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Soon after the Buddha's Mahaparinirvana (passing away), his disciples wanted to synthesize his teachings to keep their purity and prevent arbitrary interpretations. So they called a meeting of senior monks. It was decided that 500 of the most accomplished ones—Arhats (those who had fully overcome the mind's habitual patterns and disturbing emotions)—would gather and recite the teachings.

Ananda, the Buddha’s shadow-like attendant, was supposed to be in the meeting as he was the one to remember the Buddha's teachings. People had extraordinary memory at that time because all knowledge had to be recorded in human brain; paper wasn't invented to note things down. But there was a problem with Ananda—he wasn't an Arhat yet. Becoming an Arhat required the mind to have clear, unhindered knowledge of its own reality. Ananda still lacked that clarity.

The night before the great convention, the First Buddhist Council, Ananda was in crisis and his participation wasn’t sure. As the story goes, Ananda tried to speed up his Arhathood but failed. The more intensely he tried, the more he felt being pushed away from it. Tired and exasperated, he was convinced that he wouldn’t make it to the council. So he gave up and went to sleep toward the end of the night. That did it—just before the dawn, as soon as he fell asleep, realization dawned on him. He was able to fully free the mind by seeing and separating the subtlest of habitual tendencies and disturbing emotions.

Often when we practice meditation, we are way more confused and deluded than Ananda (he was already very close to realization). We think meditation is a state of being free from thoughts, and that it is a peaceful, feel-good state of mind. We think it is about stilling the mind. Not quite.

Stilling the mind or making it thoughtless is never the goal of meditation, at least in the Buddhist tradition. It is helpful to have a still mind, but we don’t strive to make the mind still. And we don’t make effort for that either, because we cannot make the mind still through effort. It’s like going to sleep—it’s helpful and very beneficial for the body and mind to fall asleep. But we cannot sleep by trying. We cannot force ourselves into sleep. We create the necessary conditions for sleep, like lying down on a bed, putting a cover over us, turning off the light and so on. But the more we try to sleep, the more sleep evades us. We can just have an intention, not effort, to fall asleep. We let go of all our trying, all our doing, and sleep befalls us.

Having a still mind in meditation is like that. We create the necessary conditions, and we let go of all our efforts, all our doing energy. Then mind calms down. What is the necessary condition here? There are a few: a curious, non-judgmental attitude that accepts things and situations as they are. Not labeling experiences as good or bad, right or wrong. Willingness to let go of things. If that doesn't work, allowing them to let be as they are. It's as if you let go of your stress and try to relax; but if you cannot relax, let the tightness be there. Accept it as the truth of the moment. As soon as you accept it, the resistance drops and your tightness goes, often without your knowing. External environment like a comfortable meditation cushion or a peaceful candle-lit shrine could help a bit in the beginning, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient.

Say you are successful in stilling the mind. But the point is not quite that. Animals never think, they naturally have the thought-free mind that we all wish for. Is that due to meditation? Are they meditating? Not at all. Like animals, we can have a thought-free and still mind. But at the same time, we can be totally ignorant, bonded, and miserable. At the most, a stilled mind can temporarily send mental defilements to the background, not eradicate them. Eradication is possible only when we see them up-front and properly understand their nature. A still mind can just give us a supportive environment to see and cleanse that stock of mental defilements. It is only a means, not an end in itself. The goal is to have wisdom—that full seeing and understanding of the mind’s intricacies—that liberates us.

We deal with our jumpy and bumpy mind by attentively seeing it, being curious about it, and accepting it for what it is. Knowing, more than trying, calms it. And this knowing takes us further—toward wisdom, toward a liberating clarity. That’s the real thing we look for.

All the modern expertise of conflict resolution is, at the best, flawed. It stands on the “two or more parties” notion and tries to fix it there. To an extent, it’s okay because they try to reconcile the parties that are stuck with “I’m right, you are wrong” attitude. Skilled conflict managers try bringing the parties to talk, encourage them to stand in the others’ shoes and look at things from the others’ viewpoint. If done well and if the parties are open enough, there is a chance of success. The unskilled ones will simply use reward or punishment to shut them up and make peace.

In the less developed world, we are more used to shutting them up and making peace. But we are also learning the other approach from the West, thanks to all the development in social sciences, and the theories of human rights, peace, conflict management, and so on.

All this is fine. By whatever means you resolve conflict, that’s awesome. Except there’s a little problem. You cure only the symptoms and not the cause. For, in this whole business of conflict resolution, there is little effort in allaying the “I versus others” mentality.

A different model of conflict management has existed for ages in the East, specifically in the Indian and Himalayan regions. This is not a model of reward or punishment, neither is it of stepping in the other’s shoes. It’s a model of knowing that there is no ‘other’ out there whom we can reward or punish, or in whose shoes we have to stand. It’s a model of knowing that the ‘other’ is only a fiction, projected on a fictitious screen by our own confused minds.

Just like we too are fictions, created by our confused minds. In the Eastern spiritual systems, this fictitious ‘I’ disagrees with that fictitious ‘other’ on totally fictitious grounds for some equally fictitious idea. As soon as we understand this, the whole plot drops. The fictitious stage crumbles and the show of conflict comes to naught.

Of course, it sounds high. But that’s the point—it sounds high because it is high! What the Buddha or Krishna or the countless Himalayan sages taught in this hallowed land has the highest knowledge possible to the human race.

It’s a different thing that we have forgotten their teachings. When people in Nepal and India spend months and years reading conflict management theories from the West, and our NGOs spend millions in conflict management workshops, it seems to me like we are sitting on a heap of 24-karat gold and spending hardearned money to import some gold-lookalike from Morocco.

The cause of conflict lies in the human psyche, in what we generally understand as ‘ego’—which runs the entire show. It is what we usually identify ourselves with— race, religion, ideology, beauty, money, and what not. This play of ego—self-identity—is nothing but an illusion. When one understands it, there is no self-identity to hold on to. When the understanding deepens, first the idea of ‘identity’ and then even the idea of ‘self’ dissolves and one stops seeing any difference between oneself and others. Our illumined masters tell that in that state of deepest realization, all duality between ‘I’ and ‘others’ drops, and everything becomes part of one consciousness.

Perhaps we will have a little idea of it if we pause here and ask: Who is the one that is reading this piece of writing? Is it the eyes? Is it the brain? There are trillions of cells in the eyes and the brain. Which one of them is ‘I’? Ok, I may not be any of those cells, nor the back muscles that are now aching. But I feel the back pain anyway, so who is it that feels it? Where in the body is this ‘I’ located?

Of course, we cannot find or locate it. The more we try to find the ‘I’, the more elusive it seems. So it may not exist at all! But it exists, because we feel we are. But did it exist before birth? And what happens to it when we die? Does it just fizzle out?

We will not get an answer to any of these questions. Let’s not try even, or we might get further confused. A great deal of preparation is needed to know the nature of ‘I’. The good news is that our illumined sages have made it easy for us. We know, reading them, that at least we are not what we think. And there is not much difference between this ‘I’ of mine and the ‘I’ of others. Actually, there is no two at all—there is no ‘I’ and others! We are all flimsy compartments of one big whole separated by these illusory I’s!

For now, let’s understand it only conceptually. When we have enough motivation to go deeper, we can start with preliminary meditation practices and take baby steps toward the real understanding of ‘I’. If it’s the highest knowledge, it cannot be assessed by chance or by shortcuts. You cannot just jump onto the moon to have a look at the earth.

So how do we use this knowledge for conflict resolution? Well, we don’t need a real experiential understanding of not-two—the non-duality of ‘I’ and ‘others’. We can start with a conceptual framework, and gradually work to have experiential understanding. When we set ourselves on the path of such realization, when we actually understand the truth of not-two, of non-duality, we get to the root of resolving all conflicts. After all, where is the ‘other’ to have conflict with?

To coincide with the Mahaśivarātrī, a great Hindu festival, ApEx brings to you a noted European scholar on Sanskrit and Śaivism—the study and practice related to Śiva. Florinda De Simini is an associate professor in Ancient and Medieval History of India at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. A PhD in Indic and Tibetan Studies from the University of Turin, she is busy exploring Śaivism in India and Nepal these days through her Śivadharma Project, making a noble use of the National Archives of Kathmandu, and contributing to the study of the religious-social landscape of the Kathmandu Valley, tracing it right up to medieval times. Excerpts:

What exactly does the Śivadharma Project do?

At the Śivadharma Project, our research focuses on lay Śaivism as seen from the perspective of the texts belonging to the Śivadharma tradition, which we trace in their attestations through the textual, epigraphic and visual sources of South Asia. Financed by the European Research Council, the project is based at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in Italy as the host institution. University of Bologna and the École française d'Extrême-Orient in Pondicherry are our partners. Scholars from Italy, Nepal, India, the United Kingdom, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Israel, hired at these three institutions, contribute to the project with their expertise in different fields of Indology.

Florinda with Śivadharma Project team

Your project mainly focuses on pre-modern sources. How could it be relevant for the modern age?

In the first place, the team of scholars working for the Śivadharma Project is contributing to publishing and studying new sources, and thus writing new pages of the religious and political history of South Asia. Therefore, one of the reasons why the project can be considered relevant to the modern world is that we are enhancing our knowledge of the past; specifically, also of aspects of the past that still reverberate in the present. As a matter of fact, traces of the Śivadharma can be seen in the living Śaiva traditions of India and Nepal: I think, just to mention a few examples, of the Lingayat in Karnataka, or the Śaiva Siddhanta in Tamil Nadu.

In Nepal, the famous Yogi Naraharinath, working from Pashupatinath, about 20 years ago transcribed and commented upon the Śivadharma Sanskrit texts, producing the only complete edition of the works belonging to the Nepalese “Śivadharma Corpus” that is known so far.

Our study of primary sources, such as manuscripts, inscriptions or iconography, will furthermore contribute not only to the knowledge, but also to the preservation of this precious but fragile heritage, as we are carrying out the digitization and online storing of these materials. All the results of our project will be available online at no cost on our website, to the benefit of the academic and general readership. 

What are your project's crucial findings so far?

In the first place, we are discovering that the influence and reception of our Sanskrit sources, composed as early as the 6th-7th century, was more pervasive than we originally thought. The Tamil-speaking South, with its production in Tamil and Sanskrit, has surpassed our expectations concerning the number and complexity of the new materials that have emerged on our specific research subject. Moreover, in several cultural areas, such as Nepal or North-Eastern India, our research is constantly showing that, at some levels, the boundaries between religious traditions were in fact quite blurred: Śaiva communities existed in a continuum with Buddhists and Vaiṣṇavas, and this has echoes both in their doctrinal and in their institutional lives.

How would the study of Śivadharma benefit the European academic sphere?

Primarily by employing scholars at European institutions, such as the University of Naples and the University of Bologna, and thus enhancing the possibilities of conducting research in the field of classical Indology and Tamil studies. At the same time, we are also attracting and supporting students and younger scholars, to whom we specifically address some of the seminars that we host during the academic year. The organization of conferences, workshops and other academic events, which has now temporarily come to a standstill due to the current sanitary emergency, are all opportunities to promote academic and intellectual exchange, which benefit not just the scholars involved, but also the wider communities of scholars and students hosted at our institutions. In Europe, our project cooperates with colleagues mainly based in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Hungary and France, striving to reinforce a long-lasting network of cooperation. 

How could it possibly impact Nepal and its religious and cultural studies?

Nepal is one of the main regional areas on which the work of the Śivadharma Project is focusing. As a matter of fact, this country is a treasure-trove of materials, considering the abundance of early palm-leaf and paper manuscripts of the Śivadharma texts originating from the Valley. These texts have been of special interest in the Nepalese religious landscape for centuries, as they were copied for religious purposes and chanted during festivals. The work of the project in assessing the impact of the Śivadharma on local Śaivism will therefore shed light on a relevant aspect of the rich religious history of Nepal.

We would also like to establish agreements such as MOUs with Nepalese academic institutions, in order to promote the exchange of students and scholars between Europe and Nepal, and foster collaborations between the Śivadharma Project and the Nepalese scholarly community. Nepali scholars are already in our team.

Does it tell anything new about the religious practices of the Kathmandu Valley? Are they different from those in India?

One of the specificities of Nepal that we are encountering in our research is that here, and only here, the early Śaiva works we study have been transmitted by a great number of early and modern manuscripts as part of a fixed corpus of works. Now, when we started examining these additional works, which might have been composed in Nepal, or at least were extremely popular in its manuscript traditions, we noticed that in the majority of cases they are far from being solely Śaiva in a strict sense: they rather seem to point at a hybrid form of cult in which the Śaiva devotion was embedded with Dharmashastra, Vaishnavism, and, at times, Buddhism. We believe that this aspect, when further examined and put in conversation with other elements of Nepalese religious landscape, will be counted as one of the main specificities emerging from our research on the Nepalese corpora. 

This allows us to draw a direct parallel with the current cultic practice of the Kathmandu valley. As we know for experience, the Paśupatinātha temple does not only host the worship of Śiva and Śaiva deities, but also that of Vaiṣṇava deities such as Viṣṇu and Kṛṣṇa, while once a year Śiva is worshipped in the form Buddha (more specifically in the five buddhas: pañca-buddha) at every buddha-purṇiṃā (full moon day on which Buddha was born) falling in the month of Vaiśākha (May). A comparable case is the worship of Viṣṇu in Budhānīlakaṇṭha temple, where the cult of Viṣṇu starts with the consecration (abhiṣeka) on the head of a Viṣṇu statue, which presupposes that Viṣṇu is a form of Śiva. The same statue is considered to represent Avalokiteśvara by Buddhists, and it is frequently visited by Buddhist devotees.

Thus, the Śivadharma “corpus” that we are studying attests to a similar level of religious tolerance as the one that we still see in practice in Kathmandu.  

You have been working closely with the material from the National Archives, Kathmandu. What value do you ascribe to those materials as an expert in this field? 

The manuscript materials of the National Archives are, simply put, invaluable. In terms of antiquity and abundance, these manuscripts have been crucial to understand the relevance of the Śivadharma texts and their impact on early societies. The Archives preserve the earliest specimens of this collection, and some of the most reliable sources that we in the Śivadharma Project are using for critically editing our Sanskrit texts. At the same time, these manuscripts are more than just tools for the reconstruction of texts: for the study of their material aspects, as well as of the information added by copyists about their production and use, can also provide important clues on medieval and modern history. This does not only apply to manuscripts of the Śivadharma Corpus, but to many specimens of the various works that are preserved at the National Archives.

These are truly unparalleled materials, such as an early manuscript of the Vaiṣṇavadharmaśāstra, the oldest surviving text belonging to the Mahābhārata. Moreover, among the Archives’ precious collection we encounter the only manuscript of the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, the earliest surviving Śaiva Tantra; the earliest extant Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra source, i.e. the Jayākhyasaṃhitā; the oldest surviving Jaina Tantra, the Praśnavyākaraṇa, and so on. Such materials provide an enormous contribution to the study of the early history of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism — which makes The National Archives of Kathmandu an irreplaceable resource in the field of Indology.

Why did you choose to study Sanskrit instead of venturing into other profitable areas?

Well, if you consider the grants that I received, and not my personal income, studying Sanskrit has proven to be a very profitable choice in the end! All jokes aside, I have always been attracted to the humanities and the arts, and wanted to dedicate my life to studying them well before my encounter with Sanskrit. When I started engaging with this field of study, I saw that it could give enormous possibilities for original research and new discoveries. But my choice was not solely dictated by my personal inclination: I do believe that studying and teaching these subjects has a long-lasting impact on society, even though the results can only be assessed over a long period of time. 

You have spent so many years studying Śaivism. What attracted you? Why Śiva?

One of the reasons why I chose Śaivism is that it is one of the main religious, cultural and political agents in the period that I was mainly interested in studying, which spans from the post-Gupta era to the 13th century. The spread of Śaivism had a profound influence on the literary, philosophical and artistic production of the era, while also impacting the political and institutional spheres. In brief, the history of Śaivism makes for a multifaceted topic that can arise the interests of many. Another reason was the encounter with the work of several other scholars who were already active in this field. I was thus also attracted by the idea of becoming part of a lively academic community, and contributing with my work to its intellectual endeavors. 

What drives our social action or inaction? What guides our big philanthropic projects or little acts of charity? Why do we even think of serving others? What is our motivation?

Often, our service to others is driven by our self-interest—we do things because we feel good about it. We get a sense of self-praise and self-aggrandizement by helping others. And we want credit for what we do. We want our names written on the marble plaque outside the temple for a few bucks we give. We want a great photoshoot of our giving a few used clothes to the homeless. See the social media of a charity worker or a philanthropist and you will know. It's not only about the ordinary men and women, but also the so-called religious or spiritual people. And sometimes we refuse to take action, thinking we are more important than these worldly things.

There is not much wrong with that. But there could be another—and more liberating way of doing it. We could do charity to come out of self-centeredness instead of being further buried in it. We could feed the people instead of our own egos. Two stories from Swami Vivekananda's life are worth recalling here.

India saw severe famine toward the end of the 19th century. Vivekananda, upon returning home from the West, busied himself with relief work. Once he was in Dhaka (Bangladesh and Pakistan were parts of India then) for fundraising. A few Vedanta pundits went to see him after hearing of his heroic stories abroad. They expected him to start some lofty philosophical discussion on Vedanta, but he talked of famine and death. He started crying, in front of them, for the people who died of hunger. And the pundits were taken aback: This great Vedanta monk is talking about hunger! And he is crying over the perishable human body! Maybe he doesn't know a thing about Vedanta!

The pundits started looking at each other's faces. And they said they were disappointed seeing his attachment to the world. They preached to him that being a Vedantist, he should remain aloof from such things and not talk about the suffering of the body; and that he should remember everyone was an immortal soul.

To their surprise, Vivekananda picked up a big stick and jumped onto them, saying: “Ok, let's check if that’s true or not: If you are an immortal soul or not. Whether you cry over your body or not.” They were scared like hell! This wrathful young monk was better built and stronger than them. They ran for their life. The monk continued with his relief work.

In another incident, he was once touring the Himalayas in northern India. He had to cross a river and was waiting for the boat. An ascetic came and started chatting. Vivekananda introduced himself, and the ascetic became scornful. He said going to foreign lands and lecturing people won't make a great yogi. “One has to go through hard training to become a yogi,” he said.

The ascetic then talked of his miraculous powers. He walked over the river water, and asked Vivekananda to aim for something similar. “How long did it take to get this power?” the young monk asked. “Twenty years of hard practice,” the proud ascetic replied.

“Well, Sir, then you wasted 20 years of your life. You could just get a boat and cross the river in five minutes!” Vivekananda replied, adding: “If you had spent those 20 years serving people, you'd be closer to God. You could have crossed the river of life and death, not just a river of water.”

“Service to man is service to God,” Vivekananda used to say. In a brief life of 39 years, he became the biggest modern Indian icon for spirituality, patriotism, social reforms, and youth empowerment. There is hardly any great Indian leader of the past century who hasn't drawn inspiration from Swamiji at some point in his or her life. In his honor, India celebrates his birthday—January 12—as the National Youth Day. Tributes to him on his 158th birth anniversary.

By serving people, one doesn’t do any favor to them, but they get an opportunity to come out of their egos, he used to say. “Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow men?” was the counsel of the modern monk to the men and women of our age.

The last day of the year that passed, December 31, was special for spiritual seekers. The followers of Ramana Maharshi celebrated 141^ST Jayanti (birth anniversary) of one of the greatest Indian mystics of the past century. Maharshi [great sage] was born on a night earlier, December 30, in the year 1879, near the south Indian town of Madurai as Venkataraman Iyer. Later his devotees started calling him Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharsi.

Ramana is best remembered and revered for his teaching of self-inquiry, in the form of “Who am I”. The questioning is done consistently to such a degree that the question vanishes and everything the “I” associates itself with is dropped, leaving behind the bare, naked I-ness. And this I, in its bare starkness, finds itself no different to the un-manifest basis of all creation—or the Self. Ramana referred to this Self as God or Shiva or Brahma, as the occasion required. In that revelation of the Self, the egoist concept of individual and separate “I” dissolves and you are put on the path of moksha (liberation) or ultimate union with the Self.

But of course, it cannot happen that simply. And this inquiry is not that easy. When visitors came to see him, Ramana tried to help them have a glimpse of their true Self through silent transmission. He just glanced at them with a compassionate gaze, which brought about subtle spiritual changes in them. Visitors would get their questions answered, their thirst quenched, their confusions cleared in his presence. No words were needed. But when prompted, he would give minimal teachings. Sometimes, his caretakers would finger-count the words he spoke in a day. Those few words were remarkably succinct and profound.

“When he chose to answer questions, each sentence was like a text from the Upanishad, so full of meaning that it required calm, silent pondering over in order to be understood fully,” writes Professor T.M.P. Mahadevan of Madras University.

The outer manifestation of Ramana's silence was an absence of speech. But its real nature was the stillness and calm of the mind that was constantly manifest in his meditation as well as his worldly chores, even when meeting people. He said his real teaching was silence, words were just pointers. Teaching through words was a mundane and inferior act for the illumined sage.

Ramana settled at Arunachala, the hill of Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, for the rest of his life after leaving home at 17. The hill was not just a hill, it was his Shiva itself as he referred to it as Arunachala Shiva. Three incidents before his leaving home are noteworthy. When he was 16, a visiting relative told him he was coming from Arunachala. The word worked like a magic spell on the young Ramana, indicating a past-life association. Upon knowing that Arunachala was a real place and it was called Tiruvannamalai, his future course was set. Then he found a book, Periyapuranam, which chronicled the life stories of sixty-three exemplary saints. Their tales of renunciation had an overpowering effect on Ramana, and he started envisioning a similar life for himself.

When he was few months to 17, he entered a death experience. One afternoon he was sitting in his room, his health perfect, but he suddenly felt like dying. He lied down on the floor and welcomed death, questioning what is it that dies. He felt his physical body dying, but his consciousness was very much alive. He had an extraordinary experience of everything about him dissolving except his real Self. Few weeks later, he left home for good.

People coming in his proximity felt liberated. Sometimes, spiritually uplifted gurus may still have a good stock of ahamkara (ego) in them. In their presence, one may feel dwarfed or embarrassed. But never with the egoless Ramana. Anybody coming close to him was bound to be filled with awe for his simplicity and compassion. Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi, a collection of personal accounts by 202 well-known people, has plenty of testimonies to this fact.

“His [Ramana’s] face is full of inspiration, unearthly serenity and power, of infinite kindness and understanding,” writes M. Sudouski (Mouni Sadhu), a Polish-Australian author. “His eyes glow with a perfect understanding of all the weaknesses, defects and inner difficulties of those who look into them. They had much sympathy, wisdom and understanding. An incredible loving kindness radiated from them.”

“Being near the Maharshi one feels the presence of God–no arguments or proofs are necessary. The greatest miracle is the Maharshi himself,” concludes Sudouski.  

Suppose you have been given a death sentence and are awaiting the execution. Luckily, you also have a lifeline: there is an open pot full of mustard seeds in your prison room. If you take it to the palace without spilling even one seed, you will be pardoned. Your executioner will follow you and if one mustard seed falls to the ground, he will behead you. You see hope in this plan, and set forth from the prison carrying the pot.

But as soon as you step out of the gate, all sorts of distractions await you: sumptuous food, exquisite wine, tantalizing sex, treasure troves, and what-not. There are adorable men and women promising you great time together. And there are despicable people provoking you in all possible ways; doing things to challenge and threaten your tiny little self; instigating you; compelling you to react in anger; or maybe frighten you to run. There are roadblocks every here and there. There are enough reasons to keep you from reaching your goal. What will you do?

Most probably, you will overcome those obstructions and carry the pot to the palace as told. Those seductions and repulsions won't stop you. Possibly you may not even notice them, as your survival is far more important than anything else! This is how you function when you are in a life-and-death situation and you have run out of options.

Most probably, we too are in a similar life-and-death situation. And we have only very few options left, if we really care to look at it.

Thankfully, enlightened people come to our help from time to time. Sometimes a Buddha, a Krishna, or a Mahavir appears and shows us the way. Our prisons are deceptive, and once you are in, you won't see it. But these masters not only show us our prisons, they also give us a plan to come out of it. Out of great compassion, they remind us that our execution may come at any moment, and encourage us to free ourselves before it's too late. Unless you are a hopeless loser, you'll understand the gravity of the matter and set out on the salvation path immediately. If you go exactly as told, and avoid doing absolutely egregious things to entangle yourself along the way, you will make it.

But which prison are we talking about? And what execution are we going to face?

Obviously, we are not talking about a physical prison, but the prison of our mind—the mental bondages we create for ourselves. And we face small executions each day, every now and then. It comes in the form of some anguish, anger, lust, jealousy or a similar emotion that unsettles us. We don't know when such emotion takes over next and kills our peace. The final execution comes at the moment of death when you take your troubled and anguished mind—a work of your lifetime—to your afterlife.

Knowing the rules of the game, enlightened masters tell us to stop being bonded when we still have time. They explain it in their own ways, in their own words. They give us different roadmaps. But their gist is the same: avoid destructive behavior, engage in constructive behavior, and keep the purity of your mind. In our story above, we set an intention to be free from the prison (keep the purity of mind), set forth towards the goal (constructive behavior), and overcome distractions (destructive behavior) along the way. A verse from Dhammapada, a central Buddhist text, sums it up:

To avoid all evil, 

to cultivate good, 

and to cleanse one's mind 

—this is the teaching of the Buddhas. 

(Dhammapada, verse 183)

Guru Nanak Jayanti this past week was an occasion to remember the great Indian master, Guru Nanak Dev Ji, and his teachings. Born in Nankana Shahib near Lahore (now in Pakistan) in 1469, this householder monk was deeply troubled by the Hindu-Muslim tussle about their ideas of God. Like all great masters, he displayed exceptional traits right from his childhood, and showed clear signs that he would pursue the path of God.

When he was 11, he refused to put on the sacred thread, which all Hindu boys were supposed to wear. He said it was not necessary to know God. He often sat in meditative trance. Once on a hot summer day when he was lying under a tree in a trance, a cobra stood over his face flaring its hood, protecting the boy from sunlight. The onlooking villagers were amazed when the snake moved as the sun moved.

At 30, Nanak disappeared under the depths of a river and emerged three days later, enlightened. His utterances, starting with “There is but One God, His name is Truth,” marked the beginning of a new spiritual movement. Followers of the movement were to be known as Sikhs (Sanskrit śiṣya, meaning a disciple or learner who is open to śikṣā, learning). His words formed the content of Adi Granth, the first Sikh scripture. This new movement would have universal brotherhood, altruism, overcoming five vices (lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride), and one-pointed focus on a formless single God as its hallmarks.

Once Nanak’s father gave him some money for business. On his way to another town, Nanak saw some mendicant saints and spent all his money to feed them. On returning home, young Nanak got reprimand by the angry father for failing to do business and wasting money. “Why do business?” Nanak asked. “To earn profit,” father replied. Nanak smiled, and said: “Well, father, then I did brilliant business. I earned the divine profit, which nobody can ever measure!”

In another story, Nanak gave a needle—an ordinary one—to a disciple and told him to keep it for him for some time. When the disciple's wife knew it, she became worried that the husband would be forever indebted if the aging master died before taking the needle back. So the husband ran after him and handed him the needle, saying: "If you die, I can't take it to heaven to return to you." Feigning surprise, Nanak asked: "Why? Can't you take even a tiny little needle with you after death?" "No," the disciple answered. Nanak asked again: "Then why do you keep so much money with you?" The disciple had an instant realization. He was freed from greed.

Guru Nanak dismissed all forms of dogmas and rituals. He rejected fasting, killing, and caste discrimination. He gave women equal social status as men. Following the teachings of Nanak and his nine succeeding teachers, a Sikh would seek the One God (Ek Onkar), and engage in three virtuous acts: Naam Japo (keeping God in mind all the time), Kirat Karo (acting righteously and earning honestly), and Vand Chhako (giving in charity). Perhaps you would not like to miss the soothing Keertan (singing) of Shabad—the lines from the Guru Granth Shahib—or the delicious food of Langar, the Gurudwara kitchen where people from all castes, creed, and faiths are fed with equal respect.

Nanak learned from both Hindu and Muslim traditions. For his impartial love and service, everyone loved him. He was a great dispeller of disputes. When he died, his Muslim and Hindu followers wanted to do the death ritual in their own ways. But when they removed the cloth covering the saint's dead body, they found only a heap of flowers.

If you focus on the errors of others

Constantly finding fault

Your effluents flourish

You’re far from their ending. (Dhammapada, 253)

Thus spake the Buddha. But we keep focusing on others. We keep finding fault in others. The other person is bad. They are unholy. They are evil wrongdoers, robbing us of our rightful privilege. They are blocking our way to heaven. We need to correct them. But the result? Our sufferings grow—we are far from their end.

How many of us have experienced that?

History is proof that we have caused great sufferings because we have found faults in others and have tried to correct or win over them. We have fought gruesome wars. But we have never learned. We are all too keen on ostracizing and marginalizing 'those faulty people' so that we can enjoy ourselves. Others must be somehow sidelined so that we can protect our race, our class, our land, beliefs, scriptures, skin color, the shape of nose, and what not. So our fight is justified. The fights we fight and the wars we wage are right.

But are we ever happy? When we try to correct or defeat others, our miseries grow. As the Buddha says, winning only gives birth to hostility. Losing, one lies down in pain. Killing, you gain your killer. Conquering, you gain one who will conquer you. Insulting, you will gain one who will insult you; harassing, you will get one who will harass you. And so, through the cycle of action, he who has plundered gets plundered in turn, the Buddha adds.

We don’t hear many world leaders speak like that. Quite the contrary, we are constantly taught to teach others a good lesson. We are constantly taught to think us versus them, tit for tat, an eye for an eye. We need to correct others, because we are right and they are wrong.

A plain logic would be that something righteous should be right for all. If it is righteous, it should bring happiness to all. It should unify, not divide. If something brings pain to others, then pain remains in human experience. How can a righteous thing keep pain alive!

Nothing that puts others in pain can ever be righteous. It can't be holy if it teaches that a whole lot of people are evil just because their noses are a little bigger or smaller than ours. After all, who created all those people? Who are we to judge?

From a Buddhist perspective, the thought that we are right and the others wrong stems from a distorted view. It is due to misplaced associations. Instead of fixing others, it is better to fix yourself. Conquering others would not be the righteous way to happiness, but conquering your own imperfections and weaknesses would be. As the Buddha says:

“Though one may conquer

A thousand times a thousand men in battle

Yet he indeed is the noblest victor

Who conquers himself. (Dhammapada, 103)