Home & alone. What a bounty!

I bet there are many like me living in this perpetual dilemma - how to get a work & personal life balance. My moronic corporate existence hits every now & then. On rare occasions when I am alone at home during the day time (usually I am night owl, a working women with 8.00 am to 8.00 pm, six days a week job), I sit on my favorite sofa cum chair and ponder about life. It is during those blank, empty hours that thoughts for this blog pour out of my tired mind. Rest of the time, for about 10 hours a day life simply passes by. Me is caught in a time machine called "Office". Start of the day to end of the day, start of the week to end of the week, cut off from the outside world by sound proof glass panes, the weather changes!!! But everything right from the decor to the temperature, to the light remains unchanged in my sophisticated air-conditioned prison.

Sitting in the favorite corner of my house, the silence and solitude has a soothing effect on me. Is it all really worth it? Outside the shadows are changing shape, the Sun goes up ans then down, the Stars appear and disappear......My body has forgotten the warmth of the summer Sun. Alone at home, I sit silent and still for hours. Coming to terms with what I am loosing. Day after day. Reflecting. Nostalgia takes over. Childhood memories of seasons, associations surface. Sounds and smells of summer spent with cousins and friends. Winter chill waiting for Diwali sweets and the wet rains or monsoons in Mumbai - time for a fresh new semester at the School.

Coming back to where I started from, the merits of a simple, uncomplicated life, non corporate life. On rare days when I am alone at home, I listen to the crow outside my window, children laughing and playing, honking of autorickshaws, a loud thuk thuk(bang bang) of hammer (somewhere close there is a carpenter working) It is all music to my ears.

No cribs. It is not as bad. I like my work. And my office is a good place. People are kind to each other. May be being away from home makes me appreciate the otherwise mundane sounds of the crow and the carpenter!!!

Striking a balance

There are times while meditating, I manage to reach strange depths within my self. An unknown zone of existence in my mind and conscience. I am lost somewhere deep within myself cut off from the external world. It is a divine experience. Complete bliss. Those who have experienced deep meditation will understand or appreciate my words. I manage to cut through the noise and clutter of outside world. When I gradually open my eyes after meditation......for the first few seconds my mind is lost. It fails to connect with the outside world. It tries to establish a connect with the outside physical world. Naming things, recognising people, establishing a context. Slowly the pleasant effect of meditation starts fading away. It all comes back. Work, money matters, society and various pressures of our contemporary human existence start taking control like the tentacles of an Octopus. The peace and quite which I had found during meditation vapourises. One thought echoes in my mind "Welcome back to the insanity of human existence!!!!"

I become a mixed bag of human emotions. Angry one second, happy next and again sad the third second. And so the pendulum of emotions keeps oscillating. Coping with life and the demands made upon me by the outside world. No grudge as far as the demands are concerned. The world has a right to make demands on me. I am obliged to meet their requirements. This is my Niyat Karma (Destined Karma I am born with). But yes, the noise and the clutter of the external world irritates me. I crave for the peace and the quite inside me. Sounds of joy, chatter of family members, the birds and breeze, Small children crying or laughing, people chanting prayers, soothing music....all good but still noise.Traffic, people screaming and shouting, making demands, fighting with each other...all bad again noise.

Given my wordly commitments and responsibilities it is not possible to remain in a state of meditation at all times. The dilemma is whether to seek the depths within myself which requires me to cut off from the outside world or to give up the quest for self and focus only on the outside world? I feel like a Pilot who is flying a plane at 30,000 feet above the ground with a few hundred pasengers on board. Even if the poor fellow has a sudden urge to quit his job and leave the plane, he is bound not to do so. He is bound by a sense of responsibility to fly the plan to a safe destination. We are all seeking to fly our planes to the safe destinations. As helpless as the pilot. Forced to give up the self needs and focus on those we feel responsible about, willing or unwilling.

It is all about making the choices. Religious teachers say "strike a balance", corporate trainers say, "work-life balance", saints call it a state of "Samadhi". But how do I attain it? Is it really possible for anyone to attain a state of "Samadhi" in the physical form of exisitence? Remain bonded to the external world and yet strike a balance between the self and the outside world. Is giving up one of the two the only way to attain peace?. As did Mother Teresa; loosing the self completely in serving the outside world or as did Lord Buddha; loosing the outside world completely and retreating deep within oneself?

But then even that is not a balance!!!!