peace of mind – Meditative Man

War and Stress

I am sure you have some thoughts on the ongoing war in Ukraine. You have to be living under the rock if you are not familiar with the situation by now. Has the war affected you personally at all? I know it has an effect on my psyche for sure. So today let’s talk about how we can cope with war-related stress. This of course assumes that you are physically far away from Ukraine. If you are in a war zone, this may not be of much help to you.

I didn’t even realize at first that I was having war-related stress. I could tell I was a little bit tense for a few days. I could not figure out what was going on. When I started to think about it, I realized that all this war talk is taking a toll. So I tried to figure out why was it affecting me personally. There is of course the compassionate part where I feel for the people in Ukraine but I thought it was deeper than that.

Upon further examination, I realized that it was more about the uncertainty that comes with the war. Affect the economy at a time when we are already in an inflationary environment. Potential for a world war iii if we do end up dragged into it, the potential for a global recession, and so forth. If you feel that your behavior has changed in the past couple of weeks, you might want to self-examine to see if you are having what they call “Headline Stress” – they actually, have a name for it! Who knew?

During my research for this episode, I learned that women and children have an increased vulnerability to the psychological consequences of war. Studies have shown that children have a higher rate of war-related stress than adults. This is kind of understandable because they are not able to process the situation and what they learn on the media tends to be scary.

Wo how do you know if you have war-related stress? Some of the things to look out for include, trouble concentrating, anxiety about the future, being easily irritable, lack of appetite, difficulty sleeping, difficulty making decisions, and so on.

So if you feel this is bothering you, how do you go about fixing it? Fortunately, solutions are simple and plenty. The first thing, to do is to control your intake. Being glued in front of breaking news is the last thing you need. I am not saying to turn yourself off from the information world we live in. But do not over consume the media feed. I got my aha moment when I was watching a news show and they repeated the same clip 6 times in the same one-hour program! That told me they were just hyping something for the eyeballs. Another thing I realized in the same newscast is the fact that a lot of this is propaganda. We only get a point of view. I saw this clip of alleged Russian army atrocities. When I analyzed the clip, I noticed that they did not show any army personnel, no one’s face was visible, there was no license plate on the car, and a few other things that would make the clip suspect. Between these two incidents, I got over my war news appetite. I am telling you, I instantly could see that my stress was relieved.

Another helpful tip is to limit your social media time. As we have discussed in the past, the social media feed keeps us in the bubble of our own opinions and does not allow us to look at the broader picture. Yet another thing to do is embrace uncertainty. Yes, the war is uncertain and it may have negative consequences in the economy, the job market, and such but there is nothing you can do so let’s just see what comes next.

The most important thing you can do is to make sure you maintain your health. Continue with your exercise routine, maintain healthy eating habits, and so forth. If you have not developed a meditation routine, this may be time to develop one. Spend 15 minutes a day meditating. You will be amazed at what that does to your peace of mind. If you are not able to do that, at least, take 10 deep breaths every hour.

Inherent Existance

We have talked about at length in the past about inherent existence part of so-called wisdom teachings. It’s been a long time since we talked about those so in the next few episodes, I would like to revisit this topic with different examples. First of all, what really is inherent existence? If you think about most of us take the existence of all phenomena as inherent. What does that mean? Well, let’s talk about any object. A car, or a house, or clothes, or a computer, and so on. We think it exists and does not think twice about it. As a matter of fact, we think exists inherently and cling to it. This grasping or clinging is what brings the most suffering in our lives.

I know this sounds crazy. So let’s break it down. Any existence is either inherent or it is not. What is inherent existence? A phenomenon that exits from its own side is considered an inherent existence. In reality, there is no such thing. No phenomena exist from its own side. For anything to exist from its own side, either it is the same as its part or a collection of its part. There is no other possibility. Let’s take an example. This is a book. Many of you have this book. You look at this book and you say of course it exists. Now, if we just take one page from this book, would you say this is a book? For example, if you order this book from Amazon and if they only send you one page, would you say you received the book? Of course not. How about the cover page of this book? If someone only gave you a cover page, would you say it’s a book? No, you would not. So we all agree that the parts of the book are not the book. How about a collection of the parts. If I give you all the loose pages would you say it’s a book? No way you say. So there is no inherently existing book. Well, then what is this thing we called a book. It is nothing but imputation. It is a book because we called it a book. It has no inherent existence. Another way to look at this is that it is a dependent existence. I recently learned that if the person loses their eyesight say around 3 years of age. If they recover their eyesight say around the age of 40, they would not be able to see what we see. For them is just a blurb. Because that part of the brain that associates images is not developed at that age, they are never able to see the things we see. Now, if the same thing happened to them at the age of 8 when the image association is fully developed, they will be able to see what we see when they recover their eyesight. So you see, it is a dependent existence. The same things that are in our experience are not in the experience of people who have not developed image association or people who are blind.

Let’s look at this pen. Can you point to the pen? Where is the pen? Is it on your screen? Is it in my hand? You see this pen because your eye senses look at a picture of the pen, your brain interprets that as a pen. In other words, the pen is in your mind. Without your brain interpreting this object like a pen, the pen does not exist for you. In other words, it is a dependent existence.

So there are people who believe everything exists inherently meaning from their own side. As we just discussed that is just not the case. There are people who believe nothing exists at all. That is surely not the case since we are experiencing these phenomena. There is a middle way. That says that all phenomena are imputed or dependent on existence. Nothing exists inherently and all existence is imputed.

Let’s look at another example, we all have a car parked in the garage. Let’s find if the car exists inherently. For a car to exist inherently, it can either be found in its parts or it is a collection of its part. So let’s begin with its tires. If someone gave us four tires, we will certainly not call it a car. How about if someone gave us a bunch of bucket seats? Well, that is not a car. How about a door, or an engine, or brake pads? None of these parts is a car. If you take all the parts of the car put them on the ground, we won’t call it a car. So there is no inherently existing car. It is a car because we all decided to call it a car. In other words, it is an imputed existence.

Again, this is a deep subject. I would like to pick this up next week on the same topic. So we can investigate a little more to make sure that we are all on the same page as to inherent existence.

Peer Pressure

When adults do it, we call it keeping up with joneses and when kids fall for it, we call it peer pressure. Either way, it is one of those traps that can suck one into a downward spiral. So today, let’s discuss peer pressure and how best to navigate it. I read about a story where in our local school district, kids are involved in this TikTok challenge where they steal toilet paper from the school restrooms or otherwise destroy the restroom and put a picture on TikTok. How crazy is that?

Peer pressure is nothing new. And there is nothing wrong with hanging out with friends who are trying out different things. It becomes a problem when we allow their behavior to influence our decisions. For teenagers, this is especially difficult. They are trying to get acceptance from their peers and be part of the “cool” group if you will. This is the same for adults when otherwise rational people try to keep up with the lifestyle of their peers. It all comes down to who we are as people and if we are comfortable in our skin. If we are happy with who we are, we will never try to impress other people. And this is the rub really. Most people are trying for approval from external sources. We look for validation from our colleagues and friends of the choices we make for ourselves.

Psychologists say that people overspend beyond their means just to impress other people or to fill a void within themselves. In a consumption economy, we are actually encouraging this behavior by making credit easily available to anyone and everyone without regard to the ability to pay back. A lot of these material items are flashed as a signal of wealth instead of a signal of debt.

I had an interesting conversation with my cousin a few years ago. She was visiting from India and we were chatting and she asked how come a lot of minimum wage employees were able to afford the latest iPhone. It was a great question. I explained to her that when people buy these items, they are not looking at the cost of the product but the monthly payment. Can they afford that additional $20 monthly payment, then they buy it without concern about savings or anything else. I have nothing again taking on debt for appreciating assets such as a home but when one takes on debt to pay for consumables where value deteriorates within the first few months, you are just taking the unnecessary financial burden.

This is purely a psychological issue rather than a financial education issue. People want to keep up with those around them and impress them so they splurge without regard to their own financial situation.

So how do we get out of this cycle of comparison? The first thing to realize is that happiness comes from within. No matter the external conditions, if we are content with who we are and what we have, we will not need external stimuli for our happiness. One way to develop this state of mind is through meditation. Create a daily meditation practice with an emphasis on “I have everything that I need at this moment”. Another way is to develop a gratitude practice. Be thankful for what you have and that brings contentment which leads to happiness. We have talked about both of these at length in the past. I encourage you to review our Gratitude episode as well as the Contentment episode on the YouTube channel.

The next thing you can try is to figure what your value is. If someone drives a fancy car, do you value the car or is it just for show? Once you know your values you will stop competing and that is when you will begin to see changes. It also helps when you stop following influencers on social media. They are there to paddle consumables. It is their job but that does not mean that we have to follow them. And most important thing is to realize that self-worth has no relation to material worth. They are completely detached from each other.

Once you implement some of the solutions outlined here, you will begin to feel change where you can still hang out with your friends without being in need to compare your lifestyle with theirs. I hope this is helpful in some way to you or someone you love. One thing I would strongly suggest is to instill these values in our kids at an early age. The Sooner they realize they don’t need to do anything to impress someone else, the better off they will be in their lives.