Why Life Sucks | Param Srikantia | TEDxSyracuseUniversity

good afternoon when my son Elliot was in elementary school he said something that awakened me to a great paradox life has so much potential but we seem to make so little of it no matter how much money we make we're always in financial scarcity despite all the labor saving devices we have we have no time to enjoy our life and with all the social media there is we are more lonely than ever before in the world why on our daily on a daily basis our life just seems to suck why around the same time I stumbled upon the writings of an Indian mystic called Osho spelled oh Sh oh oh show who left behind a legacy of over 2,000 books on the art of living in bliss in joyful abundance and with conscious awareness inspired by Osho's perspectives and by my son's question I will now explore a fundamental shift in our consciousness that speaks to the very heart of the paradox that my son Elliot highlighted there are three barriers that contribute to why life sucks let's examine what it takes to overcome them the first barrier I want to talk to you about is called the chattering monkey how many of you have noticed that there's a voice inside your head that is talking to you right now simultaneously even while I'm talking to you Eastern mystics have called this voice the chattering monkey why just as monkeys are moving all the time jumping from branch to branch so is our mind I have brought Curious George with me to demonstrate this firsthand I once worked in an office where my boss would walk in through the main door she would stop at my desk for a few minutes and then she would proceed to her office this happened every day but one day she walked in through the main door and walked straight to her office that's when Curious George sat up he said did you just see what happened how mean of her do not stop by and say hello I was with her in a meeting to 7:30 p.m. last night and she seemed quite happy with me I bet it's my boss's boss he didn't look too happy he must have said something bad about me anyway let me go back at lunchtime to make sure everything is okay I went back to my boss's office at lunch only to discover that she was leaving for lunch with four of my colleagues to my favorite Indian restaurant without inviting me that's when Curious George became furious George he said did you just say what happened not only did she not stop by and say hello but she's leaving for your favorite Indian restaurant without inviting you I hope I'm not getting fired I don't even have an updated resume eh I better come up with something spectacular to help me keep my job otherwise I'll never be able to make my payments on the new Honda now little did I know that my boss was supervising a project that four of my colleagues were working on that was going very badly and since I was not involved in the project she just didn't feel the need to invite me and on top of that my boss's boss said yelled at her that morning about the project going badly so my boss was stressed she walked into the building walked straight to her office picked up her phone called my colleagues told them to meet her for lunch so that they can together fix the failing project but my chattering monkeys auditory messages became visual filters and these visual filters started shaping the way I view my boss so when Curious George said this bosses mean I started wearing my mean lenses the moment Curious George said she is unfair I start wearing my unfair lenses and then soon when he says she's such a jerk I start wearing my jerk lenses now my boss looks like a mean unfair jerk to me how many of you can see that through these lenses I will never be able to see my boss for who she is now we live trapped in the psychic prison of the mind we live engaged in our own private world of stories and interpretations even countries go to war with each other based on what their chattering monkeys are telling them it's only when we go beyond the chattering monkey and we go beyond the mind that we can start seeing reality for what it truly is without all the distortions that our lenses can create notice how much continuous inner chatter goes on in your head from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed the antidote to the chattering monkey is the shift to mindfulness the ability to watch and witness your thoughts as if they are just clouds moving through the sky rather than take your thoughts to seriously watch them go by how many of you can see that there is a chattering monkey in your life that is actually causing unnecessary alienation in some of your relationships at work in your family and your social life and how many of you can see that whenever you're miserable most often it's your chattering monkey causing your misery the shift to mindfulness enables you to start watching your thoughts as if they're just clouds floating by without getting sucked into all the tension and stress that they create mindfulness is your ability to know that these thoughts can come and go you don't have to get sucked into them and you are not you're moving thoughts you are actually the sky itself the space of consciousness that holds these moving thoughts now I would like to talk to you about the second barrier the second barrier is called unsubbed tears this was a phrase used by osho to refer to experiences that have produced sadness pain and shame experiences that we did not grieve fully when they happened but they wounded us deeply hence the phrase unsub tears we carry the sadness within the within us long after the event we wear masks sometimes to conceal the pain I wear three masks to hide my insecurities that I'm nice that I'm smart that I'm goofy how did I come to wear these masks I was riding on the backseat of a car in New Delhi when I was nine years old blabbering away when someone turned to everybody else in the car and said this kid is stupid he never says anything intelligent in that instant my whole world came crashing down it's no accident that I have earned the equivalent of four master's degrees I have a PhD and have published a bunch of papers just to prove that I'm smart but the irony is that no matter how many degrees I earn the initial insecurity never went away and now this is one of the conundrums of more exist racial conundrums of modern achievement-oriented societies like the one we live in things that happen to us in our childhood and in our teenage years create feelings of insecurity and inadequacy we try to compensate for these experiences by wearing masks but the insecurity Persis look at my life someone said I was stupid I have spent the next 25 years earning multiple degrees trying to be smart now if I were to tell you that I was trying to be smart what does it tell you that I decided that I'm not smart exactly this is one of the conundrums and the catch-22 that no matter how many degrees I earn if I've already decided that I'm not smart how the degrees will never may allow me to feel smart inside and in modern competitive societies we are all struggling in our own ways to be unique special and extraordinary how many of us here would agree that you two are wearing masks social masks perhaps to conceal some of the sadness pain and shame that you feel inside sometimes our relationship with ourselves has fundamentally broken it's only when we can feel deep passion for ourselves and for the struggles that we've lived through and we can love ourselves unconditionally for who we are and who we are not that this would be the beginning of a planetary revolution it's only when we can love ourselves fully that we become capable of loving others how we treat others is a reflection of how we treat ourselves but if we condemn then judge ourselves we will never be able to genuinely love and accept those around us life just becomes a futile game of condemning one another but try this instead raise your hand if you agree that there is probably nobody in this room who's exactly like you now raise your hand if you agree that there is probably nobody like you exactly like you in the entire world in the entire planet great you just confessed that who you are is so unique so special and so extraordinary that there's not a single other person like you on this entire planet unsolved tears represent the pain the insecurities the sadness and shame that we all carry inside us we try to become unique special and extraordinary but we forget that each one of us is already unique special and extraordinary there's nobody like us anywhere on this entire planet this is a powerful shift that can move us from the everyday tension and stress of proving our worth to appreciating the sacredness of ourselves and of everybody around us if there's nothing else that you remember from my talk I want you to remember to fall in love with yourself just the way you are the third barrier that I want to talk about is called robotic somnambulism some nominalism is a medical term that simply means sleepwalking you woke up this morning and you're here where you are now how many of you would agree that you probably have no recollection of how you got here why is this so because it's almost as if there's a little robot inside you that is hitting the snooze button brushing your teeth eating your cereal taking a shower and driving to work all done mechanically we are on autopilot why does this happen our desires transform us into programmed goal seeking robots planning a grand future even as the beauty of this present moment disappears right before us believing that we will be happy once we reach our goals is a falsely peddled mentality as we reach our goals too often the goal post just moves and when the goal post just moves it's like we're chasing a point on a receding horizon we climb the ladder and just as we are beginning to celebrate a hundred other ladders open up before us instead let us consider another paradigm life happens in three domains having doing and being having consists of all those things you can possess doing consists of actions that you take and being is simply a state representing who you are let me give you an example that will remind all of us of something that's very important being happy is not dependent on what we do and what we have I want you to look at this more closely if you grow up in any of the consumption oriented societies of the modern world you are told that you need to have what money in order to do what you most want to do let's say vacation in Venice in order to be happy although you're told that how many of you would agree that you could be miserable sitting in a five-star resort in Venice and you could be joyous walking your dog and pookie picking up her poop right here in Syracuse try another one how many of you can picture three delighted children playing by a garbage dump with a milk carton tied to a string as their only toy but joy and how many of you can picture three children in a very prosperous neighborhood with a room full of the most expensive toys still discontented and unhappy this only goes to show that being happy is not dependent on what we do and what we have when we are sleepwalking through life like robots we forget we become so busy having and so busy doing that we forget that the very essence of us is our being we have forgotten our being we need to shift therefore from sleepwalking through life like program robots to what to a deep wakefulness in which we are alive to the miracle of life celebrating the beauty of this present moment if we are not conscious of the beauty of the present moment years of our life will disappear just before us because we are sleepwalking through life and many of us here have an inner condemned nur which is constantly criticizing us and condemning us for not having enough and for not doing enough this is a very important shift because it reminds us that we were designed to be human beings not human having's and not human doings through this shift we can remember that being happy is not something that is dependent on something outside but arises from within now in conclusion I want to invoke the metaphor of a beautiful rose to understand the full potential of life let's think of four different stances that we can have towards the Rose as Osho reminds us those of us who are business minded will tend to approach the Rose with a calculating frame of mind how much can I draw sell this Rose for those of us who are scientists will tend to analyze the Rose by placing it under a microscope after dissecting it those of us who are artists will probably admire the beauty of the Rose perhaps by composing a poem about it perhaps by painting it and those of us who are mystics will simply celebrate the beauty of the Rose the mystery of the Rose we will celebrate the mystery the infinite marvel of nature's splendor life appears like a problem to be solved because we live in a world that is created out of logical explanations and utilitarian calculations but we must remember not to approach life as a problem to be solved but instead as a mystery to be joyously embraced so to go back to Elliott's original question how is it that life has so much potential but we make so little of it and why life sucks in the unawakened state of consciousness there is a monkey a robot and years worth of on sob tears within us inside all of us but through the shifts that we have discussed hopefully we can begin to take the steps to start living our life like OSHA would have liked us to in bliss with conscious awareness and in a spirit of joyful abundance thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 78,944

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Consciousness, Education, Future, Goal-setting, Happiness, Individualism, Leadership, Life Development, Personal growth, Potential

Id: fE_82qwpSKI

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2019