Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day

by Jay Shetty

“Because the only thing that stays with you from the moment you’re born until the moment you die is your breath. All your friends, your family, the country you live in, all of that can change. The one thing that stays with you is your breath.” This ten-year-old monk added, “When you get stressed—what changes? Your breath. When you get angry—what changes? Your breath. We experience every emotion with the change of the breath. When you learn to navigate and manage your breath, you can navigate any situation in life.”

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. —Bhagavad Gita 3.35

When you try to live your most authentic life, some of your relationships will be put in jeopardy. Losing them is a risk worth bearing; finding a way to keep them in your life is a challenge worth taking on.

“Your identity is a mirror covered with dust. When you first look in the mirror, the truth of who you are and what you value is obscured. Clearing it may not be pleasant, but only when that dust is gone can you see your true reflection.”

When we tune out the opinions, expectations, and obligations of the world around us, we begin to hear ourselves.

AUDIT YOUR LIFE

According to the Gita, these are the higher values and qualities: fearlessness, purity of mind, gratitude, service and charity, acceptance, performing sacrifice, deep study, austerity, straightforwardness, nonviolence, truthfulness, absence of anger, renunciation, perspective, restraint from fault finding, compassion toward all living beings, satisfaction, gentleness/kindness, integrity, determination. (Notice that happiness and success are not among these values. These are not values, they are rewards—the end game—and we will address them further in Chapter Four.) The six lower values are greed, lust, anger, ego, illusion, and envy. The downside of the lower values is that they so readily take us over when we give them space to do so, but the upside is that there are a lot fewer of them. Or, as my teacher Gauranga Das reminded us, there are always more ways to be pulled up than to be pulled down.

We humans cling to stuff—people, ideas, material possessions, copies of Marie Kondo’s book—thinking it’s unnatural to purge, but letting go is a direct route to space (literally) and stillness. We separate ourselves—emotionally if not physically—from the people and ideas who fill up our lives, and then we take time to observe the natural inclinations that compel us.

TRY THIS: PAST VALUES Reflect on the three best and three worst choices you’ve ever made. Why did you make them? What have you learned? How would you have done it differently?

TRY THIS: VALUE-DRIVEN DECISIONS For the next week, whenever you spend money on a nonnecessity or make a plan for how you will spend your free time, pause, and think: What is the value behind this choice? It only takes a second, a flash of consideration. Ideally, this momentary pause becomes instinctive, so that you are making conscious choices about what matters to you and how much energy you devote to it.

opinions, expectations, and obligations (OEOs),

A twenty-year study of people living in a Massachusetts town showed that both happiness and depression spread within social circles. If a friend who lives within a mile of you becomes happier, then the chance that you are also happy increases by 25 percent. The effect jumps higher with next-door neighbors.

LinkedIn and Meetup and tools like Facebook

When I spend time with this person or group, do I feel like I’m getting closer to or further away from who I want to be?

TRY THIS: COMPANION AUDIT Over the course of a week, make a list of the people with whom you spend the most time. List the values that you share next to each person. Are you giving the most time to the people who align most closely with your values?

Does this fit my chosen values or those that others have selected for me? Is this dust or is it me?

It is impossible to build one’s own happiness on the unhappiness of others. —Daisaku Ikeda

“Cancers of the Mind: Comparing, Complaining, Criticizing.”

One of the exercises we did was keeping a tally of every criticism we spoke or thought. For each one, we had to write down ten good things about the person.

This helped me see my own weaknesses differently. I tended to focus on my mistakes without balancing them against my strengths. When I found myself being self-critical, I reminded myself that I too had positive qualities. Putting my negative qualities in context helped me recognize the same ratio in myself, that I am more good than bad. We talked about this feedback loop in class: When we criticize others, we can’t help but notice the bad in ourselves. But when we look for the good in others, we start to see the best in ourselves too.

peace, love, and understanding (thanks Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello).

Sangha is the Sanskrit word for community, and it suggests a refuge where people serve and inspire each other.

The desire to save others is ego-driven.

The more we define ourselves in relation to the people around us, the more lost we are.

Remember, saying whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, is not freedom. Real freedom is not feeling the need to say these things.

Mudita is the principle of taking sympathetic or unselfish joy in the good fortune of others.

The Bhagavad Gita describes three gunas, or modes of life: tamas, rajas, and sattva, which represent “ignorance,” “impulsivity,” and “goodness.” I have found that these three modes can be applied to any activity—for example, when you pull back from a conflict and look for understanding, it’s very useful to try to shift from rajas—impulsivity and passion—to sattva—goodness, positivity, and peace. These modes are the foundation of my approach to forgiveness.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life. —Buddha

We panic, we freeze, we run away, or we bury it, as I had buried my anxiety about my parents. The first two are shorter-term strategies, while the second two are longer-term, but all of them distract us from the situation and prevent us from using our fear productively.

when the fear of staying the same outweighs the fear of change, that is when we change.

“Think about your motivations. Do you want to memorize all of the scripture because it’s an impressive achievement, or do you want the experience of having studied it? In the first, all you want is the outcome. In the second, you are curious about what you might learn from the process.”

Fear. Thakura describes this as being driven by “sickness, poverty, fear of hell or fear of death.” Desire. Seeking personal gratification through success, wealth, and pleasure. Duty. Motivated by gratitude, responsibility, and the desire to do the right thing. Love. Compelled by care for others and the urge to help them.

The Sanskrit word for illusion is maya, which means believing in that which is not.

“As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.”

meaning shows that our actions have purpose.

Fear, desire, duty, and love are the roots of all intentions. In Sanskrit the word for intention is sankalpa, and I think of it as the reason, formed by one’s own heart and mind, that one strives for a goal.

Dharma, like many Sanskrit terms, can’t be defined by a single English word, though to say something is “your calling” comes close. My definition of dharma is an effort to make it practical to our lives today. I see dharma as the combination of varna and seva. Think of varna (also a word with complex meanings) as passion and skills. Seva is understanding the world’s needs and selflessly serving others. When your natural talents and passions (your varna) connect with what the universe needs (seva) and become your purpose, you are living in your dharma.

“Follow your bliss.” He wrote, “Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. ‘Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, ‘I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.” If you follow your bliss, he said, “doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

“Yesterday is but a dream. Tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

Only by detaching can we truly gain control of the mind.

And once we’ve got a point of view, we’re unlikely to change it. In her popular TED Talk, “Why You Think You’re Right Even When You’re Wrong,” Julia Galef, host of the podcast Rationally Speaking, calls that rigidity “soldier mindset.” A soldier’s job is to protect and defend their side. Conversely, there’s the “scout mindset.” Galef says, “Scout mindset means seeing what’s there as accurately as you can, even if it’s not pleasant.” Soldiers have already signed on to a cause, so they value continuity. Scouts are investigating their options, so they value truth. Soldier mindset is rooted in defensiveness and tribalism; scout mindset is rooted in curiosity and intrigue. Soldiers value being on the right side; scouts value being objective. Galef says whether we’re a soldier or a scout has less to do with our level of intelligence or education and more to do with our attitude about life. Are we ashamed or grateful when we discover we were wrong about something? Are we defensive or intrigued when we find information that contradicts something we believe? If we aren’t open-minded, we deny ourselves opportunities to learn, grow, and change.

Some tasks build competence, and some build character.

The two things to remember are the bad we’ve done to others and the good others have done for us. By focusing on the bad we’ve done to others, our egos are forced to remember our imperfections and regrets. This keeps us grounded. When we remember the good others have done for us, we feel humbled by our need for others and our gratitude for the gifts we have received. The two things that we were told to forget are the good we’ve done for others and the bad others have done to us. If we fixate on and are impressed by our own good deeds, our egos grow, so we put those deeds aside. And if others treat us badly, we have to let that go too. This doesn’t mean we have to be best friends with someone hurtful, but harboring anger and grudges keeps us focused on ourselves instead of taking a broader perspective.

“What belongs to you today, belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow.”

Receiving an insult. Observe your ego, take a broader view of the person’s negativity, and respond to the situation, not the insult. Receiving a compliment or accolades. Take this opportunity to be grateful for the teacher who helped you further this quality. Arguing with a partner. The desire to be right, to win, comes from your ego’s unwillingness to admit weakness. Remember you can be right, or you can move forward. See the other person’s side. Lose the battle. Wait a day and see how it feels. Topping people. When we listen to others, we often one-up them with a story that shows how we have it better or worse. Instead, listen to understand and acknowledge. Be curious. Don’t say anything about yourself.

The monk approach is to look to your guru (your guide), sadhu (other teachers and saintly people), and shastra (scripture). We look for alignment among these three sources. In the modern world many of us don’t have “guides,” and if we do, we probably don’t put them in a different category than teachers. Nor are all of us followers of religious writings. But what the monks are going for here is advice from trusted sources who all want the best for you, but who offer different perspectives. Choose from those who care most about your emotional health (often friends and family, serving as gurus), those who encourage your intellectual growth and experience (these could be mentors or teachers, serving as sadhus), and those who share your values and intentions (religious guides and/or scientific facts, serving as shastras).

“Believe those who search for the truth; doubt those who have found it.”

The health benefits of gratitude are so extensive that Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, head of the Division of Biologic Psychology at Duke University Medical Center, told ABC News, “If [thankfulness] were a drug, it would be the world’s best-selling product with a health maintenance indication for every major organ system.”

Brian Acton exemplifies this conscious practice of gratitude. He had worked at Yahoo for eleven years when he applied for a job at Twitter, but even though he was quite good at what he did, he was rejected. When he received the news, he tweeted, “Got denied by Twitter HQ. That’s ok. Would have been a long commute.” He next applied for a job at Facebook. Soon after he tweeted, “Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life’s next adventure.” He didn’t hesitate to post his failures on social media, and never expressed anything but gratitude for the opportunities. After these setbacks, he ended up working on an app in his personal time. Five years later Facebook bought WhatsApp, the app Brian Acton cofounded, for $19 billion. The jobs at the companies that rejected Acton would have paid far less than he made off WhatsApp. Instead of fixating on the rejections and adopting a poverty mentality, he just waited gratefully to see what might be in store for him. Don’t judge the moment. As soon as you label something as bad, your mind starts to believe it. Instead, be grateful for setbacks. Allow the journey of life to progress at its own pace and in its own roundabout way. The universe may have other plans in store for you.

Brother David Steindl-Rast says, “People usually think that gratitude is saying thank you, as if this were the most important aspect of it. The most important aspect of the practice of grateful living is trust in life. … To live that way is what I call ‘grateful living’ because then you receive every moment as a gift. … This is when you stop long enough to ask yourself, ‘What’s the opportunity in this moment?’ You look for it and then take advantage of that opportunity. It’s as simple as that.”