Game of Sudoku mirrors life

Su means number and Doku means single. The game of Sudoku has many similarities to the game of life. The game consists of a 9x9 grid divided into nine 3x3 boxes in which a few numbers called "given" - the number of givens varies between 17 and 30 for a puzzle to be reasonably viable - are already in place.

In life, too, you start with a given set of vasanas and then work from then on. In Sudoku, you need to follow a set of rules to build up the grid, filling each row, column and box with numbers ranging from one to nine, so much like in life where you have to go your way without antagonising anyone else, maintaining peace and harmony in all relationships. Respect every number (everyone) and things would be just fine. While trial and error may or may not work, the correc technique is in eliminating the numbers that don't fit in a particular box. In other words, keep eliminating your faults for progress in life. The grid is the same every time, the numbers keep changing. The soul is the same in all, just the bodies are different.

In Sudoku, the arrangement of the given numbers is symmetrical. Even if you rotate the puzzle through 180 degrees the pattern of the filled-in squares remains the same. This is instructive in life, on how to maintain steadfast faith, poise and equanimity despite situations when everything turns topsy-turvy. Often at first glance when the givens are few, you are numbed into inaction. Realise, the puzzle is there to be solved, so just go ahead and do your duty. Solve a couple of easy ones and sooner or later the ego gets in the way and you are stuck in the next puzzle. Analyse your life, more often than not you'll clearly see how your ego has been the stumbling block.

While playing, you never think of the end (the result); you just keep working on the numbers and the final result (fruits of action) accrues on its own. Extremely difficult puzzles may take hours.
Similarly, to achieve desired results in life may take years. According to the law of karma, fruits of action in some cases might fructify after successive births!

Now and then you get attached to a particular number and are hell-bent on fitting it in, in any which way; it seems like big trouble. Just let go of your attachments and things will work out on their own. The game of Sudoku and the game of life are best played in a calm but focused state. Everything has to go in tandem in a Sudoku grid: the rows, columns and squares. Ditto in life. Your duties towards your family, teachers, society and country all go on simultaneously. Variations in Sudoku include the diagonal, the odd and the even, the extended, overlap, and even the monster. Life too presents complexities in the form of loss, illness, death and failure. Patience, faith and continuous struggle is the key to both.

There could be an underlying subtle difference between Sudoku and life. Make a mistake and you can erase it and begin all over again in Sudoku. Not so in life. You can learn a lesson, though, and avoid making the same mistake in future. Hone your skills. Excel. Realise the singularity for the One and only Truth. For that is the solution, the answer, that arises out of a steady mind.

It's a dream-like world that seems illusory

At the end of the Mahabharata war Arjuna came to meet his grandfather Bhishma who was lying on a bed of arrows that Arjuna had shot. Bhishma was waiting for an auspicious day to leave his mortal coils. Arjuna asked: "Pitamah, where do you expect me to bury your body after you leave this earthly abode?" Bhishma smilingly said, "Bury my body in a place where i was not buried before". Accordingly, Arjuna selected a place on the banks of the Yamuna river and performed suitable rituals.

As he lifted the axe to dig the ground he heard a voice, 'Shatam Bhishma' which meant that Bhishma was buried here over hundred times. This shall mean that everyone of us is born and has died countless times ever since birth and death started happening on this universe.

This is what is called sansar, a word that not only means engaging in worldly life, but also includes birth and death in this world ad infinitum. This sansar is a long unending disease for which the sure and best medicine is true inquiry.

Wise men have said that we are not bound by maya or illusion in reality, but we only have the false feeling that we are bound by illusion. This delusion can only be averted by proper inquiry.

Once a herd of hundred donkeys was being taken on a hill by the owner of the herd. On the way he had to rest at an inn. He was afraid of his donkeys escaping at night while he would be asleep. But he did not have sufficient length of rope to tie them all; he only had a small length of rope which was hardly sufficient to tie one donkey. So he planned in such a way that he pretended tying the small rope around legs of each of the donkeys. In actual fact he did not tie the rope to any in the herd. Next morning when he pushed each donkey it hardly moved thinking that it was tied by its master. Only when he pretended to untie them did they begin to move.

Similarly, we too are led to think that we are bound by so many of our karmas or past deeds and hence we are made to suffer. We also undertake purification rituals to get over them. But in reality it is realisation that is needed. This realisation cannot happen even by performing hundreds of such rituals.

The realisation that this sansar is only dreamlike and the truth is beyond it helps one initially pass through the hurdles of life. That is why it is also said, 'Avicharena kritobadhah, vicharena nivartate', which means that we are bound to karmas only because of non-inquiry and the solution to it cannot be rituals but right inquiry to get at the truth. What has come by non-inquiry can only go by right inquiry.

Inquiry allows realisation of the truth; realisation of dreamnature of sansar and true nature of Self (atman). One may defy this dream theory. But to say that this world is created hardly arouses right reasoning for there need to exist a witness to such creation and this witness had to precede Creation.
Another reasoning to support the dream nature is that any creation ought to have a stuff for creation and this stuff should have been created earlier.

Move with the flow, learn to let go

We tend to cling to every object in our lives. We hold on to our profession, relationship or possession as if our entire world depends on them. We are so busy clinging to our own lives, that we have forgotten to live with the flow. We are afraid to move ahead, afraid to let go.

Life in essence is like an unobstructed, unrestrained, uncontrolled flow of a river. Life flows at its own pace and the ultimate source of all our pain and sufferings is our tendency to cling to and obstruct the flow. Professional life stagnates, relationships are broken, possessions are lost; all because we refused to let go when we were actually required to let things take their own course.

Why do we cling? We cling because change scares us; we cling because we are afraid to face the unknown, to face challenges; we cling because we feel secure if the status quo is maintained; we cling because we refuse to believe that life can never be static; because we refuse to accept the transience of everything; we believe that everything is in our hands. We do not have enough faith in life and that higher force which is omnipotent and omnipresent. In the chaos of existence, we have lost touch with our higher self. Most of us lead a life which is similar to that of a child who is lost in a crowd, separated from his guardians. He has nobody to place his faith on. He is afraid, insecure, suspicious about everyone and everything.

We live under the false illusion of having everything under our control. The spirit of getting things done becomes a problem when we continue to cling on even after we have exhorted all our efforts. We are overwhelmed by a sense of despair and disillusion when things move beyond our control. It is at this stage we need to learn to let go. Several times relationships are broken just because we tried too hard to make them work. We didn't give the breathing space they required to grow. We didn't let go and let them take their own course.

Professionally or personally, once all the efforts are made towards achieving a goal, we must learn to let go and let life take the best course. It might or might not be of one's choice, but if we have faith, we will realise that it inevitably is the best course. We need to believe that forces above us are far better equipped to make judgments for us. We must learn to have faith in their judgment. Letting go, however, does not mean turning into a fatalist. One cannot sit idle in life and expect life to take care of itself. Karma, the fulfilment of one's duties is the ultimate objective of all human existence and if we fail to fulfill our duties towards life, life inevitably fails us.

When God gives us dreams, He shares them with us. Whatever we consider our dreams, are actually His dreams and He gives us the capability to realise them. The part we are required to play is to ensure the optimum usage of the capabilities bestowed upon us. And once we have played our part with utmost honesty and effort, we need to let go, step aside and let God step in to fulfill our dreams. After all, they are His dreams, too.

Thundering waterfalls and puzzled monks

Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception of rest. The first painted a still, lone lake among the far-off mountains. The second created on canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch tree bending over the foam; and at the fork of the branch, almost wet with the cataract's spray, sat a robin on its nest. The first was stagnation; the last was rest, writes Drummond. Rest is not a sedative for the sick, but a tonic for the strong. It spells emancipation, illumination and transformation.

Our world is made up of vivid contrasts. There is the arid, barren, desert and there is the luxuriant oasis with waving palms. There are breathtaking mountain heights and there are the monotonous plains. Stagnation is to remain in a place that takes us nowhere. To choose to be like a lone lake is to refuse to grow and to move up to the next level. Mrs Charles Cowman says, when our spiritual garments are threadbare, our existence becomes as fruitless as the desert wastes. We dry up; our wandering is aimless; we live on the margin of life.

To live like the robin on a thundering waterfall, perched on the fork of a bent branch of a tree seems precarious and calculated to make us anxious, restless and fretful. If we image our lives as forever hanging on a precipice, we will remain afraid and unable to move forward. But if we image our nests, which are secure and protected perches we can rest on in the midst of life, we will move with the confidence and assurance that life is safe but it must in the end be all about spiritual growth. Assurance and confidence can come from learning to give. Often they come from receiving, which is an art.

Receiving the limitless grace of God enables us to set our sails by the eternal in what seems to us a mysterious, constantly changing and fathomless sea. It seems life is like a trackless ocean, vast and impersonal, moving on and on. Grace reminds us that the hand of God keeps track of us on trackless paths. Receiving needs no genius, no goodness, only want. Our real needs and wants are not those that are most apparent to us. The conditions we believe we need to grow are often not the conditions which promote true growth.

A monk who needed oil planted an olive sapling. Then he prayed for gentle showers for its tender roots, then for the sun to warm it and then for the frost to brace its tissues. He was puzzled to find the tree sparkling with frost but lifeless at the end and unable to supply his needs. In life, too, we lay down so many conditions that we are unable to grow spiritually.

The monk's brother housed in another cell had also planted a tree, but prayed for it to thrive and entrusted it and what it needed to God. The tree thrived because God supplied its needs knowing better than the monk all that it truly needed to survive.

We are painting our life sketches and planting our life trees. Some of us choose stagnation, others growth. If we remain caught up in superficialities, we finally stagnate. We have to go beyond and look for the truly abiding hidden in the surface turmoil and cries of the battlefield to discover true rest. We cannot paint both pictures at the same time. We choose either life or death.

the ironical after life

Once upon a time there was a little boy who didn't know whether to believe in ghosts or not. Various people had told him that such residuum of departed humans did indeed exist. He had also heard that when people with important unfinished business passed away without completing what they had set their hearts upon to accomplish, they hardly ever died well. The tug of earthly bonds then became so strong and overpowering that they couldn't cross over to the other side and, instead, lingered on in this world trying to complete their self-imposed task. But alas, it was a futile undertaking because without physical substance they could not effect any change and only ended up repeating trivial actions for all eternity.

Now this was powerful stuff for a little boy to digest and even though adolescence came and went and he grew into strapping manhood with a wife and kids in tow, those dire old thoughts never deserted him. Sure, he'd forget about it most of the time as there was a job to be held on to and social obligations to perform besides family duties and other responsibilities. But when he was alone with his thoughts at night - before sleep eventually stole over his eyes - he would return to face the question which had troubled him since childhood: Did ghosts exist? Or, as he grew more sophisticated in his thinking, was there "life" after death?

This line of intense private investigation led him slowly but surely down the path of unknown belief and no return till a time came when he suddenly found himself one day standing at the statistical end of decline. Yet, though his aged body was preparing to move into shut-down mode in many methodical ways, his brain was still functioning perfectly and hammering away with the same exuberance as always at questions of purpose and existence and mortality. For some people, some questions never get resolved and our hero was one of them. Thus it was sad for him when he died.

However, to this day his descendants say they can sometimes see the old man sitting on his favourite chair, staring out of the window. He doesn't do much else except seem to be lost in his own thoughts and looking a little frightened for that. In fact, some of his great grandchildren joke that he seems to be haunting only himself - such is his peculiar legacy. One so called psychic has even suggested the man probably has some unfinished business but can't remember what it is! Moral: Hit the delete key/ And unsave what is written/ To save the unwrit.

Think positive

When entrusted with a difficult assignment or a tough deadline at the workplace, an optimist focuses his energies on identifying a solution and charting out a roadmap. He nurtures a mental attitude that admits positive thoughts, words and images, leading to success and happiness.

Our attitudes are shaped through constant conditioning as a result of interactions with family, friends and environment. They are so ingrained in us that it is an uphill task to alter them. Positive thinking is a hallmark of an optimist professional, who expects to see brightness and sunshine everywhere. The language of an optimist is 'I will', 'I can', 'It's possible'. A pessimist would lose precious time just thinking about the problem. An optimist focuses on the solution, the pessimist on the problem. An optimist would introspect and figure out the disconnect between performance and expectations and try and bridge the gap, never losing sight of the goals.

When caught in the quagmire of negativity, one's misperceptions overcome one's logical thinking. These irrational themes are manifested in many ways:

Filtering:

We magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter the positive ones. For instance, you have been promoted and you've got a good increment. However, the percentage of the increment is a notch below your expectation. You focus on the latter instead of celebrating the former.

Personalising:

You hold yourself responsible for anything that goes wrong. If the team overshoots the project deadline by a day, you take complete responsibility and curse yourself.

Catastrophising:

You live in the realm of Murphy's Law, expecting anything that could possibly go wrong, will go wrong! E.g. if you are organising a training programme, you will anticipate that the trainer will not turn up, the equipment will fail and the participants will either not show up.

Polarising:

You look at things in white or black. So the boss is either excellent or nasty, the colleagues are supportive or uncooperative, team members are performing well or not at all.

Making Positive Thinking a Habit:

Evaluate Your Thinking:

Watch your thinking during the course of the day. Check yourself the moment you find yourself edging towards negative thoughts. E.g. Instead of lamenting over lack of resources, think of creative solutions. Similarly, don't get overawed by tasks that seem too complicated. They'll seem less daunting if you break them up into smaller units and then address them. If you think that you do not have the expertise in a particular area, look around for experts who can help you. Try and induce more of self acceptance and less of self criticism. This will enable you to relook at 'problems' at the work place as 'learning opportunities' and handle stress in a realistic and constructive manner.

Exercise Positive Affirmations

Susan Jeffers, noted self help author, avers that positive affirmation is a proven tool for steering clear of negativity and fear. She explains, "Positive affirmation is a strong positive statement telling us that all is well. With constant repetition of this uplifting and soothing statement, the voice of doom and gloom is replaced with thoughts of peace, power and love." Pin up positive affirmations like "It is all happening perfectly" or "I am powerful and I can do it" at your office desk or in your car, and look at it on your way to work. It has been demonstrated that just repeating, writing or thinking positive statements lend us strength, whether or not we believe them. And if we say affirmations often enough, we ultimately start believing in them! Positive affirmations can certainly arm us with resilience for facing adversity.

Associate With Positive People

Both positive and negative thoughts are contagious. At the workplace one often encounters unhappy souls, who find something wrong with almost everything around them. They point fingers when things go wrong, they grumble, moan and find fault. It helps to steer clear of these people as they rub off their attitude and state of mind on us. When we meet people, we are affected by their aura and thoughts consciously or subconsciously. Therefore, it helps to be in the midst of people who are optimistic, upbeat and happy.
Positive thinking can empower us in a way that would boost our self esteem, expand our comfort zone and envelope us with well being and health, thus paving way for personal and professional growth. It has been aptly said that a positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible!

Anger management

If all is God, why is there imperfection in the world? Negative emotions like lust, pride, attachment, anger, ego, greed and jealousy are distortions of love. These distortions manifest in animals also, but they have no way to go beyond them as they are bound by Nature. Endowed with the power of discrimination, human beings can move from these distortions to a state of pure love. Every sincere seeker wants to get rid of anger and reach a state of perfection. What can you do when anger rises in you? You may remind yourself a hundred times that you shouldn't get angry, but when you feel the anger, you are unable to control it. It comes like a thunderstorm. Emotions are much more powerful than your thoughts and the promises you make. Anger is a distortion of our true nature. It is part of this creation, but we still call it a distortion because it doesn't allow the Self to shine forth fully. And this is what sin is. Anger is a sin because when you are angry, you lose your centredness; you lose sight of the Self. Anger is a sign of weakness. A strong man doesn't get angry easily. When you focus on other's mistakes, you are bound to get angry. The cause of anger is the lack of total knowledge of what is happening inside that person. Showing anger itself is not wrong, but being unaware of your anger only hurts you. There is a place for showing anger, but when you get angry yourself, you are shaken completely. Are you ever happy with the decisions you have made or the words you have spoken when you are angry? No, because you lose your total awareness. If you are completely aware and you are acting angry, that is fine. In fact, anger is an instrument. It is useful when you are able to control it. It can work wonders when you know how to use it and where to use it. Spiritual practices help you maintain your centredness. This is where a little knowledge about ourselves, about our mind, our consciousness, and the root of distortion in our nature will help. It is when you are exhausted and stressed that you lose your nature and get angry. Breathing techniques and meditation are effective in calming the mind. Meditation is letting go of anger from the past and the events of the past. It's accepting this moment and living every moment totally with depth. Often anger comes because you don't accept the present moment. You look for perfection; that is why you are angry at imperfections. Even when someone commits a mistake, know that she is not the culprit; the stress inside is causing her to make that mistake. Just this understanding and a few days of continuous practice of meditation can change the quality of our life. Usually, you give your anger freely and your smile rarely as though a smile is expensive. To the ignorant, anger is cheap and a smile is costly. To those of knowledge, a smile is free - like sunshine, air and water - and anger is expensive. Make your smile cheaper and anger expensive.

Be yourself

Whether you know or not, you cannot be other than yourself. To be yourself, knowledge is not needed. A rosebush is a rosebush. Not that the rosebush knows that it is a rosebush. A rock is a rock. Not that the rock knows that it is a rock. Knowledge is not needed. In fact, it is because of knowledge that you are missing being yourself. Knowledge is creating the problem. The rosebush is not confused. Every day it goes on being a rosebush. Not even for a single day does it become confused. It does not start some morning growing marigolds; it goes on being a rosebush. Knowledge is not needed for being. In fact, you are missing your being because of knowledge. I was reading about a certain man named Dudley: To celebrate Uncle Dudley's 75th birthday, an aviation enthusiast offered to take him for a plane ride over the little West Virginia town where he had spent all his life. Uncle Dudley accepted the offer. Back on the ground, after circling over the town 20 minutes, he was asked: "Were you scared, Uncle Dudley?" "No", was the hesitant answer, "but i never did put my full weight down". In an airplane, whether you put your full weight down or not, the weight is carried by the airplane. Whether you know yourself or not is not the point. Knowledge is disturbing you. Just think if there was a rock also on that airplane with Uncle Dudley, the rock would have put the whole weight down. Uncle Dudley is unnecessarily worried. He could have rested, he could have relaxed just like the rock, but the rock has no knowledge and Uncle Dudley has knowledge. The whole problem of humanity is that humanity knows, and because of knowing, the being is unnecessarily forgotten. Meditation is how to drop knowledge. Meditation means how to become ignorant again. Meditation means how to become a child again, a rosebush, a rock. Meditation means how just to be and not to think. When i say to you to be yourself, i mean meditate. Don't try to be anybody else. You cannot be! You can try, and you can deceive yourself and you can promise yourself and you can hope that someday you will become somebody else, but you cannot become. These are only illusions that you can go on having. These are dreams. They are not going to become realities ever. You will remain yourself whatsoever you do. Why not relax, Uncle Dudley! Put your full weight on the airplane. Relax. In relaxation, suddenly you will start enjoying your being, and the effort to be somebody else will stop. That is your worry how to be somebody else, how to be like somebody else, how to become like a Buddha, how to become like Patanjali. You can only be yourself. Accept it, rejoice in it, delight in it. Relax. Zen Masters say to their disciples, "Beware of Buddha. If you meet him on the way, kill him immediately". What do they mean? They mean there is a human tendency to become imitators. There is a book, Imitation Of Christ. In a way, that title is very symbolic. It shows the whole mind of humanity. People are trying to imitate, to become somebody else. Nobody can become a Christ. There is no need. Existence will be bored if you become Christ. It wants somebody new, something original. It wants you, and it wants you to be just yourself.

know who you are

Though restless and battered by complex problems, disillusioned and dissatisfied, many of us continue to remain engrossed with the exterior. Whereas, undeterred by social pressures, the Bauls, saffron-clad folk singers of rural Bengal, sing on "Why do you run after mirages? Look within yourself to attain happiness and tranquillity. Peace does not come from outside. You cannot discover peace by owning the world". The Bauls travel from village to village singing with their ektara, which is a simple onestringed instrument, and drum called dubki. The Baul songs of joy, love and longing for union with the Divine deliver the message that God lives within every human being. The songs imply the importance of human soul or the "maner manush" which the Bauls perceive as the true God within every one of us. Hence the Bauls find no difference between people. Universal brotherhood is a fundamental of Baul ideology. They find no reason not to be at peace with all of mankind regardless of how people perceive the Supreme Being or the manner in which they practise a faith. The Bauls reject the rigid rituals and the social mores of mainstream society. On account of this unconventional approach, the Bauls derived their name from the Sanskrit word "Batul" which means "afflicted with the wind" or "mad". It is this "madness" and their acceptance of the Oneness of all life that sets the Bauls apart from most. The Bauls believe that authentic worship of God takes place only deep within each person where God is enshrined. Individual inquiry is stressed, emphasising the importance of a person's physical body as that which enshrines the Supreme. The essence of the Baul belief is that God is hidden inside each one of us and neither priests nor rituals can help us to find God there. For the Bauls, searching within for God, the true soulmate, is a lifelong journey. They meditate through their songs searching for answers from within. The philosophy of their living path is intertwined with their songs. Their search for God is a personal one and they believe it to be something that each individual should carry out for himself. The Bauls believe that God must first be perceived before being experienced and realised through the pursuit of inner enlightenment. With this goal in mind, the songs they sing and the accompanying dances are meaningful meditation focused on the soul. The Bauls believe that the body is a microcosm of the universe in which the Supreme Being resides and the essence of innermost being or "self" makes human nature divine. The Bauls profess that when you search for God, you are searching for "self" within. Though God assumes various personal forms to reveal Himself, God is actually within every human heart. If you desire to attain the knowledge and realisation of the Supreme Being, then you should focus on the inner being. God is present in every moment and closeness with God is possible to experience during one's lifetime through surrender to Him. Understanding that thought, emotion, feeling and self-image are not only gifts from God but manifestations of God. So, the Bauls sing: "Harvest before the sun sets. Know thyself before you sail for the unknown".