QA with youth – Coping with corona crisis

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
A very good morning to everyone.
Namaste, Hare Krishna. Today, we welcome you all for this Facebook live session on the topic, can’t go outside, then go inside. The speaker for today is a very special person, a very special guest, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu.
Chaitanya Charan Prabhu is a mentor, a monk, and a motivational speaker. He has authored over 25 books on applied mindfulness and purposeful living. He is also author of 3500 daily inspirational meditation on Bhagavad Gita.
He has been invited speaker at TEDx, World Peace Conference, UNESCO, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and many other universities across the globe. He has given more than 400 talks across 100 cities in four continents every year. Chaitanya Charan Prabhu, thank you so much for giving us time and being with us today.
It’s a pleasure talking to you. I have followed you over many years now as a PhD student. There was a time in my life where I was seeing you more than I see my parents.
So I always have that special feeling of connection with you. So thank you once again. Thank you for arranging this.
It’s a pleasure for me to be here with you. Thank you, Prabhu. Thank you.
I also have with us today three more guests who will be joining me in asking different questions to Chaitanya Charan Prabhu. We have Aditya Garg. Aditya is a recent graduate of Doctor of Pharmacy programme from University of Alberta.
He’s currently working on the front lines during this pandemic, caring for older patients with complex medical needs in Calgary. Aditya, welcome to the session. Next, we have Shashi.
Shashi is our techie friend from Silicon Valley and he has been involved with the different technologies and working at forefront to make technology accessible to people. So Shashi, it will be very interesting to listen to your perspective on the current situation we are dealing with. Thanks for joining us today.
We have with us Victoria. Victoria is my friend from Princeton Sangha and she manages a nationwide school recycling programme in the United States. Her background is in environmental services and marketing.
So we all are from very different diverse backgrounds and it’s kind of nice because it gives us bandwidth to talk about more diverse topics. And with that, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu, you always have been an avid world traveller and I have seen your lectures, you know, sometimes it becomes harder to follow your movement from place to place over the continent, over the globe. So how has life changed for you in this pandemic time? How are you engaging yourself? What new projects are you working on these days? Yeah, it’s been a drastic change.
Before the virus started, in the 45 days, I travelled across probably 15 cities. And then in the last two months, I haven’t gone out of the room where I’ve been staying. Because I came to India, there’s a lockdown.
So at a physical level, there has been a drastic change. Simultaneously, because of the technology we have today, we can stay connected. So I’m doing online podcasts and I’m focussing a lot on writing.
I think this is a time when all of us get a opportunity to rethink our priorities. Normally, our life goes fast. And, you know, there are three levels.
There is the immediate, which we need to take care of. Then there is the intermediate and there is the ultimate. So by immediate means, okay, I have to get this chore done.
I have to get this, meet this deadline, get this done. So to some extent, we are caught in the immediate most of the time. And intermediate refers to somewhat long term, maybe where I want to be a year down the line, two years down the line, or six months down the line.
So we do spend some attention for that because if we are having somewhat long term projects, some exams, some assignments, we think about them. But the ultimate, so that is something which we don’t usually think about. So I found that for me, writing is something which I always wanted to do.
And I have written a few books. But over the last five years that I travelled across the globe, I got some more experiences, insights and ideas of how to present things. So right now, I’m working on four new books and one novel also I’m working on.
The first time I’m writing in that genre. So that way, I’m utilising this time for writing. And it’s been quite enriching.
Correct, Prabhu. Indeed, I, for me personally, I know it’s a tough time. But past seven years, I was so heavily involved with research and academic life.
I have taken a pause from that life. And I’m trying to discover what I can contribute at a personal level, what I can contribute at a social level, and contribute back to the community. And that kind of feeling, and the time which I have got in past few weeks, I appreciate that.
And at the same time, I pray that we get out of this situation sooner, sooner than later. So I completely agree with you. Yeah, thank you.
Yes, we all want the situation to resolve as quickly as possible. Let’s say that there are two aspects, there is acceptance and there is passivity. So if we don’t have acceptance, then we are constantly resenting and ranting about the situation we are in.
So there has to be a certain level of acceptance of what is, but passivity is where we don’t do anything about what is. So if we don’t have acceptance, we resent, we have passivity, then it is, we just feel sorry for ourselves and sink into ourselves. So that the key line differentiating between acceptance and passivity is purposefulness.
I accept something that I can’t change, so that I can focus on the purpose that is important for me. And sometimes how I’m going to pursue that purpose may change, because some specific situations are obstructed by the externals. Correct.
So either we spend our time in vehemently resenting the situation we are in, and that doesn’t help, or we just dejectedly cave into the situation. So both of those more, the Bhagavad Gita talks about the mode of ignorance and in Tamoguna, so these reactions of resentment or passivity, both of them are in the mode of ignorance. And many mental health problems come up when we either can’t accept what is, or we just cave into what is and don’t do anything about it.
So if you can find a channel to move forward, then it is a time for being constructive. Thank you, Prabhu, for that, for that wonderful sort of intro to what we’ll be talking about today. I just wanted to go a little bit more deeper, because what I’m seeing in work is that, you know, patients are asking me, you know, what is the situation like? When will we have a cure? When will we have a vaccine? And it’s so difficult, I find, to be able to relate to the reality of the situation, while still make it seem like, you know, things are still not all doom and gloom.
And when I was reflecting on this, I was like, maybe it’s because I really myself haven’t come to understand how I can balance these two aspects out. So I wanted to see, you know, what you make of the situation, like, how can we see the reality of the situation, and yet remain, you know, hopeful, not completely hopeless, and, you know, sort of communicate that, you know, to, like individuals in the society, where they’re not completely oblivious to the reality, but they’re still hopeful. Yeah, it’s going on to the same thing.
One is, if I deny the reality, I’m living in a fantasy world, and I will be shocked sooner or later, when the reality hits me. But then, I cannot be obsessed only with the reality of the things around me, as I’m depicted by the media, or as I’m hearing from people around me. This is where spirituality can help us.
Because one of the basic principles of spirituality is that our identity extends beyond our biology. Our identity extends even beyond our psychology. We have a physical side to us, we have a mental side to us.
But we exist beyond both of this. So, we have a core, which is beyond our situations and beyond our emotions. And usually, if you consider this three-level reality, the body, the mind, and the spirit.
So, the mind is where thoughts and emotions arise. The spirit is the source of consciousness, from where we process things. Now, usually, most of the anxiety comes up, not at the physical level, but at the mental level.
At the physical level, there are problems. But generally, whatever problem is there, we can do something to deal with it or to live with it. But when a problem comes up, our mind starts imagining what will happen in the future.
And that imagination is where the thing becomes complicated. Now, to some extent, we need to visualise and prepare for the future also. But the difference is, you consider the physical, mental, and the spiritual.
At the mental level, it’s almost like a horror movie starts inside us. And then that overwhelms us. So, there are two questions.
Usually, whenever there are problems, there’s one problem, then the mind starts asking a question, what if? And what if, what if this happened? What if that happened? What if that happens? And various doomsday scenarios start playing in our mind. So, one way to stop that is to change the question from what if to what is. Okay, what is the situation right now? What is the problem right now? So, what is at the mental level when we are getting caught in the worrisome thoughts coming from our mind, the way to deal with this to go down or go up.
Go down means go down to the physical level of reality and ground yourselves in the physical level. So, for example, in the yoga tradition, deep breathing is considered important. Now, deep breathing serves many purposes, but just breathing deeply, it makes us aware of the physical dimension in a way that is unchanging.
The physical world around us can keep changing, but the breath is something which is constant. And if you can just start focussing on the breath and maybe try to breathe slowly, deeply, what happens? We get our consciousness no longer is caught in the level of the mind. And then that helps us calm down.
And beyond that, so one way is go down, the other way is go up. Go up means this is where processes like meditation or mantra chanting or prayer, they raise our consciousness to the spiritual level where we experience a certain level of calmness, where we can become observers of our situations and our emotions both. So, this is the first thing.
Once you get caught in the head, caught in the mind, we need to come out. So, what is at the physical level? What is at the spiritual level? At the spiritual level, I am different from my situations, I am different from my emotions. And then, if you consider the mind playing a horror movie, this may go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong.
Now, as I said, we want to prepare for the future. We don’t want to be paranoid about the future. We want to prepare.
So, the difference between preparing for the future and becoming paranoid about the future is who is in control of the movie that the mind is showing. Is it that I’m just doing like a passively watching, what is this, what is this, what is this, what is this? Or I am calmly in control and then I take the situation, let the mind’s movie go to the future. Okay, if this happens, what all can I do? Okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.
We need to have some kind of preparation for emergencies. We may stock some supplies, we may have some emergency contacts, we may ourselves create some resources. So, we need to prepare for the future.
But while preparing for the future, we need to first ground ourselves in the present, ground ourselves in the present, both physically and spiritually. Then, look at the future and prepare for the scenarios. So, that way, we can be realistic in terms of preparing for the situation.
But at the same time, once we understand that the present is there with us and the future cannot hurt us in the present unless we let it hurt us. The future can’t hurt us in the present unless we start fantasising about it and especially dystopian fantasies, which drag us away into all kinds of negative, scared, scary emotions. But then, ground yourself in the present and then prepare.
That’s what I feel that if you start from the present and then in a calm way try to visualise future scenarios, then that can help us prepare for it. Yes, that’s a wonderful segue to a question that I had for you, you know, talking about imagination, fantasy and whatnot. And here I am in Silicon Valley, you know, all the innovation practically begins here in Silicon Valley.
Lots of craziness, fast life, you know, talk of technology, you know, the biggest innovation going on right now is that self-driving cars, right? All the Teslas in the area are right now parked in the garage and they’re not driving themselves. So, every Monday in my office, you know, we used to have a check-in on, you know, what did you do over the weekend and people will have like really cool pictures to share, really cool videos to share. They went out and did this.
And when you are in that kind of a mentality that I have got this world, I have everything and these setbacks are really hard to accept, right? One is really, okay, you know, I just bought this expensive car. I cannot go anywhere now. You know, I had this gadget that I wanted to take pictures, take pictures of what now, you know, I’m stuck in the house.
And people were sharing about all these things on Monday morning, everyone would ask, what did you do over the weekend? So, people here, they don’t like downtime, you know, we don’t like downtime in internet and we don’t like downtime in our own lives. So, it’s at this point, it’s like an emotional crisis that, okay, you know, my brain is a functioning machine. Now, it doesn’t have anything to think about.
I cannot, you know, wait, I cannot do anything. I’m just sitting in the house. At this time, one starts introspecting, right? Because the brain and mind has to function, they will be thinking about something, they want to introspect.
But you know, what the problem, the dilemma is, we are not guided, like we don’t think on to introspect on. So, I was wondering if you get if you have like some practical suggestions that, you know, people, you know, you should be this is how you begin introspecting. Or, you know, these are the kind of questions that are there, because we have lost that chain of thought sometimes, you know, we need to understand what is important to introspect on.
So, can you please share some lights on what are some practical tips to, you know, deal with these? That’s a very practical question. And quite universal. Also, although in Silicon Valley, the pace is higher, but I think all over the world, the pace is fast, and it’s becoming faster.
So, as I mentioned, in our introspection, there are two levels of reality, there is the mind, and then there is the spirit. So, to understand ourselves, we can observe ourselves more carefully. Quite often we are so caught in the outer world, doing this, getting that done, buying this, watching this, then we don’t really observe ourselves.
Sometimes we surprise ourselves, or sometimes we are surprised or concerned by our own reactions. Say something small happens, but we explode. Or conversely, something big happens, and we don’t feel anything.
Now, we may, that might some catastrophe happen somewhere, and we just don’t feel anything in our heart, any empathy, any compassion, any pain for those suffering. So now, when we are going too fast in our lives, we are not emotionally aware of ourselves. We are driven by our emotions to do things, but we are not aware of those emotions.
So, I like to talk about the concept of inner news, just as we have outer news, what’s happening in which part of the world. So, inner news broadly means, I like to think about, if we consider emotions, it’s like a pattern, there are sine waves. Sometimes we feel good about things, and sometimes we feel bad about things.
So, one way of introspecting is to look at what triggered crests and troughs within us. And sometimes, we are doing something very enthusiastic, and within a few minutes, we find that our mood has gone down. Now, what happened? We might say, we might say, Oh, I’m just, I’m a moody person.
Well, maybe, but still something caused the sine wave to go down, go from top to bottom. So, from the crest to the trough. So, basically, if you observe ourselves, it might be just, you’re doing something and somebody passed a snide comment, or somebody had said something about us long ago, and we just remembered it.
And that remembrance becomes like a break on our enthusiasm, and our vehicle just comes to a grinding stop. So, then that helps us understand, okay, this is where I am a little emotionally vulnerable. So, basically, if we look at ourselves to understand what puts us down into the troughs, instead of just going down there, okay, yeah, I am.
See, when I say I’m feeling down, I’m feeling bored, I’m feeling depressed. It’s okay, I am feeling depressed. Now, what does it mean? I am here, and my feeling is here.
And I am observing my feeling. So, then if I observe this, okay, then I try to think, okay, what got me here? We may not always be able to catch it immediately. But just observing, okay, right now, and I started feeling a little down.
So, then we start understanding ourselves that way. So, similarly, if we feel energised, we feel enthusiastic, we feel happy about certain things. So, at one level, our own emotional ups and downs, if you become more aware of those, then we can prepare for those in future.
So, for example, now, even the medical scenario, which Althea was mentioning, some people, if they feel very paranoid, very fearful of things. So, the introspecting, what is it that you feel fearful about? Is it you feel fearful about abandonment and loneliness, something might happen, nobody would be there? Or that you feel about, worried about impoverishment that you may not have financial support or strength? Or is it that you feel that you might be in pain, and you don’t know how to process the pain? So, basically, try to find out what are the things that cause emotional ups and downs. So, it’s like, instead of just getting swept away by the waves, try to observe what causes the waves.
So, that’s one level of introspection, by which we understand our minds better. Another aspect of, so, it could also be one way to start doing this is, maybe once, once an hour or once in three hours, just take a pause and try to articulate your thoughts or feelings. For example, I might say that I’m feeling excited by this talk, or I might say that I’m feeling, I’m feeling bored because the same questions keep coming again and again.
Or I’m feeling nervous, I don’t know what question will come and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to answer it or not. So, basically, what happens? Sometimes when the extremes are coming, it is difficult to not be swept away by them. But if we just, before the extremes come, even in normal situations, just take a break and try to articulate.
Articulate your feelings or articulate your thoughts. You don’t have to do it for all the past three hours, just for the right now. What am I feeling right now? So, what happens by this? Two things.
Not only do we develop a vocabulary to understand ourselves, but also introspectively we start understanding that I am different from my emotions. So, if I can observe my emotions, if I can identify my emotions, then what happens? There is the one thing is identifying our emotions and the other is identifying with our emotions. So, most of the times, we start identifying with the emotion even before we have identified the emotion.
That means, even before I realise, if I notice I’m getting angry now, then maybe I could put a brake on it and ensure that I don’t speak something that makes things worse or that I would regret. But if I can’t identify that, then what happens? I start identifying with it, I get angry and I get swept away. So, trying to articulate our emotions on a regular basis, maybe every few hours or maybe at the end of the day, just look at, you know, at that time, look at what were the major crests and troughs I went through.
So, that way we can start the process of introspection or at a bigger level. So, we could look at our life and look at what are the things, what were the crests and troughs in our life in the last one week or last one month or last one year. And then what happens by that? This is what I was so excited about at that time, but now I don’t feel that important.
Or sometimes I find this was so important, but I was so emotionally unengaged at that time. Sometimes we may be having a very important discussion with someone, but we are distracted at that time. And then afterward, we realise, hey, what did you say? There’s something very important.
So, basically, we learn to identify our emotions before we identify with our emotions. And this can also help us in our spiritual growth, because as soon as I start to understand, I’m identifying my emotion. That means I understand that I am different from that.
And then when the emotion starts coming, it is easier to stay, to distance ourselves from it and not be swept away by it. And sometimes all this inner identification we don’t do because we are too caught in outer things, either doing outer things or watching what other, what outer things others are doing. So, unfortunately, what I’ve found is for many people, instead of the physical lockdown, instead of leading them inward, instead of leading them to inner exploration, it is actually leading to more of digital exploration, which is not, you can learn a lot online, that’s fine.
But if that becomes a substitute for not looking inward, then we are losing this opportunity. So, the digital is helpful and it would have been difficult for us to sustain the physical lockdown without digital connections. But there can be a digital connection and there the point is, we sometimes use the outer world to run away from the inner world.
And introspection is when we stop that running away and start confronting ourselves, start learning more about ourselves. Does that make sense? Yes, Prabhu. Wonderful.
Thank you so much. I have some follow up questions as well to that, but I’ll go after Victoria’s question because ladies go first. Yes, thank you so much, Prabhu, for explaining that we should stay separate from our emotions and really place an importance on introspection during this time and the difference between outer news and inner news.
And I’m one of those people who actually is looking into the outer news. And actually, one of the things that I’ve been noticing is that there is almost an unintended benefit from this experience from ecological. So, people aren’t going out as much due to the stay at home orders.
And therefore, the human emissions have decreased and the air quality is better in many places such as Delhi, New York and L.A. At the same time, many wild animals that were displaced because of human involvement have been reentering their natural habitats. And at the same time, people are tapping into DIY culture a little bit more. Maybe we’re cooking more than we usually do or we’re trying to garden and do things for ourselves that we would normally go out and get on our own.
So, we’re able to get things that we need at home instead of going outside, not just on an inward scale, but also like if you think about the tangible needs that we need to take care of our body and of the earth. So, I have a question for you based on this. Is this a sign from Mother Earth? Is she trying to tell us something that this simple living that we are in need again? Is this something that we kill ourselves and the earth? Is it, you know, giving us a sign that this is actually there could be a benefit from this? Oh, yes.
Definitely. Situations can be understood at different levels based on the frame of reference. Say, for example, if suddenly, while this talk is going on, suddenly, say, my sound goes off.
It could be that maybe my internet has gone down or maybe I pressed, my mic came out, or maybe your speaker went off. For the same event, there could be different explanations. So, now, when we want to find out which is the explanation that is most suitable.
So, which is the most suitable, most constructive, most actionable. So, now, at one level, we have the corona crisis and it is because people have travelled and people, there has been human to person to person transmission. So, and we are trying to avoid that.
So, that is one level. So, it’s like if the light goes off, one level is maybe switch off the bulb, switch it off accidentally. Or is it power has gone off over here? Or is it that, you know, the power plant itself has collapsed? So, like that, you could place things in different contexts.
So, one immediate context is, yes, we want, it’s because of the infection, and we want to avoid the infection. But we also need, we humans actually have this unique capacity to place things in various contexts. And certainly, the environmental context is a vital context to consider.
Because over the last few centuries, almost, we have lived as if we are the only species that matters on the earth. There are many sci fi movies about say, aliens, extraterrestrial life coming to the earth. But the centre of the earth, centre of the whole idea is that they come and interact with us humans.
So, it’s like, we are the most important species on this earth, that we are all that matters. But now we have the point that the viruses are so tiny, that even bacteria can’t see them. And we can’t see bacteria.
So, and practically all the viruses that are there on the earth, which are probably there, this coronavirus that’s there on the earth, if we put all of them together, all that are infecting everyone, they would probably be not more than one gramme. So, one gramme of virus has brought the whole planet to a standstill. So, we don’t, we can’t have an entitlement mentality toward the earth, that this earth is just for us.
There is, we need to live in harmony with nature and consider the consequences of our actions. Environmental activism over the last, maybe two decades, and especially the last decade has become quite prominent in the media and in the world. And that’s a very healthy sign.
And certainly the one aspect of environmental activism that is not thought about, and that is not talked about so much, even Al Gore’s inconvenient truth found one truth too inconvenient to talk about. And that was the role of our diet, of what we eat. So, the current virus has come to us through zoonosis, the transfer of germs from animals to humans.
And this is where almost 63% of diseases that have infected humanity in the last decade, they have come through through meat consumption, the animal food. So, maybe that is something which is within each one of us to do. Because if we talk about environmental pollution, then how much can we control that? How much can we at an individual level get factories to stop sending effluents into the rivers? How much can we stop using cars, or automobiles? There are many things which need to be done for fixing the environment.
And of course, you are doing something to educate students and to make sure that schools are green. That’s very good. But beyond what we can do at a big macro level, at a micro level, if we could even not, if we can’t stop and decrease the consumption of meat, then that could help.
In fact, I did some analysis and even I was shocked that 150 billion animals are killed every year. It is, meat has always been a part of human society, but 150 billion means it’s like the entire population of the earth is annihilated every 18 days. Every 18 days.
And this 150 billion doesn’t even include the fish. It’s only the land animals. So, and fish, the estimate is anywhere between 50 billion to 140 billion, separately.
Because fish, when they are fished, they are not counted in terms of numbers. They are counted in terms of kilogrammes, weight. So, we don’t know how much.
So, in terms of the scale, in terms of the brutality, and in terms of the dangerousness, there has been never this kind of meat consumption ever before. So, even if somebody says, oh, meat is a natural part of my diet, I can’t give it up. Okay, but even our ancestors never ate meat at the scale that we are eating.
If you consider biologically, we have canine teeth, but our canine teeth are not like a lion’s or a tiger’s canine teeth. And all our teeth are not canine. That indicates that if a tall meat is a part of our diet, it’s a small part.
So, one way we could be, so nature as our environment or the earth, now maybe by sending these diseases to us through a particular channel is teaching us that maybe this is a channel which we shouldn’t be exploiting. This is not the first disease. Earlier we had swine flu, and we had mad cow disease.
So, it’s not a particularly convenient truth. Because what happens in other forms of environmental activism, it’s easy to blame the big corporate companies. Whereas, so there’s a lot of possibility for moral posturing.
But here, it’s a possibility for practical action. So, at one level, it seems a little intrusive, or you want me to change my lifestyle. But another level, it’s also empowering.
Each one of us can make a difference. Correct, Prabhu. In fact, I mean, I completely agree with you on this, that this pause has given all of us this time to sit back and think and if we don’t contribute and in our part, I don’t think that bigger change which we have been talking about, I feel that’s all just theoretical, you know, unless we show it in our actions.
And, you know, I want to like shift a little bit gears from here, because I want to share a personal feeling. This is first time in my life, I have a feeling of insecurity, because and this feeling is very similar to when I see videos of migrant travellers in India who are going back to their homes. It’s very similar feeling which I have because I am an immigrant in US.
And today, we are facing this kind of a situation where I don’t know whether I will be I will have a job tomorrow or not, whether my parents will be safe back home, whether my friends and people who are close to me, they are good in their health. So this insecurity has taken over so much that it creates a feeling of anxiety. And it’s very hard, I have all compassion for people who are, you know, dealing with this tough situation back home.
And even here, all the students in US are suffering right now. So where this insecurity comes from, and how can we work in a practical way to overcome this feeling of anxiety by focussing on our inner news, which you talked about? Yeah, first thing is, it is, it is a disconcerting time that we are in. And insecurity or fear, they are not intrinsically undesirable.
Nature has given us fear, as a, as a gift as an alert, alerter of danger. So in that sense, it’s vital that animals couldn’t survive in the wilderness if they didn’t have that sensation of fear. The problem for us is, in today’s world, our sources of fear have become amorphous.
For a deer, as soon as he sees a tiger, oh, there’s a tiger, let me run from it. So it’s a very tangible source of fear. And there’s a tangible action that you can do about it.
But in our world, the source of fear is amorphous. Okay, it’s, it’s not one actionable thing. If I lose my job, okay, that’s one thing.
But then, it’s not one thing which I can point out to and I can move away from it, if the economy goes down. So quite often, the fears are amorphous. That’s why they’re not so easily actionable.
And then what happens, we, we can’t, if you can’t identify the fear, we can’t do any action about it. And then we stay in a constant state of fear. Fear in the presence of danger, presence of actionable danger is healthy.
But fear, when it is, when it is not connected with any actionable danger, then it degenerates to fearfulness, where I’m constantly fearful. And that becomes problematic, because then that drains us. The fear is at one level, a state of high emotional and physical energy.
The hormones are getting activated, so that we can fight or fight, fight or flight or whatever we do. So we can’t stay at that level constantly. So I talk about broadly four principles, by which we can make the fear, reduce it to something actionable.
So talk about this, F-E-A-R. So F is focus. Focus means, what is the exact problem right now? This is actually related to what I discussed about what is as compared to what if.
So basically, if we consider a three level reality, there is the, there is the spirit, the consciousness, there’s the mind, and there is the physical reality. So now we interact with the physical reality in two ways. One is we take in information from outside, and then we act on the outside, act on the outer situation.
So what we are doing is by focus, we focus our vision on something particular. What is the exact problem right now? And sometimes you may have to ask that question two, three times to ourselves. What is the exact problem right now? Oh, what if my parents, they fall sick or they get some trouble? Okay, what is the exact problem right now? Well, I’m here and they are there.
What is the exact problem right now? Well, I haven’t contacted them and I don’t know how they are. Okay, then you got to something. So what happens is you try to get the problem down to something specific.
So I don’t know how they are. So then that brings us to CE is engage. Then what can I do about it right now? What can I do about it right now? Engage.
Oh, then let me give them a call. Or let me give my neighbour a call. So they’re asking me to keep a watch on my parents or whatever.
So as soon as we start doing something, then the grip of the mind on us, the grip of our captivation with the mind’s horror movie, that stops. So focus and engage. So going back to the earlier point, I said to get out of the mind, either go down to the body or go up to the spirit.
So focus and engage, they get us down to the body, get out of the physical level. What is the exact problem right now? What can I do about it right now? And then after that, A and R is arise. Arise means raise your consciousness above the mind to the spiritual level.
And especially this is easily possible if we have some regular practise of meditation or prayer or mantra chanting. These act as elevators for our consciousness. So by regularly doing this, we can do it and we can find our consciousness rising upward.
Let’s arise. And when you do this, it’s like if you’re caught in a stormy situation, if you’re in an ocean and the boat is being tossed here and there, you feel very vulnerable. But if a helicopter comes and picks us up, then the storm is there, the waves are there, but we don’t feel personally threatened.
So it’s like that. If we can raise our consciousness upward, then that helps us calm down. And then we can be concerned, but without feeling threatened.
And then the last is R. R is release. Release means we say, OK, you know, I did this. I thought about this.
I raised myself. But then there are so many things that are not in my control. So many things are going wrong.
That which is not in your control, let go of that. We often think of letting go as passivity as passivity, but actually letting or letting go as defeat or weakness. But actually it is strength.
What happens is the more we hold on to the things that are not in our control, the more our thoughts go out of control. And then that makes me wild with anxiety. On the other hand, so when we are letting go of the things that are not in our control, what are we doing? We say we’re trying to catch hold of our thoughts.
Let me focus. OK, that is not. What if something happens in India? Well, if you are in America, that’s not my control.
Then what happens? But what can I do? So F.E.A.R. is cyclic also. When I release, then I can focus better. OK, that I let go so that I can focus on what I can better.
So by this focus, engage, arise and release, if you do this thought exercise, it is possible to at least get a grip on our fear. We can’t get rid of the fear, but we can ensure that the fear doesn’t take control of us and the fear doesn’t overwhelm us. So, Prabhu, just for everyone, we are entering into the last 15 minutes of the discussion, and I would also like to take some questions from online because we have a lot of viewers who are watching it.
So maybe Shashi and then Aditya, Victoria, if you have some specific questions and then we move to some audience questions. Sounds good. So my question was, you know, probably you gave a very good advice on how to understand the fear, but there are some positive engagements that you can do, right? Like we cannot keep it at neutral.
What are some practical meditation tips that you might tell us and our viewers that, you know, practically these are the things you could be focussing on? You know, this is how you can uplift yourself. You know, when you’re in a lockdown, you’re staying at home. What are some practical things one could do to in order to, you know, get through this time? Okay.
Yeah. So usually I talk of this as 4S. So we could put it this way that if a wave is coming and sweeping us, if we can hold on to an anchor, that anchor gives us strength so the waves hit, but then the waves will sweep us away.
So there are four ways we can, there’s a wave behind, is there anchor also? Okay, you got anchor there. Good. So it’s 4S or you could take it in English or in Sanskrit both.
It is, first is spiritual knowledge or we can Sanskrit we call it Swadhyay. So we need to study, maybe read wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita and get a bigger picture of reality. So spirituality can just be some hazy feel-good kind of thing or spirituality can be a journey with a map for us.
So just like we talked about going inwards, well, what is there inward? How do I go inward? So that what is the inner topography? That we understand by studying wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita. So study is very helpful for us not only to go inward but also to anchor ourselves because we are intellectually reminded of our, of a higher reality and that intellect become a basis for connection. The second S is Sadhana.
Sadhana is our spiritual practise. So it could be in our tradition we chant mantras, we chant the Hare Krishna mantra and there are different practises based on one’s own tradition. The important thing is we practise something that tangibly helps us raise our consciousness.
So the, now sound is extremely powerful. We are, among all our senses, what we are most conscious of is eyes and sound. Some people have sharp olfactory sense and some people are connoisseurs of food.
But if you see movies, the primary way they get us into captivated is through sight and sound. So now our eyes usually get us caught at the material level. Sound is very powerful for raising us to the spiritual level.
In fact, the Bhagavad Gita is this journey from sight to sound. Arjuna came to fight a war, he saw, he saw all these are my relatives, how can I fight? So that sight put him into illusion. But sound, hearing the wisdom of the Gita elevated him, it gave him confidence back again.
So sound is very powerful and mantra chanting is also sometimes called as sonic meditation. So we use sound as a tool for raising our consciousness. Mantras are special empowered sounds.
So keeping some time for prayer fully, reciting some mantras and practising some meditation thereby is a way to elevate our consciousness, to gain an anchor for ourselves. And third is Sangha. Sangha is spiritual association.
Who we associate with shapes our thoughts, our emotions, our intentions, ultimately our life. And we do have various kinds of friends, colleagues and we function for functional purposes. We do need to associate with them.
But there is some association which can nourish us. They said there are two kinds of people. Some people bring happiness wherever they go and some people bring happiness whenever they go.
So wherever they go and wherever they go. So if we have some association that uplifts us, that reminds us of our of life’s spiritual side, then that association can also act as an anchor for us. Because sometimes just processing things inside our own head becomes difficult.
I may intellectually analyse, I may try to distance myself, but it’s not always possible. Our association matters a lot for us. Now here spiritual association doesn’t necessarily mean physical proximity.
It essentially means it means similarity of aspirations. What is it that I value in my life? What is it that we seek in the long run? So similarity of aspirations. So if we have some spiritually minded people with whom we can associate on a regular basis, that helps a lot.
And the last is seva bhav or service attitude. Service attitude means a simple understanding of a difference between a spiritual consciousness and a materialistic consciousness is that whenever I meet someone, if the first question that comes in my mind is what can this person do for me? Then that is material consciousness. But the first question in my mind is what can I do for this person? And that is spiritual consciousness.
Now what happens? Why is service attitude important? A service attitude doesn’t mean that we let others walk over us or just use and abuse us. It simply means that we begin with the platform of what is in our control. So in every situation, if I have a service attitude, then I am not so tied down with expectations about what should happen or what others will do.
If I understand that, okay, what can I do in this situation? And if we understand from a broader spiritual perspective, I earlier talked about release also. Now the Gita also states that the universe ultimately moves purposefully. That even when there is chaos happening at our level of perception, there is an overarching divinity which brings order out of the chaos.
Now for that order to emerge from the chaos, we need to be positively purposeful. So service attitude means, okay, how can I serve? How can I contribute in this situation? And that can be a very empowering meditation. So it could be one of the easiest ways to get out of depression is to think of what you can do for someone else.
Just thinking about someone else, it helps. And that way, if we have some people with whom we connect and we try to assist them, we get out of our head. So broadly, these four practises, you know, spiritual study, swadhyay, sadhana, spiritual practises, then seva, sangha, spiritual association and seva bhava, service attitude.
If we cultivate these four things, then what I said earlier about fear, FEAR, applying this will become easier because we will have that inner strength to do these things. Does that make sense? Mm hmm. Yes.
Yes, Prabhu. Thank you very much. Prabhu, I had a follow up question.
Yeah, you were talking about, you know, spiritual knowledge, studying the principles of the Bhagavad Gita. In addition to Victoria’s question previously, like you mentioned about, you know, how this, like, almost radical meat consumption, you know, it’s excessive meat consumption may have put us in this situation. Bhagavad Gita also mentions this concept of karma.
So how do we, you know, and so is this a correct understanding that whatever is happening today is really just karma, right? But then at the same time, if we start to target individuals like that, that makes us very insensitive as well. So how do you reconcile those two? That’s true. Karma is an important analytical principle to help us make sense of the world overall.
If you look at, but if you look at the epics, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana or the Bhagavatam, you won’t find any single situation where someone is suffering and someone else comes and tells them, this is your karma. So, in the tradition, there are two concepts which need to be carefully understood. There is karma and there is dharma.
Karma is the cause effect principle by which our actions produce certain reactions. Dharma is our duty. So, what we need to focus when we are interacting with people, our focus should be not on what is whose karma, but on what is my dharma.
What can I do in this situation? So simple example to illustrate this. Suppose, now you are in the pharmacy field. Suppose there is a patient who comes and the patient is having severe liver problems because of excessive alcohol consumption and the patient had earlier similar incidents and you and the medical care staff had warned him if you consume again, it can be lethal for you.
Now, suppose there’s a doctor who sees such a patient and the doctor starts saying, you fool, I told you don’t drink, you’re drunk now, suffer, I won’t treat you. No, if a patient is suffering, the first duty of the doctor is to treat. First treat, then teach.
The doctor is not meant to give a sermon at that time. Now, of course, the doctor also needs to make the patient aware of what caused this and what can be done to minimise or prevent it. So, at an appropriate point, we can talk about the principle of karma also, but first we need to begin with the principle of dharma.
Principle of dharma means what is my duty in this situation and our duty should always be to help others. It is not to teach others. Sometimes teaching can be a part of helping, but karma is also very complex.
It is that when we talk about, in principle, actions lead to reactions. That is the basic principle of karma. But then an action leads to reaction.
This is such a simple point. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita also says, Gahana Karmanogati. Gahana Karmanogati means the moments of karma are very difficult to understand.
So, it could be that sometimes when we face some trouble or somebody faces some trouble, it is often a result of some present action they have done as well as some past actions they have done. So, it could be an unpredictable combination of the two. And that’s why when we talk about karma, karma is very rarely used for the purpose of post-mortem in the tradition.
Karma is used more for the purpose of prognosis and prevention. Post-mortem means you are suffering, that’s why you must have done this. That would make people heartless.
That is never done. If you see, for example, if a mother has a baby who is crying, should the mother think the baby is crying because of her past karma? That would be an atrocity, a travesty of motherhood. So, the mother is concerned, how can I take care of the baby? So, karma can never be used as a pat explanation to dismiss away the reality and the gravity of people’s sufferings.
So, we definitely need to empathise. And while empathising in a reasonable and intelligible way, we can also point to the principle of cause-effect connections. So, when we are talking about meat-eating as a cause, again, it’s not that you might have a neighbour who is maybe an 80-year-old lady who is nice and sweet and gentle, but she eats meat.
We are not blaming her. We are talking about, when I talk about it, what is our target? We are talking about the industrialisation of the meat business, which has led to unprecedented levels of suffering. So, the purpose of karma is never to blame a particular person.
It is basically to help us choose better for the future. If in the present there is suffering, we need to help in whatever we can. Does that address the question? It’s a very important question.
And it is often something which makes people quite insensitive. Yeah, and that’s why I wanted to bring it up because if somebody reads the Gita, it can make someone very, oh yes, this is your karma. This is why you’re in the hospital.
Very insensitive. You know, interestingly, in the Gita, Krishna doesn’t use the karma in that sense at all. Now, if you see, we may have a certain understanding of the Gita, but Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna that you suffered all this in the past because it was your karma, that you suffered, the Pandavas suffered various atrocities.
There’s no statement that your suffering was because of your karma. Or he doesn’t even say that, you know, it is the karma of all these people who are, that they are meant to die. But basically, he says that you have to establish, you have to do your dharma.
And these people are disrupting the law. And that’s why you have to neutralise them. So, karma is often, we have a super simplistic understanding of karma, whereas the Gita’s understanding is much more nuanced.
Thank you very much Prabhu for that. Prabhu, I will just take one or two questions online and then we will go towards the closing of the session. There is a question from Chandrakant Reddy.
He’s asking, how do I teach myself to access and know what I should do as my dharma and what I shouldn’t? So basically, he wants to know what is one’s dharma and how can we have the more in-depth understanding of what we should do and what not? Okay, so dharma is, first of all, at one level, very easy to understand, at one level, very difficult to understand. Dharma at one level means that we are all in a particular situation in our lives, and there are certain responsibilities expected from us. So, we do those.
So, we may be students, we may be family people, we may be professionals, we may be citizens of a particular country. So, we all have our particular roles to play. The basic principle in dharma is that we understand that we are parts of holes that are bigger than ourselves.
Those holes could be our family, could be our community, could be our nation, could be humanity itself, could be the planet earth. So, we are parts of a hole bigger than ourselves. And we often take from that hole without even noticing that we are taking.
So, if we are taking something, we need to be giving something to the hole. So, the basic principle of dharma is that we play our part in contributing to the hole that is sustaining us, that in which we are participating. So, it’s like if I’m driving on a road, then my dharma would be that I have to drive on the right side of the road.
I’m participating in the road transport system and it’s something much bigger than me. So, I need to play my part in the hole. Now, expanding this to the spiritual level, there’s ultimate reality and we’re all part of the ultimate reality.
So, all our various dharmas, we could have family dharma, we could have professional dharma, we could have national dharma. All these are subsets of our dharma to the ultimate reality. So, that is where service attitude or seva bhava comes in.
So, at one level, we just consider what holes am I a part of and how I am meant to contribute over there. That’s one understanding of dharma. Now, another understanding is that each of us has been endowed with particular things and we can contribute in our own unique ways.
So, in the Bhagavad Gita, it says, guna and karma is qualities and activities or in contemporary language, we could call that as comfort and competence. That means, what am I meant to do? What am I meant to contribute in my life? So, we can look at these two things. We do various things in our lives, but what is it that we are good at and what do we feel good doing? So, what are we good doing means? That’s competence.
What we do feel good doing means that we are comfortable about it. So, our comfort and competence, they can point to our distinctive endowments and then that can help us discern what could be our dharma. So, while doing whatever we are doing in a responsible way, in a mood of service and contribution, we also learn to observe ourselves and find out how best we can contribute.
And in many ways, if we adopt practises like meditation, service attitude, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that, it is said that if we connect with the divine, if we connect with Krishna with a service attitude, then that gives us inner clarity. So, we can understand ourselves better. So, basically, by doing our part in the whole responsibly and observing ourselves to understand what we are competent, comfortable at, we can learn what could be our optimum dharma.
Thank you so much, Prabhu, for elaborately explaining from that point. We are very short on time. I just wanted to get some closing thoughts and summary of so many things that we spoke on and some takeaways for our viewers and for us that you would want to mention.
And yeah, maybe the takeaways you can tell me what you’re taking away. That’s a quiz. Yes, I mean, it was wonderful to hear about how we are separate from our, you know, the mind is separate from us.
Then, on that map, a situation could be used for one’s own good. And, you know, one of the major points that I find very relevant for myself is, you know, while we are disconnecting with the world, you know, the internet could be or, you know, these gadgets could be another sort of distraction that is keeping us away from the reality and from introspecting. So maybe, you know, we should be, we should put some focus on, you know, moving away from gadgets, taking down time and actually introspecting, writing down our thoughts, what we are thinking at particular times, and then the practical tips of, you know, what we should be meditating on.
That’s the million dollar question. You know, people have so many vague thoughts of meditation. So you went straight to the point and, you know, explain what should we be meditating on the ways we should be meditating on, and then explaining on the intricacies of karma.
I know it’s a big chapter on itself. But you know, explaining that in a very concise way was appreciated. Yeah, so those are the kind of takeaways that I have.
And we’re very grateful that you took a time off of your schedule to help us out here. Happy to your service. Thank you for organising this.
Maybe everyone else can also give me one point of what you’re taking home. Victoria? Yes. Yeah.
So, like Shashi, I feel like I got so much from this session. I really loved how you answered my question about how we like to put, you know, different situations in different buckets and how we can look at this situation from an environmental perspective. And you specifically mentioned meat eating and how it can be destructive to the environment.
So I really appreciated that point. So that’s what I liked. Aditya? Yeah.
I really liked the fear, the F-E-A-R principle. I think I’m really going to, especially the F and the E, the focus and the engage. I’m really going to try to, because we get these bouts of anxieties in our patients, you know, when we’re speaking to them.
And so just help them walk through their emotions. You know, just help them observe and just help them walk through their emotions. And so, you know, to empower them so that they can deal with their emotions better.
So that’s really what I’m taking away because it’s so difficult with everything else going on, on how to manage patients’ emotional health as well. So thank you so much. That was really, that’s really what I’m taking away from this.
Thank you. I’m happy you’re on the field. So I’m happy to be of some service to you.
So Prabhu, for me, I think the 4S principle, the spiritual knowledge, which you have shared with us today, the spiritual practise, which I think I have to do, and the Sangha, this is what the Sangha is, the spiritual association, and the service bhav, because I feel during this current situation of pandemic, that service bhav has to be there. And we have been reading how ISKCON has been doing great amount of service among people. And there have been so many activities at social level as well.
So with that, for me, those 4S, I think, are the building blocks for a stronger foundation and also keep myself away from the anxiety, which I talked about. So that’s what I’m taking away from today’s session. And thank you so much once again, Chitrannacharan Prabhu and Aditya, Victoria and Shashi for taking out time and joining us today.
I think it was a wonderful session. Prabhu, just one quick comment. I am getting messages from my friends who are studying, like PhD students who are studying at Princeton, Harvard, and they message me, is it possible for them to also arrange a similar session with you? And they can also come and have such kind of some topic of their interest.
Yeah, I’ll be happy to do that. We can work out the schedule, then we can coordinate, but I’ll be happy to do that. Definitely.
Thank you so much, Prabhu. And stay tuned. We will come.
Wonderful being with all of you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.