Art of concentration in the age of Distraction - ICAI National Conference_Radheshyam das

0:01 foreign and all the other students who are organizing this event it's a very big event massive event and a couple of days event I heard and I'm also thankful to the organizers for giving me the opportunity to share something with all of you today first of all let us talk a little bit about the Mind before we can get to the topic of concentration you see mine can be compared to your Dam or mine can be compared to your flood after the two which one has energy has flood God energy or the dam got energy what do you say

0:48 which has energy Shakti flood or a dam okay how many of you say damn raise the hand let me see okay how many of us say flood okay actually both of them have energy Dam has potential energy and flood has kinetic energy both have energy but out of the two which one you think is constructive which one is destructive dam is constructive and the flood is destructive so you want your mind to be like the dam or the flood yeah that's the main point here if you can understand this point well then as we sail through the session it

1:34 will be beneficial to you like you see one doctor said when you become extremely angry it is like running five miles distance that much energy you spend when you lose your temper on somebody and the same is true when you are feeling greed and your mind is extremely Disturbed I went to Market yard in Pune in one of the shops one millionaire was sitting he has a heart problem but in his shop he has got the stock market situation going on on a TV screen so as the rates are rising and going down his heart is also like this now so he's getting affected by it so I told him sorry you have a heart problem why do you keep this in front of you

2:20 so he said what can you do I can't do without it but he's facing problems which means he is actually draining his energy due to the emotion of greed you can see that similar when to do the emotion of anger so these are all negative forces in our system which drains our energy one of the highly draining agents is the modern day distractors there are many distractors the social media is one of the biggest distractors needless to talk about it so all of your students here CA students are all very brilliant students you will see that you have tremendous energy but oftentimes you see that like a flood

3:08 wastefully employed just like a flood carries away the cattle destroys the houses kills people it has energy but energy is misused or misapplied energy that's not what we want similarly you all have energy in your mind but it would be wiser to make it like a dam conserve your energies protect your energies I don't say don't use it employ it fruitfully meaningfully purposefully in a direction in which you would achieve your results just like in a dam you have for irrigation purposes you open and you let the water isn't it and then whenever you don't need it you close it

3:54 here comes a very important point which is regulation like in your gas cylinder we have a regulator right when you want the gas you open it when you don't want to close it so here is a clue which I will explain later this one word regulation you can remember based on the example of flood and the dam is flood regulator is flood regulator no but the dam is stored energy which is regulated time to time you release it so mind has to be regulated we will talk about it a little later when we come to the solution part another thing about the mind just like the damn example I gave you

4:41 and the flight example he gave you in the same manner you can compare your mind to a elephant because you can see elephant sometimes gives even ashirwad blessings also you've seen that sometimes on the elephant back they keep God you know for the processions and all sometimes you see the elephant lifts a trunk of wood and can carry it along sometimes the elephants are used in many festivals and all it's a very wonderful animal friendly Animal Human friendly even children go and give a coin to the elephant and get a blessing on their head but the same elephant dear friends when the elephant becomes wild it can be extremely destructive it can lift a scooter and throw it it can destroy a

5:26 auto or a car it can kill people actually when elephant goes berserk they shoot the elephant next moment because a very dangerous animal so your mind is certainly as powerful as an elephant you can make your mind a constructive elephant or a destructive elephant which means I mean to say a trained elephant or a mad elephant so choice is yours how you want your mind to be mind good news for you is your mind is trainable just as an elephant is trainable mind is also trainable no so I gave you a couple of examples

6:12 still now the example of the flood and the dam then I gave it the example of the a good elephant and a mad elephant isn't it so our mind is compared to the elephant in the Gita pramati Arjuna says that so in the Gita bhagavad-gita Arjuna asks the question to Lord Krishna is telling my dear Lord Krishna this mind is as powerful as an elephant it is as naughty as a child he says and it is as crazy as a Madman and how do I deal with this mind and make it focused and one pointed and not

6:58 distracted it is almost like a world vendor which I am unable to control that's what Arjuna said like a world when sometimes in on New Orleans you all might have heard a few years ago how the world when they created a big Havoc so much a destruction so my mind is like that he says so krishnam in response tells Arjuna I agree with you Arjun yes it is indeed true that mind is really very very powerful but you can Elevate yourself with the mind you don't have to degrade yourself with the mind just like you take a key you can use the key to open a room and enter the room or you can use the key to lock somebody in the room similarly the mind can liberate you mind

7:44 can bind you mind can free you mind can bind you you said so mind is like a knife a knife can be is knife good or bad can you say that is my is knife good or bad in the hand of a surgeon knife is very valuable in the hand of a thief for a murderer knife can be very deadly the very same knife so that's a good news Lord Krishna gave him he said yes your mind can be used for elevating yourself and concentrating in a one-pointed way focused away it is possible but if you don't train the mind the very same mind will drag you down for example um now I am introducing one more term desires you can see that it's not wrong to have

8:30 a desire but it is not good to become a slave of a desire like you all have smartphone with you your smartphone your servant or you are the servant of your smartphone ask yourself when you purchase the smartphone first time you intended to make it your servant to fulfill your purposes but eventually you will see that as time progresses the very same phone can become a menace for many people it can distract you from your studies it can distract you from your duties we give up our duties and get distracted by some flickering you know temporary instinctive Pleasures which take all the time away just like for example I am writing a very important article suddenly some pop-up comes

9:17 then I go to the pop-up and I get distracted and it is common for all of us you will understand what I am saying so we often lose track of our priorities the main reason is we have become slave of our desires so when the Mind becomes a slave for example somebody becomes a slave of smoking somebody becomes a slave of drinking somebody becomes a slave of drugs somebody becomes a slave of the smartphone similarly somebody becomes a slave of many of the pop-ups which come and it is a kind of habit formation you repeatedly do an activity over and over again then you get into your set pattern from which we are unable to come out

10:05 but the good news again I tell you good habits also can when you repeat them they become part of your system so here comes the main point if you cultivate a good habit over and over and over again I'll tell you for example when I get up in the morning where I sleep in the ground in my room as soon as you get up I went up my bed keep it in a particular place your place for everything and everything in its place I stick to that and then I immediately throw the water and wipe it with the wiper and put on the fan and I've been doing it last five six years I am doing it and I repeatedly did it now this good habit has become a second nature my hands and legs do the thing without even my endeavor so this is the way the good habits are if you cultivate good habits they become

10:50 your second nature and you don't have to Endeavor at all to do them in the beginning there's a bit of a struggle but once you cultivate it it's very easy that's the nature of habit you see the word habit remove the Hajj habit remains remove a bit remains remove B it remains that's the nature of habit once you have cultivated you don't go away it will just stick on with you so why not cultivate good habits so good habit in this subject matter of concentration means one thing at a time eat while you eat sleep while you sleep study while you're studying play while you play don't mix up things say for example some of your friends go to learn of La for a Excursion and one of the

11:37 boys is telling hey next week examination is coming I am in tension so you may tell him you are in learnable why are you bothering about the exam next week still there is time now you enjoy the time in learnable now you all have come back from the Excursion now tomorrow is examination imagine the same Boy comes to you and says hey how wonderful Lord was you know we saw the waterfalls and Greenery everything was wonderful you may say Hey Now forget about it now study for the exam and this is what happens with all of us you will see that night when you're lying down you don't get sleep because you didn't study well during the day the day time because you didn't sleep well in the night you're feeling sleepy in the day that's what I was telling all of you one thing at the time this is one aspect of

12:23 concentration say for example I am taking a a dirty pie of oil now I have to transfer this oil to another big what do you call the T Pi T Pi you know that yeah so when you transfer it the oil goes like this Google Google you've seen that so my I need that concentration otherwise I won't be able to put the oil properly it will go outside similarly welding also requires concentration you know welding if you make it little away it will not weld at all if you take it very close it will stick so you need just to keep just one millimeter or so distance and then you can continuously well like that okay turquoise concentration when you do such things like welding or pouring oil from one vessel to another it's really when there's a small hole you have to be very attentive in the same manner you need a

13:11 like a seamless Consciousness to have a focus on doing one thing at a time and the main reason why we are unable to do one thing at a time yes we have cultivated distraction we have got habituated to destruction of doing multiple things when we are doing so nowadays people think that I can do multi-processing but the problem in multi-processing is when you do multiple things the quality of work reduces you know the quality of attention quality of work then we end up doing uh we create a mess in doing anything so keep in mind there's one thing at a time and the second thing that I want to tell you about how there are three components of

13:57 concentration if you can focus on these three components well you'll be very successful and able to concentrate on anything that you do you can repeat after me attraction attention absorption so these three things follow one after another you are going to be attentive only to something which attracts you if it is not attractive your attention span is going to be very less like right now I am speaking to all of you if the subject matter doesn't make sense to you you will be looking at the clock when will this fellow get over but if the subject matter is of interest

14:43 to you you are able to connect with me and you understand the examples that I give then you will say oh this is wonderful it's going to help me so anything that we all do attention is the second thing the first thing is attraction so you all want to do your subjects are you sufficiently interested in it or not if you are not interested go to your student who is like you know enthusiastic about the subject who is thrilled about the subject who prepares very nicely on the subject and who can even teach you share with you then that person can create interest in you your interest can be awakened so make sure that whatever you want to focus on your interested first of all then the attention no when you are

15:31 paying attention on one thing as I again told you one thing at a time when you're doing if you pay attention to that you will do well destruction means alternative attraction that's a definition of distraction so there are many pleasurable things in the world which are destructive and not good for us and there are not so pleasurable things painful things which we call as Duty which are very good for us for example a little example children like to play or to study what do you think they like to play parents want them to study or to play study so what should the children do they should do a combination study when you study play while you play a lot of time for everything and stick to the timing here comes the point of sticking

16:18 to the discipline so make a discipline for yourself I'm going to study this many hours I'm going to play this many hours I have time for this time for this and we have to stick to that and we need discipline discipline requires determination without determination and willpower you can't stick to your discipline it's very easy to make a plan but to stick to the plan is difficult you know one man went to a gym on first January and it was it was completely full there was no place so it was very frustrated the gym Warner told him don't be frustrated sir come next week half these followers will not be coming they have taken a New Year resolution to come every day but next week you will see half of them will be gone you see so people make resolutions but they don't stick to it because they don't have the discipline and determination they don't have it so and where do we get the

17:05 determination and the will power to do anything here comes a very important Point think deeply about it you know in Sanskrit there are some words specific words I'm going to tell you now dharana Shakti means ability to grasp and which are Shakti means ability to think and analyze similarly smriti Shakti means to have a retentive power so first of all whatever you study you should be able to grasp it and hold it grasp also means so to hold also grasp and hold and smriti means to recollect when you want it means to be able to analyze it viveka buddhi means to be able to discriminated actually all these things come from one

17:51 very important quality which you call as celibacy or brahmacharya we call it actually means one should not waste to answer vital fluid from the body unnecessarily which is the seventh component in ayurveda it says we call it so our concentration becomes completely multi-branched and distracted when one does not keep a purity in character so when one maintains a purity and character Purity inhabits especially eating sleeping mating defending in these four activities if you keep Purity you will see concentration will be boosted a million times more like I remember in our early days when we hear

18:37 a class you know we used to make notes every line and then try to recollect over the years we saw that we can hear a whole class for one hour and repeat all the points on the class simply by hearing and that type of ability can be developed there provided you cultivate Purity in these four activities eating sleeping mating and defending for example modern day people are eating a lot of junk food which is very unhealthy for the body although titillating for the tongue actually the foods that they eat produce a certain effect in your mind this verse says that you should eat that food which purifies your mind calms your

19:23 mind some foods are calming some foods are agitating if you eat for example pickles that agitates the mind similarly you eat jalebi for example titillates the tongue these have agitating nature of course you may eat in small quantity but the staple foods like for example rice Dal sabji chapati daily Foods we eat milk sugar this kind of things so when these Foods vegetarian foods for example when they're eaten they keep the Mind calm and and the foods which produce adrenaline you know adrenaline adrenaline is actually a not a good hormone there are two hormones I didn't line and endorphins hardened lines are harmful hormones they

20:08 increase the blood pressure and cause heart attack and things like that and endorphins are pleasure hormones they give you happiness these two different hormones are produced according to what you put inside if you if you put products of violence like like the animal products and things like that they increase passioness they agitate the mind so this is about eating and about sleeping also how many of you know early Tibetan early device makes you healthy wealthy a little better and early to rise makes you healthy wealthy and wise isn't it so doctors say that 9 to 12 sleep is equivalent to six hours of sleep and 12 to 3 sleep is equal to three hours of sleep three to six in the morning is equal to one and a half hours of sleep and Beyond six in the morning

20:55 your sleep is useless because sun is already up in the sky so we have to sleep with the sun and rise to the sun unfortunately many students nobody sleep at one o'clock or two o'clock so ten to two sleep is very vital for replenishment of your body recuperation of your body you can go to the YouTube and check why Top Notch he was like apple companies he wasn't all rise at 4am in the morning that's the time your creativity level is at the peak in the morning you can think well you can be Innovative you can be creative early morning hours when the whole world is sleeping even the global gossip is absent in the morning all the smartphones also sleeping along with the people so you can think well you can be very creative we can be very Innovative in the early morning hours like I sleep at nine and get up at three in the morning I've been doing it last

21:41 30 years and once I get up at three I can work for 18 hours start a stretch without lying flat on the ground anytime so your efficiency can be very high so eating sleeping and the third one mating I said of course the scriptures the wisdom literature say marriage is never condemned but a man should marry a woman and they should live peacefully without entering into illicit relationships in these days illicit relationships are increasing that's one of the very high mind agitating factors in the in the current times definitely as soon as there is a triangular love or illicit connections then one cannot one's mind is very distracted highly distracted and also it's unclean and it can lead to complications diseases and all and then the defending

22:28 means unnecessarily we should not go from need to greed because going from need to Greed leads to bleed you will see that so I I remember when um I heard and there's a place called belgaum you know belgaum so there there is a farm we have a big farm in that farm they were growing sugarcane so one time an elephant from the forest came and saw oh there is a lot of plenty of sugar cane I want to eat it of course the elephant gets a lot of grasses in the forest but the elephant wanted sugar cane occasionally you would get 100 sugar canes when the lorries go they would throw sugarcane to the elephant so now he wanted to eat the sugar cane and he saw it was all fenced by barbed wires

23:15 all around the elephant went round and round he couldn't get it so then do you know what he did he sat between two poles that stone poles and with his body he did like this like this and then he knocked down two poles and then he entered then he tore his legs with the sharp what do you call that steel wires and he hurt himself it was bleeding because he was greedy for the sugar cane he had to bleed you see similarly you will see most of the students make unhealthy comparisons with other students see if somebody is a Topper somebody is cracking exams they are gifted with some brain let them do it you think about your progress don't try to pull anyone down you think how you can progress this is what we

24:00 learn in the srimad-bhagavatam there was one boy through a small boy five-year-old his mother told them never think of you know like a crab pulling anyone else down if you want to progress you go to God you pray to him you get empowerment and you grow in your life so you can be peaceful in your mind she said so the point is you can defend yourself but don't attack others you can make a healthy comparison but not unhealthy comparison you know what is healthy comparison somebody is better than you go and take help from them somebody is inferior to you help them unhealthy comparison when somebody is better than me I'll pull him down unhealthy comparison in uh inferior once means it ridicules them mock at them don't do that so in this way you will

24:46 see these four habits of eating sleeping mating defending if you purify these four habits then this leads to a pure mind here at this point I want to say a little bit about the mind three things are very important to know soul mind body now the soul is the real person every one of is sitting here you you will see that you are conscious that I am speaking to you you are hearing whereas this sofa in which you are sitting is not conscious if the sofa were conscious the sofa Will shout at you hey why are you sitting on my head you'll ask you the sofa is dead whereas you are conscious so who is a conscious entity who is hearing is called as Atman or Soul or Spirit we call and the spirit is seated

25:33 in this bodily machine so surrounding the spirit is mind and surrounding the mind is a gross body which you see in a mirror now why this grass body and the mind is with you with us with a spirit because you store your desires in the mind and you execute them with your body yeah like for example my hands and legs are like servometers I exercise my disease so the mind is like a hard disk whereas torment is yes and the body is for executing my desires these are clear to everybody like for example I want to play a piano I have a desire then I get a piano and play with my hands I want to play football I have a desire I kick a football and I play so the bodily parts are for exercising that is here and the

26:18 mind stores the desire now why do you need to know this because if you really want to attain concentration you need to know the way the Mind functions then it becomes very easy for you so in our mind if there are disease which are detrimental for us and those diseases become like you know imagine you went into a mosquito net but along with you some few mosquitoes also entered with you your whole night's sleep will be finished similarly these mosquito-lay Desires in our mind are the cause of our distractions so therefore when we are talking about concentration one has to know this fact that there are two stages of the mind your

27:04 Calm Mind or agitated mind so we want which mind for concentration Calm Mind or agitated mind Calm Mind you see like if I am holding a lens like this a magnifying glass and it and I take the diffused rays of the Sun and I put it into the magnifying glass and focus it on one point that one point can burn a paper or a carton on the other hand if I put the paper on the top of my house even at the hot sunny day at noon time still the sun cannot burn the paper why can any of you say I am putting it right under the sun it cannot burn it why yes focus is not there correct no because it's all diffused sun sun rays

27:51 that means our if my thoughts are all diffused in different direction I don't have Shakti no power but if I can focus them into your lens and focus it at focal point then I can burn that is called concentration we call it so now if my mind is like that lens imagine if I shake the lens like this will I get Focus if I Shake My Lens like this will I get Focus that's our problem when our mind is agitated we don't get concentration when the mind is stable then it can get concentration so how do you make the Mind stable this is where I wanted to say about two things I told you in the beginning of my talk I told you regulation regulate your disease there are things say for example there are some certain

28:38 habits which are very dangerous for us neither for our mind they are good nor for our body they are good they all are mind agitating so there are four activities you can remember giving gimi you can remember gambling illicit sex meat eating yeah intoxication so gambling why gambling is agitating to mine because you get a lot of money or you lose all your money therefore mind is agitated illicit sex is agitating because there is always a threat in illicit relationships you are not peaceful in the mind and meat eating because the product of the Animal product for example is a product of violence and fear when you kill an animal the animal is afraid and animal cannot save itself it shows

29:25 the teeth to you so that's violence and fear both that's called adrenaline is produced by that so therefore that is also mind agitating and fourthly the intoxications like smoking drinking drugs these are very very mind agitating because they take the mind like that they give a kick to you you go up you feel that you are very powerful now like a drunkard thinks I am the most powerful even a small boy can knock him down just by one slap so he gives you a kick and then it brings you not here it takes you to depression Zone then you drink more again you go out again you come to further depression then you drink much more you become alcoholic similar to smoking also it initially gives you a stretching of the nerves makes you feel you it's very nice but then it takes you to depression then you become a chain smoker so we don't want to become

30:11 Chainsmokers or alcoholics or drug addicts because none of these things truly help you they will only harm you they will hurt you harm you destroy you and they will be very mind agitating mind polluting and they take away your concentration many students are not aware of these things how they are losing their concentration because of these bad habits so therefore now bad habits you have to avoid so three things you can do for example I keep away from tempting habits all together that's the best thing and or if I go to places where these bad activities are done it'll be a little difficult for me to control myself and if I keep friendship with those who do these activities it is sure short thing that I will also fall prey to

30:58 these things so ultimately this is your choice what do you want to do with your life what do you want to do with your mind so don't put anything into the mind that is agitating to the Mind therefore I gave you a clue give me gimi gambling mediating intoxication elicit sex there's four things I told you these are all Imperial activities so now what do what what should we keep in the mind that will make the Mind calm you will see that in all the dharmas worldwide there is a prayer to God there is a meditation which is very mind-coming like like for example if you got Alcoholic Anonymous and Narcotic Anonymous even they admit that there are certain habits we can only surpass by praying to the almighty or the Supreme

31:44 and draw that energy from the Supreme and take that help by kneeling down by bowing down by offering a prayer which is springing from the heart so meditation is a very powerful form like we do Mantra meditation in our Japan beats we do in every religion you will find and they have some mantras which they chant and they take out a little time of the day maybe 10 minutes or 15 minutes so by doing this your mind becomes very calm cool collected especially if we do it in the early morning hours of course I do Mantra meditation chanting of the Hare Krishna Mantra I do some people to calm meditation also calmly they sit and take deep breathing exercises they do pranayama and yogasanas they do and they

32:31 calm the Mind down so one has to bring mind to a steady state once you make the magnifying glass or the lens you know you make it in such a way that you don't shake it don't do anything that unnecessarily disturbs the mind for example if the is a lake which has no ripples the moon in the sky can be clearly visible in the lake but if the ripples are present on the waves then you can't see the moon moon also will appear to be shattered or broken like that so you all want to concentrate in a one pointed way is called as Krishna is one is singular branched another one is multi-branched you want which one

33:17 one thing at a time or multiple things all ringing in the head you do you end up doing nothing you want to do one thing at a time he says don't have too many things going up you end up doing nothing if you want to have one point of concentration keep your mind calm cool collected and for that you need one thing I told you bad habits Give It Up good habits you should know which are the good habit list them and what are the things which are regulatable activity like eating should be regulated sleeping should be regulated for that you need discipline so I use some specific words and solutions today which is discipline I used one word habits another word used regulation if you are not regulated we are

34:04 definitely going to be ruined you will see that like you you can nowadays students don't like the word a discipline a regulation they think you know if you want to be free bird you know why do you restrict us actually these are restrictive principles of Freedom they give you actually Freedom so I want to send a kite up in the sky do you cut it from the with the blade and throw it in the sky is that what you do or you take a spool and slowly release it what do you do yeah you use a spool or you just cut it and throw it if you cut it in the blade it'll go and get stuck in a tree so you that means you keep control so there is a control in the kite in the garden in the garden also you see they do trimming other plants then on them generally they look nice if you don't trim them they will grow unevenly everywhere you will see that in a road

34:51 also there's a traffic police to control the traffic if there were no traffic police there will be either traffic jam or an accident similarly I told you about the flood and the dam I told you discipline regulation and good habits these things are very conducive for a calm cool collected mind and meditation I told you these things are very very conducive then you can keep your mind very calm then you'll be able to be focused on one thing at a time now I'm going to conclude my talk with one last thing I told you three things attraction attention and yeah actually there are four is attraction attention absorption and awareness that's the fourth one so from

35:36 attraction comes attention so develop attraction for whatever you want to focus on concentrate on and go to those who have attraction associate with them then you got the attention and absorption means what the one thing at a time which I told you you should be so absorbed that you don't know what's happening around you that's the meaning of absorption and awareness means what you should know the purpose behind what you are doing then only you you will be able to do it with full consciousness like I am coming from a temple in cartridge we have a iskcon new vedicultural center so one of the days I went during the construction of the temple I saw three missions doing the construction I asked one of them

36:22 what are you doing he said I'm building a wall he said another fall I asked him what are you doing he said I am building a hall he said third one I asked him what are you doing he said I am so blessed in my life I am building a temple for the Lord he said so out of the three fellows whom do you think has full awareness first one and second one or third one the third one is it not true so he could do it with full-blown Consciousness with a very joyful heart every day when he comes and puts the bricks and builds the temple he thinks I'm building a temple for the Lord so in your life also when you are acting in your life doing your work do it as an offering to God don't do it mindlessly don't do it unconsciously don't do it just for the

37:07 sake of earning money or fulfilling up the belly which more students nowadays don't have a very clear purpose or goal in life so when you have a goal in life then you can live for that cause meaningfully purposefully you can live so that is called awareness we call it so your life has two pictures a larger picture and a smaller picture you know what it is one small kid was playing in the seashore making a sand castle the waves of the ocean came and washed off that sand castle just imagine how pained that child must be but at the same time mother and father came and told the child better it's getting dark now we are going home now come so the boy just dusted off his hands in the seashore and then went with

37:54 the parents in the car now you tell me is that small boy's relationship with the seashore or with the parents tell me with the parents with a seizure it's a temporary relationship but with the parents it's a long lasting relationship why I'm telling you this example in Kota Rajasthan this year 20 boys committed suicide do you know that in one year 20 students in IIT Hyderabad also three students committed suicide in 2019. these people are seeing only small picture in life they are not seeing a larger picture they are only thinking academics is everything if I fail in my academics hang myself because they can't see anything bigger they are blind they're like a frog in the well Cooper

38:40 manduk they can't see a bigger picture so whenever you go to colleges they tell the students see academics is one part of your life then there is entertainment in your life then there is relationship with your parents then relationship with God you have your hobbies you have your sports there are so many aspects of your life why do you think academics is the only thing so my request to all of your students see a smaller picture of larger picture of Life the larger picture is that God has created this world with a purpose and what is the purpose like rain water is pure in the sky when it touches the ground it becomes muddy similarly we all are originally pure but we have come to this world and picked up many unwanted misgivings and we have become polluted and by meditation by chanting by good habits as I told you

39:28 you can actually again purify yourself and bring yourself to the original spiritual plane from where we have fallen and in that plane you will experience boundless happiness and you will have full concentration full awareness and meaningful purposeful life so our relationship is with God from whom we have come here our relationship is not with this world it's a temporary relationship of course this is also important you make a balance between the two between material and spiritual like a railway line has two lines material and spiritual make a balance of the two and attain the ultimate destination and don't see only the smaller picture of like like children who may be foolish and seeing only a smaller picture that way you will never commit suicide even in the face of failures like students jump high when they get success in life

40:13 but I would also say you should develop inner courage to face failures in life when you face them and not just kill yourself foolishly when you have to face any availabilities in life so in conclusion this topic of in avoiding distraction and having one point at concentration I spoke on many things um but I don't want these things to flow out of your mind in order for you to remember them I am recollecting one or two points at the end and we'll conclude the talk now in two three minutes I began with telling you about the flood and the dam so both have energy but the flood has destructive energy the dam has constructive energy

40:59 so we want to make ourselves like a dam we don't want to waste our energy so that was one point I said then I gave the example of an elephant the elephant can be trained good elephant or untrained mad elephant our mind can be like a mad elephant which we don't want it to be we want our mind to be like a trained elephant so the trained elephant is very favorable and friend human friendly and all that so let our mind be friendly with ourselves and with everybody else and also I told you about the body mind soul this body which you see in the mirror and the mind you possess these two are two instruments God has given you use them wisely you're storing Desires in your mind and executing those

41:46 Desires in your body so use both these instruments very intelligently very wisely very carefully cautiously don't misuse them that was one of the points I was making then I was telling you also about how in the mind there are certain agents if you put the mind can be very agitated mind can mind can really just like for example I told you if you put helium in a in a balloon it will fly up if there is no helium it will be flat on the ground similar in the mind some impure things you put two minutes little mind will take off it will get agitated so don't agitate don't put agitating elements into the mind in that connection I told you give me gambling intoxication mediating illicit sex these

42:33 activities actually are mind polluting mind agitating and the mind just destroying so avoid these activities is telling you and also I was telling you the secret of concentration is one thing at a time don't try to do multi-processing do one thing at a time eat while you eat sleep while you sleep study while you study play while you play do one thing at a time and whatever you do do it with full absorption then I told you about 4 is attraction attention then awareness and absorption and I explained each of these items to you all these four components put together is called concentration you do one thing at that time that leads to one thing at a time

43:18 and also I told you uh one who is pure in mind can concentrate on one thing very nicely and who is pure in mind one who is pure in habits and who is pure in habits one who is Spirit in eating sleeping mating and defending these four activities so then I told you about what we should eat certain items like I told you vegetarian foods and milk and sugar and all these things calm the mind don't put agitating Foods into your system then it's all about sleeping sleep early rise early and your body will be healthy like I am telling you last 30 years I sleep only six hours a day 18 hours I can work and these six hours I chose in such a way that I get sufficient good sleep so many students actually hurt their bodies because of

44:03 lack of good sleep a little bit and early to rise then I told you about mating habit illicit sex means sex before marriage and sex outside marriage both are abandoned both are condemned actually one is allowed to marry but no sex outside marriage or sex before marriage it's actually within marriage then it is it is legit otherwise it is illicit otherwise so and also I told you about the viriam or the semen unnecessarily one this is like the butter you see from milk you make dahi from the you make butter butter should not be thrown out similar in your body when you produce the seventh component preserve it and that amounts to concentration you will be completely unaffected by the world around you if you preserve your purity don't waste your energy

44:49 and I also told you don't waste your energy with anger lust greed and all this things which agitate the mind huh don't destroy the energies keep the energies and use them in a very fruitful way positive way and then I use some specific terms habits discipline regulation each of it I explained with many examples for you so it is possible for every one of you to be very concentrated in whatever you do in your life as students by regulating your life and making it in a way that your mind becomes calm cool corrected and focused and concentrated and I offer my praise to Lord Krishna that He blesses every one of you in achieving success in your earnesty endeavors and I thank all the organizers

45:34 offering me an opportunity thank you foreign hello sir first of all really thank you for the insightful uh session and the wonderful Words which you said my question to you was um so sometimes we uh end up taking a decision which we regret later yeah uh so how do we overcome the regret even

46:21 like how do we know that it's the right thing for us to do or not and what if we end up overthinking that how can we overcome that regret and the second thing is sometimes we have to prioritize things and there are a lot of things and we are really confused especially the you today and I know me and my friends there are a lot of things we're confused in so how do we make the right choice keeping the priorities in our mind good two brilliant questions from you thank you so let us give an example for the first one you know in my in my school days one of my friends you know he was a genius in mathematics you know so he came from the examination Hall and said today I answered all the four questions I am going to get Center marks he said

47:07 then one of his friends told him hey today were five questions how do you say four then he showed the paper and then this fellow his friend turned around and showed fifth question was there which this fellow didn't notice then immediately ran to the exam Hall and told Madam can I finish the first question Madam told him that you see once you get out of the exam Hall we can't allow you again and this boy was shattered for two years he suffered you know because of the regret as you said you know he said oh I know that question but I didn't turn the paper because they didn't put PTO you know please turn over they didn't put so he cried and cried every day evening he would come back home and you'd be crying and that affected the quality of his life very much so what our wisdom literature say about it there are two words used specifically

47:54 lamentation and regret these two are two different words lamentation means going into a downward spiral of depression you know it is not uplifting it is not rewarding but regret and repentance and remorse these are good words because if I commit a mistake at least for a few moments I should feel bad about it so that I don't repeat it again and also I should be able to learn some good lessons from the mistake and should I commit any more mistakes in future yes I can commit but I should commit a new one not the old one again because I have already learned from the old mistakes so there are two guns we end in as endless I mean downward spiral of lamentation which is very that's what was happening to Arjuna and the beginning of the battle of

48:40 kurukshetra it was getting into depression mode so Lord Krishna spoke to him and stopped him from the depression and pulled him out you know get get out of it he said who doesn't commit mistake in this world we are not God to be all perfect you know we are humans and to Aries human we know that you heard the saying to every human forgive his Divine you know so yes if I committed a mistake how can I learn from it how can I come out of it how I cannot repeat it and then how I can be more capital and cautious in future so that is very constructive and rewarding and uplifting thought that's the first question so the second one about prioritizing we all are going to make priorities based on your awareness about life what you like somebody thinks money is everything for him you know his wife is

49:25 telling today's my birthday can I come home early at seven o'clock he says no no I can't come before 10 because I am getting money you know for him his money centered in his life somebody's relationship Centered for the sake of relationship he will forego money also there are people like that somebody is friend centered somebody's enemy centered enemy centered people all the time keep working on how to attack the enemy trouble the enemy like that so everybody is different having different Center off center or eccentric we call it they all have different centers then what is the correct Center we should call it as a principal Center so we should know what are the universal laws principles if you keep them at the center your life will be very happy one I will tell you very precisely I call it as a super leader I call it sacred

50:11 Universal principles for enlightenment and Reformation that is super sacred Universal principles for enlightenment of the head and Reformation of the heart so one principle I'll tell you one such principle it's called confirmative with God and unity with all now this is one such principle like this there are hundreds of principles like that Universal loss so if you make them the center of your life you know and then make your priorities accordingly then your life will be very rewarding and very happier one you will see that for example if you you are in a family for example you know you can focus on four things in life if you focus only on the body doing yoga

50:57 and to keep yourself healthy then one is called as a good animal we call it animals also give their body well and if one is focusing attention on one's profession like Chartered Accountants you all are doing and you you top the rank and you are very smart then you are called as a good Craftsman you know you're good in that field and if you're very good in your relationships with family friends and circle and everything you are called as a good friend and if you take out time and do meditation and connect with God you are called as a good Saint so if you combine all this for good animal good friend good Craftsman good Saint you are considered a complete human being but most people compromise on any of this and therefore the quality of the life goes down so in order for you to prioritize I

51:43 would say that make a balance of these things and then choose your priorities for example you have three things in life most important things family Duty professional Duty and devotional duty to God if you is a tripod in the Tripod if you remove one of the legs it will fall you can't be peaceful so you take time for family take family and friends and take time for your profession and give time to God because without giving time to God and the Sacred Scriptures we won't be able to increase our wisdom quotient without that so in this way we can become wiser and wiser and wiser and see the world with good Clarity with good understanding and not be having a clouded Consciousness and we can lead life wisely with full understanding all right thank you thank you [Applause]

52:37 I spoke today last one I was like we were into the another world and I haven't questioned that you said that we have some purpose that's why we are here so can you just elaborate that purpose because running behind Financial stability we had forgotten the purpose why we have why we have been here so kindly please yeah so in the dietary upanishad and there are five stages said [Music] means the children who are newly born they only think about the food they eat the food go to sleep again they eat the food and go to sleep they don't anything beyond the food and then when you grow to the age of five or six or seven then you start coming out in the world and competing with the world around you even the

53:23 businessmen are competing we all know that they are competing to survive in the market and make more profits and expand their business and that is like a game which we can never win and we can never stop playing it keeps going that kind of game that's a Prana means what whatever things you can't make in life you dream about them so we call it a dream job or dream business a dream success we all are thinking about and then when you come to the fourth stage we call it and that is where you understand the difference between spirit and matter I am not this body this body and mind are simply covering over my soul my real identities I am a spirit soul and the Soul Never Dies the soul is eternal imperishable Everlasting it's a part and parcel of God and it is very

54:09 pure and anybody can belong to any religion but in all the all the people belong everybody is a spirit who is one in quality there is one supreme and plural subordinates and all the plural subordinates are one in quality although you may have different attires and different genders in different things so that's the fourth stage and the fifth stage when you come then you understand that the goal of life is to awaken our love for God and love for all that's the purpose of life and love for God is like a master switch if you switch it on then automatically you will love every living being because you will see that all living beings are connected with that one supreme as children so if you love him you can't hate any of his living beings okay like like for example

54:55 if any of you have a sister when your sister gets married you like the sister's husband also and you like the sisters mother and father I mean sisters mother-in-law father in law because everybody is connected to your sister similarly when you love God you have to love everybody naturally you will love all creatures in this world and once that love is awakened when there is no enmity with anybody in the world even this world itself becomes a very happy place for you yeah so in that then you will become a spreader of Happiness so I'll tell one English slogan for this you asked about the purpose of life so you all can repeat after me it's a very beautiful statement May the Wicket become virtuous please repeat May the Wicket become virtuous May The Virtuous become tranquil

55:43 May the Tranquil become free May the free set others free this is the purpose of life is it clear [Applause] thank you so much sir for enlightening our minds with your wonderful words we will surely inculcate the one thing at a time rule in our daily life uh before proceeding further I am really very happy to share with you all that radhe shamdasji is the president of iskcon Pune since 1997 with a community of 6 000 members he is also the global duty officer for West Outreach appointed by GBC of iskcon

56:29 radhe shamji has been an IIT Mumbai topper and is the founding director of voice that is Vedic osis for inspiration culture and education he has received the global Excellence award for educating youth in bhagavad-gita he has also won Jiva goswami award for Innovative youth Outreach he has compiled youth books like stress to smile and 5 volumes of Gita he has been training the youth for last 30 years in all the leading iit's nits and reaches out to cities in India and abroad he has also presented seminars at MIT Boston Stanford Caltech UC Berkeley UCLA and other universities in the United States he has also conducted a

57:14 corporate seminars at Microsoft Amazon Bank of America Infosys Etc we again thanks thank you sir for your enlighting for enlightening our mind thank you so much and also I also wish to extend extend my warm invitation to all of you in cartridge condo we have a very big temple in six acres you all are most welcome and uh you will you will find a beautiful garden and Fountain and also the very Divine Syrian setting you can sit in the temple Hall and do your meditation you will have a very Grand experience there and along with me there is ratnesh ji and samesh is a chartered accountancy student and accountant in our Temple you can just stand up here so if you will find them that when you come yeah

58:00 so they are they are helping us with simple activity and I also want to thank all the organizers for putting up this program and as a part of your child accountancy meeting for the couple of days this is a spiritual part which they have taken out time for and I really congratulate them for doing it because this is one very essential aspect of any human being's life for calming the mind and being focused in our duties and I deeply appreciate the organisms for intelligently making a plan to include this program and I look forward to meeting you all again sometime in future and you all are welcome to our Temple thank you thank you sir for the invitation we will surely come thank you now I would like to request CA Amrita Kulkarni mam to felicitate our session chairman radhe shamdas sir

58:52 [Music] foreign [Music] thank you so much ma'am now I would like now now I would like to call upon Mr pratik joint Treasurer Pune vikasa to deliver the vote of thanks

59:46 sometimes you know good evening everyone I am pratik lavande joint treasurer of Pune vikasa it's my pleasure to welcome you all to this event as we all know we have we are a Caesar CA students we deal with lot of lot of things at a time we deal with our studies our parents and our principals and at a time we can't do a lot of things we have to concentrate on one thing at a time as Sir said so as our theme India knowing the way showing the way and the India knowing the way showing the way and

1:00:32 going the way so we are a country having history for more than couple of thousands of years we we know how the culture works we knew the how culture works we know the culture how works and we cannot we are showing the we are showing the world how to behave how to represent ourselves as Sir Sir has given many sessions in Western countries so we are showing the way to the world I would like to thank uh thank thanks thanks to dignitaries on the dice of the dice for being here and thank you all of my friends for Patiently listening to all these sessions [Applause]

1:01:22 thank you pratik and thank you everyone once again for being such a wonderful audience we hope you all have a great time ahead thank you so much thank you