I've Words in Me

This year has been exceptionally busy for me. From the events in the ashram to the Bhagavad Gita translations, audio recordings, rituals for the upcoming Sri Vidya app, meetings, my own work for my livelihood (which is a fair bit), and, above all, writing. Not just the monthly write-ups, but writing my books, too. To be consumed by what I do is fundamental to my temperament, but nothing consumes me the way writing does. Yes, when I sit down to code (I still do, often enough), I lose all track of time, but it's writing alone that engulfs me and transports me to another world.

After finishing The Bhagavad Gita Retold, I am now on to my next book: The Legend of Rudra. I might even read a chapter or two on the live Gurupoornima event. Usually, it takes me forty-five minutes to scribble a thousand words. That's my average. This does not include redrafting or research time, of course. But writing The Legend of Rudra, unearthing our history and telling it in a way you'd actually want to read, has been another matter entirely. The first chapter alone took me more than eighty hours (including redrafting).

Fewer people in the world are reading books these days than ever before, and even fewer actually finish the books they start. YouTube, podcasts, social media, OTT, and other platforms promising instant gratification have reshaped, if not ruined, our reading habits. But no matter whether people read my books or not, regardless of whether they sell, I feel incredibly productive on days I get any writing done. Truth be told, it's only with words on the page that I feel I've actually served you, our dharma, or humanity in any meaningful way.

When I start writing a book, I switch to minimum-distraction mode. That is to say that everything else, unless akin to a life-threatening emergency, must wait. Queries, meetings, projects, action-items, events, everything must get pushed out. And it's not just because I don't have the time, which I admit is the prime reason, but more so because I am unable to function. Imagine diving deep into the ocean and having to surface midway to attend to something trivial or even important. You don't simply pick up where you left off. Instead, you must strap the gear back on, take the plunge once more, and hope nothing pulls you back before you've gathered the jewels lying on the seabed.

If on most days I sleep an average of six hours, during my writing stints, I barely get three or four hours of sleep. If I could get away with it, I wouldn't even sleep that much but the brain demands its due. When writing a book, I'm unable to do much else at all because the world around me turns hazy. I stay indoors for days on end, only getting up to bathe, exercise, and eat twice a day. Salad at lunch and a bowl of veggies with a bit of rice or chapatis in the evening. It's set. All other variables of my daily routine must come to an absolute constant so I don't have to expend any energy or thought on anything else at all.

I didn't think I would devote five long paragraphs and bore you with my writing process. What I had actually planned to do was to share just a few words on why I still write even if there are other, arguably better, ways to reach the world. While I do believe that books have no equivalent when it comes to leaving a lasting impression on your consciousness, the reason I write is the same reason a bird sings: it has a song in it, and I have words in me.

And that is what I would say to anyone who tells me they feel a void in their life, or that they don't know their purpose, or that they can't see the point of it all. I would ask them to dig deep and find out what they truly care about.

We think confusion about life is a large problem. We treat it like a locked door and go looking for a key. We read books and go on retreats. We ask what is the meaning of all this, why am I here, what is the point. And we assume the answer will be enormous. So we wait for the enormous thing. Meanwhile the days pass, one after another, like electric poles we see from a moving train, and nothing is claimed by us and nothing claims us.

When a person does not know the purpose of his life, it is almost never because the purpose is hiding. It's just that they don't know what they care about. Besides, purpose is not something you find lying under a rock in the Himalayas. It is the name we give to the thing we care about so much that we are willing to be inconvenienced by it.

Ever seen a small child at a puddle? She does not ask the puddle what it means, but simply gets into it. She cares about the splash, about the mud on her knees, about the sound the water makes, and she cares completely, holding nothing back. Nobody has to teach her. We are born knowing how to care about something but somewhere along the way we learn to hold back. We realize and learn that if we care about a thing and lose it, it will hurt. So we ration our caring the way a stingy cook rations ghee, a little here, a little there, never enough to taste. And then we wonder why the food is bland. We wonder why nothing moves us. We have made ourselves safe, and safe is another word for nothing.

Then again, to care about something is a perilous act. I do not want you to walk into it thinking it is only sweetness. When we truly care about a thing, we hand it a knife. A person, a work, a deity, a cause, whatever it is, once we care, it can hurt us like nothing else can. When I first went into solitude for my sadhana, I cared about seeing Mother Divine with a longing that left no room for anything else, and there were nights the longing was hard to tell apart from grief. If I had cared less, I would have suffered less. That much is true. But I would also have seen nothing. The Mother does not show herself to a lukewarm heart. Nothing worth seeing does.

The mistake we make is thinking we must find the great, correct, cosmically ordained thing to care about before we are allowed to begin. So we begin nothing. But it does not work that way.

You do not sit at the start of a thousand-mile drive and demand to see the destination before you turn the key. Your headlights show you ten meters. You drive those ten meters, and the next ten appear. You drive those ten meters and the next ten appear. Care about the small thing in front of you. Care about it fully. Cook one meal as though it mattered. Chant one mantra as though God were listening, because He is. Attend to one person as if they were the only person. The caring itself will show you the road.

Pick something. Give it your whole heart. Watch what happens.

So do you have a song you wish to sing? No? Why not start learning then? That is all there is to it, the rest is commentary.

Peace.
Swami
P.S. See you live at the guru poornima event, for some more words, on 29-Jul @ 7:30 AM IST. Live on YouTube, too. Thank you for your love.