Kolkata - Workshop - The Problem Of Stress In Today's Executive Life

Short notes on the lecture at Intellectuals’ Workshop, 5th August 2007

• Why is stress such a big problem today?
  • Data confirms that nearly 2/3rds of all chronic medical ailments in the USA may be classed as either mental or psycho-somatic
  • While thousands of years ago, Ayurveda made a distinction between adhi, vyadhi and upadhi, but it does not seem if the psychosomatic problems that we talk about today existed at that time.
  • Jain canonical literature also does not mention psychological diseases: Sthanang talks of 9 reasons for disease; none of them include mental problems.
    
• Quick reason is that the race today is far more intense than it ever was, anytime in the past.
  • Why is today’s race so fierce?
  • Today, the periphery of competition has expanded tremendously. Thousand years ago, businessmen or students, or just about anyone, had to compete inside a small geographical territory, perhaps a village.
  • Today, geography is irrelevant when it comes to competition.
  • We compete on a global scale.
    
• If the race is so powerful, obviously, the mind has far more reasons to be perturbed today, than ever in the past.
  
• Mind is like a monkey:
  • Markatasya surapanam, tatra vrischik danshanam
  • Tratropi bhootsancharo, yaddha taddha bhavishyati
  • The mind is like a monkey – too agile. On top of that, if the monkey has drunk wine, and has been bitten by a scorpion, and also has a ghost residing it in, one may imagine how unstable the mind will be.
  • Today, mind has drunk the wine of winning the race, has been stung by the scorpion of urge to win, and has also been taken over by the ghost of attachments.
    
• Do busy people get stressed?
  • Umpteen examples exist of people who are very very busy, and yet not stressed.
    
• What causes stress?
  • Imagine a string, not tied to anything, lying free. Will it have a stress? Surely not/
  • Imagine the same string tied to two opposite poles, comfortably. There is some stress, but not intolerable.
  • Now, we pull one of the poles – that causes stress.
  • Imagine the two poles holding the string pulled in two opposite directions – there is more stress now, perhaps the string may break.
  • If one pole is pulled in one direction, and the other pole is pushed also in the same direction, there is no stress again.
    
• So:
  • In a static state, stress cannot arise automatically.
  • It arises when there are two opposite ends pulling in two different directions.
  • If one end cooperates with the other, there is no stress again.
    
• Mutually opposite ends are a part of our life.
  
• The mutually opposite ends that cause stress may be:
• • Ability and ambition
  • Income and expenditure
  • Capital and business
  • Availability and desire
  • Strength and anger, and so on
    
• How do we deal with the stress:
• • Jainology provides us technique of kayotsarg - we need a similar mano-utsarg – a complete emptying of mind.
    • Mostly, stress is not caused by incidents – it is caused by either thinking about something that has not happened, or brooding over something that has already happened.
  • Divergent thinking:
    • We need to apply our mind on something that is completely different from what we do in regular routine
  • Balance of physical and mental work
  • Samayik – at least 48 min of time when we are completely with ourselves
  • • Complete solitude
    • Completely free from the “network” that follows us at all times
    • • No phone, no blackberry, no nothing
      • Absolutely to ourselves