This question begs to be asked:

Why are we unhappy?

In a way, man cannot live without a relationship because this human being comes to this earth from a relationship. Man and woman meet to give birth to a child. And your relationship starts right from very early days. The moment you come out of the mother’s womb, you are nurtured, you are given all the love and affection and the care and from here the whole story of relationship starts. But the basic issue on which I want to emphasize is that the man and the woman who brought you on this earth, who became a vehicle for you to come to this earth, they themselves had no training. Thus they never gave you the training. You have always seen them asking, expecting from others and that is what you have got and now this is what you are practicing.

The best relationships in your life are always the ones in which you are not expecting anything. On the contrary, you are ready to deliver something to others.

Even when we begin a spiritual life, this relationship with God again is established on the basis of some ulterior motive. We want God to bless us; we want God to fulfill our desires. It is again not on the basis of love.

Sufis say, ‘God will never appear to those who will seek Him, and for those who will not seek, God will be never available to them.’

The moral of the story is that as long as you are desperate to know God, you will not know Him because you have an ulterior motive and God is allergic to it.

So, as long as you have a desire to get enlightened, Rinzai, the famous Zen master says, you will never be.

So as long as you wish to get awakened, your wish will be an obstacle. One of the monks wrote that for twenty years he kept on meditating, serving his master and working on the koans which Rinzai would give. He would spend sleepless nights, meditate for more than fifteen hours a day and constantly asked the master, when he would get awakened? And as the Zen masters are known for giving spontaneous weird answers, every time Rinzai would whack him. And after twenty years, a day came when he became relaxed and meditated for the sake of meditating and not for the sake of getting enlightened. Days passed, spring came and the trees were laden with flowers. One night while meditating under these blossoming trees when there was fragrance in the air, he was enjoying every moment of his meditation. He was not seeking anything, not even enlightenment and he got awakened.

Next day, he went to his master, bowed and he had just one question: “When I was desperate, when I would bother you with my questions, to teach me the way, let me know which is the trick, what should I do to break my slumber of ignorance and you would just whack me and last night I was blessed. What was the reason? I don’t know. You were the reason, I don’t know. I was the reason, I don’t know, but something happened, something dawned upon me.” Rinzai said to his dear disciple that last night when you were meditating, that was the time when truly you could meditate without thinking of enlightenment, without worrying about even master. Why I am not blessing you and opening those gates for you, the gateless gates of enlightenment for you – and being in that moment, the magic happened.

The relationship with your own spirituality is also laced with selfishness as you want to be happy, you want peace, and you want to have those ecstatic moments which you are reading in the books and scriptures. You become greedy and you want all those good things happening to you, and you want Samadhi too.

Remember, beggars cannot be the givers. And in any sound relationship you have to be a giver. When it is the question of children, then parent’s should accept that they have been blessed by nature, by God, to experience, how this human body comes into being, the wonder of seeing the baby, the wonder of seeing the baby growing from a toddler to an adult, from a child who is always pestering his mother and father for toys and milk, growing up to be an adult. Parents should be thankful for being given opportunity. And I think it is an important job which should be handed over only to sensible people, not to those who say that children happen because of an accident or we just got pregnant. I don’t think that every man and woman should be given a right to be a parent until and unless they are trained to become one. Every parent should be trained, well-equipped to live their life in a better and balanced manner. When they bring forth a child in their family, they should be able to guide this child on how to develop a sound and healthy relationship.

The mother has to learn to be a mother; the father has to learn to be a father. We have great examples. Shwetaketu goes to his father and tells him that since he is a Brahmin he should have the right to sit with him, when the latter goes out to the assemblies. And when his father informs him that he is not a Brahmin but a Shudra, he is shocked! The father explains that just because he is born of him, the son doesn’t become a Brahmin. The day Shwetaketu will realize Brahmina, will be the day when he will be given the legitimate certificate to be called as a Brahmin. For now, he is just a Shudra. And a Shudra is the one whose attachment is with this body of flesh and bones. If you identify just with this mortal human body, if you don’t know who you really are, then you cannot be called a Brahmin, and you’ll have to work hard to get to the point when you can actually be called a Brahmin. Here, the father is giving an opportunity and the right guidelines to his son to be an able, an independent, and a sound person.