Yogisthaan – Rules for being a human

My favorite café in Bangalore is in a quant little house in a quiet lane in Indiranagar. Yogisthaan is a Yoga School and Café with healthy food options and amazing hot and cool drinks, mostly all traditional Indian. I often have my meetings there; and miss meeting people over a nice cup or chai or buttermilk during these lockdown times. The atmosphere is serene and conducive for quiet work or reading as well. As you start getting out of your house, it might a good place to start meeting humanity again.

Here is something that the founder, Ajit Singh Tapasvi, has hanging in the cafe that I really resonated with and try to live by, especially the last rule.

The rules for being a human – handed down from ancient Sanskrit

1. You will be given a body.
   You may like it or not, but it will be yours for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons.
   You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called life. Each day in the school you will have opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
   Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The ‘failed’ experiment is as much part of the process as the experiment that ultimately works.
4. A lesson is repeated, until it is learned.
   A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it, then you can move on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end.
   There is no life that does not contains its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. ‘There’ is no better than ‘here’.
   When your ‘there’ has become ‘here’, you will simply obtain another ‘there’ that will look better than ‘here’
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.
   You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something that you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you.
   You have all the tools and resources you need, what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. The answers lie inside you.
   The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.