Spirituality in the AI age || IIT acronym || Yoga Toronto

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
hopefully I’ll prepare anything I’ll give you some points to speak on but I’ll take a broader framework over here actually I just came here from Seattle and before that I was in Monterrey both these are places where AI is being developed and I spoke with some companies over there I talked with some of the people who are at the cutting edge in this field and several points came up but I’ll use a broad framework to analyse this the first point is that generally any change there are two ways the human mind responds to change one is utopia anyone know what utopia means? sorry yes utopia is everything will be wonderful and the opposite of it is dystopia dystopia is everything is going to be terrible so in general this is the tendency of the human mind to go towards extremes that any change that comes up is going to bring in paradise it’s going to bring in death that’s the extreme and this starts right from the time the early 15th century 15th century printing press was invented and the first books started getting printed they were used to start in the west, in Europe primarily to print the bible and the church said that the bible is made so easily available it will cheapen the word of god and once the word of god will be cheapened, god will become superior and society will be ruined by that so right from that time onwards, every invention when the mills were invented those who were doing hand reading they said our life will be ruined and the latins protested against every advance so same way as things moved forward weapons of mass destruction were developed when the internet came up and social media came up each of these has had harmful effects no doubt, but at the same time it’s both ways neither utopia has been realised nor has utopia been realised so what exactly happens I will talk a little specifically about AI, I will talk about a broader principle, whenever technology develops, essentially technology what it does it increases our power that is the essence of technology technology was founded science itself was founded by people like Einstein Newton, technology the idea of using science to change things in nature that was pioneered by people like Francis Bacon and he said that knowledge is power now while that statement has been almost universalised to emphasise the importance of knowledge but he used it in a specific sense he used it to say that nature is cruel nature is evil to nature there are extremes of weather to nature there are storms, to nature there are diseases and the more technological power we get, the more we will be able to bend nature to our will and in that sense he said knowledge is power the more technology we get the more power we will get and by that power we will be able to deal better with the challenges that the world or nature throws at us so essentially this was back in Francis Bacon’s idea now Carl Jung was a prominent philosopher philosopher, psychologist he also had a lot of ideas so he made a very significant point about the nature of scientific problems essentially what he said the more outer power we get technology gives us a lot of outer power the more outer power we get, the more inner power we need the more inner power we need to be able to use that outer power power and what he put his finger on is that the problem is not that the outer power has increased the problem is that correspondingly there have been no attempts made to increase people’s inner powers in other words inner power can be many different things, in this context inner power means basically the capacity to use our judgement our intelligence properly so that we can use outer power so inner power basically inside us we can say that we have our intelligence and in the Gita’s language we have our mind so we could say that intelligence refers to our contemplative, reflective thoughtful the mind refers to our impulsive side so basically inside us both these sides are there the reflective side and the impulsive side so whenever some situation comes up at that time the impulsive side says come on do this if somebody disagrees with us immediately the impulsive side urges us the desires, the emotions, the cravings the hurts, the hangups urges show this person their place hit them where it hurts to me most often not physically in our civilised society but often at least verbally so get angry, yell at them put them in their place but the reflective side doesn’t agree with them this person is being disagreeable maybe there is a reason let me try to understand that’s why we try to get to know people’s background to know people’s background essentially means to know what is on their back and what is under their ground that is everybody is carrying some burden which is why if somebody is walking in a very twisted way you can laugh while you are walking like that or maybe they are carrying an invisible burden or maybe the ground on which they are walking is slippery so the point is that we have this capacity to discern so inner power basically ensures that the contemplative side is stronger than the impulsive side it is not that the impulsive side is always bad that also is useful in some ways, sometimes but when we lack inner power, say somebody gets angry I just came from America there are many places with very easy access to guns now it’s a very political surcharge issue the point is that people say guns don’t kill people who use guns kill which may be true but the point is if people are not trained in impulse control we all will get angry and we get angry when we yell at someone we may throw a few punches physical or verbal but if somebody has a gun it won’t damage so the point is the more outer power we have the more inner power we need so AI is one specific development in human history where our outer power in terms of gaining information has increased in all this it’s not just information it’s not just raw data, it’s also organised data it’s also, now with respect to creativity, you can get ideas for creativity we human beings have to develop creativity I was talking with one of the AI pioneers in Microsoft in Seattle and he was telling me that there is a widespread concern that AI will take away the jobs of people he said actually what is going to happen is AI won’t take away the jobs of people AI will take away the jobs of people who can’t work with AI so those who learn to work with AI, it’s a tool it’s a powerful tool those who learn to work with AI, their jobs won’t be taken but still the point is it’s a tool and it is in many ways a tool unlike the previous tools so here I talk about this whole session will be in two parts how outer power has increased and how inner power has decreased and while we cannot correct or we cannot stop the increase of outer power but what we can try to do is we can try to equip ourselves so that we increase our inner power by which we can use outer power so basically technology at one level is nothing but a set of tools but what happened was initially say that we could have tools like axes we could have tools like tractors now these tools are basically extensions of human hands and legs and those tools you can clearly see them as tools but say when the calculator was developed and then the computer was developed so these were extensions of the human hands and legs but many philosophers of science they felt that when these were developed these were extensions of the human brain and a particular boundary was crossed what is that boundary over there that say if we are working if somebody is working for us but if we know that that person is smarter than us then that naturally creates a sense of insecurity say if I am say working in the medical field if I am a doctor and the doctor working under me I know he is better than me then it naturally creates a moment of insecurity then the question comes why am I on what basis am I his or her boss is it that just I have more money is it that I have more experience what is it that I have that this person doesn’t have and if we don’t find anything like that then that creates even more insecurity and that’s when we try to suppress the other person but you may have more expertise but I have more experience and then we can have a good relationship we can work together so basically when the person using the tool is greater than the tool is better than the tool then the tool remains a tool but when the it seems as if the tool has become better than the person that’s when a lot of insecurity comes and then this is what has especially happened with AI AI itself is not a new thing the idea of using some intelligence to assist human intelligence has been widespread so when we have encyclopaedias and we have online encyclopaedias so the challenge is that when the tool seems to be better than the person using the tool then is the tool the relationship between the tool and the person is the tool a supplement is the tool a supplement for the person or will the tool become a replacement for the person this is where the tension comes if my subordinate is better than me my subordinate can overthrow me and usurp my position so this is where when AI developed, this is where a certain level of existential angst came up and is this actually a prejudice? so there are many movies which come up about AI dystopia and how whether once we have intelligent robots they may annihilate human beings Frankenstein monster is enduring imagery in modern in the modern mind so I talked a little about how outer power has increased and what are the implications of the outer power so then let’s now shift to the other part this will be the major part of the talk and the last part of the talk what do we mean by inner power and why does it matter or how can we increase that power so now inner power what is this inner power that we humans have so we humans basically in our lives there are two broad things that we need we need means and we need meaning means are again tools they are also the outer power but it is we humans who also seek meaning for our life how does it always count so we humans seek meaning and AI with all its sophistication it can tell us how meaning has been interpreted by different philosophers but AI itself is not something which is itself searching for meaning so it is we humans when is it possible like I said inner power when is this inner power possible for us it is only when the word meaning is often associated with the word purpose meaning and purpose talk about it so it is we humans our power comes when we are able to put purpose above pleasure so essential our power is that to be able to put purpose above pleasure the less inner power we have the more the search for pleasure takes us away from our purpose that means if I have inner power my purpose is I want to study I want to become professional in the school I want to gain expertise in this particular area so I will use my phone I will use my laptop I will use AI to gain that knowledge so that is I have power then my purpose goes above my pleasure but if that inner power is lacking then ok I have my phone I have my laptop there are so many movies on Netflix and this and that then what happens is Netflix becomes a net in which we get fixed we get fixed and trapped so then the search for pleasure takes us away from any meaningful purpose in life so AI in its specifics can be a very powerful tool but it is for us to ensure that the promise of pleasure through quick outer power I can know about this I can know about that I can watch this I can now that is so much that can be done with AI but it is all outer power what is it that I want to use that power for and Martin Luther King also put his finger on this almost 50 years ago when he said that our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power we have guided men and misguided missiles is it true? what did he say? yeah so you have guided missiles and misguided men so guided missiles refers to in terms of our discussion which power is this? outer power and misguided men is inner power is lacking so this was what King said so this is he put his finger on this almost 50-60 years ago and it is even more true today so I will talk about three broad points about how we can gain or regain inner power that is the capacity to put purpose above pleasure it is not that pleasure is bad but it is important that we are able to make sure that we have a purpose beyond pleasure now why is that? because pleasure itself as a purpose soon becomes meaningless how many of you like humour? many times when I say this most people don’t raise hands how many of you like humour? humour many people don’t raise hands I asked one of the participants this was in Florida he says actually your classes have no humour so I thought it was a test now there is no test over here we all like humour and if there is a comedy show where there is a lot of humour we will enjoy but if somebody says from tomorrow onwards you have no financial obligation no family obligation, no social obligation no health obligation also just sit in front of a TV for the rest of your life one thousand shoes how many of us would enjoy that? it will be half an hour, one hour maybe a few hours if you are really bored or frustrated for a whole weekend after that go and do something we want pleasure but we don’t want meaningless pleasure, like just laughing at jokes it’s meaningless so we intrinsically want pleasure but actually we want meaning more than pleasure so I will talk about these three things three ways by which we can gain or regain inner power if we never had it, we will gain it if we had it but lost it, we will regain it so I will talk about this in terms of acronym IIT now IIT is a prominent institute in India it’s called the Indian Institute of Technology one of my student friends who went there he had a terrible time over there he said it’s the institute of infinite torture but anyway so we all can become IIT degree holders look at these three principles by which we can keep purpose above pleasure by which we can gain inner power so the first is intention so what does it mean? that for each one of us it is important that we evaluate our own desires generally what happens is we say I desire this I desire that and often we think of desire and we often talk of discipline basically as I have got a desire and will I say yes to the desire or will I say no to the desire so often we think of if I have to discipline myself then I have to say no to my desires oh if I have to study this then I can’t watch this TV and I can’t play this, I can’t do that if I have to work on this job then I have to say no to that desire well that’s what we think generally speaking well there is some truth to that but actually instead of thinking of our desires as singular our desire is actually not singular it is multilayer multilayer means that we have superficial or surface desires and then we have deep desires so another way to differentiate is there is what we want and then what we want to want what does it mean, what we want to want now what I want maybe oh I just want to eat all the tasty food that I can but what I want to want is I want to have a big body I want to have a high energy level I want to have attractive physique I want to be energetic and effective in my life so that is what we want is often a superficial desire that is often triggered by exteriors we see something here we see something there and we get that desire that’s what we want but so you can say what we want is largely like an outside in kind of thing, we see something outside and it is triggered from within us but what we want to want are much deeper desires in the Bhagavad Gita in 270 it talks about this curious term called Nakam Kami which is don’t be a desirer of desire what it means is that many desires will be proposed by the world from outside so now with technology advances there are so many options read this, learn this, watch this enjoy this so many propositions will come but it is for us when we talk about intention is what do I really want, what do I want to want there will be always a noise of desires but then so when you talk about when I am using the word here intention it is not about suppressing desires at all it is about selecting desires so it is about which desire is more important so unless we start with an inside out approach that I am clear about what I really want not just what I want in the moment what do I really want say 5 years down the line 10 years down the line what is really of value what really matters so unless we do this homework and not just do this homework but revisit this regularly the world will just pull us here there and everywhere so what really matters for us this is where our intention comes in what really matters for me and when we take some time off people say you are cut off from your gadgets now a days there is digital detox one of my friends tells me that once a week I pass from devices laughing laughing this particular don’t contact me contact somebody else they will contact me I am not going to touch my devices which is interesting because we are not really able to do that but we can descend some kind of regulation because we are not pulled by just the things just come from the outlook so what really matters for us certain level of introspection maybe some journaling maybe some taking time out for ourselves to really contemplate what really matters for me that is the first step so if you want to regain inner power we need to first focus on what is my purpose now I am not talking about some cosmic purpose but from a practical perspective what is it that really matters so this is where introspection Vivek Pradesh is saying sometimes sometimes being to ourselves to really contemplate is helpful at the first point what is the acronym IIT the first was the second is as a part of to develop our intention itself we can do introspection but the second is intelligence now intention is more associated with solidifying or concentrating our desires we humans have to broaden our feeling capacity and our reasoning capacity so what I am trying to do over here is we are trying to find out what really matters for me and then intelligence the word intelligence can have many different meanings but essentially intelligence means that whenever we encounter something there is the appearance of that thing and then there is the substance of that thing so intelligence is the capacity to see beyond appearance to substance now this can apply in any field say if somebody is a good car mechanic, they have intelligence with respect to automobiles and we may just say that my car is not working or my car is making a strange sound and for us it is just a strange sound that is the appearance it is the sound to us it is strange but for them oh the carburetor is gone they can because of the intelligence they can go beyond appearance to substance somebody is a doctor you see you are looking very somebody may say you are looking very pale a doctor may say maybe you have got anaemia so basically what we see only as the appearance when we have intelligence we can go beyond it to see the substance in general the development of intelligence means that there are visible there are visible phenomena and underlying them there are invisible principles so intelligence is the capacity to go from visible phenomena to invisible principles when Newton saw the apple falling so he felt the apple falling whichever way hundreds of people have probably seen apples falling but what did he do ok the visible phenomena is the apple falling and the invisible principle is gravity he inferred from there so what the Bhagavad Gita tells us is the key to understanding or gaining inner power is to understand that there is more to reality than what meets the eye that our very existence is multilevel so there is reality there is a material aspect to reality but beyond that there is a spiritual aspect to reality so we see each other’s physical side and that’s our first appearance that we have for everyone but we are beings beyond our physicality so all of reality has more than what we see so we could say going back to the previous point there are things that glitter and there are things that matter so intelligence is the capacity to see beyond the things that glitter to the things that matter going back to our discussion about outer power technology, tools, AI it can all provide as many more things that glitter but that there is something that matters beyond it at one level intention means this is what matters for me we have decided that but intelligence gives us a vision of reality that is congruent with our desires our superficial desires for the things that glitter but my deeper desires are for the things that matter so Gita talks about this, even our search for happiness it states that there are things which taste like nectar initially but they will taste like poison eventually these are mundane pleasures but opposite to that there are spiritual or deeper pleasures, deeper joys in life and they may taste like poison in the beginning but they will taste like nectar in the end so intelligence means as I said I talk about three levels of the understanding of intelligence, first is to see beyond the immediate to see beyond the appearance of substance so that seeing beyond appearance of substance is not just in terms of how there is more like in terms of physical knowledge or working of a body, working of the car but there is more, beyond the material there is spiritual, beyond things that glitter there are things that matter so ultimately there are things that give immediate pleasure and there is short term pleasure and there are things that give us deeper happiness which lasts longer so we have say we are spiritual beings and we have these two resources we have our intelligence and we have our mind we are spiritual beings so this diagram may seem a little complicated but don’t worry I will make it a little more complicated after that I will simplify it but basically we have these two faculties within us and our mind we, when we look through the mind we look only at initials and no yes, ok there is so much trouble over there, poison over there I don’t want to do this so as contrasted let’s say reading maybe a 5000 word essay on some subject where I try to understand the handle of the subject I just watch 15 or 10-15 tiktoks or insta hails and clicking them, we don’t really get much understand but it’s pretty little so that’s our mind goes towards the initials whereas if we look through the soul sorry the soul looks using the intelligence then what happens then we see beyond the initials so here beyond the nectar there is poison so no I won’t be doing this and here beyond the poison there is nectar so basically the more we develop our intelligence the more we develop our intelligence the more we will be able to say yes to the things that matter and so first is intention the difference between intention and intelligence is intention is more in terms of a personal decision but intelligence is equipping ourselves to reinforce the decision say for example somebody has the and they said I want to solve this ok that’s intention and no change will happen without intention but once the intention is there after that that person has to have intelligence ok why should I stop it because that feeling might come sometime ya I want to do this once there were two friends one of them was alcoholic so the other friend was constantly trying to get his friend to stop drinking he said the second so the first friend told the second that yesterday I read a very powerful article about how dangerous consuming alcohol is how dangerous alcoholism is and it spurred me to immediate action I knew it I said please what action will you take, he said I immediately stopped reading the article laughing laughing laughing so the idea is that even if we have some intention unless we are boosting our intelligence that intention gets sabotaged so the more we strengthen our intelligence that intention when we have created a healthy or noble intention it can be boosted it can be bolstered it can be sustained so for all of us the intelligence of how to use artificial intelligence talking about AI artificial intelligence is hugely available and it is only going to increase more and more but the intelligence of how to use artificial intelligence that will come from our spirituality that will come from kindness, justice, control, wisdom like the Bhagavad Gita so when we read this it will repeatedly remind us of the things that matter and based on the things that matter we will be able to based on that conviction of things that matter we will be able to push aside the things that hinder that brings me to the last part what is the last acronym P so P refers to taste many times people think that discipline means that oh I have to say no to all the things that I enjoy it’s not like that if we have to say no to all the things that we enjoy then if we say no to that well it won’t work for us so basically if you consider two circles let’s talk from a parenting example so there is a parent and there is a child now parents have to make sure that their children are well nourished so now there is food that is healthy and then there is food that is tasty if these two circles were identical life would be so easy but when these two circles are not identical that does not mean that there is absolutely no overlap if as parents we observe if our kid likes some food that is healthy maybe a particular vegetable maybe a particular particular food is healthy and they also find it tasty then naturally we can prepare that meal so what applies to our children can also apply to us among we talk about things that matter and things that glitter so these two are different but they don’t have to be entirely different things that matter means what is good for us it’s like healthy food things that glitter is what feels good so if you can find out somewhere the area of intersection between the two that is what will help us sustain ourselves there are some things that glitter which we have to say no to there are some things that feel good we have to say no to but if everything that feels good to us we have to say no that will not be sustained so among the things that feel good for us what are the things that are good for you so with respect to AI we can get information or entertainment or whatever technology about hundreds of things but okay among those what is it there is also value so that the thrill the dopamine hit that comes by getting something new something quickly something quick we acquire we don’t have to always say no to that but can I keep it within certain boundaries is there some area where we should the idea is taste means what I enjoy presently it can take me to what I can enjoy permanently or it can take me away from what I can enjoy permanently so basically when we find something that gives us taste right now so there is what I enjoy presently and then there is what I can enjoy more enduring permanently so what I enjoy presently if I am here what I want to do is I want to pursue in such a way that it takes me here this is good but I don’t want to pursue this in such a way that it takes me away so for us we can look at through technology many things are provided to us say in my life there are hundreds of kinds of music that are available maybe there is some music that is my urge to search that outer power which I have gained through technology is not that I have to say no to it but let me use it to focus on the areas where what I enjoy presently can point me towards what I can enjoy permanently and this way we all can find that it doesn’t have to be that I have to give up all pleasure till I gain inner power rather it’s this is the last image I will conclude with sometimes we feel I am here and I have to go here so this is the place of pleasure and say this is the place of purpose and say we think I have to give up my pleasure to get to the point of purpose but what happens if we try to take a high jump we end up going further down we take a huge leap but what we can do is once we find some taste taste means what I can enjoy presently in a way that can take me towards what I enjoy permanently then it becomes a more incremental journey here and here but then so in between these two is the taste that is the intersection of intersection of you could say pleasant pleasure and permanent pleasure or you could say pleasure and purpose that’s what I want to do so if I can find this intersection then that will become like a stepping stone and with this stepping stone each one of us from wherever we are we can rise higher so it’s not that say we are hooked to TV, we may be hooked to our phone, we may be hooked to social media we may not be able to give it up completely, we don’t have to we can’t also because we live in a world stepwise environment, we don’t have to but if we keep our compass directed towards a higher purpose then we can find incremental steps this incremental approach is what the Gita recommends in 6.25 and 26 gradually step by step from wherever we are we can move upward towards a stage where we can be completely absorbed in the spiritual reality of who we are, in the higher purpose of our life and then the outer power will never overpower us but will rather become an aid for us in pursuing our higher purposes because we have situated ourselves in a place of human power I’ll summarise what I discussed today broadly the topic we discussed was the role of spirituality in the age of AI so essentially started by we discussed about how any new technology it can lead people towards utopia or dystopia but essentially what technology does is technology increases our outer power and the outer power earlier was in terms of increasing our hands and legs but beyond that it has gone that where it exceeds our head, it expands our head but exceeds our head also and then this happens, this is where it leads to the outer power’s growth leads to insecurity because it makes me start fearing that the subordinate, the tool has become greater than the user of the tool the master of the tool and therefore what we need is that while outer power is increased, how can we correspondingly increase our inner power and for increasing inner power we discuss this acronym IIT so what was I? Intention so we all have desires but intention we could say it’s like solidified solidified desire solidified means we have understood that there are things that, things I want and things I want to want that means there are immediate desires but I want to make these greater so rather than seeing our desires as just a singular, we see them as multilayer not just plural but multilayer so there are superficial desires which come in the moment and there are deeper desires so these deeper desires we can find by introspection what really matters for me I try to find that out so once we have intention then we can move towards the next part intelligence so intelligence means the capacity to see beyond there is appearance and then there is substance so intelligence helps us to see beyond appearance to substance so or we can say that the things that glitter and then the things that matter so we want to go beyond this and this is what in every field it is there and in that connection we discussed about how it is the nature of pleasure also there are things which taste like nectar initially but they will be like poison eventually and conversely there are things which are like poison initially but they will be like nectar eventually so we discuss if we look through our intelligence or we look through our mind so the soul intelligence and mind depending on how we look through will determine what we look at if we are looking at through our mind it will simply say no and yes no to the things which are not very good initially which don’t feel good initially on the other hand if we look to the intelligence we will be able to make healthier decisions so that’s what we need to equip our intelligence and the intelligence can be equipped by things like yeah studying wisdom text like the Bhagavad Gita so intelligence is nourished through study the last part was the fourth IIT was taste so taste means that what we enjoy presently we try to find out the intersection between like for children what is healthy and what is tasty what feels good and what is good so we don’t have to say no to all pleasure but we find out that inner power which is basically the capacity to subordinate pleasure to purpose this doesn’t mean that we have to take a high leap rather we can take incremental steps and these incremental steps happen by we can find how what we enjoy presently can take us towards the present enjoyment can take us towards permanent enjoyment and each one of us you can find say the outer power that we got from technology we can use it to regain or to reinforce our taste in the things that are not just feeling good but also are good for us then we can even have the dopamine in that particular area but we won’t be distracted by it rather we will be facilitated in our journey towards gaining inner power by which we can use outer power instead of inner power thank you very much very interesting the question is life is so easy to introspect but life goes so fast and by the time we meet on that it will die down so give me some tips or tools that can give me introspect ok ok so first of all being busy is not a bad thing it is only if you are busy in things that are not important for us then that’s when it becomes a problem so the gita talks about three modes there are like three gears car can function in various gears so there is tamas that is the mode of darkness this is lethargy, apathy then there is rajas this is the mode of activity, hyperactivity energy and so tamas is associated with lethargy rajas is associated with energy and sattva is associated with clarity so there are three modes and basically we all function within these three modes at different times so first of all if a life is busy busy life basically means that at least rajas it is protecting us from tamas so it is good to be busy rather than just be having nothing to do especially when somebody is born comfortable in a well to do family they may not even want to have a job they can just live on their own play video games, watch movies and just vegetate around and waste their life so rajas is better than tamas and our life is such that most of the times we will be functioning rajas, that’s just the nature of the world we live in the nature of the professional and social obligations that we have so what we need is that sattva even if it is a brief time even if it is a few minutes in a day we may not always be in sattva but we can decide our overall pattern for life when we are in sattva so that means during this week this is the activity that I am going to do this is how I am going to spend my time we decide that during sattva then even if we go into rajas, even if we go into the mode of energy or hyperactivity that won’t disorder the students so if we can do it daily just for a few minutes and the way to do it is in general if you want to bring about an inner change there is two, our emotions are going in particular directions we are feeling angry, we are feeling upset we are feeling disheartened so changing emotions is difficult but actually what we can do is change our questions what do I mean by this that if we can formulate some questions for ourselves so this is we need some quality time maybe sit for one week for a few hours make a list of things that matter to us and then formulate some questions what matters for me, my spiritual growth my family, my health my financial stability and then there are other things we can put in a hierarchy and then we ask ourselves at the end of the day how did I spend my time what did I spend, was my activity in alignment with my priority so these questions basically are our activities, are they aligned with our priorities but this question at the end of the day we may just feel, oh no, I just wasted so much time that is not very helpful I couldn’t do much in my life we are already feeling down and we feel further down that is not what is very helpful ok, so this is what I wanted to do what exactly happened when I was not able to do this or what did I do when I was not able to do this so when we have questions ready to ask ourselves so we can gain greater self-awareness so for example, I have a whole seminar on journaling some simple thing you can ask is quite often four questions at the end of the day if we ask, so if we consider a day what was the best thing that happened to me then what was the worst thing that happened to me, conversely what was the best thing that I did what was the worst thing that I did so basically what happens is it gives a parameter so it gives a feature which is important sometimes some small argument may have happened with someone and that just spoils our mood completely but on that very day, something very important and good may have happened when we are completely overshadowed so basically in our life broadly, we can say that our life can be divided into things that happen to us and things that happen through us things that we do basically, so events and actions, so among the events what is the best event of the day what is the worst event of the day what is the best action of the day what is the worst action so we just ask a simple question, answering this question may take 3-4 minutes one question may take 1 minute and if we need, we can spend more time later on, maybe another weekend or something like that when we have a little more time to start, but this is just a suggestion, we can find out what questions we can ask ourselves by which we can do introspection by which we can align ourselves align our activities with our priorities so is spending the time important it’s important to make a start some way or the other so the nature of the mind is that it will look for excuses for not doing the things that are of value to us oh I don’t have time to write, if I write if somebody else reads what I have written then what will happen oh I wrote in this book but I don’t have that book with me now oh so many excuses will come up so we can start just by investing some time to think nowadays we have transcription software, we can even speak and dictate the point is writing is one way it’s helpful because it engages more and more of our senses it’s like when we are doing a mantra chanting just in the mind, the mind wanders everywhere but if we are uttering the sound and we are also fingering the beads, it becomes more immersive so like that when we are trying to do introspection, if we are journaling, if we are writing things down, then it’s not just in our head when we are thinking in our head when we stop thinking of what we want to think about and we start thinking about what our mind brings up, we may not even realise it so our introspection session can also suddenly change into a resentment session into a self-loathing session into a blaming session so it’s not that our introspection should be simply that we are finding faults with others or finding faults with ourselves the purpose of introspection is not judgement it is understanding so judgement means what a bad thing I did what a fool I am, why did I do that I am a terrible person, no it’s just that we try to understand ourselves if understanding comes first then values can come afterwards, so inside our head depending on our particular tendency that is there we will go off in that direction if our tendency is to blame others, we will start blaming others if our tendency is to blame ourselves, we will start beating ourselves up but when we have to write things down it is more engaging so in that sense, writing is helpful, but the most helpful thing is to start off some way or the other