Changing Perfection

I have written a post where I said that changes in this world is necessary, and recently I also wrote a post where I said that everything is perfect. Someone might ask, “If everything is perfect, why change it?”

Similarly, one can also ask, “If you can accept something, why do you want to change it?”

First of all, let us be clear about one thing, change is the one thing that is inevitable in this universe, which consists of infinite number of dimensions. Perfection and acceptance are therefore bound to be part of changes, it is inseparable.

Another thing that we need to be clear about is that we have a freedom of choice in our lives, a choice whether we want to be a part of the change or not to be. Truth is, it doesn’t matter, changes will still occur whether we are a part of it or not, people will die, with or without our interference, day becomes night, with or without our interference (we cannot interfere with this one anyway.)

Should we choose to change the conditions in our life, and should we also choose to do it in a harmonious, peaceful way, we must first learn to ACCEPT that everything is PERFECT. Once we can accept everything as perfection, than no matter what kind of changes occur, we will still see perfection in it; and as a result of this acceptance, whether we choose to be part of that change or not, we will still be harmonious and peaceful.

People rebel and retaliate to change something, and as a result nothing becomes harmonious and peaceful, this is because they haven’t learnt to ACCEPT everything to be perfect. They are changing things with the spirit of RESISTING because they see IMPERFECTION. Therefore, these people will only bring about imperfection in their lives and there will be no peace and harmony in their lives.

Accepting is not to be mistaken as giving up. Giving up is the end result; a result attained by lack of self confidence over ones own choices. Accepting is the first step to a big change in your life and possibly in everyone’s life. You will never change yourself, until you can learn to accept your limitations and setback. Acceptance; accepting yourself for who you already are, is the first step you should take to start making some changes in your life. Otherwise you would be in a state called denial.

The Three Gems

In this post I would like to discuss what it means to take refuge in Buddha.

A lot of people have this misunderstanding that to take refuge in Buddha is to convert ones religion into Buddhism and to pray daily and light incense sticks and worship the giant Siddharta Gautama’s statue. Hoping that one day when you are in deep trouble Gautama will swish down from the clouds and solve your problems. This is terribly wrong. Gautama the Buddha Himself was never for religion or any sectarian movement, he believed in a universal movement.

To understand what it means, we need first to understand what is the meaning of Buddha? A lot of people have the impression that Buddha is Gautama’s surname or last name. But this is not so. Buddha was a title given to him after attaining enlightenment. Buddha is a Pali language, it means the enlightened one.

Therefore to take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in the enlightened one, which is different from taking refuge in Gautama, because Gautama was not the only enlightened being in this planet, there has been thousands of enlightened people before Gautama’s time, contemporary to Gautama’s time, and after Gautama’s time. Enlightened beings are every where around us, we just don’t notice them. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was right when he said that a mundane human being cannot see God even if He was standing right before him (the mundane fellow) in all His glory and might.

To take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in the quality of enlightenment. This quality of enlightenment is supported by three important factors, factors that have to be scrupulously paid attention to. The three factors, as taught by Gautama the Buddha, are: Sila (Morality), Samma Samadhi (right concentration), and Punya (wisdom).

Over here I would like to discuss the third factor, punya or wisdom, not that the other two are less important, they are all equally important in their own respective ways, they are like the legs of a tripod, if one is missing, the other two will not be able to support the balance.

In Gautama’s teachings he divided Punya into 3 different stages.

1.Sut Maya Punya
2. Chinta Maya Punya
3. Bhavna Maya Punya.

Sut Maya Punya is the wisdom you get from reading spiritual books or listening to spiritual tapes attending satsangs held by sages and philosophers. This is the first stage and the easiest to attain, it is also the easiest to loose (let me see if you remember the point written on page 162 of any self help book when you are in deep trouble and going through emotional upheaval; the last thing you want to think about is what is written in any particular book). An easy way to understand this is when you enter a restaurant and read the menu and attain the knowledge of the food served there.

Chinta Maya Punya is the second stage, this is a wisdom you get from your own intellectual, for example when you are attending a funeral of someone close to you and your intellectual starts thinking, “nothing in this world lasts forever.” This is a wisdom attained by your own intellect (after the funeral you go outside find that your car is stolen and then you go “my car is stolen! Iam finished!” and there goes your wisdom.). This can be compared to when after reading the menu in the restaurant you start seeing the people around you enjoying the food and you say to yourself, “hmm..the food looks very delicious in this restaurant.” To attain this wisdom one must have some degree or knowing of wisdom.

The third stage which is the Bhavna Maya Punya, is very hard to attain, very hard to comprehend and conceive by us everyday folks, this is a wisdom you experience. Not to be mistaken as the wisdom you get from experience, which will be Chinta maya punya again. But to experience wisdom, it is quite unheard of since a lot of us perceive wisdom as a set of wise words said by some sages and philosophers and some intellectual genius, but wisdom does not end there. This wisdom, can only be experienced when you are pure, when you have performed a deep rooted surgical operation of your subconscious mind.

Gautama started to have an inkling feeling of this when he started his meditation under the banyan tree. After going everywhere listening to talks by saints and sages, he thought to himself, “This is not enough, even after being taught all this wisdom and after reading all the holy scriptures I keep doing the same mistake, I am still miserable, there needs to be something more powerful.”

No matter how many books or how many talks and satsangs we listen to, we are most likely to make the same mistakes, because by reading this books and listening to these talks we are only attaining knowledge at a conscious level, only the surface level gets cleansed but it does not do anything about the roots, where as the real problem lies within the roots. Not that it is bad to read books and listening to talks, they are good of course, they give you knowledge, and they give you some degree of awareness. But after that we go back to being slaves of our mental volition. This mental volition can only be changed if we stop reacting by craving when something good happens, and stop reacting with aversion when something bad happens. The Buddha always teaches us to take the middle path; to just accept and move one, to take action but not to react.

This my dear friends, is how you shall attain that highest form of wisdom which is buried deep in your subconscious and will only surface itself in all its glory after your subconscious is purified from all the bad mental volitions and eventually be fully conscious, and this is exactly where Sila and Samma Samadhi comes to help.

Orderly Chaos

I have a firm believe that everything in this world is in order and that everything is just perfect and that everything is just as it should be, that everything, even the rustling of the leaves and the branches, has a purpose of its own, although it is beyond my understanding and comprehension; but it’s a belief, a faith, and miracles have happened through a leap of faith.

One way to test your level of understanding, would be to place yourself in the busiest street you can comprehend, probably like the Chandni Chowk market in India in the morning where everything is just bustling. A person who has a high level of understanding can see the purpose behind the entire racket, a person with low understanding can just see the racket and not the purpose.

In short, to be understanding is to be able to see the purpose behind every happening that goes on around you. To be able to understand why that person in front of you is driving his car so slowly even when the road is empty ahead of him. To be able to understand why that rickshaw driver is driving so fast and almost knocked the living day lights out of you. You can be sure that that guy ahead of your car is not doing just so he could annoy you (its possible but chances are pretty low), you can also be sure that that rickshaw driver did not want to kill you.


Can you imagine how much work was put for that rickshaw driver to drive his rickshaw so fast? A mundane human may say, “well all he had to do was to paddle that rickshaw fast with his mighty legs and away he goes.” That may be right.

But the universe put way more work, this guy’s soul has lived a thousand lives before he was born as a rickshaw driver, he needed to be born with strong legs, another person needed to be born to sell rickshaws in the future, the many “coincidence” that had to happen for the rickshaw driver and the rickshaw seller to meet and make a deal, the many persons and characters those 2 people’s lives revolved around on, just so that one day he will be able to whiz his rickshaw right by you on that one glorious day; to say that there is no purpose in this would be an insult to the universe.

The distance that the wind has traveled just so it can blow on the leaves of the trees right outside your door, there has to be a purpose in everything. It is out duty to accept this fact. That everything has a purpose.

What is OUR purpose in this life?
If you were to ask me, I would say that your purpose is what you make of it, it is not written anywhere what you purpose in life should be. That rickshaw driver has made it his purpose (consciously or unconsciously aside) to drive people around from point A to point B. The saints have made it their purpose to help people out of their misery. Everyone and everything has a purpose. Your purpose is what you make of it, because you were given the gift of choice, therefore choose wisely.

The Punishing Phenomena

The reason why people are capable of doing bad things and are living wretched lives is because we think what they are doing is bad and because we think their lives are wretched.

This is one of the reasons we find it so hard to comprehend or understand why someone who is or was so good could commit an act of something so shameful or disgraceful. For people who live in a world of duality, which is probably 90% of the people living in this world, they cannot understand this.

As a result, the “good” people who is discovered to commit this “bad” act, is suddenly shunned from society, they are avoided; as a result this person will be depressed and will do more “bad” things and be miserable for the rest of his or her wretched live.

The truth is that, every one of us in this world, given the right circumstances and situations, are capable of doing “bad” things, no doubt about it. In fact all of us have done a “bad” thing or two, of a small scale of course.

If I ask 10 people what is “bad” and what is “good”, I will surely get 10 different answers. This only goes to show that “bad” and “good” is nothing but a relative truth and not a universal truth; a truth only pertaining to ones perception of things.

We are in no place to judge one another; we are however, in a very favorable place and time, to observe everyone and everything. We learn a lot from observing, but we learn nothing from judging.

None of us have enough credibility to judge anyone, because every one of us are capable of doing wrong, none of us are perfect. To this you may argue and say that, “What about people like Michael Jackson, Hitler? Shouldn’t we bring them to justice?”

To which my reply would be, you may but you don’t have to. Every one’s action is bound to have a consequence, just like the branch of a tree that moves when a wind blows upon it, so are the actions of these people bound to bring them similar consequences. Not because someone up there is judging them, or there is some divine judge up there in heaven judging them, but because it is just natural. When a thunder strikes it does not mean God is angry, a thunder strikes because it had to, because of the attraction of opposite charges that brings about this phenomenon.

Having said this, I don’t think it is necessary for people to judge one another, because everyone and everything is bound to get the fruit of their actions, the fruit of the action of the wind that blew on the leave is the movement of the leaves. When everyone is bound to get the fruit of their actions, why do we need justice? Why do we need police? To make sure the universe doesn’t forget who to “punish”? Now that my friend is ridiculous.

The Smile of a Cruel King:The Buddha’s final revelation

Gautama the Buddha lived and blessed this planet with his presence for more than 80 years. Through which he abandoned his status as a prince, abandoned all worldly possessions, set out to become a monk, and eventually gained enlightenment at the age of 32.

The final 10 years of his life was one of the most important chapters of his life, without which his teachings wouldn’t be as widespread as it is now to the general public, and would only be available to monks and nuns.

What happened during the last 10 years of his life you might wonder?

It was during his final 10 years that he gained his final revelation. The story goes like this.

It started when a wicked prince banished his father, the king of the town the Buddha’s dharamsala resides in and who is very near and dear to the Buddha, to a life time in prison where no one was allowed to meet him or feed him and he was left to die there alone.

A time came where this king was finally breathing his last breath, and he was finally allowed to be visited by the queen and the Buddha himself. During those last minutes, the king made the Buddha promise that he (the Buddha) would guide and teach his wicked son the path to wisdom and dhamma, to which the Buddha promised.

After the king died in prison, the cruel prince, by drinking a dangerous medicine by mistake, got a large tumor on his forehead. Everyone tried to cure it but to no avail. Finally the Buddha decided to visit and cure this sick prince, who banished and virtually killed his own father to gain control over the town and tried to take over the Buddha’s dharamsala.

When the Buddha entered the prince’s bedroom he saw the prince helpless and almost to die, and infront of everyone, the Buddha laid his index finger on the prince’s tumor, and the pain on the prince’s forehead disappeared and he straight went into peaceful sleep. Everyone was surprised at this happening.

After witnessing this, the ministers allowed the Buddha to visit the prince everyday for the “treatment”. For 3 years non-stop the Buddha didn’t fail to visit the prince even for one day. The tumor gradually shrunk and eventually disappeared.

As the Buddha was getting ready to leave the room after his last and final visit, the prince called the Buddha, and gave him a smile. It was the first time the prince ever smiled in his whole life. All his life he was being exposed to cruelty, to the rigid and strict life of the palace, he was not allowed any freedom what so ever, which was how he got his tumor, stress. It was thanks to the Buddha’s peaceful (or vibe as your guys say it today) and loving aura that he passed on to the prince by touching his tumor that finally made the prince well again.

When the Buddha saw this beautiful smile, he smiled back and thought: “what a beautiful smile….just like a God’s.”

The moment he thought of this, he stopped short and was awed by his revelation.

The revelation was that no matter how bad a person or a living thing is, there is always a God inside this person, which is buried deep beneath all his/her/it’s cruel exterior and behavior.

Before this revelation the Buddha only shared his wisdom to monks and nuns, because he thought that enlightenment is supposed to be earned instead of discovered. That only monks and nun, people who has abandoned all worldly possession could finally gain enlightenment and eternal peace.

But after seeing the God in the cruel prince, he finally realized that enlightenment, peace, joy, happiness is already there in all beings, all they need to do is to go deep inside them and find that place of eternal peace and joy and happiness.

After this revelation, his dharamsala was opened to the public and everyone who wanted to discover their own inner light and discover enlightenment and peace.

This was when he was around 70 years old. During this time he decided that he would go all around the country with this helper, Ananda, and spread his knowledge and wisdom to everyone. Now, in the present moment, his wisdom has not only spread across the country he was living in, but all around the world, a lot of people have benefited from his wisdoms, from India, Europe, Africa, America.

If it wasn’t for this revelation, we wouldn’t be able to read the Dhammapada which are words of wisdom written by the Buddha himself when he was still living, the monastries and Pagodas would only be accessible to monks and nuns. And my mentor SN Goenka wouldn’t exist. My mentor is a colossal proof that you don’t have to abandon all worldly things to gain enlightenment; SN Goenka is a Burmese industrialist and a billionaire, who has gained enlightenment by practicing Vipassana, a meditation technique founded by the Buddha.