Abhay Sobti

Title of the paper Walk the unbeaten track Topic of the paper Let only one competitor constantly challenge you – your yesterday’s performance Name of the author Sheila Sobti Name of the chapter Kolkata Number of words 1761 Reading time in minutes 15 minutes Walk the unbeaten track What does the topic of this Paper tell us? Simply that it’s time we stepped aside from the race track and abandoned the race. That we stop comparing ourselves with other people, rather compare ourselves with our past accomplishments, our past actions and reactions, our past way of thinking, our past results, our past health evaluation, our physical threshold and many such parameters. What is competition? According to Sander Linden, the Dutch social Psychologist, “Competitiveness is a biological trait that co-evolved with the basic need for human survival”. How humans evolved is known to all of us – it was the survival of the fittest. But modern man brought about a sea change by stressing upon the attitude of cooperation in the civilised society.It is this cooperation which played an important role in forming the society we see today. Among small kindergarten children, winning in a race is not a grave matter. It is the parents and elders who “egg” them on to perform their fastest , smartest and swiftest. The child is more interested in the lemonade served at the end of the race. He or she hardly knows what is happening and doesn’t care. For a child who is a little older, and who is unable to do something, like solving a maths problem, the initial enthusiasm at performing quickly turns to grumpiness. Reassuring the child about his/her strengths leads to zilch. “Hey, you are good at sports, so what, if you cannot solve mathematics” is like talking to a stone wall. They just won’t believe you! Do not try to comfort the child at the cost of putting down another child. “Hey, Joe cannot swim as fast as you”. Instead if we explain to the child that different people have different strengths and develop at different rates, it would lend authenticity to our words, merely because that is the plain and simple truth. Be present with the child throughout his grumpy phase and make him think of his past performances and let him focus on doing better the next time. “Hey, you did better than how you did last time. Well done !”, is a better compliment than saying that you did better than someone else. But the problem is, most parents want their child to outshine other children. In this process, they sow the seed of unhealthy competition and do immense harm to their own child. If a child stops enjoying the game because he is not winning or because of fear of being reprimanded or being compared with his siblings, it is related to some issue at home. The people at home are to blame- certainly. Some children like to win to get attention or to make their parents happy, little enjoying the game. This is parental pressure, not conducive to the child ‘s growth. It was 1985- the last year of my school life. I had not participated throughout middle and senior school, all because I had developed into a very quiet and shy girl in public. But time was flying, within months we would be completing our school board exams. This was my last chance. So I decided to participate in the Annual Singing Competition. I had prepared very well. My auditions went very well. I sang in front of a few teachers and they looked surprised that i had not sung even once at the Singing competitions all these years. They liked my voice and I got selected for the final day. But on the final day, disaster struck. I suddenly found 500 pairs of eyes looking at me and I shook and quivered on each note. My teachers were utterly disappointed and somebody reprimanded the teacher who had selected me, for having got someone with no stage experience for such a prestigious Annual competition. I cried for the rest of the day in school. I could not show my face to anyone. I constantly felt everybody pointing at me and talking about my miserable performance. But within weeks, I learnt one thing- that public memory is very weak. No one remembers who did badly until you remind them with your sorrowful face. Also no one remembers who had won the trophy the previous year. People have better things to do and they don’t really bother. Only the winner and the losers remember. I was now undeterred by failure. Each time I got to perform, I understood where my mistakes lay and worked upon it and moved ahead. But move ahead, I must! I thought of all those people who had never even tried to do things they were passionate about. The easiest route is not trying. Competition against yourself is the ability to set your own values and yardsticks- you choose your goals.  In the journey of life, the real journey is against your past and the unrealized potential lying dormant within you. The versatile American actor,director,producer and writer,Matthew McConaughey says in his own words,  “Every day, every week, every month and every year of my life, my hero is always 10 years away. I’m never gonna beat my hero. But that’s just fine with me because it keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing”. According to Emma Lord,editor of a women’s’ magazine, when only your own past performance competes against you, you enjoy a sense of freedom and you tend to succeed. Six positive things happen in the process. They are : You have a much healthier measure of your success. There will always be somebody better than you. There is no escaping that thought. While you were trying hard to get that cushy job, one of your friends got married and had a couple of kids. Should either of

Title : From behind my eyes Have you seen God? Silence Can you show me God? Silence What is the price? I will offer you life-long servitude. Long Silence “God is not an object. He is the subject. He cannot be seen. He is the seer. Find out who is the seer”. These words of Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi brought an end to the life-long, passionate search of Harilal Poonja for God. The one who wandered the length and breadth of the country in search for an answer, found the culmination of his search within himself.  The thirst was finally quenched. The journey from Man to God for Papaji was accomplished in an instant. Searching? What? The history of mankind has many stories of people who searched for something and dedicated their lives to that search. Some, like Siddhartha, walked out from the comforts of the world, embraced abject poverty, and went on an outer and inner search that would consume the rest of their lives. Siddhartha was not the only one, there were many like him, and most never made it to the history books, for which they least cared anyway. In their passion for what they were seeking, they exhibited total disregard for what the rest of the world coveted. They treated wealth and fame like trash and burnt their minds, bodies and souls in the search. From the accounts of great masters, we know that they seem to have finally found something that gave them total liberation from the miseries of human life and transformed them into Gods. The question is : What were they searching and what did they find? Having said that, I look at the beautiful stone statue of Gautama, the Buddha, in my living room and wonder how many have used him as a decoration without even understanding what made him the Buddha or even contemplating on what made him reject the very riches we run after. It is indeed ironic that the One who gave up an entire kingdom to embrace poverty was making my drawing room look more opulent. We are what we look at It just so happens that what is an unfathomable mystery for one , is a mundane, everyday stuff, for another. A blade of grass may forever elude someone’s attention and yet may strike someone else as an awesome work of creation. A new father may flaunt his new child as his own, without even realising the great magic that turned a couple of fused cells into the human in his palms. What grabs our attention,  draws us towards itself and creates our reality. Whatever is beyond our perception or field of vision, for all practical purposes, does not exist at all. Our human existence is just a play of our attention and focus, nothing else. And then our design makes us look outwards, take in stimuli, process the collected data, and react back. Our total focus and energies are directed towards the world that lies outside of us. It is the world that constantly challenges us into engagement and draws our attention back every time we look away. It throws at us it’s temptations, traps us into desires and involves us fully till we are dead and buried. We may take birth, live a life and pass away without ever wondering at the incredible mystery of our being. Speaking of our attention, I cannot even recall the last time I stared at the sky and enjoyed the view of infinity. It has been a while since I lied flat on my back and lost myself in the immenseness of what was above and around. It is of relief to know that in this sheer vastness, we – or our worldly worries, failures or successes – don’t really matter. We are but a speck of dust, too insignificant to be worried about, in this overall scheme of things. Masters say that it is from this feeling of being nothing that the great realisation of being everything emerges. But that is what the masters say, and for the time being, till that realisation comes, it is great to be nothing. The Sky is a testament of how we live under the roof of awesomeness and are yet bored with our lives and it’s daily chores because we spend most of it looking down. Because in the final analysis, we are what we look at. But we are on the God Path But look closely – every effort, by the sinner or a saint, always strives for an expansion – physical, material, mental or spiritual. Man, in its incredible story so far, has expressed nothing but an unconscious desire to expand into something larger than himself. Continuous improvement and a journey towards perfection is the essential underlying backdrop of this story. Man has always, deep within, experienced an existence larger than his physical body and the limits of his intellect and mind. Every invention made by man, and every poem written by him, and in each of his achievements, he has expressed nothing but his essential spiritual nature which manifests in him as an intention to be perfect. But what is this in us that drives us to this perfection? And then, what do we finally become? God? Forget the answer, the Question itself eludes most But for most of humanity, life is a daily ritual from sunrise to sunset, from breakfast to dinner, and is just a process of continuous breathing, and a obsessive engagement with survival, power, wealth or something earthly. Millions, no trillions, since our birth as a specie have come and gone without sparing a thought for the great mystery of life. The modern man has fared no better. He has found a thousand ways to engage his mind into pursuits of every kind. He has taken strides in science and has progressed exponentially in material terms. Having conquered the land and oceans, he set his sight on space and reached out to the stars. He