Let’s take a honest look at ourselves.
What have we become.
As Thoreau once said, we have become a tool of our tools today.
Today, the world is unmindful the way it has never been in human history.
Everyone wants to do something all the time. The moment we wake up, the moment we get a few spare minutes, we start to rush towards our phones and computers to feed our mind with something.
The art of staying quiet, and simply being mindful of ourselves, of what’s going around us, is lost.
That’s the worst thing that has happened to not only you or me, but to humanity itself.
This won’t do. This can’t do. We got to be better than this.
And this change can only begin with me and you. Before changing the world, or blaming the world for what it has become today, we ourselves need to accept the blame too for losing our mindful state so easily today.
You and I need to take a honest look at our own lives, at how we live it from morning till night, every day.
I mean, I myself am no Saint. I, too, keep falling into this trap of doing something unmindful every now and then. And I know I can do better than that.
So, the first thing I need to do is be fully mindful myself, of every little thing that I do, throughout the day. And thankfully, I am almost there, and I wish so was everyone else around me.
When I am at the Doctors’, Barbers’, or in the checkout line at the mall, I see people have become restless today. They have lost the practice of simply being themselves.
They want to be doing something, talking to someone, looking at something around or on their phones. They are incapable of doing nothing and being nothing, even for a moment.
And that’s a sad state.
If you always have to do something, to read something, to watch something, to be something, then you fail to be your own self.
In order for you to be aware of who you are, you have to first stop being something else, you have to stop doing something else.
Only by being nothing, at least for a part of your day, can you actually become something worth being of.
It’s only by doing nothing, and trying to be aware of what’s going on within you, can you be closer to your true self.
So the first step to becoming mindful is to create such pockets of time, throughout your day, in which you do nothing.
Now what do I exactly mean by that?
Doing nothing here means making your mind do nothing. When walking, just walk; when sitting, just sit; when looking, just look.
Don’t participate in any other thing. Don’t participate in what thoughts come to your mind. Let them come, let them stay, let them go. You simply be yourself.
The true art of being mindful is to be not even mindful that you are being mindful. It’s just about being, and that’s it. It’s not about being something or someone.
There are various techniques taught by our Indian Yogis of the past for doing this, or for making it easier to become calm and quiet from within, so that you can become mindful of your existence.
You can focus on your breath for example. Let the breath come on its own, let it stay on its own, and let it go on its own. You simply witness it as an observer who has got nothing to do with it, and who is only observing it.
Or, you can say some mantra in your mind. It doesn’t matter which God, which Enlightened Being, which Yogi, which Guru, you believe in. If you deeply revere them, then saying the mantra of their name, or saying the mantra that they taught you, will help.
When I started in this journey of living mindfully, 19 years ago, I used to focus on my breath to calm myself down, to bring myself to my mindful state.
These days I automatically find myself repeating the Sanskrit/Hindi equivalent of “Everything is consciousness” or “Everything is Paramatma”. Or I say mantra on Vishnu, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, or Buddha.
What I want to say is, just pick any of these, or make or use any of yours mantra, to bring yourself back to your peaceful and mindful state.
(Side note: As I was trying to recollect what all techniques, phrases, mantras, and names I have used to bring myself back to the present moment, I accidentally knocked down the cap of my Ink pen, over my desk, with which I am writing this article. So much for teaching others to be mindful!)
Anyway, irrespective of the words or techniques that you use to become mindful, the important thing is to keep doing it every time, throughout your day, whenever you find yourself becoming unmindful. And you can do this anytime, anywhere, whether at work or at home or in the way between them.
The more you do it, the more you will want to do it. And it will become your second nature to do it. And then it will automatically come to you the moment you need it.
You will find yourself standing in a crowded Bus, and you’ll automatically say “Everything is Buddha” or “Everything is Krishna” or whatever.
That is the place where you want to be with respect to living mindfully. You don’t want to be complaining about standing in a crowded Bus. You don’t want to even think about when you will find a seat. You don’t want to browse your phone to distract yourself from the situation.
All that you want to do, all that you end up doing, is saying your mantra, or feeling your breath, and being one with it at that moment. All that matters then is that you are simply there, fully content with where you are, the way you are, whereas everyone else is in some other place in their mind, busy in worrying about something – When will I reach home? When will I reach office? Why is it so crowded today? Why doesn’t the Government run more Buses in this route? Why is that baby crying so much? Why is the Driver driving so slowly? When will I get my own Car? I hope there is something good for dinner today?
And then there are also those these days who are glued to their phones all the time, and some have earphones on all the time. When you see such people, it feels that these must be the most busy people in this world; poor guys, who don’t have enough time for all the things in their life. They are glued to their phone screens all the time – in a crowded Bus, while crossing the street, while sitting next to you as they are talking to you, while eating, inside the toilet, and God knows where else.
It’s seeing such people, youngsters for the most part but I also see old people doing such things, that worries me about where we are headed as a humanity. Is this mindless consumption of useless information, not just at an individual level but at a global level, ever going to decrease? Likely not.
We keep devising more and more ways to consume content in various forms, and then we keep using such new technologies all the time, every single moment of the day in which we are awake, and thinking about them even in our sleep perhaps.
This mindless consumption has to go, if we, and by that I mean we humanity as a whole, have to do things that are meaningful, and of benefit to all.
And such a change can only be brought at a conscious level, not at the surface level of our mind. We have to consciously think of the things, the technologies, we own, and we have to consciously make use of them in our everyday lives.
Don’t be a slave to these tools which we only created to serve us, and not to serve them instead. You don’t have to run like a slave to your phone – your master – every time it beeps out a notification. You don’t have to know each and everything that’s going on across each and every corner of the world. You don’t have to know what someone ate today, wore today, did today. You just need to be aware of your own self first.
You don’t have to worry about who did what, who should have instead done this or that, or who shouldn’t have said this or that. That’s none of your business. That has got nothing to do with who you are and what you want to become in life.
The world’s reaction shouldn’t decide what your actions should be. It’s you, it’s me, who need to be in full control of our path, our destiny, and this path, this destiny, we won’t give over the control of – the reins of – to anyone else; be whoever or whatever they may be.
We will be mindful of each and every moment of our day. Every action of ours, every word we say, every thought we think of, will be our own choice. It will be our mindful choice and not a residue of those junk thoughts that the world throws upon us, or keeps trying to throw at us 24×7.
We will be the mindful ones, we are the mindful ones, and we were born to be the mindful ones. So that’s what you and I will be.
Let the whole world go to hell if that’s what it has decided to do. Let the humanity be doomed if that’s the path it has chosen for itself.
I and you will choose our own path. I and you will follow our own path. I and you will be what good and sensible still remains of this humanity.
I and you will be the change that we want to see in this world. And that’s the only thing that we need to take care of. And that’s the only thing that matters now, that matters in the end.
And it is by doing this, by being mindful ourself, will we spread the happy virus of mindfulness to others as well. When they will see how calm, how peaceful, how sensible we are in our words, in our actions, they too will get attracted towards us, and our light too will fall upon them and influence them to live a mindful life as well.
The biggest success in life is not to become rich, own an island, build a billion-dollar business, but to be mindful in an unmindful world, and let the spark of consciousness still shine within us all the time.
So let’s work towards that.