Winning, losing and letting go - a perspective!

"Ordinarily, a man gets excited or becomes despondent, not because of the happenings in the outer world, but because his individual contact with them. If anyone dies in the city, it is not a tragedy to me, but when my father dies, it is my calamity. This proves that the death of a man, in itself, cannot bring any disturbance to my mind, unless my mind had already ...projected itself on its relationship to the individual who has died…. The man of perfection can no more feel any joy on receiving what is pleasant nor grieve on receiving what is unpleasant!" - Chinmayananda - while explaining an aspect from "The Gita".

 "Barriers are often more psychological than physical. There is a reason for trying to find perfection points: defining them enhances the likelihood that we're going to get better, faster. And knowing how far we are from perfection will make them drop even faster. Because the perfection point is not a measure of where we end….just where we're going." - John Brenkus from "The perfection point"

People have propensity to sulk and here no effort is needed from their side. Rather, one needs practice and effort to feel otherwise! Only strong willed person can dispel and redeem his mood from remorse.

Whenever something untoward or that which was unexpected happens, the first question that arises in the mind is "Is this the end of the road?" "Why me?" is the other!

This is because, we are always accustomed to chase goals, destinations and we take the "arrivals in the destination" as natural and facing a "byroad or reaching a roadblock" as unnatural!

The former breeds craving and anxiety (anxiety of what next - which again is a destination!) and the latter brings in self doubt and remorse.

Both the above thinking process are diametrically opposite from a mid-point.

What Chinmayanand mentioned in his delineation of "The Bagavad Gita" is precisely this. We need to attain a "middle way" in our thinking, where both the opposite roads become obscure and irrelevant.

The law of nature has its truths hidden in the opposites: the truth about the existence of defeat (or) loss in the victory (or) accomplishment and vice versa!

Describing about Concentration camp experience in one sentence, survivor Jean Amery said, "Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight!"

Dying is an act and when one "performs it", he will not be there to "feel or fear dying". But in life, men fear death every moment and in the every step they keep, because they have a 'knowledge of death', but, they have not understood what "dying" is!

When you are amidst in death for a prolonged period of time, then dying ceases to be an event, but a rote - another ordinary event -like waking up and performing routine like a zombie.  What Jean Amery said was precisely this and out of experiencing and being in the scene of humanity's most heinous crime - where 'dying' was not even an 'option'...

To understand what is life and living, one needs to understand what is death and dying!  Likewise, to understand what is winning, one needs to understand what is losing!

If we allow ourselves to understand what is success and defeat; then a new door opens before us which will lead us to the middle way: where the significance of victory and defeat is blurred to the point of obscurity.

For understanding what is defeat, we need to look deep into the thoughts of "victories and accomplishments" and likewise, for understanding what is victory, we need to look deep into the "Defeat". If you succeed in reaching a "void", the silencing of all noise and murmur in both the above process, then you have initiated your great journey in the right direction!

Scientist Mani Bhaumik said, "…the vastness before my eyes shifted my awareness to another level altogether. ….great awareness in knowledge do not occur solely through trial and error, but await the occurrence of intuition and the readiness of the human mind."

This awaiting the occurrence of intuition and being ready mindfully is the crux.

Through vigorous practice, if we can tame our mind, then we would be ready for shifting our awareness to another level!

We would understand that it is not about winning a game or losing it, it is not even about winning or losing the world championship….but, we would start realising our presence and role in the scheme of things in this universe and this would lead to a deeper understanding and more importantly "acceptance" as the things as they unfurl.

This is what is meant by "let go".

Only then, we would be capable of not ladening "the unfurling moment" with expectation of winning or accomplishment. We would succeed to accomplish with no great sense of elation and would fail to accomplish without any sense of remorse!

 "...the perfection point is not a measure of where we end….just where we're going..."

Dear Vishy, you have delighted us for all these years and you would continue to delight us by reaching the next level of awareness and blossoming further into greatness.

Dear Magnus, boy you have an unique sense of perception for chess, we wish you could let it unfurl naturally and take chess (and us) to its next level of comprehension!