How to maintain 'Balance'?

All through my growing years I often heard this advice from important people in my life that we must always maintain a balance in life.  I often read about this in religious scriptures, like, Lord Buddha advocated following middle path and to avoid living in extremes. What does all that mean?  I was not clear in my mind even though I had myself started advising my kids also that they should learn to maintain harmony and balance in life to be successful. 

Funniest part is I didn’t understand this ‘balancing’ thing.  I was blindly doing what others were doing.  I was mostly acting randomly and deciding what constitutes perfect balance in my life as a daughter, wife, mother, student, employee etc so many roles I am playing all at the same time.  I was doing what I ‘felt’ was right thing to do at that point of time.  Yet so many times I was not happy and feeling out of balance.

What constitutes the right balance is difficult to define.  What is that middle path.  Hindu scriptures talk of half male and half female aspect of God in order to define what is balance.  Chinese talk of yin(receptive female element of intuitive mind) and yang(strong male creative power) balance.  Whenever we come across something at extreme level we can easily identify and know that it is out of balance. 

In our day to day life to indicate this imbalance we often use the word ‘too’ - something or someone is too sweet, too rude, too thin, too fat, too studious, too lazy, too talkative, too quiet etc.  Here ‘too’ indicates that the quality we are talking about is out of balance.  We even have adjectives to label certain aspects of our personality e.g. extrovert, introvert, shy, aggressive, bold, timid, fearful, daring, brave, timid, workaholic, work-shirker etc.  We know we are talking about out of balance personality here – some aspect in personality which is either over or below normal level.  However, how do we know that we are in balance in any given situation?

I got an answer in Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda teachings who has stated that each human being has inbuilt masculine and feminine aspect in its personality which has to be in perfect balance for healthy body, mind and soul.  Masculine or positive aspect reveals itself as power to judge, discriminate, reason etc while feminine or negative aspect reveals itself through feeling of love, compassion, joy, and emotion.  If 'reason' lacks 'feeling' it becomes calculating and harsh and if 'feeling' lacks 'reason' it becomes blind emotion.  We go out of balance and thus unhappy. 

This philosophy made perfect sense to me and I could understand it clearly.  A perfect balance of these two aspects (reason & feeling) results in right action.  Have you noticed that sometimes we don’t do right thing just because we are not feeling good about doing it.  We get deceived by our ‘feelings’ and want to give ‘rest’ to our body.

If I am reasoning too much and overlooking the emotional aspect of a given situation, I am going out of balance.  I have to judge my friend, family or even enemy through intelligence and reasoning and not by emotional blindness.  From where does this intelligence comes from?  It is inherent part of our soul.  We call it as voice of conscience – which may differ from person to person.  What may be right to me could be 'not so right' to the other person.  


I should have faith in my own inner intelligence and reasoning for my own growth.  I may take advice from learned people, teachers etc but ultimately my decision should be based on my own inner understanding of the situation if I want to grow.  I have to understand that I am responsible for my life and its result.

If you know through your intelligence and reasoning that you have not wronged a person and the other person (even the world) insists that you are wrong, then you are not wrong.  Swami Vivekananda has insisted that a human being has to learn to ‘have faith in self’ to be successful in life.  To be able to say ‘I have a clear conscience’ is the most happiest state for any human being.  This is the perfect state of balance.

The pre-requisite here is taking responsibility of each and every happening in my life.  I get what I attract.  I am responsible for my failure and success.  We are mostly shrugging off our responsibility by blaming others for things going wrong in our life.  I have to do my part of karma in the most diligent manner as per guidance of my inner consciousness.  Nobody else is responsible for anything going wrong in my life.  The universe is working in divine perfect order.  Everything happens the way it should.

In this workplace called earth, I am the warrior (Arjuna) and God (Krishna) is nothing but my own inner voice of conscience-ness.  So many times we know what is right but still we don’t do it because we do not ‘feel’ like doing it.  We get deceived by our strong feelings and emotions and end up making wrong choices just to feel good.  We have to discipline ourselves if we want to live in balance.  Make it a habit to do right thing even when we don’t feel like doing it.  We have to discard those reasons which are making us emotionally and mentally blind (Dhritrashtra).

As a human, we are energy beings, made up of pure consciousness.  When we look at others too as pure consciousness, we act right and maintain balance.  When we personalize, we make wrong choices.  Right approach to maintain balance would be to look at the situation /person from non-personal level, try to feel what other person is going through, discriminate intelligently, listen to your own inner voice of conscience, reason out, take a decision, act and standby it.  Now don’t let judgments of others bother you.  You have done your best if you 'know' it in your heart.  This is sufficient.

Vandana Ritik

New Delhi

How to keep your Promise?

Have you given a promise to someone and are now unable to keep it? Is that making you guilty because you believe that when we give our word to do something, we should do it no matter what. That is why it is said that Silence is Golden. However, supposing you made a promise to someone many years ago and are finding it difficult to keep the same today, what would you do?

Well the Great Indian Epic Mahabharata

has a solution in this regard.

The Great Warrior Bhishma Pitamah had taken a vow that he would not claim the Kingdom of Hastinapur. To prevent any of his off spring from becoming King, he took a vow of celibacy. He also promised that he would be loyal to whosoever sits on the throne of Kingdom of Hastinapur. The vow was made when the times were good, the King was his own father and the whole environment was good.

However, two generations later, problem arose as now the Hastinapur was in the hands of an unworthy blind ruler Dhritrashtra, who wanted his selfish and ambitious son Duryodhana(Kaurava) to be the next King ignoring his royal cousin Yudhishtar(Pandava) who was the most fit person to be the King in those days and he also had the right to be the next King. Old Bhishma, who was still very strong and mighty warrior, knew these facts but due to his vow of loyality towards the ruler of Hastinapur he could not oppose the injustice, harrassment and foul tricks being played against the Pandavas family by the Duryodhana(Kauravas) and all the while blind king kept quiet and did not take any action to stop his son.

The big war of Mahabharata could have been avoided had wise Bhishma broken his vow in order to establish Dharma (righteousness) in the Kingdom. To keep his word, he fought and lost his life against Pandavas who had the support of God Lord Krishna himself. The wise Bhishma was struck up in the past. He was overlooking the new changes in the environment, the downfall in the values of the rulers of Hastinapur.

He was so powerful if only he had reconsidered his promise so many lives could have been saved.

In the same battle, Lord Krishna had also promised that though he would support the Pandavas but he would not wield any weapon against the Duryodhana’s army. He became Charioteer of Pandava Warrior Arjuna instead.

However, towards the end of the war, Lord Krishna did take up the weapon – the Sudarshana Chakra(the revolving disc of fire) to save life of Pandavas’ unborn progeny. Lord Krishna did not keep his word. He was looking at the situation from the present angle. The vow was made in the past. Now the circumstances had changed and if he had not stepped in the Pandavas' (who represented righteousness) future lineage would have stopped. Saving the future of humanity was more important to Lord Krishna than keeping his word of non-violence during the war.

Lord Krishna reconsidered his promise in the new set of circumstances to establish righteousness in the interest of all.

Resolve your inner conflict keeping the above points in mind. Lord Krishna is your own inner consciousness. It is always good to keep your word but if the situation demands, it is wise to break your promise when the circumstances have considerably changed and keeping your word is going to hurt interest of all.

Vandana Ritik
New Delhi