The Monk’s Podcast 6 with Shyamananda Prabhu and Hari Vamsa Prabhu – Finding inner anchor amid outer storms

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Okay, welcome everyone to the monk's podcast and we have Shamananda and Chetan Charan with us. They have decades of experience in sharing spiritual wisdom in contemporary times and today also we have a very interesting topic with us and we would like to have them share with us wisdom nuggets especially in these troubled times. The topic for today is finding inner anchors amidst outer storms.

We have seen storms in different parts of the world, different versions. There are tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. What we are seeing now is of a peculiar kind because due to this storm we have been asked to be inside our homes.

That's the sort of mandate to put a curb on this storm. So now as a common person sitting inside my home looking outside the balcony at empty roads, what do I do? As a spiritual seeker, as somebody who is looking for enduring meaning in life, how do I process this outer storm which is going outside my home? And while sitting inside what should I do so that at least when this storm abates there's some wisdom. I've added some meaning and these months, I hope, have not gotten wasted like that.

So what do you all have to share in this regard? You want to start Shamananda? Okay The Bhagavad Gita explains that our existence is three levels. There is the body, the mind, and the spirit. The spirit is the source of consciousness and consciousness because this consciousness comes from the spirit, radiates through the mind to the body and then it goes outward to the physical world.

And usually our consciousness goes toward the things that we are most attached to. So if we come to a room and say we are eager to eat some food, then our first attention might go to the fridge and what is there over there in that. So generally our consciousness is caught at the physical level of reality in various objects depending on what we are attached to and accordingly we do various activities.

Maybe physically go here, travel there, do this and do that. But when the physical level of activities is curtailed that can become very frustrating because consciousness by nature is dynamic. It wants to explore.

So then what we need to do is we have to take this consciousness on an inner journey. Instead of it going outward, it can go inward. So consciousness going inward is the essence of the spiritual journey.

Now when our consciousness goes inward, often as I said, there's a spirit, there is the mind and there's the body. The consciousness comes at the level of the mind, it goes into fantasy land. So the mind can imagine various things either good or bad about the past or the future and now of course with entertainment being a big industry, people's mind's imaginations can also come up and we consume things digitally and basically it's either our consciousness gets caught in our mind or in the products of others' mind.

So when we are caught at the mental level that is not necessarily going inward in terms of learning anything meaningful. We need to go beyond the mind and its various moods and fantasies to the level of spirit. So we could put it now we could put it horizontally or we could put vertically at the physical, mental and spiritual level of reality.

So our consciousness needs to rise to the spiritual level and there we can experience ourselves, we can experience calmness, we can experience clarity, we can experience ourselves as observers different from our situations and different from our emotions. So the situations come at the physical level the emotions come at the mental level but we are different from the both of them just as sometimes we can notice this person is this person is speaking things which are making me bored now. So that is a physical level of perception, but you can also observe.

Okay. Now I am feeling bored. So this person is making me bored that is the situation.

I am feeling bored. That is the emotion. So we can be the observer of our situations and the observer of our emotions also.

So once we recognize that we are observers that's the time we can gain a significant level of freedom from our situations and our emotions because we understand that actually I am different. I'm different from both of these. So when we are too caught in our physical situations or our mental emotions, then we rarely if ever realize that we are observers.

So to find shelter internally means that the storms come not only at the physical level in terms of problems, but the storms come even more at the mental level in terms of our uncontrolled reactions to those problems. Right now there's a health pandemic but along with that there is also a concern that there might be a mental pandemic. People can become depressed, people can become panicky, people can become lonely and those are all storms at the level of the mind.

So by going inward to the level of the spirit, we can go beyond both the physical and the mental storms and find spiritual shelter. Okay. Thank you.

I especially like the part where you emphasized training oneself to be the observer. So I would just begin my answer. I won't cover the solution part.

When you say, nicely put Harivansh, that if I see outside, what do I see? And what do I do with this situation? Was that your summarization? When you said that in today's times, I see outside, empty streets, there's no one there. So how do I relate to that? Or could you just paraphrase your question? Yes, Kamananda. I don't see anybody outside and I'm not used to staying inside.

So this kind of dark clouds of outer storm, how do I process and how do I make some meaning out of my stay inside my home? Oh, right. So a very popular Americanism, like when you say English, there is also some people who say, don't call it English. This is American.

English is the language spoken in England. This is America. So if I use the word in American, if life throws lemons at you, what do you do? So one simple answer was make lemonade.

So a lemon is like a storm situation. Another answer to that is catch the lemon and throw it at someone else. That is a blame game.

So life suddenly has thrown not just a lemon, but the biggest lemon ever in the last maybe 80-90 years after the Spanish flu. Now it is surprising that about say 55 million or so people were maimed or injured or killed in the first world war and more people were affected by the Spanish influenza epidemic. But that is not seen as a major killer.

So humanity tends to see humans as the movers and shakers more than nature. What nature does is sometimes just taken out of the history books and history mainly is filled with the exploits of humans. So today nature has shown how helpless we are.

So this is a big lemon thrown at us and I compare today's civilization actually any civilization can compare like that with a person who goes with a heavy makeup day in day out. That is the kind of face he or she would like to show the world. And imagine that person going to perform on stage or on the way and somebody just throws two three pails of cold water on his face and all of a sudden there is no makeup now.

And with that situation that person runs back to his apartment closes the door and shrieks in horror as to what he sees in the mirror. But there is no freak or a kind of a horror figure there. It is he himself.

So from whom are you running away or who is that hideous figure in the mirror? It is you. But all these years you Harvard cultivated a kind of a persona which you were not. And what were your makeup paraphernalia? It was gadgets.

It was the Facebook likes. It was the so-called popularity, the so-called proliferation of Marvel movies one after another raking in billion dollars plus. The kind of exotic vacations, the kind of coupons you got free on the internet 30% off 80% off and you thought life was great.

And now you cannot do almost all of these and you feel as if I am lost. A very popular phrase in one of the greatest Nakti texts, Shrimad Bhagwat is a Nashtavittamiva. A person losing his wealth means I am lost.

Well, he's not lost. So when you look at the grim or kind of desolate scenario outside it is not the end of the world. But the kind of life you were leading is has kind of programmed you into thinking this is the end of the world.

If I don't see a new McDonald's breakfast special, if I don't see something discounted off on quality shoes or some jewelry or some exotic vacation or a hotel resort available for just $2.99 for three days. So because these are all the layers, it's almost like a Photoshop image of mine with 15 layers of so many things added. So the computer may tell me that this is how I look.

But all it needs to remove those layers is just one mouse click. So with a digital click material nature has just removed all the layers. And now we are told that now deal with this.

So we said deal with what? This is not me. This is the real you. Welcome to yourself.

So now you need to know whether in my life I have anchors. I like this title very much. In this storm, which are the anchors? And suddenly humanity like a ill-trained deck boy, I'm using a maritime technology term.

He just goes on the deck and the captain says get the anchor. And he said, sorry, sir. What do you mean? He said, you don't know what the anchor is? No, never used it even once.

So he tells go down. You see this big strong iron thing and get it up. Hurry up.

So I will come to the anchors when we discuss that, but this is my small assessment of the scenario which we are facing today. Thank you. So nicely put with all the examples.

Thank you Chetanchal and Shamananda. I think both of you mentioned that about this anchor part. Chetanchal you said about the real us, the spirit behind body and mind.

And we are seeing that today, isn't it? People are not bothered about gold bricks or some other essentials, but we see huge lines in front of potato and tomato counters. Those have become the essential. So what is the real essential? What is the real anchor? And you mentioned about observer, but maybe if you can add more, that how do we practice so that we start living being anchored in that way, more pragmatic, more practical.

So I felt that Shamananda spoke very vividly about the things in which our consciousness is currently invested. And we could say not just invested, but trapped. Sometimes when we talk about investment, it's a conscious placement of our money.

But sometimes after we place it, we can't take it out. Then it gets trapped. So our consciousness is often trapped in certain things.

And in many ways, technological advancement means that we are given more and more avenues for enticing and entrapping our consciousness. And then suddenly most of those avenues are taken away from us. So that's the time when we recognize that, okay, that I have got myself invested so much in these things, but are those things really important for me? And so if things change, just like in an ocean, when there is a storm, then what stabilizes the ship is the anchor.

So when the ocean is smooth, we may not even require the need of an anchor, or even recognize that we will ever need an anchor also. But when the ocean becomes stormy, that means, as I said, that we are like in an ocean and the waves are becoming stormy. Now, things that gave us comfort and pleasure are suddenly being interrupted.

That's the time when we need an anchor. So it is time to disinvest our consciousness from outer things and reinvest it in inner things. So see within, go within.

These are often common themes, but they can seem very abstract. For many of us, if we go within, it's not very peaceful. It's said that many people speak because they find speech more tolerable than silence.

Because when they are not speaking, their mind is shrieking inside them. This problem, that problem, that problem. So it's interesting in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about discipline of the body, of the speech and of the mind.

And there he talks about mauna. Mauna is the vow of silence. But Krishna talks about mauna as the discipline of the mind, not discipline of the body.

He says that So real silence is not simply zipping our lips. Real silence is calming our mind. And if the mind is not calm, then going within simply means encountering a wild mind.

So we need to have a process. We need to go on an inner journey beyond the mind. So normally if you are to go on a journey, say we are we are going from place to place, we say from Mumbai to Pune or we are going from LA to San Francisco.

So then we basically need two things. One is a map and the second is a vehicle. Similarly for going on an inner journey, we need these two things.

We need a map of the inner territory. And we need a vehicle to take us. Now take us means to take our consciousness on the inner journey.

So consciousness is like the light of awareness. And our consciousness goes through various things. So this light of awareness has to go inward.

So first we need a map and spiritual wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita can be that map and they show us what the inner territory is. They help us understand. Okay.

This is the mind. This is the spirit. These are the various passions, impressions stored within the mind.

So this is of course not a visual perception, but a conceptual comprehension. But even for that we need a map, a guide to the territory. And then the vehicle is actually the process of yoga.

So the yogic practices are meant to act as tools or vehicles for us to take our consciousness on this inner journey. So yoga is not just about sitting in a particular pose or intoning a particular sound or visualizing a particular object or any of these things. Yes, these can be useful but they are all meant to take us on that journey.

So the idea is that we start with some outer object of focus and then we go toward an inner object of focus. So for example in the Bhagavad Gita when it talks about the process of yoga, it states that you sit in a comfortable yogic posture and then focus on the tip of the nose. Or it also says, that's in the sixth chapter, in the fifth chapter it says focus on the space between the eyebrows.

Now the important thing is that take one external point which is stable. Now actually speaking we cannot very easily see the tip of our nose or the space between our eyebrows. But what happens by trying to focus on that one point that becomes like a anchor which can calm our consciousness which is otherwise dissipated in so many outer things and then gradually the consciousness can be drawn inward.

So this is one tool. Just like when we are driving a vehicle, the vehicle has different levers and buttons for doing different operations. So noticing our breath and slowing our breath and calming our breath, focusing on our breath, that's also another tool.

Mantras are also another tool. So when we use these tools, these vehicles, then gradually we can start going inward and we go inward beyond physical reality to the mental and eventually to the spiritual level of reality. And that's where we can start experiencing an unchanging core.

And when we come to that unchanging core, we start experiencing stability. We start experiencing shelter. We start experiencing security inside us.

Thank you. I had heard this many years ago when I was quite fascinated by this concept that in life you have to find a center where there is no chaos because the larger your circle grows, you will find that on the circumference there is too much happening, too much of a chaos. So if you let go of the center, you'll be caught in this turmoil and heaven forbid if you are thrown away, then I am basically an economics student, but if I remember my geometry, a tangent is when that line touches just one point in the circle, right? The faster is your speed, the longer are you thrown away.

Is it not? If you are whirling at top speed and then you let go of the center, that acceleration will take you far away from the center. So it's like one hand has to be always touching the center. So call it an anchor or call it that particular point which you should never let go.

I have these three things, so call it three anchors or three aspects of one anchor and simply put it means your daily spiritual regimen, the community with which you align yourself either physically or in today's times in a virtual way and third is either your service per se, the physical aspect of service or service attitude. So these are the three S's. Daily practice is the sadhana, community is the sangha and service attitude is seva.

So almost all transcendental bonafide transcendental practices have this thing of something which you do daily. It is as much as a piano performer practicing daily. There's a very famous statement by one great pianist that I don't practice for seven days and I can notice it.

I don't practice for 15 days and the audience can notice it. I need to do something as a daily practice which is called sadhana and it is as basic as someone trying to make it big in the 100 meters in Olympics. He does jogging, swimming, even plays chess.

Now what chess has to do with his 100 meter sprint? But the person says it helps me keep my mind focused. So whatever helps, the goal is to break that 10 second barrier for the 100 meters. So your daily practice in the bhakti tradition could be your daily japa, private meditation or your daily reading of the sacred texts, discussion of the sacred texts.

So that's the sadhana part. And community, now sometimes there could be a mini storm within these three S's. That also is possible.

Like you just don't feel like getting up in the morning. You don't feel like doing that practice. You say I did it for 30 years and it has not worked so far.

So what if I lose one day? You know what more will it what more kind of damage will happen because of that. So that time you need a reminder or sometimes the reminder could be just a gentle or a not so gentle kick on the back side, but it is required. So you need a kindred support system.

You need someone like you. So when that friend or that fellow pilgrim, there's an arrangement that if you feel down, then call me and if I feel down, I'll call you. And more than anything all it needs is someone who cares about you.

So that's the daily practice part. In the Sangha, because of this particular age, even though your goal is the same, still there could be disagreements. We are all humans, we are all unique individuals.

So even if the goal is the same, there could be disagreements. So it is said that when there is a problem with your daily practice, take help of the community and your core seva attitude. If there's a problem with the community, take shelter of your daily practice and your seva attitude.

And if there's a problem with your seva attitude, take shelter of your daily practice and your Sangha. So like an equilateral triangle, this particular differently shaped anchor can be of immense help. Wow, this is amazing.

The monks podcast is now podcasting the sutras, Chaitanya Charan, maps and vehicle. And Vamananda, starting with S, gave three S's more. Sadhana, Sangha and Seva.

So grateful that you have put it in such a concise manner. I would like to ask, and maybe this could be our last question of the day, something which is closer to your personal practices. I saw you mentioning Bhagavad Gita, the book, and also the practice like japa.

So would you like to shed more light on how, especially in these times, Bhagavad Gita stands out? And I think you mentioned about japa also, mantras also, how those also stand out and they have something tangible to offer to one and all. And if you can also top it up with some of your own other mantras like how a person hearing you all in this podcast can go right away and implement them with very less incubation period. Okay, if I I'll connect this with the previous points.

I was thinking that I did a somewhat mixing of metaphors because generally anchor is a nautical metaphor in a ship, but then I talked about journey with a vehicle and a map. So, of course, we need a vehicle and a map. We need a ship and a map if you're going on an ocean also.

So there are two distinct things over here. One is realizing our ultimate spirituality. We understand ourselves to be the soul who's the observer.

We also understand that beyond the soul is the whole the divine who is the supreme observer. So realizing that is the ultimate shelter. However, while we are in the process to realizing that the process itself can become like a shelter.

Just like if we are literally in an ocean, the waves will hit us much more. But if we are in a ship, in a sturdy ship, then that can shelter us. If we are in a ship that is well anchored, that can shelter us even more.

If we take the ship and reach the land, then we are best anchored. So we could put it that when we have no spiritual understanding or spiritual practices, then we are simply in the ocean. We are at the mercy of whatever waves may come and toss us here, there and everywhere.

But when we gain some spiritual understanding and start having spiritual practices, so if we put sadhana, seva and sangha, all three as comprising the vehicle, then as comprising the ship, then we get these, all three can shelter us from the stormy waves. Now within these, we may find one of these may be as the most empowering or enriching or nourishing for us at particular times. And others may not nourish us at that particular time.

And which one that will be can vary from situation to situation. Sometimes we may be with people who don't understand us so well. Even sometimes among spiritually minded people, there can be differences of opinion.

And the most painful loneliness is not when we are physically alone. It is when we are surrounded by people who don't understand us. So we can sometimes feel not understood and we can be lonely.

Maybe that is the time when we need to turn towards our service or we need to turn towards our sadhana. And we get that as our anchor. So the ship when it is anchored, it is much stabler.

So we have our practices and they themselves are like the ship for us. But within those practices, some practice helps us become stabler and that can become our anchor. And for each of us, the anchor may be different.

For each of us at different times, the anchor might be different also. And by sheltering ourselves with these anchors, we can stabilize ourselves among these storms and then we keep moving forward. And as we keep moving forward, eventually we will reach the shore.

So reaching the shore is perceiving our own spirituality first hand. It is we intellectually understand now that I am a spiritual being separate from my body and my mind. But when we experientially realize it and we actuated in that level of realization, Brahmavid brahmani sthithaha.

The Bhagavad Gita in 520 says that not only do we have spiritual knowledge, but we are spiritually situated. Brahmani sthithaha. That is the time when the ups and downs of life don't disturb us so much.

na praharishet priyam praapya no dvijet praapya cha priyam That is we don't get elated when there is pleasure or success and we don't get dejected when there is pain or failure. So let's say that for each one of us, for me, I find words, spiritually directed words as a important anchor. So it could be verses of the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures.

It could be concise thoughts based on the wisdom of the Gita. So words are for me the anchor by which I can access Krishna and connect with Krishna, access the ultimate reality and so each of us can find out the anchor that works the best for us and that's how we can move forward. So for me, I find words connected with spiritual reality are quite an accessible and relishable anchor.

Thank you. That was very very nice. I would say that to conclude as to we have these three S's, your daily practice, your community and your own core, which is your service attitude.

Seeing the example of previous greats and how they went through their own crises. Just to give an example, I was reading about Abraham Lincoln. Now he was a political figure and during the course of his life, he also got some kind of his pox.

There is small pox, but there are other varieties of pox and which are also viral fevers. So he brushed it off by saying, I don't think it will disfigure me anymore than what I am now. So from today's political leader's point of view, such kind of rock hard steadiness is certainly could be seen as worshipable.

So when I read the biographies of great bhakti yogis who are stalwarts in wisdom as well as practice, so that kind of solidifies the for example, the daily practice. I read that the founder of the great founder of the Gaudiya Mutt, Shri Shivan Bhakti Siddhanta Sarathi, he took a vow of a daily regimen of private meditation, japa and it was one billion names. That was the sankalpa, that was the target and he had a small thatched hut and when it would rain, he didn't even bother to mend it or repair it.

He just took an umbrella in the left hand and with the right hand he did it. So this kind of dedication to one's personal practice and then in the life of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada who founded this International Society for Krishna Consciousness, four decades of steady kind of preparation for launching a worldwide effort which itself is a novelty which was never done before with this gusto, with this enthusiasm and with this urgency. So as they say when you see a flower vase and it says unbreakable, the very first urge is to dash it to the ground, isn't it? To just see whether it is unbreakable or not.

And if someone says it is unbreakable till you don't drop it, then you know there is something wrong. So when he says that somebody is a sage of steady mind or a steady character, it means that that this is a ship which has weathered a lot of storm. It means a real storm.

It was not a CGI thing. It was not a computer generated interface where you could just put a wooden ship on a green screen of a lot of storms and everything happening. It's a real thing.

So similarly we also are being put through this. Help is there. There's a lot of evidence that people, far worse situation than you and me or all of us put together and they have weathered that and that should be our center point.

So if we cling to that center and somehow we have to work on the circumference whether it is a job in Walmart or Amazon or with a Bangalore startup or whatever, we can weather this storm and we can come out victorious. Very nice. Very nice.

Our spirituality does not promise us a stormless sea but it can provide us an unsinkable ship. Yes. Very nice.

Thank you. Very nice. So I think we are almost towards the end of our fantastic podcast and if you will allow me to put an effort to do some summary in terms of those S for summary and I will have many S's for the yardstick, the milestones, whatever you call inspired by both of you, Sadhana Seva and you were telling about unsinkable ship.

So the first level is a stormy sea and that's our usual status when it is uncontrollable. Our mind is going through much more stormy phenomenon than the outer storms, right? And then we try to put a sturdy ship, again two S's, and that sturdy ship is comprising of Sadhana, Seva and Sangha. Within them we have an anchor which could be a particular expression of Sadhana, Sangha or Seva which will which acts as an anchor for the ship.

And finally when that journey has been taken as Shamananda said storms of the stormy sea will come but now we have a sturdy ship we'll reach shore and that shore is our real anchor, our real happiness. And then looking back what would be the compass to make sure that the stormy sea is navigated by the sturdy ship to come to a shore is the shoulders or I would say that the stalwarts, right? Following the stalwarts. So another S is here.

That's clever. I'm very grateful. It's such a wonderful discussion today and I'm sure you can add one more S. Scripture can be the map.

Yes, the compass stalwart scripture is the map. Okay, so I think we call it a day today here. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Very nice and looking forward to having you all in our podcast next time.

Take care. Be safe. Thank you.