Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 416: Hinduism 101 | Swami Tyagananda

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

One of the most consistent requests we get from listeners is to explore non-Buddhist forms of meditation. That’s what we’re going to do with this episode. Our guest is Swami Tyagananda, who has been a Hindu monk since 1976, and is now the Hindu chaplain both at MIT and Harvard.This conversation explores: the basics of Hinduism, including its history, and its approach to prayer and meditation; letting go; karma; rebirth (and how and why to escape it); the deep connections between the Buddhist and Hindu traditions; Swami Tyagananda’s contention that all prayers are answered; and a recipe for reducing stress and anxiety. Swami Tyagananda also shares his thoughts about how to deal with our sense of not-enoughness or incompleteness and he provides a new way of thinking about the trickiest of all Buddhist concepts: annata, or the idea that the self is an illusion.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/swami-tyagananda-416See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, one of the most consistent requests we get from listeners is to explore non-buddhist forms of meditation. So that's what we're going to do today. In fact, we're going to get what I've been calling Hinduism 101. We talk so much about Buddhism on this show, but, we're going to get what I've been calling Hinduism 101. We talk so much about Buddhism on this show, but I'm pretty embarrassed to admit that I know or knew until now,

next to nothing about Hinduism, the tradition out of which Buddhism emerged. So that changes, or at least starts to change today. My guest is Swami Tiagananda, who has been among since 1976 and is now the Hindu Chaplin, both at MIT and Harvard. In this interview, we talk about the basics of Hinduism, including the history and the approach to both prayer and meditation. We talk about letting go, karma, rebirth, and how and why to escape it. The deep connections between Buddhism and Hinduism, his contention that all prayers are answered, a recipe for reducing stress and anxiety, his thoughts about all the ways in which we scramble to deal with our sense of not enoughness or incompleteness or emptiness, and his argument that the answer is a kind of simplicity,

which I have been somewhat globally calling deep decluttering. And we talk about a new way to think about perhaps the trickiest, slipperyest of all Buddhist concepts, anata or selflessness. The idea that the self is an illusion. Just to say before we dive in here, we are posting two interviews this week that directly challenge my views on Buddhism. Coming up on Wednesday, we're going to talk to the author of a book called Why I Am Not A Buddhist. As you may know, I think it is vital and happiness producing to systematically challenge your own views,

so I'm going to try to walk the walk here, at least for this week. Okay, we'll get started with Swami Tiagannanda, right after this. Before we jump into today's show, many of us wanna live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap

between what you wanna do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our Healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and The Great Med meditation teacher Alexis Santos To access the course just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm all One word spelled out Okay on with the show

Hey y'all it's your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my new podcast Baby this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby This is Skiggy Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast.

So I'm a Tiagandha, welcome onto the show. Oh, happy to be here, Dan. And I should say for those who didn't get a chance to hear it because we're probably not going to include it in the show that Swami was extremely patient as I learned the correct pronunciation of His name. So that's a sign of advanced spiritual development right there. Speaking of your name, can you tell us what it means? The name is a Sanskrit combination of two terms. The first term is Tiaga, which means letting go.

And the second part is Ananda, which means the joy. So put together, the name means the joy of letting go. And what does that mean to you in practical terms, the joy of letting go. And what does that mean to you in practical terms, the joy of letting go? Yeah, I mean, it's not the name that my parents gave me. So this is the name that was given when I was ordained monk 45 years ago. And Hindu monks generally their names ended on and there,

and there'll be another one qualifier before it. And the name is not chosen by me, it's given by my teacher. And so in our tradition we see that whatever name the teacher gives upon ordination, I see that as an ideal towards which I must exert, I must try to attain that. And that's what I have been trying to do in my own little way of letting go of the unnecessary baggage so that I can focus my time and energy on what is essential, what is important. I suspect there may be some modesty in my own little way part of that formulation. I'd be curious to hear what's included in your own way

of letting go. How does one go about that? Because it's counter to human nature in many ways letting go. We are programmed by the culture and by evolution for accumulation. Yeah, that's true. One of the essential ingredients of our human existence is the feeling of incompleteness. We somehow feel that I lack something and it's that sense of unfulfilled sense of lacking that makes me want to go and accumulate things and somehow to fill that emptiness within me and letting go therefore does not come naturally. But also I think that in life sometimes we see that when we get something new, then whatever is old, we are able to let go of that easily. For instance, if I have space in my garage to park only one car and my car is getting

old and somehow I get a new car, then letting go of the old car becomes easier. And so I say, letting go of that, that once we acquire a higher ideal, something better, something higher, then that which is lesser of lesser importance of lesser significance is given up easily. So in some sense, I think letting go should ideally become a very natural process rather than something one reluctantly kind of gives up because as long as there is reluctance to give up something, it means it still has value for me. So that makes sense to let it go of specific things or ideas or patterns in habits in our lives becomes easier

when there's something more meaningful with which to replace it. I'm curious for you, what is more meaningful? Now, I did not begin thinking about this very philosophically, very young age, but when I look back, sometimes when I was a teenager, I guess, because that's when I seriously started thinking about these things, and I joined the monastery when I was 19. So around that period, it just felt that the things which are so temporary, so perishable, so impermanent,

kind of holding on to them, no matter how much we claim to them, sooner or later they are just going to slip away. I'm going to lose them. So the quest was to see something which would last longer and not something which I will miss very quickly. And that's what took me to the study of these ancient books. And then of course, in Vedanta, the tradition I come from, it speaks about this inner essence of our existence, which is immutable, which is birthless, which is deathless.

That is something that can never be taken away from me because that is me. Anything that is not me can be easily taken away from me. And so thinking along these lines I started focusing my attention more and more on that which always is. Now, theistically people just say that permanent being or entity or force or no matter whichever way one wants to characterize it as God. In a subjective way, that is the essence of my own existence. Would you say that another word that could be applicable here would be soul? Yeah, I mean, what could say soul, except that the word soul gets also used

in theological literature, and it gets defined in different ways. So when a Christian or a Jewish, or a Hindu or a Muslim, because all the English translations of these indigenous texts, they kind of use the word soul. But what is meant by the soul in the different traditions,

may not necessarily be exactly identical. I personally prefer the word the self, because there is no ambiguity there. It's me. I mean, then what question can be asked between, like, which is the real being and which is the superficial being and so on? You asked that question, I'll be here. I'll be here to hear your answer to it.

Yeah, I mean, I look at it this way, is that we use the first person pronoun all the time, from the time we wake up till we go to sleep, and of course, even in our dreams. So the question would be, when I say, I'm sitting, I'm talking, I'm doing this, or this has happened to me, who is this eye? And clearly, the very first thing that comes to mind when we speak about the eye, just the body. And that's why I stand before a mirror, and I feel I'm able to see myself in the mirror,

but what I'm really seeing, it's just my body. Not even my body, really, it's just a reflection of my body. But I feel it's a fairly good representation of who I am, so I kind of judge my appearance from what I see in the mirror. But then we see that, am I just the body? Isn't there something more in me me and then we can think about the invisible parts of my personality, like the body, the mind, the intellect by hopes, my fears. None of these things can be found when a surgeon cuts open my body and yet they are parts of my personality. So if I see the body as a visible part of me and the mind, the intellect, ego and all of that, and collectively I could just call it the mind for simplicity as the invisible part of me.

And then the next question is that anything more in my mind besides the body and the mind. And that is where these Hindu texts, the Vedas, which are the revealed texts of the Hindus, they say that beyond the body and mind, there is something else. The body and mind, they both characterize that material, made up material particles, but that something else is the non-material part. So I, as I understand myself right now, is really kind of a three-in-one. There is a visible part, the body, there is an invisible part, the mind and all the other stuff, and then the third is the word that is used in Sanskrit is art one which really means the self, the mean. So body, mind, you call it spirit, soul, or again the labeling can be problematic.

So I will just call it the self. So the body, mind, and self. And then the next question would be, am I all these three on what? And that's when we come to then the perishable and non-perishable parts. So can you say more about the perishable versus non-perishable? Yeah, sure. So the perishable nature of the body is quite apparent. Actually, come to think of it, there is not that much difference between the body and the mind. Except that I can see the one and I don't see the other.

Other than that, everything is pretty much the same. The body gets tired, the mind gets tired. If you give nourishing food to the body, the body gets strong. If you give nourishing food to the mind, pretty much identical. So, both are perishable except that the body being a gross batter perishes faster than the mind. Now when will the mind perish? The Hindu theology says that as long as the mind continues, which is really the seat of all our karmas, all our hopes, fears and impressions and everything, we are going to continue in this state of relative existence, the word that the use of samsara, that means that which is continually changing, continually fleeting.

So the goal would be that the mind itself has to end. Only when the mind ends, will there be no more transpigration, no more births, no more deaths. And the only non-perishable part of my me is this real self, the spirit. And because of the non-material, it doesn't begin, it doesn't end. So material things you could think in terms of birth, if it is seen as composition, material particles coming together, then death is decomposition. The particle being separated again. But the self is not made of any material particles, is not made of any particles, it doesn't have any parts and therefore it's immutable, imperishable.

So that's how a distinguish between what is it's immutable, imperishable. So that's how I distinguish between what is perishable and what is imperishable. And the conclusion of the text is that me, the real me, is the only non-perishable entity. Everything other than me, if it's an object of my perception, object of my thinking, it's going to perish sooner on later. Okay. I have so many questions. I want to highlight something for people who are listening and may not have that much

familiarity with Eastern spirituality and philosophy and religion. They might have heard you say that the only way to get out of some sorrow, this endless cycle of birth and death, is something about a transcendence in the mind. But for a lot of us in the West, as you know, having lived here for a long time, we may not know that rebirth is actually seen as something you want to avoid. And so can you unpack that a little bit? Well, absolutely. And I completely understand that it's kind of a natural impulse because our desire to live and death is something we try to avoid, and partly because we see death as non-existence,

as non-being. And so the instinctual and a fear of death is there in every living being. The question about rebirth is actually completely connected with the theory of karma. And that's a big subject, but very briefly, we have certain questions about the world that we see, the world that we encounter. We see injustice, we see things that happen

which don't make sense. And some things do make sense. If I don't study for my exams and I do badly in my exams, I know what the cause is and the effect is understandable. But there are a lot of things, other things in life, that seem to happen randomly. And I feel like, why did this happen? And the theory of karma kind of steps in

to provide a conceptual framework to explain why things happen. And it basically is just simple axioms with which we all agree that everything that we do has an effect. If we do something good, the result is good, which usually means something that will bring me happiness. If I do something bad, the effect is suffering in some form. And the natural desire of the heart is to be happy and to avoid suffering. But also, we have the hope that there is such a thing as justice in the larger picture. And therefore, we believe that goodness will lead to good results and wickedness will lead to bad results. And that hence the basic of ethics, why are we told to do good, be kind, because we know

that it will lead to a good result. And that's essentially what the karma theory is. And then the question comes when we see sometimes babies when they're born in some extremely favorable circumstances and some are born in war-toned countries in very challenging circumstances. And we might then ask, well, what did these babies do? to deserve this or to deserve the other thing? They haven't even had a chance to do anything. And so if there is justice in life, we would say, well, if it is not in this life, maybe in previous life.

Because we really don't have much options, other than saying, well, it's the will of God. It puts God in a very difficult position because we like to think of God as someone who loves all equally. Then it does seem to make sense why God would want some people to be happy and some people to be miserable. So the theory of karma keeps God out of it and says, let me take the responsibility for whatever is happening in my life. And that's how karma and rebirth get connected. An innocent child gets cancer or the idea is that there must have been something happening in that person's past lives that have resulted in this negative occurrence. negative occurrence. Not cancer per se, because the effect of karma in experiential terms is either joy or sorrow

or suffering. And so, if there is happiness in my life, we like to believe that well, I must have done something right to deserve this. Usually, when we are happy, we don't question the results at all. We just kind of say, well I'm entitled to it. But only when there is suffering and then someone says, well you must have done something to do it then you select, wait a minute, wait a minute, how can you blame me? So that's essentially how it is seen. So if I am suffering, I must have done something and if I don't know, if I've done something in this life, maybe something might have been done by me in some previous life because of which this suffering has come.

And the reason for that is not to blame anyone, but to say that if suffering were to come to me without any reason, then why be ethical at all? Because suffering can come to anyone for any reason, happiness can come to anyone for any reason. So why should I do any good? Why should I avoid evil? So it's not very logical to kind of believe in justice and then not so much accept the idea that whatever is happening to me, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, I may have contributed to that in some way, which I probably may not even remember now, well, if it happened in my previous life, I certainly don't remember it.

Isn't one problem with this notion of karma that it could at least theoretically lead to a kind of indifference or callousness, for example, in the country where I live and you live too in the United States, there's a lot of inequality and unfairness in the system. If I embrace karma, perhaps this would be an inappropriate embrace of the idea of karma. I might say, well, somebody's homeless, somebody's disadvantaged, that's because something they did in their past lives, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to try to fix that. Yeah, that's a good question, but I think this response comes only when we don't understand

what the theory of karma says, because if I see a homeless person, if I see someone suffering, and I don't help that person, I'm storing a bad karma for myself. And then I would have to suffer in future for not doing what I should have done. So if someone ignores suffering and doesn't help, that's not that the theory of karma is failed, but this person is storing up suffering for themselves. So if I understand karma in the right way, I will know that if there is suffering, if there is anyone in trouble, the right thing for me to do is to go and help that person. Because if I help that person, I'm storing up good karma for myself. But actually, if you can even go a step further,

if I can go and help someone who is in need, if I try to remove suffering of someone else, without even thinking of storing good karma for myself, with no self interest involved, with no asking the question, what am I going to get out of it? If I just do it completely selflessly, then that's when my heart becomes pure. The word in Sanskrit they use for this is called chitta shuddhi, chitta your heart, shuddhi is purity. And if my heart becomes pure, then I acquire a clarity of perception. And with that clarity of perception, I will know exactly the right choices to make going forward, the right decisions to take, the right things to choose to see the distinction between the perishable and the imperishable,

then choose the imperishable. So I think understanding the Theor of God might very helpful because with extremely empowering, it gives the reins of my life in my own hands. Rather than blaming the government, the destiny, and my neighbors, and that's what children do. They just blame somebody else for what's wrong with them. But what's the sign of being an adult, a mature person, is to say, I'm responsible. The taking responsibility is really what Karma says. And if what I'm experiencing

today is a result of what I have done and thought in my past, then it stands to reason that what I'm going to experience tomorrow or a year from now will depend on what I'm doing now. So I get control of my own future in my own hands, not in some unseen forces outside me. Let me go back to the deeply unpleasant notion of a child with cancer. How would we, you know, if we do embrace karma, and I do appreciate your clarifications very helpful,

but if we do embrace the notion of karma, how do we compute why something horrible happens to an innocent child? There is no way to know that that is why the Gita, which is an important text of the Hindus, the Gita says that karma is inscrutable. And we know the general principle that good actions will lead to happy results, bad actions will lead to suffering. That's all that we know. But if there is suffering, it's not always possible to know like, what did I exactly do which brought about this suffering? If there is a burning candle and I put stick my finger into it and I get burned, then I know the cause and I know the effect. But sometimes we don't know.

And it's a futile exercise, I think, to try to always see what may have done 20 years ago or maybe last life for me to suffer now. And I think the right thing is if I'm suffering now, let me find a way to get out of that suffering. And that was the approach that the Buddha took. That don't go into this metaphysical questions about why this and why not that. But if there is suffering, try to find the cause of that suffering and remove it. And he narrowed down the cause to what he called tanha desire.

So I think if I see a little child suffering, rather than wondering what the child may have done in the past, I must use my knowledge, my skill, or whatever resources I have within me to try to go and help that child. You mentioned the Buddha, and I want to get to some differences between Buddhism and Hinduism, although as I understand it from a Hindu perspective, the Buddha can be folded right into the practice and beliefs. But I want to get to that in a second. You've used a few terms that I think might be worth quick definitions. You talked about the Gita, the Vedas,

Vedanta. Could you just run through and just briefly explain what you're referring to with those words? Oh, absolutely. The Vedas are known to be the most ancient spiritual texts available today, historically. Kindos see that as their revealed text, the Vedas don't have any human authorship, the wisdom that is passed on into the Vedas came from before the time when things were written. So for generations it was passed on orally from one generation to the next and at some point they started noting it down. So it's a very ancient set of books. The Gita is relatively of a recent origin, but in terms of time, because Hinduism itself is so old,

a recent would mean Gita is sometimes time that about 1,500 years before the Common Era, so that would be about 3500 years ago. The Geeta is considered the best summary of the Vedas. It's a much smaller text, only 700 verses. And the Vedas are so vast. So most Hindus have probably not read the Vedas themselves, very few have.

But the Geeta is the more popular of the Hindu scripture, partly because it's much smaller in size and it's written in classical Sanskrit. So any Sanskrit knowing person will be able to follow it even in the original. Vedanta, the temple where I live and teach here in Boston, is called the Vedanta Society. So when Vivekananda started these organizations in the West, we called them the Vedanta Society. Now Vedanta is a combination of two terms, Vedanta, and I just explained what Vedanta is, Anta means the essence.

So Vedanta means the essence of the Vedas. Vedanta can be understood as the philosophical foundation of the Hindu tradition. And because Hinduism has been around for so long now, there are hundreds of sects and denominations and different deities and different festivals. So there is a lot of variation in the different mythologies and observances in the under Hindu communities, but the philosophical foundation on which all these different sects stand or derive their inspiration from, that is Vedanta is probably a closer to the actual name if you want of Hinduism itself. But Hinduism is a pretty recent origin, relatively speaking. There is a river in the north western part of the Indian subcontinent.

If you see in a modern maps, you will see the word Indus, the original name of that river is Sindhu. Now ancient Persians, whenever they had this word with the letter S, they tended to pronounce it with an H sound. So they pronounced the name of the river as Hindu. And it was the geographical terms. So they applied that term to all the people who lived on the other bank of the river Sindhu. And when the British colonized India in the 17th century they dropped the age and so the river became indos, people became Indians and then sometime in the I believe around 1630 or so we find the first

written reference to this word called Hinduism because they wanted a word to characterize the religious life of the people living in that part of the world and the simplest way it seemed was well we are only thinking of these people as Hindus, just add anism to it. And that's how they formed the name of the traditional as Hinduism. Because no Hindu scripture has the word Hindu in it. Again, it's a big subject about there's this Orientalism,

how the strong, the powerful get to define and characterize those that are less powerful politically and so on. And so the term Hinduism or even Indians are none of these are indigenous terms. So if we want to find kind of a more accurate term to describe Hinduism, then Vedanta probably might come close to it. So I don't have any problem with Hinduism, then Vedanta probably might come close to it. So I don't have any problem with Hinduism, but just this kind of a historical background to that one. And Krishna is worshiped by Hindus as one of the incarnations of the Divine, and he is the teacher who gives the teaching that is found in this book called the Gita.

I just want to pick up, this is is all super fascinating and I really appreciate it, especially the history, much of which I did not know. When you say Krishna is one incarnation of the divine, that leaves me to think that it's not that Hinduism or Vedanta is a faith with many gods. It's that it's a faith with one god that has many incarnations. Would that be the correct articulation? Yeah, so the word for incarnation in Hindu books is avatar. Again, as you can see, when these sacred terms from a religious tradition get entering to mainstream English language or get appropriated, then they kind of lose their meaning.

And today, if you say avatar and people think about all these avatars, they have other social platforms and hollywoodization, it is a movie avatar. So it's kind of sad in some ways because avatar is a very sacred word in the Hindu tradition. It means the descent of the divine, that somehow periodically we see when we look back at history that some extraordinary beings seem to be born in different parts of the world. And the influence that they have, the power that they exert is not just for their contemporaries, it remains for centuries. And such are the people when it's difficult to know whether these are human beings or it's a divine being, whether this is a human being who has raised themselves toward divine stature or it's a divine being who was kind of come and take on a human form.

So it's kind of a meeting ground between the human and the divine. That's where the avatar or the incarnation resides. And because it happens periodically, being to see that there are many incarnations, but the being whose incarnations they are is one and the same. Coming up, we're going to talk about how to escape some Sara. Swami will also explain his belief that all prayers are always answered. And he'll talk about Hindu meditation.

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Just sticking with escaping some Sara, escaping this round of repeated births. What is the mechanism by which one would escape samsara? That's a good question. And we have to ask, what is it that brought me into samsara in the first place? And the Vedas say that it's ignorance, that somehow I seem to have forgotten my true nature. And the illustration that the teachers often give is of sleep, because one way of defining sleep is it's the state of ignorance, because at night after dinner, I go, I switch off the light in my bedroom, I lay on my bed. For some time, I'm turning and twisting.

And at some moment, suddenly, sleep overtakes me. None of us knows the exact moment we move from the waking state to the sleep state. Now, what is sleep? Until the moment I slept, I knew exactly who I was, I knew where I was. But the sleep comes in, I no longer know who I am, I no longer know where I am. And my dream I might find myself in the Bahamas or in Hawaii, and that would dream completely natural. So am I really lying in my bed here or a mind how I?

Because in the dream, I don't know the dream to be a dream as long as I dream me. So the dream is very real to me until I wake up and then realize that it was only a dream. So in the dream, I am a different person. I forget my real nature when I'm asleep. Now something like that seems to have happened, that this one infinite being, this infinite reality, if it were to go to sleep and it would forget that it is infinite and in the dream, see itself as finite. It will forget that it is immortal in the dream, see itself as mortal. It'll forget that it is immortal in the dream. See itself as mortal.

It'll forget that it's free and See itself as bound and that's our human existence now if we look deeply when Buddha said life is suffering He didn't really say that life is joy and suffering, which is our present experience He didn't really say that life will joy and suffering, which is our present experience. He just said life is suffering. And that's what even Krishna, whom Hindu's worship, said in the Gita, he says, having come to this joyless world. Now, these seem like pretty one-sided descriptions. But when Bhuta referred to this life as just being filled with suffering, he was really

referring to the existential form of suffering. Not this kind of a daily suffering through hunger and homelessness. That suffering I granted. But again, those are not universal in the sense that not everyone in the world is homeless. Some people are and we need to do all we can to help them. But there are certain kinds of suffering from which no one is except, for instance, mortality. No one is exempt from death. Aging, we can pretend we are not old.

We can hide the fact that we are getting old, but we cannot stop the process of aging itself. Illness, no one can say that they have never fallen ill. So physically, aging, sickness, death, the three main sites in that story in Buddha's life, which he saw when he first went out of the palace, which was like the beginning of his renunciation. There is no human solution to these problems. And of course, at the level of the mind, there is stress, there is anxiety, there is worry. So these are the existential nature of our existence. This is the kind of suffering. If when we focus on it and realize there is no escape from this, then one can ask, do I want this to repeat again and again through millions of years, or do I want to put an end to it? And the answer is, while if I can end it, I would love to end it. And that's what I believe,

the different religious traditions try to do. I mean they, theologically they can put this same idea in different ways, but the idea is can we be free from this present chaos of existence in some way and be in a place or in a state where we can be free from all of that. And if you think about it this way, then I think wanting to break this cycle of birth and rebirth would be great. So what does the alternative look like here? If you say you can escape from these endless rounds of birth and death, where do you escape to? Is it heaven? What are you envisioning? Or what does the faith envision? Yes, we actually we just wake up. the faith in vision. Yes, we actually, we just wake up. So, the analogy of sleep that I gave before, the only way to escape from a dream is to wake up. Otherwise, one dream will be followed

by another dream. So, these reapers, if one believes in them, can be seen at just another dream. them can be seen at just another dream. Death is another dream. If someone wants to think in terms of heaven and hell, that's a heaven dream, that's a hell dream. So we are passing from one dream to the other and we can go on doing this indefinitely unless it until we wake up. And the word Buddha really means one who is awake. Buddha was not the name that his parents gave him. And Buddha himself said that just as he became the awakened one, everyone of us has the potentiality to wake up from this seemingly endless series of dreams. And so escaping out of samsara really means waking up and finding

that all this mortality, this limited death, this anger, this hatred, everything that is terrible, all of that were just a dream. You wake up, you haven't done anything new, you just find you are who you are. Do you know anybody who's walking up in this way, who's ascended in this way? And what happens to them when they die? This experience of enlightenment is a completely subjective experience. Outwardly, the person looks pretty much like we see other people except the people I met who I've seen as enlightened beings they carry a different aura around them. There is so much peace and joy and contentment just spending a few minutes in their company you feel uplifted.

So those are the external ways we can try to understand that something has changed inside. We see someone who is always loving, kind, they never get upset. There is not an IOT or Jalice or anger or hatred in them. So from outside we can say well something has changed inside. But what has exactly happened internally to that person, only that person knows. And that person can't really express it so much because the moment you put it into words, you already distorted it. Nevertheless, many texts do describe what are called the characteristics of the Enlightened. A some external way of kind of knowing that here is this person who has been able to go

beyond the common weaknesses of humanity and somehow scale some height beyond that. And such are the people then whom we respect, adore, worship as mystics, saints, sometimes saviors, prophets, incarnations, and these are the different labels that are put upon them. But this is what we see from the outside. How does one go beyond? How does one in your tradition become enlightened? One way of doing that is just letting go, letting go to begin with of all unnecessary baggage. And even in a very superficial way, we understand the utility of it. Sometimes I see my own desk here, gets so cluttered, so crowded with things. And then I look at them after a day or two and say, do I really need this thing to be here?

The moment my desk is cleared of all unnecessary things, I just feel so happy. I am able to work better. So same thing can be done, but looking at our own life and seeing these hundreds of things that I think I need to do, this hundred of things that I feel are my duty, my responsibility. And I might ask myself, do I really need to do all this? Do I really need to possess all these things? And if a part of me says, now maybe I don't need this, I don't need that. See if I can to begin with start eliminating the unnecessary baggage I have accumulated over the years of even material possessions, but also unnecessary thoughts and ideas and information,

thoughts and ideas and information, I will find that I'm already feeling much freer. That's the way I think to kind of prioritize things in life so that life becomes simpler and the more simple we become the happier we get. In fact in some Hindu traditions God is described as the simple one. And there are songs in the Hindu tradition which says that unless I become simple, I cannot really recognize the simple one. So in order to understand or to communicate with that infinite divine existence, divine reality, which is simple, not complicated. I need to become simple myself. If I'm not able to perceive that truth right now,

it's not because the truth is not present, but because I have become complicated. And so letting go of this unnecessary baggage, I'm able to regain my simplicity and then that way towards transcendence, way towards eliminating my weaknesses, my drawbacks becomes easier. Okay, so I hear that a sort of deep decluttering here, both on a material and a psychological level is part of the path toward enlightenment. Where do spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation fit in in the view of your tradition? Yeah, so prayer is a very natural response when we want something, prayer is a kind of a wanting. When we are little babies, when we needed something, we just go to mom and dad and say, mom, I want this, I want that. And when we grow up, if we are believers and

theistically people pray to God, believing that God is someone who can give me what I want. And people see God is my father, my mother, or any kind of a way people relate with that higher reality. But prayer comes from that sense of assurance that faith that I will get what I ask for. I sometimes say that people feel that some prayers are answered and some are not. But I believe that all prayers are answered without exception. And that is because if I ask for something and if I don't get it, the answer is no, but no is an answer. And if God truly loves me,

then just as a parent, when they truly love their children, they don't give everything that a children ask for. If a parent believes that this is not good for my child, the parent would say no, and that no is an act of love. And so when we feel that faith gets strengthened to the practice of prayer, then the natural reaction is that of gratitude. And that gratitude gets expressed in a form of worship,

a worship in the Hindu tradition, and I believe possibly in many other traditions as well, takes the form of giving. So in many Hindu forms of worship, they give, they offer incense, flowers, fruits, food, that's an act of gratitude. So if prayer is seen as a movement from the divine to the human, then worship can be seen as a movement from the human being to the divine. And both of these prayer and worship bring the two closer together and then meditation becomes possible. So meditation I see is in the word word in Sanskrit, is a darshana,

is seeing the divine, seeing the truth. But what happens is, I mean, sometimes people speak about, and Hinduism definitely says it, that God is all-provading, God is everywhere. And oftentimes, meditation practitioners are asked to kind of concentrate in their heart, or sometimes it in the between their eyebrows, depending on whatever instructions they have received from their teacher, that see God in your heart. But when we close our eyes, we just see darkness. So what do I do then?

And then the next thing we can do is, well, if you're not seeing God or not seeing the divine there, think of the divine. And so we start thinking about God. But I think it's important to distinguish thinking from meditation. Meditation itself is not thinking. Because thinking is a very mental activity. Thinking requires effort.

Thinking is the next best thing we can do when we are not able to see. So the mind can be seen as a body of water. In fact, in yoga, the image of the mind, the imagery that is used is that of a lake. So just as a body of water, on top of these waves and ripples, the water is pretty much disturbed on the surface due to wind and so on, but the more you dive deeper and deeper into the water, the water becomes still. If you go

like the bottom of the Atlantic or the Pacific, the water would be completely still there. So the mind is like that. As long as we are in the superficial layers of the mind, there are all these thoughts, disturbances, conflicts, but when we learn to dive deep within our minds, then we reach a place where it's completely still. I spoke earlier about how when we are lying down in bed at night, at some point the waking state suddenly abruptly stops and the sleep begins. In the same way, when thinking becomes so one-pointed to the exclusion of everything else, at some point unbeknownst to ourselves, thinking stops and seeing begins. So thinking can lead to meditation, but thinking itself is not meditation.

So that's how these prayer, worship and meditation are related in a Hindu way of thinking, at least one way of Hindu thinking. What would you describe as the main differences if any between Hindu meditation and Buddhist meditation? Hindu meditation itself is not just one thing. I find it difficult to kind of even think about Hindu meditation in a singular way. And so it will be really difficult to compare a Hindu meditation and a Buddhist meditation because even in Buddhism there are so many different techniques developed by

different pastors. I mean the way my mind thinks is I don't bother so much about the labels, whether it's even a Hindu meditation or a Buddhist meditation. I just think if any practice, any way of thinking resonates with me, with my body and mind, resonates with the way I understand myself, I understand the world, I should make use of it. It doesn't matter whether it's Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or Muslim or just anything, the truth can come to me from any direction, oftentimes in many unexpected ways. And I should be open to that one. Even though I'm a Hindu monk, my Hinduism sits pretty lightly on my shoulders. In the sense that I don't have any hesitation in learning and accepting and growing in learning and accepting and growing and being grateful for wisdom that comes from any direction.

I like that a lot. I appreciate it. Coming up, Swami gives me his take on the Buddha's teaching of not self or selflessness. He also provides a simple recipe for reducing stress and anxiety, that and more right after this. I do want to ask about something that I mentioned earlier. A lot of people who listen to this show know quite a bit about Buddhism because we talk a lot about Buddhism here. How would you describe the principle differences between Buddhism and Hinduism? Well, I would begin by saying Buddha was not a Buddhist. There is no indication anywhere in Buddha's teachings that he said that I'm starting a Dhyorelition. So I see Buddha as a reformer within the Hindu tradition. And you could say there are similarities, the relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism, to somewhat between Christianity and Judaism.

So, Buddha was a very powerful, very charismatic, one of the greatest reformers within the Hindu tradition. And he came from a royal family and those who belong to the priestly caste and the warrior caste to which the Buddha's belong, they routinely studied all the scriptures. It was a part of their upbringing. So Buddha had read all these Hindu texts. In fact, a lot of the Buddha's teachings can be traced back to these texts which are older at that time. The only thing is Buddha did not go on saying, oh, I'm saying this because it is said in the Gita or because it is said in the Vedas. He was not like coating from books, but all of his teachings can be traced back to that. In fact, Swami Vivekananda, who was the first Hindu indigenous teacher to come to the West, he described Buddha as the

greatest teacher of Vedanta ever born. So, Hindu see Buddha as a great teacher. In fact, Hindus believe in a repeated descent of the divine, so there are many avatars in the Hindu tradition, and Buddha is one of the avatars in the Hindu tradition. So Buddha is worshiped by the Hindus as well. So Hindus don't see Buddha as of someone from a different religion. And so for me Buddhism doesn't feel like a different religion. It just feels like well, we belong to this same big religious family. But when Buddhism spread outside the Indian subcontinent, went to Tibet, Sri Lanka, East Asia, and then to Japan and Korea, and all these other places, and of course later on when made a such a strong foothold in the Western world as well. It absorbed some of these local cultural morts and ideas and emesaries.

And that is why we have now had different kinds of Buddhism. Well, they're all Buddhism, but if you see a Tibetan Buddhism in Japanese and Vietnamese, everyone has their kind of an own flavor attached to it. And that's the strength of Buddhism, I see, that it doesn't go and push aside the existing thought processes and cultures of the places Buddhism spread to, but it assimilates them. And so Buddhism definitely has made a deep impression on the world today. And if there is a deep impression on me, I've got a Buddha's image right in my room here, and I bowed

on to it every day. One difference, and you may not see this as a difference, you might be able to disabuse me of this notion that I'm about to articulate, but one difference I can see between what some might call Buddhism and Hinduism is in your descriptions earlier in this conversation, you talked about the Atman or the Self. The word Soul could be used, although that's as you pointed out a complex word, but this true nature that resides within all of us, whereas in Buddhism, he talked about Anata, not self, that the more you look at the mind, the more you'll see that there's nothing you can call self, and that freedom liberation enlightenment lies that way in not taking anything personally

and seeing that the self is actually an illusion. That seems to me like perhaps a key difference, but please tell me where I've got that wrong. Now, I don't think you're wrong. I just that how we understand the terms and understand the intent behind using those terms that would lead us to kind of different ways of interpreting those words. Let me explain. I see Buddha as a very practical teacher. I mean, all of the Buddhist philosophy that has developed down over the last 2000 years

or more than 2000 years is a philosophy that developed by those who came after the Buddha. And Buddha's words themselves, the discourses of the Buddha are so simple, so direct, so practical. It doesn't feel like he was trying to construct any metaphysics from that one. And because Buddha was practical, one thing he noticed that people had gotten so caught up in concepts that the reality that it beyond the concepts was eluding them. And this happens in every tradition over time. And Buddha, we saw the Hindus of his own contemporary period. He saw that they were discussing these, what is the nature of the art man? What is this and what is that? And so much engagement into concepts. And

he wanted to kind of draw their attention away from the concepts towards the reality. The example often given in Buddhist tradition is of the finger pointing at the moon. A finger pointing at the moon can be helpful to locate the moon, but the finger itself is not the moon. So if someone starts looking at the finger, they're not seeing the moon. So sometimes the conceptual framework that is present in different traditions, if we are engaged all the time with these concepts, then whatever reality those concepts are pointing to, we may not be able to reach that. And so Buddha wanted to break that connection

between the concepts and that reality, saying, now, get, leave this concept behind, hold on to what is real. And he did it in a very provocative and revolutionary way. So people are saying, ah, man, ah, man, ah, man, say, no, there is no ah, man. See, beyond the idea was the moment you let go of these concepts, the reality will reveal itself to you. And I think that was very, very powerful teaching. The problem which occurred even during Buddha's time, because when Buddha said there is no atman, human beings being who they are, people started thinking, oh, there is no Atman. So no Atman, Anatta became a concept. So instead of being preoccupied with the concept of the Atma, people started

getting preoccupied with the concept of Anatma. And that is where Buddha in one of his discourses says, and this is kind of hilarious in some ways, but also something that should make us think. Kabuddha says, those who are attached to the idea of the Atman have some hope, but those who are attached to the idea of no Atman have no hope. Now, what he meant by that is, it won't do to substitute one concept by another concept. We have to look beyond the Atma and beyond the Anatma because concepts are just that. If I want to go to the roof of the house, a ladder might help. But the ladder is not the roof. I must use the ladder

to go to the roof, but then not just start arguing about the ladder itself. So, that's one way I try to understand the different ways the same truth gets expressed, whether there is this infinite transcendent self or let go of this concept of the self to reach the reality a second way Which is also helpful that I have found for me is for most people Self is really there ego even the idea that the real eye the real me is

Not this eye that I'm experiencing now. I have to real me is not this eye that I'm experiencing now. I have to eliminate my present limited notion of eye to go to that real eye. And so because my kind of a false eye right now is myself. So when Buddha said there is no self, what he was really saying is, get this false eye, this limited eye attached to these perishable entities like the body and mind, get that out of the way. And the idea was, when the false eye gets out of the way, whatever is real will remain, whether you call it by that name or not. So there is something ineffable, and whether we call it Atman or Anata or the soul or God or whatever, getting hung up on the concept is

going to screw you up. What you want is to do the work of meditation, service, prayer, letting go in innumerable ways that will allow you to have the experience which is beyond concepts. Absolutely. Concepts are good. Concepts can be helpful for intellectual understanding, but remaining stuck to them can hinder our growth. So we expect good use of them and then learn to look beyond them. Last question from me, which is about you. You started by telling us your personal history, joining monastery at age 19. You were given this name, which translates into the joy of letting go. Now you're no longer 19. I don't know your exact age, but you're a little bit older, and I'm just curious after a lifetime of study and practice,

would you describe yourself as enlightened? How good are you? How accomplished are you at letting go? Now how joyful are you now? Progress report if you're comfortable with it. I can definitely say I'm 10% or more happy that I was when I've joined the monastery. Certainly, looking at myself objectively, I definitely can see that I have become

more mature. I have this strong faith and conviction that I'm on the right track, that if I continue doing what I'm doing, continue being who I am, that I will reach the goal of transcendence. I've been very lucky, I must say, that the choices I made in my life along the way have all been produced the kind of results I had hoped they would. So I'm very grateful for whatever circumstances brought me to where I am today. And what I have found is that the best way for me personally to be happy is to make the thoughts, the words and the actions as close to each other as possible, harmonizing that if I think something, my words and my actions should be in harmony with what I think. Because I believe that much of the stress and anxiety that we experience in life

is because sometimes we think in one way our words, what we say goes in a different direction and our actions go in a yet different direction. To the extent we are able to bring them all able to bring them all in harmony, in one line, that is what I believe would produce a truly authentic life. An authenticity is absolutely necessary to reach enlightenment. I think people who are not authentic can never become enlightened. So I think that's the first and foremost struggle that we all have to undergo in our life. And I'm doing my best. And to the extent possible, I try to share with others through my books, through my lectures, and so on. Whatever I've found has helped me personally in my life, and something that I know that it works. And the blessing of my life has been that over the years, people who come here, not just in Boston, but whichever places

I have been before, their feedback has been very encouraging. So in the Viraan society, it's a very diverse congregation we have. The people who come to the Vedanta society don't all self-identify as Hindus. There are Muslim, there are Christian, there are Buddhist, different traditions. And over the years, so many people have told me or written to me, that is the result of studying and understanding the teachings. And we study it here through the life and inspiration of Swami Vivekananda and His teacher, Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sharada Devi. These are the founding lights of the order to which I belong. Many have pointed out to me that is a result of studying and trying to understand

using these insights, they have said, I feel that I have become a better Christian or a better Muslim or a better Buddhist. And so that's how I see a way of serving others might be, to take anyone where they are, where they stand. and if it is possible for me to extend a helping hand to do so without asking them to change or making them change into anything, if the change occurs that change should occur internally and naturally and spontaneously. internally and naturally and spontaneously. And so that's been the journey of my life. And I'm very grateful for whatever has happened. And I'm grateful to you now for giving me this opportunity to express myself this way.

Thank you so much for coming on. You did a great job expressing yourself and I'm grateful for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was wonderful being with you. Thanks again to Swami Tiagananda. This show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ, Kashmir, Justin, Davie, Kim Baikamam, Maria Wartell, and Jen Plant with audio engineering from our good friends over at Ultraviolet Audio. Coming up on Wednesday, I

mentioned this at the top of the show. We're going to talk to Evan Thompson who wrote a book called Why I'm Not a Buddhist. He takes a pretty hard run in his book at people who have been really influential for me, including Sam Harris and Robert Wright, both previous guests on this show. So very interesting and challenging interview. And it's part of the theme for this week of just taking a hard look at some of my long-held views and positions vis-a-vis Buddhism. So that's coming up on Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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