Apologies in advance but this blog will get a little personal (which I usually avoid but given that I am sharing “my” idea of fitness, I am including some personal elements)

I am personally not sure if I have the पात्रता or qualification to talk on the topic of mental fitness . I am not a सिद्धपरुष nor have any expertise in this domain . But this topic keeps coming now and then on a regular basis whomsoever you meet or whichever newspaper article you read or blogs being written. So I felt it may be a good idea to put together opinion that I have arrived at based on my own reflections of my own life. Based on these reflections, my idea of fitness will be conveyed together with four सूत्र  that I will share towards the end of the blog to attain the ideal state of fitness. Readers may take what appeals to them and ignore those which do not appeal.

Some questions come up when one talks about fitness – how does one define fitness?

1. I have not claimed even a single rupee of medical expenses from my company for many years – is this an indicator of fitness?
2. Barring a day or 2 , I do not recollect myself falling seriously ill for a long time – is this an indicator of fitness?
3. I’ve crossed 50 years of life and so far I do not have any lifestyle affliction like blood pressure diabetes etc (unless something is lurking inside 😀), is this an indicator of fitness?

And if these are indeed the indicators , what do I ascribe these to?

1. Is it my athletic childhood – my body is tuned well for sports since I was a kid
2. Is it some आसन that I’ve done in my past for a period of 10 continuous years? And I used to do the आसन after a proper स्नान and chanting श्लोक since my interest had been ध्यान as against physical health.  
3. Is it because I do not drink or smoke or am a vegetarian?
4. Do I possess any genetic advantage that I may have inherited?

Or maybe I am unfit really though it is just that I do not know it as yet 😀. 

So what is the truth? If we define fitness in terms of physical health and mental fitness , then the कर्म we will indulge in may be to do daily walking or jogging, run marathon, doing sudoku, play chess, etc to keep ourselves fit. But this is a fear based motivationmeaning that we are pursuing running or walking or playing games out of fear of not getting into a state of terminal hospitalization? Besides, bad health may also be caused by pandemic, pollution, poor quality food, etc over which our level of control is far more limited. And then we have examples of people who live long & healthy despite not overtly dong such actions. Limiting fitness to external physical or mental aspects does feel sub-optimal in my opinion. So, I personally reject such an ordinary definition of fitness. 

Must one remain fit so as to live longer? But what is the benefit of living long if it means spending time watching IPL, Netflix, listening to music or keep on travelling to useless places mindlessly or worrying about parents or children throughout our life? So many people have done these things in the past, doing these things today and will continue to do so in the future – why bother to live long if our only interest is in these “frivolous” pursuits where the actions are compulsive which we indulge in without any control over ourselves?

Why do I say this ? Gyaneshwara lived for 21 years , the mathematician Ramanuja did not reach the age of 30, Adi Shankara for 32 years, Swami Vivekananda for 39 years, Tukaram for about 40 years, Shivaji and Rana Pratap lived for less than 60 years and on the other hand, Paramacharya lived  for 100 years, Ramanujacharya for 120 years and Srimad Bhagavatam says that श्रीकृष्ण lived for 125 years. Were these people leading fit lives or unfit lives ? Or do we say that irrespective of whether they were fit or unfit at a physical level, they lived a fit life – which is why we remember them long after they’ve passed away whereas all the others who may have lived longer, had many friends and accumulated a lot of प्राकृतिक objects, but every such so-called activity of accumulation comes to an end, is it not? Those great beings are giving to society even today – long after they’ve departed – one may thus state that they are indeed living even today despite not being around physically. From our own perspective, though we may be living physically today, are we really living? 

Let me share my own story as it went about till mid 30s. I used to feel drained out. I used to return home with stinking socks. I used to fall ill often. I used to be in office by 8:00 AM (as has been my routine for many years) and leave office after 8:00 PM. Though I always exuded an external calm (a genetic advantage probably), my heartbeat was certainly unstable in office and home stress situations. And no matter what mind job I was attempting, the unrest within me was always there. I was angry with life and though I was doing holidays and outings with friends and family now and then, the unrest within me never left me. I had even contemplated leaving Mumbai and move to a smaller city to make life easier. My point is obvious – what is the use of external physical fitness when the mind feels exhausted unsteady and unsure throughout life?

But this state of unrest started to abate from about the early 40s – no situation in office or home or anywhere caused rapid heart beating with the frequency that it used to earlier. Even when people behaved badly, anger troubled me far less than what it used to in the past.  No doubt there was frustration now and then but it was not anger directed to another person. Getting good bonus or praises from people hardly excited me nor bad years troubled me. I too have faced difficult circumstances both at office and at home – in fact, more difficult challenges came my way than what I had experienced early in life. And not only I survived those tense moments, while I was apprehensive about outcomes, anxiety/ fear/ anger were not troubling me as I was going through these moments. More importantly, motivation to give my best at work or home came from within and detached from the external noise – good or bad. Being detached from an external trigger for motivation to do my own स्वधर्म is a big liberator.  

So what triggered this change? I have had two obsessions innate within me since I was a kid – reading ancient history/ आध्यात्म texts and writing. And since I was always innately inquisitive, I had a lot of questions a sample of which are given below:

1. Why was India under siege from the last 800 years?
2. Why is India dirty?
3. Beyond external biology is there a difference between a man and a woman?
4. Why do we love others? Should we love others?
5. Is there any difference between independence vs freedom?
6. Even when outside India, some questions kept coming to me from foreigners – a Singaporean asked me as to why Indians fought for freedom from the British instead of allowing them to stay on, a Pakistani asked me about Ramana Maharishi (most modern Indians have not heard about him), an Indonesian asked me as to why ancient Indians where sensible and wise while modern day Indians so arrogant etc 

Having kids is a wonderful experience since they too ask a lot of questions. This forced me to dig deeper – I am pleased to share a sample of some of the interesting books that helped me in formulating answers to these questions:

1. Mahipati’s biography on Tukaram and other saints of Maharashtra like Eknath 
2. Swami Chinmayananda’s commentary on the श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता and or Osho on कृष्ण 
3. Small is Beautiful by E Schumaker
4. Writings of Joseph Kumarappa 
5. Autobiography of Lee Kuan Yew
6. Life of Swami Ramana Maharishi 
7. Swami Krishnananda’s writings in general and his commentary on Brihadaranyaka उपनिषद् in particular 
8. Vivekachudamani bye Swami Ranganathananda 
9. Being Different by Rajiv Malhotra
10. Beautiful Tree by Dharampal 
11. शिव सूत्र by Jaideva Singh 
12. Lectures on शास्त्र like तत्वबोध,  आदित्य हृदयम् etc and on इतिहास texts by various Gurus in multiple languages 

This obsessive reading give me some answers, added many more questions which in turn led to obtaining more answers. The end goal is that over the years many aspects of life became far more clearer than what they were a decade back. Similarly, the habit of converting my thoughts into writing has been there since school days – most of the writing has always been for personal consumption. Of course, I have also written to various institutions/ opinion makers (thanks to internet) and have had good exchange of views with those who responded. The blogsite here is a logical outcome of this writing orientation that captures answers to some of the significant questions that have bothered me over the years. 

Why am I sharing all these personal aspects? Slowly but surely, life moved from holding onto what is temporal to what is सनातन or eternal. I was somehow able to disconnect with the modern variables of thought (input sources being education, popular media, modern opinion makers or WhatsApp University) which drive our triggers for action. And what is the सनातन variable – it is simply that we are free, universal and an ocean of bliss – the सत्-चित्-आनन्द स्वरूप  is what we possess innately. We are not a  limited empirical individual but instead are an unlimited आत्मा who has taken on an limited body in a specific time-space continuum. Therefore any activity that I may take up (e.g., engagement with a vocation like Information Technology or that of a teacher or sports or a mountain climber or a house-wife), the success from pursuit of such an activity should be measured only if it helps to regain our सत्-चित्-आनन्द स्वरूप. While the worldly variables like fame, power, position, wealth, etc are usually seen as motivators and presented in various modern-day books, the धर्म lens however sees regaining of सत्-चित्-आनन्द स्वरूप  as the centre of success – no matter what action or vocation we take up (or do not take up). 

The choice of vocation must be something that is aligned to our skill-set or innate aptitude (since it is relatively effortless – just as writing and reading in my personal case). What is the actual vocation that is taken up does not matter at all – if it is aligned to our innate aptitude, it is easier for us to practice it. Let us say that life has taken me to be in the domain of sports . If my स्वभाव is geared towards writing I will take to sports blogging as a vocation. If स्वभाव is geared towards verbalising, I can take up vocation of a sports commentator, if स्वभाव is athletic and physical oriented, I can pursue active sports, if geared towards designing, I can take on to building sports utilities or if I am good with numbers, I can take to pursuing the role of a sports statistician Now replace sports with any other profession or even living as a home woman or home man or working in a charitable hospital or anything else, knowing our स्वभाव will enable us to choose the right vocation. But the measure of success is gaining of सत्-चित्-आनन्द स्वरूप (not any other variable). At a लौकिक level, one gains clarity of thought and ease of decision making. At a परमार्थिक level, it paves the way for मोक्ष. 

Rather than fitness of a physical kind being pursued as an end goal, pursuit of fitness in every action one does becomes the goal.This also means that length of life that we will live for does not really matter – this is because we have been pursuing excellence in every action of ours, while having long term goals may be relevant and give a sense of direction, they are not very important. What matters is what one does now. What matters is how we are doing what we are doing. I see the following four सूत्र as enablers for pursuit of fitness:

1. Every person has some wisdom to share – Even if a person is generally seen as uneducated or of an impulsive orientation or even an enemy etc, he or she may suddenly throw a pearl of wisdom – we need to be alert to catch such a pearl. Value your engagement with every person whom you meet and give respect to each and every line of what the other says – let your own prejudice or awe for the other person not govern how you engage with others. When either prejudice or awe takes over, we stop noticing or listening – this is our doom. Even a simple act of lighting up a दिया twice a day at the पूजा mandir consistently can become an act of tremendous inspiration provided we have the दृष्टि to learn from such an action. Sri Dattatreya in the Srimad Bhagavatam refers to His 24 Gurus which include aspects of nature such as space/ river or animals like deer/ elephant/ insects or even a prostitute named Pingala. यथा दृष्टि तथा दर्शन् is the maxim – if we operate with a limited दृष्टि that is burdened by prejudice or overconfidence or plain ideological lens, our दर्शन् of the truth of life will be limited. 
2. Take responsibility in every moment of your life – at home, you are responsible for the joy of your whole family, at work your responsibility is to align with the larger organization & your role in that scheme of things, on the road you need to walk or drive responsibly to cause minimal damage to others, you need to pay taxes for the larger cause of good of the country, while doing पूजा honestly aspire for सर्वे जनाः सुखिनो भवन्तु, etc. More recently, the famous Canadian Psychologist, Jordan Peterson in his book “12 Rules for Life” emphasises a lot on taking responsibility as a key endeavour to make us better individuals and live richer lives than those who remain irresponsible. 
3. Every moment of life is filled with units of experience. Give your best into every unit of experience and it does not matter what is the unit of experience – one may be doing a fancy presentation to a client or buying vegetables from a roadside vendor or talking to the boy who washes your car daily. And our role in each such experience is योग as conveyed in the श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता – समत्वम् योग उच्यते (be equanimous) or योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् (skill in action is योग). If the outcome of every कर्म we do is that our heart is beating faster or we become happy to the point of exuberance or we become disappointed to the point of depression or we become angry to the point of becoming bitter, etc., we have failed in that unit of experience. But if we have retained समत्वम् with respect to outcome of our कर्म or have discarged our धर्म well, we have performed an action of “fitness”. 
4. Cultivate an engagement that excites you. I will urge all to read David Epstein’s “Range” – a fascinating book encouraging people to cultivate range (of skills) into their lives. For me, using my innate aptitude of writing and reading history, I have pursued a wide rangeof कर्म. One needs to have an आलम्बना (support) that we hold onto throughout life – it is this support, our raft, that we use to seal through life – we must never let it go. Let such an आलम्बना be a continuous pursuit of depth in our own innate orientation, whatever कर्म we may take up. Engagement cannot be something like watching cricket or football, watching movies, listening music or playing cards with friends etc if these are done passively – such engagements are mere expressions of गुण of तमस् since they are a mere passive engagement in काम. The engagement has to grow you, expand you, push you to work harder and lead you to add value to others in that domain. Progress in life is measured by how much one is expanding – not via positions in a career or bank balance since those represent mere कर्म फल which may be seen as merely an incidental outcomes. Instead, growth is in terms of how one is expanding  only but how much one is expanding or adding skill in that space which is enhancing clarity and reducing emotions of anxiety, fear and incompleteness. Ultimately, it is that growth or that deepening of knowledge that adds meaning to life.

It does not matter whether we live long or not, it does not matter whether we are hospitalised or incapacitated physically in some form – for whatever time we live, have we been able to live and experience every moment of our life fully? What does living fully give us? It gives us freedom. no prejudice drives our actions, no obsession or desire drives actions – we become detached to the external aspects of her life (money position clothes etc) but become attached to deepening ourselves in our chosen domain of skill. Whether we are really rich or not from a bank balance perspective, we will still feel rich since we’ve accumulated a lot and grew continuously throughout life pursuing life fully. 

And what do we start our journey with? It is अभयं (fearlessness) – Chapter 16 of the श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता list 20 traits we need to cultivate and अभयं comes first – we can therefore start with bringing this into our everyday actions. As we progress, we will attain our स्वरूप  which is the state of eternal fitness.  Fitness does not become a separate कर्म that we need to pursue and instead our day to day कर्म aligned with our स्वभाव will bring clarity of thought as to what स्वधर्म we need to pursue and pursuit of our स्वधर्म will eventually enable us to regain our स्वरूप, our own eternal real free nature. There is only one villain one will keep us down, one that will keep us sub-optimal, one that will keep us unfit – it is तमस्, our own laziness. It is तमस् that makes us blame others, blame circumstances, blame our background and creates a mountain of excuses to live in unfit life. Shed this and one is free – eternally.

ॐ तत् सत्