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Tag: spiritual practise

What is the proof?

What is the proof?

Published August 19, 2020

It has become a big deal to proclaim and trumpet the number of hours one spends on spiritual practises including attending satsangs, doing yoga asanas, meditating or reading scriptures. These activities quickly find their way into facebook, instagram and other social media. Nothing wrong in that.

One person spends her time attending seven Skype satsang sessions every day. Yet she herself admits to having all sorts of issues – desires, attachments, problems at home, problems at work – you name it.

Why this disconnect? Why do the hours in satsang or spirituality not translate into real life positive changes?

The answer is simple. Because there is no application. The change we seek must come from within. Reading a book or attending a discourse have little meaning if the learnings are not applied, consistently, day after day. To quote an oft-quoted example, we can all read 100s of books on the technique of swimming, but will never learn unless pushed into the water.

This does not mean we must reduce the hours one is spending on these good activities. But an hour spent less, instead of resulting in regret, should ideally culminate in real world implementation. Came across some lessons on anger management? Super, now see if you can control your tongue – no lashing out – especially in the company of your irritating but well-intentioned friend. Read something about the importance of being charitable? Great, now go out and see if you can donate 10% of your income this month to a charity of your choice.

In this case, the proof of the pudding, is in the doing.

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Doing a 10k

Doing a 10k

Published June 30, 2020

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule.

He says that if anyone can practise 10,000 hours worth of a skill in any field, that person would become an expert. Practise 10,000 hours of coding and you would become one of the best computer programmers in the world. Or 10,000 hours of piano practise and you would be ranked amongst the best pianists in the world. Presumably, 10,000 hours at my job, would make me indispensable, and likely to be very highly paid and sought after.

Assuming a 10-hour-per-day effort, this would translate to about 3 years.

There are several disparaging articles on this – about how the number 10,000 is wrong, and that it should be less (or more), and how deliberate practise is more important, and so on.

Completely agree, and completely disagree with all those. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is to get started, and then plough on, as much as possible.

Also, in our world today, material achievements abound aplenty. But these laurels mostly leave us feeling empty within.

What if we apply the 10,000 hour rule to spirituality and happiness as well? If we practise charity, practise generosity, practise smiling, practise giving, practise meditation, practise empathy and so on, we will only get better at it.

Let us put our 10,000 hours to good use.

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