What is meditation and self awareness according to Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

So Yajnavalkya basically talks about meditating on the nature of our true Self. First we begin to listen to ourselves. We reflect upon the nature of our Self. We understand more about it. Then we become more and more comfortable with ourselves. Slowly, we develop empathy for the other. We begin to help others in finding their true Selves. Indeed, that empathy will guide us through the most turbulent times in any relationship - most of all the fascinating relationship we all have with ourselves.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad teaches us what is love?

 I din't find s convincing definition of Love other than what Brihadaranyka Upanishad tells us. Here are few excerpts taken from Wikipedia. 

Yajnavalkya's teaching to his wife is no different. At a basic level he is saying that we don't love our spouses or children or wealth, but we love ourselves. A girl is dear to her father because she is his daughter. A man is dear to a woman because he is her boyfriend. A dog is dear to a family because he is their pet. A suit is dear to a man because it is his suit. The love in a relationship comes because of the Self and not because of the inherent quality of the other. In fact, love arises out of an intimate awareness. After all, can we love something we don't know anything about?

Struggles of life

I am just a normal human being who has struggled to achieve love, happiness and career. Career wise I am an IITian who graduated from IIT Kanpur after lots of struggles. I was enrolled in prime Bansal Classes of Kota. If you have watched Kota factory then, you probably know the struggles faced by a budding engineering aspirant. 

I remember the day when my JEE rank was declared in the first attempt. I was not qualified. My mother became too nervous to see her child dreams shattered. Then I took the bold decision to drop one more year and work hard to achieve my goals. Supported by parents I took up one year course at Kota and worked hard. After ups and downs in the tests conducted at the coaching institute, I finally passed the exam. That moment was heroic to see my rank on IIT JEE portal. 

This anecdote is not unique but still a way to look upon my hardships faced in the preparation. I slipped 300 ranks in the internal batch reshuffling tests at Bansal classes. This gave rise to anxiety and negativity. the fear of failure in exam loomed over me. But then with hard work I gained success in the next reshuffling test to get promoted to the top batch. This was my share of struggle. 

Happiness is still in the journey despite setbacks. Working harder gave me higher levels of dopamine. One of my friends suggested that when you go through pain of any kind, try to involve yourself in another pain. This would relieve the earlier pain. 

This is a fair piece of advice. I was a metallurgical engineer at Tata Steel. I was not enjoying my work. I attended one of CSR activity in a nearby village and the idea of becoming a civil servant hit me. I felt that I will not have to work If I choose this work. So I resigned. That gave immense pain as I faced failures in my endeavours.

However, by God's grace I qualified Bihar State PSC exam. This gave me hope. I also enjoyed my job thoroughly. I may be a public servant in the eyes of my fellow citizens , an officer, but this has not come without fair share of further struggles.

So sometimes I feel, what is life? Is it a series of struggles? Or is the happiness wired in the struggles? 

I fail to get the answer, but still I wonder over it in my times of solitude. I look at the stars up above the sky on cloudy nights and wonder about the creations of God. This gives me a sense of ecstasy as I come to believe that God exists looking at those wonders. I also come to believe that struggles have made me the person I am today. And the happiness was not something to be achieved by reaching the destination but was in the journey. 

A short poem

Take all the pain

Take all the melody

Take all the happiness

Negative emotions

I am trying to overcome all faces of negative emotions.

Pain and Success

 Almost all roads to success are travelled with painful experiences. 

Inheritance Tax

Recent controversy on the innovative idea of introducing Inheritance tax has wider conundrums. 

Inheritance tax seeks to tax the assets and property transferred to the children of deceased parents. The government will levy 45% of the transferred income from the assets and the rest will be distributed among the children. 

By doing so, first the government is creating a mentality among the parents not to generate enough capital to be left behind for the children. Also it will lead to harassment of the children of the deceased parents. We know how tax collection in the country can be tedious and coercive for the citizens. 

Second, according to the social contract, the government is bound to offer services to the citizens who pay taxes. Does the corpus so collected has the potential to offer benefits to the children in the long run in the form of health insurance, education benefits, tax rebate? It is the larger question to ask. 

Third, the tax to GDP ratio of the country will improve only marginal by collecting such tax. Because GDP of any country is the sum total of all goods and services produced in a financial year and tax is collected after the parents are deceased who no longer contribute to goods and services production. So tax buoyancy will be marginal. 

Some benefits that can be comprehended are - social security to the children. It is the most important benefit, since deceased parents may not equally distribute wealth among their children due to large number of factors like adopted children, off springs who settled abroad may not get equal share in the distributed wealth, etc. So inheritance tax acts as Tax deducted at Source (TDS) for the deceased parents. The children will receive the remaining 55% of the asset income of the deceased parents, with the Government as the regulator. 

Nevertheless a tax on the deceased parents, will be a blow to the departed soul. Dont tax the deceased clean income , however Government can tax the unclean properties of the deceased as inheritance tax like black money tax. Spare the soul.