Books are an infinite treasure
Books are a means of escape
For those who don’t travel
Can’t or won’t socialize
For people like us
Books are our modes of transport
Books are our language of interactions
When I first received Shubha Vilas’ book ‘Open-Eyed Meditations – Practical Wisdom For Everyday Life’, I didn’t think I would be able to reach the last few pages, as you see this was the first self-help book or for that matter non-fiction book I was about to read after “The Secret” which I had read 10 years back. However, simplicity is the charm of this book!
Sprinkled with snippets of Indian Mythologies like Ramayan & Mahabharat, it is composed of 64 chapters of two-to-three pages each, which makes it simple to read. Especially for people like me who have a short attention span, this book can be devoured in small bites just like dark chocolate.
The author has covered several aspects of day-to-day life and given us simple yet effective means to deal with them. In several instances, you will be able to relate with the advice given as it matches your beliefs but has simply been put to words in a simple yet impactful way.
Each chapter mentions an excerpt from either the Ramayan or Mahabharat, hence in some cases it’s difficult for us readers to find the connect if we are not too well versed with the myths. However, this has been well-balanced by the messages that are explained in depth before the examples.
Each chapter comes with a small summary at the end, which would help a reader go back any day and reread the crux of a chapter in a few minutes. This is something that I really liked as I have marked nuggets of wisdom that I really loved in a few chapters.
Here are a few quotes from the book that I loved the most…
“Yoga of communication is essentially a combination of three limbs, namely the yoga of interaction, the yoga of participation, and the yoga of non-intervention.”
“If the deep-seated addiction to conclude before listening is sacrificed, healthy interactions will begin.”
“Leadership is not about impressing people but about impacting people.”
“Peace and Joy cannot be purchased by forcing someone to love us more but by hating our self less.”
“No matter how much you try, you cannot make friendship deepen faster. The test of friendship remains time.”
Hence as you can see from the snippets above, the book is a simple trove of wisdom that we can put to use in day-to-day scenarios of life. An interesting read that I took a couple of weeks to complete vis-à-vis my usual quick day or two reading of fiction books. A suggestion to more people like me who do not like self-help books that much, read it with an open mind, with the perspective of understanding human psyche as an onlooker rather than with the objective of improving your self.
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