The Spiritual Dilemma Within a Pandemic

I told myself, I don’t want to write another contribution to the cacophony of coronavirus consciousness. We’ve got 7.8 billion perspectives out there, as virtually every single human being is suddenly faced with the same situation. There are plenty of thoughts recorded at this stage, and there are going to be more and more and more, even after the crisis subsides. It’s an overwhelming inundation. Why add to it? 

But it’s a bit awkward to speak of anything unrelated to Covid-19 at this bizarre moment in history. Frankly, it’s as much on my mind as anyone else’s. There’s so much that requires processing. My aspiration here is to change our orientation from one steeped in the clear and present danger outside to one that helps us transcend the fear, not only with Covid-19, but the fear that is always near, buried within us. Therefore I sincerely pray that what I say here is somehow most constructive and genuinely addresses our needs at this time, and far beyond.

The Battle for Consciousness

As a spiritualist and former monk who knows the necessity of sanctity, I’m torn between two worlds. There’s the world of my inner convictions, and the world I’m exposed to mercilessly every day. The former demands I shut out the world I’m exposed to externally to a very large extent. For my convictions lie in a life that is internal; richer than the eye can see. But the latter, the world I’m exposed to, does not let me do so, for it would be callous to reject the senseless suffering of so many souls. It breaks my heart to no end. How then, can I simply concentrate on the self, the life within, when there is so much pain outside?

I, like you, am constantly bombarded by the news of the outside world. I’ve been advised by mentors who are very self-realized that I must be careful what news I consume, for it will soon consume me. I agree. Yet, uncharacteristically, since Friday, March 6th, I’ve been endlessly trying to understand what the hell is happening to us with the outbreak of Covid-19. It was on that day, at the last second, we did not board our flight to Atlanta where we were to conduct an Upbuild workshop. Inconceivably, we stayed home. 

From that day forward, I’ve found myself unable to stop reading and hearing about this terrible disease and its myriad consequences. This is a new experience for me since monastic life. For days and days on end, I’ve been on a quest to grasp the world around me and what is my responsibility so that I gain a clearer outlook and can orient accordingly. 

I find that the reactions to our current situation can be divided into another kind of bi-partisan lines - the optimists and the realists. From the optimists, we get hope. And from the realists, we understand severity. When you understand the severity, it’s hard to be positive! And when you’re positive, it’s hard to stay with severity! 

The self is both positive and realistic. Those who are able to intelligently integrate the two are rare. If we manage to strike this delicate balance, we’re primed to take prodigious steps in our lives, without leaving the world behind. Rather, we invite the world into a better state of being. 

This has been true since time immemorial. 

It is sure that to be lost in the sea of endless information and fear will disrupt our connection within. I’ve experienced it firsthand throughout this ordeal. Following the waves of the media hardly benefits the people or situations reported on. And shutting out the news does not shut out our care for the world. 

Turning off the TV or closing our browser should never mean turning off or closing our hearts. To turn on a distraction or to live in make-believe happier times cannot address the need for realism. Neither can drowning in society’s sorrows serve anyone, disconnected from the need for positivity. Whatever our coping mechanisms, while human and maybe even needed at times, they’re thoroughly insufficient to the self.

I’m ashamed that I currently feel closer to the world out there than to my own self. In earnestly trying to make sense of the outside world, which is natural and often necessary, I must still be aware of the unintended side-effects which can quickly become a most terrible cost. In fixing my attention externally, I’ve ever so subtly loosened my attention on the reality within. Then the experience of the world immediately becomes more real than the experience of the self.  

But there’s everything to be gained by reclaiming the self. That is the highest example we can set for anyone else. And it’s actually selfless, for that is the core quality of the self. 

Even now, during this time of blatant suffering, we must recognize and remember that by focusing on the self, we are selfless, and therefore can actually be of greatest service.

Being Who We Are in Pandemonium

Before we can come to the point of reclaiming who we are, our real selves, we’re forever faced with immediate impositions from the world. It should not come as a surprise to us, for that is the nature of this world. What does it mean practically to seek the self in chaos? I’ll give you a little picture from my own vantage.

I’m currently on full lockdown. I haven’t stepped outside my building in exactly a week. That was for a 15 minute walk with my wife, Radha Bhakti, across the street around Court Square Park. Before that, it was many days I’d been holed away. We order all our groceries online now and we wipe them down with a patently rigorous routine. We disinfect doorknobs and keys and hands and bag-handles and clothes and anything we can cleverly think up. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone in the flesh other than my wife, without a barrier between us.

I understand this to be the need of the hour now, but it took a lot to get me there.

My first reaction was to pray for the Chinese and presume the disease likely won’t make it to our country. Then I thought the news to be sensationalist in terms of the implications on a global scale, and heard from doctor friends that it was something like a mountain out of a molehill. 

Then, an Upbuild workshop in Milan canceled. Then California was hit. Then Seattle. New York could be next. 

Suddenly, we didn’t board for Atlanta in a torrent of perplexity and emotions, with continuous debate that lasted from early morning till late night. Then a last hurrah to the Catskills for quality time with my wife, who had actually planned for it to be a surprise weekend in Paris; European travel, accommodations, and events all canceled. My hunger to understand grew. 

I read and read, careful about the sources. Italy became a tragedy on the world stage and a warning sign to every nation. I had horrific nightmares several nights in a row. It’s all a “true nightmare,” as a client expressed, after having to fire his entire staff and wind down 25 years worth of work and dreams. Our leaders stood and watched helplessly or heartlessly. I lived in fear, doing the best I could to navigate the tension of inner and outer worlds.

Researching like anything to the detriment of my soul’s need for positivity, I felt I crossed the hump when I came upon a very pragmatic, yet visionary piece my brother-in-law shared that went viral: Tomas Pueyo’s “The Hammer and The Dance.” Many insights and intuitions affirmed by this essay, questions answered, and action points underscored, I determined that from this point forward, I know what I need to know. I won’t barricade myself from media, as I have from physical proximity with others, but I will be extremely conscientious to curate what I take in and when. Knowledge will still come to bear, and I’m no one to reject what’s helpful in an ever-changing situation. 

But with my quest for understanding satisfied externally, the real work must now continue with all the more rigor internally. To not be swept away by the tide of time and all that goes on around us at any given moment, we need an anchor. When we are our true selves, we are not flung around by all of life’s unpredictable circumstances. The lesson for me keeps coming – I need to anchor much more to who I am, so I can better withstand the waves of the world and be a solid instrument in the service of others.

If we close off from vital information, we act foolishly. And if we open ourselves up to the onslaught of purportedly vital information, we act fearfully. Both are foreign to who we are deep down. No one wants to be foolish and no one wants to be fearful. We intuitively feel some vague sense – that’s not who I am. I should be solid, not wracked with fear. I should be intelligent, not prone to recklessness.

My own journey has been fraught with so much struggle trying to walk the line since the outset of this month. What I recognized is that I need to know what we’re up against. I need to know how to protect myself, and – most surreal – how to protect others from me. I need to understand reality as it stands presently to our limited perception. But I also need to understand that I – the real ‘I’ – don’t fit into this version of reality. No one does.

When There’s So Much to Lose, Let Us Not Lose Our Selves

All wisdom traditions share with us that the nature of the self is to be connected with other selves. “No man is an island.” We see we’re not the only subject in this world. The ego constantly sees everyone and everything as object. That’s all it knows to do. Sartre therefore talked about “The Look” as the core experience to everyone. The Look is what we all do to all that we see – objectify. We don’t know how to see another subject. Once we see, what we see is already outside of me. And it’s of lesser value to me. But the real me sees all living beings, including animals, as subjects. My selfish desires don’t dictate my vision. Nor does the capacity of the other.

When we are ourselves, we recognize that we’re all in this together. We cannot divorce ourselves from anyone else. We are all a unit. We see that every living being has intrinsic value, and that we are all made of the same stuff. We are all brothers and sisters on this planet. Our every thought, word, and deed must reflect this.

When we are ourselves, we can’t ignore that we are one family. We can’t imagine a life disconnected from reality. And reality means ultimate unity.

With so much selfishness and so much suffering, we owe it to the world to be our selves.

I learned from Rasanath’s wife, Vrin, that the new cliché is making its way: “When you can’t go outside, go inside.” And perhaps it’s a good sign. But that still can sound selfish or sentimental if we don’t define what it is to go within. We don’t want to be in our ivory towers pontificating on how this can be good for us while our health care professionals are out risking their lives every day to serve others. That would be ludicrous to the true self, who has a heart!

Crisis can catapult us closer to our real selves than we could have imagined, if our desire is strong, we’re receptive, and we ask the pivotal question: 

What is the real me?

The outside world will compete for our attention, but when we bring our attention to the self, we find tremendous strength. Imagine approaching the world with that strength of connection to who we are. Clear, grounded, and full of compassion, with an unstoppable spirit to serve others. That is what the self is made of, and only by becoming aware of who we are, keeping that vision with us, can we can step up to live it. That is what’s at stake.

Caring for the physical body is critical and urgent. We feel this deeply in a pandemic. But that does not heal the root of our suffering, and the body was made to end soon. The life of the self is the less perceptible, but equally urgent need.

The sacred text of the Bhagavad-Gita that first inspired our monastic lives as well as the work of Upbuild, continues to be our guiding light to this very day. And it makes the hidden reality of the self unmistakable.

“The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.”

-Bhagavad-Gita 2.23

In other words, what we see of this body is not the full picture. As Socrates said when sentenced to drink the hemlock, “How can they kill me? First they have to find me.”

The body is a vehicle that transports the driver – the self, or the soul – in this lifetime. We must take good care of that vehicle, but when we mistake the vehicle for the driver, that is a wild travesty!

When we spend all our time and all our mental and emotional energy worrying and planning for and identifying with the vehicle, and we neglect the driver, the loss here cannot be emphasized enough. The soul longs for contact. The soul longs to be received. To be freed from the imprisonment of the ego. Eternally, not temporarily.

Unlocking the Strength of the Self

The attempt to reach our true self, the soul, gets instantly shrouded every time we focus exclusively on the ephemeral world of the mind and body. The information we take in from outside affects our consciousness more than we know. It all reinforces identification with the ego – the persona of who we think we should be, linked to the mind and body. That’s the hall of mirrors that is our world. It makes the soul a myth.

For example, now that we are in our “new normal,” many people have found their sense of self to be shaken, because the very things they identify with are being taken away from them, well beyond their control. Jobs are being lost, wealth reduced, prestige and status becoming irrelevant, sickness and death thrust in our faces brutally. And the fear… 

This is not only a health crisis, an economic crisis, and emotional crisis – it’s an identity crisis.  

There’s so much anxiety. Naturally. It’s in the ether, and it’s in our hearts. Because I’m identified with something temporary that will come to an end. Painfully, no matter how we slice it. And it’s so foreign for the self to think of an end to selfhood. It doesn’t make sense.

Our anxiety clouds clarity and contentment. It impairs our perception and action, even by the standards of the external world, what to speak of spiritually. We need the right amount of fear to be responsible, but when we’re responsible, we don’t need to fear. 

Living the Life of the Soul

What’s instructive about Covid-19 is that it presents us unavoidably with the sufferings of this world that we do everything to avoid, ignore, shut out. Why? Because it’s fearful, and that interferes with our pursuit of happiness. It confronts us with the crying of humanity in a way that makes it difficult to turn away. It creates compassion in those who truly stare it in the eye. And it reveals the nature of the world around us, which is ruthless, and will be so, because there is always misfortune and death. 

The more we stay present to the pain of the world, the more we’re compelled to seek answers. When we recognize suffering to be existential – it calls our very existence into question. Hence that pivotal question – What is the real me? I must know… Who am I? Why am I here? How am I related to the outside world? Am I my mind and body with which I currently identify?

Mistaking the self for the mind and body is the cause of all anxiety and pain; those who identify with the self do not suffer, even in situations of deepest pain and loss. Those who identify with the self give up fear. Saints and sages throughout the ages have been sharing this lesson through their own realization. My guru’s guru, Srila Prabhupada, was once asked by a reporter what is the experience of self-realization. In a word, he said, “fearlessness.”

After suffering a slew of near-death experiences and horrid reversals, this was not theoretical for him.** There are countless examples in history.

Srivasa Thakura was a self-realized soul in medieval India, threatened with torture and death for reciting sacred mantras against the orders of a totalitarian dictatorship. He marched through the streets of Bengal with hundreds of thousands who followed his lead. And he selflessly shared his mantras for the awakening of all to self-realization. Even thieves, who went out just to steal from the homes of the marchers, became enchanted by the purity they felt all around them. They joined the march. Spiritual sound billowed throughout the town and inspired countless persons to reconnect with the self. In a time of terror, people felt free. Completely and lastingly. Srivasa Thakura walked through his own fear to offer fearlessness to others, just as Srila Prabhupada did. They sought only to serve others, both physically and spiritually.

What happens when we identify, not with the mind and body – the ego mechanism, the vehicle – but with the driver, the self? What happens when we engage with the world from that place? 

It’s the most powerful thing we can do. By seeing everyone as subjects, we make all others feel understood. This is the greatest service, the burning human need. And we do so at the level of the soul. Where people are seen and felt, in a dramatically different way than they’re used to, or even knew they needed. We perpetually step into the shoes of others, feeling for them. Unfathomably connected as divine family. And when attuned, everyone can receive the unspoken embrace of our spiritual vision. It’s something I’ve experienced as a recipient of the love of great souls, and it has fundamentally changed me. It awakened in me a heartfelt desire to reach the self. It spurred my passionate entry into a monastery. It led to the creation of Upbuild, in order for us to try to repay the matchless gift which we can never actually do justice to.

And we cannot be of that service to others until we look after our real selves – through study of the self, meditation, and association with like-minded people. It is not selfish to look after our real selves – because only then can we be of greatest service to others, which is more needed today than perhaps ever before in our lifetimes. To go beyond the world of fear. 

If we’re not in touch with the fear, think what it would be if our conditions changed. If we lost our job, our money, our prestige, our love, our health, or our life. Everything is vulnerable in this world. And everything ultimately breaks. The fear is simply being present to this fact. 

It’s fearsome now or fearsome later. There’s never a time without danger to ourselves and our loved ones. It only takes presence to feel that fear. But the fear keeps brewing in our unconscious. Constantly. With varying effects on our lives. See Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, and all the work of Freud that is one massive exposé on the fragility of the human condition, outside our recognition, but affecting every one of us – severely).

So to best serve others in a world of fear, we must seek the strength of the self. Before a flight, we’re told that in the event of a change in cabin pressure, we must put on our oxygen mask before assisting another. It feels selfish and maybe even counterintuitive, but it is paramount to our very survival. 

A driver must take care of her car, but if she doesn’t take care of herself, she won’t be able to drive the car – which is a vehicle to get her to her desired destination.

We must cater to the soul (the driver) more urgently than the body (the vehicle) to reach our desired destination – self-realization. When we do that, we become our selves. We become para duhkha duhkhi, the Sanskrit term for someone who becomes happy at the happiness of others and miserable at the misery of others. So heartfelt, so connected, so empathic and compassionate. Simply desiring to serve, seeing we are all brothers and sisters here.

Even as we go through the complexities of this life, with the world that pulls us outward into its immediate demands, impositions, necessities, and fears, we can connect with who we are, and engage from there. 

What is the step we can take? We need a spiritual vision. To see ourselves and all others as our selves. Souls. To have, at heart, the desire to lovingly serve all souls as family on this planet. 

And how do we keep fresh and sharpen that spiritual vision? Through practice. If you develop a daily practice, you cannot lose sight of what’s most important. You cannot lose yourself, as we do throughout our day-to-day. For you always come right back to who you are. And that transforms a person over the course of time. Beyond our wildest imagination… This I share from my world of conviction, and from my own personal experience, though I’ve only reached a fraction of the potential therein.

Jesus taught us to be in this world, but not of it. That’s a tall order. And one I fail at miserably. But because we miss the target doesn’t mean we should cease to take aim or give up our shooting altogether. That is selling ourselves short to no end.

In our Bhagavad-Gita classes, we screen the film The Shawshank Redemption as a metaphor to illustrate principles of the sacred text. There’s one particularly poignant scene we use as an analogy for what can be achieved internally, in the face of utmost adversity: 

The protagonist in a prison, Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), comes out of solitary confinement. And somehow, he’s miraculously cheerful. After undergoing the cruelest experience, which the United Nations Committee Against Torture claims is unacceptable, the other inmates around him are shocked. It’s as if he’s lost his mind. He can’t fit into their world. He exists among them in prison, undergoing the same terrible experiences, but his being is fundamentally different. He shares with them at this moment, “There’s something inside that they can’t get to... They can’t touch... It’s yours.” 

That is the hope we dare to cultivate. It comes only through repeated genuine connection with the self. Through practice. Every day. Come what may.

So let us remember who we are now, and serve all souls with all our hearts. Let us make a commitment to our selves that we will practice connecting with this sacred vision that calls us. By spiritual practice, we overcome identification with the ego by constant reinforcement of being who we are – the soul. The more we live in that space, the more it becomes us, and the more others are touched by our vision of reality.

There are innumerable ways to develop a practice of living the soul-life, and there is no time to waste in so doing! We must continually strengthen our practice. If there’s one thing this new strain of corona is meant to teach, it’s to not waste another moment. Let us close with one potent spiritual practice together.

The following is a set of compassion prayers from India that are thousands of years old, spoken by many self-realized souls. Since this crisis began, we’ve been offering these prayers as an Upbuild Team each time we come together. Radha Bhakti and I have been doing so as well for some years. But if, like me up to my early 20s, you don’t believe or have confidence there’s someone to receive such prayers, the nature of positive intent is that your own consciousness receives it, transforms your thinking, your being, and affects others subtly, but very deeply... I see this time and again in my own life.

Finally, thank you so much for considering this plea to break free from the world of ego and invest in the self. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work through my own dilemma and endeavor to make spiritual advancement in this writing. I’m praying with my whole heart that, by some grace, this impassioned plea may become a precious gift for you too. It is coming from all the wise and loving souls who have affected me, so anything good that comes is only to their credit.

Sincerely,

Hari Prasada Das

**Age 69, onboard a cargo ship from India to the U.S., he was struck with two heart attacks and understood it was a miracle he somehow survived. He was gored by a bull, plagued with a stroke, violently attacked by a drug addict, victim of thievery for a sacred manuscript that was his only possession and life’s work. He walked the streets of the Bowery in New York City alone and penniless, not knowing anyone, not knowing the culture, checking periodically to see when would be the next boat back to his home of India that he missed so dearly. But with the determination to spread the fearless life of the soul worldwide, he soon succeeded in a manner unprecedented. With centers that span the globe and books that sold in many millions – he became author of the best-selling Bhagavad-Gita translation and commentary to date. He continued to translate with crystal clarity and determination on his deathbed when the doctors said his body felt it was on fire.

Compassion Prayers

May all be happy!

May everyone be free of diseases!

May everyone see all good everywhere!

May there be no distress for anyone!

Let there be auspiciousness for the universe.

May the wicked be pleased, not angry!

May all beings together meditate intelligently on cooperation!

May the mind become free of attachment!

May our minds without motivation be absorbed in the Supreme Lord!

May the entire Universe be blessed with peace and hope.

May everyone, driven by envy and enmity, become pacified and  reconciled.

May all living beings develop abiding concern for the welfare of others.

May our own hearts and minds be filled with purity and serenity.

May all these blessings flow naturally from this supreme benediction: 

May our attention become spontaneously absorbed in the rapture of pure love unto the transcendent Lord.