How can we become more contemplative in daily life?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if we are to become more contemplative are there specific practices and can we incorporate how can we incorporate those practices in our day to day lives I talked in terms of similar words contemplation and action I talked about connection and contribution so contemplation basically is where we see our actions in terms of a bigger context say for example right now I am speaking say I am answering your question you asked a question I answered a question that’s one context in which we are discussing but another bigger context is say I am trying to myself be a spiritual teacher you are also be a spiritual practitioner so it’s a connection between the two of us that’s another context so what happens is we place our situations our actions and our situations in various contexts so sometimes the context that we are placing is constructive sometimes it might be destructive so for example say in fact many mental health problems come up because we place problems in destructive contexts I was at a conference at a mental health convention in Connecticut couple of years ago so there was one young girl she was telling how she went into depression so she was she was studying in a college for a degree and she was also waiting tables by the side to get some money and while she was serving a customer and she was carrying some water and the water glass slipped from her hand and fell down and it’s a big mess and she started thinking if I can’t carry even one glass of water what am I going to do with my life now probably all of us have had glass of water slipped from our hands but what happened is we might say ok maybe my hands were wet or maybe you know maybe I was talking to someone else or maybe the floor was slippery and I lost my balance so we could place it in different context but she took that incident and placed it in a context of self-worth itself so often when we when we experience discouragement or disruption in our lives it is not just because of particular incidents it is because of the context in which our mind places those incidents so for example you know maybe maybe we did something for someone and we expected them to reciprocate with us, maybe speak some kind words appreciate something and then they don’t do it and then we start thinking actually nobody values me, everybody takes me for granted and then what happens by that, we start feeling lonely we start feeling uncared for and we might sink into depression because of that so basically contemplations I would say it can have different ways but the way I have found it most constructive is contemplation is thinking about thinking that means in what context am I are my thoughts placing the situation whatever we do, we have thoughts about that so in what context am I placing these thoughts so contemplation can help us find a more constructive context in which to place our actions our mind will place our thoughts in a particular context I remember once I asked a senior teacher that sometimes we give classes and we find that the audience is just not interested and then we also lose interest in speaking so what should we do at that time so he told me quite creative, he said think of those talks as your practice run for future talks when audience will be interested so basically what he did was just don’t reduce the people not interested, what is the use of speaking don’t place it in that context, see that you are not just going to give one talk this is a major part of your life so place it in a different context so I would say contemplation so that’s what happened to Arjuna Arjuna was about to fight a war and he thought that how can I fight against my own relatives Krishna said that actually we are all souls your relatives are also souls and they are all in journey of spiritual evolution and you do your duty and you will evolve spiritually and they will also evolve spiritually so Krishna helped Arjuna place his situation in a different context so basically contemplation means we learn to place our situations, our actions in a more constructive context that’s the, we can do contemplation in various ways and sometimes contemplation can be just completely world transcending now we sit and remember some philosophical points, we remember some past times of Krishna and we just lose ourselves in those thoughts that’s good we can absorb ourselves in Krishna for some time however the most transformative contemplations will be not those which we transcend the world completely but the most transformative contemplations are those which transform our vision of our place and purpose in the world so for example, if we are working in our professions we see oh this is just something which I have to do to earn a living so I have written a book on 10 leadership sutras based on Bhagavad Gita one of the teachings of Bhagavad Gita is work as a form of worship so some people translate this as work is worship that is oversimplification what the Gita is saying is work as a form of worship not that all work will intrinsically be worship so the idea is that that say we can reconceptualize our work suppose there is a teacher who is teaching students and there are 3 teachers in 3 adjacent classes somebody goes and asks one teacher what are you doing can’t you see I am trying to keep order among all these unruly, disobedient students the other teacher what are you doing I am earning my living go to the third teacher and ask what are you doing I am helping shape the future of the world by educating these children so then all of them are doing the same activity but the first way of looking at it is going to foster resentment the second is let me do it and get over with the third way of looking at it is going to lead to inspiration and higher motivation so we can try to place our activities in more positive, more constructive contexts so when we are contemplating say for example if we are working in our office and we have a colleague who is very very irritating, very annoying, it is said that there are 2 kinds of people some people bring happiness wherever they go and some people bring happiness whenever they go so so what may happen is that sometimes we might just have irritating colleagues and we might just get frustrated by dealing with them and it is understandable it is a human emotion but instead of just seeing that oh this person is frustrating me so much we could reconceptualize it and think that you know maybe by dealing with this person I learn to grow more in tolerance, in patience and I learn how to deal with difficult people and it is not that this person might be especially difficult but we all face difficult situations so instead of just seeing that as unnecessary entanglement we can see that as a as a useful growth stimulus now if we have only people who keep troubling us all around us then it will be exhausting for us but if there is one person like that instead of just obsessing over it so contemplation is so we could see that maybe yes I have been put in this situation and this person is behaving like that but ultimately Krishna has a plan for my growth and could this situation also be a part of that plan so if we can contemplation in terms of learning to place our situations in more constructive context then we can incorporate contemplation in our lives appropriately so we just take a few minutes we can see what are the typical challenges that we face in our life and before that in advance we sit down and use our knowledge of philosophy, our intellectual resources to see ok how could I place this in a better context and maybe write it down keep it with us and then when we face that kind of situation just read it once again to yourself so at that time automatically you might not be able to think about more constructive way of looking at it but if you have already thought about it remembering it will be easier so basically what the Bhagavata tells us is that we try to cultivate a service attitude in every situation that we are in now how can I serve Krishna in this situation how can I bring an attitude of service in this situation the materialistic vision of looking at people is what can this person do for me the spiritual vision of looking at people is what can I do for this person so if we have that service attitude then we can go through situations in a in a more in a less destructive way and maybe more constructive way ok thank you