The Way of the Monk: The four steps to peace, purpose and lasting happiness

by Gaur Gopal Das

Monk Mindset: Saying things in anger damages our relationships. Hence, we should try to avoid doing so. If we need to give corrective feedback, we should invest tonnes of praise and trust into a person before doing so. Think: With regard to the story in Nepal, I could deal with the emotional hurt because I realized how much the individual correcting me had done for me in the past. Corrective feedback is an art. It has four principles. Ask yourself: Am I the right person to give corrective feedback? Do I have the right motive to give corrective feedback? Do I know the right way to give corrective feedback? Is it the right time? The smooth implementation of these four principles takes time because giving corrective feedback insensitively has become an addictive habit for many.

Forgiveness is a complex concept. We must understand it thoroughly to be able to internalize it.

‘The topic of relationships has spiritual roots. If we can understand how to relate to people on a spiritual level, then we can transcend our dividing differences.’

Monk Mindset: Forgiveness is a deep and often obscure value to understand. The principles we should know about forgiveness are: Look beyond the situation: If we are hurt by someone’s words, try to understand why they spoke them. When people act harshly towards us, most of the time they are suffering too. This is empathy. Separate the episode from the person: Rather than being affected by the emotion of guilt by saying, ‘I am wrong,’ or anger by saying, ‘You are wrong,’ we should separate the I or the You and deal with the wrong. Higher purpose: Can we forgive based on a higher principle? For example, in my story, the husband forgave the wife because he loved her, and they had a duty to their community and son. If chosen, this approach takes support and time and is not something that happens overnight. Justice: On a personal level, we can forgive the person who may have wronged us, but on a societal level, there should be strict justice to create an orderly society. No one should be able to break the law and get away with it in the name of forgiveness.

Our relationships are stronger when they contain a spiritual component. There are three different ways to become good friends with someone.

Offering gifts and accepting gifts, opening one’s mind and inquiring in confidence, sharing food and receiving food are the six exchanges that develop loving relationships.

‘Fun fact: I know that you spend more than forty hours a week at work, but let’s say that on average a person spends forty hours working between the ages of twenty and sixty-five, and gets two weeks of holiday a year. In that time, they will have worked a total of 90,000 hours. That’s a lot of time, so we better learn how to best utilize it in the right way.’

Monk Mindset: Our association is powerful: it can uplift us or bring us down. General interactions are dealings meant to do the needful and are simply neutral. Intimate dealings are built through the exchange of things, food, thoughts, values and belief systems. Our lifestyle is affected more by another person’s value systems than their habits.

At work we tend to compare and compete with others, instead of comparing and competing with ourselves.

Open-minded people, on the other hand, grow by developing themselves. They know that nobody is their competition. They are their own competition. Every day they keep striving to become better versions of themselves, even if the growth is only a tiny fragment. They feel uncomfortable if they remain the same as they were yesterday.

‘If we do have to compare ourselves with others, we should compare positive attitudes. That person’s attitude to tirelessly keep working or grinding at their skills is inspiring. I want that same attitude. Let me learn from them and in turn help them in any way I can. Let us mutually grow. That is how an open-minded person thinks.’

Monk Mindset: There are two causes of unhealthy competition, being envious of someone or uncontrolled ambition. We compete with people who have the same skills or outlook in life as us. When another person’s skills have no bearing on our life, we rarely feel threatened. Competition is found in all spheres of life. Some examples include sports, business, politics and the workplace. Healthy competition is about competing with ourselves rather than others to become a better version of ourselves. There will always be workplace politics but we should learn how to manage it in a clean way.

To find your purpose in life, you must go on a journey of self-discovery.

‘If there is one thing that I think is the foundation of growth, it is understanding who you are. You can only compete with yourself if you have a clear idea of your potential, your capacities and certainly your limitations,’

We have to understand ourselves to be able to compete with ourselves. What are our tendencies? What do we like? What do we not like? Where do we want to be in the future? These are only a few preliminary questions we need to answer to succeed. And this process of inquiry begins our journey of self-discovery.

According to this concept, to find purpose in life, you have to answer four questions, just as Sairaj and his family did subconsciously: What do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need? What can you get paid for?

Monk Mindset: We should understand ourselves to know what is meaningful to us, and what we want to devote our time to. This can be done by understanding our purpose, which takes dedication and patience. Discovering our purpose is exciting, just as opening a gift gives the feeling of anticipation and joy. Reaching our purpose in life is a journey, not an event. The Japanese have a model called ikigai or a ‘reason to live’, which is composed of four traits we need to understand: What do we love? What are we good at? What does the world need? What can we be paid for? Sairaj and his family discovered that for him early on in his life. If we are older and have not yet figured out our purpose, we can follow the principle: love what we have to do and do what we love to do.

‘Spirituality helps declutter your mind. This clarity gives you the ability to understand your purpose at a deeper level. You don’t have to become a monk like me to practise spirituality!’

Be straightforward in two things: business and eating.

Monk Mindset: There are many misconceptions when it comes to being a spiritual-minded person and being successful in the world. One is that spirituality kills our ambitions and zest to achieve. This is false because spirituality just changes our motive to achieve. It makes us want to be hugely successful so that we can have the resources to help others. The story of Krishna and Arjuna in the Gita explains more: Fight and achieve to help others, but be internally content in your personal life. Another is that spiritual people get walked over in business because of their values. The story of the sage and the snake describes how we should stick to our values but be meticulous and straightforward in business. Though we can make as much money as we desire, and use it to serve, we should be wary of its potential to distract us from our purpose.

Spirituality helps develop good character. It is character that shines bright when words fail to do so.

Monk Mindset: Good character has the ability to change lives. It has to do with our actions, not our words. The principles of developing character are: Vichaar: The life philosophy we follow. We must learn from it. Aachaar: The action based on that philosophy. We must do it. Prachaar: The good conduct that is displayed to the world through those actions. We must practise it. What great men do, common men follow.

You can be completely selfish, completely selfless or any of the combinations in between. Life is a journey from being selfish to becoming selfless.

‘Wheel four has to do with being selfless, and making a social contribution.

On the spectrum below where do you lie?

The journey of life is moving from being an ice cream to being a candle. That is the purpose of everyone’s life at the core: to share, give and contribute to others.

Compassion fatigue is a state of stress experienced by those who help others to the extent that they start suffering because of their preoccupation with the suffering of others. It can be detrimental to care too much; caregivers who do not focus on self-care can develop destructive behaviours over time.

It takes wisdom to know when we are being selfless and when we are simply causing harm to ourselves by being ‘overcaring’.

The principle and practice of service involves being somewhere in the middle on the ice cream to candle spectrum: to be selfish yet selfless.

Monk Mindset: The philosophy of an ice cream is: Enjoy it before it melts. The philosophy of a candle is: Give light to others before it melts. In order to be happy, we should shift our attitude from being an ice cream to a candle, from being selfish to selfless. This is shown through service. We must be wary of compassion fatigue. This means we must have all our wheels balanced as we try to help others. This is the principle of being selfishly selfless.

The first step in selflessness is to practise it with our family.

Selflessness starts with our family, but it should not just end there. To expand our circle of selflessness, we should help those outside of our immediate care and affection too.

Monk Mindset: On one level, we practise selflessness in helping our family. Our day-to-day sacrifices to maintain our family relations are acts of selflessness. We do not necessarily have to run marathons like Lata Khare to display our devotion to those we love. Our circle of selflessness should not end with our family. We should help those outside of our immediate care and affection too.

We can increase our scope of selflessness beyond our family by serving our community, city or even nation.

Monk Mindset: When we expand the circle of selflessness, we can effectively serve our community and nation. This is shown by the heroic efforts of the soldiers who keep us safe, and the civil servants who help run our nations.

In Sanskrit, service is called seva. Adding a spiritual element to our seva can make it more fulfilling.

Monk Mindset: In Sanskrit, service is called seva. Adding a spiritual element to our seva can make it more fulfilling. Based on our connection to God, we utilize our skills and potential to serve others. We learnt about Vinay at the Barsana Dental Camp. From spiritual practice comes seva: ‘The true symptom of someone who is experiencing genuine love for God is that they experience compassion and pain for the suffering that people go through in this world.’ We have to do the right action, with the right intention and in the right mood, for it to be classed as spiritual.