Go beyond comfortable happiness

[Talk at Brisbane, Australia]
Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you all for coming today and I will speak today on the topic of going beyond comfortable unhappiness most people today are comfortably unhappy we have lots of comforts in our life but despite having comforts we tend to be unhappy so I will take this in three parts first we will talk about what we mean by comfortable unhappiness and what is the evidence that people are comfortably unhappy then I will talk about what is it that actually brings happiness and then lastly I will talk about how spirituality can guide us to the deepest happiness in life so if we had a time machine and went say 500 years back into the past we would see that the kind of comforts that we have today are not only unavailable but also are unimaginable for most people for example say artificial heating telecommunications air travel these were unable even for royalty a few hundred years ago so we have had enormous technological transformation of the world and we have facilities and comforts far better than the past and yet we see that there is an enormous level of unhappiness now at one level happiness is subjective we can’t really know who is happy and who is unhappy people can put on a facade of happiness also but if we observe a person’s life and if we see what they do in their lives we can more or less make out if somebody needs destructive sources of relief say if somebody is taking drugs somebody is taking alcohol lots of alcohol then what or even somebody is compulsively watching hours and hours of television what it means essentially is that their real life is at best too boring for them to live in and that’s why they are trying to escape to some other level of experience and at best boring at best it could be agonising it could be mortifying it could be heartbreakingly distressing so when we see that people are looking lots and lots of people far more than the past are having mental health problems a few months ago maybe a month or so ago on Christchurch there was this brutal shooting and it is a despicable act of violence which is committed and whenever any such acts happen they are very concerned I was giving a talk in America and suddenly there was a gun alert and before just I was giving the class and I had turned towards the slide shown to display something and then a gun alert came and I looked there was nobody in the class then what happened? everybody had disappeared under their desk because it was gun alert and then my organiser told me you also duck under the desk so of course it was a false alarm there was nobody there but it was just a the point is that there is a lot of concern if killers just go on the rampage and kill someone and understandably so life is precious but how many of us know that more than the number of people across the world who are killed by others in murders in violent crimes in shootings more than the number of people who are killed by others is the number of people who are killing themselves 1 million people commit suicide every year 1 million people means one suicide every 40 seconds that means since I started this talk about 7-8 people have committed suicide so WHO calls this alarming social health crisis in the world it’s not just a mental health crisis but it’s also a social health crisis and of course suicide can have many varied specific causes but overall it’s not that life is far far far tougher than it was in the past in many ways the comforts available for us life is not that tough so what is it that is missing you could say that if somebody has committed suicide at the very least we can say is that they were not happy with their life happy people don’t commit suicide isn’t it so if we see this alarmingly increasing number of suicide that itself is some indication that unhappiness is increasing in the world and then we also have other mental health problems depression is a huge problem so overall it does seem clear that there is a significant increase in unhappiness in the world so this is the paradox our comforts have increased far more than others far more than the past but simultaneously the unhappiness in life has also increased significantly so why is it like this what is it that is missing in our lives because of which despite having comforts we are still unhappy so the bhagavad gita offers us an answer to this question based on an understanding of various levels of our being suppose you were just walking near your house on the road and suddenly you saw your neighbour rushing out of the car rushing out of their house and going into the car running into the car just opening the door slamming it and charging out where are you going I am going you saw them going in such frenzy where are you going oh I am going to fuel my car ok but where will you go after that oh then I will go to the next gas station and I will fuel my car over there ok but after that then I will go to the next gas station and I will fuel my car over there but what after that no I will keep going to gas station and keep fuelling my car my car needs fuel of course car needs fuel but what we drive with is different from what we drive for fuel is what we drive with and its required without that car function but putting fuel is not the purpose of driving a car what we drive with is different from what we drive for and the same principle we can apply to life that what we live with is different from what we live for what we live with we can say we have health, we have wealth, we have social connections we have house, we have comforts so all the comforts what they provide us is things to live with but what to live for that knowledge is conspicuously missing in today’s world and people say no you create your own purpose for your life its ok but life is so complicated in today’s world to try to create your own purpose what am I meant to live for I just gave a talk in Stanford University when I was in America about a couple of months ago and after that one American lady she came to me and she was talking with me that her daughter has been in Stanford for 12 years Stanford is one of the top universities you need to be brilliant to get into Stanford so then I asked why 12 years so I said that for 12 years she has been changing her major to discover what is her calling in life now her co-students are already graduated, post graduated working, some of them are already married and have families and she is still in the first year of her graduation so what has happened here I gave this example, extreme example of the point that if we leave it to people find your purpose of life we can end up with endless confusion and even if I say that ok I will find my purpose of life but that is my subjective decision about what the purpose of life is but objectively does life have some purpose the mainstream materialistic world view will tell us no life has no purpose in fact a prominent scientist Steven Weinberg said that the more we study the universe the more we understand the universe the more it seems pointless the more we understand the universe the more it seems pointless now this statement is tragically ironic why suppose now I am giving a class and somebody sends a message to me I look at the message and it’s all some strange squiggles I wonder what is this message maybe it is in some language maybe it is some script I don’t understand so maybe I try to figure out what is the script so if somebody has sent us a message and it is in some strange script and you try to figure out ok what does this particular shape mean what does this combination of shapes mean and then gradually start finding out ok this shape means this letter this shape means this letter this set of shapes means this word and then the more you start understanding the message in terms of what the shapes mean what should happen the more we understand the message the more we will be able to see ok what the point of the message was isn’t it so if somebody has gone through all the trouble of writing all those squiggles and each squiggle means something then the whole message should also mean something if I find that every letter and every word in the message means something but the message doesn’t mean anything what is going on I am missing something isn’t it the more the message becomes comprehensible the more its point should become clear but in the study of the universe which is done through science what is happening the more the universe becomes comprehensible the more it seems pointless so what is going on so if we ask scientists if say I drop this phone obviously I won’t drop it but if I drop this it will fall and if you ask why did it fall say because of gravity ok if the lights go off why electricity has gone off so if we look at science, science gives us explanation of why things happen the way they do in nature ok why does the temperature go up why does the ocean level rise why does the storm come why does the snow fall so various things in the universe start making sense when we study it with the eyes of science but the whole universe makes no sense ok why does snow fall why does the temperature rise we have answer, why do we exist no purpose how does that make sense its like we find islands of meaning while drowning in an ocean of meaninglessness here this makes sense but life, no sense surely we are missing something so there is science studies objective reality science studies things science studies matter and its important to study matter but there is a study of matter and there is a study of what matters the study of matter and the study of what matters are two separate things if we look at our own daily experience if say after you go to temple go back home and you say today you meet so many nice people over here I met a very interesting person today ok tell me about that person that person was 5 feet 3 inches ok what else oh that person weighs 70 kg ok now how many of us are interested when we talk about people we are not firstly interested in physical dimensions we are interested in the personality so the objective characteristics of a person matter but if you want to relate with a person, if you want to know a person its not just the physical parameters that matter it is the personality, the nature their likes, their dislikes their way of living, way of acting whatever isn’t it so in our daily experience of life what we first look for foremost is not the physical parameters suppose after this programme in the prasad there is gulab jamun its supposition not a promise laughter laughter so suppose there is a gulab jamun now if I tell you that ok in the meal today there is going to be a spherical object of 3 by 3 inches and viscous density so and so and mass so and so and weight so and so are you really interested in that food we want to experience experience science studies the world as it is measured through objective parameters and that is useful no doubt but how we experience the world is primarily in terms of its experiential parameters and the most important experiential parameter that we look for is happiness we want to be happy in life so happiness itself is something which is you could largely say beyond the sphere of science now all that I am saying is none of this is to criticise science, science is very important valuable body of knowledge but we have to understand that there are different branches of knowledge nowadays one of the biggest fears in the world for young people young people especially but people in general is something which was not in the top 10 list of fears in the past centuries say that if we study the history of fear of the centuries two fears have entered into the top 10 list in the 21st century one is the fear of terrorists and the second is the fear of rejection if you try to form a relationship with someone and that person rejects us, abandons us and goes away so it’s a great cause of great fear to everyone now when we want to form a relationship with someone at that time we don’t really we all want to know is this person for real do they really care for me is their affection for me genuine do they really love me now when we want to know this with all our scientific advancement can we manufacture, we have like a thermometer a barometer, can we have a love-o-metre let’s see if a boy says to a girl I love you let me take out my love-o-metre let’s see we can’t do that because love is not something which is mathematically measurable and yet you could say it is the deepest reality if when we were born newborn, at that time our mothers didn’t love us none of us would have survived beyond the first few months of infancy it requires tireless affection and love from the mother’s side to take care of a human infant so you could say love is one of the most fundamental realities of life and yet there is no way love can be measured another reality is pain now if somebody’s hand is fractured then the doctor can say ok you must be in pain the doctor can say how much is the bone cracked how much is the bone displaced but there is no pain-o-metre to measure pain why is that? because these are experiences internally they are real but they are not mathematically measurable so why am I talking about this? the first point I talked about is that we are comfortably unhappy and then we are talking about why is it happening like this so science by its progress has provided us a lot of comforts in terms of physical resources to make our life easier and that’s very powerful as far as it goes but that is the study of matter but the study of what matters what matters truly for us is what we are experiencing internally in the past people might have had to work in the heavy sun and they would sweat because of the heavy sun’s heat now we might work in a software firm in an air-conditioned atmosphere and there we will sweat not because of heat but because of stress so we may not experience the comfortable air-conditioned atmosphere of the company all that we experience in the stress so for us what matters is more important than matter and unfortunately in today’s world the question of what matters has been left entirely to people’s subjective decision and there is no proper education to help us understand what is truly important in life and therefore when say if we all have to live for something in life so at a very basic level we have certain bodily needs we need food we need sleep we have the urge to unite and procreate we have the need to protect ourselves from danger so food, sleep, sexuality and defence these are four basic animal needs and by animal I mean they are the needs of all living beings in the world so because our society has not given us knowledge of any higher purpose of life what we are doing is we are trying to do the animal activities in more sophisticated ways so when I gave the earlier example of a person rushing out in a car to fuel to put fuel in the car so that’s what we are doing most of our lives we are ok let me get better and better food to eat let me find a more and more attractive partner let me build a bigger and bigger house so that I can defend myself so we are focussing on these all these are what we live with none of this is what we live for food is very much needed sleep is very much needed, defence is needed procreation is a fundamental biological imperative all those are needed but none of this is what we live for it is what we live with and when we start living for this we can but what results by that is all these activities can give us a certain amount of pleasure but when we seek more pleasure from them nature responds by giving us more trouble nature has allotted a certain amount of pleasure through these activities when we use our scientific technological advancement to seek more pleasure we may get that more pleasure temporarily but we will get more trouble also so we can look at so many people suffer from digestive issues so many people suffer from sexually transmitted diseases so many people the man or human beings are the only animals who eat when they are not hungry who sleep when they are not tired who mate when they have no desire to procreate and who fight even when they are not provoked so all these drives we keep doing more and more and we don’t get any real satisfaction with it and what is the proof that we don’t get satisfaction the proof is that we keep craving these activities more and more and more in more and more explicit more and more more aggressive forms and still satisfaction eludes us so the body is a part of who we are the body is like our car and it is important for us to take care of the body but our life has some higher purpose and so comfortable unhappiness means see if you look at life for most people the source of happiness is often the cause of the greatest unhappiness where we seek happiness is what gives us unhappiness we could see this most graphically in the case of addiction addiction well say when it is said about alcoholism first the drinker takes a drink then the drink takes a drink and then the drink takes the drinker so people get trapped and nobody is born with a bottle of alcohol from their mother’s womb nobody is born an addict but people become addicted drug addiction, alcoholism and so many other forms of addiction this is an example of how the very thing that we think will give us happiness ends up causing us unhappiness and addiction is very vivid and extreme example although it is not really extreme because millions of people are suffering from addiction but for many of us the very things that we think will give us happiness end up giving us unhappiness because we are looking for happiness in the wrong place so what is so what is the cause of we being comfortably unhappy because we are what we are living with we are trying to live for that and that is backfiring on us so the very thing which you think will give us happiness they end up causing unhappiness then what can we do about it so the Bhagavad Gita explains that our life has a higher purpose and that higher purpose is spiritual evolution what do I mean by that essentially happiness is not a worthy purpose for life what do you think I mean obviously everybody wants to be happy what do you mean it is not a worthy purpose see happiness is too cheap and too fragile a purpose for life why too cheap how many of you like humour humour how many of you like humour you know very few people say they don’t like humour you also like it thank you but suppose somebody tells you from tomorrow I’ll free you from all family responsibility all financial concerns all health concerns for the rest of your life you just watch comedies how many of us will enjoy that maybe for a few hours after that I want to do something with my life isn’t it or we could say small children sometimes people their relatives want to have some fun they might tickle the child now when the child is tickled the child starts laughing you tickle the child now when the child starts laughing is that laughter happiness you could say one kind of happiness but if that were happiness then we could say all of us can manufacture our own perpetual tickling machine and we could be happy for the rest of our lives would we be happy no we would get bored this is enough so happiness itself is too cheap a purpose for life and it’s not just too cheap it is too fragile a purpose for life why fragile because sometimes in our life we will have to go through such situations where there is no happiness sometimes if a loved one is sick and we have to take care of them we may say I formed this relationship for happiness but there is no happiness over here but if the love is real you have to take care of that person when say a woman becomes pregnant and is going to have a child the later stages of the pregnancy are not pleasant and if happiness is all you want there is no happiness in that so if happiness is the only purpose of our life then when we go through phases of life and there is no happiness there will be nothing left to sustain us so happiness is too cheap and too fragile a purpose to make our life meaningful to make our life meaningful now this doesn’t mean that we should be unhappy that’s not obviously the meaning the point which I am making is that happiness is best experienced as a by-product of a meaningful life not as a product that we chase after so if you look back at your own lives and think which were the deepest happy moments of your life they won’t be the times when you are watching a movie or you were just watching some comedies or something like that they will be the times when you are doing something meaningful when you are trying something which was deeply important for you so happiness is best experienced as a by-product that comes from a meaningful life not as a product that we seek after when we do activities to get pleasure we get some pleasure but we also get lot of trouble so what is it that can bring meaning to our lives what is it that we should drive for technology can provide us lot of comfort that is what we live with but what do we live for that the Bhagavad Gita says is spiritual evolution what do you mean by spiritual evolution it explains that the Gita explains that we at our core are spiritual beings and as spiritual beings we are meant to evolve expand in our capacity for wisdom and our capacity for love we are meant to evolve in our capacity for wisdom and our capacity for love and as we evolve in our capacity for wisdom and love our wisdom helps us to comprehend what is it that truly matters what is it that ultimately lasts what is it that is most important in my life and then we direct our love towards that reality there are many things important in our lives and we could say there is a hierarchy of important things and that which exists at the pinnacle at the top of this hierarchy of important things that the Bhagavad Gita says is God God is not just some religious concept or some product of some belief system God is what exists at the top of our hierarchy of important things in that sense everybody believes in God because everybody thinks something is important for them but the question is whether what they think is the most important thing is really the most important thing is it something which is really going to help them in the time of need is it something which is going to bring true meaning to their lives somebody might be a alcoholic and they say for me alcohol is my God ok but is this God going to get you out of trouble or going to get you deeper in trouble now nobody will say alcohol is my God but if they consider that as the most important thing of their life then effectively they are treating alcohol like God so somebody might say cricket is the most important thing in my life I just want to play and want my team to win ok fine but it’s a game what after that what do you do if your favourite team loses what do you do at that time so we need a God we need something which is truly important which truly matters for us and that thing has to be if it is to truly matter for us it’s truly uplift us that has to be lasting that has to be eternal I’ll conclude with two points and then you can have few questions I suppose so there was a child living somewhere in Africa in the remote jungles completely unconnected from the world and one day that child came back to his home and said mom mom I want a pizza now what would the mother say what do you think the mother would say what is pizza or how do you know about pizza isn’t it if there is nothing in the child’s environment which could inform the child of a pizza then actually the question would come where do you know how did you come to know about a pizza so love is something similarly if we consider our longings our core longings whatever they are we have a need for food and food is present in nature we have a need for we have thirst and there is a need for water whatever our core longings are provided for one of the things that we long for is love and not just love we long for lasting love and that’s why so many of the movies and novels they are about romance and most romance novels have this theme of happily ever after now in real life there is no ever after nothing lasts forever even big big mountains do not last forever I was in New York a few months ago the place where the twin towers existed that is now kept as a memorial so when the twin towers collapsed so actually it was not just a building that collapsed it was the symbol of of American and Western prosperity and power that crumbled with it so even the twin towers was not eternal so if nothing in our environment is eternal why do we have a longing for eternal love this longing is as out of place as a remote African tribal child longing for a pizza so nothing outside lasts forever and yet we have a desire to live forever where does this desire come from? it doesn’t come from our externals it comes from our internals inside us is a spark of spirit and that spark of spirit lives forever and that spark of spirit longs to love forever and for that aspiration to love forever to be fulfilled we need an object that also lives forever and loves forever so that object is God different traditions reveal God in different ways, name God in different ways, the bhakti yoga tradition from ancient India reveals God to be an all attractive person who is named Krishna so spiritual evolution means that the purpose of life is to learn to grow in wisdom, to know who is the truly worthy object of love and to grow in our capacity for love children may love their toys as they grow up, they may love their sports they may love their jobs, they may love their other things but as we grow up, our capacity to love also has to grow and as it grows and matures, we learn to love the eternal, we learn to love the supreme divinity and Krishna is the anchor who will never shake life will send us through many storms and whatever we hold on to, it will start shaking but if we connect with Krishna we will not shake because he is unshakeable and happiness comes at the deepest level when we connect with Krishna, who is the source of happiness and based on that connection, we make a meaningful contribution in the world bhakti is not about rejecting the world it is about reconnecting the world with the source so we have our family, we have our jobs we have our interests, we have our hobbies, now all these are meant to be spiritualised so what the bhakti tradition tells us is that what we are is God’s gift to us what we become is our gift to God, what we are is God’s gift to us so we have certain abilities, certain talents, we have certain situations in our life, so this is something God has provided us what we do with it, what we become is our gift to God so every one of us has certain talents, certain inspirations certain capacities and when we use them in a mood of service there will be two results an external result and an internal result, when we use our abilities in a mood of loving service to God, we will be able to do a lot of good in the world we will be able to do good in the world in a way that is not self aggrandising it is not in the sense that I want to prove to the world how great I am I want to make a positive difference in the world and whether we achieve external success or not, sometimes it depends on various factors that are not in our control but by acting in a mood of service through our various roles we will connect with Krishna and that connection will be the source of lasting satisfaction so the car has to be driven not to the next gas station, the car has to be driven to a meaningful destination similarly life is to be lived not just to get where we will get the next meal or where we will get the next meeting partner or where we will get the next bodily desire fulfilled life is to be lived to fulfil our spiritual longing spiritual longing for a lasting object of love and when we evolve in this way, then through thick or through thin we may go through them both but with God by our side we will find that our life will be meaningful life may hurt us in many different ways but the connection with God will strengthen and shelter us and we will discover if we stay devoted to God, Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita if you become conscious of me you will pass over all obstacles by my grace so Krishna will protect us the world can hurt us in many ways but if we practise Bhakti Yoga we will discover that greater than the world’s power to hurt is God’s power to heal greater than the world’s power to hurt is God’s power to heal and we will be healed not just from whatever hurts that the world may inflict upon us but we will be healed also from the basic meaninglessness that a materialistic life afflicts us with and then whether we have comforts or no comforts still we will have happiness by the hint of our meaningful connection meaningful devotional connection so I will summarise I spoke on this topic of why we are comfortably unhappy and what to do about it I started by talking about how we have phenomenal levels of comforts far more than a few centuries ago and yet we have alarming levels of unhappiness 1 million people commit suicide more the number of people who are killed by others the number of other people who are killing themselves this means people are profoundly unhappy then I discussed why is that I talked about scientific knowledge we live in an age of science and science studies objective reality it gives us a lot of knowledge of matter by which we can arrange comforts in our life but science doesn’t tell us what matters what is really important in our lives so not knowing what is really important we are making our bodily cravings trying to pander to them more and more as the purpose of our life and that’s like racing in a car to just the next gas station to fuel the car what we are driving with is not what we are driving for when we, the body can give us a certain amount of pleasure but when we seek more pleasure through the body than what nature has allotted then we also get more trouble through that so the search for happiness often becomes the cause of the greatest unhappiness you can see this in addiction and you can see this in so many other things at a lesser degree so we all want happiness but happiness itself is too cheap and too fragile a purpose for life somebody told us to watch comedy shows for the rest of our lives, we couldn’t do it and if happiness is all that we wanted and if we had to go through difficulties where there was no happiness, life would become unbearable so what we need is happiness as a by-product of something meaningful and what is the most meaningful thing that is spiritual evolution to evolve in our capacity for wisdom and love wisdom means to understand what really matters in life so we are talking about, we all have various important things, what exists at the top of the hierarchy of our important things, that is God so everybody has some God but most people have false Gods that means what they think as very important lets them down at the important times in their life but there is an eternal reality who is our eternal object of love we discuss how we all long for love and nature, our deepest longings do have fulfilment hunger has food, thirst has water the longing for love is also like a deep core longing and we long for lasting love nothing around us lasts so this longing is as out of place as an African tribal child longing for pizza it doesn’t come from the external, it comes from the internal from our spirit so that, the object for which we are longing is the all attractive supreme, that is Krishna and spiritual evolution means to learn to direct our love toward Krishna not by rejecting other things but by reconnecting everything with Krishna so when we work in our day to day responsibilities in a mood of service to Krishna when we practise bhakti yoga and infuse that mood of service then we get both the external result in terms of making a meaningful contribution using whatever abilities we have what we have is God’s gift to us what we become is our gift to God and irrespective how much external results we get when we have that mood of service we connect with God and that connection itself becomes the anchor that no storm can shake that devotional connection becomes the source of our everlasting satisfaction and when we have that devotional connection then comfort or no comfort we will have happiness thank you very much Hare Krishna any questions or comments yes please thank you for the last there is a saying actually the human beings are social animal so of course my experience we have been brought up in circumstances from the childhood and where we are materially more advanced or achievements we are thinking of that we never come into contact with the spiritual because of the parental and because of the generations and when we come out of that and come into the spirituality we are facing lot of hurdles to cope up with the spirituality and we don’t recognise the spiritual happiness as the real happiness at that time so we are more into the material happiness and I just want to know which factor that distinguish these two happiness is there any important factor that distinguish the material happiness and the spiritual happiness or where do I draw a line ok good question on this aspect so we are brought up in more or less material atmosphere so we naturally gravitate towards material happiness rather than spiritual happiness so can we demark it between the two and where do we demark it if we can I would say that material and spiritual are classifications which are to be understood at the philosophical level like there is a body and there is a soul but if say somebody falls down and they are in pain can we tell them I care for your soul but I don’t care for your body no if we care for a person we care for the complete being body, mind and soul so similarly at our level we don’t have to rigidly or constantly differentiate between material and spiritual happiness the important thing we could focus on is what is taking us towards Krishna and what is taking us away from Krishna that means we could say that in material also there is sattva, rajas and tamas there is goodness, passion ignorance that means there is we could say in another terminology that is pro-devotional there is non-devotional and there is anti-devotional so if somebody is getting intoxication somebody is getting into say violence towards animals just to gratify their tongues that kind of food is we are not being conscious of animals so that is anti-devotional so that should be avoided as much as possible at a serious place but the pro-devotional or the non-devotional that is there, that can be connected with Krishna so the essential difference between material and spiritual is more in terms of intention is it selfless or is it selfish when I meet someone if my first thought is what can this person do for me then that is material consciousness when I meet someone if I think what can I do for this person then that is spiritual consciousness the essence of spiritual and mental consciousness difference is an attitude of service or attitude of self-gratification so if we have that attitude of service, say if we have a job, is that job material or is it spiritual, well you could say it is material but then the job is what is giving us financial stability, it gives us social position and with that we are able to execute our spiritual life also so if we do that job in a mood of service sva-karmana tam abhyarcha siddhim vindati manava in 1846, 47, 48 Krishna talks about this quite a bit and he says that if you work in a mood of worship to me then that work itself will lead to perfection so similarly the family responsibilities, we can just say there is a material and I don’t want to spend time in this or we can consider these family members are souls who are parts of Krishna and they are interested in my care right now so if I take responsibility for them in a mood of service to Krishna then even by serving them, taking care of them, I will grow spiritually so we often try to have like a black and white demarcation between attachment and detachment but bhakti is not so much about detachment as it is about commitment its commitment to connecting with Krishna and then commitment to connecting with whatever connects us with Krishna so rather than worrying too much about material or spiritual, we can focus more on what will take me toward Krishna and what will take me away from Krishna or what is self centred and what is service centred if you have that attitude then gradually we will grow in our spirituality so there is, I will conclude this answer with one point, you could say there is exclusive spirituality and there is inclusive spirituality exclusive spirituality means say for example you come to the temple and now here you have no material interest, you come to the temple because you want to learn about Krishna you want to do some seva, so this is when we are doing our sadhana its exclusive spirituality just focussing only on connecting with Krishna we all need some time for exclusive spiritual connection with Krishna without that Krishna will not remain a real presence in our lives but after we have given that quality time for exclusive connection with Krishna then the remaining time is for inclusive spirituality inclusive spirituality means that my career, my health my family, spirituality is included in that so through our exclusive spiritual practises we infuse within ourselves a mood of service and then we carry that mood of service into our various activities in life and that’s how our spirituality becomes inclusive so we need a dynamic balance between the two, its only exclusive then we will become too other worldly and we will not be doing anything tangible in the world, but if we focus too much on inclusive and don’t have time for exclusive spirituality then we will become too worldly and our spirituality will just become like a cosmetic for us, it won’t be real does that answer your question? thank you Hare Krishna can we stop? any one question anyone has? yes please ok how do you deal with addictions? its complicated but I would say two three different things about it why I said its complicated is there is no pat answer one answer for everyone see basically every unhealthy craving is a distorted expression of a healthy medium I repeat that every unhealthy craving is a distorted expression of a healthy medium that means some people drink but they are social drinkers because they don’t want to be odd people out everybody else is drinking so I also drink but if their social circle changes and then they come to a social circle where people are not drinking then they also stop drinking but if somebody is drinking as a way of escaping from life’s problems from life’s distresses, life’s burdens life’s loneliness then even if they surround themselves with a better more healthy association because their need is still not being addressed so what we need to do is understand what is it that is making us do that its not just a matter of will power will power is of course required but what is the need that this particular addiction is serving it might be something as simple as boredom some people become addicted to internet because their life is boring so internet seems more stimulating of course it is only superficially stimulating and after all it also becomes boring that’s why you need more and more stimulation on the internet but the point is that we have to address the root cause understand what is the need that is being addressed in unhealthy way by this particular craving and that may require some introspection, that may require some discussion it may also require some greater self understanding, what happens is if somebody has addiction, either they or the people around them start judging them you are so weak willed, why are you doing this just give it up, but its not that easy for them to give it up so if just before we succumb to that what is my thought, what is my emotion try to understand that so if like say this is discomfort, situation of discomfort now when we are in discomfort none of us discomfort is not a pleasant thing discomfort may be because of loneliness, it may be because of boredom it may be because of overwork it may be because of stress it may be because of anxiety so it may be because of heart break so many things discomfort is one word which I am using now when discomfort comes we need some relief so we will gravitate towards that which we are habituated to so we need to find a healthier way to address the discomfort so that means understand what is the discomfort that is impelling someone to go towards the addiction and then find a healthier way to address the discomfort what does that mean healthier way that means that is there something which you like to do but which is also uplifting say for example if somebody feels lonely and that is when they start taking drugs or drinking or indiscriminate net surfing or whatever then is there something they like, may be they like music may be they like spiritual music then keep that spiritual music readily accessible so when the moment of discomfort comes instead of gravitating towards that default unhealthy behaviour, try to move towards that healthy behaviour saying no is very difficult and it is painful because we feel deprived by it so we need to have something to say yes to and we focus our energy on saying yes to that so another example to illustrate this would be that if somebody is in an ocean and waves are coming and hitting them now if a wave comes the wave will sweep that person away and you tell that person don’t get swept away what do you mean the wave is too powerful so now if we are not in that part of that ocean we may not feel that wave and we don’t understand why are you going in that direction well they are not going they are just being swept away so somebody who has become addicted, they are like in a stormy part of the ocean where waves are coming again and again forcefully so you tell somebody resist that wave, it is very difficult but what we can do is throw an anchor to them and tell them don’t try to fight the wave try to hold the anchor now holding the anchor also requires strength but the amount of strength required to hold an anchor and the success thereof is far greater than the amount of strength required to just fight against a wave so the addictive desires will come like waves and we can’t fight against them directly but each of us needs to ourselves and for others help them find an anchor, something which they can hold on to so that’s why I said there are things which we like in our lives and there are things which are good for us and these two don’t have to be entirely non-intersecting circles we find out somewhere there is an intersection of the two what I like and what is also good for me and something that falls in that circle could be our anchor and if we make it a habit to hold on to that then saying no to those cravings would be easier and an important thing is that we don’t have to define ourselves in terms of our failures we should define ourselves in terms of our successes that means if we consider that for all of us even if we are not addicted to anything but still we all have urges and those urges have surges what that means is whether it is lust or whether it is anger or whether it is greed or whatever it’s not that urge is constantly at a high level but the urge sometimes has a surge and at that time when the surge occurs we just feel powerless I can’t do anything about it and what happens when the surge occurs we succumb, we relapse and then we feel so disheartened that even when the urge has gone away still we stay disheartened and the next time the surge comes again we relapse so even if we can’t resist the urges we can persist between the urges means okay when that urge comes I don’t know whether I will be able to resist or not but right now I am not troubled by that urge let me do something positive let me do something spiritual let me do something which will strengthen my intelligence which will sharpen my conscience which will give me spiritual strength and if we keep doing that then what will happen is next we will be becoming stronger and then when the urge comes we will be in a better position to resist it sometimes we just define ourselves by that urge, urge surge and whether we are able to resist at that time or not see we may fall down but we don’t have to fall away falling down is where we are not able to live up to a particular standard falling away is where we just give up the practise give up attempting to improve ourselves so we may fall down but we don’t have to fall away and understanding God and understanding God’s love for us can be a very powerful impetus for us to persist there is nothing that we can do there is nothing that we can ever do that can make Krishna stop loving us no matter how many bad things we have done Krishna is never going to say I am going to leave your heart and go away, I will not be there as the Paramatma in your heart Krishna is always there so entangled soul is praying to the lord, my dear lord please free me the lord may say why should I free you he says because you are free and I am bound but the lord may say you are bound because of your own karma he says ya but I am bound because of my own karma but you are very compassionate so please free me and the lord may say I have tried to free you so many times you never took heed, he says yes my lord but you never get tired of trying to free me so you are liberated, you are immensely compassionate and you are untiring so even if we sometimes fail in our Krishna Consciousness we can fail in Krishna Consciousness not fail out of Krishna Consciousness that means ok I couldn’t follow this rule I couldn’t follow this standard but still I will be Krishna Conscious Krishna Consciousness is not just a matter of following certain standards Krishna Consciousness is a matter of Consciousness so if we understand and appreciate by studying Shastra studying Shastra is not studying scripture is not a matter of memorising verses or just chanting some mantras the essence if there is one thing only we can learn from studying scripture that is we gain the conviction that Krishna loves us if we can gain that conviction then we will naturally Krishna loves me, I want to reciprocate with him, I want to connect with him so through our study of scripture if we get that so even if we fall still Krishna loves us Krishna is there not to punish us when we fall Krishna is there to catch us when we fall catch us it’s like a child is learning their first few steps and the mother is watching nearby and the child falls the mother doesn’t start laughing at the child, hey you fell down the mother runs there and catches the child so Krishna is like that Krishna is with us there to help us so if we strive to stay connected with Krishna then that will itself purify us so four things I said, first is that try to understand the need that can be addressed that the unhealthy need, the healthy need that is being fulfilled in an unhealthy way second is try to find a more healthy way to deal with the discomfort discomfort leads to degradation find a healthy way to deal with the discomfort then in that connection I said find an anchor, something which we like and something which is good for us and focus on holding on to the anchor not on fighting against the waves and lastly understand that Krishna loves us and just persist between the urges understanding Krishna’s love and then gradually we will become stronger by spiritual practise and eventually we will overcome that addictive desire yes ma’am ok ok, the de-addiction programmes don’t talk about spirituality, how to convince them, see our purpose should not be primarily to preach spirituality especially when we are dealing with distressed people our purpose should be to assist people and spirituality is one resource that can assist them and I would say it’s not that they are against it Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the biggest successful programme that helps people to get about alcohol and they too talk about, I need to entrust my life to a higher power they don’t necessarily refer to God of one religious denomination they talk about higher power so self-transformation requires access to some power beyond ourselves and that’s widely talked about but what has happened is religion in today’s world is seen as a source of sectarian conflict and that’s why people are leery about in anti-christian circles they use the term called Jesus smuggling what do you mean Jesus smuggling that means that where God should not come in you are bringing in God over there that is you are trying to impose God and your faith on us so we don’t want to do that, basically if we provide people wisdom and resources for self-transformation then gradually people take up so the way I whenever I present in mental health forums or something like that, I focus not so much on God as in the self the model of how the body and the mind are different from the soul and then even if you want to present Krishna, you don’t have to present Krishna as God or as certainly not as a Hindu God, we present Krishna as the object of loving yogic meditation that now for centuries yoga practitioners have meditated on this conception of God so instead of talking this is God and you have to believe it, this is a conception of God that has uplifted the consciousness of millions of practitioners for millennia so try that out so if you present it in a descriptive way, not in a prescriptive way prescriptive, this is what you should do descriptive is, this is what has been done and this is what has benefited me, this is what benefited many people, you can try it out and if you present it that way, people are ready to accept it thank you very much