Peace and Harmony in Daily Living

Do you really know what you want most in life? Even if you have all the success, fame and money you want, and the good health to enjoy it - are you happy and fulfilled? Why is it that we all find ourselves seeking something more from life - all the time? Now, a modern sage points out that each one of us, at some time or the other, has a taste of what that is: an uninterrupted experience of peace and harmony. He also shows how we can achieve this constant repose in our ordinary, hectic, daily living. This is what the seeking - most evidently, the spiritual seeking - is all about.

Thus, Ramesh Balsekar in his book Peace and Harmony in Daily Living raises a very basic question: Why should anyone seek 'enlightenment' or 'Self-realization'?

A simple examination of one's personal experience will reveal that what usually disrupts the peace and harmony in life is a thought about something we think we - or someone else - should or shouldn't have done. Hence, a massive load of guilt and shame for oneself, or hatred and malice for the other, is perpetuated. Without a lot of arduous effort - work, discipline, sacrifice, sadhana - without outside assistance, but simply by investigating one's own experience, it is possible to get relief from this bondage. What mystics have said for ages, is here viewed from the perspective of modern living: that actions are happenings and not something done by someone. This understanding is what actually contributes to and helps us in discovering the state of equanimity and peace which we most ardently seek.

Try it and you will see how simple it really is.

Ramesh S. Balsekar, married to Sharda and a father of three, is known and loved by seekers from around the world as an eloquent Master of Advaita, or Non-duality. After retiring as President of the Bank of India, Ramesh translated many of the daily talks given in Marathi by his Guru, Nisargadatta Maharaj. The teaching began in 1982 after Maharaj had twice directed him to talk, and since then he has written over twenty books on Advaita as well. Ramesh is widely regarded as undeniably unique and uncompromising in his presentation of the concepts, in keeping with an early premonitory remark by Maharaj that as a teacher Ramesh would not be "parroting" the words of his Guru. In response to the appreciation frequently shared by visitors at his talks for the singular clarity and `purity` of the teaching, Ramesh himself has perhaps best expressed it with his view of the Master-disciple relationship: "The purity of the teaching lies in the absence of an individual teacher and an individual learner - that is to say, in the absence of a subject-object relationship. The purity lies in the spontaneity of the happening."