Mindfulness Awakening to Reality
you think mindfulness is something
you sit in a secluded corner and
meditate
most of people think that way but let me
tell you today
mindfulness is not it’s just simply
meditating at one corner
and trying to stop your thoughts
mindfulness starts
the time you wake up it is all around us
while you are walking towards your
classroom listening to a professor
eating your food or doing any mundane
work possibly you can think of
mindfulness is on and that’s the reason
mindfulness is so powerful in your life
today i’m going to talk about
mindfulness and i thank you all
for you have come to listen to me and
this is my first ted talk
and i will be sharing not many things
which i have not shared any time before
so mindfulness is all about i read up
gita’s quote
mine is your best friend when you sit
under control
and is your worst enemy when it is not
why it has been said like that
because mind plays in a very critical
role in our day-to-day life
mind is the most powerful thing which
control our physiology
this exactly happens to me when i
started working on my life
and i had a lot of opportunities to work
on a different thing
i saw world changing i saw people having
a mental issues
just to get unhappiness you need to
involve your mind
i always thought what is a happiness do
you think eating more
can be in happiness but i felt while you
eat more
you become uncomfortable and when you
eat even more you become disgusted
some people told me technology gives you
happiness
and i felt at one point technology
is a burden technology has its own
challenges and problems to come
then people talk about success you know
building skyscrapers is success
and prosperity if that would be so then
people would not be jumping out of them
to commit suicide i come from mumbai you
know what’s an iconic
construction done was a sea link but
what notoriously known for ceiling to
commit suicide
rather than joining two islands what is
happening to this world just to give you
one data there is a 33
increase in suicide rate from last 1997
to 2017.
about 150 people every day commit
suicide
in u.s and about 150 000 people
try to give their life annually the
number of people making societies almost
to the size of a country
what is happening what is pushing them
to do such thing in their life
and then i started something working on
mindfulness so let me share with you my
journey today
i start i born in a delhi in a family
and i’ve gone to a very nice school but
suddenly what my father got transferred
to a small town of himachal
and i was supposed to live in that small
town and go to a primary school
i went to a primary school i found a
teacher
sitting under a tree and a few children
sitting there in primary i was 10 year
old
i was told to sit on a mat which was
made of cement bag
and teacher was sitting under the tree
the first lesson was
take out your english books i took out
my english book lesson was
galileo and gravity and teacher was
teaching a for apple and g for goat
i had one option either to run away come
back home and i said i will not study
or to accept that reality i don’t know
why i
accepted that reality and now today i
look back
it was my beginner’s mind it was my mind
of that child
that accepted that reality and then
second was acceptance
that taught me how do i can actually
learn things which have not learned
how to jump in the stream which a school
boy from
from urban city would have never done or
climbing a tree
this continued in my life and i lived in
that part of the world
graduated in economics did very well in
my my academics
and i decided to go for my international
business in delhi
life changed back again now it was
turned the table
i was a small city boy or a village boy
in a city of stars
and people told me you have no
vocabulary for english think your
english is so poor
and even either in writing nor in your
original english is so good
you will never succeed and don’t think
even about international business
because kind of vocabulary you need
you have you will take i think a new
life to do that
again i have two options run back to the
comfort of my city
a small town or continue to challenge
the reality
two things i learned non-judgmental
behavior
they are not create the judgment the
people are creating judgment about me
i should not do it about my own self and
then trusting my gut
i’ve been meditating from the age of
seven i was fortunate that i got this
opportunity
to learn meditations and that helped me
throughout my
my thesis to face of my life that i was
able to trust my gut feeling
i did lot of mistakes i tell you many
mistakes i did it i learned from those
mistakes
because there’s about all my mistakes
life continued again
and i was among the top ceos in the year
2000
heading large organizations dealing with
lot many countries i opened the offices
almost every destination in the world
starting from africa to russia
from u.s to china that gave me an
opportunity to learn
various diverse cultures people but i
realize one thing
that is not sufficient and at age of
about 45 i decided to quit everything
and start a new beginning so my
learnings were three there
i should have the power of letting go
letting go
of your what you are holding letting go
and letting go is the one thing which
you keep you alive imagine
you’re breathing all of us breathing yes
or no
and if you just hold your breath what
will happen to you
you’ll die because you will only live
when you let go of the breath you have
taken
and that’s the biggest learning i learn
if you don’t let go of things
it will actually not help you so let go
of your anger
letting go of your greed and many things
and when you let go of things
you build a level of compassion and
empathy within yourself
that gives you a purpose to go beyond
your barriers
beyond your own self and then you start
working for a larger purpose in life
the real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeking
out a new landscape but in having a new
eye
and this exactly happened to me because
i have gone to so many landscape in my
life
in my journey that i am now seeking a
new life see
those things with a different angle and
i needed a new eye for that
and that was my journey starting from
mindfulness
and friends this journey started few
years ago today
i run one of the largest conference in
asia called mindfulness india summit
where the top most neuroscientist
thinkers
and people from all walks of life come
and share the view we just concluded two
days back
i’m proud to say that it’s one of the
biggest one in asia
what happens what is mindful reality so
one world is what you are living in
today
is where you think what do you think if
you i stop
thinking what will happen to me
i just give you one small example
thinking is like
holding a thought and thinking that what
you are today
mind and body works together the body’s
strength and performance depend on
undulation of your mind
and if what you are thinking makes what
your body is most of people think
that what they are thinking is right or
wrong but they’re still stuck in
thinking
and that’s the reason they repeatedly do
the same thinking process
and life gives them the same opportunity
same situation back and again and again
in different form because they are not
changing their thinking
then comes the world called feeling
feeling is a very important world
some people think from the level of
feeling from emotions
we think what is happening in our
emotions we think what is happening
inside
so there are second people one is a
cognitive thinker and one is the emotive
thinkers
we think from heart we feel things we
feel things
so that’s the second level of player
thinkers and feelers
what happens is there anything beyond
that
that was my quest is there anything
beyond
and then comes the mind which observes
you have one thing which observing what
is thinking
and who is feeling and that’s
your observing reality but this reality
doesn’t end here
so thinking reality why i call
thoughtfulness
feeding reality i call it heartfulness
or emotive
and observing reality i call mindfulness
or
wakeful reality or wakefulness and for
that
you need awake to reality
and this awake to reality is which is
observing
who is thinking who is feeling
and who is observing so if you can think
in this dimension
of imagine that you are observing
yourself observing
what is your thinking what are you
feeling and what are you observing
and that is the level of your
mindfulness that is level of your
creativity
so would you like to to experience this
creativity
how many of you if you would like to i
will take you to a small journey i can
explain mindfulness many times but when
you start to experience it
let’s do a small small experience okay
all of you just sit to the straight will
do a very short
okay let’s not spend too much time
take one breath close your eyes or keep
your eyes open
take one breath and just let it go
and then take another breath in and feel
what’s happening in your head now
just observe what is happening is in
your head what are you thinking
do not try to stop it stay with the
breath
and now go to your heart
feel your chest what’s happening in your
chest how are you feeling now
whatever it could be anxiety happiness
fear whatever is happening feel your
heart now
take a breath in and then let it go
so keep the track of your breath as well
while you’re feeling
now take another breath and feel your
stomach feel your gut
and while feeling your gut observe
what’s happening in your head
what’s happening in your chest and just
take your left or right hand
and keep it on your heart
and now feel what’s happening to you
and now bring a thought or that
that i am good i am good
while thinking that think of head
heart and gut and let go of your breath
now you can come back
that’s a mindful moment most of you
would have some of you felt have calm
some of whom would have felt little
anxiety some of you would have felt
when will this end
so this is called mindfulness look
inside and everything what you want
is inside of you is already there it’s
by rooming so you don’t have to search
something
outside what you are looking for is
already with you
i give you on letting go story
you know how in india people catch
monkeys
they put a small pot a matka and put
some chanas in them
in matka or some bananas in the mud car
monkey comes puts the hand in a mudka
and don’t let go of the banana or chanas
and the guy comes and catch this monkey
this exactly happens with us
we hold on to things we don’t let it go
letting go is very important because it
is the part
you start your life with would you like
to know a little more deeper on this
journey what is happening to his
journey and letting go is a very
important part because you can only let
go
when you are in present moment let me
give you some data on your brain
all senses put together is bombarding
your
your brain with 400 billion bit of data
you know how much is your brain capacity
to hold about 100 bit of data
poor things been bombard subconsciously
consciously without data
which i have only ability to be in
attention state about under 220 bits
it is observed that our mind wandering
leave us with the attention span about
47 percent
if you are most of time ruminating in
past or in future
your present is almost lost it is said
that if you stay if you take care of the
moments
the life will take care of your ears so
staying
in present moment is the one key for
your progress for
one key for your creativity and then you
start with something called trust
you start to trust your gut feeling you
start to understand
what am i feeling within myself most of
us has two voices coming
i shall do i shall not do but we don’t
know which voice to actually acknowledge
and to listen to when you start
practicing to stay in a moment and
mindful practices
you will understand you will trust
yourself and then
when you trust yourself you build first
new skill first new skill called
compassion
compassion for your own self and
empathetic about your our self
which leads us to empathy to others and
that leads to gratitude
when we are empathetic we are trustful
we are in a moment we are gratitude for
it because we are acknowledging every
moment
and then our awareness is so vast that
we are one thankful for it
second we are compassionate and we are
trusting which leads to
something called interconnectedness so
if you are thinking your universe is
alone
then you are mistaken because something
called collective intelligence
how you tap into this knowledge how you
tap into this universe
which is filled with so much of amazing
information
on biology on physics on chemistry on
engineering
so many information
when you stay in the present moment you
can only tap into that
when you are really connected within
your own self because
the road to that interconnected network
goes from
inside not from outside more you stay
out
more less connected you are you have to
stay out sometime but you should have
ability to go back in
and then it comes with the kindness the
basic word
the communication tool is kindness i
just told you 60 bits of data
is required for one to one communication
which means
you cannot concentrate more than 660
bits for anything
imagine if so many people talking how
will you get the data within yourself
kindness is one language it is by mark
twain
that deaf can hear and blind can see
if you are kind to people you don’t have
to say something it’s already been
expressed
so my friends today
the learning which i wanted to share
with you it took me a journey of 50
years
to understand you are your best person
this is your best season this is your
best time
every moment is your best time you just
need ability to tap into that
moment connect with your inner being and
i tell you
you will be the most successful you
don’t have to look for somebody what you
are seeking
is already seeking you what you are
thinking is already happening inside
connect with your own self and be
mindful and i’m so glad that i’m sharing
this information with you
thank you very much