SADHGURU
Youth & Truth @
University of Toronto
University of Toronto
12 Questions
About
On 12 November 2019, Sadhguru was at University of Toronto, as part of the Youth and Truth movement. Watch the vibrant QnA session that followed as Sadhguru answered students’ questions on a wide range of topics.
100 min
Questions
Introduction
Questioner: Since we are here at U of T, we just want to let everybody know that one of the major topics that we considered when coming up with questions and discussion topics is ‘Mental health’. Which I’m sure everyone in here knows that has been a very prevalent and a very growing topic, especially in the last few years. And especially if you’re a U of T student, I’m sure you know that the topic of ‘Mental health’ and to put it blunt even ‘suicide’ and such has been a very large topic, especially in the last few months. So, we have a lot of questions that are geared around that as well. So once again, thank you so much for coming. We are very excited and honored and grateful to be here, but to be here with all of you. So, do you guys want to get started? Perfect, perfect. Thank you so much.
Sadhguru: [Chants – Kala na janati]. Good evening. Good evening everybody. I just decided to chant because he said “one of the main issues is mental health.” We need to understand this, as today slowly people are beginning to understand for physical health, doctor is not the solution. How you eat, how you stand, how you sit, how you breathe is the solution. Hello? What do you do with yourself on a daily basis.
Similarly, for mental health also, what we’re doing with ourselves on a daily basis is the solution. And what we’re doing with ourselves on a daily basis is the source of the problem too. So, to start any activity in your daily life, if you had a some sort of process to settle you, and kind of put you in place for that kind of activity that you’re trying to perform, you would see, you would perform your activity much more easily, with least amount of friction.
In the initial stages of mental ill health, it is just a question of little bit of friction. When the friction happens continuously, something breaks down. Once it’s broken down, then fixing is a humongous task. But ensuring there was not much friction is a much easier thing to do.
All of you young people, mental health is the last thing that you should be concerned about at this stage in your life. But unfortunately, it’s come visiting. No, it’s not come visiting, it’s been invited. So, keeping that in mind, let’s [start].
9 min
How can we heal ourselves from our past pain?
Question
So, the first question we had was - nobody goes through life unscathed. Everybody has had a past experience with a person or a situation that left a permanent scar on them, such that whenever we are reminded of this, the sadness or loneliness or pain associated with the memory comes back, regardless of how much time has passed. Is there truly a way for us to move on from and let go of the things that have hurt us in the past, such that they have no substantial emotional effects on us? And if not, how can we heal ourselves from this past pain?
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How to take care of self, when one is a caretaker?
Question
So Sadhguru, a lot of our students take leadership roles at school, a lot of them are just good friends and are part of families where problems do exist, and they take the caretaker role a lot. So, what they've asked is, "How do you take care of yourself, when you are usually the one taking care of others?"
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How to live in the moment?
Question
So, Sadhguru going back to what you were saying that you need to be part of the solution and going back to what Daniel was saying that mental health is such a problem here. At U of T we are constantly challenged by new ideas by some of the greatest minds in the world. And in such a competitive environment, which I sometimes describe as a roller coaster ride we got on to, knowingly or unknowingly - I find myself and a lot of people in the audience would echo to this that, I'm juggling between dealing with stress and finding internal happiness. I want to understand how do you live in the moment? How do I cherish my victories or my failures before I move on to the next task in life?
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How to love unconditionally & healthily?
Question
So, love is such like a universal topic. It's in movies, songs, it seems like such a basic component of life. Yet it's really hard for us to define it. It's really hard for us to truly know, when we're in love. To truly know if it's the right kind of love. If it actually is love, if it's just infatuation. If you feel really strongly it must be love, because you can't get them out of your head. So, this can be, and maybe that's just me as a young person. But yeah, so love can be a very, very big topic. So, the question that we have, that we've sourced from the U of T community is - what does it mean to love someone, both unconditionally and healthily?
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How to deal with identity crisis?
Question
I'm Canadian born, my family is from Tanzania, but originally from Gujarat. So, I've always struggled to identify who I am, in the Canadian context. So, I was always stuck between these two identities constantly, and these are things I did as a child six, seven, eight, nine. And now as an adult, I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate in this space. So, my question for you is, as youth we have the ability to adapt our identities to fit the social surroundings, we're in. How do we begin to understand our authentic truths and act upon them, in a world that expects us to change and be amiable in our environments?
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How to deal with failure?
Question
Sadhguru, the next question is something that we sourced from the audience and it's been a personal question as well. Which is that when we're on this journey of life, we tend to set a lot of short-term goals and when we don't achieve them, we don't know how to deal with failure. And that is something we all deal with a lot at U of T in specific, but in that moment when we can look back and say, "Yeah, this is fine," but in that moment, how do we hold our ground and how do we learn to see the bigger picture?
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Why do we do rituals?
Question
Ok, My question is why do we do pooja? Or, any kind of ritual in our Hindu religion?
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Can I have multiple Gurus?
Question
I've read an article that you published online where you've said that - "How do you know when you find your guru," and you've mentioned that if you know, If you meet someone who almost threatens you and you want to leave, but at the same time there's something that brings you back to this person then you found your Guru. Like, can you have multiple gurus? Or how do you know you're in the right path that hey, this is working for me and I should be doing this?
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What, or who, is God?
Question
you've made an interesting comment that you know, when you think of god, most people think of him as an old man sitting up there with a big beard, you know passing judge... And so, my question was, I was curious to understand what in your definition would be god?
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How to balance personal and relationship goals?
Question
With respect to interpersonal promises and intrapersonal promises, I feel there are two types of promises that we make to others and to ourselves. How do we balance both of those, especially considering that sometimes we have to keep the interpersonal promises at the cost of your intrapersonal promises?
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How can I learn about myself?
Question
So, my question is that, we learned that we are sophisticated machinery, and that we must learn how that sophisticated machinery works. But how do we approach that? How do we go about learning how this sophisticated machinery works?
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How not to get swayed by social & peer pressures?
Question
How do we counter balance the power of social structures put on by popular culture? It feels like it sometimes holds youth in ignorance and has them carry out a suede perception of self-worth, and can also lead people to destructive behaviors like drugs and alcohol because it's so cool. This is the most common thing amongst us young people – marijuana, alcohol, bad habits – it's pushed onto us from pop culture. What do we do? We can't avoid it. It's everywhere. How can we stay on our path and ascend? It's human to fail in these habits but it does not feel right. It is impossible to escape. What do we do?
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