From Nomad to Pilgrim – Infusing our life with purpose and meaning
So, I am grateful to all of you today and I will speak on this topic of from nomad to pilgrim in three parts and after each part I will invite some reflections if any of you would like to share your thoughts and then at the end we will have some questions. So, in the first part I will talk about how we are all nomads searching for pleasure in life and I will talk a little bit about my journey also and second part I will talk about how spirituality can give a higher direction and meaning to our life and by applying spirituality in our life third point I will talk how we can bring meaning in our life making it into a pilgrimage. It's a from nomad to pilgrim.
So, broadly there are two kinds of people in the world. Some people are wise and some are otherwise. Some people are wise and some are otherwise.
So, what do we mean by otherwise? All of us are seeking pleasure and imagine if we had a computer now artificial intelligence computing device. So, I was a few months in America. So, I was speaking at a university and after that they took me to the artificial intelligence laboratory to see.
So, now, one thing about AI artificial intelligence is that it will simply function according to programming. So, if a computer is programmed to recognise red colour red stimulus falls on it and if it is programmed I see blue colour. On seeing red colour I see blue colour.
So, it functions according to its programming. Similarly, all of us have some programmed definitions of happiness and we more or less function according to those programmes. So, during our life whatever we consider as pleasurable that is what we keep seeking.
So, some of us may be thinking of sports as very enjoyable, some people may think of wealth as very enjoyable, some people may think of smoking, drinking as very enjoyable. Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said that giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world I have done it over a 100 times. So, what happens is I give up smoking, but smoking does not give me up because it is not just a matter of willing it is a matter of programming.
If I am programmed that smoking is enjoyable then that impels me. So, we are nomads in the sense that whatever programming we have we keep this or that or that for pleasure. So, when I was a student in India, India is a very academically competitive country actually because the population is so high.
So, students right from their childhood are groomed to perform in their schools. So, my dream since my childhood was that I should come first in my class I should be in India the word uses topper I should be at the top and I was always among the toppers, but I was never the topper. So, I was second, third, sometimes joint first, but I was never the first.
And then finally, when I was studying engineering at that time there is the exam GRE for going to America I gave that exam and since my childhood one of my hobbies was to just pick up a dictionary and memorise the meanings of words. So, my English was reasonably good and that is where many Indians falter. So, when I gave the GRE at that time I got I came first in the whole state of Maharashtra.
So, Maharashtra is a one province of which has a population more than 10 times the population of all of Australia. So, I came first and I was elated I was jubilant and after sometime it struck me and just looking at the mark sheet does not give much pleasure. So, then I went to my friends and everybody was congratulating me the whole university knew about what I had achieved, but somehow it happened the three of my friends one after another forgot to congratulate me.
They thought that actually everybody knows about it, they are not intentional. When the first person first friend forgot to congratulate I was annoyed. The second friend forgot to congratulate I was irritated.
When the third person forgot I was infuriated and it is very embarrassing you cannot ask people why are you not congratulating me. So, at that time sometimes it happens in certain moments of insight we look at ourselves from a perspective outside of ourselves. Now all of us are very complex beings we do not know ourselves actually and sometimes it is a good exercise to observe ourselves as if we are a person we do not know and we can learn a lot about ourselves not in a narcissistic sense, but just an objective sense.
So, at that time it is as if I look at myself from above and I thought hey wait a minute you thought that becoming a topper will make you happy, but here you have simply become more dependent for your happiness on others instead of becoming happy. Earlier you could just meet your friends and talk with them now you are so desperately dependent why is no one congratulating me. So, instead of becoming happy you become dependent on others for your happiness.
So, that put me thinking what really is happiness what will truly grant happiness and somehow by a series of you could say coincidences or as Albert Einstein said coincidences are the divine's way of remaining anonymous. So, through a series of incidents an old friend came back into my life and he gave me an ancient yoga text the Bhagavad Gita and when I was reading the Bhagavad Gita I had heard about it and I have very big familiarity with it, but at this time I was reading it more the existential seeking and then in the sixth chapter in the 22nd verse I read something where Krishna says that you can attain a state of consciousness where you don't feel you want anything more. And you can attain a state of consciousness where distress will not disturb you.
So, a state where desire or distress will not disturb you. So, it struck me that what achievement in my life could promise me this I had come first in this exam tomorrow I might go to America and I might earn money I might become famous whatever but whatever I might achieve desire would still keep dragging me and distress could hit me anytime I might become come the first in class the next exam someone else might come. So, that was the time and so that was the time when I started exploring the Bhagavad Gita's message more seriously and everything at that time slowly started making sense.
So, how it made sense I will talk in the second part, but this broad point which I was making in the first part is that we are all nomads and we are running like programme machines according to our particular definitions of happiness and the problem is that we once we start believe that something is enjoyable we stop examining whether it is actually enjoyable once we start believing that this will give me pleasure. Then I have talked with I was in Connecticut in America where there the government had asked me to speak on addiction and spirituality. So, there speaking about how I talk with several addicts who are recovering and they said that if you take drinks initially you drink drinks to go high but afterwards you take drinks not just to go high but to feel normal initially we take drink because it is it is or take drinks or drugs or whatever excessively it is whatever it is but we feel that oh this is so so wonderful but afterwards not taking it is so dreadful.
So, it is not so much pleasure it is rather the lack of peace the agitation that drags us it is said that first the drink takes the first the drinker takes the drink then the drink takes the drink then the drink takes the drinker. So, what happens after some time the very things that we think will give us happiness they stop giving us happiness but because of the programming we keep chasing after them. In fact, if we look at our own lives we will see that the search for happiness is often because of the greatest what we do for pleasure is often what gives us the greatest trouble and this is how we stay as nomads going from here there here there seeking pleasure and unfortunately pleasure eludes on those occasions.
So, this is the first point any comments or questions anything that struck a chord with you or anything was not clear yes okay yeah. So, it is all pleasure bad I am not going into the discussion of whether something is bad or good we are not talking about bad or good see every there are many things which feel good and actually all of us want to feel good but the question is how long does it feel good and after we feel good what happens after that. So, it is like there are many things which can make us feel good but they make us feel bad and after that they make us feel terrible.
So, is there a pleasure which can help us to feel good consistently the Bhagavad Gita says that most pleasure tastes like nectar in the beginning but tastes like poison in the end see some of you are say you take a drink and it is supposed to be sweet and delicious and you buy it you pay for it you drink it and the first few sips are delicious and after that suddenly the taste changes but now you paid for it so maybe it will turn good it will turn good but it just tastes bad. So, it is not a question of good or bad it is a question of what is the pleasure is there a pleasure that can fulfil us this is a pleasure that we can be contented by it thank you anything else. So, I will move to the second point about where about how we can a spirituality can direct our search for pleasure constructively.
So, let us look at two broad pointers towards spirituality all of us want pleasure and when we want pleasure we want lasting pleasure there are many things which give us pleasure but let us consider one thing which everybody looks for is relationships is we all long to live forever and to love forever. So, if you look at the world around us nothing lasts forever there are hundreds and hundreds of movies novels many of them are about romance and many romance movies and novels they all end with the idea of happily ever after. Now, in the world around us nothing lasts forever I was in New York just a few months ago and we passed by the twin towers now when the twin towers fell it was not just a building falling it was the illusion of security and prosperity that it represented that collapsed with it.
So, there are things which seem to last for a long time but nothing in the world lasts forever. So, if we are simply products of the world around us and nothing in the world lasts forever why do we have a longing to live forever to love forever. So, where does it come from if we consider the say a remote Australian tribe where some of the people are everybody is disconnected more connected with the rest of the world and suddenly a small child goes to his mother and says mom I want a pizza the mother will say where did you hear about a pizza there is nothing in the child's environment which could trigger the knowledge of a pizza or a desire for a pizza the similar is our situation nothing in the world around us lasts forever and here we have a desire to live forever and to love forever where does it come from could it be it comes not from the world around us but the world within us could there be something indestructible at our core is longing for fulfilment and that is what the Bhagavad Gita and many yoga texts from the east say that we at our core are indestructible we are eternal spiritual beings and we are longing for that eternality at the physical level so that eternal joy is found in the state of consciousness where we are aware of our spirituality where we connect with who we are at our core and delight in that so as I said we want to live forever and love forever so the yoga tradition right now what we did the kirtan it is a part of a particular yoga called bhakti yoga bhakti is love divine love so the bhakti yoga tradition explains that we all are parts of an entity and we all are meant to have a lasting loving relationship with that divine that divine may be known by different names in different traditions but we are all pilgrims we are all on a journey of spiritual evolution so we are nomads as long as okay this will give me pleasure that will give me pleasure that will give pleasure we stay searching but we become pilgrims when we start focussing on our spiritual evolution now what do I mean by spiritual evolution it means evolution is the definition of happiness a small baby thinks that just drinking the mother's milk that is happiness a child thinks at playing with playing games is happiness a teenager may think that playing video games is happiness so we all have certain definitions of happiness now as we grow up our definitions are also meant to evolve so when we start seeking joy in that which lasts in bigger things rather than smaller things that is how we evolve now what do I mean by a bigger thing again all of us if you look at who are the people who we consider as heroic whom we admire not in a not in the adulatory fan like sense but who we really look up to most of the time we see these are people who live for something bigger than themselves they may be musicians they may be patriots they may be humanitarian workers they may be saints but they live for something bigger than themselves so the evolution of consciousness our spiritual evolution essentially means it that we start living for some purpose bigger than ourselves generally it is curious that as I said the more we seek happiness pleasure often that ends up in trouble so happiness is more a byproduct than a product a byproduct means when we seek to do something meaningful in our life when we take up some responsibility to do something worthwhile fulfilment comes as a byproduct if we simply go out chasing pleasure might get a little pleasure but it will not last for long but rather if we take up responsibility to do something worthwhile in life that is what will give us meaning and fulfilment now what do I mean by something worthwhile all of us have problems I have travelled across the world and even met very successful people also just talk with them scrape a little below the surface surface and you will find that everybody is has gone through their own tragedy few things make us as unhappy as the belief that everyone else is happy few things make us as unhappy as the belief that other people are happy so everybody has their own distresses and what can what can we do in the face of distress so distress will it's nowadays you talk about democratic forms of government distress is democratic distress will come upon everyone sooner or later and now if we have made seeking pleasure the goal of our life then distress represents a total defeat of that purpose and when that happens just can't process that's when we're seeking pleasure we get distress it becomes unbearable and it becomes unbearable often we end up increasing our distress by our resentment by our negativity by our sense that our feeling that we have been wronged when this happens this distress is inevitable but our response can either increase the distress or decrease the distress our response if we have been governed by the particular definition oh my definition is that I was again I said I was in America at a de-addiction conference so people were telling how they got addicts and how they got over it so there was this girl she was speaking that she she got into she's a student and she got into drugs and as she was taking drugs more and more you know she started squandering all her savings this money that she had got for her education started squandering that and they started pilfering from her neighbours and at one particular point she went into a particular sneak into a somewhere place she took some things and she went she ran from there and as she was running she thought that something was in a in a closet she picked it up she heard somebody coming and she went and then she ran and as she was running she saw there was some money but something else and she saw that there was some medicines over there forget it she just ran got the drugs and then later on nobody knew who took it but later on that neighbours were talking and that that medicine they said there was a baby in that house and that was like a necessary medicine for that baby's life and she took that medicine and that baby almost died somehow they got the medicine from somewhere else and they survived but then she said i i could never ever think that i would cause the death of someone but at that time what happened she's so infatuated i have to get money so that i can get my shot of drugs and she just didn't understand what she was doing so the point i'm making is the search for pleasure when it is frustrated in the face of pleasure we get distress distress can bring out our inner demons and distress can make us do evil things things which you normally never do if that is not to happen we need some purpose in life that is bigger than pleasure they're simply seeking pleasure when pleasure is thwarted it will bring out the demon within us but when we have some purpose bigger than pleasure of course we want pleasure but what do we seek pleasure in if you are seeking pleasure in not in getting gratification but in making a contribution in doing something with what we have with our god-given resources god-given gifts sometimes we feel what can i do i'm powerless sometimes life puts us in a situation where we feel that i just can't do anything i'm helpless how many of you have felt like this sometime i'm helpless yes thank you now when you feel like this i'm helpless just ask yourself this question can you you are in a bad situation right we are a terrible situation but can you make things worse they say who wants to make things worse they're bad enough no just a thought thought exercise can we make things worse no matter how bad things are we can always make them worse that means we are not powerless we are not as powerless as we thought we were if we can make things worse we can also make them better and whether we will make them better or not that depends on how we view life if we think that my place my my purpose my i want to get pleasure and now i'm not getting pleasure then we start becoming destructive i'm not getting pleasure why should anyone else get pleasure so we start consciously or unconsciously creating trouble for others some people bring happiness wherever they go and some people bring happiness whenever they do they're just such a pain so what happens the difficulties in their life make them into a difficult person and by that they make their life miserable and they make others lives miserable so if we have this understanding that we are spiritual beings and we are meant for a bigger purpose in life then even if we are not getting pleasure right now all that is happening is we're just going through one dark phase that dark phase is like a tunnel it's not a dungeon whatever difficulty we are having in life it's simply like a tunnel it's not a dungeon it's not something in which we are permanently trapped this is a temporarily this difficult situation is there and if we understand i am a soul i am a part of the whole which is far bigger than me then we can keep moving forward keep moving forward there is a higher plan there is a higher purpose for our life our life if we look at the world around us as far as we know we are the most complicated beings that exist there are many species there are many plants there are many animals but we are the most complicated beings that exist so our existence in its own way could have some significance that we don't know about spiritual wisdom says that there is significance what is that significance everything that we are going through is meant for our evolution for our expansion of our understanding of what will truly give us happiness what is what is life worth living for what ultimately counts that that understanding is meant to expand so when we face distress in our life either we can blame we can go about blaming our outer world or we can go about building our inner world if we are blaming our outer world we make our life and the lives of others miserable many people feel nowadays they have been victimised oh this person betrayed me this person did like this to me that terrible happened to me yes now we all may have been victimised not may have been everybody has been victimised sometime or other but we don't have to be victims when we think of us as the victims basically we outsource responsibility you are responsible for my problems now that person may be a cause but by outsourcing responsibility to that person we make ourselves powerless okay this person did this to me that was terrible and now it's happened now what can I do so we could either go about blaming our outer world or building our inner world what spirituality tells us is that whatever bad things have happened to us they are a part of a bigger process and it's a tunnel through which we can walk through and so this was the second point that spirituality can give us a purpose that is bigger than simply the search of small small pleasures spirituality helps us to evolve in our understanding of what is life's purpose and that's how we can move forward so i'll quickly conclude with the last point and then you can have questions so how does what does what how can we apply the spirituality whatever I mean in our daily lives what does it practically boil down to all of us are constantly thinking of something or the other most of the times our thoughts tyre us we certainly need to think to deal with practical issues say you all of you came here so you had to navigate by the traffic and you plan to come here so some of our thoughts are practical productive thoughts but all of us have big problems and we keep thinking about those problems why did this happen why did the person do this why did the person do this so if we look at a graph of problem solving capacity versus time if we don't think about our problems at all we live in denial that's terrible some people have problems and they just drink into deluding their way into delusion don't think about the problem at all that's not good so if we think about our problems some clarity comes okay this is the issue this is what I can do so our problem solving capacity increases if we think about a problem systematically but that increase is not a infinitely growing line it grows up to a particular point and after that it flattens it flattens the we think think think but no clarity comes and after some time that line starts going down the more we think the more perplexed we become the more disheartened we become some people are such that earlier I was confused now I'm not so sure so some sometimes overthinking simply makes things worse for us so we all need a satisfying object of thought we all need a satisfying object of thought and spirituality provides us a supremely satisfying object of thought so when we were doing this kirtan this is a form of connecting our consciousness with the divine of resting our consciousness in the infinite there are different forms of meditation meditation can have different aspects but the essential point in meditation is that we fix our consciousness on some higher reality bhakti yoga reveals that higher reality is an all-attractive all-loving divine being and we can focus on that divine being with our head our heart and our entire being that the whole practise of bhakti yoga is for providing tools for our consciousness to find resting place so when the more we learn to meditate the more we learn to dwell on the infinite the more that resting of our thoughts itself will give us calmness clarity and confidence calmness clarity and confidence when we have problems as I said the more we think about the problems we make things worse for ourselves but if you could just turn off okay I thought as much as I could about this problem now no more thinking about this problem no but what do I think about we need something else so we switch off our consciousness we can't literally stop our mindful thinking but meditation builds our inner world by giving us a satisfying object of thought not just giving us a satisfying object of thought but training us with tools by which we can direct our consciousness our thoughts towards that satisfying object of thought and the more we learn to focus on that higher reality the more we will get inner contentment I started by talking about the Gita verse which jolted me that state of awareness where neither desire nor distress can disturb us so that is the state of spiritual absorption when we learn by the gradual practise of meditation to become absorbed in a higher reality that is what gives us deep peace that gives us strength and then with that inner strength when we work in the outer world we can make a positive difference in our lives and the lives of many others so that is the process of spirituality.
Spirituality is not just about just giving up the world and imagining something higher it is about it is about drawing strength from a higher reality to bring about a change in the reality here so we every one of us can be a positive source of change in the world in at least in our own world if not more we can't if it's say suddenly the power goes off everything is dark we will not have the power to get the power supply back but we can turn on our flashlight and if everybody turns on their flashlights we still we can have significant light even if others don't we can turn on the flashlight we can see one step ahead we can see one step ahead and as we see one step ahead we can help others see one step ahead so similarly there will be many things wrong in our world there may be many things wrong in the world around us but all of us can turn on the flashlight of our spirituality by that we will get calmness we'll get clarity we'll get confidence we'll take one step forward one step forward one step forward and gradually we will find a way ahead and we'll create a light around us as I said the dungeon will end so the the dark phase will end it's a tunnel but as we grow through it we will become stronger we'll become tougher so bhakti yoga is about building our inner world by building our connection with the divine and when we do that we will discover that we can we can be tougher than what we thought that life may send its troubles now life determines our problems but we determine their size we determine their size if we learn to dwell not on the problems but on a higher purpose on a higher reality focussing on drawing strength by that higher meditation and focussing on the purpose in my situation with my limitations with my abilities how can I make a positive contribution instead of blaming responsibility how can I make a positive difference how can I turn on my flashlight positive step take a step forward by that we will find that transformed into a pilgrimage our inner world will become like a sanctuary and the storms may come in the outer world but inside us there'll be a shelter there'll be strength there'll be a spirituality which will give us to go through life's problems and to grow through life's problems till ultimately we attain the spiritual reality ourselves we attain life's supreme destination we'll get inner strength and lasting satisfaction so in summarise I spoke about from nomad to pilgrimage pilgrim I talked first about we're nomads we have various programme definitions of pleasure and we keep chasing pleasure accordingly but most of the time the search for happiness is of the course I talked about how my own search to become the topper led to frustration that made me think where is pleasure so I read the Mahabodh Gita says that we can have a state of awareness where desire neither desire nor distress can disturb us so then the second point I talk about how can we attain that state of consciousness probably all have a longing to live forever and to love forever nothing around us in the world lasts like that so where does this longing come from it's like a child who lives in a remote tribal place unconnected to the world suddenly desiring a pizza so this longing doesn't come from our outer world it comes from our inner world we are spiritual beings who are indestructible and we are longing for that lasting life at the material level because our consciousness is projected outward by our outward definitions of happiness so spiritual spiritual growth means there is the evolution of our consciousness evolution of our definition of happiness so if pleasure alone is what drives us then when distress hits us then that frustration can unleash the devil within us and I got off this girl almost because of her infatuation for a drug and that jolted her so we need some purpose bigger than simply the pursuit of pleasure happiness is best experienced not as a product but as a byproduct of absorption something else so what is that all of us have certain abilities certain resources certain gifts we use them to make a positive difference in the world around us we may feel I am powerless but no matter how bad things are we can make them worse that means we are not powerless if you can make them worse you can make them better also so instead of blaming our outer world we build our inner world so how do we do that spirituality provides us a satisfying object of thought I talked about problem solving capacity versus time the more we think about a problem sometimes clarity comes but if you keep thinking then it flattens and then it worsens so if we overthink about our problems we make ourselves and others miserable so spirituality gives us an inner retreat where by our meditation by the process of bhakti yoga we connect with the all-loving spiritual reality and in that resting of our thoughts in the divine we experience calmness clarity and confidence we understand that we are bigger than whatever situations we are going through the difficult times in our life they are like a tunnel through which we are passing it's not a dungeon in which we are trapped life determines our problems but we determine their size if we learn to grow spiritually that means experience the inner spiritual connection through meditation then that is like turning on the flashlight amidst the darkness it will take one step forward one step forward one step forward till eventually the lights will come back so by growing spiritually but by using the tools of meditation for connecting ourselves with the divine we can build our inner world and thus our life can become a pilgrimage that gives us greater and greater purpose and greater and greater fulfilment thank you very much so any questions or comments yes please so i just want to know how how much you meditate each day and how much you think a person should meditate in order to have it beneficial yeah so how much should we meditate the point of meditation is not the quantity as the quality so the purpose of meditation is to connect ourselves with the spiritual reality within us so we start with whatever quantity we feel comfortable at our level and by that gradually we grow you see meditating is like muscle building it's like say weight lifting the purpose of lifting weights is not just to strain ourselves we lift weights so that we can build our muscles so that we can become healthier but with respect to meditation what happens is that we may sit down to meditate but if we are not connecting with spiritual reality then we may not experience much benefit so it's like somebody goes into the gym and just moves their hands without any weights well they're not going to build their muscles they might guess this hand moving exercise might be there so but that's not going to build so the important point in meditation is that we need to connect with the spiritual reality so we have to find out how best we can connect so we can start with 5 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes whatever helps us to establish the connection so the important thing is to make the connection and that's why meditation if it is done in isolation and we just meditate our mind will keep wandering so it's good to in spirituality there is the experiential aspect and there is the philosophical aspect say for example what we discussed now was the philosophical aspect so the philosophical aspect gives us a map of where we want to go and the practises they are like actually going on the journey so if we don't have a map we may start on a journey in one direction but we might get lost so if we could distribute whatever time we would like to spend on spirituality whatever time we feel comfortable we spend some of that time in getting an orientation understanding the philosophy and then we spend some time on meditating we have a balance of both then the time we spend on meditation will be more constructively used otherwise just trying to meditate without a philosophical orientation can lead to simply the mind going for a going all over the universe and just making us exhausted so I would say more than quantity is the quality and the quality comes by gradual like a building of muscles through exercise and also that philosophical orientation thank you any other questions yes okay how do we know how do we know that we are connecting with the spiritual reality yes when we meditate yeah when we meditate it's at different levels and the connection is experienced in the first level is if we are in a storm to give an example if you're in a storm and say we are all alone in the ocean and say there's a storm in the ocean the waves are tossing we are getting tossed thrown here and there now if somebody throws us a anchor throws us a lifeline we hold on to it now what will happen is the storms will keep hitting us but we and we will be shaken but we will be shaken less and less because we are holding on to it and gradually as we say enter into the ship then the waves impact will become lesser and lesser so similarly in meditation the more we experience the connection the more or the more we will not be shaken so much by life's storms so we may have stormy desires inside us stormy events may happen in our life but as we start connecting the agitation will be there but it will decrease the impact of life's events will decrease it will not trouble us so much so it's not that suddenly one day you see the mystical light think oh now i have established the connection the connection often is as i said i talk about a spiritual evolution so evolution is incremental so we will not experience an immediate difference but say if we are every day trying to lift do some exercises now it's not that every day if you measure your biceps they're going to grow but maybe after a few months you try to lift a big weight earlier you were straight now i can lift this so if you keep practising spirituality regularly even if we don't experience an immediate connection you'll find that if a sudden problem comes in your life maybe before you're practising spirituality then the extent to which you got agitated was much weaker and now yeah it's a problem but i can let's see how i can deal with so that's the evidence that our inner world is built if our inner world is built then life's burdens don't crush us they're still burdens and they still have to be lifted but they won't crush us so we don't have to focus so much every day when we are doing our spiritual practises oh am i feeling good am i feeling good whether i feel good or not i do that as a discipline we do that as a discipline and then gradually as we become spiritualised that steady feeling of strength will come within us does that answer your question thank you anyone any other questions well a big round of applause to Chaitanya Chauhan once again we are very grateful and thankful that he took the time out and travelled all the way to Newcastle and i'm sure you've all got something to take away from today's talk.