The Urban Monk Explains Why Our Success Is Not Just Our Own
Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, aka the‘Urban Monk’, is truly a sum of many parts. On the one hand is the spiritual influence of his Indian heritage, whereas on the other hand is his insight into American psyche and the culture. We spoke about centering the mind via meditation and he also had some Matrix quotes for me. Pandit is a true global citizen who draws on his dual heritages to inspire business leaders and create positive work cultures. His book Urban Monk: Exploring Karma, Consciousness, and the Divine makes for fascinating reading and the conversation the two of us shared makes for fascinating listening! Check it out here.
Understanding success.
While in the West there is a lot of celebration of individual success, Pandit brings a different perspective on this: our success is not just our own. If one is a successful professional as an adult, numerous people contribute to it: our parents for the values they imparted, teachers who educated, co-workers, team members, mentors, intimate partners for their support. That success is much like the star in a movie; we don’t really see the art directors, technicians, writers, recordists and support staff that are actually responsible for it all together. In the hurly burly of modern life, we perhaps forget to give credit where it’s due, and Pandit sends out a timely reminder.
Another casualty of modern lifestyles is stress, which is something Pandit helps reduce via the lectures he delivers. Most of our stress is self-induced according to him, and this is true because our stress is a reaction to stimuli around us. If we looked for ways to respond positively to the stressors around us and found healthy coping mechanisms, we would be able to self-care that much more effectively. As Pandit puts it, the high levels of stress are because we don’t know how to press pause on our thought process. And this is true! So much of the stress in our lives is based on eventualities and scenarios that haven’t even happened yet!
“The mind is like the child and the intelligence is like the parent.”
These words of Pandit just make so much sense to me. He explains why the parent should be in charge of the home and not the child; similarly, the mind cannot be in charge of our decision making. As a child goes to school to learn about life and pick up skills, so must we train the mind. According to Pandit, meditation is food for the soul and precisely what helps center the mind, helping it achieve the discipline and maturity it needs to function in a calm and peaceful manner.
I strongly urge you to listen to this episode with Pandit Dasa, the‘Urban Monk’ where we speak about so much that is fascinating and uplifting. We speak about how truth is often not as important as the relationship; how what we call the‘truth’ may only be the ego speaking. We speak about how so many are addicted to work, and overstimulation and information overload can be such problems.
Listen to know how problems, like the process of digestion, can take time. Pandit also offers some useful tips for the right way to inhale and exhale, and how this can be a great way to de-stress and mentally detox.
