What should i do if people hurt me?

It is not people who hurt you. It is your own foolishness, your own mind, your own vulnerability and your own emotions that entangle you, and make you feel hurt.

Do you think people have no other business, that they want to come and hurt you? What can hurt you? Somebody’s words, somebody’s selfishness, somebody not caring for you. You love somebody and you think they don’t care for you, or you have helped somebody and they do not talk to you, and that hurts.

My dear, wake up and see, is there an intention in them to hurt you? You need to see things from the other side as well.

Place yourself in their position. Many times it happens that you never intended to hurt someone, yet they felt hurt by your action. What do you tell these people who feel that you have hurt them?  You say, ‘I did not mean it, something happened through me. I did not mean to hurt you, but an incident or event happened that gave you an idea that I hurt you’. Now if you really intended to hurt somebody, then it means you have a deep hurt inside you. Even then, you are worthy of being excused, and you have to excuse the other person as well.

If someone has hurt you intentionally, you should know that they are sick. What should be your attitude towards someone who is sick? You should be compassionate towards them. If someone has not intended to hurt you, it is an unintentional act, then it is your own mistake. You can only blame your own perception, and not them.
If someone has scolded you or used harsh words that have hurt you, and they have done it with a very good intention, then you can only thank them. Then the friendship grows.

If a friend has insulted you, knowingly, you can only thank them.

This is because they have had the courage to give you their piece of mind, what you needed, otherwise why would they do it? Why would anyone want to hurt you at their own cost? Nobody wants to risk their friendship. What should your attitude be? ‘Thank you! You did something good to me, it has made me strong.’

It is all in your hands, how you view things; what type of intention you put out there, that will come back to you.

Wake up and see that there is none other than the One, and the One comes to you in many forms. It is all for your growth, well-being, and happiness. The universe is so loving, and compassionate towards you. If you can keep this wisdom in your heart, nobody can hurt you.

No Such Thing as Justice

Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan’s insightful questions are answered with unfailing clarity: “Right now nobody has any right to think about justice. We must become a law-abiding society first; after that the luxury of justice will come... Right now we have no order, where is the question of justice?”

 There is no such thing as justice on the planet. What is justice for you will be injustice for someone else. Usually the word “justice” is used to enforce revenge on someone – whether it’s legal revenge or illegal revenge. If somebody does a killing, he thinks he has delivered what someone deserved. That’s why they do it. So let’s not go by justice. Let us simplify the laws and enforce the law. Right now nobody has any right to think about justice. We must become a law-abiding society first; after that the luxury of justice will come. Sometimes when the law itself is cruel, we can break the law and deliver justice. Right now the way we are in this country, there is no luxury like that. Here law must be enforced first. Simply enforce the law – it may be unjust, but enforce it. Because without a semblance of order, there will be no luxury of justice in any society. Right now we have no order, where is the question of justice? Revenge will be labeled as justice.

Now how to bring this about in a society? One most important thing is to simplify the laws. And if you want to live in this country, everybody must understand the basic laws, what the laws are. Most of the people existing in this country do not know what the basic laws are. Every time you ask, they will throw their hands up, they think somebody should tell them. No, we must make it a law that if you want to live in this country at least this many basic laws you must know. If you want to drive on the street, you must know what are the laws of the street, isn’t it? Similarly, if you want to live in this country you must know this, this and this. Not that you heard from your neighbor – not like that. Proper education. Everybody knows that these are the laws, if you break it, this is the punishment. Everybody should know, isn’t it?

And then enforce it. It’s not as simple, enforcing. Making the law itself is complex, enforcement is a super complex thing… because here comes justice, injustice. So for a certain period of time we must be willing to surrender justice and just stick to law. People who are enforcing law sometimes will enforce it in unjust ways – you must endure that. If you don’t endure that, you will have a disorderly society, a lawless society. Then revenge will be the way. But we will call it “justice.” We will go about labeling it as justice, taking revenge on each other. Many things are happening, people are shooting each other, and they think they are rendering justice, because the law is not sensible.

So in making this happen – in creating an orderly society, not a just society – I want you to understand this is a serious sacrifice that we must be willing to make if we want to move ahead. This is a very serious sacrifice that “I don’t ask for justice. Enforce the law on me. Whatever the law, I will go by it. It may not be just, but I will go by the law right now.” If the law is very unjust, we can look at restructuring the law, but beyond the law no justice. Nobody has the discretion to deliver justice. This has to be established. This one thing we have not done yet.

Love & Grace,

Business During a Slowdown

Tackling a Slowdown

Vivek Law: Let me begin with you, Sadhguru. You wrote that “If you have money in your pocket, it is great. Only if it enters your head, it becomes a perversion.” Right now, there is a real fear that the money is not even coming into the pocket. What do we do in times like these?

Sadhguru: The money is still going into someone’s pocket, though maybe not into a kind of pocket that will use it to create wellbeing and wealth for humanity at large.

When there is a certain slowdown, times hurt because you have prepared yourself in terms of man, material, everything, for a certain speed. Suddenly, when there is slowdown, you have excess capacity and not enough to do. When such a thing happens, normally, most companies in the world go for retrenchment. They want to cut down their staff. There is a difference between cutting down on your stocks of material and cutting down on people who work for you. Modern management tends to treat both the same way.

I would say there is a different way to approach this. Instead of cutting down people, why not sit down with them and let them take a cut on their salary and use the saved amount to retrain them into a new possibility? There may be a slowdown in your current field of activity, but there are definitely other opportunities. You can use such a time to retrain yourself and people around you and retool everything. If, instead of looking at it as recession, you look at it as a period of rest, after a while you could come back into activity with much more vigor. Rest is the basis of all activity. If the business is getting a little bit of rest, it could be a phenomenal advantage – unless the rest lasts for too long.

In the present situation, the rest will not last for too long because businesses are not limited to geographical boundaries. People can always rejig themselves and move to other areas where they could function better. There are many possibilities. But fundamentally, instead of cutting back on human resources, why not bring them in in a friendly manner and ask them to share the burden and keep their colleagues. That way, you can pass through this period of rest with a certain level of bonding and togetherness and be ready for the next level of action.

Global Economic Outlook

Vivek Law: Ram, do you believe the global situation is going to get better sooner than later?

Ram: Yeah. Let me make three points. Point number one ¬– I totally agree with Sadhguru. Point number two – I see by the fourth quadrant next year [2014] a global economy running at 4.5 %. I clearly see the United States economy on the positive track. I am very happy for 7% economy growth in China. I see in India, no matter which government comes, more than 5% growth. Brazil is still in a slump. Germany clearly comes back. Greece etc. are really behind. So, I am very positive but not too bullish.

Third point. I learned this from a chairman in India – whenever there is an adversity, whenever there is a recession, there is a message. Try to find the message. Use it to sharpen your business – customer selection, product selection – and build the future: new innovation, new things. A recession will go one day – you got to come out ahead. Change your thinking from defensive to offensive.

Gender at Work

Vivek Law: Another big issue in corporate India is gender at the workplace. What are your thoughts on that?

Sadhguru: I feel we should learn to make the workplace kind of gender-free in the sense that you look at people in terms of who they are, their activity, and their competence, not in terms of gender. You don’t have to be a man or a woman when you are working. You just have to be a human being who does things. You should be judged by your competence, not by your gender. I feel gender is a big issue right now in the country because women of a certain competence, capability, appearance and style are still new in the perception of the Indian workforce.

Because of the newness, we are trying to treat it specially, but I feel we should level it out and treat every person who works for a particular company according to their competence, irrespective of their gender. We should bring this culture rather than making special laws for women that will separate them as an exclusive group who will always be looked at in a certain way. Leveling it out is more important, though it is easier said than done. It is not going to happen immediately, but we need to gradually shift the culture in this direction so that at some point in the coming generation, almost 50% of the workforce will be women. Making it normal rather than making it exclusive is important.

Sadhguru looks at when money matters and when it doesn’t, and how we can make the best of it when it’s a question of money management.

Sadhguru: Sometime ago, someone brought a man to me. He was depressed and broken and wanted to commit suicide. Why? Because about five years ago, he was worth three thousand crores. Then he played in the stock market and things went a little wrong, and his worth dived a little bit. When he came to me, he was worth only two hundred and fifty crores. So he wanted to commit suicide. Most people in India, if you give them that much money and tell them, “Do you want the money or do you want to go to heaven,” they will ask for the money. But this man is broken! If you keep money in your pocket, it is great. But if it enters your head, it becomes misery because that is not its place.

What we need in the world is not just “wealth creation.” We need to create wellbeing. Wealth is just one of the tools towards human wellbeing, not the whole of it. Wealth means making the outside pleasant for ourselves. But right now, people are going at it like it is a religion. Money is just a means; it is not an end by itself. We are making it too big for nothing. Is it bad? Is it good? It is neither; it is just a tool that we created.

We must understand that no one is aspiring for money. That may sound ridiculous, but I am saying it is not the money that they want. It is just that money has become the means for what they consider as a better life.

Everyone wants their life to be pleasant. When we say pleasant, pleasantness happens in five different ways. If your body becomes very pleasant we call it pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant, we call it peace; if it becomes very pleasant we call it joy. If your emotions become pleasant we call it love; if they become very pleasant we call it compassion. If your life energies become pleasant we call it bliss, and if they become very pleasant we call it ecstasy. If your surroundings become pleasant, you call it success. This is all you want, isn’t it? “No, I want to go to heaven.” Why do you want to go to heaven – because the “advertisements” have always said it is a very pleasant place. All you want is pleasantness, and right now you believe that in this world, money can buy it for you, which is partially correct.

But money can only create external pleasantness, it cannot create inner pleasantness. If you have a lot of money, you can stay in a five-star hotel, but if your body, mind, emotions and energy are not pleasant, would you enjoy your five-star hotel? No. If these four are very pleasant, you could even enjoy yourself under a tree. Does that mean you should not have money? No, but the priority should be considered – which should come first? If these four things within you are very pleasant, and you also have money, you can make the outside also pleasant. So there is nothing right or wrong about money. It is a certain means. It is just that if money does not stay in your pockets and goes into your head, misery will come.

What’s the recipe for a happy marriage? Sadhguru, view that go into making a sweet, joyful and nourishing relationship with your spouse.

#1 Take Two “Heartfuls” of Love

The English expression, “Falling in love,” is significant because you don’t rise in love, you don’t fly in love, you don’t walk in love, you don’t stand in love. You fall in love, because something of who you are has to go. It essentially means someone else has become far more important than yourself. Only if you don’t think too much of yourself, you can be in love. When what you consider as “me” falls, a deep experience of love can happen within you.

#2 Add a Liberal Dose of Understanding

The closer the relationship with someone is, the more effort you should make to understand them. Someone becomes closer and dearer to you only as you understand them better. If they understand you, they enjoy the closeness of the relationship. If you understand them better, then you enjoy the closeness. If you are expecting the other to understand and comply with you all the time while you don’t understand the limitations, possibilities, needs and capabilities of that person, then conflict is all that will happen.

In everyone, there are some positive and some negative aspects. If you embrace all this in your understanding, you can make the relationship the way you want it. If you leave it to their understanding, it will become accidental. If they are very magnanimous, things will happen well for you. If not, the relationship will break up. It is not that the other person is totally bereft of understanding. With your understanding you can create situations where the other person would be able to understand you better.

#3 Work On It A Little

A marriage is not an absolute thing that you can do once and forget. It is an active partnership. Two separate people have chosen to come together for a common purpose and build a life together, live joyfully and multiply their wellbeing. Two human beings weaving their lives into one has a certain beauty.

In Indian culture, a marriage was renewed once a year just to remind you why you came together. It is a fresh marriage again on that day. Otherwise, you think you have been stuck in this forever. No. You came together consciously, and you have to conduct it consciously too.

#4 Warm It Up With Some Joy

If relationships have to be really beautiful, it is very important that a human being turns inward and looks at himself in a very deep way before he looks at someone else. If you become a source of joy by yourself and your relationships are about sharing your joy, you would have wonderful relationships with anyone. Is there anyone in the world who would have any problem with you if you are going there to share your joy with them? No. If you want to experience the profoundness of being with another human being, your marriage should never be about you – it should always be about the other person. If both of you think like this, your marriage will not be an arrangement, it will be a union.

#5 Offer It To Each Other

If your marriage is just a bundle of expectations about how to extract happiness out of someone who should make heaven for you, you will be disappointed. They say marriages are made in heaven. They say that because most people created a hell out of their marriage! If your relationship is about extracting something out of someone, it does not matter how much you manage, there will be constant trouble. But if your relationship was an offering to the other person, then everything would be fantastic.

QUESTION & ANSWER With Sadguru ( Breath and Relations Related)

Frequency of Breath

Questioner: For both Surya Kriya and asanas, the instruction is to breathe slightly deeper than normal. What is the idea behind that?

Sadhguru: Generally, most human beings are breathing somewhere between 12 to 15 times per minute. They use less than 20% of their lung capacity during normal breathing. If your lung capacity expands, the number of breaths per minute during normal breathing naturally comes down, without you controlling it.

If you stick to the classical form of yoga, over a period of time, your breath will become slow. There are very poetic expressions for this. They say, if your breath becomes 11 per minute, you understand the language of every animal and bird around you. If your breath becomes nine, you understand the very language that the Earth is speaking. If your breath becomes seven, you know everything that is worth knowing in existence. That means your body becomes so stable that there is no static, no crackle – it just perceives everything. Even now, the body perceives – otherwise you could not exist. You may not be conscious of it, but your body understands exactly how the Earth is spinning, what is happening with the Sun, what is happening with everything. As long as you live, your body is adjusting to all that.

When your breath becomes more and more stable, the disturbances of life are gone. You are able to clearly see what is happening. Either you achieve this through yogasanas or by becoming absolutely meditative. For example if you sit in Shoonya meditation, the breath becomes very slow, almost not there. In Shoonya, many of you may be breathing about nine to ten breaths per minute. Then again, at certain moments, you will breathe faster.

You can get there through meditative processes, but doing so by preparing the body is more reliable. With meditation, today your breath may naturally slow down, tomorrow it may not. But if you prepare the body, the progress is more stable. That is the strength of doing the practices every day – they steadily take you up. With meditative processes alone, one day it is fantastic, another day you may not be there at all.

If you intentionally stretch your normal breath, after some time, you will gasp. That is not evolution of the system. That is forcefully trying to do something. On the other hand, when you practice asanas, breathing slightly deeper than normal, over a period of time the duration of the breath may increase. Your normal breath will become slower, and so will your slightly-deeper-than-normal breath.

As your system evolves, the number of breaths you take per minute will naturally come down. You will start understanding what people around you are saying. You will understand the language of other creatures, the language of the planet, and the very language of the source of creation.

The body always understands because it is a piece of creation. It knows everything about creation. It is just that there is too much disturbance for you to realize that. It is like turning on the radio and there is static because of lightning, rain, or whatever, so you cannot hear the music. If the rain stops, suddenly the music comes out crystal clear to your ear. That is the whole process of knowing. You just have to stop the static.

The Effect of Rapid Breathing

Questioner: In certain asanas, for example in Bhujangasana in the Surya Kriya series, or in the Sarvangasana series, as well as in Matsyasana, we do rapid breathing. Why so?

Sadhguru: Wherever there is rapid breathing, there is an effort to turn a very physical process into an energy process. When there is an opportunity without risk, we are trying to use it. Kriyas have to be done with a certain care. Suppose your energies get activated without the right kind of preparation, while you are in the wrong posture, in the wrong attitude, in the wrong situation, your stomach is full or whatever else, what could be a great thing will turn into a disaster.

It is like a pot of gold came down from above, but it fell on your head and killed you! If a rock broke off from a mountain, fell on your head, and you died, it is one thing. If a pot of gold came down from above, but instead of you catching it, it fell on your head and you died, it is a disaster! So, when we do asanas, only certain postures where it is safe to do that, we seek to transform them into Kriyas.

Questioner: Sadhguru, people who come to the yoga class with experience in aerobics or other types of exercise tend to breathe through their mouth while doing yogasanas. Does it make a difference whether we breathe through the nose or mouth? And why should we breathe slightly deeper than normal?

Sadhguru: If you are running at a certain pace, there is a tendency to open your mouth because breathing through your nostrils may not be sufficient. But you never ever breathe through your mouth during asanas. This is not an aerobic exercise – asanas are about building internal strength of the organs and the whole system. Within a few weeks of practicing asanas, naturally, your system will become more capable and your pulse rate will decrease.

Breathing through the mouth is both unaesthetic and unscientific. You should always breathe through your nasal passage – except in emergencies. If you are just born and they hold you upside down, or you are running a marathon and your pulse rate goes beyond a certain level, or it is your last breath and you want to live for one more minute – then it is all right. Otherwise, always breathe through your nostrils because the nasal passage is there for this purpose – make use of it. There are many benefits to this. One is the purification of the air. Another is that the temperature of the air gets adjusted to your body temperature before it enters the lungs, which is important.

In yogasanas, there is absolutely no necessity to breathe through your mouth. You should never push yourself to the point where you have to open your mouth. You must steadily build it up in such a way that your ability to breathe keeps increasing. We say you should breathe slightly deeper than normal because otherwise, if you go into an extreme position and I say “breathe normally,” you will not get enough oxygen and after some time you will gasp. Any gasp is an aberration in the breath. Any aberration in the breath naturally has an effect on various aspects of the body.

If you breathe in hot air, even if you are at sea level and there is enough oxygen, you will gasp as if you were in high altitude. The human body is comfortable at a certain temperature and it needs a certain air mixture. When I used to ride my motorcycle across the country and I would go up a mountain, from about 4000-5000 feet above mean sea level, the oxygen becomes less and the engine starts behaving differently. Since I always wanted the same level of power, I would stop, open up the carburetor, make the necessary adjustments, and only then ride on. If you come down to sea level, the engine starts knocking and you have to adjust the cylinder head again.

Bringing the body to ease

Recently, I was at the Volvo truck plant and they were showing me the electronic instruments that are attached to the engine nowadays. It detects the efficiency of the firing inside the internal combustion engine, the fuel temperature, the oil temperature, and if there is any small aberration, it informs the driver that this is what is happening. The driver may not be educated enough to make use of this information, so there is another computer which is correcting all these things. For a truck that is lugging up to 130 tons, even a small change in engine performance will translate into a big overall performance drop. This is just a small imitation of what your body always does. Even a small change in the air temperature will affect it, but the body has correction measures if you are breathing properly. It will correct itself for the rareness of air and for even a small change in the air temperature.

This time when we went to Kailash, we were at an altitude of over 16,000 feet for almost eight, ten days. Except for the Sherpas who always live in that altitude, I was the only one who did not take altitude-sickness medication, even though all the other participants were practicing more yoga on a daily basis than I do. But if you build your system over a period of time, you can enjoy the benefits on all levels, all the time – not only in high altitude. If the body comes to ease, the other possibilities open up. If the body is not at ease, the other possibilities will not open up because everything is focused on making the physical part right.

This is what yoga is about – you want to bring your body to such a state of ease that you do not even know whether your body exists or not. You cannot forget the parts of your body that hurt right now. You can only forget what is at ease. To bring the body to such ease, you must breathe slightly deeper than normal, and over time, in any asana, if you are in the perfect posture, your breath should become normal. If your body is in good shape and you are within a certain age range, after about 12 to 18 months of intense practice, you will come to a point where in a full asana posture, there will be no need to breathe deeper than normal anymore. Just the normal breath will be more than enough, without gasping. If you remain in the full posture for one minute and there is no aberration in your breath or your pulse rate, it means your body is coming to ease. If it comes to such a state of ease, there will be no dis-ease. And if there is no state of dis-ease in you whatsoever, then the body has energy to explore other dimensions of life. Otherwise, the body keeps you busy for the rest of your life.

Question: Much of the anxiety I experience comes through my relationships. Isn’t it reasonable to expect some understanding from other people?

Sadhguru: When you live in this world, there are various types of complex interactions happening. As your field of play increases, the complexity of interaction also goes on increasing. If you are just sitting in a cubicle working on your computer with only one other person, you need only a little understanding. If you are managing a thousand people, you need a vast understanding of everyone. Suppose you are managing a thousand people and you want all these people to understand you, you are not going to manage anything. You need to understand the limitations and capabilities of these thousand people and do what you can. Only then will you have the power to move the situation the way you want it to go. If you are waiting for these thousand people to understand you and act, it is a pipe dream. It is never going to happen.

 Question: Suppose somebody is in a close relationship with me and is very important to me. Shouldn’t I expect better understanding from them?

Sadhguru: That’s the point. The closer the relationship is, the more effort you should make to understand them. It so happened, once there was a man who had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, with his wife staying at his bedside night and day. When he came to, in those few moments of consciousness, he motioned for her to come closer. As she sat beside him, he said, “I’ve been thinking…you have been with me through all the bad times in my life. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business went down the tube, you were there working overtime and doing night shifts. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house in that legal clash, you were right there beside me. Now my health is failing, and you are still by my side. When I consider all this, I think you only bring me bad luck!”

This is exactly what you are doing to yourself and to your relationships. Someone becomes closer and dearer to you only as you understand them better. If they understand you, they enjoy the closeness of the relationship. If you understand them better, you enjoy the closeness.

Question: This is easier said than done. It is difficult to always be there…

Sadhguru: It is not that the other person is totally bereft of understanding. With your understanding you can create situations where the other person would be able to understand you better. If you are expecting the other to understand and comply with you all the time while you don’t understand the limitations, possibilities, needs and capabilities of that person, conflict is all that will happen. It is bound to happen.

Unfortunately, the closest relationships in the world have more conflict going on than between India and Pakistan. In your relationships, you have fought many more battles than they have. This is because your line of understanding and theirs is different. If you cross this L.O.C., this Line of Control, they will get mad. If they cross it, you get mad. If you move your understanding beyond theirs, their understanding also becomes a part of your understanding. You will be able to embrace their limitations and capabilities. In everyone, there are some positive things and some negative things. If you embrace all this in your understanding, you can make the relationship the way you want it. If you leave it to their understanding, it will become accidental. If they are very magnanimous, things will happen well for you. If not, the relationship will break up.

All I am asking is: do you want to be the one who decides what happens to your life? Whether they are close relationships, professional, political, global or whatever, don’t you want to be the person who decides what happens in your life? If you do, you better include everything and everyone into your understanding. You should enhance your understanding to such a point that you can look beyond people’s madness also. There are very wonderful people around you, but once in a while they like to go crazy for a few minutes. If you don’t understand that, you will lose them. If you do, you know how to handle them.

Life is not always a straight line. You have to do many things to keep it going. If you forsake your understanding, your capability will be lost. Whether it is a question of personal relationships or professional management, in both places you need understanding. Otherwise, you won’t have fruitful relationships.