Whatever is your age, multiply it by 365. Then multiply the total with 24. Write down the total with a thick felt pen in big bold font on a paper. Paste it on a wall. This is the number of hours your body, your mind, your system has been working non-stop. Now stare at this number for 15 minutes and think of all the breaks you took… alone… from the world…. from everything… your family, work, city, laptop, wallet, gym, phone and anything that is other than your body and some basic clothes…. Now count the number of hours in those breaks when you did nothing… you just sat under a tree…. strolled in the woods, slowly…. or stayed still in a bed… in a hammock… with no food choices, no recreation… no, nothing. Just you with yourself. No purpose, no deadline, no day, no night…nobody waiting for you… nobody to answer to… lost… disappeared… with no address…. In a state a waking coma. A state of stillness. That’s the number of times you have rebooted yourself. Now calculate the numbers of hours you have been in this state of stillness. Write down this number. Divide these numbers and find out the ratio.
Can you calculate roughly how may hours you have used your computer? Can you also try to remember the number of times you have rebooted your computer? Now divide these numbers and find out the ratio.
Compare both the ratios.
You know what am I getting at. If you reboot your computer system so often then what is the reason you don’t ever think about rebooting yourself. Taking a holiday, a small break or a weekend getaway is most certainly not rebooting your system. Your body, your arteries, nerves, lungs, intestines, brain cells… every pore of your body is working non-stop to keep you going. Going away from your surroundings, taking selfies in front of a monument with family, drinking in a bar on a Saturday night, binge watching a show on Netflix or just a romantic weekend in a safari lodge or walking on a tourist beach is not rebooting. It’s exactly what it is… taking a break. But in this break the mind, body and soul are still engaged. On a holiday we are constantly engaged with travel, hotels, ticketing, taxi booking, shopping etc. even on a holiday in the nature we are engaged with plans to see sunrise, going on a trek, trying various foods, camping etc. We are calculating the altitude on our smartphone, temperature, routes, directions, places to visit etc. The yoga getaways, motivational workshops etc actually are just diverting our engagement from a daily routine to a different routine.
I am talking about being in a state of no engagement, no choice, no plan, no human contact. Just land in any place which you can handle , spend a period of nothing and fly back. End result – Where did you go? Nowhere. What did you do? Nothing? What was your experience? Nothing.
It may sound difficult. In fact when I speak about it in lectures people can’t comprehend how is this possible. But I speak from experience. I do it often. It’s difficult as long as you think from the paradigm of a city. As long as you feel attached, it may not be possible and that’s exactly why you need to go away. To be in phases of detachment. The moment we are detached, we are lighter. Like how a computer’s performance changes when you delete files and create space. You realise those files are not needed. Human body and mind work on auto gear.As long as you are engaged, it saves all the files not knowing when you may need it for survival. As soon as you move in a no-engagement zone, it starts clearing all the unnecessary files from your system. In few days you can feel your arteries because the mind is free and it can focus on the most important thing in the world – you.
Your soul gets time to talk to you. Each time you breath, you can feel the air inside you. You can feel every pore of your body only to wonder at the marvel of God for creating so many pores, each pore with its unique purpose. By and by, you get in a zone from where you don’t even need to wonder about connecting with God because you feel Godly. You feel the connection, the wiring, the wi-fi that connects you with a larger system. Once you are rebooted, you can come back to your city. Now you know that you may be attached to the world around you but you are connected to a different world. And the only way to reach there is when you detach yourself, from time to time, until you are fully detached.
In that detachment, the world becomes more beautiful. More peaceful. More liveable. And more purposeful.
Don’t wait. Go, reboot yourself. Be #IAmBuddha.
Note: you can also contribute to this column by sending your ideas, stories, fables, anecdotes. I’ll use them with due credits.
