Beyond Happiness & Distress – a guide to emotional wellbeing

Namaste everyone. Very nice to be back.  I hope you’re all well.

So, before speaking, I will offer my respects with auspicious invocations in Sanskrit to my spiritual teachers, to our lineage, and to the Supreme Soul.

aum ajnana timirandhasya jnananjana salakaya
caksur unmilitam yena tasmai sri gurave namah

bhaja sri krishna caitanya prabhu nityananda
sri advaita gadadhara srivasadi gaura bhakta vrnda

he krishna karuna sindhu dina bandhu jagat pate
gopesa gopika kanta radha kanta namo ‘stu te

aum namo bhagavate vasudevaya

So, this is a continuation in the series that we started end of last year, Wisdom From the Bhagavat Gita. And the topic I have tonight is Beyond Happiness and Distress – a guide to emotional well-being.

In this world, the focus is pretty much trying to chase happiness and doing what we can to prevent distress, pretty much. What do you think? That’s kind of like what everybody is doing. That’s what’s sort of driving things. And our experience is that the distressfulness and unhappiness is like, it eats away at us, it’s such a bummer. And then the moments of happiness seem to be quite fleeting. Even if they’re strong they kind of just don’t last, and at the end of the day, they don’t provide us with what we are really desiring.

When we talk like this, sometimes people get a little bit startled, because the subject of self-realization and God realization is actually a very serious and heavy subject. It doesn’t mean it has to be complicated, it doesn’t mean that it has to be something to be avoided; but it’s sort of like the understanding from the spiritual perspective is that the purpose of human life is to discover your actual, real identity as an eternal spiritual being and to reconnect with the Supreme Soul. But generally, people in this world, they don’t really have much in the way of thoughts of that. It’s kind of like, just get on with life, do all the things that’s required of us, and it becomes like just part of the drudgery, I guess, of life.

A big problem that we face is that there is a general tendency for people not to really connect cause and effect. Everything that we experience in life, the good and the bad, and just the blah in between, everything has a cause. It’s always going to be the result of choices that we made and actions that we took. All of our actions have consequences. There are results, and that’s what we end up experiencing in life. But there’s a massive disconnect between the idea of a cause and an effect.

I’ve mentioned before, I used to run programs, meditation and mindfulness programs, at the maximum security prison up in Auckland. And the first meeting we have with the guys, and there’ll usually be anything from eight up to about 20 of them at one time. And the first thing I asked them is, “How many of you guys actually had a plan, that on this particular date, you were going to be in here? Was that part of anybody’s plan?” And of course, everybody laughs. It’s ridiculous. Nobody wants to end up in that place. Nobody wants to be there.

So, I would say to them, “Well don’t you think that that indicates that somehow you’ve lost control of your life, because if it’s not your plan to be here, how did you end up here? What was—what were you thinking, what were you thinking, that set you on a pathway that’s going to end like this?” And by the end of the 10-week course that we do, a lot of them, or even halfway through, most of them say, “I’ve never thought of anything like this before. It’s blowing my mind, and I didn’t know that you could think like this. I didn’t know that you could actually take so much charge of your life and consciously make decisions to produce good results.”

And so, there is this tendency that everybody has, particularly in this day and age of social media, and everybody’s on the internet, and we’re all stimulated and encouraged to just seek instant gratification. You feel lonely. You feel purposeless, something missing, feeling unhappy, bored, whatever, immediately seek an instant solution. And the solution that people are choosing is also going to have a ramification.

It’s not like—it’s sort of like, imagine somebody’s planning to hold up an armoured car when they are going to make a delivery to the bank. And so, the guys unload the bags with the money in it on the trolley, and they start pushing it towards the bank, and somebody runs up there and just grabs a bag of that money. At the instant that they’ve got it, it’s like, “Wow, this was my plan. Now I’ve got it.” But before he can run, somebody’s tackled the guy, and he’s down on the ground, and next minute, he’s being hauled off to the police station. He’s being put in the slammer. And it’s kind of like, “Well, that wasn’t the plan. My plan was to grab the bag, and everything was going to be fantastic. And at the moment I got it I was so excited, and it was so exhilarating, but it was just like moments later, everything took a turn for the worst.”

We do this kind of thing. We often don’t think longer term of the consequences. One of the examples I always use is marriage. And I laugh! Excuse me, I’m not very kind. Sort of like everybody goes to the altar, or goes before a justice of the peace, or whatever, to get married, and they’re going to make their declaration, “I love you forever.” And at that moment every— people—the couple are looking at each other, and it’s just like, “This is it.” But then, 6 months later, how are things going? One year later, how are things going? A year, two, 5 years later, how are things going? So, the fact that so many marriages or committed partnerships end up in great sadness and difficulty should give us some pause. It’s kind of like, that wasn’t the plan. The plan was to live happily ever after. But the reality is I ran into this unexpected thing.

So, we often, in life, have so many unrealistic expectations. We don’t look at life, we don’t look at the world in a very grounded sort of way.

There are fundamentally two ways of looking at things. One is from the materialist philosophy or the materialistic perspective; the other one’s from a spiritual perspective. And what do we mean by that?

The philosophy of materialism—and most people don’t even have a clue that they’ve brought into these ideas—but the philosophy of materialism is the idea that I am material, that, this body, which is comprised of atoms, material energy, is me, and my mind is a product of this body, and this is also me.

The spiritual perspective is that we are actually eternal spiritual beings, temporarily residing within this current body. This body is not us. We are going to occupy it for a certain amount of time, and then we are going to leave, whether you like it or not. You don’t have a say. You will be forced to leave. But we spend our whole lifetime not paying any attention to our spiritual being, who we truly are, and just being completely lost in the body and the mind and the experiences that we can have in relation to the body and mind.

When we speak about emotional well-being, the emotions are simply the result of things that go on in our mind and how those experiences or things affect us. The materialistic view is, as I’ve already sort of spoken about, the idea that I am matter, I am this body, that I am the mind, the mind is me, and therefore whatever is going on in the mind, the flow of all the mind stuff, the different emotions that reside or are experienced there, I completely identify with it, and it really deeply affects me, deeply affects me.

One of the great transformations in life is when people actually learn to, what they call “regulate your emotions,” rather than just surrendering to whatever’s going on up there and whatever emotion you’re feeling or experiencing, where you learn to actually regulate, and how you respond is driven by something else.

So, one of the good examples is anger. Anger is just like the most useless–it’s a waste of time. Do any problems actually become solved through anger? When we express anger, when we feel anger, when we are driven by it, and we connect with somebody, just out of anger, does it really make anything better? Does it make your life better, or does it actually make your life worse? If you are honest, you will say, “Yeah, it does make my life worse, but I don’t feel like I have the ability to control it. And I don’t see the benefit of trying to control my emotions.”

People live with the idea that if only my mind can be experiencing some happiness, then I will be happy, and so I look to stimulate the mind, I feed the mind with things to see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. I try to feed the mind with different types of experience in the hope that I will become happy.

But it’s kind of like—in the old days, I used to be a computer programmer, and there was a famous saying that all programmers learned. It was called “Garbage in, garbage out,” meaning if I write some code that’s ridiculous, it doesn’t make sense, it’s stupid, then, the result that I see on the computer is something that’s ridiculous. So, they call this garbage in, garbage out, rubbish in, rubbish out. And we don’t really relate that to our life, that if I make really bad choices, or I cling to ideas that are not founded in truth, they’re actually ignorant, then I will end up suffering. I will become unhappy.

The idea that this world is a—we are temporarily moving through this lifetime. We cannot make a permanent home here. We cannot find perfect happiness and perfect shelter in the material domain, the material dimension, but yet, I want to try and do that. I want to try and build something permanent that will last, that will never end, even in terms of my relationships.

The spiritual perspective is actually somewhat different. Instead of focusing on trying to feed the mind and the body with different kinds of thrilling experiences, and hope that I will become happy from that, the idea is that I should actually—I should be in charge of my mind rather than my mind being in charge of me. I should be directing what my mind is going to think about, how it’s going to think about things, how it’s going to process things. And if I learn how to do that, I will grow in spiritual strength and experience.

We can expose the mind to all kinds of stimulating experience. One of the—well, there’s so many ways people do that with their little devices in their own little secret space, reading, looking at things, trying to play games, trying to do things where they can find some shelter, where they can find some actual happiness. And they think if the mind becomes stimulated like this, then I will be happy. But the problem is at the end of the day, I am not.

The reality is that if I instead choose to live a more spiritually directed life, if I begin to take charge of my decision making, I make decisions, I have relationships, I deal with people seeking something good, seeking a good outcome, then gradually I will be able to experience what we will describe as spiritual happiness, which is actually lasting.

When we talk about these kinds of things, a lot of people find them very confronting. And it’s okay, not everybody can really appreciate spiritual truth and cultivate a spiritual vision.

There is one verse in the Bhagavat-gita that’s—I always—it’s always—I’ve found it really fascinating, when there is a description about the nature of the soul, the spiritual being residing within the body. Then there is a verse that is spoken,

“Some look upon the soul as amazing, some describe him as amazing, and some hear of him as amazing, while others, even after hearing about him cannot understand him at all.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.29]

So the reason I’m just mentioning that is, not everybody is going to have a strong or deep interest in spiritual life, but that doesn’t mean that spiritual life is not real, it’s not connected with who you truly are, your actual identity, your spiritual identity, just means that the person is not ready at that point in their life to actually hear.

So the proposition: in order to be able to live a very balanced life, in order to be able to experience peace, one actually must learn to tolerate the constant fluctuations of the mind and emotions, rather than just being dragged around by them and caught up in them.

So there is a verse in the 2nd chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, the 14th shloka, or verse. This is a conversation between Lord Krishna and a warrior prince. His name was Arjuna, and he’s described here as the son of Kunti, that is the name of his mother.

“O son of Kuntī, the non-permanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.14]

So this is just like, wow! This is an amazing idea, that rather than constantly chasing the mind and whatever’s stimulating it, one must learn to tolerate the fluctuations of the mind and the experiences that we will automatically have in this world. Happiness will come and it will go, distress, or unhappiness will come and it will go; and rather than being controlled by that, one must learn to tolerate that and be focused on something that is actually more important.

The next verse:

“O best among men [Arjuna], the person who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.15]

Liberation here meaning to come to the point of the realization of our own spiritual identity. In this system of yoga, one does not try to avoid happiness or avoid distress, one does not completely focus on simply trying to chase happiness in this world, or distress. One simply accepts it as a passing reality, and their focus is different.

When we speak of happiness, the Bhagavad-gita actually describes three different types of happiness that a living being can experience. And it’s quite interesting, because depending upon what is our state of consciousness, what we are attracted to, we will be in one of these three categories.

The third one, which I’m not going to reference very much, is described as very—an ignorant state, when a person is—actually, they’ve lost their way. And I will use an example of somebody that’s suffered from alcohol or drug addiction, just as an example. It’s not the only example. But in that state, where a person is befuddled all the time, they cannot think straight. They don’t care what they’re doing to other people, the effect they’re having on other people’s lives. They’re just lost in this realm. They’re just chasing the bottle, or they’re chasing a needle, or they’re chasing the meth pipe, or whatever it is, and their life is actually really hellish. Somebody from the outside looking at it, it’s like, whoa! that looks like hell, that looks like suffering. But when the person is in that state, they don’t feel it to be suffering. They feel—there will be moments when they go, “I don’t want this anymore,” but on the whole they can’t even actually think with clarity.

So, they speak about the type of happiness that is most common in this world:

“That happiness which is derived from contact of the senses with their objects and which—”

—That means my body and my mind interacting with this world

“—and which appears like nectar at first but poison at the end is said to be of the nature of -passion.” [Bhagavad-gītā 18.38]

So many people have this experience. They get some idea that something is going to be just amazing, and they’re able to get what it is that they’re chasing, and at first it’s just like, “Oh, this is heaven.” But then as things progress, and you keep revisiting that experience or a relationship or something, later it becomes like poison. It, just like, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m over it. I’m out of here.”

Another type of happiness, they say, is…

“That which in the beginning may [seem] like poison but at the end is like nectar and which awakens one to self-realization is said to be happiness in the mode of goodness.”  [Bhagavad-gītā 18.37]

So the point—this is actually quite a deep subject, but I’m just saying, you can see how these ancient yogis actually took the time to really look at things very analytically. And we know this experience—I’ll relate it to a drug or alcohol addiction, since we already spoke about that.

It’s like when somebody is trying to get clean. Their first days in detox, they feel like they’re in hell. They fight it. They’re so angry about it, quite often, or so depressed, or so upset, and it’s like you’re fighting it, this new kind of life, drug-free or alcohol-free life. But then as the days go by, and they begin to clean up and detox, and then there’s a good counsellor there, talking to them about life, processing things, helping them to revisit stuff. And maybe 3 months, 4 months, 6 months into this process, and you go see them, and they’re all clean, bright face, bright eyes, and you ask them, “How’s it going?” “It’s really amazing. I’ve been clean now for this amount of time, and I’d forgotten what this was like.”

But in the beginning of that process, that process seemed to be like poison to them, but in the end, it was very sweet and nice. So it is said that the process of spiritual awakening is like this. This is how it can be experienced.

So, when we speak of living a more spiritually directed life there is some guidance on what we should be aspiring for. So it is stated that,

“A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desires—that enter like rivers into the ocean which is ever being filled but is always still—can alone achieve peace, and not the person who strives to satisfy such desires.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.70]

So this is like, oh my God! this is like foreign thinking. This is not the messaging that we’re getting from the world. The messaging that we’re getting from our phone, from the world, from the society, from the television, from all of the advertising is, you should constantly seek to satisfy every desire that arises, and if you can do that you will be happy. And it’s not true. Even when you have the money and the power, the means to satisfy every whim and every desire, you can end up feeling utterly suicidal.

And so rather than constantly chasing all of the desires, seeking to fulfill them, but then end up at night time lying in your bed just feeling so empty and alone and just so unfulfilled, and questioning, “What’s this all for?” one should instead learn how to tolerate the constant flooding of desires that arise within the mind and just—and become like the ocean, where so many great rivers with vast amounts of water are rushing into the ocean, yet the ocean always remains steady. It’s not reacting to the constant flow of great rivers into the ocean. And it is stated that a person who can learn to tolerate the constant demands of the mind, that person alone can achieve peace, not the person who strives to satisfy such desires.

So they have a word, a Sanskrit word, it’s called atmarama. This word atma means the self, the spiritual being, and rama means to be filled with happiness. So atmarama could be understood, one who is self-satisfied, they are finding their happiness somewhere else, somewhere within. Their journey, their experience to find happiness is an inward journey.

When a person is able to—A lot of people, like when we come to these sort of gatherings, and people just take a break, a time out from my life, so-called, and I sit down here, and we chant together, we discuss spiritual subjects, some of it might just fly over our head, some of it we may grasp and understand, some of it may seem like, wow, I’m not sure what that means. But the experience that most people have is an experience of feeling some peacefulness in their heart, even for an hour, even if it’s 30 minutes, there’s a feeling of— there is some—I’m actually beginning to taste something. And the more I do this, the sweeter the taste becomes, and my life begins to change. I begin to look at other people, myself, the world, differently than I did before.

So one is really, really encouraged, as part of the process of moving on this path towards what’s called self-realization, to discover your true spiritual identity. One must live a responsible, a caring, compassionate and loving life, doing good for others, not seeking harm for anyone, but also to be able to live a life of peacefulness where I don’t follow the path I was following before, constantly just chasing whatever comes up in my mind; that’s where I am, I’m just chasing and following that. One can actually learn how to decide what it is I’m going to think about today, what it is I’m going to focus on.

If somebody—if I have a rough encounter with someone, and they’re all upset and raising their voice, I don’t have to respond emotionally. I can consider how should I best respond to this person in a way that’s beneficial to them and beneficial to me. I can actually think about it. Maybe I need to step away and consider that, and then come back in a very purposeful way and engage, “I’m sorry that you’re feeling that way. That wasn’t my intention, that you would have that reaction and experience. If I’ve offended or hurt you in any way, please forgive me, but let’s turn it down, the volume, let’s turn it down a little bit, and let’s look at how we can have a better life together. How can we make better choices, how can we live to make things better? The path of spiritual realization, of self-realization and God realization provides people with this internal change.

This way of living is actually called yoga. This word yoga doesn’t actually refer to physical exercises, what everybody in the world calls yoga now. This word yoga means union, and it describes the nature of a union of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul. And when one is experiencing this union, they see all other living beings as also being my brothers and sisters, who also have an eternal connection with the Supreme Soul even though they may not be realizing it.

And so when I live in the condition or the state that is called yoga, or in union with God, then I’m also in union with other living beings. I know the right way to deal with people. I know the right way to respond. I am concerned about others well-being.

So, in one verse it states:

“Be steadfast in yoga, O Arjuna. Perform your duty and abandon all attachment to success or failure. Such evenness of mind is called yoga.”  [Bhagavad-gītā 2.48]

So this is the condition that the spiritualists aspire for.

I’ll just add one other point. This process of self-realization and God realization is not—some people think, well, you have to be special, you need some sort of special ability, or you need real intelligence, or only certain kind of people can have this kind of experience, but no, that’s not true. What we are talking about is uncovering your eternal spiritual nature.

This process of meditation, this process of engaging in a more purposeful and spiritual life is about uncovering what is already there, your true spiritual identity, who you truly are is an eternal spiritual being, to become awakened to that experience. So it’s not for some special person, or only this kind of person.  We are talking, everybody has an eternal spiritual nature, and this process that’s based primarily around the meditation upon and the chanting of these transcendental, these spiritual sounds, these holy names, is a process that—it’s like when the sun comes up on a foggy morning.

You guys get a lot of fog here in Hamilton compared to a lot of other places, because of the river, I guess. But, even on a really foggy morning, if when the sun comes up and there’s no clouds in the sky, just the power of the sun begins to burn off the fog; and when you got up you look out the window, and you can’t see where the—you can’t see where the car’s parked, you can’t see the fence, you can’t see the tree in the yard, you can’t see anything, but then, just by the influence of the sun it begins to burn off the fog, and gradually you begin to make things out. And as the fog dissipates, then you begin to see everything with clarity.

This process, you don’t have to like really take it apart and try to understand everything. If you simply embrace, with a humble and a straightforward heart, this process, you don’t have to do anything else. But if you do this it will change you. It will change how you’re seeing things. It will change your experience of your current life, your relationships, your connections with others, and with this world. And so we strongly recommend that this very simple process can completely transform your life.

So I will lead a kirtan. I’ll probably chant this mantra over here to begin with, Haribol Nitai Gaur, and then I may chant the Mahamantra. And after we’ve finished that, while serving a meal, if you have any questions or anything you want to ask, please do feel free to do that.