The Science of Living: How Vedanta Builds Mental Health

Source: Gautam Jain

This post is part one of a three-part series.

Vedanta teacher Gautam Jain (addressed as Gautamji) is a senior protégé of renowned philosopher and author A. Parthasarathy. Currently the head of the Vedanta Cultural Foundation, he has dedicated three decades to full-time study, research, and dissemination of Vedanta, which is essentially the teachings of the Upanishads, spiritual textbooks dating back thousands of years. In this interview, Gautamji elaborates on how this timeless wisdom tradition can help us in our everyday lives. He has presented seminars on self-management to premier corporations, institutions, and universities, including the YPO (the world’s largest CEO organization), Amazon, Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Columbia, Princeton, and MIT, and has been featured on ABC and PBS for his work on applying ancient wisdom to contemporary challenges.

Mark Matousek: How did you come to find yourself in the 'wisdom business'? I'm aware that your career path wasn’t always headed in this direction.

Gautam Jain: I wouldn’t call it a business. It’s more about trying to serve people with this knowledge. This was over 30 years ago when I was a senior in college here in the U.S. I came to study here from India as a 17-year-old. I studied business. My senior year in college, when I was getting all these job offers from many companies, I just thought, there’s more to life than just to work for oneself, and to acquire and enjoy just for oneself and one’s family. I strongly felt at that point that there has to be more to life. I spoke to my guru, whose lectures my mother used to attend, and that’s how it started. As soon as I completed my graduation, I went back to study at his Vedanta Academy in India. Then after 10 years, he got a little tired of me and said, “Why don’t you go back to the U.S. and teach? We don’t have anybody there.” I’ve been here for the last 20 years or so.

MM: For people who aren’t familiar with Vedanta, can you give us a brief overview of its central principles and how it can help us in our modern Western lives?

GJ: The word Vedanta actually means the end of knowledge, the culmination of wisdom. It refers to the highest knowledge known to a human being. The reason it’s the highest is that it provides us with techniques for how to live in the world, to be peaceful and productive in what we do, and move toward wisdom and self-realization. To your second question about how it applies in the modern world, another word for this knowledge is Sanatana Dharma, which means eternal principles. These are eternal principles of living. It doesn’t matter if they were found in ancient India thousands of years ago. It’s like the law of gravity. It doesn’t matter who found it and when they found it. It’s a living principle that applies to all human beings in all periods of time.

MM: What distinguishes Vedanta from the teachings of Buddhism, or from the Judeo-Christian traditions?

GJ: The unique thing about Vedanta is that it is not dependent upon a single founder like other religions. There is a galaxy of sages and saints over thousands of years who have all attested to the same truth. It’s more a science of living than a narrow set of religious principles. The wisdom of Vedanta applies to a person whether he believes it or not. Not having this knowledge is like going onto a highway and not knowing how to drive. Consider the results of not having this knowledge. That's what you see all over the world. At the individual level, you see stress, addiction, depression, divorce, and disharmony. At the world level, you see terrorism, war, corruption, and greed destroying humanity, all because the fundamental principles of living are not taught anywhere. This isn't a matter of East or West; there is a dearth of practical education for living around the world.

MM: Ours has been called the age of anxiety. Trauma has become such a watchword in our era. How can Vedanta be helpful in working with fear, anxiety, and trauma?

GJ: The first principle—if you want to learn anything about how to deal with your life—is that the problem is not the world, it’s how you relate to it. One person wants to divorce his wife. Another person is waiting equally desperately to marry that same woman. The first guy says, “She’s the cause of all my sorrow.” The second guy says, “She’s the cause of my happiness.” Obviously, it can’t be the person! It’s how these two people's minds are relating to the person. Stress, trauma, and anxiety are caused by the mind’s reactions, not the world. You see, the mind is nothing but emotions, desires, likes, and dislikes. The intellect is your capacity to think. When that is strong, the emotions can be kept under control. That’s how you grow as a human being.

MM: Fair enough, but what about when there is an actual threat, or genuinely destructive forces in your midst? How do you recommend that we neutralize, or better cope with, adversity in the world around us?

GJ: First, we need to understand the world is not designed to cater to the whims and fancies of a particular person or a set of people. The world will be what it is. You like summer, but there will be winter. You like the roads to be clear, but there will be traffic. You want a particular political party to be in power, but if more people vote for the other party, the power goes to them. There are dictatorships everywhere; this is the world. If you can keep your mind under control, you will not be disturbed by it. It is your wrong expectations of the world that cause the stress.