It's an Up(c)hill(y) Task

The trailer of the food recipes through visual and smell appeal made it look very promising. I am talking about a lunch meeting a couple of days ago. As we started having the food movie, some portions really were engaging-palatable and then came in one of our villains...."really hot green chilly". My friend somehow didn't see it coming. And he got so startled by the green chilly as if he has seen a frozen screen frame. What happened after that is a matter everybody is aware of and can relate to...when one's food has chilly way out of his range...the next few minutes or tens of them is a red face, watery eyes, stumbling speech, no taste of anything else. The rush of blood, energy, attention of the whole body to combat the chilly terrorist overtakes the conscious awareness. In such a scenario, any stimuli (advice, kind words, sweet helpings) have little and slow effect. The damage is done and the repair is painful.

Cut this to the daily metaphorical chilly intakes one has in different relation equations...here reference to the response or comment or unifinished/unaccomplished expectations one has with very many things any human is related to. Of the many ways to describe him, Human Being is also described as a “relational being”.

Here the Human who is the Relational Being has mental accounts or relations or map-ways with

• Other humans like immediate kins, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, Professional colleagues
• Belongingness to communities like society, caste, creed or nation, world
• As also several milestones around the material possessions one wants to accomplish.

Upon observing closely, any person’s anticipation with all the above three types (and its sub-items) of relations are never complete or accomplished all at the same time. One may always easily achieve some sense of accomplishment or satisfaction in one or many of them (any of the sub-items of the three types of relation) while the others are always incomplete. This means that humans live their life in an unfinished flowing, or “becoming” manner in many context. This “unfinishedness” or “Incompleteness” is somewhere the bumping into hot spicy green chilly zones with negative sentiment, neck-choked pushing-targets, misplaced expectations, etc that leaves one with near-chilly experience.

Answer is that the question is one of "how to avoid green chilly zones?" Sanskrit has few words that describe an approach towards passionate endeavor but “avoid-derailment” to outcomes/results.

“Sthitha Prajnya”… Steady State of Wisdom

“Same Kritva”…equanimity to opposite outcomes

“Udaasinaaha”…rising above the seat of extreme emotions

It begins with simple witnessing or observing of one’s own thoughts few times a day. Pick up any time of the day randomly and just watch for the last few minutes as to what were you thinking. Then make a note of whether it was +ve orientation or –ve orientation. Just witnessing few times a day around this can lend a new faculty of “conscious self-reflection” which is the first path towards meditation.

Am reminded of something in Jewish Wisdom:
If a man says, "I will do it soon." : The way is poor.
If he says, "I am ready to do it now." : The way is of average quality.
If he says, "I am doing it." : The way is praiseworthy.

Will you do this soon, or ready to do it now or are doing it already?