QA on mindfulness at South Illinois University 2019 Spring

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Yeah, I agree.
It’s a very valid question. See, can mindfulness help the world to deal with the big problems that we have? And yes, a few years ago I was invited to UNESCO to speak and there the UNESCO head was speaking. He said that it is the 60th anniversary of the United Nations UNESCO Foundation.
So they said that basically when they charter, they said that war begins in the minds of people. So peace also has to begin in the minds of people. So if you consider the climate change, a significant part of it is human-induced and that’s largely because we have this indiscriminate approach to exploit nature for our own purposes.
And that has come because, for many reasons, but one is we don’t have inner fulfillment. The less inner fulfillment we have, the more outer domination we seek, the more control. We all need a sense of self-worth, of satisfaction, of security, of belonging.
Either we can get it by organizing and managing our thoughts in a constructive way. We can’t, then we try to do it by controlling others, by controlling extremists. So if we could become more mindful, then that mindfulness will permeate all walks of our life.
It is if we learn to manage our thoughts better, it will lead to we manage our relationships better. We’ll be able to manage our jobs better. We will understand and function in our social roles better.
So we pollute the environment because our consciousness is polluting. If we can remove the pollution from our consciousness, if the greed, the possessiveness, the domineering mentality, the entitlement mentality, all these, if our consciousness, by mindfulness, we understand these are like pop-up windows that have come and they’ve consumed our screen now. If we can minimize them, then naturally that will express itself in outer actions.
I come from India, from Mumbai, so we have a Govardhan Eco-Village. It’s an eco-friendly community which has won international awards, including an award from the United Nations. So it started about 10 years ago.
It’s just a few individuals wanting to live in an eco-friendly spiritual way. And now it is attracting people from across the world to come and see as a sample. And that’s just one example I know from my tradition.
But there are many people who are living more consciously and mindfulness is a big part of the awareness and the ability to live more consciously. Does it answer your question? Any other questions or comments? Yes, please. Okay, yeah.
So those who are not able to put bad things in that perspective, how can we help them? One of the common problems in today’s world is the victim mentality. All of us, things have gone wrong in our life. I’ve traveled across the world.
I’ve interacted with many phenomenally successful people. And just crap a little below the surface, you find that everybody is working through their own tragedies. Life is tough for everyone.
Of course, not saying life is equally tough. For some people, it can be unbearably tough. But for everyone, it is tough.
So the victim mentality makes us feel sorry for ourselves. We all will be victimized in life. But we don’t have to self-identify ourselves as victims.
So often, when we feel ourselves to be victims, or when we feel ourselves overwhelmed by the things that have happened to us in the past, or maybe are even happening right now, one thing that happens is that we feel powerless. We feel helpless, we feel powerless. Oh, a terrible thing happened to me.
What can I do about it? I’m powerless. Sometimes we feel that I’m in such a situation. I’m so trapped.
There’s nothing I can do about this. Have any of you been in a situation like that? When you felt powerless? Anyone? Yeah, almost all of us. Now, thank you.
Now we could turn and this sense of powerlessness is very dangerous. And to get ourselves out of it, we could do a counterintuitive thought exercise. No matter how bad things are, can I make them worse? What kind of question is that? Who would want to make anything worse? It’s already bad.
Of course, we’re not actually going to do it. But can we make things worse? No matter how bad things are, we always have the power to make them worse. Say, if I drive carelessly, and I get into an accident, and I fracture one foot of mine, I’m in the bed, all my plans are disrupted.
I feel helpless because I’m in the bed. And immemorialized. But I can take a hammer and crack my other knee also.
So, no matter how bad things are, we can always make them worse. And if we have the power to make things worse, that means we are not as powerless as we think. That means we have the power to make things better also.
So, actually, I usually do this as a full one day workshop. And the second part to it, which I could not go into, but I’ll mention this briefly, that we can always open a new tab in our life. Say, if one sometimes some pop-ups come up, and they pop up and there is no you can’t spot minimize only.
Where do you cross it? Because you just go to some other screen. So, like that, open a new tab in your life. Tab is an acronym.
T-A-B. No matter how powerless we are, three things are always in our control. Our thoughts, our attitude, and our behavior.
Our thoughts means, what do I think about? Say, somebody has betrayed me. Somebody has wounded me. Somebody has violated me.
Whatever. Life can be horrible at times. But what we think about is always in our control.
Some bad thing has happened to us, and to deal with it, we have to think about it. But we don’t have to constantly keep thinking about it. So, especially our spirituality can provide us a satisfying, strengthening object of thought.
So, what I think about? I got a fracture. I can keep thinking about the fracture and feel sorry for myself. Or I can think, okay, on this bed, what can I do? Maybe I can read this.
I have my phone. I can access this. I can do that.
Maybe I can do this course while I’m on the bed or whatever. What we think about is in our control. That the world doesn’t control it.
People can’t control it. Second is attitude. Attitude means, how we look at what has happened.
We can just say that, oh, this terrible thing has happened. And my life, always terrible things keep happening. My life is rotten.
The world is against me. And I’m doomed. Or we can look at it as, yes, bad things do happen.
But sometimes, bad things lead to something good. Sometimes, when one door closes, that’s how another door opens. And if you look back in our own lives, we may see that what bad things happen to us.
Sometimes that led to a better thing happening. And this is where actually an awareness of the higher reality of the universe, that there is a higher organizing principle, there’s a deeper intelligence in the universe, that can help. So things may not go according to my plan.
Things may not be in my control. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re out of control. They are under some higher control.
And if I just keep doing my part, things will be taken care of. So an attitude is, oh, this is terrible. And my life is doomed.
This is not an attitude. This is terrible. But maybe something good will come out of it.
Let me see what I can do. That’s attitude. And B is behavior.
Behavior means how we act is up to us. Sometimes some people get sick. And they behave in such a sick way, that all their caregivers become sick of them.
Or sometimes some people are sick, and still they try to maintain a positive, cheerful attitude. And they create warmth around them. So they attract warmth also.
So behavior means what? How we act in the situation is up to us. And one way to behave in a constructive way amidst difficulties is to decrease our functioning frame of reference. That means if something terrible has happened to me from my past, and if I start thinking, and I’m still reeling under the impact of that, if I start thinking, what will happen to me after 10 years, what will happen to me after 20 years, or what will happen to me after one year? At that time, the variables are too many.
And thinking too much long term only overwhelms us. So decrease the functioning frame of reference. For this one day today, can I act in a way that doesn’t make things worse? Can I act in a way that, a more positive note, that makes things better? Can I act in a proper way for this one day today? Or if one day appears too much, for the next one hour, can I behave in a way that would make things better? One way to do this is also, if I were counseling someone who were in this situation, if my friend were in this situation, how would I suggest that they act in this situation? There are many things in our life we know we should be doing, but we’re not doing them.
The many things which we know we should not be doing, but we’re doing them. So behavior means, just for the next one hour, can I act in the best way that is possible for me in this situation? And if you do that for one hour, at the end of the one hour, take a few deep breaths, and appreciate yourself. Not in an egoistic way, but in an encouraging way.
Good job. Now, you can do this. So you’re not as helpless as you thought.
Now, let’s do this for one more hour. And if we keep doing this, we’ll discover that we are stronger than what we thought. Our spirituality especially can help us to discover layers of strength that we didn’t know we had.
No matter whatever faces us, what graces us can always be stronger. And if we just keep moving forward in a small frame of reference, keep taking steps forward, forward, forward, we may feel I’m in a dungeon, but we’ll discover that it’s not a dungeon. It’s a tunnel.
And we will come to the light at the end of the tunnel. Does that answer your question? Thank you. Any one last question? Yes.
Okay. Does meditation, from your perspective, can it help to… so if you meditate on a regular basis… Okay, I understand your question. If somebody is depressed and you meditate on a regular basis, can it help to manage depression, but if they stop meditating, then you do that and you can create depression? Okay, that’s a good question.
Does meditation cure depression or does it only manage depression? Other mental illnesses also? Okay, see, this is a little complicated question. I would answer it in three different points. First is that, as I said, sometimes mental illness can have a neurochemical component to it.
But it is not healthy to presume that that is the case. I’m feeling depressed, just take some pills. That can create dependency on the pills.
So we need a multi-dimensional approach to it. If my relationships are horrible, if my career is down the drain, if my health is poor, and I feel depressed, well, there are reasons to feel depressed. And just taking some pills is not going to solve the problem.
I need to address those issues also as much as I can. So same way with respect to meditation, so what applies to meditation also applies to meditation. It’s not that if everything else in my life is wrong and I meditate and everything will be solved.
No, meditation can give me the inner strength and with that inner strength, I can work to address the relationship issues, the health issues, the career issues. So it’s not that meditation is like a magic wand that will solve all problems. During meditation, if we do it well, we will feel good, we will feel peace, we will feel power, we will feel a sense of purpose coming into us.
And with that power and purpose, we need to act in our life. So in that sense, when our life is still a mess, meditation can help us to at least manage the causes of depression so that we don’t get overwhelmed by it. But if we make it a habit to meditate regularly, then we can also fix the things that are wrong in our life.
And in that sense, depression, if it is coming from some external causes, which may be snowballing in our mind, so we address those causes in a reasonable way and the depression will not only be managed, but will get cured. Now, in some cases, in a person’s life, everything else is right, but still they are feeling depressed. Then we need to check whether there is some neurochemical imbalance which is causing that.
Then some medication may also be required. But that medication, we don’t want dependency on that unless it’s a serious problem within the body because of which it’s not able to produce certain chemicals or whatever. So meditation will give us that perspective.
Do I need this? How long do I need to take it? Because sometimes doctors might just recommend it indiscriminately, just keep taking it. So we need to be building ourselves internally and then externally also. And as we keep doing that, gradually the causes of depression will decline and disappear from our lives.
And does meditation also make us dependent on meditation? I won’t use the word dependence. I will use the word empowerment. It’s like if you exercise regularly, then you feel empowered by that exercise.
If you have a regular routine for exercise or workout, that empowers us. And then we do it regularly, not because we are dependent on it, but because it gives us strength. So meditation can make us strong if we are weak.
And if you are already strong, meditation can make us stronger. So it is a source of empowerment and healing. Does it answer your question? Is there something else on your mind? Thank you.
So we’ll conclude. You had this question, you can conclude with that. Well, I think I took this quote from a friend’s teacher.
He tells you that you are doing real damage to your body. It was emotional pain. I think it was similarly telling tolerance.
How do we determine when we should tolerate or when we should stop and remove ourselves or try to change our situation? Oh yeah, that’s a very good question. Just as physical pain is an indicator that something is wrong, which needs to be fixed. Similarly, emotional pain can also be an indicator of something being wrong.
So when do we fix it or when do we just tolerate it or move out of it? Broadly speaking, all of us can benefit by increasing our tolerance level. That means, say right now, if you are hearing this talk, if suddenly some noise starts coming over here, now that noise will distract us. But if you tolerate that noise and focus, that’s a strength because life will distract us in so many ways.
So in general, increased tolerance level is always beneficial. But that doesn’t mean tolerance is alone the solution to all problems. Tolerance is for a purpose.
Right now, the purpose would be that you want to be a part of this talk, understand it. So your purpose is to focus on the talk, so you tolerate the distraction. So we all need to have some purpose in our life.
And tolerance means to keep small things small so that we can focus on the big things. But if tolerance, if we are obstructed in doing the big thing itself, if the pain becomes so much that we can’t do the big thing, then tolerance is counterproductive in that. Say, suppose you are going in a metro train.
Now in India, because the population is so high, the metro bogie is for 50 people and there are 300 people in the bogie. I put a squeeze together. Suppose you’re standing and some people are like bullies.
So you’re standing and this person comes next to you and starts pushing you. And then suppose we get angry, how dare you push me? I’ll push you. You think you’re so strong? I’m also strong.
And they push us and we push us and they push us and we push us. And we get so caught in pushing that our station comes and goes. And we’re still pushing.
Now that could be foolish. Okay, you think you’re a big boss? Okay, no problem. I’ll move aside.
You want more space? It is a short journey. I’ll tolerate it. So there, keep the small things small.
This person wants to show off themselves. Okay, move aside. But suppose that person starts pushing us out of the train itself.
Then we can’t tolerate it. Because that is interfering with our purpose of getting to the destination. So it is our purpose that gives us perspective.
And then when to tolerate, when not to tolerate. So that person starts pushing us out of the train, then tolerance is foolish in that. Then we have two options.
Broadly, it’s tolerate, mitigate or immigrate. So mitigate means, you know, maybe raise an alarm. And maybe other passengers come along and they don’t do this.
Stop. We do something to counter it. But if that person has got several other people in their own group, then immigrate means you might just go to another movie.
So all three approaches are valid. And all three approaches can be invalid. Depending on what is our purpose.
So if you’re tolerating and you’re simply feeling helpless, and you’re not even pursuing any purpose, then we will become resentful. If you’re mitigating, but you’re mitigating simply for the sake of fighting. You did this, I’ll do this.
And our purpose is lost. That’s also very bad. If you’re immigrating, then you’re just running away from one problem to another problem to another problem.
That is also bad. But if you’re purposeful, okay, this is the purpose of my life. And for this big thing, this is a this is inconvenient, but it’s tolerated.
For this big thing, then I’ll tolerate it. But for my big thing, this is coming in the way. Then I have to counter it and mitigate it or if mitigating is taking too much trouble, then I have better things to do in my life than fighting this war and fighting this Then I move on somewhere else.
That is not out of fear, but that is because of focus on our purpose. So then either tolerate, mitigate or immigrate. All three are valid options, depending on what helps us further the important purposes of our life.