ViBha Class Notes: February 20, 2022

The message of Shrimad Bhagavata is high thinking. The evidence of this is in the first verse where the last teaching is Satyam Param Dhimahi – May we contemplate on the truth. The message of the CHYK culture, of the young adults movement is also high thinking. How so? When they are engaged in high thinking, then they are stronger than pressure. A prerequisite to high thinking is simple living. Simple living is a catalyst to high thinking, and to show evidence of this – if we analyze Ashtanga Yoga, the eight practices in becoming free, it starts with Yamas and Niyamas, which is to simplify our lifestyle, and then it grows to Dharana and Dhyana, which is high thinking. 

There are several icons of Simple Living in terms of Sanatana Dharma, but the one Vivekji would like us to tune into is Bhagavan Shiva, an icon of simple living. Whatever everyone else does not want, He accepts, in terms of articles, being and circumstances. No one wanted the poison, but He just accepted it. In Vedanta in Bhagavata, and in Stronger than Pressure, we are leveraging Vidya, we are utilizing knowledge. Another definition of Vidya is remembering. So in the remaining part of the class, we will learn how to live simply. Simple living is required for high thinking. It is the means to the ends.

We have explored tips for Happy Living. Now we will explore tips for Simple Living through an acrostic poem, using the word SHIVA. Each of these is to be practiced serially – 

1. S – Set your Nature. If we are confident about what our nature is, that is if we are confident that our nature is Joy, then all that we interact with, we will not try to extract Joy from it. If someone is functionally rich and they know that, then they are not looking to start additional businesses. If we feel that our nature is the mind and we set that, then everyday we will engage in the development of the mind, and not just the body. So set our nature. For those who are able to tune into this, that our nature is Infinity and Divinity, then all else naturally becomes relative. If our nature is absolute, then our clothes are relative, our scores are relative, our friends are relative, our body aches are relative, our negative thoughts are relative. If they are relative, then we can treat them as relative. How many of us dreamt last night, and when we woke up what did we do with our dream? That dream is relative, so we renounced it. When we set our nature, we are able to let go of all that is relative. 

We should set our nature in the morning. Anyone who wants to cultivate simple living means one has to be a morning person. The later one stays up at night, the more complex living becomes. We should try to do this in the morning so that the rest of our day is set too.

2. H – Handle for Evolution. What is the purpose of all that we experience? It is for our evolution. And if we know and handle that it is for our evolution, then it becomes that much more purposeful, meaningful. There is a saying that we learn more in adversity than in prosperity. Do we agree with that 100%? Initially yes, but for those who are more mature, they learn in prosperity as well. Whether an experience is adverse or easy, it is for our evolution. Whenever we handle any kind of experience for evolution, then that experience becomes more joyous. We come to know our nature more. 

Learn from every experience. Nothing that happens to us is casual. There are no accidents. We should also not forget the importance of Vitamin R3 – Read, Write and Reflect. So now that we are a morning person, we should start with Vitamin R3. Once we create the impression that we should learn, then the rest of the day becomes more interesting. Those who do not handle for evolution, tend to be more bored, and bored people are boring, just as interested people are interesting. 

3. I – Invest in Effort. Knowing that everything in our life is for our evolution, then it becomes our responsibility, and we should give resources, time and most of all effort to our evolution. We should work hard, and smart. Those who work hard, it feels like they are doing one thing at a time, but those who work smart, they create a system for many things to get done at a time. Not in the sense of multi-tasking, but they keep investing into their responsibility and figuring out ways for things to become more beautiful, more powerful. This is one of the coded messages of Bhagavad Gita where Bhagavan Krshna tells Prince Arjuna – Focus on your efforts, and not on the results. Anxiety relates to the future. What do we hope will happen in the future? Results. But if someone is following what Bhagavan Krshna has taught about focusing on effort, then we are less dependent on results, which means we are less dependent on the future, which means we have less anxiety. In most families, there is more emphasis on excellence than on effort and the danger of that – Most of us may find that our academic or professional lives to be fairly easy, but eventually we will meet someone who is finding it easier and is more successful. And when we meet that person, we will be crushed because our whole lives we have been excellent, and now there is someone who is more excellent and we don’t know what to do with that, so we feel crushed. But the one who invests in effort, they will be the master of their own security and of their own joy. 

Invest in that which helps us to live in the present. In the present, there are no anxieties. In the present, there is unitasking, there is quietude. 

Our workshop relates to High Thinking and to be able to engage in High Thinking, we first have to facilitate Simple living. An icon for Simple living is Bhagavan Shiva. What does Bhagavan Shiva wear for a lower cloth? He uses animal skin. Those animals have naturally died and He has used that skin. He didn’t kill that elephant and then use the skin. So Simple Living: S – Set your nature, H – Handle for evolution, and I – Invest in effort. Now we proceed to V. 

4. V – Value the Deep. Authenticity and depth – Humans tend to look for these two qualities in other humans to have beautiful relationships. Valuing the deep means having relationships that are authentic and deep. Automatically that means quality, and not quantity. Now let us expand that to our education. For those who are in college, how many are in a program that we want to be in or are in a program that our parents or family or society wants us to be in? If we are not, what are we valuing then? We are letting someone else live our lives. Valuing the deep means that we focus on what is more quality oriented for us, in terms of relationships and in terms of our education. The more depth there is, the more stability there is. On the surface of an ocean there is a lot of noise, but as we go deeper, there is less noise. Many of us are challenged by change and that naturally happens in terms of the shallow, but if we are tuned into the deep, there will be more stability. Valuing the deep means we are nurturing our own security. We are living our life so that we have less Fomo (fear of missing out), so that we have more Jomo (Joy of missing out). Our security is not dependent on any external factor. It is all internalized. We wake up in the morning, we are being in the present, ready to learn from all our experiences, and in all this we will begin to feel more secure. This then leads to the final practice for Simple living.

5. A – Absorb the Shallow. Not everyone is deep. It’s a rare personality trait. A typical person is shallow. They are focused on the shallow, which means they will always be deflecting their weaknesses onto us. A great sign of one who is shallow is they deflect. Vivekji gave an example of his children when they set up trains and tracks in the living room and occasionally will trip on them and ask, “Who put that there?”. They deflect and are frustrated and angry by that. That will happen to us and when we know that another is deflecting their weaknesses on to us, we tend to react by saying “It is your fault”. Instead, just absorb. Just smile and nod. Just absorb, as it helps us and them too. In a more psychological sense, absorbing the shallow is forgiving ourselves, which helps us to forgive others. We all make mistakes. We are not the mistake, but we make mistakes and that’s the shallow part of who we are, so we have to just absorb that. We have to forgive ourselves and it is critical to be able to move on. Those who do not invest in effort, they experience anxiety, and those who do not absorb the shallow, they experience regrets. What happened? – and they keep on offering more and more thoughts to that, and they are stuck.

Set your nature, Handle for evolution, Invest in effort, Value the deep, Absorb the shallow – these are 5 ways we can practice being like Bhagavan Shiva. One more name of Bhagavan Shiva is Ashutosh – the One who is easily pleased, the One who is independently content. Simple living becomes the catalyst for high thinking. How do we know we are engaged in high thinking? Become Ashutosh – easily pleased, ever grateful. 

Discussion: Bhagavan Shiva has many names. He has an entire Sahasranama or more than a thousand names. One of His names is Shambhu. Sham – joyous, egoless, Bhu means being – the One who is joyously being. Only when one is Shambhu can one become Shankara – Sham is here again and kara means doing, helping others. Only when one is joyously being, then one can one help others joyously be. Based on this analysis – 

What are ways to stop living others’ lives (becoming) and to start living our life (being)?

Vivekji’s thoughts: Pujya Swami Tejomayanandaji once shared – It is only when we ever remember that we are dying, will we ever remember to live. Instead of approaching this fatalistically, we should take this productively and become someone who is not just hard working, but also smart working. Vivekji visualizes those who are close to him as dying or dead. That way he doesn’t take them for granted. It sounds extreme, but that’s how we start to not live others’ lives. 

RAW: Continue with our RAM – Reflection Adventure of the Month: From February 6 to March 6, one has to reflect on a verse a day, a total of 28 verses (14 – 41) from Chapter 87.