Amar Misra
The two important pillars of health are good nutrition and moderate exercise. The most important factor, however, is your mind. Diet control has a lot to do with mind control. Which is why fasting is prescribed in many religions as a way of self-discipline. If you try to learn the inherent programme loaded in your body, it would direct you to health and happiness. You may not need to curb your cravings to eat what is not good for your body. The method is called witnessing. You can start by taking five minutes from your morning schedule and spend it watching your breath. Sit in a comfortable position and start watching your breath. Keep your focus on your breath when you inhale and exhale. This practice would give you a glimpse of a state where there are no thoughts in your mind. Slowly you would be able to watch the activities of your mind and the journey of thoughts from one subject to another. Soon you would know the system that operates your senses and in turn your mind. You have five sense servants. You can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. None of these sense servants are designed to govern your hunger. Yet you feel hungry when you see the food you like. Any talk about your favourite food or its aroma immediately triggers your hunger. When you find anything tasty, you want to eat more and more of that food. If you allow all your servants except the cashier to handle and operate your cash chest, you cannot remain solvent for long. Your body is programmed to send a specific signal to your brain when it feels hungry. The trick is in the knowledge that most of the time your eating patterns are governed by habit and not by the requirements of the body. Then how to know and feel the real and actual sense of hunger? Fasting is one of the timetested and proven methods that helps you understand your hunger and has been used by almost all religions of the world. The best way to begin is to go on an ‘only water’ diet for as long as you can do it conveniently depending upon your health. It may range between 10 hours and 24 hours unless you have some medical problem. The purpose is to focus on your hunger and understand how it feels to be hungry and how hunger increases its intensity. When the body gives you a signal that it is hungry and needs food, then try to witness the sensation and understand how it feels. Drink water and the signal would fade away. Next time it would give you a stronger signal. You need to understand these signals before you respond to the same. When you feel that you are very hungry then you drink some fresh fruit juice and watch how a signal of satisfaction is generated. Try fresh fruits, milk and cereals later but always keep the focus on your hunger and satiety signals of the body. The objective is to know the dynamics of your body which is unique for everybody. Is it not surprising that among the six billion people living on this planet, no two persons have the same finger prints? We are designed to be unique and incomparable. So respect your body and learn its dynamics. Knowing ourselves would help our body attain perfect health. Always.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Beware, the ego is constantly at work
VITHAL C NADKARNI
WITH 500,000 copies sold over three years, Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth wasn’t scorching the bestseller charts the way his earlier Power of Now had. Then came Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement which created a publishing history of sorts: 3.5 million copies printed and shipped in just four weeks to feed the blistering demand for a book that exhorts readers to give up ‘ego-consciousness’ and live in the present. In his first new book in eight years, Tolle concedes that awakening to your life’s purpose may not be an easy endeavour at the best of times. But it helps when you travel light, when you “chuck de” all that inner baggage and identification with things, along with mental concepts, or addictions, says the German-born mystic. Again, this is easy to say, almost impossible to accomplish without the help of insightful action: for the wily ego is constantly at work, finding new ways to ensnare our mind in new yarns and escapades away from the ever-present now. Tolle’s book also delineates a new, universal demonology for the 21st century: accordingly, ‘hearing voices in the head’ is not only the prerogative of the possessed, and those damned with the label of being psychotic. Listen carefully and you’ll find a voice (or even a cacophony) whispering in the caverns of your mind. What is more distressing “most people are so completely identified with it — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe these people as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are,” Tolle explains. The ego thrives on comparisons, on combat, and on being right, not to forget judging others. But one can go beyond it by getting into the witness mode, what the Indian tradition calls sakshi bhava. One can then take appropriate action as the Zen teacher Kasan did. The monk had to preside over a funeral of a local dignitary. As he stood waiting for the VIPs to arrive, Kasan found he had sweaty palms. He stepped down on the next day, pleading inability to see the sameness of being in every human. He became the pupil of another master and returned eight years later, enlightened. Tolle ends with a paean to the spiritual practice of enthusiasm, which is not dependent on winlose mindsets. Instead, enthusiasm rides the wave of the present moment to “give out its own abundance.”
WITH 500,000 copies sold over three years, Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth wasn’t scorching the bestseller charts the way his earlier Power of Now had. Then came Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement which created a publishing history of sorts: 3.5 million copies printed and shipped in just four weeks to feed the blistering demand for a book that exhorts readers to give up ‘ego-consciousness’ and live in the present. In his first new book in eight years, Tolle concedes that awakening to your life’s purpose may not be an easy endeavour at the best of times. But it helps when you travel light, when you “chuck de” all that inner baggage and identification with things, along with mental concepts, or addictions, says the German-born mystic. Again, this is easy to say, almost impossible to accomplish without the help of insightful action: for the wily ego is constantly at work, finding new ways to ensnare our mind in new yarns and escapades away from the ever-present now. Tolle’s book also delineates a new, universal demonology for the 21st century: accordingly, ‘hearing voices in the head’ is not only the prerogative of the possessed, and those damned with the label of being psychotic. Listen carefully and you’ll find a voice (or even a cacophony) whispering in the caverns of your mind. What is more distressing “most people are so completely identified with it — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe these people as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are,” Tolle explains. The ego thrives on comparisons, on combat, and on being right, not to forget judging others. But one can go beyond it by getting into the witness mode, what the Indian tradition calls sakshi bhava. One can then take appropriate action as the Zen teacher Kasan did. The monk had to preside over a funeral of a local dignitary. As he stood waiting for the VIPs to arrive, Kasan found he had sweaty palms. He stepped down on the next day, pleading inability to see the sameness of being in every human. He became the pupil of another master and returned eight years later, enlightened. Tolle ends with a paean to the spiritual practice of enthusiasm, which is not dependent on winlose mindsets. Instead, enthusiasm rides the wave of the present moment to “give out its own abundance.”
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