy and success. Thinking and speaking the affirmative language can turn out to be miraculous.

Tuesday 30 December 2008

Some nice quote from iLand blog

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
Robert Frost

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
Lana Turner

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.
Mae West

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
Oscar Wilde

Women and Cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it. Robert Heinlein , Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
Charles Wadsworth

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.
Anonymous

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
Anonymous

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
Anonymous

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Wolf

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

We do not remember days; we remember moments.
Anonymous

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Mindfulness Defined

Mindfulness Defined
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

What does it mean to be mindful of the breath? Something very simple: to keep the breath in mind. Keep remembering the breath each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. The British scholar who coined the term “mindfulness” to translate the Pali word sati was probably influenced by the Anglican prayer to be ever mindful of the needs of others—in other words, to always keep their needs in mind. But even though the word “mindful” was probably drawn from a Christian context, the Buddha himself defined sati as the ability to remember, illustrating its function in meditation practice with the four satipatthanas, or establishings of mindfulness.

“And what is the faculty of sati? There is the case where a monk, a disciple of the noble ones, is mindful, highly meticulous, remembering & able to call to mind even things that were done & said long ago. (And here begins the satipatthana formula:) He remains focused on the body in & of itself — ardent, alert, & mindful — putting aside greed & distress with reference to the world. He remains focused on feelings in & of themselves... the mind in & of itself... mental qualities in & of themselves — ardent, alert, & mindful — putting aside greed & distress with reference to the world.”

SN 48.10

The full discussion of the satipatthanas (DN 22) starts with instructions to be ever mindful of the breath. Directions such as “bring bare attention to the breath,” or “accept the breath,” or whatever else modern teachers tell us that mindfulness is supposed to do, are actually functions for other qualities in the mind. They're not automatically a part of sati, but you should bring them along wherever they're appropriate.

One quality that's always appropriate in establishing mindfulness is being watchful or alert. The Pali word for alertness, sampajañña, is another term that's often misunderstood. It doesn't mean being choicelessly aware of the present, or comprehending the present. Examples in the Canon shows that sampajañña means being aware of what you're doing in the movements of the body, the movements in the mind. After all, if you're going to gain insight into how you're causing suffering, your primary focus always has to be on what you're actually doing. This is why mindfulness and alertness should always be paired as you meditate.

In the Satipatthana Sutta, they're combined with a third quality, ardency. Ardency means being intent on what you're doing, trying your best to do it skillfully. This doesn't mean that you have to keep straining and sweating all the time, just that you're continuous in developing skillful habits and abandoning unskillful ones. Remember, in the eight factors of the path to freedom, right mindfulness grows out of right effort. Right effort is the effort to be skillful. Mindfulness helps that effort along by reminding you to stick with it, so that you don't let it drop.

All three of these qualities get their focus from what the Buddha called yoniso manisikara, appropriate attention. Notice: That's appropriate attention, not bare attention. The Buddha discovered that the way you attend to things is determined by what you see as important: the questions you bring to the practice, the problems you want the practice to solve. No act of attention is ever bare. If there were no problems in life you could open yourself up choicelessly to whatever came along. But the fact is there is a big problem smack dab in the middle of everything you do: the suffering that comes from acting in ignorance. This is why the Buddha doesn't tell you to view each moment with a beginner's eyes. You've got to keep the issue of suffering and its end always in mind.

Otherwise inappropriate attention will get in the way, focusing on questions like “Who am I?” “Do I have a self?”—questions that deal in terms of being and identity. Those questions, the Buddha said, lead you into a thicket of views and leave you stuck on the thorns. The questions that lead to freedom focus on comprehending suffering, letting go of the cause of suffering, and developing the path to the end of suffering. Your desire for answers to these questions is what makes you alert to your actions—your thoughts, words, and deeds—and ardent to perform them skillfully.

Mindfulness is what keeps the perspective of appropriate attention in mind. Modern psychological research has shown that attention comes in discrete moments. You can be attentive to something for only a very short period of time and then you have to remind yourself, moment after moment, to return to it if you want to keep on being attentive. In other words, continuous attention—the type that can observe things over time—has to be stitched together from short intervals. This is what mindfulness is for. It keeps the object of your attention and the purpose of your attention in mind.

Popular books on meditation, though, offer a lot of other definitions for mindfulness, a lot of other duties it's supposed to fulfill—so many that the poor word gets totally stretched out of shape. In some cases, it even gets defined as Awakening, as in the phrase, “A moment of mindfulness is a moment of Awakening”—something the Buddha would never say, because mindfulness is conditioned and nirvana is not.

These are not just minor matters for nitpicking scholars to argue over. If you don't see the differences among the qualities you're bringing to your meditation, they glom together, making it hard for real insight to arise. If you decide that one of the factors on the path to Awakening is Awakening itself, it's like reaching the middle of a road and then falling asleep right there. You never get to the end of the road, and in the meantime you're bound to get run over by aging, illness, and death. So you need to get your directions straight, and that requires, among other things, knowing precisely what mindfulness is and what it's not.

I've heard mindfulness defined as “affectionate attention” or “compassionate attention,” but affection and compassion aren't the same as mindfulness. They're separate things. If you bring them to your meditation, be clear about the fact that they're acting in addition to mindfulness, because skill in meditation requires seeing when qualities like compassion are helpful and when they're not. As the Buddha says, there are times when affection is a cause for suffering, so you have to watch out.

Sometimes mindfulness is defined as appreciating the moment for all the little pleasures it can offer: the taste of a raisin, the feel of a cup of tea in your hands. In the Buddha's vocabulary, this appreciation is called contentment. Contentment is useful when you're experiencing physical hardship, but it's not always useful in the area of the mind. In fact the Buddha once said that the secret to his Awakening was that he didn't allow himself to rest content with whatever attainment he had reached. He kept reaching for something higher until there was nowhere higher to reach. So contentment has to know its time and place. Mindfulness, if it's not glommed together with contentment, can help keep that fact in mind.

Some teachers define mindfulness as “non-reactivity” or “radical acceptance.” If you look for these words in the Buddha's vocabulary, the closest you'll find are equanimity and patience. Equanimity means learning to put aside your preferences so that you can watch what's actually there. Patience is the ability not to get worked up over the things you don't like, to stick with difficult situations even when they don't resolve as quickly as you want them to. But in establishing mindfulness you stay with unpleasant things not just to accept them but to watch and understand them. Once you've clearly seen that a particular quality like aversion or lust is harmful for the mind, you can't stay patient or equanimous about it. You have to make whatever effort is needed to get rid of it and to nourish skillful qualities in its place by bringing in other factors of the path: right resolve and right effort.

Mindfulness, after all, is part of a larger path mapped out by appropriate attention. You have to keep remembering to bring the larger map to bear on everything you do. For instance, right now you're trying to keep the breath in mind because you see that concentration, as a factor of the path, is something you need to develop, and mindfulness of the breath is a good way to do it. The breath is also a good standpoint from which you can directly observe what's happening in the mind, to see which qualities of mind are giving good results and which ones aren't.

Meditation involves lots of mental qualities, and you have to be clear about what they are, where they're separate, and what each one of them can do. That way, when things are out of balance, you can identify what's missing and can foster whatever is needed to make up the lack. If you're feeling flustered and irritated, try to bring in a little gentleness and contentment. When you're lazy, rev up your sense of the dangers of being unskillful and complacent. It's not just a matter of piling on more and more mindfulness. You've got to add other qualities as well. First you're mindful enough to stitch things together, to keep the basic issues of your meditation in mind and to observe things over time. Then you try to notice—that's alertness—to see what else to stir into the pot.

It's like cooking. When you don't like the taste of the soup you're fixing, you don't just add more and more salt. Sometimes you add onion, sometimes garlic, sometimes oregano—whatever you sense is needed. Just keep in mind the fact that you've got a whole spice shelf to work with.

And remember that your cooking has a purpose. In the map of the path, right mindfulness isn't the end point. It's supposed to lead to right concentration.

We're often told that mindfulness and concentration are two separate forms of meditation, but the Buddha never made a clear division between the two. In his teachings, mindfulness shades into concentration; concentration forms the basis for even better mindfulness. The four establishings of mindfulness are also the themes of concentration. The highest level of concentration is where mindfulness becomes pure. As Ajaan Lee, a Thai Forest master, once noted, mindfulness combined with ardency turns into the concentration factor called vitakka or “directed thought,” where you keep your thoughts consistently focused on one thing. Alertness combined with ardency turns into another concentration factor: vicara, or “evaluation.” You evaluate what's going on with the breath. Is it comfortable? If it is, stick with it. If it's not, what can you do to make it more comfortable? Try making it a little bit longer, a little bit shorter, deeper, more shallow, faster, slower. See what happens. When you've found a way of breathing that nourishes a sense of fullness and refreshment, you can spread that fullness throughout the body. Learn how to relate to the breath in a way that nourishes a good energy flow throughout the body. When things feel refreshing like this, you can easily settle down.

You may have picked up the idea that you should never fiddle with the breath, that you should just take it as it comes. Yet meditation isn't just a passive process of being nonjudgmentally present with whatever's there and not changing it at all. Mindfulness keeps stitching things together over time, but it also keeps in mind the idea that there's a path to develop, and getting the mind to settle down is a skillful part of that path.

This is why evaluation—judging the best way to maximize the pleasure of the breath—is essential to the practice. In other words, you don't abandon your powers of judgment as you develop mindfulness. You simply train them to be less judgmental and more judicious, so that they yield tangible results.

When the breath gets really full and refreshing throughout the body, you can drop the evaluation and simply be one with the breath. This sense of oneness is also sometimes called mindfulness, in a literal sense: mind-fullness, a sense of oneness pervading the entire range of your awareness. You're at one with whatever you focus on, at one with whatever you do. There's no separate “you” at all. This is the type of mindfulness that's easy to confuse with Awakening because it can seem so liberating, but in the Buddha's vocabulary it's neither mindfulness nor Awakening. It's cetaso ekodibhava, unification of awareness—a factor of concentration, present in every level from the second jhana up through the infinitude of consciousness. So it's not even the ultimate in concentration, much less Awakening.

Which means that there's still more to do. This is where mindfulness, alertness, and ardency keep digging away. Mindfulness reminds you that no matter how wonderful this sense of oneness, you still haven't solved the problem of suffering. Alertness tries to focus on what the mind is still doing in that state of oneness—what subterranean choices you're making to keep that sense of oneness going, what subtle levels of stress those choices are causing—while ardency tries to find a way to drop even those subtle choices so as to be rid of that stress.

So even this sense of oneness is a means to a higher end. You bring the mind to a solid state of oneness so as to drop your normal ways of dividing up experience into me vs. not-me, but you don't stop there. You then take that oneness and keep subjecting it to all the factors of right mindfulness. That's when really valuable things begin to separate out on their own. Ajaan Lee uses the image of ore in a rock. Staying with the sense of oneness is like being content simply with the knowledge that there's tin, silver, and gold in your rock: If that's all you do, you'll never get any use from them. But if you heat the rock to the melting points for the different metals, they'll separate out on their own.

Liberating insight comes from testing, experimenting. This is how we learn about the world to begin with. If we weren't active creatures, we'd have no understanding of the world at all. Things would pass by, pass by, and we wouldn't know how they were connected because we'd have no way of influencing them to see which effects came from changing which causes. It's because we act in the world that we understand the world.

The same holds true with the mind. You can't just sit around hoping that a single mental quality—mindfulness, acceptance, contentment, oneness—is going to do all the work. If you want to learn about the potentials of the mind, you have to be willing to play—with sensations in the body, with qualities in the mind. That's when you come to understand cause and effect.

And that requires all your powers of intelligence—and this doesn't mean just book intelligence. It means your ability to notice what you're doing, to read the results of what you've done, and to figure out ingenious ways of doing things that cause less and less suffering and stress: street smarts for the noble path. Mindfulness allows you to see these connections because it keeps reminding you always to stay with these issues, to stay with the causes until you see their effects. But mindfulness alone can't do all the work. You can't fix the soup simply by dumping more pepper into it. You add other ingredients, as they're needed.

This is why it's best not to load the word mindfulness with too many meanings or to assign it too many functions. Otherwise, you can't clearly discern when a quality like contentment is useful and when it's not, when you need to bring things to oneness and when you need to take things apart.

So keep the spices on your shelf clearly labeled, and learn through practice which spice is good for which purpose. Only then can you develop your full potential as a cook.

Sunday 28 December 2008

Stress Management Techniques for People Searching for Answers

Stress Management is more than anger management and relaxation. It is self management. There are many different ways to manage stress. I have compiled the various stress management techniques that are simple and most effective to follow and practice. Please feel free to use as many as you can, keeping an open mind, so you can have a collection of techniques that are the most effective for you.

  1. Feel Good about your Self
  2. Take Care of your Body
  3. Develop the Right Attitude
  4. Develop the Right Environment
  5. Short Tips for Busy People

1. Feel Good about your Self

If you want to bring down your level of stress level in a matter of minutes, these techniques will help you. Use them as needed to feel better quickly; practice them regularly over time and gain even greater benefits.

  • Deep Breathing from the Abdomen

  • Meditation

  • Having a dose of Laughter

  • Progressive Muscular Relaxation

  • Listening to light music

  • Practicing Yoga

  • Aerobic Exercises

  • Creative Visualization

2. Take Care of Body

When we’re stressed, we don’t always take care of our bodies, which can lead to even more stress. Here are some important ways to take care of yourself and keep stress levels lower.

  • Eat Healthy low fats â€" high protein meals

  • Have six to eight hours of regular sleep

  • Exercise regularly

  • Develop a Hobby

  • Have healthy Sex Life

3. Develop the Right Attitude

Attitude plays a great role in managing stress. Much of your experience of stress has a lot to do with your attitude and the way you perceive your life’s events. Here are some resources to help you maintain a stress-relieving attitude.

  • Let go your Ego

  • Have a Optimistic approach to life

  • Do not react under pressure

  • Stop Worrying about things not in your control

  • Accept that everything cannot be perfect

  • Find an opportunity in every problem

  • Say good things to your self â€" affirmations

  • Have a health sense of humour

4. Develop the Right Environment

Having ambiance and pleasant environment make stress management very easy. Your physical and emotional surroundings can impact your stress levels in subtle but significant ways. Here are several ways you can change your atmosphere and less your stress.

  • Clutter free home, office and working desk

  • Green and Clean surrounding

  • Light instrumental music

  • Motivational Posters

  • Words of Wisdom

5. Short Tips for Busy People

Busy People add a lot of stress to their already stressed life. People who may have more stressors in their lives is because they have more activity in their lives, and less time to devote to stress management. If you’re a busy person, these resources can help you to manage stress efficiently in a short amount of time, and eliminate some of what’s causing you stress in the first place.

  • Time Management Tips

  • Communication Skills

  • Listening Skills

  • Managing Priorities

  • Enhancing Team Work

  • Enhancing People Skills

Sunday 7 December 2008

Be honest, be also resourceful

Be honest, be also resourceful

K VIJAYARAGHAVAN



MANY who claim themselves to be ‘practical’, feel that to go ahead in life, it is often necessary to compromise on one’s integrity. They also point out to many simple and honest persons suffering, especially financially, while those who have been corrupt appear to thrive.
Such philosophy would, prima facie, in fact, appear to hold some water, especially because there
also exist many ‘honest’ persons, who, on observing others’ comfortable living, nurse doubts about their own values. They even conclude that one cannot be honest and also be above want at the same time — that is, one cannot have the cake and eat it too!
A deeper analy
sis would, however, convince that those who take such a cynical view are not simple persons but mere simpletons, whose list of virtues commences with honesty and also ends there. Such ‘honest’ persons do not have the urge to extend honesty to other needed virtues, so necessary for true fulfilment. Life, limited in this manner, is prosaic, laughable and is, actually, no life at all!
Honesty, inspired by true courage of conviction, would always also go with intelligent hard work, enterprise and dynamism. Thus the seeker not merely obtains peace of an honest mind but also materialistic gains (artha), to
fulfil his true desires (kama). Established in righteousness (dharma), he finally wins liberation (moksha) from all wrong living and worldly bondage.
It is through this holistic and integrated approach, “tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection”. Its practical working is illustrated by Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Striving for excellence in flight,
Jonathan learns to “find the rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean” and to “ride the high winds far inland to dine there on delicate insects”. He is thus the winner, even from the materialistic point of view, having also fulfilled the call of the spirit within.
The late Gomathy Krishnanand, the first principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Trivandrum used to inspire her students, telling, “there is always room at the top” in this vast world, for him, who is good, honest and also willing, daring and resourceful. This awesome combination of such abiding integrity within and also effective persistence would obtain the twin blessings of being both honest and also being prosperous in every way — the blessing of having the cake and eating it too! This, doubtless, is unmatched skill in action (karmasu kaushalam)!