Talk Show – Growing Amidst Anxiety

Transcript

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hello everyone welcome to our talk show we have here with us Chaitanya Charan Das who is an acclaimed author mentor life coach and monk he has been an invited speaker at several international conferences organized by UNESCO on interface of spirituality and science and he has given invited lectures at colleges universities and companies all over the world from Australia to America he is also an author of 18 books on the contemporary application of spiritual wisdom and his articles regularly appear in several Indian newspapers including the reputed speaking tree in the times of India so we are very honored to have you here with us on our show and we welcome you happy to be here in this show we would like to learn from you of how can one apply spiritual practices or spiritual lifestyle when somebody is young age when he is studying or he is a student and how can it practically help him for example if we take the situation of an average student in India so he or she has so much stress in their life for example they take loans for education for example they have stress for exams then they have stress that okay once they pass the exams they get good marks then whether will they get a good job okay once they get a good job they pay off the loans then next step is who will marry them or what will happen like you know so there is so much uncertainty and because they are very young and that phase of life is kind of like you know people want to experiment and do so many things naturally there is a chance that they fall into kind of unhealthy associations and kind of having wrong thoughts in the mind and unnecessary anxiety sometimes so how can spirituality help one deal with these things if it can or is spirituality just one more thing that adds into the list that gives more stress so we would like to learn from you of how spirituality can be applied practically in this situation very important question spirituality is meant to help us focus and direct our energies so primarily we focus on our activities we think that okay in the morning I have to do this afternoon I have to do this evening I have to do this we think of our day and our life in terms of the activities that we do these activities no doubt define us but what defines us much more is our thoughts a student may be studying in a class or attending a class trying to hear but your thoughts are wandering everywhere else maybe the cricket night that is going on or maybe a party that they’re going to go in the evening or maybe the party they had gone last night the thoughts are anywhere else then they cannot focus on what they’re doing and essentially the primary contribution in contemporary terms of spirituality is that spirituality helps bring our thoughts and our actions in sync with each other so when our thoughts and our actions are out of sync that causes stress stress is not caused by how much work we have to do or by how much problems we are facing stress is caused primarily by our trying to solve a problem other than the problem facing us right now most people surveys have shown that if they’re in office they’re doing some work they don’t have that much anxiety but when they come back home or when they’re in a subway in a train or in a car and they have nothing to do that is the time when anxiety hits them the most so we have problems and we work towards dealing with the problems in that situation there is no stress but when I have a problem but I’m not doing anything to deal with the problem except thinking about the problem I’m not thinking in a focused way to plan and deal with it thinking in a lethargic way just imagining this may go wrong that may go wrong what will happen here what will happen there that is what causes stress so the thoughts and actions going out of sync is the primary cause of stress and if thoughts and actions come back in sync then we may be in a stressful situation but we can minimize the stress on us so the spiritual practices such as meditation they involve stopping physical action so that we can observe our thoughts and we can process and focus our thoughts so there are different kinds of meditations the most powerful is mantra meditation but the important point in meditation is to observe and channel the energy of our thoughts and to the extent we do that to that extent that organization of our thought energy that carries over from our spiritual meditation from our spiritual practices to the rest of our life and more and more of our life our thoughts and our actions come in sync and when they are in sync whatever problems we may be facing we don’t get overwhelmed by the problems because we are doing something practical to deal with the problem it is only when we think of a problem without doing anything about the problem then we let the problem do a lot to us so the more we think passively about a problem the more the problem seems to become bigger and bigger and bigger and then the more our feeling of disempowerment increases we feel I can’t do anything about it so this is with respect to the broad understanding of spirituality and how it can help us deal with issues of stress now coming to the other part about uncertainty of the future that also is actually a manifestation of the thoughts and the actions being out of sync the future is going to be shaped by the present so the present is all that we have and the present is all that we will ever have now certainly in the present we have to prepare for the future but preparing for the future and worrying about the future they are two separate things the difference primarily is in who is in control of the thinking of the future the bhagavad gita explains that inside us is our mind and the mind is like a badly programmed software and sometimes because of this bad programming this malware that is there in the mind the mind goes off and does things which are unhealthy for us just like some software some virus comes in some malware comes in it harms our machine so the mind sometimes has this negative programming of worrying so I often say worry worry is like the interest that we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken the problems have not yet come and they may not even come actually if we think about the things that we worry about more than 95% of the things we worry about never happen so our worries are more imagined than actualized now this what should I do so without doing anything sometimes we get overwhelmed so when we are planning for the future we are in control that means we take our thought to the future ok this can happen if this happens then I can do this or do this ok this can happen I can do this do this do this if this happens I can do this do this do this so like that when we plan for the future we take our thoughts to the future and we are in control and we calmly analyze and that makes us feel prepared for the future again here also our spiritual practices help us to discipline our thought energy and our thought energy channels primarily from the mind so when we discipline our mind then we can prepare for the uncertainty of the future by doing whatever is practical for us to prepare for it wow that’s very enlightening and very helpful throwing light on it so the next question what would what kind of you know what can help one or how spirituality can help one to kind of firstly spirituality is not a replacement for material practical arrangements it is a complement in the Bhagavad Gita after hearing the Gita Arjuna fights a war and he wins the war now he wins the war but not by the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita alone he wins the war by the knowledge of archery that he had learned throughout his life the Bhagavad Gita gives him a purpose a higher purpose for using the skills of archery so there is the material and the spiritual the spiritual is the director of the material the spiritual is not the replacer of the material the point I am making with this is that in today’s world it is a very technocentric world and we need technology so most of is coming from the social media then there has to be a practical solution applied at the level of the social media itself so this means that we have to evaluate how best we can use the social media there is no need to be a campaigner against social media like everything else it can be used for good it can be used for bad the chances of it distracting us is much more no doubt so in such situations we may need something practical let me just use some apps or use some filters I should decide for some hours I just cut myself off from the rest of the world see our willpower is not an infinite resource our willpower is a finite resource what this means is that we have to invest our willpower wisely so if I am going to study I can use my willpower to absorb myself in studying or I can use my willpower to resist the temptation of going on some social media site or some other site and reading something over there watching something over there now if my willpower gets dissipated in just resisting the temptation then by the time I come to focus my willpower is already exhausted so our willpower is a finite resource and that’s why it’s advisable to not dissipate the willpower on unnecessary temptations so cut off access in the Bhagavad Gita when Krishna talks about overcoming our lower desires the first thing he says is tasmato indriyanyadau niyamya bharatarshabha he says begin with the senses so he says regulate the senses regulation the senses also means cutting off the access to the objects that can distract the senses so at a practical level if we can decide a time this is a time when I’m going to cut off social media this is a time when I’m going to focus on this and we can have some programs which do it and which don’t allow us to change the settings also that’s something or we can have some friends who keep an eye on us and see what we are doing so we need practical help we don’t want to waste our willpower in this alone now having said that it is important as I said the spiritual is the director of the material it is not the replacer so when it is a director that means if we have a overall spiritual understanding of life then that understanding helps us to keep in focus what is important if we are doing our spiritual practices regularly if we are studying spiritual wisdom regularly that reorients us say that an airplane say is going from Mumbai to New York more than 90% of the time the airplane is off course because of the fluctuations of the motion of the air atmospheric conditions air pressure all that what makes sure the airplane reaches the destination is that the pilot so it is not that we can expect just by our willpower or just by resolution I decide and next moment I will be in like a zen like state of meditation no distraction completely absorbed in my work if we expect that we set ourselves up for frustration so the Bhagavad Gita says the mind will get distracted get it back yato yato nischalati manas chanchalam patas tato nyam yaita atman neyosham neyaita it is in 6.26 that wherever and whenever the mind wanders bring it back and focus it so rather than expecting if a pilot expects that I will not go on the flight unless I can go on absolutely straight flight pilot will never be able to go on track go to the fly to the destination the same time the pilot says what can I do the wind is taking me off course I will go off course no as soon as you realize I have gone off course bring yourself back on course for a period of time the pilot becomes more and more expert and then the pilot plane will still go off course but will go lesser lesser off course so like that we cannot begin by expecting that just by my determination there will be no more distraction or I will be able to reject all distraction we will get distracted but as soon as we become aware we come back we reorient ourselves we reorient ourselves and by this reorientation our capacity for resisting distraction and our capacity for increasing concentration that will increase and most important is not just saying no more important is saying yes so rather than saying I should not be doing this I should not be doing this I should not be doing that saying no to anything creates a feeling of deprivation within us and when no one wants to feel deprived so if we focus instead on what I am doing and have some purposeful goals within that if I can just focus this is a book a 300 page book I have to study in one hour I can read 20 pages then that means in just 15 hours if I manage to study I will have read the whole book so today I will read 20 pages so if we have a purpose we can move forwards and the basic point of spirituality is that it helps us to put first things first first we understand what are the first things in our life and secondly we get the awareness when the second third things become first we push them back and put first things first first wow that is also very helpful now we would like to know your views on the education system the goal of education is just to get a degree go out and find a job and live a good life so there is actually not much inclination so we would like to know some of your thoughts on what do you think the status of education system right now and what can be improved in it so that they help the students when they are in need rather than making them feel that their only goal of education is just to get a job and move ahead in life so it should be a wholesome education not just a very streamlined education that just focuses on one aspect so what are your thoughts on what we can do so that you know I think it was Radhyar Kipling who said that I have never let my schooling interfere with my education so I go to school I learn something everywhere that is not my real education I have to learn I have to see what helps me to learn what helps me to grow and I have to make efforts to learn that Martin Luther King said that we live in an age of guided missiles and misguided men our scientific power has outrun our human we ourselves we are not scientists we are not humanity students we are not engineers we are not these are roles which we have we are essentially human beings and whichever source of knowledge can enrich us we take that and move on actually the dawn of science from the time of Galileo basically Galileo found observed that in the world around us there are two kinds of properties of things there are the measurable properties and there are the non measurable properties so for example length breadth height speed all these are measurable and science deals with them now the non measurable are say beauty sweetness melody how do you measure this if you are using photoshop say to make a good image for something maybe a poster the computer can tell you how much color percentage is there in it but the computer cannot tell you whether the image looks good or not that we have to have somebody else observer conscious observer judges so what has happened unfortunately is the reductionistic education system that is there today it has focused primarily on the measurable side of human beings and leave alone our spiritual side even our emotional side is neglected because emotions cannot be measured we cannot have anger how angry I am so this this lack of attending to our non measurable side that has had measurably disastrous consequences we have throughout the history of the world there have been people who have been inclined towards bad habits to a self-defeating behavior but the scale of it today is far greater than ever before it’s not just addictions it’s not just negative thought patterns even suicide so one million people commit suicide every year one million is actually more than the number of people who are killed in wars and murders and terrorist attacks all combined together the more the number of people who who are killed by others are the people who are killing themselves last year I had come to Ohio at your place so after my talk as one student who came and told me before the talk he was thinking about committing suicide and he said after I heard this talk I understood it is not I want to commit suicide it is my mind which is saying this now I know how to close my mind so again it comes to the point that the scientific the education that we have it is not that the education is at fault it is the overall ethos of today’s world which makes us believe that this education alone is enough the science of the particular methodology and it will give us knowledge of a portion of reality we need a broader understanding of life to know that okay this education is equipping me for this but what about my inner life and I need some education that equips me for that and that is spiritual education so we may good engineers good doctors good lawyers good chartered accountants by our education but we will become good human beings by our spiritual knowledge I often put it that science can make things better spirituality can make people better so if I have anger if I have negativity if I have pessimism if I have self-doubt all these there is I cannot just free myself from these things I cannot take a pill and just hope that it will go away we need inner purification so that is what spirituality offers us time-tested methods for cleansing our inner world for bringing order and direction in the inner world and so the inner and the outer when both are harmonized that is when we will be not just productive but we will be fulfilled individuals just by outer expertise we may become productive we may achieve a lot of things but fulfillment will elude us fulfillment will elude us we will always feel dissatisfied we will always feel irritated if we have if we not learn to discipline our mind even if we could achieve paradise even if we could achieve prosperity equivalent paradise still the mind will say yes but yes but it will find some reason to keep us dissatisfied so we need spiritual knowledge which will help us to improve our inner world and whatever skills we learn from our academic education the skills we need for surviving and prospering in the world but what is the purpose of it all and what how do we use what we have for our good for contributing to society all that purpose we learn from spiritual knowledge well thank you for bringing a revolution in our show and I think we will end with that and it was enlightening experience to have you here and I hope our viewers also had a good time and learned something really valuable so thank you for your time and we hope to have you again