The Simplest Way To Live Life - And the Happiest

As you know, life as in 'how to live the best life' is my favorite topic to write on this blog.

And after writing these many posts about that, I feel that I have been getting more clarity on most important things...

To summarize,

What is life?

Life is essentially meaningless and it is we (I, and the society around me) try to assign meaning to it. Nothing is permanent and hence everything will be lost one day or the other. (Still some probing going on my mind here. - Like what about the legacy people leave after they go. Remember: If we are able to see further, it is because of standing on the shoulders of giants)

The Easiest Way to Live

So now the latest question is what is the easiest way to live - The easiest way to live is to do the things that naturally come to us. It might not hit you like a profound idea for the first time but think about it. What are the things from your childhood till now which made you happy. There are many assortment of things but you felt happy when you did things which you were drawn to. And doing things which we are interested already is very easy isn't it?

But the problem arises when we allow the society to assign meaning to our life and then trying to reach it in a way which is unnatural to you. It is then that life becomes difficult. So it is our responsibility to make sure we are not programmed by the society to do things which we are not natural to us.

Though it is not always possible to only do things which we love to do, we should make sure that one typical day contains activities which do excite us.

Sometimes to do things we like to do we may have to confront people, break existing rules and take some financial risks, but it is all worth it... Life is beautiful when things happen in the way we want to.

Overcoming Disappointments

People are very lucky if they had their way always in life and never had to feel disappointed, but generally we all might have faced some disappointment or the other. The best way to get over our disappointment is acceptance. Accepting the situation as it is is the best way to overcome disappointment. Acceptance doesn't mean we will cry for the rest of the time. No, what it means is to understand and accept what is the current situation. Then question ourselves what can we do about that now. If there is any action that we could take now which can change our situation - Just take it then and there. Else - just accept the situation. Accepting the current situation would help us make the best of the remaining life. Though, acceptance doesn't come easy, I have seen that letting the past be, is the best we can do in the present to make the best for our future.

Easiest way to live is the natural way, doing whatever comes to us naturally without having to struggle to do it.

But if you ever have to do something against it, then make it your decision and do it smiling...

Here I remember a quote by A.R Rahman in his Oscar acceptance speech... "In my life many times I had to make a choice between love and hate. I chose love and I am here"

And finally

forgive others easily and more easily forgive yourself.... for a happier life...

Why I prefer to be an atheist?

What does following a religion give us?

Following a religion gives us hope, faith and confidence about problems which we cannot solve ourselves...and a sense of humility which is very necessary in this random world.

It also is used to give some sort of stability, checks and balances in the society so that it will not degrade..

But with extreme religion people get carried away to think that things can happen without their working, and making each and every thing in scriptures as absolute law even if it is not at all logical are the ill effects of religion. I know that there are some things which might seem illogical at this level of consciousness, but may make sense if we know more things.. Especially in the hindu culture, most of the rituals have some inner meaning which we may not decipher for some things but they do have some significance...

If we can understand that it not all necessary to follow everything which is said and follow only those that make sense to us and remember the first line..(courage, faith, hope and humility) we can have them ourselves without attributing them to a superpower.. and in that way we can even avoid the ill effects of religion.

So why atheism?

If you think closely, you can understand that what the world runs on is the survival of the fittest. You can see lot of people committing lot of sins to earn money and power. People often tell that 'God sees the truth but waits.' But nothing happens. You know lot of people who have committed sins and still go scot free in the world. And people who haven't committed any sins but are powerless suffering. I am not advocating that we do illegal and immoral things and get away with it, I say exactly otherwise. It is up to you to determine what is really illegal and what is really immoral and not depend on a religion on a text to tell you what is it. This way you will be more in control of outcomes in your life and there will be no false hope for miracles.

I know I am treading a dangerous path here, because life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And by saying I don't believe in miracles, I am setting myself in a path where I will never see miracles. Okay so how many of you readers have seen something extraordinary, something unnatural or something miraculous, not which was told to you.. something which you have personally experienced? I haven't experienced any such thing from my childhood till now. So I have decided that there is nothing like that until proved otherwise. If it has to come with belief, then I choose not to believe because things that I have to do something to be happy in afterlife doesn't make sense to me. The fact that we have to repent for our sins committed in previous life doesn't make sense to me. The fact that I am reborn also doesn't make sense to me.. what the heck.. if I am meant to improve and reach God, why should I forget what I learnt in the last life... why cant I remember it so that I can make better progress?

I feel it is up to us to live and let live. I don't need to do that with a fear of some power overlooking me.

Let us not talk about the caste system. If such a system is proclaimed by God who chooses to distinguish between people based on birth, I don't believe him. Ok let us leave hinduism... If there is a religion which proclaims there God is true blue God and others are not, then how can you accept such God? All these things make me feel these things were only created for manipulation and power-grabbing. Hence I reject them.

Other Religions and Philosophies :

I have written previously on aim of life here,

If the sole aim of a human is to reach God or salvation or mukti whatever we call it and there is nothing else for humans to do here except worshipping God, then why should he create people at all? If God is the one who created us and wants us to reach him, then why should he create us at all? Here people talk about karma siddhanta that we are born because of the papa/punya phalas of our previous birth. Then I ask how did it accumulate its papa and punya, Initally it should have been a blank slate right? Why is he created then? Is it just that Gods wanted to see a game? Doesnt it look strange to be born freely, do what ever we want but being awarded points for being good or bad respectively, and again being born, not freely but with the points we accumulated in the previous game, and this happens cyclically till our good overwhelms the bad and we reach God. Doesnt it seem like a game and we are just coins in His hands? This is the limiting point of the theory. People argue this way too - why do you argue about where you came from, as you know the end point try to reach the end point of salvation. But when I am not convinced of the starting point, how can I be convinced of the end point?

Thus I rejected this philosophy.. 

Christian philosophy is a lot better in that sense... It doesn't bind you saying, you have to bide your time for previous sins. It just says - 'acknowledge your sins, and leave them to God and you are free.' If you are a believer, this is a lot better because you are free. What I argue is what you are technically doing is letting go of your sins, that you can do without imagining that you are giving it to a God. And it has its own misgivings.. 

If you think about what you get from religion, you will easily understand that all the good in religion can be incorporated in our life without the need for a super human being and if we reject the religion, all the unnecessary parts can also be left out.

Finally, now I don't believe in a super human being and automatically which disqualifies me from all the famous religions. Now my view of the world is something very rational (Darwinian view) to a different kind (subjective view) as explained by Buddha. Darwinian theory is a proved and very rational theory and it is true by default and I need not prove this. But I also want to explore the subjective view more to see if it is true or not.

What is my world-view?

Now, as you know our life is mostly meaningless. Don't misunderstand me.What I am trying to tell is it doesn't matter in the long run. And we always try to assign meaning to whatever we are doing as if it really matters. Yes, that is the only way we can live life, otherwise there is nothing to look forward to. But the fact that life is essentially meaningless, and it is in fact ourselves that assign meaning to it should never be forgotten. Anyway you all know that you cannot take the wealth you create or any of your possessions when you die. So what is the best way to live.. I feel that to recognize the fact that we should understand the futility of trying to living up certain standards but do what makes us happy but in the end, it doesn't matter what you did. I don't feel right cheating others to get what I want, so my philosophy is to live and let live. I don't need a religion to tell me that.

This topic has received a lot of interest in this blog. All the posts in this series

1. Aim of Life

2. Karma Yoga & Advaita vedanta

3. Waking up to a Dream - Subjective Reality

I know this is a topic which can be quite divisive, for it is concerned with beliefs and it takes a lot of questioning to reject a strongly held belief. So what do you think about this?

Love Aaj Kal - A love story of our times

I have just watched Love Aaj Kal and just cant wait till tomorrow morning to tell you how great a movie it is. Generally I prefer telling the plot of the stories but I dont want to do it for this. Just watch it on the screen. It is the story of our times where there is a confusion between career and love, the seperations, the break-ups, long distance relationships, the being far yet being very near. The story of self-discovery of what is more important in life, the fun and despair of modern times, the innocence and love, the missing and the pain everything packed in a two hour movie. I just loved it. Go Watch It.

Still not convinced.. then this is for you..

What is important? Do you want to continue a relationship even if you dont feel fulfilled? Do you just allow any relationship to fade only to come back after you understand what you missed? What if it is unrecoverable? What if it is not possible? What price are you paying to succeed in your career? What is really important. All these questions are explored in the movie and director succeeds in showing how the feeling of being in love doesnt change through the ages... Imtiaz Ali, the director to watch for..

The Aim Of Life

I have wondered many times what is the aim of life? I think everybody would have wondered about this at some or the other point of their life... I turned to our scriptures to find the answers for this question. Eventhough every book talks about 'mukti' or salvation as the ultimate goal of the life of a hindu, I am not satisfied with that.
But for sometime let us accept that it is the aim of life. Then what is the most direct way of reaching god. Let us say that we have to reach God as early as possible. Then if we look at people who have attained moksha, Dhruva is the youngest person. He did it by doing narayana japa. Even 'Bhaja Govindam' written by Shankaracharya was written advising a very old person trying to learn sanskrit to stop doing that and think of God and do his bhajans (Bhaja Govindam). So the fastest and easiest way to attain moksha is utmost dedication to and worship of God. Then why should we go through the usual shodhasa samskaras(birth,...,education..., marriage,... death) in our life? They say that because it is not possible for everyone to give the utmost dedication to God so early in life, hence we need to go through the shodasha samskaras they will understand life and hence they will walk on this path. But if we know the direct path to our destination, why will we choose the other path? We may even argue that the direct path is a difficult path, and that the indirect path is little easier. But the person who marries cannot understand that he is getting attached to one person and is ready to create a web of attachments around himself which will take a lifetime to untangle. So this proves that even this is not an easy path owing to the attachments we will have if we go in this path. Hence it makes sense for us to take the first path only though it feels as if we are losing a lot.

I have said that I am not satisfied with the theory. If the sole aim of a human is to reach God or salvation or mukti whatever we call it and there is nothing else for humans to do here except worshipping God, then why should he create people at all? If God is the one who created us and wants us to reach him, then why should he create us at all? Here people talk about karma siddhanta that we are born because of the papa/punya phalas of our previous birth. Then I ask how did it accumulate its papa and punya, Initally it should have been a blank slate right? Why is he created then? Is it just that Gods wanted to see a game? Doesnt it look strange to be born freely, do what ever we want but being awarded points for being good or bad respectively, and again being born, not freely but with the points we accumulated in the previous game, and this happens cyclically till our good overwhelms the bad and we reach God. Doesnt it seem like a game and we are just coins in His hands? This is the limiting point of the theory. People argue this way too - why do you argue about where you came from, as you know the end point try to reach the end point of salvation. But when I am not convinced of the starting point, how can I be convinced of the end point? Hence I feel that acheving moksha is not the real aim of our life.

Hence I have rejected the claim the aim of our life to do something in other world, which brings us to the logical conclusion of doing something in this world. So what should we do?
we can aspire to become many things. I believe in atleast basic humanity and hence my aim atleast should be -
"In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it." This is the least we can do. But the higher thing is leaving the earth better than how we have come here. So we have to do something which adds value to the world, something which can help humanity outside our family, which is service to mankind in our own small way we can. But lets not forget the duty we have to our parents, siblings, spouse and children. We should understand that we should not be just bound by the duty to our parents, siblings, spouse and children, but to venture out and do something so that we can say ' I have helped in making earth better than the way it was when I came into it'
Let me end it with Ravindranath Tagore's quote
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
and Gandhi's quote
Service to man is service to God.

Robert Frost says
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.


which gives advice on acheiving it the best way that is uniting what we do to satisfy the duty to our family and that which adds value to the mankind doing what we love to do.

This brings us to the point where we can ask
> What are we doing as a vocation? - this you might get an answer easily as you might be earning somehow
> What are we doing as a avocation? - what is the thing that you love to do? and doing you might answer this easily too...
> How to unite them together to add value to mankind? Answer this and our life is solved. :)