Yehi Hai Zindagi — This is Life

Yehi Hai, Yehi Hai, Yehi Hai Zindagi.

Whatever we are doing, whatever is happening — this moment, right here, right now. 

This is life. 

That’s the beauty of present moment awareness. That’s all there is, after all, this present moment. Everything else is time travelling in the past or the future. 

That dream lifestyle, that dream home, that dream car, that dream business, that dream job, that dream partner. Is life just a dream?

“This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.”

– Rumi

When to AWAKE then?

I dreamt of that big beautiful home. But I am sitting on the floor right now, on mother earth. Space all around me, and sitting in space simultaneously. The blue sky I can see through the window, the cool breeze that I feel. 

This is LIFE. Right here, right now. Yehi Hai Zindagi. 

When I was growing up, I dreamt of being in a modern city amongst the skyscrapers amongst the business of crowds of human beings. Now having spent years living in a big city like Chicago & San Francisco, the longing is for the mountains. Isn’t it funny, how we don’t value what we have in the present moment? Appreciation usually only comes much later, just like the loss of a loved one. 

Then there was the desire to wear expensive branded cool clothes. Going to the mall was by default, it was just what everyone did. After a while, it stopped to matter much. Other’s opinions, validations don’t matter much, they don’t disappear completely but for me at least it stopped driving my decisions. 

Listening to podcasts has been a massive agent of positivity, personal and spiritual growth. I remember in one of Naval Ravikant’s podcasts he said something like “ If other people’s words please or hurt you a lot, that’s a recipe for a life with a lot of misery.” That went straight to my head and heart, I have never forgotten that. 

Eventually, some things start to become clear. And for me, it was – what is life after all but the accumulation of moment to moment sessions of present moments. I don’t know where life will take me by the time I am 80 or 90 but this perspective will be very difficult to unjustify.

I must have taken the below lines from Tagore or Rumi but can’t remember, I just had them written on my notes.

When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.

In silence, can you hear the sound of the divine?