Tag: meditation

Hatred

If you look at all the problems we are having as well as all the problems in the world, there are typically three causes. Greed, Hatred, and Ignorance. Today we will discuss hatred and how it can destroy our lives as well as civilization.

Before we talk about hatred from a personal perspective, I want to talk about hatred in society. If you look at every war in the history of mankind, it has its root in hatred. Every terrorist attack is a result of hatred. That hatred that was towards other people or the people we did not understand has now become against each other. A lot of civil societies are on the verge of being torn apart. Politicians are pitting people against each other creating divisions. Look at Great Britain or Brazil or Argentina or India or right here at home, good old US of A. We are fighting amongst ourselves because the politicians are creating a divide that works for their short-term benefits. We have broken down society in so many little slices that no one thinks about the big picture anymore. It used to be that what’s good for the goose was good for the gander. Now every goose, every gander, every duckling needs their own island and no one wants to share.  

Media is largely to blame because without media being complicit, the politicians would not have a way to distribute this hatred. I especially, remember during Tump’s presidency here in the US—no matter your politics, there was this daily hatred spilled out by major cable networks. If he sneezed, he was spreading germs and if he did not, he was holding something up! It was insanity. But that is what gave fuel to the fire. The same story is playing out everywhere it seems.

Now that we understand societal hatred hopefully we can all think rationally without regard to what the media is spouting out. Hopefully, you recall from our Karma series that there is such as thing as collective karma. You might revisit our Karma videos as a refresher.

Now let’s look at hatred at an individual level. Where does the hatred come from? The root cause of hatred tends to be our belief that our I is inherently existent. We grasp on that I that self so more important than everything else around us. Hatred is also aversion meaning a strong dislike. We tend to dislike things that we consider different from us. We don’t think that is part of us or that we are all interconnected. So we develop aversion towards those beings. Once we separate ourselves from others, judgment comes. This is what breeds hatred. Without judgment, there is no hatred.

So how do we get rid of hatred? Just wishing or determination would not help. The antidote to hatred is loving-kindness. We covered this at length as well in one of our previous episodes. I recommend you might want to check that out. But the gist of this is that we need to develop a loving relationship with all living beings. A wish that says “I want everything for you and nothing from you.” It is that simple. If we begin to develop that wish slowly but surely hatred will disappear from our lives. Now that may not be completely possible. If that is the case, try practicing loving-kindness towards the feeling of hatred you are experiencing. In other words, accept the feeling, be comfortable with it and the hatred will disappear.

There is one other type of hatred that we all have experienced and that is self-hatred. This is one of the worst kinds of hatred if you will. It will destroy you internally. It smashes our self-confidence, brings self-doubt, frustration and we become hopeless. All we are doing is telling ourselves that we are not worthy and that we are not qualified and so on. We are exaggerating our bad qualities. But in reality, it is just a mental image or perception we have of our specific quality. There is nothing behind that mental image to support it. It is something our mind made it up. It is just a hallucination or mental projection.

So how do we solve self-hatred? The first thing we need to do is acknowledge it and realize how harmful that is to us. The next thing to realize is the fact that we are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are just passing clouds in a big blue sky. If we start examining our mind during meditation, the peacefulness that brings will tremendously help in eliminating a lot of negative thoughts. This is not a one-day exercise. It happens over time and requires consistent meditation practice to get in touch with our inner peace. Once we turn our attention inwards, we will see how wonderful it can be. This also allows us to identify with our shortcomings without identifying with ourselves. In other words, realizing that we are not our faults and our faults or shortcomings are passing and we can change those habits that we may have developed.

Hopefully, this is helpful and you can put this into practice in your daily lives.

Greed

Let’s talk about something that all of us are guilty of at some point or another. Greed. It is easy to sneak in and hard to get rid of. Remember Gordon Gekko from the famous movie Wall Street? He glorified Greed. I remember the dialog which goes Greed is Good.

Greed has sipped into our society so much that no one thinks it is bad anymore. We put greedy people on a pedestal and give them the highest of regards. Our best and brightest want to work for wall street and law firms as opposed to go invent the next best thing or cure cancer or help humanity.

We live in a society where everyone is fleshing their possessions on social media like it is some type of competition. When did living become an Olympic sport? We all are chasing this elusive dream that if only we had a little more we would be just fine. Growing up I heard this story that I am sure you all may have heard it. There is this guy who goes to the King. He says, I am measurable and I would like to live comfortably. King was generous so he said fine, I will give you a piece of land. The guy said how big? The King goes, as much as you can take. You start when the sun rises at a specific point. You start walking. The only condition is that you must come back to the same point before the sunsets. All the land you cover during that time is yours forever. The guy was really excited. He was all ready to go come sunrise. He started walking. He was covering good ground. By the lunchtime came about, he thought of stopping for lunch but told himself he could skip lunch one day. The more time he spent walking, the more land he would get. So he keeps walking. By around 2 pm he was really tired. He slowed down. But he did want to stop. He thought he should start walking towards the original point but decided to continue instead to make sure he could cover more ground. He keeps walking and all of a sudden it is 4 pm. Now it is really getting late. So he began to walk back towards the original point. He realized he may not make it back so he started to run. He kept running it was a few minutes before sunset. He could see the origin point. It was all within his grasp. He was going to be rich with all this land in his name. But he was tired. He could not even walk let alone run. He was dragging himself. Out of energy. As the sun was going down, he fell down and stretched his hand. He was maybe a foot short and the sunset. He could not make it. He died on the spot. All he needed was six feet of land for his burial. Greed made him lose his life.

Why do we become greedy? Greed comes from our burning desire for something. We get greedy because we think those things will provide us long-lasting happiness. But the goalpost keeps moving. What you think would give you long-lasting happiness keeps changing with every passing moment. Once we achieve what we set out to achieve, we may get temporary satisfaction but not lasting happiness. Our goals will change again and we will start chasing again. Greedy people are never content with what they have. Greed also shows up as a lack of generosity and compassion towards others.

Let me give you an example. I am sure you have heard this animal rescue advertisement on TV with Sarah Mclaughlin’s song in the background. I was in a seminar with the guy who started that foundation. He has since passed. He told me he was so smart that he started this non-profit foundation and he had his own business that had a contract with the non-profit to provide T-Shirts and other things to non-profit at an inflated price. He thought he was a genius taking money from people in the name of charity and benefiting himself.  When that becomes a badge of honor, something is wrong with our society.

Let me give you another example. Someone called me up recently about some advice. I asked him what he was trying to achieve. He said his goal was to make $8,000 per day. So I asked him a few questions and realized that he was making a decent living. So I told him, why he was putting so much pressure on himself when he was making a decent living and most people would love to be in his situation. I said why not enjoy the remaining time he had with his family rather than chasing this elusive $8,000 per day goal. He said my wife and parents are saying the same thing. I was like, maybe you should listen to her! Anyway, towards the end, I suggested that he should not chase this and just be happy with what he had. So he said, Nirav, I can teach you how to make $8,000 per day! See, he did not listen to a word I was saying. Here I was trying to get him off this drug called greed and he was trying to get me hooked!

It is very difficult to get rid of greed. But fortunately, there is hope. The antidote to Greed is Generosity. More generous we are – with our possessions, our time, etc.; less greedy we will be. We have talked about generosity in the past. I strongly suggest you go back and read the generosity blog or the generosity video on our YouTube channel.

Dealing w Teenagers

Last week we received a request to talk about how best to deal with teenagers. So let’s try to tackle this age-old problem for every parent in today’s session.

Someone sent me a perfect WhatsApp message I want to say five or so years ago. It went something like, don’t live your dreams through your kid’s lives. What a perfect sentence. We all are guilty of living our dreams through our kid’s lives sometime or another. The Sooner we realize it is not healthy for either the kid or the parent, the better off we are. This is one of the biggest obstacles when dealing with teenagers. It is an age when kids are just forming their own dreams and aspirations and want to be independent. This is also an age when a parent thinks the kid is at an age where they can mold their dreams onto kids’ life! So the first thing we must recognize is that it is their life. We are here to support them in any way that we can but we must not interfere with their lives.

When we talk about teenagers in the western world, we should also realize the amount of pressure these kids are experiencing. This is the age when bullying usually starts at school. They also are trying to fit into different social dynamics of the end of middle school and beginning of high school. This is a rough time for kids. Let me give you an example. When my son went to high school, the very first week, one of his friends (this was a small skinny dude), was hung in a locker by some older bully and he was stuck in that locker for a few minutes. Imagine the trauma that the kid went through. Not only him but his friends and everyone else who found out. For example, my son started talking roughly after that incident. I told him he did not need to talk that way and he said yeah I do otherwise I would get in the same situation as the other guy! So you can imagine the pressure these kids feel just to stand up for themselves.

On top of all that, the kids have other pressures such as academic pressure, social pressure, pressure to participate in extra-curricular activities, and pressure to perform in athletic events! Growing up, we never had pressure to perform or no one had to tell us to join extracurricular activities or sports. We just did. Today, the kids are talking about college preparation at an early age. Elite colleges have made the lives of a teenager miserable. They are expected to participate in all kinds of activities and excel at them along with their academics. Let’s draw a comparison. You all have high-flying jobs. Let’s say your company expected you to spend 10 hours a week on nonprofit activities and not only that, excel at those activities, improve the impact of those organizations. In addition, they expected you to participate in competition-level athletics that required 10 hours a week of your time to prepare. I am sure you would be exhausted and quit by the end of the week!

So as you can see, the life of a teenager is very difficult in today’s world. So the question is not how to deal with the teenager, the real question is how to help your teenager. The first thing, I would recommend is that show them you understand the problems they are going through. Appreciate the efforts that they are putting into different activities. Once they realize you get the kind of effort they are putting in, they will respond accordingly.

The next thing is to be there for them. As I pointed out, they have so many pressures that sometimes, all they are looking for is an ear. I don’t think they want your advice but they do want someone who listens. Just listen without giving advice (chances are they would not like your advice at this age).

Now you say but what about when they are making wrong decisions. For example, what if they are not doing well in their classes and you know they can do a lot better (say they are getting Cs when you know they are A+ students). The only thing you can do in such situations is to explain to them the importance of the right actions. Why they should be putting effort into their education and so on. Show them the consequences they may face down the road (not consequences from you in terms of punishment but real-life consequences of unable to get into their dream schools etc.). After that, just let it be. The Sooner you realize it is their life better off you will be for your peace of mind. I have this mantra I have been using for the past five years or so, your life your decisions. We all have to face the consequences of our decisions. You cannot change that. Just accept it for what it is.

One last thing I would mention is that our kids come with their own set of Karma. If we accept that fact, we would not try to interfere in their lives as much as we do. We would instead, foster a loving environment and just let the things be.

Discernment

Today we will wrap up our discussion on the six perfections. The last perfection we are looking at is discernment also known as judgment. It is our ability to discern what is real and what is not.

There are three fundamental aspects of discernment: we must accept conventional reality; accept ultimate reality; recognize non-duality. Let’s look at this one at a time.

Conventional reality is a day-to-day reality. It is completely an internal mental representation. Meaning it is all playing out in our minds. For example, when we see something, actually our eyes see the image and that image is then inverted in the retina and then our mind actually interprets the image. This is true for all of our senses. Our mind interprets our sensations of touch, smell, etc. Human senses are limited. The human eye is capable of seeing only 1% of the light spectrum. So what we see is limited. Similarly, we cannot hear all the frequencies of sound. In addition, we are bound by emotional distortion that limits our ability to perceive. For example, when we are afraid, we see things that are not there and when we are distracted we don’t see things that are there. That is why eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.  

Conventional reality depends upon cultural agreements if you will. We all agree on a set of rules that allows us to accept certain things as long as perception meets the function.

Part of conventional reality is to recognize that every cause produces similar effects in nature. The second assumption is that all effects have multiple causes and conditions. It is never a one-to-one relationship. There are multiple causes and conditions that have to come into place to manifest a particular effect. For example, when you buy a seed it does not create a plant. You need to plant it, put fertilizer in the soil, it needs rain or watering, sunlight, and so on. All of these causes and conditions must come into play for the seed to become a plant.

Ultimate reality is just like it says, the real truth. We don’t have direct access to ultimate reality but there are principles that we can understand. 1. There are no inherent characteristics. For example, beautiful to one person would be different for someone else. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What one person finds attractive another person finds repulsive. It is always subjective. So the characteristics do not exist from its own side. All characteristics are imputed. Long, short, far, near, strong, weak, good, bad, large, small, all of these are subjective and are imputed. We should also however apply a functionality test on it. For example, killing is bad or good are both imputed but functionally, killing is bad because it is bad for the one who gets killed. 2. Interdependence of all beings and equality of all beings is a fact. Interdependence is the basis of all science. Without pollination, for example, there is no agriculture. So interdependence is a fact. Equality is a fact because each being feels they are important. So this makes us all equal. We all want to be happy. There is no question about it.

Non-duality means that ultimate reality is the basis of conventional reality – meaning they are not separate from each other. These are not separate concepts. We must have a basis for everything. Without basis, we cannot even have distortion. All beings share the same essence. Science tells us this. We all have at core the same basic atomic structure. In the spiritual realm, we say all beings have the same soul or the very subtle mind.

Once we have these three basic components in mind, it becomes easy to discern. We accept what needs to be accepted, assume what needs to be assumed, and respect what needs to be respected. The combination of this wisdom is what gives us true perception. As we discussed in the past, the function of our mind is to perceive. Once we understand these basic principles, our perception becomes clear. Our judgment becomes clear and our decisions are better.

It is good to promote discernment in today’s world because people are susceptible to believe anything and everything without reason. One can choose to believe what they want as long as they understand that it is just a belief and not based on truth.

Instant Happiness

We live in the age of instant gratification. So I thought I would offer you an instant gratification version of meditation today! We have talked about happiness on and off here for the past year. I have talked about how real happiness comes from within and that outer problems should not affect our inner happiness. On one level all of you have told me that it makes sense but difficult to grasp. Today, I want to prove to you that real happiness is within us. We will do a meditation known as transfer of enjoyment meditation to show this.

Before we do that though, let’s talk about how many of us can say we are really happy all the time? Forget all the time, how many of you were truly happy meaning no delusions – no anger, attachment, hatred, upset, hurt feeling, jealousy, and so forth for a full 24 hour period? Hardly any one of us can say we have been truly happy for a straight 24 hour period. It certainly comes and goes. We are happy for a while and all of a sudden, our mind starts to wonder and gets to a negative place, and poof, it destroys our happiness. So why is that? If we are on a vacation, we should be free from all worries. But even on vacation, something disturbs our peace of mind. Geshe Kelsang says in the book How to Transform Your Life, “Inner peace, or mental peace, is the source of all our happiness. Although all living beings have the same basic wish to be happy all the time, very few people understand the real causes of happiness. We usually believe that external conditions such as food, friends, cars, and money are the real causes of happiness, and as a result, we devote nearly all our time and energy to acquiring them. Superficially it seems that these things can make us happy, but if we look more deeply we will see that they also bring us a lot of suffering and problems.”

This is similar to what I mentioned earlier. When we are on vacation and if something sets us off, we are no longer happy. So, it is certainly not our surroundings that make us happy. I think we can say for sure that everyone wants to be happy. No exceptions. Have you met anyone that does not want to be happy all the time? Their definition of happiness may be different but they all want to be happy –  free from suffering. If all of us have the same desire to be happy, happiness should be not as elusive as it has been. The reason for this elusiveness is that we are looking for our happiness in the wrong places. Some people look for happiness in food, money, travel, sex, drugs, big houses, fancy cars, and so on. None of that can give us permanent happiness. We are told early in life that you achieve a certain career goal, get married, have kids and happiness will follow. Well, the divorce rate tells us that is not true! We have turned this whole thing backward. Rather than being happy with the journey, we are teaching kids to look for a destination. This in turn creates unreasonable expectations as kids are growing up and sets up them for a lifetime of unhappiness. Happiness is a state of mind. If we develop a positive state of mind, we will naturally be happy. This is what we need to train ourselves into. Fortunately, there is a shortcut to this process called Transfer of Enjoyment meditation. This meditation is a doorway into this practice of getting our mind to a happy state in an instant. It is however not the be-all and end-all. Initially, it is a good practice to use this meditation until we get to a point where we can get into a happy state of mind on demand. Without needing any external stimulus.