Shah Rukh Khan: I am happy. I am unhappy, I am happy. I am unhappy, In this dilemma, “I” plays an important role. Which is why it’s important to understand oneself to know why you are happy or unhappy.
This “self” is what has been studied in depth by Bangalore and US based science journalist and author, Anil Ananthaswamy. And today he is here to tell us how to make this "self" happy.
TED Talks India Nayi Soch welcomes Anil Ananthaswamy.
Anil Ananthaswamy.
(Applause)
Anil Ananthaswamy: If I ask you: Who are you? Most of you will reply with: This is my name … I am from Mumbai … married … work in advertising. This is one of your stories. All of us have several such stories in our mind. Stories about us that we tell others and ourselves. Stories that start with our earliest memories and with imagination reach into our future. The protagonist of these stories, that is we, don’t change, whether we are in our childhood or days to come in the future.
But we are not just a story, we are also a body that is present here at this moment, letting us feel the environment around us. Right now you, all can see me, hear my voice but not for once will you feel that what your eyes are seeing is being watched by someone else and what your ears are hearing, is being listened to by someone else. You, in fact all of us, can only believe in the existence of one thing in us.
So we are a body present here at this moment, and we are also a person who was like this in the childhood and will hopefully continue to be so. If the answer to, “Who am I?” is so easy, why do we even ask such questions? When we are suffering with pain and sadness, we are forced to think over such questions. Who is it or rather what is it that is experiencing this sadness? Do these questions help in easing our suffering?
According to religion and philosophy, to understand pain, one has to understand oneself. It’s important to realize that we are not permanent. To understand this better, we now have help from neuroscience, too. An example of this would be Alzheimer’s, which is the disease of forgetting things. In the initial stages, Alzheimer’s destroys the short-term memory. People forget moments they just spent and slowly this disease starts eating up their old memories too. People start forgetting their loved ones and even themselves. From Alzheimer’s we can conclude that this story that we keep telling ourselves, which is called "narrative self" or "autobiographical self" in neuroscience, is a creation of the mind.
So now you must be wondering, “Fine, my story has been made up by my mind, but how can I doubt the existence of my body that I can physically feel? This is permanent." In a lot of ways, this too is false. Some people, who lose their legs due to any reason, can sometimes feel it even after months or years despite losing that limb. They can also feel the pain. This is called "phantom limbs" in neuroscience. Neuroscience tells us that the mind, at every moment, continuously draws a map of the body that we feel, even though at times this map is wrong. So this body that we feel, is a creation of the mind.
Another example would be people suffering from mental state like Schizophrenia tend to believe that sometimes the thoughts arising in their mind are not their own thought. Usually we consider the thought arising in our mind as our own but schizophrenia tells us that the thoughts we think are our own, are also an illusion of the mind.
So we have circled around and come back to the same thing. So what is this “I” that’s sometimes aware of its story, sometimes not? That sometimes feels the parts of its bodies, whether that part exists or not. That believes the thoughts are sometimes its own and sometimes not.
So according to Buddhism there is no “I”. The interaction of the components that make up the mind and the body creates a feeling of permanence, which is self. According to one perspective of Hinduism, the self is an all-encompassing consciousness that feels everything in the world.
So where there is nothing, to believe in one permanent self or to believe in an all-encompassing consciousness, this is where we are going wrong. Neuroscience, too, is trying to tell us the same thing that the permanent self we feel is the work of the body and mind. If we understand and imbibe this philosophy in life, then maybe we can reduce our pain and suffering.
A lot of wrong in the society is the result of this permanent self. We go to any lengths to save this "self." If we leave this, then maybe we can change the direction of our lives. But the direction of this change will be different for each one of us. The more we pay attention to these things, the sooner we will be able to change ourselves.
Thank you.
(Applause)
SRK: Thank you very much Anil. You shared some wonderful things with us today. Maybe five minutes is very little time to understand this completely and to feel why this does this happen. It’s a little involved as a topic. I’ll share the little I understood. The way we think of ourselves as permanent, whether our thoughts or our feelings or physicality, physicality we all know is not permanent but the thought that is it actually present because it has been there since childhood to death, is something we need to rethink to obtain happiness in the true sense.
Have I understood it correctly?
AA: You've explained it better than me.
(Applause)
SRK: Right, because of you Anil. I’ll just ask you a question because this is something serious and very good, because deep down we are all looking for happiness. I am only upset about one thing from this talk, I did a song: “Kiska hai yeh tumko intezaar… Main hoon na…Dekhlo idhar to ek baar Main hoon na…” That has lost all its meaning after listening to Anil. So when I sing “Kiska hai yeh tumko intezaar… Main hoon...” Who the hell are you, you are nothing?
So please tell me, that all this is easy to talk about, a little difficult to understand and to feel it, is an even bigger task. Because the subject is so vast.
So if we believe what you are saying, and we believe it’s true because you have done enough research and thought over it, how do we bring this into practice? How? I believe what you are saying but how do I really believe that I am not permanent? Because I am…
AA: You are right.
SRK: Tell us, the people sitting here and at homes, how to practically follow this?
AA: First of all, I’d like to say that this is not my advice. A lot of people have thought over it, I’m only bringing their stories here.
SRK: Don’t worry. We won't not hold you responsible.
AA: So Gautama Buddha was telling us this 2,500 years ago, but people didn't believe. It’s difficult. I agree with you, this is not easy to live this idea. One has to think and meditate over this idea. And whenever given a chance, put it into practice. So in our societies there are many practices that allows you to let go of yourselves to understand that this is a temporary thing So basically you have to attentive all the time to the fact that you are permanent or to the fact that it seems permanent and somehow you keep letting go of it
SRK: So Anil is trying to tell us that there are many practices in our society and religion, although this is more science oriented but in our ancient talks, like in Buddhism, we have to somewhere keep this in mind that every time we feel permanent, we have to realize that either this is all a unified force or it’s just an illusion created by our mind.
Before we leave, I’d like to ask you, Anil, what makes you happy? I understood everything else, we will all get happy and understand this thing but what makes you truly happy?
AA: Doing pottery and spending time with friends and family.
SRK: So the crux of the matter is: do whatever makes you happy. Whether you are you, or you are not you it doesn’t really matter. But yes, Anil shared a very wise thing with us today The quest for permanence ... is perhaps one of the biggest reason for unhappiness
What we have today may not be there tomorrow, and what gives us happiness tomorrow may not give day after tomorrow. So if we all understand this, all you guys are very young here to take this cynically. So take this positively, then your life will be full of happiness or else do pottery like Anil said. Let's share it for Anil Ananthaswamy Thank you for being here.
(Applause)
