Enjoying a Cup of Tea

Q: Why do we not feel relaxed in spite of taking breaks from work?

At my office also, a group of colleagues take an afternoon tea-break. I happened to join them one of the days. They started chatting, topics ranging from office gossip to problems in their projects, about their bonus etc.. We stayed there for nearly half an hour and we did not even know when we had finished drinking tea.

Most often than not, all of us do various things without even being aware of what we are doing. Our physical body is probably doing whatever it needs to but we are not there in totality. We drink a cup of tea without even knowing what is going into our system. We are busy in our own world, the dream world, the fantasy world.

Even if we are not with someone with whom we talk, even if we are alone and drinking a cup of tea, we are least bothered about tea. We call it a tea-break but just think about it. Is it really a tea-break?

What do we mean by a break? We would ideally like to relax ourselves, our body and mind. But what do we do? When we are doing something as simple as walking to the canteen, we are constantly thinking about work. Our stress and worry which was at the office desk are being carried by us as we are walking, as we are drinking that cup of tea and as we are going back to the desk.

So where have we taken a break? Nithyananda says - when we wake up, our mind is already in office; when we are at office, our mind is already at lunch break; when we are in the lunch break, our mind is already thinking about 5pm and when we are back at home, our mind is already thinking about office...

Our mind is never there where we are. Let us just start to put awareness on our breath. We don't have to control it, just watch the breath as it moves in and out, in a completely relaxed manner. Gradually, we start to build an awareness about whatever we are doing. When we start living in the present moment, with our mind and body together, we start to see a complete relaxation happening automatically. We do not need any other kind of relaxation, even our work becomes a relaxation.

When we are aware of our mind and body, we start to enjoy every single act. When we are drinking a cup of tea, we enjoy the very drinking. When we have a plate of food with full awareness, we enjoy every bite of it. The same goes with work.

What else can be relaxation? Conventionally, when we say we want to relax, we mean we want to enjoy being completely stress free, being completely thoughtless. This is exactly what meditation helps us to do. It helps us to be in the present moment and enjoy every second. How easy to relax, isn't it?

Just by being aware of what we are doing, just by bringing our mind and body together, we eat when we are eating, we drink when we are drinking, we work when we are working. The entire day becomes a relaxed extended break!

The first part of this video by Nithyananda talks about how our mind keeps oscillating from the events of past to future. When we settle in the present moment, we become utterly relaxed:

Is it outside or inside?

Q: I am in my pre-university. I need to take critical decisions which will affect my future and its difficult and confusing. I need some clarity here...

Hmm.. this is so typical for youngsters, isn't it? If we analyze this confusion deeply, we see that the seed of this confusion was planted long time ago, right from when we were born.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had with the kid of my friend (who is a doctor by profession). This kid, hardly in his Grade 3, was intently playing with some toy and I was asking him questions which I thought are meant for a Grade 3 kid. E.g. which grade are you in? Who is your teacher? What does she teach? etc. etc. The kid was answering back with short and sweet replies (unlike us adults who speak volumes for simple questions).

After a few minutes, my friend interrupted my interrogation of the kid. His first question was, 'Son, tell uncle what you want to become when you grow up.'

I was like, 'give me a break. He does not even know where his school is. What kind of a question is that to a 5 or 6 year old?'

To add to my shock, the kid replied, 'Doctor'.

This incident simply shows, from our childhood, right from when we were in our kindergarten, we have been trained to look around us and let others make decisions for us. The fact is even the parents train the kid that way. Because the father is a doctor, the kid is bought a mini surgery kit. Because the family has 10 engineers, the kid is embedded with one single idea - become an engineer.

This conditioning has been happening since our childhood. Every time we make a decision, we take the opinion of a hundred different people. We ask our parents, our elders, our friends, our teachers, our girlfriends/boyfriends etc. We do all the research and if and only if all of them come to a consensus, we agree on a particular decision. Isn't it true?



Your case over here is also of similar nature. The pre-univeristy period is difficult not because it is actually difficult. It is difficult because we are making it difficult.

Now, why are we making it difficult...

Simple, we are looking around and trying to find a solution to the problem. We are looking at our friends, 'Oh! Ajay is going to UCLA and Stuart is going to Harvard Business School.' Then we are looking at our teachers who say, 'Boy, you are good at economics, why don't you do that?' Then our parents, 'our family has a lineage of biologists, why don't you do medicine?'

The truth is we do not have an opinion of our own. We are not ready to trust ourselves, our inner self.

We do not know ourselves because we have never consciously tried to be within ourselves. We have always looked outside. Once we look inside and see our strengths, we immediately get the solution because...
the solution is not outside; it is inside us.

Worried about no worries?

Q: I have all the money I want, my children are settled, now I have nothing to look forward to in life. How do I handle this?

This question reminds me of an interesting conversation that I had recently with a close friend of mine. For the past few months, he was TERRIBLY worried about his job. I know because he used to discuss with me. He was worried about whether he should change jobs, whether he should continue where he was, what the pros and cons were, how he would inform his boss if he gets a new job, how to finish the deadlines before that, whether his resume was made well enough, whether he had correctly chosen the list of places to apply to, how to prepare for the interviews, whether his parents would be happy with his decision..... the list was never ending, really!

Recently, he got a job offer that he is happy with. Now he has signed the new contract, has already informed his ex-boss, everyone is happy, including himself. Celebrations also done!

I was chatting with him after that. Here is the uneditted chat excerpt:

Yours Truly: so how are u feeling man? abt the new job? :)

Friend: am happy, one big prob solved, parents are of course happy.. but one thing i noticed is suddenly i dont have anything to worry abt.. so kinda feel.. empty.. amazed how much i used to worry abt the job..

Yours Truly: LOL.. are u missing your worries ;)?

Friend: thts wht... yesterday and today not much work.. so i actually got bored. no expecting calls or emails, no tension whts gonna happen next.. no worry of how to break news to boss. so now i cudnt help but think.. so wht am i gonna worry abt next? :)

This is a problem of how to handle "no worries". This leads us to a very relevant question "Why do we love our worries?"

As Nithyananda says, our worries make us feel we are important. It defines our identity. We like to worry about our work, children, their studies, home etc. because these are the few parameters that define us. If I were to ask you "tell me more about yourself", what would you say? Perhaps "I am Mr. XYZ, son of ABC and PQR, working in MNC, living in the USA, I love my BMW..."

Imagine you remove these parameters from your life, we feel as though the ground on which we have been standing is removed. We feel we are nobody. We have clutched so tight onto our so-called identity that we feel baseless when we do not think about these things. To put it simply, our ego is boosted when we worry!

When people reach their 50's, when their children are married and well settled, they feel a sense of emptiness. They have all along worried about getting their children educated and married, suddenly when it's all done, they feel a void. Some fill this void by next worrying about grandchildren and their education etc.. till they leave this body one day. Some of them take this opportunity to ask "Surely, my identity cannot be these external things, I am deep down something else, let me explore".

Worry clouds us and gives us an illusion of a false identity, which we hold onto very tightly. To see beyond, to experience the vibrant silence, our true nature is what meditation or any spiritual contemplation helps us towards. It is all about experiencing that beautiful space inside. Only the brave ones explore, the others give excuses and postpone. If you are ready for the jump, why not take the leap and see for yourself? Trust me, you will not regret it!