There is no absolute truth that the guy sitting in the cave in the Himalayas is useless, because he is at that point in his journey where he has experienced everything in the world and does not have an attraction to it anymore. Karan Bajaj More Quotes by Karan Bajaj More Quotes From Karan Bajaj My wife and I took a sabbatical and we went from Europe to India, where we lived in an ashram for six months and did meditation and yoga vigorously, like from 5:00 in the morning until 10:00 in the night in very austere circumstances. I think then my practice became less superficial, more like the traditional definition of what meditation was: to truly find oneness. Karan Bajaj yoga morning night I think meditation became truly a means to a deeper connection as I was searching for a deeper truth within myself. Meditation became almost more spiritual than material in nature over the last two or three years and it has deepened a lot as a result of that. Karan Bajaj spiritual mean thinking The first novel that I wrote was because I was having very interesting sorts of experiences, for Indians of my generation. Karan Bajaj generations interesting firsts India went through a dramatic revolution after the '90s when our economy started opening up for the first time and Indians were now experiencing the Western life, if you will. Drugs and sex and a lot of those influences came in as the economy stabilized, and we were growing up and experiencing that. The Indian writing market was very small at that time. Our literature was very attuned to what Western audiences were interested in, so everybody was writing about the slums in India and magic realism or stories about Hindus and Muslims and partition. Karan Bajaj growing-up writing sex The reality that we were growing up in was very young and vibrant, and nobody was capturing that part of India. I started to backpack after getting out of college. I hiked and did a lot of things nobody was capturing in art at all in India, so I wrote my first novel. It was a very, trippy, experience-filled novel, and it ended up doing very well in India because nobody was writing about that at that point. Karan Bajaj growing-up writing art What I'm trying to do right now is truly answer my most deepest most unarticulated questions for myself through my writing in some form. Karan Bajaj answers writing trying Now, I think of my writing as having two foundations: entertainment and meaning. The meaning portion is really me trying to answer my questions. The entertainment aspect of it is how I make a story that can make people turn the pages. Karan Bajaj writing two thinking I did not have any philosophy at all when I wrote the first novel. I was just wanting to capture experiences that I thought would be inspiring for Indians who are trying to break free from the very high-pressured family environments and do their own thing. Karan Bajaj would-be trying philosophy A lot of the book [The Yoga of Max's Discontent] is about karma and rebirth. Things like that are very attuned to my life as an Indian, but when I approach it from a perspective of a Westerner, then I have a skeptical, yet kind of novice view on it. I think that choice really liberated the story to be its own story. A lot of the conclusions that Max reaches on his own are not mine at all. So, I think that allowed the story to take on its own momentum, to have its own propulsive force. Karan Bajaj karma yoga book What has happened in most of my books is the call to the extraordinary world, the hero's push, or that push has come to him. Karan Bajaj hero book world Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves. Karan Bajaj journey new-york character The concept of karma is a beautiful concept in Sanskrit. The whole idea of karma is that every being has an innate tendency - the karma of ice is to be cold, the karma of fire is to burn, the karma of the trees is to grow and bear fruit. In the same way, a human has a certain thrust. What I've realized is that my thrust is to be in the world, like in the world of business. Karan Bajaj karma fire beautiful I think his karma became to serve in nature and not to serve in the world, while I think my karma is to be in the world. Karan Bajaj karma world thinking I think nothing, at an objective level, is either right or wrong. Karan Bajaj levels objectives thinking I don't think of the ashram world as being any more spiritual than the corporate world. Karan Bajaj spiritual world thinking I don't know if there is really an objective truth about either. I liken this to what Buddhism says about the individual, that change starts with the individual. I think it is really about purifying your own actions, and I have seen that in my own life. Karan Bajaj objective-truth buddhism thinking I think it is really a personal journey of purification, rather than whether something external is going to be good or bad. Anything external will always live in that polarity - a combination of good and bad. Karan Bajaj purification journey thinking I have been meditating for many years now, but I think for quite a few years my relationship with meditation was very intellectual. I would do meditation for all the usual things that you would think about, to be more calm, be more productive, relieve stress. Karan Bajaj stress years thinking What I need to do is to just deepen my well. I'm just experiencing life now. Karan Bajaj wells needs
