Transcriber: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Good morning.
They asked us to wear solid colors,
so I thought I'd put on orange for the occasion.
(Laughter)
This morning I'd like to speak
a little bit about mindfulness, humility, and a holistic approach to education.
And as I share my thoughts on these topics with you,
I thought I could also take a moment to share a little bit about my journey
which led me to monastic life,
which is something I'm assuming is on a lot of your minds.
As a Hindu monk, I wear orange robes,
have a shaved head, and some markings on my forehead,
which means I'm trying to elevate my consciousness.
Growing up in Los Angeles as an only child of wealthy parents,
for the most part, I had everything one could hope to have.
We had a million dollar house on the hill
with a really beautiful swimming pool.
I had my very own room overlooking all of Los Angeles,
and I was given a brand new car at the age of 16.
Safe to say, I was a tiny bit spoiled.
Didn't really learn about mindfulness
because I didn't have to share anything with anybody.
The first humbling experience that happened to me in my life
was in 1993,
when my parents' multimillion dollar jewelry business
burned down to the ground,
and we lost everything.
The business was gone,
the beautiful six-bedroom house on the hill was gone,
we lost all three of our cars,
and practically all of our savings.
I found myself along with my parents packing up our bags
and moving off to East Europe to look for new business opportunities.
We ended up landing in Bulgaria.
I was 21 at the time.
Never worked a real job, because I didn't have to,
so I had no work experience.
From my perspective,
Bulgaria was about 50 years behind in technology
because it had just come out of communism.
Nobody spoke English, or hardly anybody spoke English,
and I sure didn't speak Bulgarian.
I didn't even know where it was, I had to look it up on the map.
Every day, to make an international phone call,
I would have to walk about a kilometer to the post office;
and I would just write the number down for the operator,
she would dial it and point me towards the booth.
This was a daily ritual.
Needless to say, it was a time of great introspection.
I don't know how many times I sat on our one-bedroom balcony
wondering, how long is this going to last?
How long am I going to be here? Am I going to die in Bulgaria?
But it was also a time that I explored my spirituality.
This was the time I picked up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita,
which is considered to be the primary spiritual text of India,
which has influenced the lives of very prominent thinkers
like Emerson, Gandhi, Einstein, Thoreau.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna told me
that true happiness can't come from material achievements and gains
because all of these things are temporary, and I'd already experienced that;
that I should learn to be equipoised during times of happiness and distress,
success and failure, and fame and infamy;
and that the answers I was looking for from life
would have to come from within and not from outside.
After spending two full years in Bulgaria, we decided to move back to the U.S.,
but my parents
- we didn't want to go back to LA because of so many bad memories -
moved to New Jersey.
(Laughter)
I'm glad somebody got a laugh out of that one.
They live in Jersey City,
and I'm very much in touch with them, even at the moment.
Figuring out what I'm going to do, what my next steps are,
I end up getting a job as a loan officer in a mortgage company.
I have no experience with loans, no experience with mortgages,
on-the-job training.
Very soon, I find myself
writing loans for people with extremely high credit card debt,
or even bad credit card debt.
These loans were going to be against their houses,
these were equity loans.
I knew a lot of these loans weren't going to help them,
they might even hurt them in the future.
This kind of work was really eating away at my conscience,
I just knew I couldn't do this for the rest of my life.
I needed some kind of work in which I was helping people,
had some meaning for me.
So it was around September of 1999
that I decided to take some time for myself.
I talked to my parents, got their permission,
and decided to go to Mumbai, India,
and I moved into a Hindu monastery.
Now for somebody who's never had to live with anybody,
because I was an only child, or share anything,
I all of the sudden found myself living with 40 other monks,
sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor with 15 other bodies next to mine,
waking up at four in the morning
because the morning services started at five,
and then having to wait in line to use the bathroom.
I always had my own bathroom.
Doing simple services like cleaning the floor
or helping to cook in the kitchen
brought a great amount of joy to my heart,
a kind of joy I've never experienced before,
even when I had everything that I ever wanted.
What made it really special
was the amazing amount of camaraderie and community
that the monks shared with one another.
They did everything together.
We woke up together, we prayed together, we ate together,
we had meaningful exchange of dialogue together,
we had time for personal introspection.
All of these activities allowed all the monks
to feel emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually very, very satisfied.
Although education and learning was of a great emphasis
for members of the monastery,
an even greater emphasis was placed on the development of personal character.
It was understood that knowledge combined with proper character
would enable the monks to become agents of change in the lives of people.
But knowledge without proper character could lead to a prideful attitude
and wouldn't really help anybody.
The Bhagavad Gita explains
that if one hopes to have an impact on other people's lives,
then one needs to develop humility within their own character.
Humility isn't something that can be developed
by signing up for a two-semester or three-semester course,
it needs lifelong enrollment.
It's a course that's an absolute must for anyone in a position of influence:
parents, educators, policy makers, government workers;
for everyone, actually.
Gradually, I moved back to New York
to continue my monastic training and education.
In 2001 I had a friend who was doing his doctoral work at Columbia University.
He invited me to help him
with some spiritual programming for the campus.
He formed the Bhakti Club - "bhakti" means devotion.
Together we decided we would start club activities
by doing vegetarian cooking classes.
So, the first vegetarian cooking class - we only had five students.
I taught them how to cook some Indian food,
and we all sat and ate together.
But very quickly, the numbers grew, and the word spread;
within five years or so, we were getting 50 students every week
for a vegetarian cooking class,
teaching students how to cook food in good consciousness.
Now we get anywhere between 60 or 70 to 120 students every single week,
and we feed everybody.
Our program also expanded where we added a weekly discussion on the Bhagavad Gita,
the text that had influenced me very deeply.
A few years ago, we added a weekly meditation session,
where students, staff, and faculty can come together,
learn about their mind, learn to destress, and learn to relax,
and learn to let go of all the things they're holding in their minds and hearts.
I never expected to be so personally involved
in the lives of so many students.
But the way they would come up to me
and express their gratitude for the programming we were offering,
I began to realize that even though they had access
to some of the best facilities and best educators in the country
that they were hankering for something more,
that they had certain needs that just weren't being addressed.
What were they looking for?
They were looking for the same thing everyone's looking for,
they were looking for the same things the monks in Mumbai had:
camaraderie and community.
There were looking for a place where they could go
and talk about the things that were really on their minds.
this is exactly what the Bhakti Club hoped to achieve:
to create an environment
where people of like-mindedness can come together, develop friendship,
and talk about the things that are important to them.
I'd like to take a moment to read a couple of statements
from two students who graduated from Columbia,
and who were very active with the Bhakti Club.
The first student actually graduated from Teachers College last year
with a master's degree in Organizational Psychology.
Here's what he have to say,
"In a city where there's difficulty in finding some peace among the noise,
a graduate program that keeps me up into the wee hours of the morning,
and a life where stress is inevitable,
I found the Bhakti Club.
It has become an oasis in the desert,
an oasis that doesn't disappear but opens the doors with open arms.
The Bhakti Club has certainly given me
an opportunity to explore my spiritual self
and become closer to understanding my true self.
Aside from enjoying the weekly events, dinner, and networking,
it has truly allowed me to stop and smell the roses.
It has given me more than I can ever return."
Another student who graduated
with a degree in Environmental Science last year
says, "Bhakti Club is one of my favorite parts of Columbia.
Aside from the delicious food,
I always have great conversations and make new friends at events.
The monks have so immensely contributed to my education
in ways that are not available in any classroom setting.
Through informal meditation groups and discussions,
I am beginning to see how it is possible
to control the mind and live life to its fullest potential."
These are just two of the thousands of students
who have gone through the Bhakti Club.
It has become my full conviction
that if we really want to have a holistic approach to education,
that we need to be very mindful
of not only the intellectual needs of the students
but also the emotional and spiritual needs.
I'd like to take now a couple of moments to allow all of you to experience
something similar to what the students who come to the Bhakti Club experience.
I'd like to engage everybody
in a very short, two to three minute meditation session.
If you've never meditated before, don't panic, don't get scared,
I won't ask you to do anything strange;
you won't shave your heads or anything like that.
We'll just try to relax you a little;
this may be more useful for the organizers that are here.
So, if we can, maybe just take a moment to relax.
Put your feet flat on the floor.
Put your hands just on your legs.
Close your eyes.
And just take a deep breath in.
As you breathe in,
feel the air going in through your nose and filling your lungs.
And just try to focus on that.
Now slowly exhale.
Watching the breath leave your nose, exhaling completely,
take another slow and deep breath in,
watching the air enter your nose
and filling your lungs.
Exhale slowly, letting out all of your thoughts,
all of your anxieties,
all of your plans, and all of your worries.
Now bring your awareness to the top of your head.
Slowly bring your awareness down to your forehead.
Center your awareness in between your eyebrows.
Take a moment to look inward and try to observe your mind.
Now bring your awareness down to your heart.
See if you can feel the beating of your heart.
See if you can notice the rhythm of your heartbeat.
Now bring your awareness down to your feet.
Feel the weight of your feet against the floor.
Now slowly take a deep breath in
raising your awareness all the way back up
to the top of your head.
Then exhale slowly.
You can slowly open your eyes.
Take another deep breath in.
Relax.
Feel free to use this technique throughout the day
and throughout your life, as and when needed.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)