Self improvement

See the impermanence in life, that is the ultimate truth. Turn back and see, all that you did is now like a dream. Whatever you do in the future - you may become mayor of the town, you may rise to the highest position, you may have a lot of wealth - so what? You have cried and wept; you have gotten angry and agitated, so what? All has passed, the whole thing has finished. Tomorrow will pass too. This very moment, whether pleasant or unpleasant, will pass on.
Now and then, a pinch of unpleasantness comes. Do you know why? It makes you aware of your pleasantness. Suppose you never had un­pleasant moments in your life, you would never have pleasant ones either. You wouldn’t know what pleasantness is. Your life would stagnate with utter boredom. You would become like a stone. So, in order to keep you alive, now and then, here and there, nature gives you a little pinch. It makes life more lively. Accept it.
God does the same thing to you. Now and then, He gives you a pinch. Then you start weeping. However, just turn back and see, every time you had difficulty, were you not taken out of the difficulty? Any time you had some problem, you received a helping hand, you were picked up. There are stories of people who were drowning in the river and there was nobody there; they don’t know how they were saved.
It does not mean that you should jump into the ocean and see whether somebody saves you. You don’t have to be afraid in life. There is always support. So, every pinch you receive in life is for the best, to make your life more lively and enjoyable. Otherwise, there is no purpose in life. Whyare people born? Why go through everything when death will come one day? Is this life? Are you born just to pay your bills? If you are born just topay your taxes, electricity and phone bills, then life is not worth living.
Day and night you work so hard. You are waiting for Friday to come. The whole week is spent mad­ly working, coming home tired, eating, going to bed, sleeping, and the next day the same thing. Weekends have become another routine - the same gossip, the same sitting around drinking, watching the same movies, the same type of conversation.
If you’re awake, you will see there is so much foolishness! Just watch when four or five people get together and gossip. In a gossip session, you can immediately change the topic of conversation. This is the thing with a crowd. If ten people are talking about the weather and you change the topic to stock markets, everybody will immediately start talking stock markets, whether they know about them or not. And then from stock markets you change to health food. They will not even have completed the previous topic and will jump onto this! It is great fun.
We take many things in life for granted and that brings in a state of inertia. Getting caught in routine only adds to such a state of monotony. Few people venture out of their comfort zones for something challenging, something that triggers life. They either suffer great loss or they achieve exemplary gains.
But when a crisis like the economic meltdown hits, it just shakes the entire society with its dominant effect. It wakes you up from slumber. You suddenly realize the uncertainty of life. When your comforts are squeezed, you are compelled to move out to find new ways of sustaining yourself. From these crises one must learn that life is impermanent and so are its comforts and its troubles.
Lack of spiritual quotient will also lead you to depression and even suicidal tendencies. Whenever you are depressed, you don’t see beyond your little world. If you open your eyes, you will see there are people who are much worse affected than you. Prayer, meditation, yoga, pranayama will help one to see beyond their limitation and face the challenges.
Many feel it is easy to say pleasure is impermanent, but troubles appear to be permanent. Here, it is spiritual knowledge that gives you enormous strength to endure and find a way out. A crisis opens your eyes to something beyond, something which you had ignored for a long time. And a glimpse of that brings a sense of relief, joy and sometimes creativity.
A crisis brings forth the human values prevalent in society. Like the devastation in Bihar , Assam or Orissa, where people from all religions, whether rich or poor, helped each other. Suddenly the enormous hidden human face was visible, and you realize there is a lot of love and belongingness on this planet.
Being aware of this impermanent nature of life, of the changing nature of happenings – you will find that there is something in you that has not changed. There is a reference point by which you can say things are changing. Get­ting into that reference point, that is Being. That is the source of life. That is wisdom.