Navarasas in Religious

Navarasas are listed both in Hinduism and Buddhism, as creating an atmosphere of unrest in the mind.  In this state, the mist of negative emotions, slows and confuses the mind. During meditative practices, the chemicals of peace and tranquility like serotonins and endorphins flow into the blood. Breathing, heart rate and pulse rate stabilize. The mind is able to function calmly and freely. An alert and relaxed attitude is required for the teamwork involved in building ideas and analyzing them. Self-awareness of your state of mind can help you get the most out of life and help others to do the same.

Each of the major rasas have a few stable sentiments and many passing, transient emotions. The permanent sentiments are pleasure, laughter, grief, anger, zeal, awe, disgust and surprise. All the major rasas will have elements of these feelings. In love, there will be the pleasure of union and the grief of parting. Many scholars add the nineth Rasa, Shantha rasa (or the rapture of peace).

The mutable sentiments are not present in all the rasas. A few are present in each of the rasas. They are like passing clouds and there are 33 of them. The Mutable Sentiments are: detachment, remorse, apprehension, envy, intoxication, fatigue, indolence, depression, anxiety, delusion, recollection, contentment, bashfulness, agility, joy, agitation, stupor, arrogance, dejection, eagerness, slumber, epilepsy, dream, awakening, indignation, dissimulation, violence, resolution, disorder, insanity, death, terror and deliberation.

Positive Emotions for Joy and Happiness

The positive emotions create a positive field, which fills your blood with the chemicals of happiness and well-being, which are conducive to the building or rebuilding of a healthy body and mind. The negative emotions create a negative field, which fills your blood with the chemicals of unrest and unhappiness. It is important to have a closer look at the nine rasas.

The eight major rasas have within them 49 sentiments or bhavas. Obviously, the positive emotions or states like love, humor, compassion, chivalry and wonder would put the mind in a happy and enthusiastic state of mind, which would nurture positive field. The negative rasas like anger, fear and abhorrence, would create a state of mind which is described in Daniel Goleman’s book as an ‛emotional hijack.’ The Big Five negative emotions are: Lust, Anger, Arrogance, Greed and Jealousy.

The Nava Rasas of the Positive Field

Emotions and the way you deal with them, create the positive field.  The Mind is a field, which is filled with positive and negative emotions. The nava rasas can be your guide to understanding the nine emotions. The nava rasas are a 2000 year old Indian concept on emotions. The nine emotions have been built into a system of dance called Natya Shastra by Sage Bharata. Rasa means rapture or relish and 37 chapters of the Natya Shastra are devoted to eight of them, as Bharatha does not consider ‘Shantha’ or peace a major rasa.  Bharata’s Natya Shastra even described each rasa with a different color.

The Nine Rasas are

1.    Love

2.    Humor

3.    Compassion

4.    Peace

5.    Chivalry

6.    Anger

7.    Fear

8.    Abhorrence

9.    Wonder

Power Of Communication

They say three apples changed the world: the apple with which Eve seduced Adam, the falling apple which inspired Newton’s theory of gravity and Steve Jobs elegant Apple devices. The year 2011 focused on the power of communication through another fruit, the BlackBerry. The internet and facebook, proved to be major players in the fall of totalitarian regimes in Libya and Egypt, besides making Anna Hazare a house hold name in a matter of weeks at home and ensuring that a song like Kola Veri went viral and had turned even the sober Japanese Prime Minister into a fan, who invited actor turned singer Dhanush for dinner with him and our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visited New Delhi recently. This song has been now sung in many different languages and tongues with tunes made up to suit local needs that it seems to communicate, young people need no language, but just a song sounding good.

People can lament all they want that the world was a better place when Apple and BlackBerry were just fruits. The fact remains that instant communication is here to stay. So this year, let’s use the internet to spread viral messages of happiness, peace and love. Let us use it to keep large extended families bound together. Let us harness the power of the internet to make our friendships stronger. Let us use our i-pads to share beauty and build peace. Remember love alone is recession proof, to condemn the new technologies is like condemning water because we might drown in it. Last year Sai Baba left us, M. F. Hussain left us, Wangari Maathai who recreated the geography of Kenya by planting trees left us, genius Steve Jobs, of the radiant digital innovations left us. But their ideas have left an indelible foot print on time. Let them inspire us to lead our lives this year, so that people want our autographs and not our fingerprints.

Beware of Big Five emotions

Any of the big five emotions—Kama, Kroda, Madha, Lobha, Matsarya (lust, anger, arrogance, greed, jealousy, respectively) can flood the body with the chemicals of stress. Stress is destructive. Stress is ageing. Stress is a killer.

Work follows us everywhere. The blurring of work and leisure has intensified in this era of twenty-four-hour access, when the computer is just a fingertip away and the Blackberry and the cellphone are as intimate as a heartbeat. The delicate tissues of the body are constantly awash in the lethal chemical bath of chronic stress. Interactive electronic devices have made stress continuous. Home is no longer a refuge.

Because of these conflicts and intense pressure on an individual, both physical and mental, the most exciting breakthrough of the twenty-first century will occur not because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human in the expanding global market and the toxic workplace it has created.

The only way to break this pattern is to find a way to change the response to tough situations. There is of course no way to make the situations less tough. Meditation and pranayama, provide everyone with a way of reducing the automatic, violent reactions to stress. You can actually control autonomous systems like heart beat and pulse rate, which were thought to be outside the individual’s control. Knowing and practicing meditation can provide you with a silent space where you can retreat into peace: slow breathing, steady heartbeat, low pulse. This space is always available within a person who has learnt to meditate. While you cannot change your job, family or your life situation, you can certainly learn to breathe more peacefully, thus reversing the process of excitation and avoiding the emotional hijack.

Meditation to clean the mind

Meditation is the broom that sweeps out the negative emotions and pours in the honey of tranquility into the mind. There are many forms of meditation. Here are some examples:

Opening-Up Meditation with an Apple              

Often our senses are scrambled and numbed by the hurry of life. Each of the senses provides us with new adventures and helps us to live more fully.

Opening up consists of emphasizing the five senses of the body: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.  Anything may be used to emphasis the senses.  For the purpose of this example, an apple will be used to demonstrate all five senses of opening-up meditation.  The purpose of this is to relax the physical body and the mind.  Practise this meditation for ten minutes.    Explore each one of your senses and experience their immense potential for joy. Obviously, emphasizing the senses could be done on a walk in the park or around the house or at work in the morning.

1.  Seeing:  Enjoy the skill of the great architect of the universe.  Take an apple and closely examine the outer skin.  Look closely at the colour and texture.  Peel it and look closely at the edge of the peel. Look at the inside of the peel.  Look closely at the wedges.  Break open a wedge and look at the heart of the apple.  Examine the small pieces carefully.  It is even permissible to use a magnifying glass.

2.  Hearing: Squeeze an apple.  Is there a sound?  Peel the apple.  Listen.  Bend the peel and listen to the sounds.  What sound is it?  Close your eyes and break a wedge in half.  What sound is there?  Rub your fingers along the outside of the peel.  Is there a sound?  Rub your fingers along the inside of the peel.  What difference is there?

3.  Touching: Close your eyes and rub your fingers along the outside of an unpeeled apple.  Feel the texture.  Rub your hands all over the apple.  Spend five minutes examining the apple with the fingers before peeling it.  Peel it slowly, feeling each piece. Break the apple into wedges and explore each wedge.  Feel the inside of the peel.  Examine the edges.

4. Tasting: Close your eyes and place a wedge of the apple in your mouth.  Bite slowly into the wedge.  Bite a piece of the peel.  Taste the pulp.  How many different tastes are there in an apple?

5. Smelling: Sniff an unpeeled apple.  Peel the apple and smell the inside of the peel.  Smell a wedge of apple.  Bend an apple peel and smell the acid as it explodes from the peel.  Smell the pulp.  Smell a squeezed wedge.  How many different smells are there in an apple?

By extending the senses one can forget about present problems and relax.  By allowing in more than the ordinary amount of information from a single sense, other thoughts are blocked.  That is why it is called meditation.  It must be patently apparent that if one can extend the senses to examine an apple, those senses can be used in an even more extensive way during a walk in the park.  Or on a city road on the way on the way to work, or during lunch.  It is a handy, quick and efficient way to meditate.  It will even work with an apple!

Attitudes to achieve Positive Field

·        Unconditional positive regard

·        Appreciation

·        Expression of support

·        Loving eye contact

·        Respect

·        Non-violence

·        Win-win solutions

·        Trust and openness

·        Be interested

·        Eliminate status

·        Share responsibility

The Joyful Harvest

Harvest is mainly associated with fruit and vegetables, for which we give thanks. This is the whole point of the Harvest Festival. The cattle’s are decorated, homes are painted, implements are cleared and everything is worshipped.

In India, Makara Sankranti, Thai Pongal, Uttarayana, Lohri, and Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu in January, Holi in February–March and Onam in August–September are a few famous harvest festivals.

This is the time for each of us to sit back and celebrate of successes in the four of quadrants of your life: personal, family, work life and social life. The Bible speaks of a ‘time to sow and a time to reap!’ This is your time to reap the results of all your hard work and acknowledge the joys, successes and high points of the past year. This is the time for gratitude for all your blessings. Enjoy, celebrate and praise God for all the good news in your life!

1. Celebrate your hobbies with an exhibition for friends of fruits, paintings, music or stamps.
2. Celebrate your family with a get together, a website or a night out with all of them.
3. Write letters to those at work who helped you. Write to those who need comfort, give out little harvest gifts – fruit, wine, food.
4. Organize a coffee meet for your neighbours and friends. Sugarcane juice and other harvest goodies could be exciting ad ons.

Acts of Compassion

Today is your chance to plan your acts of compassion for everyday. Research shows that the surest way to be happy is to help others. A famous experiment conducted in a university, studied the immune response of students. They were then shown a beautiful movie of Mother Teresa, taking care of the dying in Calcutta. Mother always said, “I don’t care if the man is a rascal or a rogue or a thief. Everyone deserves to die with dignity.” After watching the movie, their blood was drawn again to study the immune response. The immune response was enhanced by 40%, just by watching Mother Teresa being kind.

The Scouts have to do a ‘good turn, everyday’. The Buddha says even the poorest of us can give. Here are the seven kinds of personal offerings: the physical offering or to offer service by one’s labor. The spiritual offering is to offer a compassionate heart to others. The third is the offering of eyes by a warm glance to give them tranquility. The fourth is the offering by a soft countenance with a smile to others. The fifth is oral offering of kind and warm words to others. The sixth is the seat offering: to offer one’s seat to others. The seventh is offering shelter: to let others spend the night at one’s home.

Imagine the gift of good health that grows out of being compassionate to others. Here are some more caring activities

1. Have a meal with an elderly relative.
2. Join a group to sing devotional songs or listen to music.
3. Pull out all the lovely clothes you no longer wear and share them with an old age home.
4. Unpack the toys your children have outgrown and give it to the children’s ward in a charity hospital.
5. On all festivals, share cakes, fruits, sweets or clothes with an orphanage.

New Year Resolutions

The time has come to make New Year Resolutions. Don’t make resolutions like the mom who resolved to give up all her son’s hair at Tirupathi. Make ones you can keep. There are four areas of your life where resolutions could transform your year.


Personal 
Family
Work
Social


The space where you have the most control is the most important personal quadrant. I know guys who have given up smoking, because it can add atleast 7 years to their life. But then they give it up atleast once a month. Which really is the problem with resolutions. They are so difficult to keep for a whole year. Here are some simple resolutions

• Every day is a celebration. I will do something every day that I have never done before.
• I will enjoy one week day evening and weekends with my family with cell phones and laptop switched off.
• I will learn something totally new, professionally
• I will keep in touch with old friends and meet them at least once a month.

Creating a positive interpersonal field

A drug addict once explained the difference between sympathy and empathy. He said, ‘You can never feel anything but sympathy for me and what I need is empathy. Empathy is the capacity to feel my pain in your heart.’ To be ‘socially tone-deaf’, a term coined by Peter Solovey, can lead to a life littered with broken relationships. Develop the capacity to pick up subtle verbal, tonal and non-verbal signals from others. Learn also the ability to send out soothing, nurturing signals to others, thus creating a positive interpersonal field. In order to develop this skill, practice working with people and listening to them with the same attitude as you would a beloved child, or respected parent. Your word, tone, glance should be completely focused on the person. When you are with someone, pay complete attention. Anything less will only elicit a lukewarm response. Those who can create positive fields around themselves attract and build lifetime relationships.

Happiness Survey

A recent happiness survey shows that hairdressers have the highest levels of happiness at work! The reason? They are in direct touch with their customers. Chris Humphries, Director General of City and Guilds U.K., says: Nowadays, job satisfaction and happiness is about fulfilling your potential, tapping into your own creativity and feeling that you can make a difference. Many are exchanging their desk-bound jobs for vocations that enable them to be hands-on, use their brains and be in charge of their own destiny.
In a Guardian article by Laura Smith, two out of five hairdressers
described themselves as extremely happy. She gives two reasons:
1. Creativity
2. Contact with customers

A study commissioned by the Qualifications Authority of City and
Guilds published the following results:

Happiest 

Clergy 
Beauticians 
Plumbers 

Unhappiest 

Social workers
Architects
Estate agents
Insurance Agents
Secretaries

Those in practical jobs enjoyed a lot more social interaction.

Towards Personal Happiness

The world is in your drawing room, it is clamoring to change your life with more and more sophisticated toys. As a popular saying goes, ‘What separates the men from the boys is just the price of their toys.’ Simplify and go home to what you really need.

Any of the big five emotions—kama, kroda, madha, lobha, matsarya (lust, anger, arrogance, greed, jealousy, respectively) can flood the body with the chemicals of stress. Stress is destructive. To recreate the garden of your mind, creates happiness, you have to get rid of the anger, hatred, fear, greed and jealousy. If you really want to be happy, you need to plant the flowers of love, the fountain of companionship, liberate the butterflies of laughter.

On the Cusp of Change

* Take care of your health. You cannot deliver a prize-winning performance with a broken-down body.
* Force the world to look at issues like: What kind of world are we leaving for our children? Where have leisure, poetry and caring been banished? Why has the door been shut on the smiles and joy of our children? Why do we have no time for our friends or small acts of kindness? Why are deadlines so terrible that they extract death as the price? None of us would mind dying for great causes, but to die for a power-point presentation, seems slightly frivolous. 
* Do not get stereotyped into how others see your role: as a mother or an all forgiving rescuer in the workplace. Encourage men to discover their so-called feminine qualities of sensitivity and caring. Do not stereotype men! 
* Affirm women who are role models instead of trying to find chinks in their armour. Network with them. There is a queen-bee complex, which causes successful women managers to surround themselves with male managers and discourage the entry of women. Identify this and speak up when required. 
* There are points in a woman’s life-cycle when her intensive physical presence is needed. There are high priority interactions which cannot be delegated. Build a support system with family, household staff, neighbours and friends to help you enjoy these
times. Men too have been deprived of active participation in these peak experiences in the past. Make your company recognise and respond to these realities.
* Hitch your wagon to the pursuit of daily and consistent learning. Be Saraswati. Bring your heritage of creating wholeness from leftovers, and wealth from waste. Be Lakshmi. Call forth the courage to speak, write and act for what is true and good for all.
Be Shakti. Be all woman. Be all human. 

Pleasant Music to Empower Your Mindspace

‘Music has the power to purify the emotional field like nothing else,’ Our mindscape trembles with the joy of old songs half-remembered, snatches of tunes hummed by our mother. Every day we could choose the sounds we allow into our field. Perhaps we could set a song for the day in our mind. Those who meet us would see the sparkle of that song in our eyes and feel the rhythm of its harmony in our limbs.

‘Shabdh or sound is Vani Saraswathi, the Goddess of Learning. Words are sacred to her.

Choose to say beautiful words, to hear lovely words. Banish harsh, angry and foul language from the inner spaces of your heart,’ Pour music into your soul. Touch people who love you. Explore new places. Reach into great books and study alternate futures.

Pamper yourself and ask your loved ones for hugs. Meditate. Be silent. Plug into the universe. Let go. Let God catch you. Your sankalpa or intention must be pure. Be clear about your goal. Be non-judgemental. Love and seek to understand with tenderness.

Healthy Environment for healthy living!

In order to treat or prevent disease, it is essential to look into our emotional, mental and psychological environment, as our thoughts and emotions directly contribute to our wellbeing or otherwise. Emotions like love, courage, humour, compassion wonder and peace create a positive and energetic environment . Meditation helps you to achieve these energy and contribute enormously to an individual’s psychological and physiological wellbeing. 

How to create a positive and energetic environment around yourself, your home and office?

 A mental process which draws a magic circle of love around all those who are participating.

 A prayer or mantra said together.

 A common exercise, a company song, common goals.

 A handshake, a friendly look, an encouraging word.

 Thinking, believing and acting in a positive manner.

 Laughter and shared jokes.

Every Day is a Celebration!

Celebrate the positive in all interactions. Sprinkle the pure waters of prayer on your soul and prepare a fresh for a brand-new day. Go peacefully amidst the noise and the haste. Enjoy the sweetness of everyday things. When we say namaste, we say ‘I bow to the Divine in you’. ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam’ say, our holy book – the whole world is your family. Imagine the rich network of love you could create, where your children can be nurtured if you believed and practiced this.

The most inexpensive ticket to happiness is not found on makemy trip.com. It is found in helping others and making others happy. You don’t have to visit Aids victims in Africa and make them happy. You can start with your own family, neighbours, cook, cleaner and friends. As the slogan at the Paro Airport in Bhutan says, ‘Gross National Happiness begins with a smile’. So spread happiness like Amul butter on bread. It will stick to your fingers.

Shangri-La

There is a place in the distant mountains which is always calm and peaceful, where the earth is laden with luscious fruit and wholesome grain, where people are vital, healthy and happy. Where every edifice is artistic and beauty clothes every home in the loveliness of hand made artifacts and the community is one happy family. Shangri-La is the result of Mankind’s effort to create this happy town, city and finally nation. Shangri-La is not really a place. It is inside everyone’s own heart. The dream city is only a reflection of our own peaceful, happy heart.

Action plans to make happiness ‘infectious’ in your Shangri-La

1. Make many friends, who get together to laugh, work, read and share.
2. Plant more trees.
3. Clean up the roads.
4. Start walking and playing together with the kids on the street.
5. Share the knowledge, play, beauty and wisdom. Create the ‘village’ which is needed to raise a child in your community.
6. Use garbage to create gardens and get everything bright and blooming.

Today, start making your own street or building a Shangri-La…

Divine forces of the Universe

We draw energy from the wind, air and sunlight, from water, earth and things grown on the earth. We also draw energy from the divine forces of the universe which pour into us through the chakras. The sun pours heat, light and vitality, which greatly improves health and wellbeing. People who are deprived of the sunlight suffer from depression during winter months, especially in the Scandinavian countries and the Arctic. A place can have a positive or negative field. You can feel it when you enter a temple or church where regular services are performed. That is why people go to places of pilgrimage like Tirupathi. The feeling of prayerful sacredness envelops all those who go there. The reason was that the whole silent congregation was prayerful and there was none there with evil intentions in his heart

We must also learn to handle our failures with confidence and grace as it is only an event, not our whole life. We must learn from failure. We should tap into the peace and silence of the universe which is always available to us. The world is a positive and healthy place.

Reciprocate love

You are the mirror in which all your loved ones see themselves. You can soothe and inspire them by reflecting back an image that is lovable and competent. Calvin Cooley, renowned sociologist has described the Mirror Image thus: ‘I am what I think you think I am.’ If you constantly put down others, you can destroy them mentally. Their unhappiness can harm your mindscape. Accept your family as they are. Unrealistic expectations about your child can put unrelenting pressure on him/her. Mills and Boon expectations of your spouse can make them feel unloved and inadequate. They can then become cranky and difficult. Compete only with yourself. Take pleasure in others’ growth and achievement. Keep the child in you alive. Cuddle, nurture and liberate the child in you.