Why and how to increase vigilance !

We all come across many self help books like How to make friends, Courage to be disliked, Atomic Habits, Psychology of Money, etc. Often times when we read them we start nodding to it with the thoughts: "Yes, it makes sense", "Yes I agree", "I already know it", "this is so rightly said!", etc. So often times if we zoom out, a lot of these self help books just help us in recalling basic principles, which are often governed my base values and rules of the world. Which we already have within us, it is just that we do not think often about it or we do not actively use that knowledge which already sits in our mind or could have been synthesised if we decided to think about it.
Thanks to these books, they float up in our brains.
So what do you do once you read a book or concept that you completely agree to and has really given you the feeling that this is going to change my life?
You try to make notes, wallpapers, get tattoo or make routines, frameworks, tools, to remember and use those concepts. But they all slowly fade away, the number of concepts that you genuinely felt excited about, not all stick through the test of time. You stumble onto new ones, feel excited about it, do something about using and remembering it and that also fades away.

Now let's try to summarise what's happening here:

• You already know the core values and concepts around something
• You read something which either is directly something that you already know or derives from what you know
• You agree to it, feel excited about the revelation or recall of a concept
• You think to yourself, I should live by it more often
• You collect a lot of those concepts and learnings
• But you fail to keep up with all of them coz you tried forcefully putting it in your routine and mindset but it doesn't necessarily stick with you for long.

You can pick examples ranging from healthy routines, mental exercises, financial decisions, general habits, etc. We all in some degree know what's the right thing to do and yet fail to do it all.

you can always re-read the resources and build routines and habits to embed it in your life, but that's an inefficient model coz you will only be able to do that for some concepts that you have access to in form of books, podcast or playlist. This method is also exhausting psychologically and at times physically as well.

The best solution is to, just focus on one thing "Vigilance", If we are just vigilant, we can decipher what's right to do based on our core values and concepts, which we already have. Reading the resources can help us refine our values and concepts for sure, infact strengthen our belief on the concept as well, but when it comes to reaping benefit of it, it all boils down to our vigilance whenever we do something to actually do the right thing, and also make the most of our time and energy.

This is not just true about self help books, but spirituality too!
Whenever I dive deep into the concepts of jainism I often feel overwhelmed from judging all the actions that we do from the lens of those concepts. I feel overwhelmed because I can see the degree of wrongness and scope for improvement, not just in terms of actions but given same action that needs to be done, if we course correct our intent and bhaav of doing it, the consequences can change a lot!
The problem with Karma is that we don't have a way to quantify it, so even if we are doing the same thing with the correct bhaav or wrong bhav, we don't see the consequences right away, coz mostly the consequences that are visible, happen because of the action, and keeping action constant with different bhaav and intent wouldn't give us a conclusive reward or punishment right away as a feedback to know what intent or bhav needs to be upheld.
That's why most of us ignore it, we don't even realise it. But when we study about things and try to look at things from those lens we see the problems.

There is a great line in a geetika called "Bhaav Bheeni Vandana", the line goes like
"Gyaan se nij ko niharen,
Drishti se nij ko nikharen,
Acharan ki urvara me,
Laksha taruvar lehlahayen"

Which translates into the fact that if we have the knowledge, we can use it as a lens to look at ourselves, nij ko niharen here means to look at ourselves closely, inspect ourselves in detail. So with the lens of knowledge that we acquire, we need to inspect and analyse ourselves. And with Drishti, meaning perception/understanding or conclusion of the analysis of our knowledge, we improve ourselves. By embedding the goals as crops that prosper in the fertile land of habits.

So I want to talk about the need and how of increasing that vigilance, which can allow us to take the right steps with right intent and intensity.

Vigilance if aced can come in handy at multiple levels:

• Understanding something deeply, if you are vigilant while reading you will be able to
  • dig deeper into the domain,
  • ponder over right questions,
  • decipher things from different POVs,
  • connect the seemingly unconnected dots of other concepts also,
  • Do self introspection, and figure the things that you do wrong and what's the right thing or way of doing it.
• Decision making
  • You can quickly surf through all the dots of your understanding (which by vigilance during learning would be enriched).
  • You will be aware of what is the right intent with which you need to do the right thing

But this acquisition of knowledge, refinement of understanding and embedding in habit is itself is a complex pipeline, add vigilance to it and it becomes even more complicated and effortful.

The practical way to go about it is to think it is an iterative loop.

Gyaan -> Darshan -> Charitra

All three evolves and the intensity of absorption of each increases after each iteration

 Like take the example of Logass.

Level 1

• Gyaan - We often learn the lyrics right from childhood
• Darshan - We developed the basic understanding that we are praising and bowing down to the Tirthankars.
• Charitra - We try to do it on important occasions or in front of monks, or link it to some things like doing it whenever we sit for samaik. or just do it infrequently On and Off.

Level 2

• Gyaan - Knowledge increment leads to understanding of meaning of each word.
• Darshan - Understanding evolution leads to realisation of what to feel on each word, what should be the intent, it also leads to increased humility and thankfulness for the tirthankaras.
• Charitra - With incresed realisation of its importance, the frequency of doing logas increases.

Level 2 in itself can increase in iterations, one can start understanding more word meanings, The meditation would also become deeper, and the frequency would also increase.

Level 3

• Gyaan - Knowledge begins to get so deep that you start decoding why some staza was written with what bhaav and why was a particular metaphor was used, and why in a particular order.

• Darshan - aur strong ho gaya, samajh me aane laga ki logas to alamban hai, stavan toh aatma ke gunon ka kar rhe hain, tirthankar bhi alamban hain. Wo kuch nahi de sakte hain, wo toh siddh hain, hume unse motivation lena hai, wo ashirwaad ya vardaan nahi dene wale, wo inert hain. Aatma ke gunon pe dhyaan karna hai alag alag tareeke se logass ka dhyaan karte waqt

• Charitra- me aane lagega ki aatma ke gunon me kaise confidence badhe, kaise hum habits me waise inculcate karen ki ye shubh bhav hamesha rahe, jab jaap nahi kar rhe hain tab bhi rahe...

Different concepts, stavan, rituals, sadhna techniques will have different levels. Imagine levelling up in all one at a time, and connecting them with each other!
Be it mantra stotra or stavan like navkaar, bhaav bhini vandana, arhat vandana, etc. or Concepts like karm philosophy, Ahar vichaar, etc. the depth of Gyaan , Darshan, and Charitra can be increased iteratively

But there is a catch, all three needs to be iterative, if there is too much gap between one another, problems can arise. :

• We get sacred of covering the gap and give up thinking it is not possible
• ⁠We feel okay living with the gap, at the back of our head, we get comfortable with the gap

Gyan can also lead to pride. So if you dive deep into just one topic only, you might miss on other topics which can help you tackle the problems of pride, inferiority/superiority complex, etc.
So if you truly pick and iteratively improve in domains like karma philosophy, Granthi Bhed, core proerties of Aatma, etc. Then you would not only be able to develop pools of concepts but improve your thinking and acting habits as well.
This framework can give exponential returns down the line, the pools which once might have seemed isolated concepts start connecting, forming better intuition and direction. This is what makes one wise!

So imagine the journey as a lot of interconnected buckets of topics, which are iteratively increasing spiral loops, they interconnect as well and at times are dependent on each other for further progress.

Now this is complicated and would take up a lot of efforts, coz even if our aatma, in its core essence, has all these buckets figured out, we have got karm particles which veil it all. So we need to put in a lot of efforts(purusharth) for sure.

Purusharth and vigilance both improves only by practice. These are neural pathways in our brain that we need to strengthen.
The best part about neural pathways is that it is like muscles, which we can train while doing our daily activities, which we anyways have to do!
So if we actively try to increase our vigilance and lazyness in our day to day tasks, we not only get optimal results in our tasks, but we also end up strengthening our neural pathways for Purusharth and vigilance!
And once the pathways are strengthened, its effect will show up in not only re-doing those tasks, but also in other tasks and realms, even spirituality!
Just like how an athelete goes to the gym, does excercises which might be irrelevant to their sport. Over time they would see their improvement not only in doing better in the gym (better form, more weight and more repeatations) over time, but in their sport too!

This is why we often see great monks being high achievers in their sansaarik lives as well!

But how to practice vigilance? How can we stay so conscious and aware all the time?

Again this needs to be done iteratively:

1. First we need to truly understand the requirement of vigilance. Note it down in our own ways and revisit and revise it multiple times. If we write it ourselves, then we truly trust it and not ignore it as any "good suggestion" that we get from someone else.
2. ⁠When it's importance is truly absorbed, then you would be motivated to do self introspection and analysis. Journalling can help. but people loose out on the habit of journalling, that is why repeatedly doing step 1 is very important to retain and truly absorb the importance of vigilance.
3. ⁠At first one might have to associate self introspection sessions with some triggers or hooks. Liek people often hook journalling to be an end of the day task just before they go to bed (This also helps declutter and have no screen exposure before we sleep, leading to a better deeper sleep)
4. ⁠The intent is to slowly increase the frequency of self realization and introspection. It can start with once a week then daily, then randomly in few hours.
5. ⁠Self introspection is an "After the event" process.We analyse after the event and realise what went wrong, what act or intent was wrong recently. When we increase the frequency, we slowly decrease the gap between the act and analysis. It can be aced so well that we start analysing it while doing something, and slowly we can start analysing even before doing something.
6. ⁠Then even the intent or feeling of doing anything which can result in analysis which would conclude it wrong would stop coming in our head !
7. And then things will just work out right in autopilot, you don't have to put in extra energy to actively analyse it! You would intuitively do the right thing!
   Now there are again a lot of buckets with varying depths, even if you ace one, there might be chances of losing your grip on it over time, so realization tool can come back into action. There might be some obvious buckets which are easy to ace, right conduct in some buckets can be assisted by law, ethics, societal norms and sanskaar. Like intuitively you might not think about killing other humans or harming other beings because of those. Harming others might appear like a clear bucket but you can dig much deeper into it. You can explore the varying depths of sub buckets like physical non violence(analysis of this can lead to discovery of acts hurting insects, plants, mircoorganisms in daily activities), verbal non violence, intellectual non violence, etc.

GYAAN SE NIJ KO NIHAREN! is a great realization tool, so once should continue studying and enriching their knowledge.

In short this is the flow :

• galat karne ke bahut baad realise hona
• galat karne ke turant baad realise hona
• ⁠galat karte waqt realise karna
• ⁠Galat karne ka soochne waqt hi realise karna
• ⁠Galat sooch ka hi nahi aana.

Build systems!
Changing one's vigilance can be very difficult.
One might fix some areas of health or finance or spirituality, but until we actively puts effort to fix and strengthen neural pathways, the benefit will be very specific to that domain or the instances of that domain that you fix things for.
We need to abstract out larger level things!

One might fix their packaged food eating habits with the gyaan of understanding that palm oil is bad or maida is bad, or sugar or in general fried items are bad, this gyan if turned into darshan cements the understanding of relevance and importance of this gyaan in one's life. When turned into charitra by checking food labels, and avoiding those products can help in inculcating it in life.
This might look like a win, but this win could be enhanced in a way that it helps beyond these specific ingredients, this specific domain of packaged food, food in general, health in general.
This exact same thing done with a more broader abstracted intent can help in financial decisions, societal and interpersonal relations, even spiritual undertakings, understanding things and many more domains!

What if what you are already doing right does not give benefit to you only in those specifics but can give you a lot more benefits across other parts of life? All you need to change is the intent and line of thinking.

A lot of things are not right or wrong in binary, it depends a lot in thh context we are in.
This becomes even more complicated if we bring in society and family.
Now the decision can involve an array of points:

• healthy or not,
• financially worth it or not,
• socially accepted or not,
• Does it comply with the expectation of others
• Would not doing something lead to a bad mood and more karm bandhan of the other person
• Would not doing it right now lead to more problems down the line?
• If it is going to upset someone no matter what I do, then which one do I pick
  And many more!
  All these hold different weights in our decision making, by habit we tend to let go of low weightage factors, and analyse only on top or top few pointers.
  Our lethargy in letting go of parameters which might not hold a lot of relevance leads to lower vigilance.
  The lethargy is there to save time and quickly decide, but the more often we do it, more lethargic we become. And hence less vigilant in general.
  We end up strengthening the neural pathways of lethargy.
  So Even if it is not relevant in the decision making, we need to analyse them all for the sake of strengthening our neural pathways of vigilance!

So our intent of decision making needs to shift from figuring out the right thing to do, to being deeply vigilant in the process of decision making for strengthening our neural pathways which will help in other tasks and even spirituality.

"जे कम्मे सूरा, ते धम्मे सूरा"

Lord Mahavir explained that spirituality is not for the weak-willed or lazy. The exact same traits required to master everyday worldly work such as unwavering focus, dedication, resilience, discipline, and intense effort are the identical engine required to excel on the spiritual path.

There is a another shlok
क्षमा शोभती उस भुजंग को, जिसके पास गरल हो,
उसको क्या जो दंतहीन, विषरहित, विनीत, सरल हो।"

अर्थ:
भुजंग = सांप, गरल = विष (ज़हर), दंतहीन = जिसके दांत न हों, विनीत = विनम्र।
अर्थात्, क्षमा करने का गुण उसी सांप पर अच्छा लगता है जिसके पास ज़हर हो, क्योंकि वह चाहकर भी किसी को नुकसान पहुंचा सकता था पर नहीं पहुँचाया। उस क्षमा का क्या मूल्य जो ऐसे सांप की हो जिसके पास न ज़हर है न दांत, यानी जो निर्बल है।
भावार्थ: यह कायरता और शक्ति के बीच का अंतर बताती है। जब एक शक्तिशाली व्यक्ति क्षमा करता है, तो वह उसकी महानता है। लेकिन जब एक कमजोर व्यक्ति क्षमा करता है, तो उसे उसकी मजबूरी समझा जाता है।

Isko jahar ke negative tone se mat dekho, bhav ko samjho..

Toh Kabil ban kar, neural paathways bana kar jab dharm me ghusoge toh jabardast returns milege.

Mai isse better approach follow karna chahta hun, upar wala thoda “aisa karenge” approach hai, mai thode present me laana chah rha hun, toh upar wala sentence ab ban jaata hai:

Toh Kabil bante hue, neural paathways banate hue dharm me ghuste jaana hai aur jabardast returns nikalna hai!

Haan wo to hai but on the contrary, 12-12 saal ke bachhe ko diksha kaise mil jaa raha hai ? I sometimes wonder , if they have enough knowledge or maturity

Sadhu jeevan me bhi toh bahut kaam karna padta hai, unka nueral pathways unn activities se refine aur strong hota hai…

Agar apramatt(vigilant) ho ke jee rhe ho, saadhu or shravak, nueral pathways strong ho hi jayenge.

WO strong ho jaaye toh bas gyaan aur darshan ke joran ki kami hai, acharan ka dahi apne aap jam jayega!