Self-Acceptance, Team Spirit and Success – Wisdom from Ramayana

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so I’m grateful to be here with all of you today and I will speak based on the Ramayana and I have a PPT which I’ll be sharing now so we’ll discuss based on that so this is our topic self-acceptance, team spirit and success so the Ramayana itself can be understood at various levels at one level it’s a Leela where we can just relish whatever is happening in the Leela at another level it can also be understood as a ethical play where we can draw lessons for how to live in our lives and we will study the Ramayana at that level today and we see that the Ramayana is very intensely centred on relationships the relationships of Ram with Dashrath of Ram with Lakshman of Ram with Sita of Ram with Bharat of Ram with Hanuman now in the Sundar Khand of the Ramayana Ram is mostly absent it is the Vanaras who are searching for Sita and it is at that time that their team spirit is both challenged and manifested generally speaking if there is one authority figure who towers above everyone else then resolving conflicts and making decisions is relatively easy but now for all the Vanaras they had Sugriva as their king Sugriva had just recently become their king because Vali had been the king and he had been killed so the four months of Chaturmasya had passed so in that sense Sugriva was known to he was long before when he had been exiled before he had been exiled he was known to be a strong warrior he was the king and above them above Sugriva, Sugriva treated Ram very reverentially and they knew Ram’s prowess so now Sugriva and Ram we could say they are the authorities in this case Sugriva was officially the authority and Ram was a powerful prince many of them knew that he was God descended to the earth so when an authority who towers above everyone else is there then there is a natural sense of submission but when that is not there that is when the team spirit gets challenged a lot and when the Vanaras went south to search for Sita at that time it’s interesting that Hanuman was not the team leader of the team that went south it was Angada who was the team leader now why Angada specifically? multiple reasons till now Hanuman himself had not manifested much of his powers we know the story where Hanuman had been given phenomenal powers by the gods he had become very mischievous and then the sages had cursed him to forget his prowess till he was reminded at appropriate time so in the intermediate time before he was reminded Hanuman was still powerful but he was not extraordinarily powerful he was one of the powerful Vanara Jandras now moving on Hanuman was not appointed as the head Jambavan was also there but Angada was the head now Angada was quite young among all the monkeys and in fact one of the reasons why Sugriva became the king and not Angada was because Angada was quite young and of course Vali also felt that I have caused I had exiled Sugriva I had persecuted him so I had to make amends for it but Angada was royalty and therefore he was naturally appointed as the leader of that group now when they came to the south for searching for Sita they got the information from Sampati that Sita is in Lanka they were delighted till now they had no clue where she is and now at last they know where she is and they jubilantly came to the ocean and then they look at the giant ocean which spread as far as the eye could see and who knew how much further more and they started thinking how are we going to cross it they look at the ocean and they look at each other they look at the ocean and they look at each other they look at the ocean they look at each other and as the size of the task before them started registering in their minds their morale started shrinking we can’t do this now if we have any team we know that the morale of the team matters a lot so now Angada tried to boost the morale of the I’m sure many of you can actually jump across this ocean Sampati had given them an idea of the dimensions and how far it was how far they had to jump across so they said they turned to each various monkey and they said oh I can jump this much distance I can jump this much distance none of them could scale the whole distance and then Jambavan said when I was young I could actually jump across the whole I could go across the whole earth but now I’m old and I don’t think I can jump across then Angada said that I can jump across but it’ll exhaust me completely I’m not sure whether I’ll have the strength to leap back again and come so Jambavan said actually you are our prince you are the leader of our team you should not go Jambavan also wanted to help Angada maintain face in the past actually it’s not even in the remote past it’s almost till the 19th century the heads of states would also be warriors the heads of states were the people who would fight in the war so even Napoleon he actually fought in the war himself the first world war and second world war the first world war is the time from where the administrators and the warriors the fighters they became separated there were some wars before that but especially from that time onwards it became separated and now of course the soldiers who fight on the war fields wherever the wars are happening and the politicians who send them there are completely different if the politicians once in a while visit the war field also people think oh such a heroic thing the politician has done so at that time for the warriors to actually lead by the front lead from the front was very important and they couldn’t do that then not only would the whole army’s morale go down but the army’s respect for the leader would also go down so Jambavan was very cautious he said no you should not go then Angad became apprehensive he said who will go and that was the time when Jambavan remembered about Hanuman and then Hanuman started then Jambavan started praising Hanuman and he started praising Hanuman more and more and more then what happened then he started reminding Hanuman of his celestial birth his childhood adventures how he had been how he had got the name Hanuman from his birth name Maruti and how he had got the various benedictions from the gods and how he had been cursed and as he started singing this more and more and more then Hanuman’s size started increasing his morale started increasing internally and his size started increasing externally so this was the time when Hanuman remembered the Hanuman that Hanuman had forgotten there was a Hanuman who was there right now but his prowess he had forgotten so it was a curious case of selective amnesia we could say so sometimes when parents when the child is very mischievous or undisciplined in some way the parents may ground the child ground the child means ok you know you cannot go out with your friends you cannot watch TV you cannot do this so certain facilities are taken away and that is the way the child is disciplined so now for Hanuman what could they do he was mischievous but the mischief was he was not hanging the mischief was not because he was hanging out with other monkeys the mischief was because he had some powers so they used selective amnesia to make him forget his powers and then at that time when the powers were needed at that time Jambavan spoke and then the powers started manifesting and Hanuman said I will leap across the ocean and I can at this moment he was so confident so jubilant because he also felt burdened at that time all the monkeys were saying how much can they jump Hanuman was silent and pensive something within him was calling him forward at the same time there was something within him which was hesitating at a conscious level he thought I can’t do this I don’t have the prowess but at a deeper level somewhere I can do this so he was caught in this dilemma that’s why he was pensive so even when people have amnesia it’s not that they forget completely they forget but there are times when certain echoes from the past come to them so he was in that situation he hadn’t spoken at all but when Jambavan started speaking so he realised yes we are not going to be defeated we can be successful he started jubilantly proclaiming what do you want me to do I can go there and uproot the whole Lanka and bring it back I will arrest Ravan and bring him back I can bring Sita back right now with me so I can destroy Lanka if you want Angad said no we are messengers so just let us do what we have been told to do and said please you go and give Ram’s message to Sita and get to know about her whereabouts and her well being and then come back and then Hanuman flew into the sky how significantly when Hanuman flew into the sky all the monkeys were watching him with joyous eyes and eager hearts and then they told Hanuman as he was flying into the sky we will pray for your success and not only will we pray for your success we will perform austerities for your success and what are the austerity they said that we will stand on one foot and perform yogic meditation and offer the fruits of our austerity to you so although Hanuman was in the lead that didn’t mean that all the monkeys remaining monkeys were just sitting and relaxing they performed austerities in general if you compare with the sports there are some which are individual sports like boxing and there are team sports like football, baseball cricket now if you consider cricket the team that is batting, two batsmen are out there and the remaining batsmen are in the pavilion now although they are in the pavilion in spirit they are there they are all watching the match they may not be praying but still they are offering their best wishes they are involved over there so generally a team is there are individuals in the team but there is also a team spirit which unites everyone and that unity that is extremely important so we will this is the background, this is the incident based on which we will be discussing today’s talk three distinct points what is team spirit and why it matters then why self acceptance matters and then how to increase our self acceptance as we discussed the monkeys could not cross yet they found and encouraged the one who could cross often teams are sabotaged by one-upsmanship where if one person wants to be the number one and if they can’t be the number one then they push everyone else down if I can’t be the number one nobody else should be but that was not the spirit of the monkeys so generally if the team spirit is there then the idea is that the team should win even if I am not the star performer so there are times when a particular person, a particular member of the team becomes a star performer so if you consider cricket sometimes it might be the opening batsman sometimes it might be the middle order batsman sometimes it might be even a tail ender who does something heroic so in bowling sometimes it’s the spin bowler, sometimes it’s the fast bowler sometimes it’s a part-time bowler so whoever it is there is a saying in English every dog has his day that means different people at different times they may perform so the idea is that whoever is performing that is great I will support that performer and the team should win that is team spirit now on the other hand self-seeking spirit is where I want to be the star performer even if my team fails so say this might happen in cricket where somebody says I want to get to my century but to get to my century I will play very slowly and in the process if the team loses also I got my record now this is very damaging to the morale of the team when naturally within a team also players want to be achievers that is just a human tendency we all want to achieve things but at the same time there is the collective achievement that is important so if the players start playing for themselves then the team suffers so broadly we could say that the attitude of individuals in the team can go to two extremes that if I am the star then I will do my best, that’s one extreme and if I am not the star then why should anyone else be I will not let anyone else be the star also I will not let anyone else be the star so that could mean say if we consider sports like cricket that could mean that if a batsman has a record and another batsman is about to go exceed that record, this batsman may deliberately make that batsman run out so I will sabotage the other person but that would be very unhealthy the healthy attitude is that I will do my best to help my team do the best and when I say I will do my best means sometimes I may play the star role, sometimes I may play the supporting role so whatever role I have to play I will play to the best of my capacity it’s significant that in the team hierarchy Angad was the team leader that’s from the official hierarchy point of view, from the team hierarchy Jambavan was the senior most but neither of them claimed credit based on that they admitted their inability and we can have many different definitions of humility one simple definition of humility is the ability to admit our inability the ability to admit our inability when something is beyond us sometimes there is an idea that wherever there is a hierarchy hierarchies are very bad and very exploitative so somebody is at the top and they will dominate everybody who is at the bottom well yes it can happen at times but there are many places where hierarchies are legitimate and essential say for example parent child the parents love their children and at the same time they have to guide their children so for functioning in any team setting some kind of hierarchy is required and yes there are situations when those at the top can dominate others but there are many other situations where those at the top also want to help others people who are successful initially generally when people are very young maybe 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 till that time the whole passion is I want to get to the top and once when somebody achieves a reasonable amount of success one of the joys in people’s lives is to help others rise and that gives them great fulfilment that not only did I rise but I helped others to rise so Jambavan he had his day earlier when he had flown across the ocean Jambavan had his day many times like before but now it gave him great joy to help Hanuman remember so now Angad was basically too young to remember the time when Hanuman was that powerful and we talk about all the Vanaras as one team but not all the Vanaras lived in the same place they all lived in different parts of the world and they had to be called by Sugriv and that’s why things were delayed for some time so if Jambavan had conveniently said if Jambavan would have remembered but he said no Hanuman will get all the glory, why should he get the glory he could have said I don’t remember he couldn’t have said that actually Hanuman is so powerful he didn’t have to remind Hanuman of that but what was his spirit we as a team have to succeed so I will do my best to help my team succeed that is team spirit so sometimes some people are just good at certain things and if they are good at those things we need to help them do those good things where they excel so we could say now apart from the pendulum we could also have a four quadrant interaction between individual performance and team performance now if you go here to the left bottom neither the individual performs well nor the team performs well then that would be a debacle it is just it’s an embarrassing failure now if if a particular individual is not performing well but the team is performing well when will that happen when one player covers, compensates for the other player hey you are not doing so well today then others take the responsibility so then what happens is then okay if one player doesn’t then the team can still perform even if particular individuals are not able to perform in India in the 1990s probably maybe later also little before little later Sachin Tendulkar was the star of the team and most people when they would watch the match if Tendulkar gets out they would just switch off the TV so because it’s over now so there are not many supporting players that great so what happens is the team is there but it’s one person but when there are many players okay if everybody sometimes has a off day somebody else takes over somebody else supports so that’s mutual compensation now that is good now the opposite of that would be competition there can be healthy competition and there can be what is called internecine competition internecine means I pull you down and you pull me down it’s mutually damaging it’s mutually destructive so there can be politics there can be backbiting there can be every sort of way in which the mind can conceive by which people are pulled down now when this happens so the individuals may excel but the team doesn’t excel so well because the individuals are pulling each other down so now at one level we could say this is just ego and this is arrogance and we should not have ego we’ll discuss about that why it might happen in this level where the team the members excel but the team doesn’t excel but this is unhealthy so we could say both at the bottom level where the team is not performing that is unhealthy just the individual performance is not good enough now of course the individual may perform and the team may not perform that’s possible at some level but when it is the individual is performing at the cost of the team performance then that is unhealthy so then the best is where there is synergy where the individual is also performing very well and the team is also performing very well so now we are whatever it is we might be as a family we are a team in our profession we might be a team in our temple we are doing services where we might be a team so we work in teams at various levels and some teams are more organic which are formed based on just people like minded and some teams are more organisational that means because of organisational necessity some people come together so now often the challenge is if the teams are organic then people naturally have an understanding of each other and it’s easier to work but if the team is organisational because of organisational goals certain people are brought together then the challenges can be significant so let’s with these two diagrams of the pendulum and the four quadrant now let’s look at that so we discussed why team spirit matters now the next part we will discuss is why self acceptance matters so self acceptance means that as I said earlier sometimes we may not have the ability to do certain things so we have to admit our inability sometimes if the self acceptance is not there then there will be self sabotage self sabotage and team sabotage will be there so if somebody seeks a lead role even if we seek the lead role even if we don’t have the ability to lead then we suffer and the team suffers so if one of the vanaras had said yes I can go to Lanka and all the other vanaras had been waiting and this vanara leaps across and maybe falls into the ocean and dies or maybe reaches there and is so exhausted that it can’t penetrate into Lanka or is caught by the demons over there now other monkeys would not even know what is happening so at one level we all want to do our best so it’s so a physical inability is not a character deficiency all the vanaras were devoted to Lord Ram but just because they were devoted that didn’t necessarily make them equally physically empowered I will talk a little bit later about the concept of empowerment but at this stage this is important point that does that mean that because they were not empowered is that a character deficiency no not it’s not a character deficiency is it that they were deficient in devotion well yes Hanuman’s devotion was extraordinary but that doesn’t necessarily imply that other monkeys were deficient in their devotion they all had a genuine desire to serve the Lord and the Lord had a plan so the Lord chose a particular person so in general so there is there is we could say a physical physical inability and there is a moral deficiency so or in our context it’s a devotional deficiency so to equate a physical inability with moral deficiency that is being judgemental and when any society or any group starts doing that it is on the path to it is in the path to ruination so for example much of America American Christianity follows the idea of what is called as prosperity gospel prosperity gospel or prosperity theology means that my prosperity is the proof of my piety in fact that was the ideology to some extent that led to the whole colonisation of the world several hundred years ago also now the term prosperity theology might not have been there at that time but the idea is that it is by God’s grace that the European countries thought that we have become so powerful and it is our sacred duty to God to spread what they thought was enlightenment across the world so they equated poverty with lack of God’s grace so similarly that is basically in our traditions language Karmakand so we may not in our talks we may condemn Karmakand but we may actually subscribe to subtle version of that where we think that if say a particular devotee does a particular service very well if a particular devotee talks get lots of views that means this devotee is empowered the particular devotee is able to distribute a lot of books then this devotee is empowered if a particular devotee is able to raise a lot of funds then this devotee is empowered yes it could be that they are empowered it could also be that they have the material skills necessary for that and others do not it could be that there is a combination of both so we don’t have to become judgemental in general if some devotee is doing a service very well we appreciate we don’t minimise that devotee this is just your material ability you are doing it because how do we know that it could be that they have the material ability but they also have the sincerity of the heart so if a devotee is doing service well we appreciate that devotee and we don’t have to deconstruct that success too much but the opposite is important not to do that if a particular devotee is not able to do any service so well that does not mean that it’s a devotional deficiency it simply means that yes Krishna has different devotees playing different roles in his plan and some devotees may not be materially empowered to do particular services so none of the monkeys none of the vanaras chose to take up a service which they knew they could not do if there is no self acceptance then that problem comes up so now when we accept our inabilities what happens broadly there are two possibilities one is that if we accept it then there is redirection of efforts okay this is what I should do and maybe so as the vanaras they decided okay we can’t fight but we will wait back we will wait and we will choose to bide our time on the other hand if they don’t do that there will be defeat so now here we see Vali and Sugreeva fighting that’s a different context entirely but the principle there was that Vali had a huge amount of arrogance and because of arrogance he presumed that he knew Sugreeva’s motives and that’s why he banished Sugreeva and he persecuted Sugreeva and deep within his heart he thought maybe I am wrong maybe Sugreeva will not do like this but he suppressed that so he could not accept that maybe his judgement was wrong and because he didn’t accept his judgement was wrong the two of them had been an undefeatable team but here what happened was they came to a situation where they had to fight against each other so sometimes we need to accept our inabilities that maybe we can’t do something maybe we don’t even know something properly okay now here we consider the idea of self-worth so the self-acceptance is very much related with self-worth in modern times self-worth or self-esteem is considered very important now where might we get our self-worth from it might come from the size of our contribution as compared to others this person did this much I did this much and therefore I am great and then another source of it could be size of our contribution as compared to our capacity this is what I could do and this is what I have done so the first one size of our contribution as compared to others in the real world at a functional level that kind of comparison has to happen if a particular person can do a particular task well then it’s better to give them that task the whole team will flourish so that is at a functional level we can’t sometimes we say we should not have we should not have a competitive mentality that is true but what do we mean by that term competitive mentality we live in a competitive society and we will be rated whether it is in the professional world or whether it is in the relational world when people form relationships when they when anybody wants to form a particular relationship they actually assess is this person appropriate for me when they assess what are they doing they are actually evaluating so we cannot avoid that kind of evaluation at a functional level but different from a functional assessment is one’s self-worth if our self-worth comes from say how much am I doing as compared to someone else see at least how much am I doing is one thing it would be another thing is how much am I getting so for many people their self-worth becomes reduced to their net worth and if they find that somebody is earning more than they feel what am I doing with my life yes money is important but we can’t let money define our self-worth so size of our contribution as compared to our capacity means this is what I can do and this is what I did this is what I did yesterday and this is what I am doing today so I am on the path of growth so from where our self-worth comes is very important so without a healthy source of self-worth we will always be in a sense of in a state of insecurity and that insecurity will will make us even unconsciously do things that sabotage the team in India the top universities are the IITs in America they are the Ivy Leagues so there have been significant number of studies about the students who go to these universities and they graduate from them so now these students who can even get into these universities are phenomenally brilliant there is no doubting their IQ and their brilliance but from a psychological perspective it is found that many of these students they suffer from emotional turbulence that means whenever they meet someone if they find I am smarter than them that person yeah I feel superior I feel good about myself and as soon as they find oh this person is smarter than me they start feeling inferior they start feeling insecure because of that so here in a sense everyone of them is brilliant but then they are pitted against other brilliant students so what happens is unless they have intrinsic self-worth it becomes very difficult to maintain security maintain stability so with respect to competitions it said often I say if there are three prizes there is a gold medal silver medal and the bronze medal so what happens the gold medallist and the bronze medallist both are happy the silver medallist is miserable you know why is that because the gold medallist got the top the bronze medallist at least I got something but for the bronze medallist it is comparing oh I could have got the gold and I didn’t get the gold so in general if we we cannot avoid comparing but if we let that comparison become the basis of our self-worth then it will be a problem so each of the Vanaras they knew that they had a role they had a service and they focused on doing their service so now each Vanara he got his day like I said every dog has his day so Angada he had his day later here Hanuman had gone as a messenger just before the war Angada went in the messenger the previous evening and he gave a warning and when Ravan said your army is insignificant we will crush you on the first day itself so Angada issued a challenge he said that you know I will just plant my leg in front of you let any of your monkey any of your demon general just come and move my foot and all demons came and they were so enraged at this challenge they thought we will just not only move his foot we will knock him down and smash him to death for challenging us like this but they came and they couldn’t even budge his foot one bit and finally Ravan himself got up and Ravan came there and Ravan bent down Angada knocked off Ravan’s crown and he moved away and he said oh fool if you want to touch anyone’s feet touch Ram’s feet he will save you my challenge was for your generals not for you and then he got that day right in the court of Ravan he was able to display his promise so everybody will get their day it may not be as glorious as somebody else’s but there will be time when we can do service Jambavan he had his time there are many warriors he killed during the war there were as I said before that he had circumnavigated the earth he had done extraordinary services during his time so self acceptance comes when our self worth we have intrinsic self worth now if you don’t have that intrinsic self worth then how do we go about increasing our self acceptance that will be the remaining and the last part of the talk so I will talk about this self acceptance we don’t live in isolation so we live in a community so our self acceptance depends not only on us it also depends on others and this is where the team leaders role comes in the team leader at one level will naturally appreciate somebody who does some extraordinary service but it’s important for the team leader to also value every member in the team so Lord Ram was like a team leader like that now he appreciated the monkeys were carrying giant boulders when they had to jump across when they had to build a bridge across the ocean at the same time you see there a squirrel carrying a small pebble and Lord Ram appreciated the squirrel also so the idea is that in a team there will be different people different people will make different contributions according to different capacities and naturally somebody who is a star they will get greater credit when Hanuman came back after his victorious mission Lord Ram embraced him in fact the commentators in the Ramayana say that at that time when Hanuman described how he had jumped across the ocean how he had met Sita how he had warned Ravan how he had set Lanka on fire and how he had done all the single handedly achieving stupendous success Ram was so delighted I want to offer you something but what can I offer you I don’t have anything I am a pauper, I am an exilee I will offer you my body itself and he offered him his embrace and Hanuman felt fully enriched by that embrace so Lord Ram did give special recognition to those who were the star performers, in this case Hanuman, but that doesn’t mean he neglected when others were telling the squirrel get out of the way, you are just coming in our way Ram said no, the squirrel is serving according to her capacity and I appreciate that so this is the team leader’s role for individuals to have self acceptance everybody needs to be valued the particular appreciation might be proportionate to the contribution but the basic valuing every person for being there that is important suppose we go to a temple now we might just be one among hundred people or five hundred people but the very least we may expect that somebody greets us, smiles at us, few people just nod at us so we may not accept a special kind of recognition but at least there has to be a human connection that is there so that is the team leader’s role from that perspective so appreciate special contributors and appreciate everyone’s contribution whatever it is that can be proportionate so now, but now let’s move on to self acceptance at an individual level how can we go about doing that so there are broadly two trajectories we might follow one is if we are not able to accept our limitations, now self acceptance if we already have some good qualities, if we have some special abilities, there is no struggle in accepting that, I want more of that and I want the whole world to know I have that so when we talk about self acceptance, it is not so much about either our virtues or about abilities, it is about our inabilities usually so what do we do at that time if we are not able to accept our limitations then we go downward, there is resentment why can’t I do this and then there is envy, why can’t this person do it and then essentially what happens is that combination of resentment and envy, it destroys us it leads us to the path of self destruction and unfortunately in today’s world both of these are very much possible, increasingly possible because we live in very usually interconnected worlds so our whole frame of reference can become huge and because it becomes so big it becomes very difficult for people to actually deal with the situation say I was I think last year I was at a mental health and spirituality conference so I presented from Bhagavata’s perspective, this was in America and now one of the participants was explaining how there are mental health problems for everyone but recently, maybe the last 20 years since social media has come up, mental health problems in terms of depression and low self-esteem have increased phenomenally especially among teenage girls now why is the reason for this? There could be many reasons but one reason is that there is excessive amount of comparison so what happens is if somebody looks at one’s own figure and somebody looks at the figure of how attractive somebody else looks, now whenever people put photos, whether it is some famous models or even ordinary people when they put the photos generally on Facebook people always put their happiest moments there and when we compare our real life with what are often doctored images of people’s happiness that is never good enough for me so then what happens is that that sort of comparison it leads to resentment, it leads to envy and it leads to depression so actually rather than spending too much time on Facebook, of course we can use Facebook for constructive purposes like say now we might be doing when we are having Facebook streaming but in general it needs to be regulated it said that those who can’t face books end up on Facebook face books we have books like the Bhagavatam the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana we read them, we relish them and then there we will get a healthy sense of self-worth because we will understand we are all parts of the Lord so what kind of sources we are exposing ourselves to will also determine whether we are able to accept ourselves or not so if we don’t accept then we go on this downward trajectory if we accept our limitations then we move upward there is self-acceptance and then there is self-actualisation actualisation means whatever is our potential we will be able to develop that so we will discuss how we can go on this trajectory towards self-actualisation but before that let’s look at what do we mean by accepting our limitations sometimes it may be even difficult to perceive our limitations if there are physical abilities, say somebody can you lift up this 50 kg weight well 50 kg maybe it is better if you have one more person so we might say that if something is physically measurable it is relatively easier to perceive but when something is subtler it is a little bit more intangible and then it becomes little more difficult to perceive so sometimes we may not only have limitations but we may have limitations in perceiving our limitations so many of you may have heard of that four level trajectory there is unconscious competence there is conscious competence there is incompetence and there is unconscious incompetence that means somebody, some children they are musical prodigies at the age of 3, 4 they pick up Kartal, they pick up Rudang and they start playing it phenomenally well they don’t even know how they are doing it nobody would taught them really much they just maybe pick it up from a previous life so that is almost unconscious competence some people is conscious competence, they have to strive and then they get it right some people strive but they just can’t get it right but sometimes if a Kirtan is going on in the temple and somebody just picks up a Kartal and starts banging and somehow they have closed their eyes and they are in bliss and everybody around them is agony they are at the level of unconscious incompetence they are playing the Kartal wrong they are just banging it but they are thinking they are contributing to the music but they are actually detracting from the music so with respect to subtler abilities sometimes it is difficult to perceive that’s why even perception requires some maturity, some consultation so that’s one limitation but beyond that once we have perceived a limitation so by our own self observation by consulting with others, by prayer then now there are some limitations which we can break and which we can extend and some limitations which we cannot break so in today’s world often the idea is there that the sky is the limit you can do whatever you want well yes and no there are limitations that we can push beyond and there are some limitations which we can’t push beyond so rather than thinking we can do anything, let’s find out what we are good at and then focus on that so looking inward before looking outward is much more helpful than looking outward and then looking inward and finding that we are deficient, what that means is we look outward and see what is glamorised in the world so ok sports players are glamorised so I want to become a sports player, movie stars are glamorised I want to become a movie star or say software engineers are glamorised I want to become a software engineer ok that’s one way of looking at it, another way is ok as we grow up we observe ourselves we help our children observe ourselves even when we are growing in our career we observe ourselves look inward and then look outward ok this is what I am good at, how can I contribute so somebody who doesn’t have a musical bone in their body that means they are practically tone deaf no matter how much they practise they are not going to become a Mozart that is so there are some limitations which are unbreakable so say if somebody can lift a weight of a particular capacity that doesn’t mean they can lift a weight of any capacity so if somebody can lift 25 kg weight and they suddenly pick up a 100 kg weight then they will get crushed under it so we know about this comfort zone, stretch zone and panic zone so we all need to push ourselves but some limitations are such that if we try to push ourselves we will be overwhelmed that will take us into panic zone so ok these are some things which maybe this is a project which I will postpone to my next lifetime I can’t work on this right now, we all have to choose our battles and there are other areas where we can work so then what do we do we focus on those areas and take steps forward so certain limitations we can push so I am talking here about self actualisation self acceptance to self actualisation that’s the journey we are talking about so for that purpose we need to recognise ok these limitations I can’t push so let me accept it these limitations I can push so let me push them so we don’t want to live we don’t want to live in our comfort zone for the rest of our life in the name of self acceptance self acceptance means this is where I am at and this is where I want to go see one of the easiest of course it’s not easy for us, it is not easy on us but it is easy for us what do I mean by that? one of the easiest ways to make our life miserable is to make everything important as soon as we make everything important we make ourselves important why? because it just becomes too much how can I process all this? of course everything needs to be given due attention but we also need to prioritise this is the most important thing for me, second most important third most important thing so we have to choose our battles I want to improve but if suddenly if say somebody says I will give you some feedback and ok I would like to improve and somebody suddenly tells you 35 things you want to improve, you need to improve that becomes maybe somebody has a list of 300 goals, well that’s not a goal that’s a wish list ok it’s good to have wish lists but shorten it down, choose your battles so this is the area I want to improve on and then we come out of our comfort zone and we move on so there are many things which are important but what is important right now for me, this is what I will focus on, so that way we can improve ourselves materially in terms of abilities but apart from improving our abilities there is another we need to also go inside and redefine ourselves, redefine our idea of greatness rather so usually in society somebody who overcomes a huge amount of obstacles and succeeds they are considered to be great and yes that’s one I bend life to my will I got life to say yes sometimes some people are glorified as saying they never took no for an answer well that might be good sound to praise someone but that’s not a reality for anyone you know everybody has to take no’s in certain areas so that they can focus and get yes in some areas so actually it requires a certain amount of greatness greatness in the sense that one has to have a great strength of character to accept a no I can’t do this so getting life to say yes to us is one measure of greatness but accepting when life says no to us that is also greatness ok this is not meant to be it’s fine now I might seem to give a lot of examples from cricket but that’s probably a sport which many of us may be familiar with and probably you can think of examples from other sports now in India Sachin Tendulkar is considered to be the god of cricket in the early days of his life he actually also wanted to be a medium paced bowler and then he had gone to a bowling coaching academy and then the one top bowler, Australian bowler told him you know you are a good batsman you focus on that and he could bowl but he was more of a part time bowler so he invested all his energies after that on batting and he became a batting legend but one part of that was ok maybe as a bowler I am not meant to be so that also requires a certain amount of willingness that ok this is not going to be, this can be so if we start thinking that’s why I said if we make everything important we make ourselves important maybe this is not necessarily for me to do, somebody else will do this, that is what I can do so we need to actually conceptualise greatness accepting no gracefully is also a sign of greatness, in fact more often than not how a person accepts reversals of failures gracefully that will determine their destiny much more than how they get life to say yes to them because relatively speaking in our lives we will usually have to take many more no’s then we can get yes’s in life and if we if no’s devastate us if we can’t accept them that will be a big problem so that brings us now this is where spiritual wisdom can help us that if we have philosophical understanding based on bhakti wisdom then when we encounter our limitations we won’t become resentful now why can’t I do this, rather we will become thoughtful what do I mean by thoughtful here broadly there are four stages and we will conclude with this that when we have to gain self acceptance, first is we break free from the ego’s constraints what do I mean by the ego’s constraints the ego defines us in a particular way and by defining us in a particular way the ego deprives us of who we actually are or who we can be this is what you have to be and if you can’t do this, that’s a disaster I can’t accept it so when we often think about give up your ego, we think of in terms of don’t seek so much honour and often giving up ego is seen in a sense of deprivation oh I should not seek honour, I should not seek pride actually we need to reconceptualise the ego also the ego doesn’t deprive us of honour actually the ego deprives us of who we are the ego makes us believe and labour to be someone who we are not and in that process it deprives us of who we are so when we talk about renunciation of either physical possessions or of even our conceptions, it is we want to give up things so that we can be who we are meant to be we can fulfil our potential so to break free from the ego’s constraints we understand who we are we are not our abilities, we are souls who are parts of Krishna and we have been given certain abilities so I have been given certain abilities, somebody else has been given certain abilities for us, understanding who we are doesn’t end with the soul we appreciate whose we are that means we are parts of Krishna we are parts of an all attractive supreme and then we recognise what gives ultimate fulfilment that is reconnecting with Krishna, we might do wonderful services in the world but if that makes us crave more and more from praise more and more for praise from the world, then that is not going to give us fulfilment because we get praise and we want more praise and we want more praise even if we do wonderful services the purpose of those services is to connect us with Krishna and that is what will give us fulfilment so now each of these could be elaborated more but I will not go into all of them so what happens as an ego it deprives us of the privilege of who we are and it makes us believe we are something we aren’t I am this person who can do all these things and if you can’t do those things don’t put a burden on yourself and put a burden on others even if you can’t do those things still you are a worthwhile person, you are a part of Krishna, you are such a precious part of Krishna that Krishna is personally present in your heart so we need to let go of the ego and actually we will let ourselves free of a big burden so our real identity is that we are parts of the Lord and then this is a key point that the material ego makes us believe that I will become satisfied if I get a bigger part but the reality is we don’t need a bigger part to become satisfied we need to do our part better if we just do our part better we will be satisfied say if we are attending a class we may feel why don’t I get an opportunity to give a class, I want to give a class we may also get an opportunity in future but our satisfaction will come not by whether I have the leading part of giving a class or I have the part of attending the class whichever part I have how well am I doing that part if I am absorbing myself in Krishna then I will be enriched I will be spiritually satisfied maya can be sometimes so subtle that sometimes by hearing a class or whenever a class occurs sometimes the audience by hearing the class can make more spiritual advancement than the speaker can make by giving the class although the speaker is much more active much more in prominence but if the speaker is thinking how many people are going to praise me for my class and the audience is thinking oh I am getting an opportunity to remember Krishna let me immerse myself in this remembrance then actually the audience will grow more spiritually so satisfaction depends on doing our part better not necessarily on getting a bigger part so that’s why I talked earlier about redefining success for us, one aspect of redefining success is that I accept taking no but another aspect is also redefining that I don’t need a bigger part to be happy in my life if Krishna gives me a bigger part that’s great but if I don’t, even with the part I have I can be happy and then this is what brings in that for us often I want to do something big for Krishna that’s fine but the size of our service is not as important as our service attitude what will enable us to do something what will enable us to grow in our spiritual life is not just the specific service that we do but the overall service attitude that we have quite often we sometimes may feel disheartened even in our bhakti why? because we want to do something wonderful for Krishna and we are unable to do it and that principle applies in general life also everybody wants to do something wonderful in their profession, in their family whatever situation they are in and many times we get depressed, disheartened and we are not able to do something wonderful now one of the soundest ways one of the ways to get out of depression is said to be just do something for someone else somebody is a very depressed person maybe go to an underprivileged area and give some food to some poor people do something for someone, what happens by that is get out of yourself you see that you can do something worthwhile you can help somebody in some small way so there are two things, doing something wonderful and doing something worthwhile we often find that we are unable to do something wonderful and we become disheartened by that however, even if we can’t do something wonderful, we can always do something worthwhile and our fulfilment, our spiritual growth doesn’t depend on our ability to do something wonderful it depends on our willingness to do something worthwhile and bhakti offers us the opportunity to do something worthwhile at every moment we just talk about Krishna to someone that can change their life, it’s worthwhile even if it doesn’t change their life we are remembering Krishna at that time and we are growing by that so, every moment we have the opportunity to do something worthwhile so if we focus on let me, not so much whether I can do something wonderful or not but can I do something worthwhile or not and if we can focus that way we will find that we can move ahead at every moment in our life and that is the essence of service attitude, can I do something worthwhile now if Krishna wants he may empower me and what I am doing may grow from being worthwhile to being wonderful but even if it doesn’t become wonderful let it at least be worthwhile that’s how we can grow so, this is how self acceptance works in the concluding slide that sometimes self acceptance can improve our material ability also ok, this is what I can’t work on but this is what I can work on, this is what I will work on like I talked about going beyond the comfort zone this area I can’t work, this area I can work and so if we can improve our material ability and we can improve material also, we can become a better person, more capable, more competent that is one way to self actualisation but another way self acceptance can lead to self actualisation is we improve our spirituality, improve our spirituality means we as I said we understand who we are, we understand what really gives fulfilment and rather than seeking a bigger part we focus on doing our part better and by that whatever roles we have been assigned, we have been allotted by the lord’s plan we will find fulfilment there in and that’s how as we move from self acceptance to self actualisation whatever team we are part of, whatever role we are there in the team, we can be fulfilled and we can synergistically contribute to the team and that’s what the Vanaras did and that’s what we also can learn from them so I’ll summarise what I spoke today, I spoke on the topic of team spirit self acceptance team spirit and success so we started by talking about how the Vanaras were stymied at the ocean and then they all encouraged and aided Hanuman to go ahead and Jambavan reminded Hanuman of his promise and then Hanuman left a cross so they had the team spirit even if I can’t do it, let Hanuman do it so we discussed that the pendulum that the attitude of team members may be, if I can be the star then I will do my best or if I can’t be the star, why should anyone do the best, so that will unhealthy, the idea is, I will do my best so that the team can do the best and sometimes I may have the star role, sometimes I may have the supporting role, then there is the four quadrant diagram that if neither the team nor the individuals perform, it will be a debacle if some individuals don’t perform, but the team still performs, how does that happen? when one player compensates for the other player the individuals are performing but the team is not performing well, that’s often because the team members are working at cross purposes against each other, it’s inter-design competition and best is where the team members perform and the individual and the team also perform that’s synergistic so we are social beings and that’s why we need to have team spirit whatever team we are playing in we are part of, so now to develop team spirit, we need to develop self-acceptance and the second in self-acceptance I talked about what does it mean that it means humility is the ability to accept our inabilities and if self-acceptance is not there, then there is resentment and envy and then that leads to self-destruction so for self-acceptance to be there, at one level there is a team leader’s role that the team leader team leader’s role is that team leader appreciates everyone and at another level, the individual’s role is twofold that we we do honest self-observation and understand, okay, this is not what I am good at this is what I am good at and accept our inability, sometimes it may require us to assess carefully because some abilities are subtler and not so easily measurable and then we redirect, so greatness is not just in getting life to say yes but also accepting when life says no so then, when there is self-acceptance this is not meant to be, but I can go in this area is redirection of efforts and we all can work there are certain areas, certain limitations can’t be pushed pushing them makes us panicky but there are certain limitations which can and should be pushed and that gets us out of the comfort zone and even at a material level, we can improve our abilities that way and the other is that we reconceptualise what really matters for us, so we understand that we are spiritual beings, so we our ego wants us to be someone who something we are not, so instead of that we break free from the constraints of the ego we understand who we are, whose we are and then what brings fulfilment so what brings ultimate fulfilment is not gaining a bigger part but playing our part better, if we don’t have to necessarily do something wonderful to be successful if we just do something worthwhile that can also bring fulfilment in our lives and in that way, sometimes we will have a bigger role to play sometimes we may have a smaller role to play, but whatever our role is the size of the role won’t determine our satisfaction, it is how much are we putting our heart and contributing so self-acceptance requires self-worth and self-worth comes by not comparing ourselves with others, but by comparing ourselves with our capacity and that becomes easier when we understand that we are souls and we are all loved by Krishna irrespective of whatever be the particular position in our life and the contribution we are making according to that position so thank you very much Hare Krishna