QA with teenagers at ISKCON Silicon Valley 2019

Video

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
study pressure, and you are not able to focus on our bhakti because of that, what can you do? Yeah, it’s natural. It’s like if you are going on a, if you are driving somewhere, the traffic is very much. So naturally, they are forced to go slowly.
But eventually, when the traffic clears, then you can go faster. Similarly, sometimes in our life, the traffic of our, of our academic responsibilities, of our family responsibilities, whatever, the various aspects of our life, the traffic becomes a lot. So during that time, we move slowly.
And once the traffic clears, we can move faster. So it’s like there’s a, there’s a purpose and there is a pace. So we don’t change our purpose.
Our purpose is to keep going in the same direction. You want to go towards Krishna, but the pace can be adjusted according to our particular situation. So we will not be able to always do the same activities, that same level of activity that we were doing earlier.
If you have exams coming up, you have some major project coming up, you have some other urgent assignment, then that’s the time when the traffic is more. So slow down. So then you slow down, that means you do what is required over there and then come back and after that you resume the pace.
So the test is that, say after the traffic clears, then also if we keep going slowly, then that means you’re not interested in going there at all. Because after traffic clears, we can make it faster. So that’s one thing.
Don’t think that you don’t have to equate spiritual life with a certain pace in spiritual life. Sometimes the pace will be slower, sometimes the pace will be faster. But the change in pace should not lead to change in purpose.
Purpose is I want to go in this direction, but because of traffic I’ll go slower, the traffic clears I’ll go faster. That’s one thing. Second thing is that even with respect to our spiritual practises, sometimes we think of our time in terms of our schedule.
Okay, in this morning I have to do this, afternoon I have to go to these classes, then evening I have to go for this particular thing. So we think of our time in terms of activities. This activity, this activity, this activity, this activity.
However, time is taken not just by our activities, it is also taken by our thoughts. Suppose you go into a class and you greet someone and that person snubs you. Immediately you get so angry.
How dare this person snub me? Next time in public, in front of everyone, I’ll snub this person. So that thought, that anger, that resentment, that may go on within us for hours. In terms of our schedule, what happened was that we were in the class.
Okay, I was in the school for three hours. But in terms of what I assimilated, it was nothing. Those three hours are actually taken by that one thought of resentment or revengefulness.
So like that, when our thoughts go wild, they take a lot of our time. And that is an invisible time sucker. You don’t notice that.
But if we are practising our spiritual life, if we are chanting, if we are doing some reading, associating, then that helps us understand that, okay, I’m not my thoughts, I’m not my mind, I’m different from this. And this thought has come, let it be stay for some time, it will go. So we don’t get carried away by our thoughts.
And therefore, we will find that the time that is wasted on stray thoughts, that will decrease significantly. So in one sense, bhakti seems like, oh, I have so many things to do and bhakti is one more thing to do. But in another sense, bhakti is not just another thing to do.
Bhakti is another way to do. The ways when we connect with Krishna, our thought energy becomes stabler. And then whatever we are doing can focus more.
So even if bhakti seems that because I have a lot of work pressure, I don’t have so much time. It’s true. But actually, it’s not just because of the work pressure.
It is the work pressure causes us stress, overwork, anxiety. And often that anxiety consumes a lot of our time. So we find that we may have a lot of work to do and I’m so much stressed out that I’m thinking, writing, studying, but nothing is going in.
Take some break, take a few deep breaths, pray to Krishna, chant a few words, chant a few mantras, maybe hear some pilgrims if you like. Calm yourself down. What would have taken one hour to do, you might be able to do in 30 minutes.
And you did that, took that break for 10 minutes, you still have 10, 20 more minutes. So don’t think of spiritual life only in terms of, okay, it’s one more thing to do, I have so many things to do. How can I do it? See, actually, bhakti practises will save our time.
They won’t necessarily take away our time. They will save the time just taken away by stray thoughts. And as even we seem to have a lot of things to do, we’ll be able to do them better.
So there was another question about, who had asked about Gorazon Eco-Village? Had someone asked? Okay, okay, fine. So was there anything specific you would like to go, what is the question? Or you just want to know about the place? Well, from their logistics point of view, it’s wonderful if you can go there, from here also if you can work it out. It’s a very wonderful trip to India.
And how many, all of you have been to India basically, many times? But not to Gorazon Eco-Village? No one? You have also not been there? You left in which year? Oh, that time it was just developing. Okay, good. She’s from Pune, that’s how I know her, from before.
She’s of course now from Silicon Valley. Okay. So it’s basically, they have a beautiful staying facility, they have very beautiful natural scenery, and they have not just scores and scores of cows, they have horses there, horse riding is there, you have yoga exercise, massage, swimming.
So it’s a gamut of activities. And on top of that, they can have, there are thousands of students from the various schools in Mumbai who come there. Every month, there are buses full which come there, and they have a natural experience.
So basically, the vision over there is that spirituality, nature, and comfort. All three are brought together. Sometimes when we go to a natural place, it may not be very comfortable.
You live in a forest or something like that. There are of course, there is also one place which is, there are different places where you can stay, there is one place called Jungle Villa. Jungle Villa is where you actually stay in the forest, in tent-like structures.
They’re not tents, but they’re, they’re just like, they are structured above the house, you can see the jungle, you can see on the Government Ecovillage website. Jungle Villa is a very beautiful place to stay. So there’s a lot of things to do, fun, and if you plan it out, then there can be some kind of retreat over there also, where you can have, you can have kirtans, you can have fun, you can have swimming, you can have some talks also by devotees there.
It will be a very rewarding experience. Just now, before I came to America, actually I went to Australia and then I came to America. Before that, we had taken about 25 Americans.
These Americans had not even gone to an ISKCON temple. They literally from the streets of America, they had come for a trip to India, and they came to Government Ecovillage. And this is a memorable experience for them.
So, so many of them, it is the first time, they came very close to cows, and they have, they have everything orientated for people who are new to spiritual culture. So they train you how to milk a cow. Has any of you milked a cow? No.
Oh, really? Where, here? Oh, impressive. Comes from where? Oh, that’s wonderful. Excellent.
Oh, beautiful. Do you like it? Will cows kick you? Yeah, really? Yeah, so of course, that’s the attraction, but there are many other things also which you could do over there. So if you get in touch, they have, they have a structured programme for kids who come for one day or two days, they stay overnight, they have like a picnic format.
But if you plan it out, something can be worked out. If somebody is accompanying from here, you could have a very nice trip over there. It would be wonderful, maybe some vacation, you can plan it out.
So you have seen the Government Ecovillage videos and everything? Have you seen the pictures of the Madan Mohan Temple? Recent one? It’s a majestic temple. This new temple has just come up now. So originally in the 16th century, 16th, 17th century, the temple in Vrindavan, which Aurangzeb broke.
You know Aurangzeb? Who is he? Yeah, he was, he was, he translated his idea of devotion to Islam into intolerance towards all other religions. So especially anything that seemed to challenge his idea, the position and prosperity of Islam, he attacked that. So at that time, when he was going to destroy the temple, the devotees came to know about it and they took the deities from there to a place in Rajasthan where the Hindu kings were ruling, Rajput kings.
So there now is a small place called Karoli, where the temple is there. So Karoli has the deities, Vrindavan still has the temple. Temple was destroyed, but it was reconstructed again.
So now what has been done is that, the pujari from Karoli had come there. So he was appreciating the devotees and he said that, you know, you have united Radha Madan Mohan with his temple now. Beautiful Radha Madan Mohan, beautiful temple.
It’s a magnificent structure. So it’s, they also have yoga training for people at different levels. That also can be learned.
So it will be wonderful if you can go there. You remember the third, there was one third question, do you remember that? The third question, do you remember that? Peer pressure. Yeah, peer pressure is, that’s okay.
So peer pressure is usually a problem because we all have a particular social circle and every one of us has a need to belong. We want to belong to some group because nobody wants to be rejected or neglected. And it’s interesting that, you know, there is an experiment done, or not just one experiment, many experiments have been done on animals.
So how animals also socialise. So if say, even there are small mice, they also play with each other. And when the mice play, how it is, if say they are, the mice, they have their own version of wrestling.
Now you see, if one mouse is significantly bigger than the other mouse, then if the two are going to wrestle, what is going to happen? Bigger mouse is going to win. But if the big mouse keeps winning again and again, after sometime the small mouse will stop playing. And then after sometime the small mouse has to invite the big mouse to play.
Otherwise the small mouse says, I don’t want to play anymore. So then what happens is, the big mouse, although the big mouse can win all the time, but the big mouse voluntarily chooses to lose for about 30% of the time. And that keeps the play as some fun.
And that’s how the two, that’s how the game goes on. But the point is that, why am I giving this example, that for socialising, even if say, if a mouse wants someone to play, another mouse to play with, the mouse cannot always go on winning. It always goes on winning, the other mouse stops playing.
So for all of us, we have to find out the best way we can interact with a particular group of people. So if you are now here in the temple, then you have a large, you have some friends where most of them share your values. And all of you have more or less similar backgrounds from India, you have some spiritual understanding.
So here, you will have like-minded association. And if you get your inspiration and your values from here, then we, as I said, we all need acceptance. So if you get acceptance and the sense of belonging here, then in your social circle, in your schools, in your colleges, in your future workplaces, that whether you get acceptance or not, you will not be emotionally dependent on that.
You naturally want it and seek it also, but you will not be dependent on it. When we become dependent on something, then we just let that, let those people manipulate us. You know the story of that horse and father and son? No? Yeah, okay.
So once a father and son went to a market and they saw a horse. And this horse is very good, sometimes. What is there to laugh? No, no, I’m trying to understand the humour.
No, no, but you did laugh with the door open. You laugh and he said, you can text me. Are you trying to massage my ego? Is it that you want me to text him and finish this class immediately? Okay, no problem.
Maybe you should keep the door open only. No, keep it open only, so whoever comes in, they don’t have to knock and check. They did some experiments with monkeys, that what happened is, you keep a monkey and there’s like a wall.
And the monkey can, with great effort, climb the wall and go to the other side and see what is there. And when they kept the monkeys over there, more than the, if they had some food, they would eat the food. But just out of curiosity, the monkey would climb over and see what is there.
So what is there? So similarly, whenever the door is closed, people want to know what is happening behind that closed door. That urge to know is there in everyone. Anyway, so coming back to the point of peer pressure, so we need a sense of belonging somewhere.
So where we get it, it’s important. So if you get it in your devotee friends over here, then even if you don’t get it entirely or immediately in your social circle, in school or whatever, it doesn’t matter so much for you. You won’t be dependent on it.
And generally, we can, so I was telling the story of this donkey, not donkey, the horse. So there’s two, a father and a son went to a market and they saw an attractive horse. They said, let’s buy this.
They bought the horse and then both of them were, they got on the horse and they were riding it. And some passerby said, what is this? This is cruelty to animals. Two of you, both of you are riding on this horse, and get crushed.
Then the father thought, okay, I’ll climb down. Son, you can ride. Son was riding and then some passerby said that, what is this? This boy, does he have no sense of decency? He is young and healthy.
His father is old. He is riding the horse and his father is walking. Then they looked at each other.
The son got down from the horse. The father climbed up the horse. And then, as they’re walking along, some people said, what has happened to parenting now? The father is comfortably riding and making a small child walk.
Doesn’t the father have any concern for the child? And then the father said, okay, I’ll also get down. So all three of them, the father, the son and the horse, all of them were walking. And then some people said, don’t these people have any brains? What do you have a horse for if you don’t ride it? So, now whatever we do, there will be people who will criticise us.
So, some people will think, this is fashionable, wearing a dress like this, having a haircut like this, doing this, doing that. But Oscar Wilde was a prominent, you have heard Oscar Wilde? Oscar Wilde. So he said that fashion is a form of ugliness, so intolerable that we have to change it every six months.
So what is considered fashionable now, after six months, it becomes old fashioned. And for somebody who wants to be fashionable, there is no put down, no insult as unbearable as being told, you are old fashioned. So, if we are too dependent on other people’s opinions, then we will not be able to do anything in our lives.
So yes, when we are going to belong to friend circle, you can find out what are the things which you can share with them. And if they pressure you on some things, this is how this is what I do, these are the principles I live according to. And if you don’t, if you don’t submit to that, they won’t push you too much, there’s a little bit pushing will happen.
But after some time, okay, this is this is how this person is, they’ll accept it. What happens is that the each of us needs to have some strength, some resilience. If you just bend to anyone and everyone, people will keep pushing us down, keep pushing us down.
So you need to be assertive about your values. Be assertive, not aggressive. Say somebody asks you, okay, but why don’t you eat meat? Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that? So there are three ways in which you can answer the question.
If somebody asked you, why don’t you eat meat? What will you answer? It’s cruel to animals. That’s one answer. Any other answers? It’s my choice.
Okay, that’s fine. Any other answers? Has anyone asked you? Have any of your friends asked you or nobody asked you also? So what is the what is the peer pressure about primarily? Okay. So what do you feel pressured by your peers about? It’s a good point.
If you have faith in Krishna consciousness, that does work. So anyway, I’ll not get an answer. But I’m making a point that when we present our, if somebody asks us, why are you doing this? Or why don’t you do this? There are three ways in which you can present it.
I call it as prescriptive, normative and descriptive. Prescriptive means giving a prescription. No one should eat meat.
You should also not eat meat. Who are you to tell that to me? When you give a prescription to others, others feel you are imposing yourself on them. Normative is meat eating is not right.
And then immediately, why do you say it’s not right? I’m doing what I want to do. Like you say it’s your choice to not eat meat, it’s my choice to eat meat. So normative is also what right are you saying this is the norm.
But descriptive, descriptive means, this is what I do. And this is why I do it. So you could say the same point, it’s cruelty to instead of saying it’s cruelty to animals, directly saying that, that you could say that, you know, I actually watched some videos or saw some pictures of how animals are treated in the factory farms.
And see the brutality against them. I don’t want to be a part of this. So what happens by this you are conveying your conviction, but you’re not necessarily making the other person feel bad about it.
When you just say it’s cruelty to animals. Oh, that means what you’re saying is I’m being cruel to animals. You’re saying to the other person.
They feel they’re being threatened by that. So if somebody asks us why we are doing something or why not do something, then just be descriptive. Descriptive means this is this is what I do.
This is why I do it. If you do it like that, then you won’t lose any friends because of whatever practises you have. Because nowadays the broad environment is multicultural.
So you can do what you want. I’ll do what I want. So any other questions? Does that answer the question about peer pressure? How do we motivate ourselves to chanting? That’s a question I ask myself every day.
It’s a challenge for all of us. I’d say that we all have to find out how we can work best with ourselves. When we are living, there is self-discipline and there is self-discovery.
Self-discipline means that this is what I’m going to do. We have to discipline ourselves. But we are not our own slaves.
What I decide, I’m going to do it. We can’t make it like that. We are not our own masters.
Then we can make ourselves do whatever we want. But there are some things which are self-discovery. This when I do, it feels good.
I can do this nicely. This when I do, it’s a little more difficult for me. This is unmanageable for me.
There is some aspect we discover ourselves. So it’s good to observe ourselves. Let’s say you meet a new friend.
Then you’ll observe that person carefully to understand them. Okay, this person thinks like this. This person does like this.
This person has this habit. This person doesn’t like this. This person likes that.
Same way, you can observe yourself. Look at yourself as if you are someone you don’t know. Now do you know yourself? Little bit actually.
Now we, our mind is complicated. There are so many desires, so many thoughts, so many ideas. So sometimes we surprise ourselves.
Sometimes, many times we shock ourselves. We do something and why did I do that? Or sometimes we do something very well. How could I do that? I didn’t know I could do this.
So both ways it works. So we observe ourselves as if we are someone we want to know. And then you find out on the days when your chanting is good.
What did you do before that? Was there something you did? Then you’ll say okay. Okay, so before chanting, if I take a few deep breaths, if I pray, take darshan of Krishna, that helps me to chant better. And if I just come from work or if I just have two three other activities and then I just pick up the beat and try to chant, I just don’t connect.
Then I feel bored. So observe yourself and try to understand how you can work best with yourself. So instead of saying chanting simply as a practise for as a ritual or a requirement or a rule, chanting can also become a means by which we understand ourselves better.
We understand our mind better. So generally there is a spiritual connection with Krishna that is helped established through chanting. The sound vibration of the soul of the holy name connects the soul with Krishna.
But sometimes the spiritual connection is not so easy to establish because we are not in spiritual consciousness. So then we need to establish a connection with Krishna somewhere else, physically, mentally, intellectually, some other. What does that mean? That means that you can keep a picture of Krishna in front of you and just look at the picture of Krishna.
Try to describe in your own words the beauty of Krishna. You do it for one or two minutes also. It will stimulate your thinking, stimulate your emotions.
If you have a favourite pastime of Krishna, keep a picture of Krishna with you in your pocket or somewhere close to you. And then you look at the picture, remember the pastime, speak the pastime in your own words. That will stimulate your thinking.
And then a connection at an emotional level, a connection at an intellectual level will happen. If you like some, if you have heard some good points in a class or how the mind needs to be controlled, could write that down as a quote, keep that in a diary and then just read that quote. Maybe speak it, verbalise it a few times.
So that will kickstart your intelligence and the intellectual connection is established. If you like kirtan, then just if you like a particular tune, then just before you start your chanting, japa, just sing that kirtan three, four times. Sing the Hare Krishna Mahamantra in that tune a few times.
So that will stimulate a musical connection with Krishna. So we want to establish a spiritual connection with the holy name. But till that spiritual connection is established, you can establish some other connection, an intellectual connection, an emotional connection.
Sometimes if you are just tired and bored, if you walk and chant, physically, you know, you look at some pictures of Krishna if you have in your room and looking at them you chant. So this might appear as if our mind is wandering. But rather what we are doing is, instead of having the mind focus on the holy name directly, that’s the point of concentration, around that point there is a circle.
The circle is the things related with Krishna. So if we can’t focus on the point of concentration, we focus on the circle of concentration. That circle is the things related with Krishna.
So and through that we can gradually get the connection toward Krishna. And over a period of time you will yourself find, oh these things if I do, I can connect with Krishna better. These things I do, I can’t connect so much.
So even if chanting doesn’t connect you with Krishna immediately, chanting will still help you understand yourself better. And when you understand yourself better, it will help you in all walks of your life. So don’t see just chanting as a rule.
See chanting as a resource for self-discovery. Ultimately chanting is a resource by which we develop love for Krishna. But right now the attempt to chant will be a resource through which you can understand yourself better.
How your mind works, how you yourself work. And then you will find that through chanting you will know about yourself and you will grow. Thank you very much.