How to become resilient

[Higher Taste Beats – Youth Meeting at ISKCON, Columbus, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Thank you very much for coming today. And I’ll speak today, continuing the theme, which you mentioned in the introduction, that when bad things happen to us, how can we best respond to them? I’ll speak based on the Ramayana, which is an ancient epic. And recently I was speaking, about four or five months ago, I was speaking at Stanford University, speaking in the Bhagavad Gita, which is also part of the Indian tradition.
And then one person asked this question, isn’t the Indian tradition fatalistic? Has anyone heard the word fatalistic? It is not fatal. Fatalistic. What is fatalistic? Fatalism is the word that comes from fate.
Fatalism means to believe that everything is preordained by fate, and nothing is in our control. So, the answer I gave was quite elaborate, but I’ll talk about this, the essence of this class will be, how can we all develop resilience? Resilience means we are moving forward in our life, life knocks us down, slams us down. So when we are slammed down by life, how can we bounce back? And if you forget everything else, just remember this one sentence, resilience comes when we accept the unchangeable, without accepting that everything is unchangeable.
When we accept the unchangeable, without accepting that everything is unchangeable. So, let’s elaborate on this. If we look at our lives, if we look at our past, it’s not just a linear memory of everyday that we have.
Our past, our memory is filled with crushes and troughs. What we remember is the extremes, either the very good things or the very bad things. And many times, how we respond to these extremes is extremely important.
The extremes are what happen to us, sometimes terrible things happen, sometimes wonderful things happen. And what happens to us is largely not in our control. But something wonderful happens and if we respond foolishly, we can ruin ourselves.
Something terrible happens and if we respond maturely, we can grow through it. So broadly speaking, if you look at the Ramayana, there are two major traumatic events that happen in that epic. The word Ramayana literally means Ramayana.
Ram is God who has descended into this world and he is playing the role of a human being. The Ramayana doesn’t focus on Ram primarily as God, it focusses on him as an ideal human being. And now what is the ideal human being? Some of us might have idea of ideal human being as everything wonderful happens in their life, their life is wonderful.
But if you look at Ram’s life, it’s filled with disasters. And what is ideal about him is how he responds to them. So Ayyan is the journey.
So Ramayana is the book that describes the journey of Ram. And there are two major traumatic events that happen in his life and we’ll see how he responds to them and how that can help us to learn resilience. So the first major incident is he is a prince, by the principle of primogeniture, being the eldest.
He is supposed to become the prince regent and then the king. And just on the night, on the eve of the day when he is going to be pronounced as the prince regent and then the king, there is a conspiracy. His stepmother conspires against him and pressures her husband, his father to have Ram exiled into the forest for 14 years and to have her own son enthroned as the prince regent and the king.
Now exile is a terrible punishment. Exile is just, of all punishments the worst is execution. Your life itself is taken away.
Exile means everything except your life is taken away. And we, most of you are Indians who are here in America, maybe we can get some idea of, some small fraction of what exile would be like is if our visa is not extended. And you have to suddenly leave the country.
At least for us, we most of us have a life, we have a family, a life, a community in India. We built something over here also. But for him, his whole life was in Ayodhya and suddenly he had to go to the forest.
And he responds to it without any bitterness, without any resentment. In fact, though his younger brother Lakshman is furious with his father and his stepmother, but Ram calms him down, calms him down. And he tries to make things as less volatile as possible.
I’ll come back to this situation a little later. But when, the point is that when this happens, he doesn’t blame anyone. In fact, he doesn’t even hold Kaikeyi responsible.
For all, Kaikeyi is his stepmother who has done this to him. So generally speaking, when bad things happen to us, it’s difficult to accept it. But it’s even more difficult to accept it when bad things are done by some people.
Say, a cricket match is going on. Well, I was told whenever I give talks in colleges in America, don’t use the cricket examples. Because for many Americans, cricket reminds them of an insect, not a game.
But I presume cricket is just like baseball. So now, suppose in a cricket match a team is about to win. And at that time, it rains.
You feel furious. But still, the anger is not as much as, suppose a team is about to win and then the referee gives a wrong decision. And then you lose the match.
Then what happens? You have a specific target for the anger. And then people will call for the head of the referee. So in general, when bad things happen, if there is some person behind who is doing the bad things, our anger becomes much much more.
When it’s natural forces, then what can you do? There is no target for the anger. If somebody gets malaria, are you going to get angry with the mosquito or the bacteria? Well, it’s accepted. What can you do at that time? But if you come to know that there was somebody who was maybe an infectious disease and they had malaria and they were not careful and because of them we got the malaria.
Because of them, somebody had TB and we got TB because of them. Then we feel much more angry. So here, what happens is, Ram is a really clear target.
This Kaikeyi’s conspiracy is a stepmother’s conspiracy which is sending him out to the exile. Stripping him of everything and for no fault of his. Then, when they are in the forest, he accepts it and he lives gracefully.
He learns from the sages in the forest, spiritual wisdom. And he is living an exemplary life over there, although he is in utter poverty. But there, we all say that sometimes when we are in a dark place, there is always light at the end of a tunnel.
Just keep walking through the tunnel, there is light. And then some days, you see the light at the end of the tunnel and you come close and you realise that light is a light of a rushing train. And that is charging upon you.
You have to get out of the way. So just when the exile is about to end, which is 14 years, long time, 13 years are over, and just about at that time, there is a vicious demonic person, Ravan. He comes and abducts Ram’s wife Sita.
And he has evil designs on her. And for Ram, it’s devastating. Actually we all have various sources of shelter and comfort and security in the world.
Our possessions are one security. Our relations are another security. And if everything is stripped away, if possessions are stripped away, it’s bad.
If relations are stripped away, it’s worse. If possessions and relations are stripped away, it’s the worst. Life becomes unlivable.
So for him, when this happens, it’s devastating. Now, he at that time, he searches around and finds that Ravan is a very powerful demon and Ram has to assemble a ragtag army because he doesn’t have royal resources with him. He has to assemble a ragtag army and he fights against Ravan and he gets Sita back.
So the theme which I am going to speak is that, this is a broad story and a lot of drama in the story, but we are going to analyse from the point of resilience that when Ram is himself exiled, he doesn’t fight against that. But when Sita is abducted, he fights against that. So one of the interesting reasons he gives, he says that when he is himself exiled and his brother is furious, he says this is the will of destiny.
Now the idea of destiny, something correlated is there in almost every tradition in the world. Sometimes it’s called fate. In the Arabic tradition it’s called kismet.
And in South America they have different name for it. Russia has a name for it. The idea that some things are just meant to be and they are going to happen and we can’t avoid them.
So he accepts that as destiny, his own exile. But when Sita is abducted, he doesn’t accept that as destiny. He fights against it.
So when bad things happen to us, I said, resilience means to accept the unchangeable without accepting that everything is unchangeable. So usually we can have broadly two responses. So fatalism is the idea that nothing is changeable.
That everything is predestined. And this is counterintuitive. Nobody lives like that.
We all make our choices responsibly. I was giving a talk once and one person said that everything is predestined. So I said, OK.
Was your asking this question also predestined? He said, yeah, it’s predestined. OK. Then he said, is my answer also predestined? OK.
He said, yes, of course, it’s also predestined. And why are you asking the question? He said, I want to prove that everything is predestined. So he said, how will you prove it? If I say I won’t answer the question, you will say that it is predestined, you won’t answer the question.
If I answer the question, you say you are predestined to answer this question. So predestiny, if you take it like that, predestination, it’s a conveniently non-refutable doctrine. Whatever happens, you say that was not meant to happen.
But how does that help us practically in making choices? So the point is that there is a certain amount of truth to it. That in life there are certain things which are not in our control. If we consider broadly the world civilisations in two, although civilisation categorisation like this is often over generalisation.
But if you say the eastern civilisation, western civilisations, eastern civilisations have largely focused on acceptance of the unchangeable. And western civilisation, especially the modern civilisation has focused more and more on focus, emphasis on the changeable. Now acceptance of the unchangeable can be taken to an extreme where we start accepting that everything is unchangeable.
And emphasis on the changeable can be taken to an extreme where we start believing that everything is changeable. Now some things are just not changeable. We are all born with a particular skin colour.
Whatever we do, we can’t change that. We can try plastic surgery or whatever, but there are limits to it. So one of my friends who has been in America for many years, he said that Indian kids who grow up in America, they are like coconuts.
I said, what do you mean? He said, coconut is brown externally and white internally. So now if we just live this way, we start thinking that I want to be like that. But you can’t change the skin colour.
Suddenly you just can’t change. And trying to change the unchangeable is a recipe for frustration. So in many ways, if you see the both extremes, one extreme is just accepting everything as unchangeable that leads to passivity, that leads to abuse, exploitation.
Because others can exploit that. But believing that everything is changeable leads to another kind of problems. Basically the dharmic traditions of India explain that our existence is three levels.
There is spiritual, mental and physical. Body, mind and soul. So when we start believing that everything is unchangeable, then we start letting a lot of wrong things happen at the physical level and just go along with it.
Because now everything is meant to be. But when we start believing that everything is changeable, then a lot of wrong starts happening at the mental level. Because when we try to change that which is unchangeable at the physical level and we are not able to change it, then our mind starts going crazy.
Because in a sense, we are experiencing or we are subjecting ourselves to a cognitive dissonance. We think this should be changeable. At the physical level we want to change it.
But it’s not changing. So we have to reconcile these two and it’s just not reconcilable. This should change and it’s not changing.
Why? And that causes trouble at the mental level. So one reason why mental health problems are enormous in the western world and not just in the western world, the whole world is becoming westernised. And to some extent wherever westernisation comes, mental health problems start increasing.
And there can be many reasons. But one reason is that we create trouble for ourselves at the mental level by losing the power to accept the unchangeable. When we can’t accept the unchangeable, at that time we just start resenting it.
We can resent the situation, we can resent the people or worst of all sometimes we can start resenting ourselves. Why can’t I change this? Why am I like this? Well, you are the way you are. Sometimes you may start resenting God.
Now resenting God is utterly unproductive. Why? It’s like spitting at the sky. All that happens is the same stuff comes back on our own face.
So that’s unproductive. But we may resent others. Why are you like this? Why are you not like this? Or we may resent ourselves.
And all this resentment, it just creates huge amount of negativity in us. So just as changing the changeable is a power, changing the changeable requires power, accepting the unchangeable also requires power. We often think of willpower in terms of somebody’s capacity to change things.
But we need to recognise and celebrate even the willpower to accept the unchangeable. Because that is also not easy. Because we are a more action-orientated civilisation.
Our whole focus is on changing things at the physical level. And that’s why if somebody changes things at the physical level, we think, oh it’s so great. Yeah, it requires great effort, no doubt, to change things at the physical level.
But when things are not changeable at the physical level, accepting them also requires great strength. And if we can have that strength, we will find that we will become much stronger. We will become much wiser.
We will become much more effective in our life. Our inner energies won’t be dissipated in our own cognitive dissonance, in our own internal conflict. So how do we go about this? Now why does Ram accept one as destiny and the other not as destiny? It is based on purpose, duty or purpose.
He considers that I am the son of my father and my duty is to serve my father. So I could serve him by rising on the kingdom, rising on the throne, ascending the throne and I can serve him by going to the forest. Whichever way, both ways I am serving him.
And if this is the service called for me, it’s difficult, but I’ll do it. Now when his wife is abducted, at that time he thinks, what is my duty now? My duty is I have to protect my wife. And for that I have to fight.
It’s required. So the idea is that if we start obsessing over what exactly is changeable and what is not changeable, sometimes we may hear, ok, this is not working, but let me keep trying again and again and again and again and we may hear stories of somebody who tried hundreds of times and then finally succeeded. So we say keep trying.
Even if it’s not changeable, maybe you can change it. So how do we decide? The decision is based not so much on our perception of the changeability or unchangeability of the situation. The decision is based on our own purpose.
What is it that is important for us? What is it that we are meant to do? What is our purpose in life? And for most of us today, we are not really educated about how to find our purpose in life. And when we all try to come up with some purpose for ourselves, ok, I want to do this, I want to do that, maybe I’ll try this, maybe I’ll try that. And when, you see, it is purpose that provides perspective.
Purpose provides perspective. If you are going for a very urgent, important meeting in your college. At that time, while you are driving your car, somebody cuts across you.
You may feel angry, you may feel like yelling at them, you may even feel like bringing the power of law on them, but if you find that, that will take a lot of time for you, then just forget it. It’s not too important for you. So if, say, you are just going for fun, going for a ride for pleasure, and then somebody comes and interrupts your pleasure, you’ll be furious.
If we don’t have anything to fight for, we won’t stop fighting. If we don’t have anything to fight for, we will fight for anything. So, what happens is, which things are worth fighting for, which things are not worth fighting for, that we cannot decide when the fight starts.
We have to have decided before what is important in my life. And then when a particular fight erupts, is this really important for me? Does this matter for me? Now sometimes it matters. And when it matters, we do have to fight.
So sometimes we work to change things, sometimes we just tolerate things and move on. So what is our purpose? And that is something which is both subjective and objective. Nowadays, traditional society, it was more or less objective, in the sense that traditional society was very hierarchical and structured.
One’s birth more or less determined their life trajectory. If somebody is born in a particular social class, then that’s what they are going to do through the rest of their lives. In some ways it was discriminatory because some people would be deprived of certain opportunities.
But in some ways it was also stable. You had your life clearly charted ahead of you. So in the past, our purpose was more or less determined by the socially ordained duties that we all had.
Now today much of that social structure is crumbling. When I talk about social structure crumbling, I often talk about how so many marriages are ending in divorce, divorce rate is rising. I was in New Zealand a few months ago and one of the organisers of the programme, he hears my classes regularly, he said here don’t speak about that divorce rates are increasing.
I thought do people get offended by it? He said no, it’s not true. Oh really? How come? He says marriage rates are decreasing. So many of the social structures that are here, they are social structures that brought stability to people’s lives are crumbling today.
So then in today’s world if somebody says this is your duty, who says? That is a difficult response. If anything you are told to do it. I said why? So I saw a caricature of Christian theme.
There is a whole story of forbidden apple that God told Adam don’t eat this apple, you can eat everything else. And then Satan came in the form of a snake and tempted Eve and Adam and they ate the apple. And then that caused a disaster.
So this cartoonist said that actually it was not Satan’s mistake, it was not Adam’s mistake, it was not Eve’s mistake, it was God’s mistake. He said God should have forbidden Adam from eating the snake. So whatever is forbidden you will do that.
So devil would have been destroyed and life would have gone on nicely. So of course that’s a caricature. But the point is that as soon as we are told do this or don’t do this.
Who says so? Why should I not do this or why should I do this? So now because of this, in the past our duty was more or less objective. What we are meant to do our purpose was objective. It was determined by society.
Now today it has become very subjective. Whatever you want you can do. In one sense it gives freedom but it is also a burden.
Because you have too many options to choose from. What do I do? What do I do? And then when we don’t have any strong purpose, maybe this, maybe this, maybe this, maybe this and we just get caught in indecision and when we don’t have any strong purpose then we can’t decide which battles I should fight and which I shouldn’t fight. And then we fight based on impulses.
How dare you do like this? And sometimes if you look back at our lives, have you noticed that you get very angry with something and you yell at someone and a big thing happens and afterwards you start thinking why did I do all that? Then if you had that experience, was it really worth doing all that? So what happens is because often our purpose is not very clear, it’s not very strong in our mind. Today’s society has made purpose entirely subjective. You just decide what you want to do.
And then when purpose is very subjective, then that purpose of a few people might really be focused and this is what I want to do in my life and if they are like that, that’s good. But if that is not strong then we start fighting over small things. So what is changeable, what is not changeable, we can’t do in advance.
But instead of asking that question, what is changeable, what is not changeable, we can ask the question, what is worth changing? Or what is worth trying to change? What is it that I want to invest my energy? And here I conclude with this point that rather than talking about duty, we talk about responsibility. That responsibility means that we take responsibility for ourselves. If you had a friend who is just like you and that friend came to you and said, I am very depressed.
And that person said, I am very depressed. Now, you would not necessarily immediately become depressed. Oh you are depressed, I will also become depressed.
Or nor would you become judgemental. Why are you getting depressed? Come on now, fight. You probably say, what happened? You try to understand that person.
Especially if you care for them, you will try to understand them and then maybe you will try to help them. So you will see that even people who are good at nothing are good at one thing. Can you guess? Giving advice.
And actually it’s no laughing matter. Because many times even people who are good for nothing, they will give good advice. Not every time, but actually everybody can.
It makes sense. So we all, if we were talking with somebody else, we can all give good advice. So especially if we are responsible for someone, we start working for them.
We start really getting concerned, we try to guide them. When we feel responsible, somehow responsibility brings out the best within us. I met a lady in America, New York.
I was giving a talk. She said that she has got a mission for her life. I said, what is her mission? She said, make America cook again.
Make America cook again. Cook. So he says, you know, people don’t cook at home.
Cook at home. So I said, what inspired her? He said, I would never cook. I would always get full.
And then he said, I had a pet dog and she was terribly sick. And we tried this medication, that medication. I loved the pet dog and she was terribly sick.
And somehow nothing was working. And then once my parents and some elders had come and they wanted to cook food. So I had cooked some food.
And they took some of it and something was remaining. And my pet dog took it. It’s not a pet dog, it’s a pet cat.
The pet cat, she took it and she liked it and she ate it all up. I could see she became so bright. So from that day I decided I’ll cook for my pet cat.
And he said that after he started cooking, within three months, my cat’s doctor was amazed. How has she become so healthy? So then I thought, I’m cooking for my pet cat. Let me start cooking for myself also.
And she started cooking for herself and she said that I lost weight, I became healthy, I became fitter. I said, cooking has great power. So now she’s got this mission.
Make America cook again. So the point is that she was not ready to cook for herself. But she started cooking for her dog, cooking for her cat.
So now here the point is that often when we have responsibility, scientific statistics show that when sometimes people say they have an organ transplant, a kidney transplant, it’s very difficult to get a kidney. And even if you finally get a kidney after years of waiting, the body often rejects it. So you have to take medication so that the body doesn’t reject it.
And almost 70% of kidney transplants fail because people forget to take the medicines. They wait years and years and lot of effort, lot of money, lot of pain goes to the transplant and they neglect it. But it’s found that if people have a pet and their pet is sick, people don’t forget to give medicine to their pet.
They may forget to take their own medicine, they don’t forget to give medicine to somebody whom they are responsible for. So the point here is responsibility brings something good out of us. Now this same principle if we can turn toward ourselves, that means take responsibility for yourself.
If, as I said, if you had a friend like you, instead of think, look at yourself objectively. This is a person here and they have these strengths, these limitations, they are in this situation, these are their opportunities. Please look at them and look at yourself from an objective perspective and take responsibility.
In this situation, what can I do the best? And if we take responsibility for ourselves, then we will make a plan. This is what is important for me, this is what I want to focus on. And once we start taking responsibility for ourselves, that this is what is my ability, this is what is my interest, these are my resources.
Let me work on this. Now, once we start doing that, then we will find that our resentment will start going down. Because there are things which are unchangeable, but there are things which are changeable also.
The mind, I talk about the mind as the third intermediate between consciousness and body. The mind often overpowers us by making us believe that we are powerless. Sometimes we feel, I am in such a situation, I just can’t do anything about it.
I am powerless. There is nothing I can do. Have any of you felt like this? Now, when we feel like that, I just can’t do anything about the situation.
We can ask ourselves a counterintuitive question. Can I make the situation worse? What? Who wants to do that? This is terrible already. Yeah, of course, nobody wants to make it worse.
But can we make it worse? No situation, however bad it is, ever takes away our power to make it worse. Some of you may notice that I need crutches for walking. I have polio in one of my feet.
It’s incurable. I can’t change it. I can’t improve that in any way.
But I can take a hammer and crack my other knee. Obviously I won’t and I shouldn’t. But no matter how bad a situation is, we can always make it worse.
And if we can make things worse, then we are not as powerless as we think. If we can make them worse, then we can make them better also. So, rather than resenting, why is it like this? Okay, the situation is like this and in this I can’t change this, I can’t change this, I can’t change this.
But what can I change? And more than what can I change, what is worth changing for me? What is important for me? So once we have our purpose clear, then we may be able to, once we take responsibility, this is what I want to do, this is the ability this person has and this is what can be worked on. Once we take responsibility, then we will find and we will be able to decide what to try to change and how much to effort to put in. So, once we start taking responsibility for ourselves, we will find that each one of us has the power to create a better life for ourselves.
So, life determines our problems, but we determine the size of those problems. We determine the size by the way we look at them, the way we approach them. If we deny the problem, thinking everything is fixable, we can aggravate the problem by that.
But if we let ourselves think the problem is everything and my life is ruined. Both extremes, thinking that the problem is no problem and thinking that the problem destroys everything. Both attitudes will make things worse, will make the problem bigger than it needs to be.
But rather than focussing on the problem, we focus on the purpose. What is it that I want to do in my life? And what I want to do? How can I keep doing? How can I move forward in doing it? What steps can I take? And this last point was take responsibility. One way to take responsibility is at one level when we are envisioning, we think big.
But when we are executing, think small. Envisioning means what can this person who is here, what can this person become? What can this person do? Think big. But when executing, think small.
Think small means sss, small simple steps. Right now in this situation, is there something I can do which will make things worse? Of course there is. Now for the next one hour, can I make sure that I won’t do it? Yeah, I can do that, that’s no big deal.
Is there something which can make things better? Yeah, sometimes we fall sick. And then sometimes some people fall sick. And then they start becoming so irritable, so snappy, so disagreeable that they are sick and they make their caregiver sick of them.
So, okay, can I do something better? Maybe for the next one hour, I’ll be polite. I’ll be courteous. I’ll try to be kind.
Small things. So, when you do that, just decide. Something which is going to make things worse, I won’t do it.
Something which will make things better, I’ll do it. And once you do this, if you do it for even one hour, appreciate yourself. Not in a self-congratulatory sense, but in a kind sense.
If you are encouraging somebody and they are taking some small steps forward, good job. So, encourage yourself and then move on. And if you start to see, progress does not have to be sensational to be transformational.
Progress can be in small, simple steps. And the result of small, simple steps can be enormous. And we’ll find that not only we each one of us can create a better life for ourselves, but if we take responsibility for ourselves, then we can help create a better world.
We all can do better than what we are doing right now, if we take responsibility for ourselves. Now, how much better? We don’t know. Discovering how much better we can do, if we take responsibility for ourselves.
Discovering that is life’s ultimate adventure. Life’s adventure is not just going skiing somewhere or climbing up a mountain or doing some extreme sports. Okay, all that is fine as an occasional thing.
But real adventure in life is discovering how much good we can do, how much good we can become, if we pull our act together, if we take responsibility for ourselves. And life will smash us down, but we accept that and bounce back. That I can’t change, but this I can change.
This is my purpose and I’ll keep going forward. Discovering how much good we can do, can make our life into a living adventure. And we don’t just watch, but we experience first hand.
We are a part of the adventure and we can make our life better and we can make our world better. So, I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on this theme of how we can all become resilient.
So, resilience means to accept the unchangeable without accepting that everything is unchangeable. And talked by Sunday Ramayan, that when we look at life, we just don’t look at life like a straight plane. Look at the extremes, good and bad.
And how we respond to those extremes is what shapes our life’s trajectory. So, Ram, when he was exiled to the forest, it was devastating. When his wife Sita was abducted, that was also devastating.
Now, in the first case, he accepted it. In the second case, he fought it. So, why the difference? First, he called it as destiny.
Second, he did not. Because the focus was not on destiny, but on duty. As obeying my father, I’ll go to the forest.
But as a duty to my wife, I will protect her. So, in general, in whatever situation we are in, there are things which are changeable and things which are not changeable. The western civilisation ethos is more on changing things.
That’s good. We can change things and we should change things that are changeable. The eastern was more on accepting.
But when we go towards the extreme of accepting things, then we accept injustice and atrocity. But when we go to the extreme of changing things, then when we are not able to change, trying to change things at the physical level makes things at the mental level worse. Because it causes cognitive dissonance.
We want to change, we are not able to change. And we are unable to accept. So, mental health problems are shooting up because of the resentment, the inability to accept the unchangeable.
And how do we decide what to change and what to not change? That it is purpose that provides perspective. Our purpose will determine what is worth changing and what is not worth changing. In the past, the purpose was provided by duty.
It is largely objective and socially ordained. Now, the purpose has become very subjective. But subjective purpose often ends up being no purpose.
And then we get swept away by any storm that comes up. If we have nothing to fight for, we will fight for anything. So, how do we find our purpose? By taking responsibility.
Responsibility brings out the best within us. Whether it is responsibility for feeding a pet or whether it is responsibility for giving a medicine to someone. When we take responsibility, it brings out our best.
So, we take that principle and apply it to ourselves. Take responsibility for ourselves. And then, with this person, with this talent, this limitation, this situation, what is the best this person can do? And then when we are envisioning, we think big.
When we are executing, we think small. If you feel that everything is terrible, I can’t change anything, then change the question to, can I make things worse? And we all can make things worse. And if we can, then we can make them better also.
So, for making things better, just small, simple steps. And don’t trivialise or minimise the small steps. Appreciate them and appreciate yourself for taking those steps and move on.
And we all can make ourselves better and make our world better if we pull our act together. And discovering how much better can we become and can we make the world better, that discovery is life’s ultimate adventure. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Any questions or comments? There could be situations more complicated than where you have the options to choose, accept or even to take action. But even if you do anything and still you are in the situation that is undesirable, like from the Ramayana itself, in the last what happened, he has to send his disciples to exile again.
And society claims in either way whatever he does. So, in such situation, what is the question? So, if we are in a situation that is lose-lose, whatever we do, we are going to be blamed for it. And there is just nothing we can do to make things better.
Then what do we do? Ya, it’s tough. Translating philosophy or translating any principle into real life, it requires a lot of intelligence, lot of experience, lot of maturity. But the point is, the principles are like a compass.
Just because we have a compass, doesn’t mean our ship can sail easily to that place. There can be storms in the way. But a compass at least tells us where to go.
If there are storms and there is no compass, it’s terrible. But if there is a compass, at least we know where to go. Specifically, how to go about doing it? Life doesn’t come with any guarantee of right decisions.
We can only use our intelligence, our experience, somebody else’s guidance, whom we trust and then make the best decision that we can. And we can only try to improve our decision making process. We can’t guarantee the right decision.
So, we use our intelligence, make a plan, maybe write things down, think them carefully and then do them. And if things work, good. If things don’t work, we learn from it and move on.
And in general, if we have written things down properly, if we have thought things through, then we can be determined without becoming stubborn. If I chose this option, I am going to stick to it. Because this is my rationale, this is why I am doing it.
But sometimes things just change completely. Okay, this decision is not working. I’ll move ahead.
I’ll move to some other course. So, we’ll be ready for that if we learn to differentiate in this way. If we learn to first get our purposes clear and then get our values.
Why am I doing this? Clear. Then once our purposes and values are clear, then the decision that we take, it’s like we want to go in a particular direction. The direction is maybe our physical well-being, our social well-being, our spiritual well-being, the physical, social, spiritual well-being of our loved ones.
That’s the direction we want to go in. And we take a particular path. And if that path is too crowded, say, we start on a particular path with Google GPS and then it says, first it says one hour and after it says one and a half hours.
Then we might have chosen that path and the other path was one hour fifteen minutes. We chose this. But now just because we have chosen here doesn’t mean we stick over there.
It will change. Okay, it’s one hour thirty minutes, let me take that path. So, we see progress more as a direction rather than as a destination.
And going back to the GPS example that sometimes I didn’t get time to talk about this thing that the things that are unchangeable, there is also a higher plan. There is an overarching divinity. And even if bad things happen, good can come from them.
So, not that everything that happens is good. But even through bad things, good can come. So, that same principle applies even to our bad choices.
See, no mistake is permanently fatal. Suppose you are using Google GPS and driving and GPS says turn left. And you turn right.
What does GPS do? Without. Does the GPS say, you didn’t obey me, get lost. GPS doesn’t do that.
So, similarly, no mistake is fatal. We learn from our experience and we move on. There are always situations which can confuse even the best of us.
But at least if we have a compass, in the less confusing situations we can move forward. And gradually as our maturity develops, as our intelligence develops, in even confusing situations we can find a better way. I was thinking when you break what you say, the unchangeable, the passion and the responsibility.
So many times in the past, some circumstances can change who you are responsible with. Or it can change or put on the side maybe what is your real passion that you had for a while and you haven’t had. Do you think that we need to prepare ourselves first for the unchangeable so that will help us align and work more in peace with the passion and the responsibility? Or do you think that may, because again, the unchangeable may make everything changing constantly.
Okay, that’s a good question. So then, is there any way that you put first, let me prepare myself for the unchangeable so that will help me be more responsible and follow better my passions? Or let me follow my passion and then work with the unchangeable. Okay, good question.
So do we learn to accept the unchangeable first and then try to focus on our passion? Or do we first focus on our passion and then work on the unchangeable? Yeah, I think life is like a tennis match. In a tennis match, we are sometimes serving and sometimes returning. So now when you are serving, you have a lot of choices.
You can serve on the forehand, the backhand, into the body, what height, what velocity, everything is in your hands. When you are returning, you might be very good at forehand. When the ball comes on the backhand, you can’t hit on the forehand.
We just hit the air. So the point I am making over here is that sometimes life presents us with many options. Sometimes life presents us with very less options.
Say if you are playing a tennis match against somebody like an ace machine. All that you can do is just try to get the racket in the path of the ball and hope to get that. Sometimes we are like that.
Our choices are very constrained. So the real problem comes when we seek the freedom of serving while we are returning. Or we choose the passivity or the helplessness of returning while we are meant to serve.
So we have to discern the situation. There are some situations when our options are very, very limited. And then just coming to terms with the unchangeable is what is required.
Say somebody has a passion and somebody is like an artist. Somebody wants to write. Somebody wants to sing.
Somebody wants to do music or whatever. And they want to make that their profession. But today they have no food to eat.
Then there is no need to subject your passion to the expectation of providing you a livelihood. Get it from somewhere else. Make some arrangement.
And then focus on the passion. So the idea is that there are situations when we may have to postpone what is most important for us to what is most needed at that particular time. So basically look not so much in terms of whether I should accept the unchangeable or I should focus on my passion and change things.
Focus on what is the situation at a particular time. Now what opportunities are open for me, what opportunities are closed for me. And based on that we decide.
Say if something more important is required at a particular time, then at that time it can be important. So Srila Prabhupada is the founder of the Krishna Consciousness Movement. And his heart’s calling was to share the message of love of God with the whole world.
Now he tried that for many many years. But when he was in India he had family responsibilities, he had professional responsibilities. And he didn’t have that freedom.
So he tried as much as he could within that. But eventually he retired from his family responsibilities and he focused entirely on this. And then there was a dramatic success when he did that.
So life is dynamic. Dynamic means that we can’t approach life with one formula. This is what I’m going to do.
No. It’s more like a, again going back to the example of a compass, it’s more like a compass that provides direction than a map that provides a path. Spiritual knowledge or this knowledge of spirituality is not so much like a map which will give a particular path to follow.
That is difficult. Each one’s life is individual, each situation is complex. And if we expect a predefined map, path on a map, we will not get it.
But what we’ll get is a compass with a direction. And how, it’s just like if there’s traffic is a lot, then we go slower. When the traffic is less, we go faster.
Similarly, in our particular situations, sometimes we can pursue our passion wholeheartedly with all our energy. Sometimes we have to pursue it a little more at a low key because situations require other things. So thank you very much for your attention and participation.
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.