Zen emphasizes awareness in the moment and interconnectedness if your objective is to reach inner peace – so it also depends on what you want and what is your objective, doesn’t it?

Let me put it very simply, I just don’t think it works, no matter what the objective is. I could give you a huge rational for this. But I know it doesn’t work for me and not for most people on this planet unless they really don’t have to engage with the world. Because you live in a hurry in this imperfect world of ours. So I do understand, respect and observe a certain ability to have an inner calm, where I can calm in the middle of a storm, where I don’t allow my emotions to take over at times of crisis so I can step away. But there is a difference between having a holistic vision of things, i.e. have this ability to distance myself a little, and live in this perpetual nowness which I think is completely unrealistic. 

So what drives you in this journey of life, why bother?

 

When you live the life of an actor, on three continents, in four separate film industries (Hollywood, Bollywood, Europe and Pine Wood in London), the thing that drives you is sheer survival.

I am part of an industry that is probably one of the most insecure professions in the world. You have absolutely no guarantee that the next film job will come up. Meanwhile you have a family to raise, children to educate, mortgages to pay and a lifestyle to maintain. So at a primal level almost, with no highflying vision of artistic grandeur, your basic survival mechanism is what is driving you in this profession. There are of course periods of calm when things are going well and you don’t have to think at that level.

 

Do I believe in karma? Not in the sense of somebody keeping a bank balance of my good and bad deeds. But I do believe in the cause and effect. In the sense that if I deliberately kill an ant walking across my table in a vicious manner, that insensitive act has affected my consciousness, which in some way will damage me in other things I do. That’s the cause and effect I see. I have become that much less sensitive and somehow it will bounce back on me somewhere. 

Isn’t it the contrary, choosing to kill the ant is a symptom of where our consciousness is at?

We always have choices. I could choose to let this ant continue its journey, or I could choose to kill it. When I give way to the impulse of just killing something that doesn’t need to be killed it shows something. We all have the killing instinct in us. Any woman can be the Virgin Mary or a prostitute. I can be a saint or a murderer. What do I choose to do, what impulse do I give way to, that determines how I have affected my own consciousness. 

You tried so many practices, but you were never tempted to adopt one fully?

No. I looked at Zen for instance. All its emphasis on mindfulness, being in the now, total concentration, essentially taking away the boundaries that separate the self from the outside world so you can feel the oneness of things. I have two problems with that. One is that it may be a beautiful ideal or theory, but I really don’t think it is possible to operate and live like that in our worldly realities.

Second, even if I reach that place, how am I superior to my cat? My cat is totally present, totally aware, has almost no memory. That utter Zen-like presentness of the cat, is that a state I strive to work towards? Not really. The danger of course is that there is always an argument to answer to each point, including what I just said. But I am trying to simplify for the sake of this conversation.

 

So is there a place in your life for rituals or prayers or meditation?

There isn’t a particular time I set aside. There are times I will go to a gurudwara and pay my respects. If I am in Rome I may walk into a church. If I am close to a Hindu temple, I will walk in as well. But the place is largely immaterial. What they all do is to give me a space where I can get in touch with my inner self. And what moves me in those places are not the images on the walls, but the faith of the people around. Those vibrations are very powerful, very empowering.

Organized religions have a very important place in society, because it gives people a sense of community, of belonging. Besides, people don’t have to waste too much of their time thinking out the mysteries of the cosmos. A belief system is given to you, you believe in it, you practice it, it’s all fine. 

Also, the rituals of organized religion are so beautiful. The ceremonies of birth, marriage, death. It’s like a beautifully written script perfected over the centuries. It’s moving and touching. If you don’t believe in a religion and you die, what do people do? They have to invent a ceremony. If you get married, you have to invent vows. If you have children you have to find a way to organize a naming ceremony. All this is done for you by religions. There is a great beauty and convenience to that. Not everyone wants the job of wondering about the universe and there is nothing wrong with that.

But for me, it could not work. I really wanted to know. Is there cause and effect, is there rebirth and karma, and so on. So the quest went on.

 

And sleeping on a hard bed, in a very bare room, surrounded by all kinds of strange people with shaven heads. You could be in an alien landscape.

So anyway, Buddhism was a very important influence in my life and for a long time I did consider myself as such.

But over the years, my larger mindset of not accepting things just because my mother handed them to me took over. And I began a philosophical quest that continues to this day.

It began consciously after graduation with Krishnamurti’s talks. I call him the greatest “deconditioner”. Nobody is better when it comes to forcing you to clear the cobwebs of our minds and question many assumptions we have made, believing what others say, or taking accepted wisdom for granted. He really started my journey of true spiritual introspection.

Eventually I moved beyond Krishnamurti because I felt he is a great mental purgative, he clears our minds of a lot of rubbish. But he won’t give us the answers and we have to find them ourselves.

I was fascinating by what Osho was saying. He was absolutely brilliant. I never went to see him because I could not accept his imposed dress code. But he was stunning — starting as a professor of philosophy, he understood the context of belief systems to which he added his own brilliance, contradictions and insights. It was very stimulating. He did a lot of the thinking for us by cross-relating so many strands of thought.

Then, when I went to California, I got exposed to many new age teachers like Ramtha, to Native American sweat lodges, Zen teachers, Tibetan Buddhist influences.

I integrated things from each of them. It’s been a continuous quest. And I have reached my own provisional answers, my state of beliefs valid for the present moment.

I realize the world is an extraordinary mysterious place and I don’t understand half its dimensions. 

Yet, do I believe in a personal God who would take care of me were I to pray Him? I don’t. Do I believe in God as a cosmic intelligence that underlies creation? Yes. Do I think people are wrong to pray to their particular gods for salvation? I don’t, if it helps their spiritual journey. If it takes them closer to happiness, then it’s all good. It just doesn’t resonate with me.

 

What is spirituality concretely in your life? 

It’s really been a search for understanding. 

On my father’s side I come from the Sikh tradition. The Bedis are descendants of Guru Nanak so there always was a strong Sikh influence in my life. My mother on the other hand became a Buddhist and spent the last fifteen years of her life ordained as a Buddhist nun. My earliest and most formative years were spent in Kashmir with many Muslim friends and families. My schools were Christian — Sherwood and St Stephens. And of course the whole ethos in which I lived has been Hindu. So there have been a number of religious influences in my life.  

Through my growing up years I simply was like a sponge, absorbing everything. Then in my first college years I started listening to J. Krishnamurti. Then in Bombay I got familiar with the teachings of Osho. And I always was interested in philosophical questions. How did this all begin? How did we all come here? Is there a God, is there rebirth, is there karma? What’s the truth of it all because everyone is saying different things and not everyone can be right.

I was very heavily influenced by Buddhism because of my mother, and also as a child, I had gone with her to Burma. There, I was ordained as a Buddhist monk with the whole attire — shaven head, orange robe, begging bowl.  

What kind of an experience was it? 

It was a very pleasant though hard experience. It’s completely different from what you are used to doing. We would wake up at four, meditate, have a cup of tea then take a begging bowl and walk through the streets of Rangoon in a file of monks. People would be standing there at five o’clock in the morning to give us food, one handful for every family. All of the monks’ begging bowls would thus get filled. Once back, we would meditate some more before the midday meal — the only meal of the day; then do some studies, then a little time off, then some tea and more meditation, then back to bed. It was very difficult to get used to it initially.

 

Is the higher self also the essence of who you are?

The essence of who you are is who you choose to be, or how you act and relate to others. The higher self is part of you. The lower self and lower instincts are also part of you. Higher and lower self are part of the essence. High or low, that’s a choice, or it may be dictated by circumstances.

For instance, if somebody is born into a gang-like family where he only sees murder, shooting and a fight for survival on the street at the very basic level, then that’s what he learns and what he perpetuates. It would take a great effort for him to rise into the higher self. Versus someone brought up in an ashram who would automatically think about that.

So the essence of who you are is what you choose to believe and how you choose to act. Not what you profess.

One of the joys of life is its complexity. Nothing is quite black and white. If you take the trouble to think about things, you realize it’s not two sides of a coin, black and white, you can look at it from a prism. Everything has several points of view. Everything has a multidimensional meaning and existence. It’s tiring to think like that all the time. It’s easier to simplify things into simple rights and wrongs.

The reality though is that there ALWAYS is a “but”. It is wrong to kill, but if you do it in the interest of the nation, then it’s ok; it is wrong to lie but if it saves a life, then it’s ok. And so on. There are always “buts” associated with anything you state. So one should not lament the complexity of life, but rather celebrate it.

 

Good morning friends.  It’s a start of the week and a start of the day.  I wish all will have a very happy days the whole week.  As my one of daily routine, trying to know what is happening around me, so I’m reading a lot before I start my work.  I came across one article and it is very nice.  I want to share it to you.  It says that happiness is never constant.  Maybe some of you believe in this and some are not.  But the important thing is that you know how to make yourself happy. – Indian Express 

Kabir Bedi is an actor who has worked in Bollywood, Hollywood and European television. 

What does spirituality mean to you?

It’s your relationship with the higher self, the cosmos, in a non-material way; also it’s about getting in touch with your inner sense of things. 

What do you mean by higher self?

We exist at various levels: the physical level, the mental level — which categorizes things like “I am a Punjabi, I am an Indian, and I am a father” etc., creating definitions for everything. But the higher self is something different and very subtle. It is our sense of what lies beyond the five senses. Whether we call it intuition or a sense of what the universe is, or what God is, that’s our higher self. When we talk of God of course, there are many ways people imagine what it is. 

What is it for you?

It definitely is not an old man sitting on a throne. I don’t see God as a personal God. But obviously there is an extraordinary intelligence underlying Creation. You see it in the fabric of ever leaf held against the sun, in the beauty of every flower, in the harmony of nature. There is an underlying order and intelligence that has guided this creation in some way. Whatever this intelligence is, you can call it God if you wish. It preceded matter itself. It is the infinity of the cosmos outside and inside us.

 

Should politicians become vice-chancellors? Retired politicians, those who have been defeated in the elections, need some place of respect. The vice-chancellorship has become a refuge. So make it a law that no politician can become a vice-chancellor.

Universities should be teaching also the latest discoveries, the latest literature, the latest poetry, and the latest in everything. The universities should be sensitive enough: each year there are new novels, new music, new dances, that should become part of the curriculum. Universities have to remain always up to date.

Speaking is an art, and a professor should be an artist. His words should not be simply words; they should carry some poetry in them, some music in them. Each professor and each student should learn a simple meditation method. He can choose one. There are 112 meditation methods; the simplest is vipassana. It is uncomplicated. Make vipassana part of the curriculum; unless a person passes in vipassana he cannot get his degree.

Then it will be real education. Then it will be a liberating factor, because vipassana will liberate you totally from your religions, from your races, from your countries. It will make you an individual. You will not be anymore a member of a mob. You will have your own integrity, your own centeredness, and your own roots.

Meditation is an absolute necessity for humanity to survive. All other subjects should be taught, but no other subject is so important as meditation. But no university is teaching it. If all the graduates from the university come out with a meditative mind, they will change the whole structure and fabric of society.

These are my simple suggestions, absolutely practical; there is nothing utopian about them. -The Times of India

Excerpt from `Death to Deathlessness’. Courtesy: Osho International Foundation. Website: www.osho.com

Good morning friends.  We all know that education is very important to every person.  With a good education we will have a good life.  Education should free us from our past. 

Education is a process of liberation, but it has not been actualized anywhere in the world. 

Liberation means liberating the mind from the past, from theologies and political ideologies, liberating the mind in such a way that when a student comes out of education he is just a clean pure seeker with no prejudice.

That beautiful sentence at the gates of the universities in India, `ya vidya sa vimuktaye’ — `education is that which liberates’ –, shows how man can be unaware. Liberation becomes impossible when the university itself has a certain prejudice, a certain programme to put into the minds of the students. So first dissolve Hindu, Muslim, Jaina, Catholic — these names, from the universities. Secondly: India… has more than one hundred universities, which is meaningless… The result is that the standard of education goes on falling. When you have so many universities you cannot get the best as professors…

Just because somebody has a university degree does not mean that he becomes automatically capable of teaching. Teaching is a totally different art. Passing an examination is one thing; to teach, you need to be articulate, you need to have a vast range of knowledge. I mean not only the textbooks that you have read in the university, you have to be constantly in touch with the growing knowledge.

Thirty years ago somebody passed his master’s degree or became a Ph D and for 30 years he has not bothered about what has happened in his subject. In 30 years human knowledge has increased more than has been possible in the past even 3,000 years. Now a professor who is unaware of these 30 years of development is absolutely incapable.

Conversations are an important way of building up relationships. They could be silent or expressed vocally. Such relationships look beyond a given set of circumstances for a wider, deeper perspective, to understand the truth that lies beneath what is apparent on the surface.

The longer we live and the more experienced we are, our ability to discern the true nature of relationships improves. We are able to take considered decisions on whether to continue with a certain relationship or call it quits without acrimony or hatred.

When we cultivate virtues like patience, compassion, mutual respect and a loving nature, we are well on the way to touching the heart of God, whose reflection we see in other human beings. God invites us through the diversity and wealth of His Creation, to a relationship of universal love. To love His Creation is to love God.

Any relationship that is nurtured for selfish motives and which is vulnerable to feelings of jealousy, hate and suspicion cannot last for it is not founded on unselfish love. And without the ingredient of love, a relationship lacks the spark that can help take it forward towards higher dimensions.

We might remember those who built empires or created elaborate monuments for themselves in the course of remembering inconsequential details of material achievements. Immortal memories ^ in our collective consciousness ^ would however be made up of those acts of kindness and love that came unsolicited, or of those who nudged us on to the path to finding God, to share with us the divine experience of unalloyed bliss. – The Times of India