Meet Contemplation, Meditation’s Cool Companion

 

Image: Frank Winkler / Pixabay

I began this piece by contemplating on why I want to write about contemplation and also thinking about what to write. My Twitter handle is Wordant (for the love of words, of course) but of late, I have realized that while words are useful tools when writing or conveying something, it is the underlying meaning that is far more important. After all, you can convey a lot with a smile, a spark in the eye, a touch...without using a single word.

Nevertheless, given that here I’m not allowed to touch you and must use my linguistic repertoire, let’s look at a few words or combinations of words and then we’ll move on.

A quiet life of prayer and contemplation. Sitting idle. Doing nothing. Thinking. Thinking about thinking. Meditating. She considered the proposal. He was trying to concentrate hard on the problem. Focus, focus, focus. Be here now.

All these words about the mind and what it does—think, consider, concentrate, focus, etc.—often get mixed up in terms of what we exactly mean when we use them. But sometimes, when we give proper context and arrangement to words—and pronounce or write them with an inner urge—we are better able to communicate. At least that’s my hope and belief.

So I wouldn’t give you any academic, hair-splitting definition of contemplation but perhaps share glimpses of my own experience—as I have often done for meditation. 

In the noisy, chaotic modern life of cities, I’m fortunate to have had some moments of quiet reflection. And, often, when those moments passed, I was like, “Whoa, that felt great!” (I’m sure a lot of folks are similarly blessed but may either not have noticed such moments or just smiled them away.)

For instance, before all this work-from-home thingy happened, I would sometimes take a short evening break from the office and go to the nearby park, sit down on a bench and just watch the sun go down. It amazed me how quickly the yellow bright disk became a soothing orange ball plunging ever so steadily behind the clouds, the concrete buildings or the nondescript horizon of cities within cities. The background would change depending on where I chose to sit or sometimes stand, but the sun behaved in the same spellbinding fashion.

During those times, a few breezes of thoughts swept gently over my mind.

And when I came back to my desk, a warm cup of tea in my hand before I resumed the day’s work, I could feel the powerful touch of contemplation all over me. Those quiet moments spent in the company of my own wondrous mind seemed to have filled my erstwhile-tired body with added vitality and peace.

The thought that led me to writing this post was this: if only more and more human beings spared some time for quiet, reflective thinking or even calm, ‘not-doing time’ (I don’t want to call it idle time), if only peace prevailed for a while in our daily sea of turmoil—perhaps we would have fewer suicides and much fewer mental health issues reported so widely nowadays. 

To share another contemplative experience, I’m reminded of walking. While I love to walk and wouldn’t mind walking almost anywhere, two particular walks come running to me. One was in high school when I attended a 10-day jungle camp in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas, and the other was early in my working life somewhere in the hills of Maharashtra. On both occasions, it was a wide mud trail on which we were walking in random groups. Few words were exchanged between the walkers but I think we all enjoyed being in the midst of idyllic surroundings, having ample time on our hands, and not much to do besides joyously moving from point A to point B.

Peace-giving images from those long-lost trips still surface in my memory from time to time.

Where have I been, really? Contemplation-land, I think.

Closer to our current, pandemic-confined lives, my fifth-floor rooftop has on occasions served as the place where the cosmic rays of contemplation have enveloped my being. Kites, crows and pigeons often seemed to signal their concurrence. For as little as five or ten minutes, feeling elemental even in the midst of a dense urban settlement has been truly rewarding.

Other times, when I meditate, I usually allow some brief periods of contemplation prior to meditation or after it. For example, instead of hurrying off to the daily chores immediately after opening my eyes, I keep sitting still and relaxed for a while. Contemplation, I believe, can be a useful aid to and a great companion of your meditation practice.

Now, let me tell you that there’s no method or technique to practicing contemplation. The only tips I can perhaps offer you is to be yourself (you can be you when alone, right?) and not to try too hard to relax your mind.

Let the smoothness of the universe rub off on you like a balm. Let the intricate web of consciousness work its magic. Rejoice and rest in the becalming ocean of gentle thought-waves.

So that’s my simple idea of some quality me-time. Say hello to Contemplation!

Ha-ha-How to Create Humor in Writing

Image: Pixabay.com

“A man walks into a bar…”

Almost all of you would instantly recognize the above opening phrase as the beginning of a joke. No, I’m not going to let you in on the joke right away—but I promise to finish it at the end of this how-to piece.

We all appreciate humor, don’t we? We are more likely to remember a piece of writing for the wit or humor it contains than for the other boring or ‘heavy-duty’ stuff.

But there’s one problem with humor—we tend to like it as long as it’s “our kind.” Like “my music versus your music.” Different people laugh at different jokes. The things they find funny could be as different as chalk and cheese. One person may find a guy slipping on a banana peel sending him into peals of laughter (the pun just slipped out), while another would chafe at those who laugh at such everyday tragedies. There are some communities who like poking fun at themselves, and there are those who threaten to sue you if you “hurt their sentiments” by cracking a joke or two at their expense.

That’s why before getting into the mechanics of how to inject a few doses of comic relief into your write-up, it’s important to understand who your audience is—the people you are writing for—in the first place. You must keep a few things about your audience in mind and tailor your write-up to suit their particular tastes: their age group, their social milieu, their tolerance toward things like religion or fashion (if your write-up involves religion or fashion), or any other trait you can associate with the desired reader group. This will not only save you from embarrassing or difficult situations, it will also optimize the impact of your writing.

Having said that, most people do exhibit a sense of humor and really like to read more stuff by a writer who has made them smile or laugh through their writing.

Here I’m assuming that you already are a good writer and can turn out prose that makes for compelling reading. Now, what you aspire for next is to make it even more interesting by using bits of humor here and there—and I can never tell you exactly where, because that must occur to you in the course of your writing and should never be forced on the reader. What I can tell you, however, is about a few tools that you can practice using in your writing and give it that elusive touch of humor you’ve been wanting to all along.

Shared everyday experiences

One of the best ways to connect with your audience in a humorous way is to bring up things that we all share with each other in our everyday lives—as dads or moms, as pet-lovers or dog haters, as harried shoppers standing in long checkout queues, as ordinary coworkers persecuted by a stupid but wily boss (remember the Dilbert cartoon?)…in short, as any imagined group that shares some commonalities, often with sympathetic undercurrents.

Erma Bombeck, one of the world’s best-known and most-read syndicated humor columnists, used this technique to a wonderful effect. Here’s a sample of her writing, in which she speaks on behalf of all those hassled moms who know not what all their kids do in the bathroom:

The bathroom should have been called the Children’s Playroom. It was their social watering hole. They became aware of it around the age of two, and barring major holidays and occasional stabs at education, didn’t leave it until they got their own homes.

What did they do in there? They floated light bulbs in the bathtub and shot at them with water pistols. They wrapped a dead horned toad in a flag and buried him at “sea.” They decorated the toilet seat like a cake, using Dad’s shaving cream for the lettering.

And when I pounded on the door and shouted, “What are you doing in there?” the response was always the same. “Nothing.”

A child doing “nothing” is a signal for parents to dial the emergency phone number. While he is doing “nothing” in the bathroom, a dog is barking, water is running under the door, a sibling is begging for mercy, and there is a strange odor of burning fur and the sound of a thousand camels running in place.

Reading this elaborate comic experience, a lot of moms out there would easily imagine themselves pounding on their own bathroom doors, wondering what took the kids so long in there!

Through such shared experiences there’s an immediate recognition by many in the audience who visualize their own selves in place of the protagonists and smile or laugh at the situation they are so familiar with. But remember: it’s not just the sharing of a situation; it’s also the power of verbal imagery that creates the humorous impact on the reader.

Let’s see how Jerome K Jerome, in his classic Three Men in a Boat, uses the all-too-familiar situation of packing stuff before a journey and creates laugh-out-loud hilarity through his superb verbal imagery: 

They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, etc., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting. 

It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and to get you interested. 

Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon. 

And then it was George's turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn't say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn't find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in. 

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn't go in, and what was in wouldn't come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room. 

In order to use this tool, all you need is very keen observation of what’s happening around you all the time and pick out instances that you think can be converted into a funny tidbit or bite of humor.

Lampooning, parodying or mocking

Much of the humor that gets created in the world occurs in some satiric form or the other. Humorists, like philosophers, are said to have this gift of keeping themselves at a safe distance from what’s going on around them—and come up with remarkable commentary that mocks, parodies or lampoons something. So, in order to use mockery as a tool, you should practice the art of seeing something from a distance and find out the lighter aspects of different situations. I know it’s not easy—but whoever said creating humor was going to be easy!

Consider how George Mikes, the celebrated author who’s lampooned all things British, takes a stab at how the English language is used, in this sample from his book, How to be Decadent:

If you want to sound truly English, you must learn to speak the language really badly. It will not be difficult, there are many language schools where they teach you exactly that. Remember that everything is a “situation” or a “problem” nowadays. In the old days a man was traveling, today he’s in a travel situation. In the past he got married, today he finds himself in a marriage situation. In the past he went bankrupt, today he has a liquidity problem. In the old days he was impotent, today he has a virility problem.

In our economic plight rationing has already begun. This is being kept a secret and for the time being only the letter r is rationed. The modern Englishman has a certain number of rs at his disposal and no more. He—and that applies to some radio announcers—uses them foolishly. He will speak of Indiar-and-Pakistan and of Lawr-and-order, only to find that he used up his r-ration, frittered it away, and now he has to save madly where he can. So he will speak of a Labouh MP and of the Fah East.

Do we really have a serious r-problem? Or are we just in an illiteracy situation?

The good thing about lampooning is, the list of people, places and events you can lampoon is virtually unlimited. You just need to figure out the lampoon situation at hand!

To take another shining example of the art of comic parody, here’s what Darrel Bristow-Bovey has to write about the zillions of Feng Shui freaks who never tire of rearranging their furniture at the slightest excuse. This excerpt is from his book, I Moved Your Cheese, which, certainly enough, pokes fun at self-help books like Who Moved Your Cheese:

Everywhere you turned, people were hanging mirrors in their hallway, or taking mirrors down from the hallway, I forget which. I met a woman who covered the edges of her coffee table with small blobs of putty because—and I am not making this up—“it makes the corners rounded, which enables the energy to flow freely through the house.” If there is energy flowing freely through your house, you need an electrician, or an exorcist, or a lightning conductor over your mantelpiece, not four blobs of gray-looking putty.

Based on some very common observations, the writer has picked on what many people who follow Feng Shui do in their homes. To make his mockery more effective, he inserts certain well-timed phrases (“I forget which”, “and I am not making this up”) that add more punch to the satire or heighten the reader’s expectation of what is to come.

Comic characterization

Whether you are writing about real-life people or cooking up characters for your fictional work, a very effective tool for inducing humor is to describe them using comic words, phrases, or analogies. 

Let’s go through a few writing samples wherein we can see comic characters striking a funny chord with the readers.

We’ve all heard of the phenomenal success of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books. However, while most people recognize the wizardry and imaginative prowess displayed in the books, few seem to realize that their appeal owes much to the humor strewn across them. Of special note is the way the writer introduces most of her characters. For instance, notice how she describes the Dursleys (Harry Potter’s relatives with whom he lived) in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors.

Notice how Rowling plays with the idea of how much neck a person usually has. And how she credits Mr. Dursley with possessing “a very large moustache”—as if the existence of a largish moustache would somehow compensate for his lack of neck!

In the same book, she introduces Headmaster Albus Dumbledore with another dose of strong comic characterization, taking full advantage of the old man’s meandering mane:

Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore.

So go on and indulge yourself with amusing accounts of protagonists in your plot or blokes in your backyard. But be careful, especially when writing about real people, in case they don’t feel flattered by your portrayal and sue you for libel. Or, worse, do something to your nose that makes it look like Dumbledore’s!

Playing upon words: Pun-fun

Almost all people with a humoristic bent of mind have a liking for puns (using a combination of similar-sounding letters, words or expressions with the intention of creating a comic effect. Veteran punsters have even technically defined various types of puns.) However, only a few are able to deploy puns in their writing in an effective and sustained way. While puns make for relatively easy humor (at least to those whose mind is an oven full of pun-cakes), overusing puns or failing to avoid “bad puns” (puns that don’t rhyme well or seem misfit or too crude) can spoil the fun. There are some who think pun to be a low form of humor—but there’s little justification to this criticism. Used cleverly to engage immediately with your audience, punning is a pretty effective tool. 

Celebrated comedian Ed Wynn (of The Perfect Fool fame) at once gives a good example of pun and silences those who criticize punning. Reacting to the criticism that “the pun is the lowest form of wit,” Wynn is said to have given this retort (which, incidentally, is a pun on the criticism itself):

“I know it, and they can be used to prove it. A man goes into a bakery and asks for buns. The baker says, ‘I wouldn’t have them around the place because the bun is the lowest form of wheat.’”

Here are a few samples of puns (compiled from the Internet) for you to chew on: 

Have you heard of the guy who swallowed a spoon? Well, he can’t stir.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Have you heard of the thief who turned into a successful actor? He stole the show.

Which country’s capital has the fastest-growing population? Ireland. Every day it’s Dublin.

He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends.

Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Compared to other tools for creating humor, punning is relatively easy—both for the writer to use and for the reader to understand. But as in the case of food, there’s no accounting for people’s taste for puns, so just watch out for offensive ones or an overdose of them.

There’s a huge repository of puns on the Web that you can check out. That’ll give you a ‘pun’oramic view of how playful and wide punning can be. But, more important, create your own puns as often as you can and practice them regularly in your speech and writing. Creating new puns and trying them out—on expecting as well as unsuspecting listeners and readers—is a lot of fun. Like somebody said, “A good pun is its own reword.”

Using exaggeration

One of the most effective tools used to create and build upon humor in a piece of writing is to overplay or exaggerate the comic aspect of the subject matter. Successful stand-up comedians and humor writers have been constantly using this tool with hilarious impact. For sustained results, the trick is to tickle the funny bone with gradually increasing but controlled pokes of the finger, delivering a one-two punch of laughter here and there (again, don’t ask me exactly where), with each successive punch slightly more powerful than its predecessor. It’s also important to keep the readers’ interest levels high in tune with your hyperboles so that they don’t feel bored or irritated as they struggle to follow your words.

Let’s see how Paul Reiser does it in this excerpt from his book Babyhood. The context is how parents choose to name their kids.

Some people don’t agonize at all about finding the perfect name. They simply give the kid their name.

“He’ll be me, but Me Junior. To be followed by Me the Third, and his son, Me the Fourth.”

Certainly moves things along. Of course, if you’re really pressed for time, do what heavyweight champ George Foreman did—name all of his kids George Foreman. God bless him, a great fighter, a fine humanitarian—not, apparently, the most creative in the naming department. An entire family named George Foreman. It’s not like they’re of successive generations, overlapping only here and there for a few years…No, this is almost half a dozen guys, with the exact same name, all living in the same house.

“This is my son George Foreman, his younger brother George Foreman…this one here is five and a half, say hello to George Foreman, and the little ones…where are they?… George Foreman? George Foreman? Come over here…okay, now, say hello, this is George Foreman and George Foreman…Why don’t you all sit down on the couch over there—the couch, interestingly enough, I call George Foreman.”

Notice how the writer has tried to keep the readers’ interest alive by treating them to a variety of expressions. He has also been creative with his imagination by fabricating an engaging situation involving all the George Foremans together. What’s more, the writer brings the episode to a climactic end by presenting—just when the readers thought the stock of Foremans had run out—yet another George Foreman. And guess what? This one is a couch!

Now, let’s look at another humor piece, by columnist Melvin Durai, in which he overplays the pain-in-the-neck flight delays that an increasingly airborne world has come to suffer as part of the overall cost of traveling.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Thank you for flying British Airways Flight 324 nonstop from London to New York. We are still awaiting our security clearance from U.S. authorities, but it's safe to assume that we'll land in New York sometime in the next month or so.

If you look to your left, you will see a landmark that attracts more than one million tourists every year. It's called Heathrow Airport. Yes, we haven't yet taken off, as a few astute passengers have noticed. Needless to say, we would rather wait on the ground than in the air—it's so much easier to get a refill. You won't believe how fast we go through our liquor cart.

The weather in New York is cold and breezy, with a 30 percent chance of snow. But why am I telling you that? By the time we get there, it might be summer.

Of course, there is still a possibility the status of this flight will be changed to "delayed indefinitely" from its current status of "delayed definitely." If that happens, you may be asked to disembark immediately. With that in mind, I would advise you not to get too comfortable. You may recline your seat and stretch your legs, but please don't change into your pajamas.

By making the captain of the plane speak up the anguish of harried passengers and exaggerating their travails (the aircraft remaining stationary and passengers waiting for months rather than hours, for instance), the writer has made the humor even more hard-hitting.

The unexpected, unusual, or uncanny

Umm, too many uns there—understandably! Hey, don’t dwell too much on the last sentence, it’s just un aside.

But then, the point I wish to make here is, you go on and on trying to write something funny and people wouldn’t just notice. Unlike a stage comedian, you can’t make faces or let out a scream or do some of the weird stuff that comedians do. So what’s a poor writer like you gonna do?

This is where the next tool in our arsenal comes into play: surprise, amaze or shock your readers with something out of the box. It could be a different writing style or jargon, something people aren’t familiar with or don’t expect in the normal scheme of things, or something that simply seems extra-terrestrial.

Douglas Adams, in his widely read book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, comes up with some amazing stuff in this league. (Needless to say, his best-selling success was due as much to his comedic skills as to his sci-fi acumen.) Sample this:

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.

See how the writer, besides coining funny names, describes the weird—or shall we say gut-wrenching—outcome that maudlin poetry can have.

To cite another example of humor created with the unexpected or the unusual, The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson begins thus:

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.

When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there for ever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can’t wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there for ever and ever.

The writer throws up a very unusual but curious mixture of two sentences in the very first para—and hooks the reader for good. Through the misadventures of the local residents of Des Moine in seeking a living out of the city and yet ending up within its confines, he further builds upon the comic portrayal in a rather unusual way.

Which brings me to the end of this how-to post that, I hope, will help you with some comic relief in your articles, scripts or books. And while I have laid out some humor tools here, to be honest, many more of such tools can exist, depending on how you cut it. But if you were to consider this article as a humor toolbox or Swiss Army knife, you’d probably find that it contains some of the most-often-used screwdrivers, pliers, cutters and spanners, all right.

Now, how you wield each of these tools separately or how you use a combination of them (you must have realized that the samples of humor write-ups given above often take advantage of more than one tool) will decide the contours of your own piece as you chisel it out. So, happy writing!

Finally, here’s the joke that I started with and had promised to finish before I bid adieu:

A man walks into a bar and orders himself a drink. After sitting alone for a few minutes, he hears a voice say, "Nice shirt." He looks all around him but can't see anybody near. 

He turns back around to finish his drink and hears the same voice again, "Nice haircut." This time he looks everywhere in the room; behind him, around the room, under his seat, but still he doesn't see anyone. 

A few minutes later he hears, "Nice tie." By this stage he's getting a bit worried, so he calls the bartender over and tells him he has been hearing this voice saying "nice tie”, “nice haircut”, “nice shirt”, etc. 

The bartender laughs, "Oh that! That's just the beer nuts. They're complimentary."

Keep smiling, writing and drinking—not necessarily beer :)

[NOTE: The above post has been adapted from an online course on ‘Humor in Writing’ that I had written in one of my previous lives as a freelancer. The site I wrote it for is now dead, but I managed to resurrect this piece from my digital attic.]

Thinking about Meditation on Yoga Day

Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

In the vast expanse that is yoga, there’s a mountain I believe shines above everything else. Like the Himalayas, for instance, which rise above the surrounding plains and valleys in a way that has been beckoning explorers for ages.

That majestic mountain I’m pointing to is meditation.

For the past seven years that I’ve been meditating (in my modest room or the local park, not in a cave), it has steadily grown as a rock-solid anchor in my life. And while I’ve written a few posts on meditation before, it’s a topic I can return to, again and again.

In my conversations with friends and strangers alike, one question that often pops up is what meditation really is, how to define it, or what all it involves. If you sit still cross-legged, close your eyes and try not to think, are you meditating? How long can you stay in a meditative state? What meditation app would I recommend? And so on.

Just out of curiosity, when I checked the Google Play Store, I was surprised to find that there is a bewildering array of apps one can download for meditation. Maybe there’s a huge market for that and people are willing to make money on one side and pay for learning the ropes of meditation on the other. But thus far, I haven’t felt compelled to try any of these apps out, staying content instead with my own practice, method and quirks.

After seven years, I’m only beginning to feel confident about what meditation is and what it is not. And I continue to grapple with how to capture this wonderful phenomenon beautifully and succinctly in words.

I wouldn’t call them textbook or dictionary definitions but let me share a few thoughts I have had on meditation. Some of these I may have shared before in other posts or tweets, so please pardon me in case it sounds repetitive.

I like to call them meditations on meditation.

Like most good things in life, I believe that meditation is a journey, a process, something that goes on—and not an achievement or destination you can think of in terms of going from A to B. (Except perhaps when you consider attaining Samadhi, the final stage of meditation under Ashtanga Yoga. And that is something only the rarest of yogis are said to be capable of. You can read about about the eight limbs of yoga and some interesting anecdotes in my blog post, “Beyond Asana: Yoga, its Ancient Roots…”)

Hope you’ll enjoy reading and reflecting on these “meditations” as much as I did putting them into words:

~ Meditation is the process of setting yourself free from the prison of your own desires.

~ Meditation is neither slumber nor a sprint; it’s a walk in the garden of spiritual delights.

~ The essence of meditation is to be with yourself for as long as you wish in an inner atmosphere of freedom, trust and tranquility.

~ Meditation takes you away from the torrent of oppressive thoughts into the inexplicable joy of stillness.

~ Meditation is the crucible of the soul.

~ Meditation is the process of churning your soul to receive the milk of divine consciousness.

~ Meditation allows you to dispassionately engage with the whole universe.

~ Meditation is the silent wellspring of wisdom.

~ Meditation is the key to transforming your monkey mind into a monk.

And last but not the least, a favorite of mine:

~ Meditation is an uplifting journey from Trishna to Krishna.

(Trishna means covetous longing or craving. Krishna is one of Hindu God Vishnu’s avatars on earth in some distant past that some call Itihaas or history and others term mythology. For me, the idea of “Trishna to Krishna” implies living a life of longing, and then moving on to join our individual soul with the supreme soul. This notion is embedded into the very word yoga, which is derived from the Sanskrit root “yuj” that means “to join”.)

So, happy meditating! I look forward to your views and comments.

Namaskar :)


Disclaimer: While I often refer to and personally like the Hindu philosophy because I find it the most diverse, deep and liberal among all worldviews, I constantly seek to learn from the best of all other belief systems with an open mind.

Can we #rethink the corporation for a more #compassionate world?

Site where George Floyd was killed. Pic by Fibonacci Blue / Creative Commons

Just when we thought the world was in the grip of the novel coronavirus and the virus alone, out poured news, pictures and videos of protests across the US.

Elsewhere in third-world India, the constant stream of weary, hungry and impoverished migrant workers continued their long walk to their respective home villages.

“I can’t breathe,” the choked words of George Floyd from under the knee of Derek Chauvin on a fateful May day in Minneapolis continue to haunt me as also, I’m sure, millions of humans across the globe.

#BlackLivesMatter was trending once again, but not before Floyd succumbed to a combination of factors, including the strain on his neck and chest as the white police officer pressed on for much longer than he should have. Was it necessary at all?

What is necessary, in my humble opinion, in the distraught world of today is for powerful corporations to take up the baton for humanity. A baton that our so-called world leaders seem to have either forsaken or, worse, using it instead to beat down the already oppressed and the underprivileged.

“Why corporations?” one might ask. I know corporations are not designed for the general good or thought to be operating that way, even though most of them have tacked on the CSR label in their annual reports. The key words for them are “profit motive” and “shareholder value.”

Corporations are also known to play it safe (especially in India, for instance) and avoid doing anything or making statements that may put them in the crosshairs of incumbent governments—even if that would be the right thing to do per the prevailing sense of civility, equality or justice.

But there are signs of a groundswell of change. And it is my sincere hope that this wave becomes a force to reckon with and sweeps much of the world for years to come, wherever political and economic oppression takes place.

Is the corporate tide turning?

While some outspoken CEOs and business leaders have made the right noises in the past whenever a widely reported instance of injustice, racial or otherwise, came to light, I think it’s perhaps for the first time a continuing stream of influential voices is visible.

“Corporate America is adding its voice to the protests sweeping the country following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, promising to make their companies anti-racist, announcing contributions to civil rights organizations and using words like “abhorrent” and “senseless” to speak out more strongly against police violence and racism” reads the opening graf of a Washington Post report, very aptly headlined “With protests, silence is ‘not an option’ for Corporate America”.

There’s a flurry of activity on Twitter, whose CEO Jack Dorsey has newly emerged as something of a hero (though a controversial one at that) who dared to take on the mighty misinformation machine also known as Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Trump happens to be the current president of the USA, the most powerful nation on earth that so many others look up to.

One indication why I think that things are a bit different this time when it comes to corporations doing their bit, at least in speaking up, is that there’s a whole spreadsheet of statements by some leading tech companies on racial justice, the BLM movement and the Floyd episode. It’s compiled by The Plug (Twitter handle: @tpinsights), a curator of news about black founders and innovators. (While there are several contributors, the owner of the sheet is another Dorsey, Sherrell. The two are not related I think.)

Emphatically coming out in support by such powerful corporations as Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Merck and others, I believe, is the need of the hour. Their millions of employees across the world look up to the leaders at the helm to soothe their collective anger and do something—anything—to set things right.

Talking of my own experience, for instance, I felt good when Girish Mathrubootham, the CEO of Freshworks where I currently work, shared in a town hall that the company opted for a “no-one left behind strategy” when the livelihoods of suppliers and vendors were at risk due to the nationwide lockdown announced in India late March. (It meant continuing to pay those suppliers and vendors during the lockdown, in addition to paying salaries to the regular employees.) 

Different companies would, of course, commit resources differently to a cause, depending on their financial status, reputation and inclination. But knowing that they do care for good causes and for the society at large—and not merely their own assets and short-term profits—is a welcome change in a weird world.

What is making the world increasingly weird, and in fact, inhabitable, is the lust for power and unhindered greed to exploit people and the limited resources of the earth. Covid and racial unrest are, in all probability, merely symbols of a bigger malaise.

I’m not going to cite statistics here, but in the age of information glut available at a click or two, it shouldn’t be difficult to come round to the view that global disparities and inequities are growing alarmingly (barring a few exceptions perhaps, such as the Scandinavian countries). Why, look at the UN’s Human Development Index or the ‘most livable cities’ studies for different countries if you wish. 

All these traits—lust for power, greed, hatred for the other—are nothing new to humanity, I know. But while in earlier times when the people of a land lived by the generosity or cruelty of the king or the queen who ruled them, in an increasingly industrialized and ‘information’ized world, the power to make a difference to the quality and dignity in the lives for tens of millions is getting concentrated in the hands of the giant global corporations. The annual revenue generated by some of them, in fact, rivals or exceeds the gross domestic products of entire countries.

Some of what I’m saying may seem a bit out of sync in a time when nationalism, not globalism, is the new mantra. But I’m not sure if we can simply yank ourselves away from the complex global supply chains and lazy habits we have been honing to perfection all these years. Personally, I think it might do the planet some good to move toward more local setups for manufacturing and food production as well as distribution.

Nevertheless, the growing significance of corporations in their respective regions—and the sway they have with political leaders—may not change all that much anytime soon.

Which is why I believe that corporations can become the new change agents for the society at large. We all know the power of brands, which are owned by corporations. To bring any significant change at an impactful scale, however, they must balance their political influence with the pull of their brands for responsible consumption and the engagement of their employees for effective implementation.

For this to happen, the very structure and purpose of the corporation will have to be rethought and redefined—from profiteering and short-termism to long-term value generation and accountability for wellbeing of most people in their circle of influence. Out goes the quarterly obsession with shareholder value and in comes the drive to improve all stakeholders’ lives. No longer the need for cut-throat competition in a race to the bottom but a welcome coopetition to jointly nudge people toward the pinnacle of human aspirations (which, again, should be measured not in SUV-sizes or GDPs but in terms of happiness and health).

You get the idea.

And when a sufficient number of corporations are able to do that, maybe it becomes possible to weather Covid-like storms more humanely. Maybe the migrant workers will reach their homes in comfort and with dignity. Maybe the likes of Derek Chauvin would be compelled to take their knee off—or better still, wouldn’t feel the need to put it where it didn’t belong in the first place.

Why Things SHOULD NOT Go Back to Normal after Covid-19

When John Galt, the brilliant protagonist of Ayn Rand’s powerful book Atlas Shrugged, resolutely said that he would “stop the motor of the world,” neither he nor his creator Rand could have imagined living in the times of novel coronavirus.

And as billions of people across the globe remain locked down in homes and shelters, the virus does seem to have turned John Galt’s fictional words to reality—albeit with different philosophical connotations.

The world’s motor is sputtering, if not completely halted.

In the middle of a lot of human misery and thousands of deaths, the lens through which people see their place in nature is casting some cathartic visions of the future.

The questions that are bubbling up in people’s minds are as varied as our existential needs. Whatever will happen to the world economy, already facing downturn in several regions? How will people be fed if there are not enough food provisions during and immediately after the pandemic, especially as agriculture and manufacturing remain in dire straits? Will people lose their minds (besides jobs) after prolonged confinement? Is this all due to some god’s curse and we are getting the disease as a punishment for our past sins?

Needless to say, as the world waits with bated breath and sanitized sneezes, a majority of denizens are raring to go back to the life of rampant travel and conspicuous consumption they have gotten so used to. Especially in the decades past World War II, as industrialization took a global strangle-hold, oil flowed freely, and factories churned out objects of desire frenetically, generation upon generation gorged on the world’s newfound prosperity. Hedonistic optimists hailed productivity gains, ever-faster computers, and shorter product life-cycles as the arrival of the Age of Abundance.

Now, with all that prosperity in retreat and a vaccine for the virus months away, the world appears headed toward gloom and doom.

But something else was also noticed—and appreciated—as the current lockdown lengthened from days into weeks. As the roads remained empty and the chimneys stopped billowing tons of carbon into the atmosphere, both birds and people cooed in unison. “Look ma, no pollution!” Pictures and videos of never-seen-before behavior of birds, beasts, and mother nature were shared enthusiastically on social media. 

This dichotomy presents an opportunity disguised as a threat. The challenge is, how to crank up the industry and the economy back to normalcy without losing sight of those wonderful pictures of nature reclaiming its glory? If anything, statesmen and economists would argue, the months lost to Covid-19 need to be made up for by pressing the pedal on production and growth. “Stimulus” should be the key word, no?

Without a moment’s hesitation, I must say, “No.” Instead, let’s use the pause button we have already pressed as a real moment in our relentless economic march to reflect, reset, and restore: Reflect on our ways of achieving growth and producing tons of unnecessary or non-durable stuff, reset our needs to responsible consumption and behavior (something we are learning in lockdown but can practice in freedom as well), and restore a bit, just a wee bit, of the majesty of the natural world around us.

This, I know, will not be easy. But we must make a start somewhere—and the current moment seems apt. By pooling the best technical talent and advancements, as well as the resources of governments and philanthropic billionaires (some of whom are showing exemplary initiative and kindness of late), we must attempt, at a global scale, to live more in harmony with other beings who...Also. Breathe. This. Only. Living. Planet’s. Air. Just as we do. But who are not in a position to change our overall collective destiny through small but significant tweaks in behavior—by stopping to eat human beings for crave’s sake, for instance.

Let’s bat for all life on earth.

The Five People I Meet in (My Walking) Heaven

I must have been walking since I was a toddler. Of late, however, I rediscovered the joy of putting my feet forward one step at a time.

It has been almost two years since I revived the good old habit that most elders in India still swear by: the morning walk. Each day, at slightly varying times as the sun rises, I pull myself out of bed, freshen up, and head out to the nearby public park. There, in the company of fellow walkers, birds and squirrels, I walk—first in a rambling, easy manner, and then at the brisk pace advised by doctors to diabetics like me.

There is a certain heavenly freshness and vitality during the morning. The quality of the breeze amidst all those plants and trees is indeed something else. 

My walks have once again brought me closer to nature and allowed me to take a bite of this divinity—before the devils of everyday living claim the remains of the day.

In these morning walks, as I move along the footpath that goes across the park as well as encircles it (‘enrectangles’ it, rather), I notice scores of people walking, jogging or just wondering what brought them here. Some of them do make me curious. 

After months into my routine, I began filtering out the “regulars” from the “occasionals” and the “not-seen-befores”—even as I made no conscious effort for this mental segregation. These things happen on their own, no?

And then, gradually, among the regulars, there emerged five souls that particularly caught my attention.

Initially, for a few days, I just ignored their presence. But as time went on, I couldn’t help but notice their peculiarities. Now, they have become as much of a habit as my two-speed walking ritual.

Let me introduce you to each of these five people I keep meeting in my walking heaven. 

The speechless soul

At first I thought there was no one behind me and it was an illusion. But there he was, when I stopped for a moment and allowed him to pass me by: a thin middle-aged hint of a man walking quietly and slowly. When I again encountered him in one of my rounds, I saw his face. I think I noticed a quivering movement of his lips but no words came out. He had a slight grayish stubble and a patch of cloth was sewn on his shirt, around the chest. It had a mobile number and an address. 

It is possible that this speechless soul has dementia or something and is prone to forgetting where he has to go after he finishes his long, quiet tours of the park. I often thought of asking him about the patch but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just let him be.

And as if in a quiet token of return appreciation, he allows me to pass by so that I can pick up pace if I so wish.

Lady first, lady second 

There are two ladies that do their “conversational rounds” in the direction opposite mine. I often catch phrases such as, “Aaj main gobhi banaoongi” (Today I’ll cook cabbage), “bahut zyada kha liya” (ate too much) and “Meri kahan koi sunta hai?” (But who listens to me?) 

It took me a while to figure out that most such phrases escaped from the jaws of only one of the dames. The other lady would mostly nod or speak in monosyllables. And the more she would listen, the more our chatterbox would let loose—primarily complaints and recipes of a bewildering variety. The lady who claimed that nobody listened to her indeed had an ear tuned toward her at an optimal frequency each morning.

The always-on talker

Then there was this boy—must be in his early twenties—who would pace a particular portion of the path while talking on his mobile. He had so much to talk and so little to walk (on). Each day, I noticed, he would choose a particular spot, pace back and forth for about 20-30 feet, and go yakking into his beloved device. 

Sometimes, as is the habit of a lot of folks in India, he would put that part of the phone where the speakers are, close to his ears and listen for a few minutes—then he would put it to his lips and speak for another few minutes. And he would go on doing this alternately for countless number of times. 

Once in a while, he would stop pacing and find a place to sit down. But his phone talk would go on uninterrupted.

I think he is a morning talker.

The bucket buddy

Among the five, he is my favorite. Each morning I see this guy wearing pajamas and carrying a bucketful of water to fill up the small earthen pots kept underneath certain trees. These are meant for the birds of the park but usually get depleted by the end of each day. Our man would repeatedly fill his bucket at one of the taps in the park and walk around, looking for empty pots. One by one, he would refill them until each had sufficient water for the chirping thirsty.

I often thank him silently on behalf of our winged friends and admire his commitment to do this simple act of goodness, day after day.

I haven’t really “met met” these five people. But I do greet them in my mind when I see them in our shared space—and continue to be amazed and amused with what I end up observing.

Now, did I just see a red-vented bulbul flit past, mocking me with a curious song as it landed on a twig?

I guess so :)

Will AI help companies deliver better CX in a multi-experience future?

Image: Freshworks

Customer experience (CX) may mean different things to different companies but it means only one thing to customers: whether they liked what a company offered or not in a given context or setting. And whether they are going to have that offering again—and, yes, whether they would grab anything else the company wants to sell them. Perhaps they would also spread the good word on the product or service used.

Alas, in most cases, it is the bad word that gets thrown around—often wildly and out of the company’s control into the ruthless arenas of social media.

For the past several years, most organizations have responded by throwing back more and more technology to fix their CX efforts. According to research firm Gartner, global spending on customer experience and relationship management (CRM) software reached $48.2 billion in 2018, a growth of 15.6% over the previous year.

But, despite the rising expenditure on tech and the best intentions of companies, the struggle to get a handle on customers and delight them with exceptional support and service continues. So, what is going on here? What challenges are companies facing in putting together a complete picture of their customers and serving them better? Whatever happened to the promise that up and coming technologies such as chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) were supposed to hold in equipping organizations with the wherewithals to delight their customers (and do so at lower costs)?

We spoke to a few industry analysts and experts to dig deeper and see what gives.

One of the fundamental problems, they say, has to do with the ability to use the right data to get a comprehensive view of the customer. “After all these years, having a 360-degree view of the customer is still on the agenda for companies. One of the issues here is, what do you understand by a 360-degree view? Is it an electronic Rolodex? Is it an extended set of data about the customer, something that different vendor tools are now increasingly exchanging? Or is it something else?” says Brian Manusama, a senior director analyst at Gartner.

On his part, he offers a simple, functional definition. “If you ask me, it is the right data in order to serve your customers well. It can have just two or three components or even hundreds of components, including different metrics such as customer sentiment or behavior,” he avers.

There are other aspects to this challenge. According to Ray Wang, principal analyst, founder, and chairman of Constellation Research, “On the one hand, most companies don’t have access to all their internal data. This lives in siloed departmental systems that rarely talk to each other. On the other hand, most companies now rely on more external data which is often seen as not secure, not as safe, and in different data formats. The last part is that data often does not tie back to business processes or journeys—which means it’s hard to determine a recommendation or next best action.”

The ‘recommendation or next best action’ typically refers to suggestive responses provided by the AI engine that is increasingly getting embedded in chatbots, CRM, and other business software. Such recommendations are based on a knowledge repository comprising standard answers mapped to frequently asked questions, previous customer interactions, etc. It is now common industry wisdom that for better recommendations, it is necessary to have a rich data repository and a finely tuned machine learning model.

Wang points to a basic flaw in how most organizations have traditionally dealt with customer experience. “Most [customer] journeys have been designed for internal efficiency, not external efficiency. Customers don’t care what department you are in and this means the design point must revolve around the customer,” he says. To correct this anomaly, a lot of organizations are now “retooling” to support this from an internal process and technology point of view.

Another big headache for companies is to make their disparate CX systems talk to each other and work as an integrated solution. Today, there is a dearth of holistic solutions that can manage the entire customer lifecycle—from acquisition to retention to life-time value (LTV) management. “There are different piecemeal offerings from different solution providers. For example, there are a lot of sales analytics companies out there who help sales teams optimize their processes; likewise, there are a lot of marketing attribution and automation software that have AI capabilities to help marketers spend their budgets more optimally and so on. Similarly, on the customer success side, there are tools for churn prediction and other areas, but the overall customer journey stack is broken,” says Swaminathan Padmanabhan, director of data science at Freshworks.

According to him, it will be of fundamental value to customers “if we can tie all these capabilities together.”

A multi-experience world
Customers are now interacting with brands through a complex mesh of interfaces and touchpoints—physical as well as digital. “Do you know how many different ways one can order pizza from Domino’s? Twenty four!” says Manusama by way of an example. Such ordering ease includes the use of phone, text, social media, and voice assistants, besides showing up at physical stores and giving the order over the counter.

“We are moving toward a multi-experience world with three different modalities of customer experience across multiple digital touchpoints—gesture, text, and voice,” he says. At Gartner, analysts now call upon tech leaders to get ready to serve ‘the everything customer’—one who requires conflicting things at the same time: to be treated like everybody else but served on their own unique terms, to be connected yet sometimes left alone.

When it comes to customer experience, companies are compelled to move from a reactive way of working to a more proactive way. And while this complexity is generally good for customers, as it gives them more choice and hands them greater control over how they want to be served, it leaves companies in a constant state of flux.

The growing role of AI
Analytics and AI are playing a more important role than ever in improving customer experience, according to Wang. “We are moving from gut-driven to data-driven decisions and this requires a ton of analytics to quantify and anticipate customer needs and requirements,” he says. The rising capabilities of AI offer hope to organizations. “Over time, machine learning will support precision decisions, which means better personalization, fraud detection, and customer  experience,” says Wang. He doesn’t hesitate to call AI “the biggest shift” in CX.

Padmanabhan refers to a six-layer maturity model of AI to lay out the path ahead for customer engagement. In increasing order of sophistication and capabilities, these layers are Data Representation Layer, Knowledge Layer, Ranking and Relevance Layer, Forecasting Layer, Recommendation Layer, and Autopilot Layer. In his opinion, most companies and systems today are operating at the Ranking and Relevance Layer.

“For example, when a customer query comes up, the bot ranks the different solution artefacts and suggests the best solution artefact. Similarly, when you have a bunch of sales leads, the lead scoring system ranks them according to their probability of conversion,” he explains.

As the AI system matures, one can expect AI-based recommendations such as “increase the ad budget by 15% to 20% for a 10% increase in customer acquisitions” or “use this workflow to optimize customer experience” and other actionable insights like these.

The pinnacle of AI capability, according to Padmanabhan, would be realized in the Autopilot Layer. As the name suggests, at this level, AI can replace some common functions performed by service agents or other team members. Rather than recommend something to be done, an AI can execute it as well.

 Not that AI will possibly replace humans fully—nor is that the direction taken by companies or recommended by experts. “Today, we don’t say that we are going to completely replace human labour but say there are a lot of repetitive tasks that are involved in the support workflow or the sales workflow or the customer success workflow which can be automated. So the agents’ time can be better spent by using AI,” says Padmanabhan.

Keeping the human element in customer engagement while still using AI is “actually a question of service design,” says Manusama. What customers want are four things in how they are served: effortless, quick, convenient, and seamless across different channels. “Many companies are discovering that they can do this through self-service. However, for more complex situations, having the human touch will often be more relevant or appropriate. Basically, companies need to answer this question: Where is the business value getting generated for my customers?” he adds.

Another trend he sees is customer service vendors consolidating their solutions into engagement clouds. “Silos that existed previously are getting broken down,” he observes.

Wang’s bet is on a future built around “ambient experiences”. What we have to ask ourselves, he says, is this: When do we automate, when do we augment with humans, and when is something a pure human interaction.

The role of engagement clouds or customer engagement platforms assumes greater significance in this context.  “We need common data models, great integration, and very good journey orchestration. You can do it in platforms or you can do it with really good tooling. I’m betting that the platforms will do 80% of the work and the tooling will carry the other 20%,” says Wang.

Whichever way organizations tilt, AI is likely to play a greater role in a multi-touch, multi-experience world. Now, depending on how they are able to lend a helping hand—through automation with a smile or by being pesky or ‘unintelligent’—customers will choose to give them a thumbs up or thumbs down.

(This blog post, which I wrote as a lead editor in the corporate marketing team at Freshworks, first appeared on www.freshworks.com.)

How to be One with Nature—Really

Each day as I drive to work or roam around the streets of Delhi I come across tens of thousands of enlightened beings. Humans have given them a simple, elegant name: trees.

No matter how crazy the traffic or hopeless the mess in the city, trees bring not only a breath of fresh air but a sense of calm and serenity.

Wasn’t it the poet Joyce Kilmer who wrote “But only God can make a tree”?

Well, this post is not about God but about nature—though for many, perhaps for me as well, the two ideas are inseparable. And the most immediate, intimate symbol I think of, whenever I think of nature, is the tree.

Recently I came across the phrase “to be one with nature” for the umpteenth time. And lo and behold, the image of a magnificent, lush, life-giving tree sprang to my mind.

But what does it really mean to be one with nature? And how do you do it, especially in a world where, increasingly, people live in concrete rather than green jungles?

First off, I thought I would say something about the origin of the phrase “to be one with nature” and sought Google’s help. Several combinations of keywords later, however, I realized that the search giant was as clueless as I—although I must thank it for the rich harvest of articles mentioning the phrase my search turned up.

Never mind the origin. Let's talk about its prevalence and effect.

I suspect most of us intuitively know what we mean when we want to be one with nature or hear someone express this wish. But have we tried describing it? And do we all experience it in the same way? What happens in that moment, really?

The most obvious, and perhaps most awesome, way to be one with nature is to go on a nature trail in a pristine forest. Where the greenery is thick and the scent of dew permeates the atmosphere. Where the sun's rays play hide and seek with the leaves. And where the sound of water gurgling in the brook next to you lulls you into a peace you never knew existed.

In such a serene backdrop, being one with nature possibly means the feeling of freshness and quiet and connectedness to everything alive around us.

Yes, I've felt it, this right-in-the-lap-of-nature kind of being one with nature.

But there have been other occasions as well, when I think I have been touched by that oneness without the luxury of being wrapped in nature’s majesty. 

I recently spent a year in Mumbai, working for a media company. There was a nice terrace, overlooking the railway lines, on the ninth floor of the office building. In my tea breaks, I would often stand there and watch black kites circling nearby. Once in a while, they would spot some prey on the ground and swoop down to catch it in their talons. But mostly, they would just swim around in the air, making spirals from high up to down below and then up again. Their motion was graceful and their outspread wings magnificent. I sometimes stood motionless, admiring their skill and poise.

A similar feeling of oneness fills me when I watch children play. Children are at their natural best when they laugh—and nothing brings me more joy than a bubbling bunch of kids laughing together. When I was in school, I often got punished for making other students sitting around me laugh. Needless to say, I never minded the scoldings.

I remember there was rain and hailstorm a few years back in Delhi when I, along with a few other office goers, caught myself scampering for cover. I took refuge in the colonnade of Connaught Place’s inner circle. There, I saw four or five boys in their preteens making merry in the downpour—completely in the buff. But they had no awareness of their naked bodies, drenched as they were in their natural tendency to extract happiness from whatever life brought them. Impulsively, the most adventurous of them slid down the ramp around a lift built for Metro passengers. The others soon followed suit, sliding down the smooth, granite-paved surface with an abandon only children know. My heart skipped a beat and a smile appeared on my previously somber face.

Sometime in high school, when I took to the more serious pastime of reading, being one with nature had an echo in me through the beauty of the written word. It still does—when the words of an author resonate in my mind long after I’ve finished a passage or a book. Sometimes, I wonder who wouldn’t be moved to ‘oneness’ reading or hearing such beautiful prose or poetry. Sample below some of my favorites:

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

- Albert Camus

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

 - John Keats

Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. He felt that he had now completely learned the art of listening. He'd often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. He could no longer distinguish the different voices—the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. They're all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.

- Hermann Hesse

To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I.”

- Ayn Rand

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

- Ernest Hemingway

And then, there are several tiny little things that can lift my spirits into that wholeness, that unity. 

Listening to a piece of soulful music is one such. When I listened to Blue Story by Deep Forest for the first time for instance, and I mean really listened and not just play it casually on my playlist, I felt a tributary of calm flow inside me that went meandering alongside its soothing notes. I felt fulfilled. Rejuvenated. Eased. The song has stayed with me ever since as a constant companion of quiet happiness.

Another is sipping tea or coffee, either in the quietude of your personal space or even amidst the white noise in a cafeteria. You sit down in comfort, holding the warm cup snugly. Then you put your face to it, smelling the aroma and letting the little clouds engulf you and mingle with your mood. And then you take the first slow, deliberate, lasting sip. The sweet warmth fills you with sheer joy. What more can one want in life?

A lot, apparently :)

That’s why most of us spend the major part of our life running after and acquiring things we may want but not necessarily need.

And sometimes, smack-dab in the middle of all that stuff, we overhear ourselves say, “What would I not give to be one with nature?”

As for me, I sit down every single day and explore what I think is possibly the best way to be one with nature—and oneself. It’s a ritual that’s been done and refined over thousands of years as practiced by novices, experts, Buddhist monks, and (true) spiritual gurus: meditation. Not only does it allow me to enter a unique realm of peace and quiet, it often uplifts my spirits high enough to feel drunk on the nectar of life.

Meditation, I feel, is a walk in the garden of spiritual delights. Call it my daily dose of being one with nature if you will. 

May the force of nature be with you.