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Quote by AVIS Viswanathan

“Life is not only about going after name, money, success, fame and fortune and getting all of them. It is also about how you live with humility, dignity, and discipline when all of what you attained and acquired are taken away from you. Resilience and equanimity cannot be developed and deployed in simulated environments. They are always discovered within you, when you stand in the middle of the battle of Life, in the chaos, in the eye of the storm. It is by facing Life and learning to be happy, to be useful, despite your circumstances, that you become stronger.”

Quote by AVIS Viswanathan

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AVIS Viswanathan

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“Your Life is ultimately made up of the choices you made at different times. When you choose based on economic criteria you may end up being both challenged and unhappy. When you choose based on Happiness, you may still have challenges to deal with, but you will be happy. So, choose wisely. Going with the flow is to be able to choose to be happy over choosing to be economically secure. Because economic security is a human invention, it is an illusion. What is true is Happiness. You have been given this human form to be happy. With Happiness, you can never be unhappy. Simple!”

“Instead of obsessing over getting them married, what parents must really wish for is that their young adult children find great soulmates. A soulmate is someone who you can relate to and are best friends with; someone that you want to grow old with – and live with all your Life! Some people find their soulmates early and some others find them over time. So, parents’ worrying sick that their children must be married here, now, by a certain age, to a certain ‘category or class’ of people…all this is clearly avoidable stress and effort. A marriage is only a social contract, an irrelevant label. Pushing your children to get married so your duty is done, so you may have grandchildren, is acting selfishly, irresponsibly. Instead encourage your children to do what they love doing, to find love and be loving! Living-in with a BFF trumps being unhappily married – any day!”

“There is nothing wrong in getting married. The problem arises when you expect a marriage to deliver companionship or when you start believing that a marriage makes love happen. If you look at it objectively, marriage is just a social license for people to live together and, well, have sex, and, in most cases, procreate. Beyond being that license, it serves no purpose. The loving between people, the act of sexual intercourse and the biological process of having children – all of these can surely happen even outside of a marriage. Which is why marriage is neither necessary nor relevant. So, marry only if you really want to, but don’t expect the marriage to make you happy. Companionship is what delivers happiness. And companionship is not about gender or age; it is about finding love, being loving – in the present continuous – no matter what and celebrating each other!”

“When all your efforts at trying to get what you want are exhausted, if you choose to walk away calmly, without grief and frustration, then what you want will flow to you, on its own, if it is meant for you. There is great power in letting go and moving on. It is only when you have let go, of desire itself, that you can receive what is truly meant for you! No one – and nothing – can take away what is meant for you and no one – and nothing – can get you what is not meant for you! Understand this truth about Life – and you will live happily ever after.”

“Don’t intellectualize Life. Not everything has a scientific, rational, logical reason to it. Beyond a point, Life is largely inscrutable. 2+2 does not often add up to 4 in Life and you can’t find the answer to some questions – particularly to the why and why me questions! It is always what it is. Life does not happen because you planned it in a certain way. It so happens that sometimes your plans are in sync with Life’s plans for you. So you end up thinking – given your education and your economic power – that you are controlling your Life. But the moment Life throws you a googly, you are stumped! You are left clueless, numb and debilitated. That’s when you realize that surrendering to Life, humbly accepting what is and going with the flow is what intelligent living is all about! This realization is the key to Happiness.”

“If you reflect on Life, it has no meaning. You came with nothing. And you will go with nothing. In this time, you will acquire knowledge and experience…you may get fame and wealth…you will build relationships…and blah and blah and blah…but nothing – and no one – is going with you, when it is time for you to leave. So, is Life meaningless? Perhaps, yes. But there’s another view too. The only option each of us has, since we don’t choose to be born, is to bring meaning to the Life that we have been given. Simply, what you do is more important than what you acquire and own in your lifetime. Therefore, make what you do – to make this world a better place for the generations to follow – the singular focus of your journey while enjoying every moment of it. This is how you bring meaning to an apparently meaningless Life!”

“Don’t grieve that your child has a problem. Don’t wish for the problem to go away either. And certainly don’t imagine that ‘bad times’ have befallen your child owing to ‘bad karma’! The truth is that no matter what you do or wish for, your child has to go through what they have to go through. Just as Life happened to you in its own unique way, it will happen to your child too. You can’t change that reality. Nor can you live your child’s Life. So, be practical. Be available for your child surely and invest in prayer. A crisis is Life’s way of coaching your child. So, pray that your child learns to face Life, not fight it or run away from it! Pray that your child evolves spiritually from the experience – often growing stronger, wiser and happy from it.”

“Oh! But training the mind isn’t easy…” Surely, Life is not easy. Getting through this lifetime is never easy. So, training the mind is not going to be achieved without dedication and diligence. But just as the body can be trained, the mind too can be taught how to live in the present moment. You see, the mind thrives only when it is stuck in the dead past or when it races into the unborn future. In those two states it is constantly spewing thoughts of anger, grief, guilt, anxiety, worry, fear and stress. But when trained to live in the now, the mind is powerless. That is how you learn to be non-worrying, non-frustrated, non-suffering, to be happy! You can either train your mind, and employ equanimity and happiness to deal with Life’s upheavals, or you can continue to cite the ‘it-is-not-easy’ excuse and be unhappy! Your call!”