What is destiny?

[Session 1, Spiritual Seekers Retreat, Chicago, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Yeah. So thank you again for coming here. And we’re here on this retreat to understand ourselves as spiritual seekers.
I would start in this session by talking about how we are a part of something bigger than ourselves and how we affect the whole and the whole affects us. So the theme that was there was, what is destiny? So in my life, there are many times when I face situations where I realize that I had hit a stone wall. I just couldn’t do anything to change it.
When I was one, I got polio. Just walking normally one day. I don’t remember this.
My parents told me this. I was one and suddenly I fell down. And I was never able to walk after that.
And polio is a avoidable disease. So my parents had actually given the vaccine, had the vaccine administered to me. But somehow the doctor who was supposed to give the vaccine, the doctor had been negligent in keeping the vaccine carefully.
The vaccine was spoiled and the vaccine ended up giving me the polio instead of preventing the polio. So as I grew up, my parents and relatives would talk with each other. And my parents would say that, or my relatives would say, I would hear my parents speaking either way, that, you know, what destiny has taken away from him.
They are referring to me. I was a small child. So what destiny has taken away from him physically, that destiny has given him intellectually.
So that time I was the first time I heard, what is this destiny? What is it that takes some things away and gives something to us? So we all, during the course of our life, we notice that there are certain things which affect us enormously, but on which we have practically no effect. So it may be the country where we are born. It may be the complexion with which we have been born.
It may be the IQ level with which we are born. And it’s not just at the point of birth. At the point of birth is one thing.
But throughout the course of our life also, sometimes certain things happen about which we can do nothing. And at these times, we start recognizing that there is something beyond me, something bigger than me that shapes my life also. I just came here from Australia.
And I was there for about a month and a half. So Australia and India have a very old cricket rivalry. So India is a cricket mad country.
Australia is not that cricket mad, but still it is there. So for many years, the Australian cricket team was dominating the whole cricket world. They would be in it to win it.
That was their slogan. And they had these very tough players. And yet many of these tough players who would act on the field and who would be very aggressive, they all had their quirky superstitions.
There was an Australian batsman, Mark Taylor. Whenever he would go to bat, before going to bat, first he would go to the restroom in the pavilion and make sure all the commode lids are closed. And then he would go out to play.
And in cricket, if he would get out early while batting, he would not go to the pavilion, he would go to the restroom and if any of the commode lids would be open, he would go and blast his teammates. Why did you keep that open? Because of which I got out. Now what has the commode lids got to do with somebody getting out? There’s another, very South African, he was captain of Australia, Steve Waugh.
He would always have a handkerchief in his pocket. And the handkerchief would be like partially outside, partially inside. And usually it was a red handkerchief.
And he considered it to be like his good luck charm. He was a very good fielder. He would never drop a catch.
And if ever he dropped a catch, first he would look, where’s the handkerchief fallen off? How do I drop the catch? Now these were very tough players who would train and fight very hard. And they performed. That’s how they were able to be at the top of the cricketing world.
But still even they recognized that performance matters. But performance is not all that matters. Performance matters.
However, beyond performance, there are many other things also. A team might play very well in a cricket match or in any sports match. But if it’s outdoor sports and rains come, the match gets wiped out.
Can’t win. So our situation is like we are in the ocean. So I’ll be speaking based on the Bhakti Yoga texts from India.
The prominent text is Bhagavad Gita. I’ll draw some of the insights from there. So it often states that our existence, this world is like an ocean.
And in this ocean, all of us are on our own small boats. And we are trying to make our way to some destination. Certainly our rowing skills are important.
Our attentiveness, our expertise, how good our boat is, all that is important. At the same time, sometimes some waves may come and they may just completely sweep us away. So we want to go in a particular direction.
But beyond our power, we may be swept away in a different or even opposite direction. So there is a force beyond our own that shapes our affairs. And this force is known in different traditions by different names.
In the Islamic tradition, it is known by the name Kismet. In broadly, it is called Destiny. In English, in the Indian tradition, it is called as Daiva.
There are different names, but it’s overall acknowledged that there is some higher force which shapes how things happen in our life. There are two broad schools of thought with respect to human conduct. And I will go a little bit into Western intellectual history before I take this discussion forward.
That these two broad thoughts are one thought is that everything is destined. And the other thought is nothing is destined. So one thought is nothing is in my hands, everything is fixed.
The other is everything is in my hands, nothing is fixed. So if you look at, if you read any of Shakespeare’s works or any of the authors before him or contemporary to him, they often seem to be very, sometimes they are very industrious, but sometimes they just seem to be very passive. Just accepting things quite negatively, passively you could say.
So till 15th, 16th century, whether it was in the East or in the West, the prominent vision of the world was of stasis, that we are born in a particular position in life and one’s birth would more or less determine one’s life trajectory. If say in medieval Europe, they had the aristocracy, the nobility, and then they had the late, the general people. So the aristocracy would live in comfort and others would live relatively in poverty or simplicity.
And there is not much chance for any upward mobility. And it was thought that the way we are born is our destiny. And basically we just have to live that way.
And this can be taken to an extreme where predestination, so destiny basically refers to a force which shapes our affairs. But predestination is a slightly different term which means that everything in our life is already predestined. Nothing is in our hands.
So predestination can make people unnecessarily and dangerously powerless. A few months ago I was in South America and South America had its own grand civilization. So the Mayan civilization, the Inca civilization, the Aztec civilization.
These were at least a thousand years old, several thousand years old, some of them older than Christianity also. Now when the Christians came and ruled, the European conquistadors came especially from Spain. So basically when the European Renaissance started, the Protestants went east.
And the Protestants went east and they also came to America. The Catholics, they went to South America primarily. So when they came, especially Spanish people came, they were few in number and this was a huge civilization.
So it was a big tribe within the Aztecs where they came. And then they were wondering how are we going to win these people over. So they had a machinery who mixed with them and learned about their ways.
And then that machinery came to know there is an ancient belief, a lore in this huge community that if on a no moon night a white horse marches into their village with nobody on top, no horse rider on it, then that indicates that they are soon going to be defeated. So with that understanding this machinery told the conquistadors and they at that time sent the horse over there. And when that horse came, the next morning the conquistadors came with a small army.
And if these South Americans had chosen to fight, they could have easily defeated them. But just because they had that belief, they didn’t fight and they just gave up. And then a civilization in 2000 years, the whole civilization was destroyed in less than two years.
They didn’t even have weapons of mass destruction at that time, but everything ended. So at one level, accepting that everything is destined can be destructive. And that was in some ways the view of many traditions in the past.
From the 15th, 16th century when the Renaissance started and then the scientific revolution came up, the idea came that through science and primarily through technology, we can change things for the better. We can, if your eyes are becoming deficient, you can have specks. It’s too cold, we can have artificial heating, we can change things for the better.
And this belief gained such a, this idea gained such a momentum over the years that people started thinking that whatever we want to do, we can do it. And everything is in our hands. So if we consider a pendulum, one extreme of the pendulum is nothing in our hands and that is destructive.
But if everything is just in our hands, if we just set our mind to do this, and if I work hard enough, initially till the 18th, 19th century, even 20th century to some extent, the idea was work hard enough. But now in the 21st century, it is not just work hard enough, it is also think positive enough. If you just visualize, if you just visualize positively, you will get it.
And if you don’t get it, that means you are not visualizing positively enough. I have a friend who is a psychologist and he tells me that he is in a place in America where there is this cult of optimism. Optimism is a good thing to look at the positive side of things and not look at the negative side of things is good.
But sometimes anything can become extreme. So all of us have different natures. Some of us by nature will look at the positive things.
Some of us by nature look at negative things. And it’s not necessarily bad. There are some people who have to have the spirit of adventure and exploration.
And there are some people who also have to think about structure and order and stability. So it’s not that pessimism alone is bad or optimism alone is good. It’s excess of anything that is bad.
So we have to have some amount of caution also. So he says that one way people get depressed is that they are told to think positive and still their thoughts go in the negative direction. And they become pessimistic about not being optimistic.
Their mind is such a thing. Things are whatever they are. I can’t think about them positively.
But I can’t think about positively that makes me depressed further. So we can just get trapped in that. So there are some social analysts who said that the whole economic recession that happened about 10 years ago in America and across the world actually.
We know that the cost of it was that many people purchased houses without having adequate finances. And then eventually the loans went bad. So one reason for this also is that people were uncritically, unrealistically optimistic.
Oh, just buy the house, everything will be fine. You visualize you will have your house, you will have your house. Everything is in your hands.
Well, yes, there is, we should always think positive, but everything is not in our hands. It’s not everything is not just a matter of the mind. So there are forces beyond us that affect us also.
And certainly by thinking positively, we can make a positive contribution. But suppose somebody is rowing in an ocean, as the example I gave earlier. And now they have learnt to row expertly and they have their friends watching and they’re rowing and they want to show how expertly I row, how smoothly and speedily my boat goes.
And then suddenly big wave comes. And the wave is so forceful that at one moment they are rowing with the oars in their hands. Next moment, there is no boat and there are no oars.
And they’re in the water. And imagine if at this time they keep rowing. They keep rowing.
They’ll drown. Yes, at that time, positive thinking is not imagining that I can keep rowing when there is no boat and oars. Positive thinking would be, OK, now I have to swim, I have to paddle, I have to get to a destination.
I have to get to safety somehow. So there is certainly if somebody is learning to row a boat, they can be optimistic. I want to learn.
I will learn. But if they are knocked off, then they have to deal with reality. So everything is not in our hands.
And acknowledging this. So in traditional cultures, people had to be pushed. Don’t accept everything as predestined.
Take some initiative. But in today’s world, quite often we need to be reminded that everything is not in our hands. A major reason why we face mental health problems.
Mental health crisis is probably the biggest health crisis in today’s world. And it can have many reasons. But one common underlying factor is that we have set up an expectation for ourselves.
Either we ourselves have done it or society has done it. And that expectation is unrealistic. We are taught to believe that whatever you decide, if you resolve to do it, you will be able to do it.
And if you can’t do it, that means something is wrong with you. That means you are weak-minded, you are weak-willed, you are deficient. No.
There are certain things which are in our control and certain things which are beyond our control. So I talk about destiny or how things work about in four terms. Four Ds you say.
Duty, destiny, duration and desired result. So the word duty often has a negative connotation today. Something which I have to do.
But duty simply refers to what is our role, our endeavor. So that is in our hands, duty. Destiny refers to the factors that are beyond our control.
Then there is duration. There has to be a right time for things to happen. And then if all these three are together, duty, destiny, duration, then the desired result comes up.
So two examples and then we will open up for question answers or comments in general. So if we consider, who said they are farmer? So now in farming, we can see this dynamic working. If a farmer has to plough the land and sow the seed, that is a part of the duty.
But that is not enough. Then the rains have to come at the right time in the right quantity. I was just in Australia, in the internal part of Australia, central part.
One of the worst famines in the last two centuries they got. And there are cattle who are dying, people who are dying of thirst. It’s a catastrophe.
We often think that Africa is the darkest, Africa may be the driest continent. But actually it’s Australia that is the world’s driest continent. And although Australia is a part of the Western world, it’s quite progressed.
But there’s just nothing that can be done. The water supply is such a big continent. In the inland, although it’s surrounded by water, ocean is there, just can’t take water inside.
So sometimes the destiny may just not work in our favor. So our endeavor is duty. The factors beyond our control is destiny.
Then duration, means even when both work together, still the result is not going to come immediately. It requires time. The land is ploughed, the seeds are sown, the rains come.
After that also the season has to change to the harvesting season. And after the duration has passed, then the desired result, that is the harvest will come. And this applies to every aspect in life.
Suppose we want to learn a particular skill. We want to learn a new language. We come to a new place, we want to learn a new language.
There has to be the effort by us, put in the effort. Now along with the effort, anybody who is in the teaching field knows that some students just catch things so fast. And some students are so slow.
It’s not that some students are necessarily innately or ethically good or bad. With respect to those skills, some students just get it. And some students take a lot of time.
And even then they don’t get it. So there is, another way to put this is, there is talent and there is commitment. The commitment is our duty.
The talent is destiny. And some people just have talent. And for them doing that thing is very easy.
For some others, the same thing may be so difficult. Some people just love maths. So some people just love maths.
We have a PhD in mathematics over here. And some people, as one friend of mine he told me, the greatest joy when I got, when I graduated was, no more maths in my life now. So he could do it but he didn’t like it at all.
So there is talent which just is innate. Because that is destiny. Something we just have or we don’t have.
And commitment is our endeavour. So in any area of life, if you want to learn something, then there is the aspect of commitment. But that alone is not enough.
There is the aspect of talent. But even that alone is not enough. There is talent and there is commitment.
And then through both of this, say there is a sports player who is a raw talent at the age of 15 or 16 or 18. And then 5-10 years they go through the grind, they go through the fire. And then they may become a champion.
So at the age of 25-30 somebody becomes a world number one tennis player. And then you say that the person has fulfilled the promise that they had. The talent that they had, they have now fulfilled it.
So here I’ll conclude with two different senses in which we use the word destiny. So I used the word destiny earlier to say that it’s something which is not in our control, which shapes things. So for a tennis player, somebody is, some players just have great talent.
So that talent is their destiny. But then we also use the word destiny to say somebody who is very talented at the age of 15-16 and they break through on the international scene. And then 10 years down the line, when that tennis player becomes the world champion, at that time we say they have fulfilled their destiny.
So fulfill their destiny, but this word, usage of destiny is somewhat different. In English, words have different meanings. It seems the word run, I saw an article, has run, run amok.
Has run, run mad. The word run has 600 meanings. So has it run mad? Which meaning is being used when? So the word destiny in our context can have two different meanings.
One is the things which are beyond our control, which affect us. But the other meaning can also be what we are meant to do, what we are meant to achieve, who we are meant to be. So in our future sessions, next three sessions tomorrow and day after, which we are going to have, we are going to talk about fulfilling our destiny in that sense.
When difficulties come in our life, overcoming adversities, growing through adversities, that’s the second session. So that’s like if we are going in the ocean and suddenly a wave sweeps us away, that’s an adversity. So how do we grow through adversities? And third session will be making wise choices.
How best do we steer our boat and move forward? And the last will be bring out your best. That is where we’ll talk about fulfilling our destiny, becoming who we are meant to be. So I’ll summarize what I spoke today.
I started by talking about destiny and how I encountered when I got the physical handicap, that there’s something just beyond me, which affects me, but it’s not in my control. So what destiny took away from me physically? My elders told me that they gave it, I was given my destiny intellectually. I used to wonder what is this? So I talked about the Australian cricket team, in it to win it, dominating the world cricket scene maybe 10-15 years ago, but still the players had their superstitions.
Either it is closing the commode lids before going to bat or having a handkerchief. Now these are not just silly superstitious people. They are sports players of the top ranking and they know that performance matters.
But they also know that performance is not all that matters. There’s something more. And in their own quirky way, they’re trying to appease that unknown.
That’s how they have their superstitions. Then I talked about two schools of thought. One is everything is in our control, which we could say the contemporary school of thought.
And the traditional school of thought, not all tradition, but some traditions, was that nothing is in our control. So in pre-Renaissance Europe, the idea was society is structured and where we are born will determine the whole trajectory of our life, more or less. And an extreme of that, I gave an example in South America where a whole huge tribe just lay down arms based on a belief that their defeat was predestined.
So with science’s progress and especially technology’s progress in changing things around us for the better, came the belief that we could change everything for the better. And that went not only to the physical level, we can work hard, but also we can think positively. And this when it is taken to extreme, people may get pessimistic about their failure to be optimistic.
They get caught in the head. So it is true that we can change things, but we can’t change everything. So we are like in an ocean and we have to row expertly, but still the ocean’s waves can sweep us away at times.
So that unknown force which can sweep us in different directions, that is the force of destiny. And as if we have to function effectively in life to acknowledge this 4D. Does anyone remember what 4D is? Duty, destiny, duration.
And that leads to desired result. And I gave two examples. One is of farming, where we have to plough the land and sow the seeds, then wait for the rains to come, and then the harvesting season comes, we get the results.
And if you are learning any particular skill, then the talent that we have is the destiny, the commitment that we show is the duty, and with both of them exercised over a period of time, a person who has a raw talent can become a champion. So that is the second sense of the word destiny, becoming who we are meant to be. So we discussed one sense of destiny today, of the factors beyond our control that shape who we are, that shape our lives, and we’ll talk about over the course of this retreat, second sense of destiny, of fulfilling our destiny, of becoming who we are meant to be, and of fulfilling our potentials.
Thank you very much. So we could have questions if any of you have any, or if any of you have any reflections, anything that struck you that you could relate with, feel free to speak that also. Yes, please.
I grew up Roman Catholic, and then on top of it, you create whatever you want, and your thoughts are going to manifest into your life, and then I think to myself, well, sometimes my thoughts suck, and then it’s going to manifest into my life, and then I feel guilty, and then I get stuck in this hamster wheel. So it’s refreshing, I guess, to hear that it’s not all in someone else’s hands, and it’s not all in my hands. So what lately I’ve been doing is to get off the hamster wheel, and just kind of allow life to unfold how it’s supposed to, instead of me controlling it, and thinking that my thoughts are controlling everything Yeah, that’s true.
Thank you. The whole idea that our thoughts will manifest as reality, that can seem empowering, but that can also be depressing. Because if my thoughts are negative, then I live in fear of my thoughts, just because I’ve seen people get into many kinds of psychosis.
Maybe I thought like this because of that, and that happened. It’s not necessary. Our thoughts, actually the word thought has two different meanings.
One is, say, if I say, I got a thought. The other is, I’ve given this a lot of thought. So the first sense is, I got a thought.
It’s just a stimulus that popped up inside my mind. The second is, I gave something sustained attention. I did, I deliberated on something.
So these two are very distinct. And we could say something, a simple way to understand this difference. Tomorrow I’ll be talking about our inner world, and I’ll talk about a model for understanding the inner world.
But I’ll just, since you brought this point, I’ll mention this briefly that, say, if I have a computer, and suddenly something pops up on my screen. That may be something which I’m interested in, something I’m not interested in, but it just popped up. I can’t deny that it has popped up, but I can choose whether I’m going to pay attention to it or not.
There could be something which I’m reading, and I spend, one page I read it for an hour. So I got a thought, it’s like something popping up on our computer. I gave it a lot of thought, something which we have ourselves read for an hour.
So for us, it’s not that any thought that pops up is going to manifest as a destiny, or is going to manifest in our life. Our mind is so wild that all kinds of thoughts will pop up within it. And thoughts will come, thoughts will go.
It is the thoughts that we give attention to. That will grow. So if negative thoughts come into the mind, if we try too much to fight those thoughts, oh, I shouldn’t think negative.
In thinking I shouldn’t think negative, I’m already thinking about that negative thought. So thought energy is like that. So it’s best to recognize that most of the thoughts that come within us, they are in the first category.
First category is a thought came within me. I got a thought. And to try to avoid thinking about it, to think that I should not think it, on our computer if we are surfing the net and going to some websites, we don’t know what is going to pop up.
What we do know is whether we let it stay popped up, we further watch it, or just close it. So similarly, some of us may have a tendency by which some thoughts just pop up more and more. Some kind of thoughts pop up.
But it’s up to us whether we dwell in them or not. And if we ultimately recognize that thoughts, many thoughts are simply random mental events. It’s not that every thought is consequential.
It’s only when we give attention to the thoughts that they can become consequential. So I do sometimes a thought experiment. Say if I have, all of you have a phone.
Can you take out your phone if you have one? Don’t look at the messages on the phone. Now, if you have the phone in front of you, think that, just think the thought that I can’t lift this phone. Just speak that thought loud also.
I can’t lift this phone. Speak this, I can’t lift this phone. And lift up the phone.
Can you lift it up? Obviously you can, isn’t it? So now you actually had the thought, I can’t lift up this phone. But you lifted it. So this is a simple thought experiment to illustrate that our thoughts are not always true.
Our thoughts can be completely false. It’s only when we dwell on them a lot, then they can acquire a power of its own. But they just come, they stay, they go.
And we don’t have to pay them much attention. How to focus on the productive thoughts, how to select the productive thoughts, that we’ll discuss in our future sessions. Thank you for that reflection.
Anyone else like to share anything? Yes. So often times we use terms such as destiny, what we use terms like destiny and fate, get the desired outcome. So fate and whether or not, anything depends on my choice at all.
Okay, yeah. Or my will to be able to do something. Yeah.
So, does anything depend on our will? Yeah. I like to give the example of a tennis match. Today’s US Open is fine, US Open tennis tournament is going on.
So in a tennis match, sometimes the player is serving and sometimes the player is returning. Now when the player is returning, at that time, that player’s control is very limited. Wherever the ball is going to come, from that’s where the player has to put the racket and get the ball into play.
So the player may have a very strong on the forehand. But if the ball has come on the backhand, the player cannot hit on the forehand. Just meet empty air.
He has to hit on the backhand and get the ball back into play. So when returning, the player’s control is very limited. But still there are tennis players who become champions primarily by their returning skills.
They return very well. Now of course, when the player is serving, the player’s control is much more. They serve on the forehand or the backhand, the body at what height, at what speed, all that they can choose.
So similarly for us, in our life, sometimes we are returning and sometimes we are serving. So when we are returning, the choices that we have are very limited. And we have to operate within constrained circumstances.
But when we are serving, at that time, we can make choices. So the problem happens when we seek the freedom of serving while we are returning. Or we exhibit the passivity of returning while we are meant to serve.
So a simple example is when I was giving this talk. So before I start the talk, or while I am speaking, it’s like I am serving. I can choose what exactly I am going to speak, which example I am going to go take, how I am going to direct the thought.
But after the talk is over, when we are having a discussion, at that time, I don’t know who is going to raise what point and what question is going to come. That time, whatever question is going to come, I simply have to return. So in our life, we all have these situations.
So sometimes destiny’s control becomes much more. So I said there are some things in our control and some things not in our control. But this boundary is not fixed.
Sometimes what is not in our control becomes huge. So if we are in a job and we desperately need that job and there is no alternative for us out of that job right now and we find that our boss is very demanding. We just have to live.
We don’t have any freedom to leave that job at that time. We have to work with that boss. We can’t change the situation.
So in that time we could say the destiny’s control is very high. So we just have to return. Somehow keep doing what we can.
But there are times, say if we complete one project and we have to decide whether we are going to this project or take another job or do this or do that. So that is the time when we have the choices for us are much bigger. So life is a dynamic process in which sometimes we are serving, sometimes we are returning.
So our free will matters in both situations. But we always have free will and in all situations our free will matters. But the scope for the free will is more in some situations and the scope for the free will is less in some situations.
Thank you. I am Polish English, so maybe you know that term pretty well. But for me that was a very sneaky term which is related to destiny.
I have learned recently the term of practicity. I don’t know if you have heard of it. Which one? Practicity.
And practicity is a term which describes the condition you were born in, the situation you were kind of born or aristocratic or that was called practicity. I found that pretty cool. That is interesting, practicity.
It is a kind of destiny as well. Yeah. So we could say in traditional settings, practicity mattered a lot.
Now also it matters but now as the society has become more egalitarian, it doesn’t matter that much as it mattered earlier. But it does matter, yes. Thank you.
If you would like to share something which struck you or which resonated with something in you. So continuing with the theme of say serving and returning, it appears to me that whether I can serve or whether I have to return also seems to be a function of experience in the sense that in many situations it is a priori rather hard to figure out whether I am the one serving or whether I am the one returning. It also seems like whether I will be the returner depends upon how much I am thinking about the situation because sometimes there are imagined constraints and sometimes there are actual constraints and sometimes there is ignorance in which I don’t even realize that there were some constraints.
And then I just go ahead, of course, thinking that I have all my bases covered, I am going ahead and then I hit a block. And then I realize, oh, I wasn’t… It seems to me that there is a certain amount of trial and error and a lot of experimentation and a certain amount of life leading that has to happen before I even start. Yeah, definitely.
It’s for us to learn when we are serving, when we are returning. It requires a lot of… It requires some… both intelligence as well as some experience. Basically, when we perceive a situation, the thoughts, as I said earlier, thoughts are random events.
They are not entirely random. There is the outer situation. There is the inner imagination.
By imagination, I am not using a negative word, not a positive word. It’s just imagination. It could sometimes be positive.
It could be creative. Sometimes it could be just fantasy and sometimes it could be dystopia, negative fantasy also. But there is a situation and there is an imagination.
And our thoughts, which you will grow into emotions later, our thoughts can arise from the reality, which is the situation. Our thoughts can arise from the imagination or our thoughts can arise from the combination of both. So that’s why it is difficult for us to know, to separate the reality from our perception of the reality.
We may think, okay, this is what I can do. Suppose at a physical level, a huge bag which I have to carry, I can lift it. I don’t need any porter.
I don’t need any trolley. I lift it and then I go for maybe 100 meters and say, I can’t lift this. I need to get some trolley.
So there, we just realized after some time, I estimated my physical capacity, but that was overestimation. So similarly, with respect to our, whatever role we are playing, we may sometimes estimate our capacity. Sometimes we find I overestimated it.
So then we just have to make a change at that time. And over a period of time, it is by observing ourselves, we learn what our strengths are. We learn what our weaknesses are.
And there are many situations, which are at the fuzzy line between, is this in my control or is this not in my control? But there are a significant number of situations, which are in our control and there are significant number of situations, which are not in our control. So for example, if we are preparing for exam, now what we study, how we study, that is in our control. What kind of questions are going to come in the paper, that’s not in our control.
This is very clear. But in between, if we consider there is, there is a oral test which we have, say viva. And then at that time, I answer this question, same question, if it is not a multiple choice kind of question, it is an understanding kind of question.
I can take the answer in this way, I can take the answer in that way. And if I take the answer in this way, maybe the teacher will like it and then we can develop in this way. If I take in this way, what will happen? So we do not know.
So then we just figure out, we answer in this way, see what happens. We answer in that way, see what happens. And move things forward.
So there is definitely, whenever we have any philosophy or any thought system for analysis, it’s like a map. On a map, if you say, it’s very neat. This is America, this is Canada.
But actually if you go there, there is no clear wall, this is America, this is Canada, or this is America and this is Mexico. When you try to build a wall, it’s quite difficult to build. So, on a map, what appears very neat, actually in the territory is not that neat.
Still, although the exact border between say America and Canada may be not exactly clear, but there are lot of parts. This is America, that is Canada. This is America, that is Canada, this is Mexico, that is clear.
And now there are some parts which are not clear. So like that, for us we could say, some things are in our control, some things are not in our control. So life is like a peculiar tennis game that sometimes the game is going on and then we have to figure out, am I serving or am I returning? But there are sometimes, there are many times when if we just have this framework, it helps.
It may not exactly help in each situation, but it does overall give us a direction for functioning. You have something in mind? Isn’t it sometimes that, well, you said there is a situation and then there is the imagination. Aren’t there times where the situation itself, in order to see it that way, requires imagination? So that the situation itself, that we all agree is the situation, is itself a sort of imagination in a sense? Okay, yeah.
Sometimes the situation itself, an imagination, could be. Let’s say that again there are two extremes. Again, if I go a little bit more into Western, Western intellectual history, science at one level developed into physicalism, where the idea is, everything is simply physical stimulus response, physical action reaction.
And the human being or the human mind was treated simply like a black box. What is inside doesn’t matter. Human personality was simply reduced to behaviorism.
This stimulus, this response, this stimulus, this response. But that was found to be a very deficient model. So one extreme would be to treat human beings simply as automatons or robots who are simply creatures of stimulus response.
So we are not just people who respond only to particular physical situations with particular responses. Because there is something which happens inside us. And that shapes our responses.
What is inside me will be different from what is inside you. And what is inside me may also shape me to respond one way to the same situation today and another way tomorrow. So tomorrow I will explain this.
The Gita, this yoga text explains reality is three level. It is physical, mental and spiritual. So one extreme is to say that the physical is the only reality and what is inside doesn’t matter at all.
The other is to say the mental is the only reality and the physical doesn’t matter at all. So if I am driving a car and if I see a truck charging towards me, at that time I might panic and in that panic I may just freeze and the truck may run me over. So the physical situation is a danger.
But the panic which I go through at that time that increases the danger. That makes the danger become a disaster. So now when I am panicking, it is not just in the mind.
There is actually a truck out there. But if I am alert, then I might just quickly veer my car in another direction and I might be able to avoid being hit by the truck. So the physical situation, the mental conception and our we as the inner observer, all these three interact in a dynamic way.
So it is not just the physical situation and it is not just the mind. It is not just the mental conception. The mental conception alone does not determine the physical situation.
But the physical situation alone doesn’t determine things. The mental conception also matters. Does this answer your question? Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah, please. As I see things, it is a very complex situation because as individuals we are like onions.
There are so many layers of ourselves that we have to begin to peel off, to begin to find ourselves. At each level you are learning and you are understanding how to behave. And then you peel another level and you have another realization of things.
So then maybe your reaction will be different because you have learned from the previous layer and you have woken up. Things change for the better. But it is getting to that point where you realize, Oh, I have to open things up because we all grow up with the labels.
Oh, you are supposed to be married by 22, have your kids by 23, have a beautiful house by 35. And it is all these labels and layers that make us so complex that it is kind of dirty. Yeah.
It is the same thing coming more into focus that it is not only the layers internally but the things around us happening back. That’s true, yeah. So beautifully put, we are like onions and there are layers of conceptions which society may have formed upon us of how we are meant to be.
It could be also conceptions which we have and as they get removed we understand ourselves better and then we can function better. Generally, it takes some amount of self-observation as well as experience of reality to perceive what is natural for us. And we are not islands.
So how other people see us, how they respond to us, that does affect us. And again, I would say this is also the same dynamic of some things are in our control, some things are not in our control. So people have certain expectations from us and sometimes those expectations help us to become better.
A child might just want to play LifeLog but the parents expect and demand that you study and apply yourself and that’s what helps the child to have a good career in future. So sometimes others shape us positively. Sometimes some expectations, instead of empowering us, we simply burden and crush us.
So in our life we will have both kinds of people. Some people who help us to grow and some people who just weigh us down. So when this happens then we understand that this is both kind of people who are present there.
It’s like destiny. So both kind of layers which are there. Some conceptions I have, they are not bad.
Actually those conceptions help me to contribute constructively. Some conceptions, they check me from becoming who I am meant to be. So both ways, it’s with respect to people who affect us.
Some people bring happiness wherever they go and some people bring happiness whenever they go. So almost everyone we can take in our lives, we have both kinds of people. So that’s destiny and dealing with it is the art of living.
So we will begin tomorrow at 10 o’clock.