Rethinking Climate Change – a spiritual perspective – Part 2 Q&A

Before we do any questions, if you have any, it’s really interesting, the ancient Vedic texts, they speak about this time that we are in, and what we’re heading into. And one of the characteristics of the time (apart from chaos, quarrel and confusion, which are meant to epitomize the time, everybody fighting over everything. I mean people can’t even get along. People who supposedly care about each other can hardly get along) was that there would be this effect of quite radical and extremely severe weather crisis. But they didn’t put it down to petroleum, they didn’t put it down to any of the symptoms, they put it down to impiousness, when people become impious all of this will result.

So just like the things that we spoke about, it’s really important to address the underlying issues. If you only tinker with that which is symptomatic of a deeper problem, it won’t solve it. It will manifest again in another way.

Okay, anybody got a question?

Audience: Inaudible

Acharya das: Oh, you’re getting bribed here! Was this okay you guys? And you know, I’m here because Rasalila insisted I come. [Applause from audience] She is very thoughtful and concerned. She regards you guys as her friends, and wanted to try and share a different perspective and something that will, she feels, benefit you all. So big thanks to Rasalila. [Applause]

Of course, I’m quite happy to do it. I tell people that I’ve had a very fortunate and privileged life, primarily because of being able to have the holy association of some very saintly people, my teachers, who have given me something of limitless value. And the way I try to repay my debt to them is by trying to share those same gifts. So you do me a great honour by allowing me to speak, and I thank you for that.

Yeah?

Audience member: Firstly thank you. I thought your talk was fantastic. I know the ancient Vedas also talk about time being cyclical [Acd: About? Yeah] being cyclical, and this age is dark and as troublesome as it is probably [words unclear] we will move through that and into another. You have a lot of faith in that?

Acharya das: I absolutely do. I mean we witness that reality to different degrees. The problem is they talk about such vast time scales it’s kind of scary. It’s not like you can hold your breath and wait. It’s going to go on for a long time. But we can create little islands, sanctuaries of light and invite people into it.

I was telling someone about the experience—I run some programs in New Zealand in the prisons, in the maximum security prisons. It’s pretty hardcore in there. And you get the guys in there, and we do this kind of practice. So I try to teach mindfulness, control of your emotions, making better choices in life, all the things that we need to do, as part of the mindfulness exercise. But we do the kirtan and they love it. Most of them are Maori and Islander guys, and they love music and singing, but they get into it, and then it’s just like, oh my God, this room that we’re in, it’s just like when we first came in it was so depressing, and the guys are all so out of it, and then you chant, and it just like, the place becomes like, wow, what happened here?

Then I said, “Now you got to open the door, and walk out, and be hit with the reality of the dark depressing environment you’re in. But when you go back to your cell you can transform your cell with these spiritual practices. You can actually transform it. This is what you need to do and share with others.” And so that’s what we need to be doing as well.

Yeah?

Audience member: So I’m just wanting you to talk about spirituality, because I understand the material, I understand electrical impulses in the body, and maybe being less anxious or more in tune with my body’s capabilities and more in tune with how my body can better survive in the world, in the environment, and how meditation can bring more calm and being more in tune with these things. I was hoping you can talk more, and sort of define what spirituality is, or what is the action or the potential of spirituality in terms of it going beyond these, the physical?

Acharya das: Yeah, big question. Did people bring their sleeping bags?

In some of the yoga processes, like in what’s called sankhya yoga, they would do an analytical study of things to try and discover deeper meaning and appreciation of what is truly spiritual, and what it means. One of the things they would do—and I’ll share it. It’s kind of like a little bit trippy. Sorry if it’s going to freak anybody out.

It’s kind of like, you ask people, “So, how do you see? How is it that you see?” And the answer is, of course, “Oh, coz I’ve got eyes.” Okay, let’s lock you in a dark room with a blindfold. Now what do you see? Nothing. Do you still have eyes? Yeah.

That might seem a little bit dumb, but let’s take it a little bit further. The eye is a gelatinous ball that’s actually quite disgusting. If you had one in your hand you wouldn’t—it’s kind of like, “Yaaah!!” And all that’s happening, there’s a lens at the front, and you’ve got photosensitive cells at the back, and light enters, and it’s reversed through the lens, so there’s an image that is projected onto the photosensitive cells in the back of the eye, upside down, and each of them sets off an electrical impulse. That electrical impulse, it sets off a chain reaction of impulses up the optic nerve all the way to the visual cortex of the brain, then explodes with all of these electrical and biochemical reactions. Okay? That’s the process.

My question is, “Where is the picture? And who’s looking at it?” That’s just like, woah, really. And they would do that with sound and smell and all of these things, and it assisted them in this search to discover what—the Sanskrit word is drsha. Drsha means the seer, the one who’s actually seeing all of this stuff and experiencing that. And who is that, and what is that?

So along with those types of things and meditations, I do—which I’m just going to say are not necessary to go down that path, but they would spend decades involved in these processes which required heroic participation, where they’d utterly withdraw from the world just to really get into that.

By examining certain things—we have a desire for happiness, and it’s kind of like, why? What’s wrong with being on a bummer? Why do we find a bummer so disturbing? Why do we seek happiness? And they pointed out that it is because it is part of the nature of that spiritual being to exist in the experience of profound and limitless joy. They called it ananda.

But when the living being is embodied, and we have lost the plot, and we consider the body and the mind to be the self, then we seek to fulfill that need that we have for happiness through the agency of the covering. And that’s why we have the experience that even the most pleasurable experience, number one, it passes rather quickly, and it leaves us unfulfilled. It doesn’t give us the experience that we actually desire, if you look at it carefully.

They also understood that all fear arises from fear of death. And it’s sort of like, so why are we afraid of that? And again, it’s back to the nature of this spiritual being. The nature of the spiritual being, the spirit soul, is that we are eternal, and because of that we desire things to be permanent. All the kids’ stories that end with “…and they lived happily ever after,” that’s actually a spiritual desire, and we want it to be like that.

And so when we identify with the body, and we encounter death, a body that is dead, it is so disturbing. There is the element of the attachment, but what’s making that more pronounced is the fact that the person that I’m attached to is no longer there. The body is there but the person is not there. The person has gone. And because we are eternal we are fearful about impermanence. We are—we become disturbed by things that don’t last. We are anxious about things coming to an end. But it’s because there’s this confusion, where being an eternal being and having that natural tendency we’re misidentifying the body as the self, and we’re in the land, in the world of that which is temporary, and it unsettles us.

The desire for love, to both love and to be loved, actually emanates from the spiritual being. It is part of my eternal nature to be experiencing the most extraordinary, the most ideal, the most incredible and ecstatic experience of love. Because, again, I misidentify the body and mind as self, I try to find that love in this world; and none of my relationships completely fulfill that deep inner need and desire. And one of the problems with relationships is we put such a burden on a partner in a relationship to make it so I can perfectly experience love, that they can fulfill that need I have, and they can’t. They never will.

And when we understand that, then it alters the way—we don’t have unrealistic or false expectation. This discovery of our spiritual identity—the body is not a person, your personhood is part of the nature of –I don’t like the word “soul,” only because in the Western world it’s commonly used, but it’s so misleading, because you ask most people, “What is the soul?” and anybody that sort of accepts that idea, they’ll say, “I have a soul,” and then my question is, “Well, if you have a soul, who exactly are you? And what is the soul?” And when you ask that it’s kind of like. that’s utterly confusing, because I’ve never thought of that. And the thing is that you don’t have a soul, you are the soul. You are just misidentifying the body as the self.

In the yoga system they talk about this amazing process by which the living being, the spiritual being, is covered by a subtle and a gross body and becomes utterly absorbed in it and becomes completely blind to their own true spiritual identity. So those things that I’ve described are part of the nature of, in Sanskrit it’s called the atma, which means the self. The true self—the process of self-realization is not something that you acquire or that you get or that—It is an uncovering of your eternal nature which is already there.

It’s not—you don’t have to be special to be self-realized. You don’t have to be special to be enlightened. It’s about uncovering what is there. So this is a very profound experience. And as one begins to more deeply experience the reality of my own self, this inward journey to truly find myself and to experience the reality of my spiritual existence, one becomes utterly transformed.

I know that that’s probably not enough for you. I assure you it’s enough for now. It’s a very deep subject.

Audience member: Inaudible

Acharya das: You’re very welcome.

And can I just say, all the stuff we’re talking about, we’re only scratching the surface. There is a vast and limitless ocean of spiritual truth and things to discover.

Yeah?

Audience member: I was just thinking, like sometimes, when I sit to meditate, when I’ve got a lot of stuff, things going on in my life, and I decide to go and meditate, it can be—I experience a lot of suffering. Sometimes it’s unbearable. I’m feeling, physically I’m so uncomfortable in my own skin.

So I’m just thinking like, in your opinion, is the only, it’s the only way, going through and having to sit there for longer extended periods of time, or is it actually starting slower and doing smaller steps.

Acharya das: I would recommend, number one, probably smaller steps which are way more manageable. And you don’t have to take that route that you’re speaking of. The route that I’m promoting is, while that recognition will be there, that’s not the focus. The focus is to rest my heart, to rest my mind, my very being, in that which is transcendental. That has a purifying effect and it—you begin to—

You know the biggest problem in human existence is the fact that we are all spiritually malnourished. We commit so much time and energy and effort to feeding our mind, to feed our body, to feed our senses with different experience, and the living being is left in a very, I’ll use the word, malnourished. I don’t mean that it is, the spiritual being is not—doesn’t transform like that, can’t be starved, but the starvation is just the emptiness and the pain of wanting something more wonderful and profound, and sensing that there is probably something there that’s more profound, but I’m not getting to it.

The experience that you’re referencing is not uncommon or unnatural, because the more we become aware of the limitations of physical existence and being embodied and the nature of the world, then yeah, it may be shocking, and it may be a source of painfulness for us on a lot of different levels, not just in a shallow way, if I can use that word, but on a lot of different levels. So, being absorbed in that experience is not necessarily going to be helpful, because it needs to be more complete than that, rather than just the negative aspects, what’s going to bring the positivity to it; and that’s going to be the use of the meditation, of using spiritual sound will do that.

Is that helpful?

Audience member: Yeah.

Another audience member: Inaudible

Acharya das: Good evening.

Audience member. Hard to hear… Yeah, I just want, I would like to, share my incident with you maybe [really to like listen,??]  for everybody. I’m from Nepal, a med student there…

Acharya das: What part of Nepal?

Audience member: Pokhara

Acharya das: Pokhara, yeah.

Audience member: I’m from there. And then when I was in Nepal I just looking for my happiness in Australia yeah, and then I came here for pursuing my degree, and I also looking for like a good job and everything. Finally I got everything now, and then nowadays I realize all these things is not for happiness. So then I’m looking for a very spiritual pathway, how can I start, and then how can I go more deeper, and then I saw this, your site, and then I am here. Now so for studying the spiritual pathway, like what I need to read, or what I need to get knowledge from like which scripture or which books, or I can get myself in a different way?

Acharya das: So I have a website with about 300 videos. Back in 2016 I was moving from Hawaii. I’d been in Hawaii for about six years, back to New Zealand. And some friends, they gave me video camera and mike and told me I have to do that and share. So I got forced to do it. But it is my humble attempt to serve my teachers.

You will find that there is a lot of things are done within series, and they deal with a lot of the things that we encounter in life, and they offer ways to look at things from a spiritual perspective, and to deal with things in a different way and on a different level that can really improve the quality of your life. There are parts dealing with meditation and stuff.

If you have an inclination, and because of your background, I’ve also got a series there. I call it Bhagavad-gita Chalisa. So there are 40 verses chosen from the 700 that I think share some of the essential messaging. A lot of people will have difficulty actually with some of these texts if you just try to read them on your own, because they contain a lot of things that are not culturally familiar, different ways of looking at stuff and appreciating and understanding that we’re not maybe connected with. And so it’s kind of like, “What? What’s that?” And we may even find some things kind of like quite challenging, because it’s like, what does it mean? And so it it’s kind of good to have somebody hold your hand and walk you through it and present ways of appreciating and understanding. So I’ve tried to do it with that particular series.

People that are interested in the yoga thing I have actually translated the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, and I haven’t gotten very far. It’s been a few years since I worked on it. I’m always struggling with time, but there’s probably enough on there to give somebody some things that will be beneficial and helpful.

So my site is Acharyadas.com, not too difficult: a c h a r y a. This was a name given to me by my teacher. The acharya, the root of that is achar achar means like conduct and particularly really good conduct. And so one of the understandings is, there’s a number of ways you can understand the word, it’s used in different ways, but acharya means a great spiritual teacher who teaches by their own example. And I have “das” at the end, which means servant. I am a servant of the great teachers. So when I hear that, then I’m always remember—I’m reminded of what I should be doing in life and with my time. So that might be a place to start.

The Australian School of Meditation and Yoga are the ones that brought me out here. They’re a volunteer organization. I’m a volunteer. We’ve got some leaflets there on the table Rasalila is pointing to. They—there are some people, some of the guys here, the guy with the camera there, and the lady underneath it, and some of them, they are connected with that organization, and they have a meditation centre and yoga centre here. So I would recommend, they’ve got lots of online resources as well, but it’s a good place to make a start. Okay?

Yeah?

Audience member: My question is a little bit like—first of all, thank you for this, but, starting I feel like once you hit the chain reaction, like once you start becoming a little bit awaken you can’t stop, but there are a lot of people in my life who it would be really important for me to share this with, but they’re not even on the verge of say, trying meditation or trying yoga or something like that. My question is, I think as well maybe, it’s the pain element of it, because I think for me as well, we’re all aware underneath it [Acd: Yeah] we’re all—we all—but we’re kind of hiding from it because there is the initial pain, once you realize how long you’ve been kind of [Acd: Yeah] ignoring it. How do you kind of open up those sorts of conversations, and I know sometimes a lot of pain especially in people say my parents age as well, who— a very different mindset, like how do I [Acd: Yeah] how do I do that?

Acharya das: So they have a saying in English, “Physician heal thyself.” Have you heard that? Meaning if you’re wanting to practice as a physician but you yourself are ill from diseases probably a good idea to try and heal yourself so you can actually begin to work on others. So the need for you to grow in your spiritual experiences, that’s what’s really going to influence people, that maybe now they’re not ready to listen. Many people have, their life has been in many ways very tragic.

My time that I spent—I worked on a documentary on Criminal Justice Reform in New Zealand, dealing with a lot of the gangs and stuff, and the work I do in prisons, and it’s so utterly heartbreaking to hear the stories of what people have been through, on—you know, it’s not as bad as that, but everybody in their own life have experienced betrayal, and there’s been promises of something that is good and whole and everything, and then you commit to it, and then you feel terribly let down or even betrayed, so—and that happens on many different levels. And so it makes people understandably, not just cautious, but even a little fearful of letting down their guard.

And I highly recommend that people need to be guarded with your heart. Your heart is something very precious, and there are far more people in the world, even so-called spiritual teachers that are seeking to exploit your innocence than there are those that are actually seeking to share something very beautiful and wonderful.

So the need for caution is there, and it’s not that we should ask people to abandon their fearfulness of something, but they need to grow in trust, and that grow—that growth in trust will come from small experience that’s kind of compounded.

So the greatest thing that you can do for those that you care about is for you yourself to take this journey, even if it’s very challenging, and go through the transformation and become strong and become fearless and compassionate. And people, just being around you, will go like, “Wow, what’s going on? There’s some change going on here. What’s this all about?” And it rubs off, and people become more trusting and more open. As we grow ourself we will intuitively know how far to go with things.

Sometimes people get all fired up. They maybe come to something like this, and they hear something new, and then they dig into it, and then they’re just like, want to go out and evangelize, almost, you know what I mean, and just like start whacking everybody. No, no, you—Slow down.

You really need to take into consideration where people are at in their life, and what’s going on, and find the appropriate thing to share that will make a little difference even. So that is a skill that you will acquire with your own growth. But sometimes people don’t like to hear—for instance, parents often don’t like to hear from their kids, but somebody else says the same thing, and they’re like, “Oh, wow, yeah,” just because of cultural and relationship stuff. So be patient; and determined to make this journey.

And be humble and realize that we need grace, we need blessing, we need to be—we need mercy bestowed upon us. This is a very real thing that’s often not talked about by many people, in the yoga scene and stuff, but it’s absolutely a reality, and all of the ancient texts speak about it.

Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutra, he’s talking about the almost like mechanical processes to attain samadhi, and my God, they’re torturous and so difficult. And then, in mentioning the highest form of spiritual samadhi, asamprajnata samadhi, he then throws out a verse, isvara pranidhana dva, that by complete supplication of your heart to that which is Supreme, the Supreme Soul, one will be gifted with this experience. And it just like, it just opens up a whole different perspective. It’s not about me being accomplished and strong and smart and determined, it’s—I am being graced with something, and I’m so blessed and so thankful. So that’s a whole another path.

They call it in Sanskrit the aroha pantha, which means the ascending path, where it’s like you’re trying to conquer Mount Everest, you’re going to climb by your strength; and the other one is called the avaroha pantha, it is the path of submission and surrender, to live in great humility and become blessed that way. Cool or what? I know!

And you—this is only the very tiniest tip of the iceberg as it were. There’s so much more.

Audience member: Just getting back to your talk, you sort of spoke about how we went from being a collective society, to being brainwashed to being really selfish, [Acd: Yeah.] but then obviously the path to enlightment is to look at the self and to go in so you can transcend and give back to [Acd: Yeah.] the community and society, like it’s a bit of a paradox. But do you think we had to go through all of that, because back then to be selfish was really bad [Acd: Yeah] like selfless [word indecipherable] kids and parents and all of that, do you think we had to go through all of that to be okay with taking time for the self, to…

Acharya das: Yeah, from a social perspective, to be overly absorbed in family was considered counterproductive for the spiritual journey, because our spiritual journey is individual. It’s not a group activity. Although we may come together and discuss and chant, there’s a spiritual potency in that, my actual journey is individual. But there are wonderful things about community and being self-sacrificing, and I’m not talking about in a weird way, I’m talking about in a really healthy way.

Part of the nature of the spiritual being, as I said, was to—is to seek love, to love and to be loved. And the natural expression of love is to what? To give, to serve, to try and do nice things for those that we love. This is a profound tendency. And so acts of kindness touch us deeply. You can watch some YouTube video of somebody—somebody showed me one:

There was this guy trying to—he was on a wheelchair, it was somewhere in Asia, and he was trying to go down the street, and it starts raining, and he’s getting wet, and somebody ran out with an umbrella. The umbrella wasn’t big enough for both of them. He’s holding it over the person, the older guy in the wheelchair. He’s getting drenched, but he’s—and you see it, and it just, it’s so hearttouching, the idea of some form of self-sacrifice, to render some service, to show kindness.

I know parents—and it’s more common in certain Christian kind of communities, where they’ll take their kids once or twice a month, and go out and do volunteer work in a soup kitchen kind of thing, or doing these food packages to give to the less—going out and distributing them and stuff, because they want the kids to have that. It’s such a touching experience to do something nice for someone. And the reason that it touches us is because it connects with our deeper spiritual nature.

So while some of our practice may be ours and personal, many of the fruits that come from our practice lead us to engage in a very compassionate way, and to show—I mean, to take the spiritual journey is not actually selfish, it’s actually necessary, and it will lead to this expansion of your heart and to be more giving and to be more caring; but we have to do some of this on our own. It’s like you can’t do it in a crowded space where there’s lots of noise going on and stereo thumping and—

Audience member: Do you think it’s easier for us now cuz we are a bit more separate to sort of go, “Oh, we can take this time for ourselves” or it’s okay. There’s all this stuff about mental health, and making sure you’re okay first, then it was, back then when it wasn’t really okay to take time for yourself.

Acharya das: Ummm, I mean, when you—I mean, I’m much more comfortable in some of these older societies and the way they lived, and taking time for yourself when it was for spiritual pursuit, was never considered selfish. It was considered a very pious and—a thing that people would encourage; and so they didn’t look upon it as being a something that you had to stop people from doing, and it was bad, and it was selfish. They didn’t look at that type of activity as being self-centred, as many self-centred activities are now.

I’ll just throw another thing out there. This was in relation to the questions about the nature of our spiritual nature. It is understood that, in the embodied state, the living beings in this world that we encounter, we suffer from a common spiritual ailment. That spiritual ailment is to be utterly self-centred. I talk about “my partner,” or “my husband,” or “my wife,” “my children,” “my parents,” “my friends,” “my city,” “my country,” we use this terminology because it’s reflective of of how we see ourself, at the centre of everything.

But in reality, that is not our place to be at the centre of the world and centre of everything. This is actually completely contrary to our deeper spiritual nature. When we see ourself at the centre, we are more focused on taking rather than giving, in relationships and just the way we manage our life and everything, but we—it doesn’t stand out because everybody’s doing it. But from a spiritual perspective it’s considered a a serious form of corruption, of spiritual corruption.

And so I’ve used the example recently of, I remember visiting somebody’s house, and they had a coffee shop—aah, coffee table book. It was like shots from outer space, from astronauts. Each page, on the left side, there was often a picture, and then there was just a couple of sentences from an astronaut, and from all over the world, different astronauts; and they all had the same experience. Looking into the vastness of space and the smallness of this Earth was so humbling for them. And looking down upon the Earth where you could barely make out a seriously big city, with 10 or 12 million people in it, if you go all the way down there, and they’re in the middle of a—somebody having a fight, or in front of the telly, or whatever people are doing; and it’s all about me, and what I’m doing right now. And then as you move out, this idea of me being at the centre of everything is so absurd. I’m not truly appreciating my place, what is my actual position in relation to everything.

And so because of this type of culture, the pursuit of spiritual realization was generally, not always, but generally, not considered a selfish thing to do. It was considered to bring great fortune on the family, for instance, and you would develop good qualities, and that would be a great blessing to everybody around you. So it’s a different sort of perspective.

It’s nice. You—in older cultures, just the way that they would function and operate, like in their spoken language you have a different word for an elder brother and an elder sister, because even though you may not like it, if an elder tells you to, you need to do something, it’s kind of like, okay you, even though you don’t like it, you do it. You—there was a sense of duty. The way that they spoke to elders, there was certain choice of pronouns or address that showed respect in all these cultures, whether it’s folded hands or taking the hand of an elder and touching it to your forehead, it was considered—it created a sense of things that unfortunately is horribly lost in the Western world.

Yeah?

Audience member: Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Acharya das: You’re very welcome.

Audience member: I really like what you said about sanctuaries of light. I’m in one, right now. And for me, my question is, I really do put importance on like my spiritual life and my spiritual cultivation, and I’m really happy with where I’m at now, like I mean literally, now we talking about. But also there’s a big desire in me as a human being to also, like I consider life as a gift, so there’s within me, I think, an inherent desire of, I’d like to experience also becoming a parent or becoming a father. And would you think that parenthood is also tied with like spiritful cultivation which also helpful

Acharya das: It’s like everything in that it can be used one way, or experienced one way, or another. So in the Vedic teaching they said one should not become a partner in life, a husband or wife, one should not become a parent, a leader of society, a teacher, unless you can liberate those in your care. So there was the understanding that the greatest service that you can perform in that capacity as a parent is actually to show your children the path towards spiritual liberation and to encourage them, to teach them these things. They’re going to make their own choices, but sharing that knowledge, and being an example in your own life is good.

One of the fantastic things about being a parent is that you will be required to make much sacrifice if you’re going to be a real parent, and that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing. It’s temporary, meaning the development of a child up until it becomes independent is, it actually doesn’t take that long. While you’re in the middle of it, it seems like it’s going to go on forever, but it’s actually a limited opportunity; and if you do it with sacred intent it can really help you spiritually in a lot of ways, to learn tolerance and patience, to learn ways to address things, to try and help your children understand and to develop a healthy perspective. So I’m—personally I highly encourage it.

The things I advise people in life: try to be present at as many births as you can. It’s an astonishing thing. I ended up delivering three of my children of the four, but to be present during birth is deeply moving. It’s just, it’s profound. To be present at as many deaths as you can; particularly if you can sit at the bedside of someone, hold their hand and assure them there is nothing to fear, there is nothing to be afraid of. You are eternal. You will leave the body. You will not die. The body will die when you leave, but you will not, that this is normal part of life, and do not fear it, being able to share some understanding; and they take such solace in this, to have chanting around.

I was speaking with my father, that when the time comes for you to leave, these sacred sounds are like a boat that will carry you across the ocean of material existence to a safe place, and it’s the only thing that you can actually take with you.

So those two things are really—they really change your life. And it’s so sad that Western society has become so fractured and so petty in many ways, and there’s not a sense of sacrifice, of duty, of respect and stuff. Everything’s become so contentious, and it undermines, rather than strengthens people’s existence, it really undermines the nobility of human life.

Little advice: there was a famous sage. His name was Chanakya Pandit, and he compiled a work called the Niti Shastra, which had to do with political and social things also, but in life; and he advised, for children, that up until the age of five one should show tremendous affection to their child. From the age of 5 to 15 one need—they need to learn discipline. And of course, the understanding is you’ve got to move them away from being so utterly selfish and self-centred, because if you don’t, when they go out into the world, and they’re not going to get everything that they want, they’re going to be so fragile and not be able to function. And being disciplined is an essential part of it, but you need to do it intelligently and carefully.

But then, he advised, that from that point onwards one should become a close friend of their child, an actual friend. I mean—and this is one of the big tragedies in this world, and particularly in the Western World probably more so, is the relationship between parents and children. Parents don’t know how to do that. They don’t know how to take the lead, and creating an atmosphere where the child feels that I can come to you with anything, and talk to you about it, and you can guide me, you know, to feel that sense of intimacy and trust.

Cool stuff or what? Are we done? Huh? Yeah.

And we’re—a you’ll notice that what you just said and what we talked about, we get up and walk out the door, and you’re back into where you’ve come from, and what you’ve got here now, and people will be feeling it in different ways, is like light. The things that I’m sharing with you are not anything to do with me. These are eternal truths, and they lighten our heart. The process of meditation that you’ve been engaged in, in different ways, using these sacred mantras, they touch you in the core of your being.

With that I would like to thank you all so very—what? You? I know him.

Audience member: Thank you very much for the talk tonight and also thank you so much for all your podcasts. I find that really great thing to listen to and appreciate it. I did appreciate all the things you’ve always said, and you said in the talk.

One thing that catches my mind is that a fox can’t, apparently can’t smell their own scent, and in that way being a product of this time, I observe the issues, and I hear the insights that you say, but especially say like with 2020 lockdowns and stuff like that, what a great opportunity it is to meditate, relax but I couldn’t, that I was drawn, I had to find out “What the hell’s going on?” and was it was a sad, for myself, realization of like, oh God, I’m really in the, [words hard to hear]

Acharya das: Okay, I know him, well, so don’t get upset when I tell him. I’ll tell you exactly what the problem is. We have this tendency to be drawn to gossip, which is called gramya katha, which is actually very spiritually eroding, and that tendency towards gossip is just watching useless crap on your phone or on, you know, just scrolling all the shorts, all this kind of stuff appeals to a nature that is part of the mind.

Can I just say, in the Bhagavad-gita it states that the mind, which is not you, it’s covering you, can be one’s greatest friend or one’s greatest enemy. Your own mind can be a greater enemy than anyone or anything else, particularly when it’s unbridled. And the understanding was that our job is to determine what the contents of our mind is going to be, rather than our mind just independently rampaging and dragging us everywhere. We should be determining what it is that we’re thinking about, what it is that’s going to preoccupy us, how we are going to take things on board and process stuff. That’s our responsibility.

But we live in a time when everybody is taught to utterly surrender to their mind, and just chase it and follow it everywhere; and this is one of the massive contributions to what people call mental health issues. I have—so it’s this unfortunate attraction that part of the nature of the mind to be drawn, fundamentally to gossip, unpleasant things, which means people spend so much time in political battles and conspiracies, or just reading up—I mean a lot of the things I talk to you about tonight, I do it hoping that you’re not going to now go get lost down a rabbit hole and start checking all this stuff out. That we would have, we would have, that would be really counterproductive. If you want to check a couple of things out to verify I’m not trying to sell you a whole bunch of crap, then that’s fine, but don’t get lost in it.

But the tendency, you’ll see, is when you start discovering something, “Oh my God!” and then it—and then you wake up two weeks later and you dug yourself this massive hole. And it’s kind of like, “What!?” I’m sorry, not two weeks, two years later. Yeah.

And so we’ve got to understand that this is just part of the characteristic of the mind that’s going to pull us in these—

Audience Member: There was another part to that. Can you give me, give us a picture please, of what would be some good homework to do and take home with, and what’s a natural, kind of like a healthy way of—

Acharya das: Curbing?

Audience member: Well yeah, but also to actually, to instil some development and that spiritual revolution.

Acharya das: Yeah. So it’s really important in developing, for instance, a meditation habit, and this can be also applied to a habit of looking at things, yoga wisdom related stuff, where you actually allocate some time every day. In the beginning do small amounts, so you don’t get stuck with, wow, you get all enthusiastic, and you commit to something, but then you find you’re not able to do it, and so it’s kind of like, oh God, say maybe tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes, okay the next day, and okay I shouldn’t have done that, now I’m going to get into it and do a whole bunch of stuff. It’s the consistency of even small doses that will really begin to change you, and so that kind of applies with everything where you actually have that level of discipline where even in small doses you actually make a firm commitment to develop a practice, a spiritual practice.

Because it’s not me, and it’s not what I’m saying that’s going to make a difference. It’s going to be your engagement, particularly in that meditative process of being absorbed in that which is transformative, that which is spiritual, that will make the difference.

Okay, okay. Now we’re done. Thank you so much.

Would you like to do that?

He’s asking if we could have a little chant before we close out. If you need to go it’s fine. If  I’m going to chant again I will this time use the Mahamantra, sometimes called the Hare Krishna Mantra. I’ll just chant a couple of Hari Bol Nitai Gaur chants, and then do the Mahamantra.