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Rajiv Mehrotra has been a familiar face on public television. A personal student of the Dalai Lama, he also heads the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

*What does spirituality mean to you?
The first image that comes to my mind is that of a monk wearing ochre colours, with great simplicity, great joy, and great compassion. The processes of cultivating these while still in samsara, is what spirituality means to me.

What is spirituality for you in your day to day life?
It manifests mostly in my failure to get there! I neither wear ochre, nor am I simple, nor am I able to live as austere a life as I would like to or should. I feel deeply caught in the web of samsara, and the more I try to break out of it, the more the web sticks to me and traps me. So I am trying to be patient and learn not to try too hard, to accept and to surrender, keeping my mind in check when it constantly says “break through”. I try to follow His Holiness’ advice when he keeps reminding me to “practice, practice, practice”.
It is fine to study the scriptures and develop an intellectual understanding, but it must be deeply internalized. Inspired by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I therefore try to combine practices that cultivate reason and logic on the one hand, and appropriate emotions on the other. If we only do the first, and attain some deep intellectual understanding or even some peace with an illusion of equilibrium and equanimity, it all goes out of the window the moment we are exposed to a really difficult situation. On the other hand, we may get deeply emotionally attached to an idea, a philosophy, a master, or a deity, which can be a good starting point; but unless it is also reinforced by reason and logic, it can easily crumble.
I find myself less at ease with the first category of practice --- following, remembering, and understanding the sutras. I am more successful working with emotions. For example, one of the practices of cultivating compassion involves visualizing one’s mother, so that the emotion of unselfish love develops. Holding onto this emotion, you visualizes someone you feel neutral about and transfer that feeling of love to that person. You then attempt to do the same with a person you are upset with, and begin to try and feel love and compassion for the “enemy”. I first saw a very powerful implementation of this principle in the early eighties, on a trip to Dharamsala, when I watched Tibetans using prayer mats that said “pray for the Chinese”.
I am several lifetimes away from significantly achieving these stages of insight and transformation but I am attempting to do so. Many mornings, I sit and nothing happens, the mind is dull and dead. Often I give up in frustration and despair, wondering why it takes so long and I feel I am getting nowhere. It is a continuous struggle, a learning process, a journey.
One of the reasons I feel so close both to Ramakrishna and to the Dalai Lama is their acknowledgment of a process, a journey. Many narrow spiritual masters claim an enlightening epiphany and then proceed to teach. Instead, those ancient traditions encourage learning and practice to the last day of one’s life, in fact even during the process Till his last days, when he was dying of cancer, Ramakrishna was still crying “Ma, Ma, Ma”, seeking union with the Goddess Kali. Although many of the sadhanas spontaneously came to him, he constantly sought to expand and intensify his experience. Similarly, to this day, the Dalai Lama practices five or six hours every day, receiving teachings from a variety of lamas, both from his and other traditions.

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