Notes by Rishaan Sachania
11.16.22
- Joy is the state of mental quietude
- The mind should always be in the present, absorbed
What brings us to joy?
- Selfless actions – reduce the strength of our likes & dislikes
Why can’t we experience joy when we do something we don’t enjoy?
- We are too focused on what we’d rather do and how we’d feel when doing the task
Prince Arjun asks, “What are the things that will take me to selflessness, what should I look out for?”
- Prioritize, Viveka: the faculty of discrimination
- That is the quality that always moves us towards our goal and without it, life just sweeps us into whatever it wants to
- Our actions then will not take us to where we want to go
How do we know what to prioritize?
- The actions that force us to grow the most and those that are the most important
- Indicators: the ones that we’d rather not do
Prince Arjun asks, “How do I get myself to do something which I know will cause me sorrow?”
- Proper knowledge, which we can apply
- For example, if someone sees a smoker and tells them that smoking is bad, the smoker will simply brush it off as he already knows it is bad, but continues to smoke
- Only until is he diagnosed with lung cancer does he realize that what he is doing can really harm him
- Likes and dislikes are expectations of what will happen during the action, the joy we seek is already inside of us (we don’t need objects to bring out that joy)
Prince Arjun asks, “How do I become more efficient in my actions?”
- Act decisively: don’t second guess, think about the factors, make a decision and stick to it
- Don’t worry about the future because we don’t have control over the result of our actions
- We do have control over our efforts and the more efforts we put in, the more can we guarantee better results
Prince Arjun asks, “You’ve been describing this perfect person, how does this person look, act, etc. what are they like?”
- A person of steady wisdom
- This person is able to sacrifice, let go of their desires of instant gratification
- Before we sacrifice, we need a goal
- When thinking about the ideal, ask what type of (for example) son/daughter do I want to be?
How do we let go of the things that prevent us from reaching our maximum potential?
- Take on more responsibilities as it forces us to get rid of our bad habits
- For example, organizing a study session with classmates for an upcoming test (you are taking the responsibility of hosting the session)
- This is good for people who struggle with finding motivation
- To apply sacrifices in our lives, make daily vows to ourselves everyday
Instant gratification with our devices:
- The more we go on our devices and use it with no intention (mindlessly scrolling), it will then become harder to delay our gratification (harder to sacrifice)
- When we engage in actives with less dopamine after continuously using our devices, it makes these activities seem much worse than they actually are
- If we were to spend less time on our device or even to detox, our dopamine would go down because of the less instant gratification that we are receiving and will be easier to do tasks that we initially didn’t like doing