1709 – The Most Effective Tools and Practices for Cultivating a Monk Mindset with Madhu.Life’s Madhu Dasa

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0:58with us right now it's madu dasa madu you are a holistic lifestyle coach and you're the ceo of madu you're found on the web at madu.life now it's m-a-d-h-u dot life uh and something i think we're going to be talking about is developing the monk mindset uh so madu it's great to have you Please share with us a little bit more about the impact that you have in the world and what you do. Well, it's always a pleasure to be here. And I'm so grateful to speak with someone like yourself who really makes these messages so accessible to the world. So much appreciation to you, Josh. The primary thing that I like to serve and share with others is as somebody who lived in a monastery in India for six months of the year and other monasteries throughout the world for the other six months.

1:44I'd shaved my head, wore orange robes, the whole thing. I learned a little bit, some interesting practices there. And my hope is to share some very easy tools and practices so that people don't have to shave their head and move into ashrams around the world to learn these tools and tips in such a way that can guarantee success in the most important areas of their life, including your health, including your business and purpose, including your relationships like that. Yeah. Yeah. And I also want to point out for those who are just listening to our audio conversation, I am so intrigued by all of these stringed instruments that you have behind us.

2:23I don't know if anyone has ever asked you, is that, that's not a sitar, the one on the ground, is it? Is it really? Okay. If, if we have time, would you be willing to do any kind of like impromptu? We don't have to do that right now. Okay. Okay. We'll get to that as a special surprise for those who listened to the whole episode. We're going to have a little, just a quick little impromptu concert at the very end. Thank you. Yeah. So Madhu, for let's say again, we're, let's say that our friend in the conversation here, listening to our conversation, let's say that, you know, they're, they have high, very high demand on themselves.

3:02They're high achiever. They work very hard. They're in a leadership capacity. What are some of the main tenets of, you know, to kind of developing a monk mindset that would be freeing or empowering that you think would be valuable? Yeah. So there's two approaches that we like to take this. And then one is trying to control the mind with the mind and the other is trying to control the mind with other things. It's very difficult to control the mind with the mind itself, as we've all experienced. So what we like to encourage is using other methods in terms of the breath, in terms of getting the body moving, in terms of engaging the senses or desensitizing in other ways.

3:42There's practices that we can do that cost us nothing that we could get into at any time. Some things take as quick as five seconds, some maybe five minutes that can really create a change and a shift internally in the mindset because suffering only happens in the mind. Even if somebody pinches you, I hope nobody does, but if somebody pinches you, we don't feel pain uh the brain is what sends us signals to actually feel the pain itself so everything that's happening in terms of happiness or distress is happening in the level of the mind so to the extent that we could learn the mind and teach the mind how to cooperate and in other in other words be the boss of the mind as opposed to the mind being our boss and telling us what to do we are going to be able to experience happiness that is deeper than just a temporary yeah no i'm happy?

4:30No, I'm sad. But a type of inner contentment, because we're going to know that our mind is going to cooperate and do what we want it to do, as opposed to bringing us down, which I hope no one here listening has experienced that, but I have a feeling we all have. You know, very specifically too, I think it's wonderful timing that we're having this conversation. Because I know, for me, meditation, which obviously something that you know a bit about. Historically, my brain really resists meditation. I get bored. I don't enjoy it necessarily. Now, I will say, I feel like whether I'm enjoying it or enjoy the process or feel like I'm at all successful with it, But I kind of do think, I feel like I get benefit from it.

5:24Can you identify with what I'm explaining right now? Does that sound familiar? Absolutely. I mean, yeah, you and good thing. It's only everyone else in the world that experiences that. So yeah, because the mind doesn't want to be controlled. The mind wants to do what the mind wants to do. And I think it's important to just preface by saying that when we're talking about the mind, there's really two areas of the mind that we're going to be referring to. and in Sanskrit, the oldest teachings of the concepts of the mind, which have been written over 5 ,000 years ago in India, they call it what's called the manasa or the emotional mind, which as recent years, we call the subconscious mind.

6:01And then we have what's called the buddhir or the intellect, which is the conscious mind, the discerning mind. So when we're talking about the mind, we have these two areas. One is that unconscious programming. That's how when you get in the car and you just know what to do, that's been trained on an unconscious level or to pick up and brush your teeth. Those are unconscious or subconscious programmings there. And then there's the conscious mind where you're actually discerning and deliberate, where you actually have a conscious ability to make a decision there. So on an unconscious level, nobody wants to sit down and meditate.

6:32It's uncomfortable to sit there and sit with whatever emotions are present, to sit with whatever's going on in the psyche, because the mind wants to do what the mind wants to do. It doesn't want what you want to do with the mind. It wants what it does with you. And when I say you, we're referred to the real you, the soul that's driving around the biomechanical robot, aka the human body, the real you. In other words, if you lose an arm, are you less of a person? No. If you cut your nails, are you less of a person? No. The real you that drives around the body, that is in control of both the body and the mind.

7:06And so when we're talking about getting on the level of that mind, the subconscious area is always going to be resistant because it wants to do what it wants to do. But from a conscious level, we might understand, oh, okay, it's going to make me more efficient. It's going to make me more peaceful. It's going to reduce my stress if I meditate, et cetera. So what we want to do primarily is connect the conscious mind where we're like, oh, meditation is a good idea. I want to do it. It makes sense to an unconscious programming where we eventually get to a space where it's not just a logical theoretical i should do this because it's good for me but actually an underlying a part of our psyche that is attached to the result we're going to get on an unconscious level as well so the primary thing that we're looking at to bridge that gap is how do we take it from a logical place into a more more instinctual and emotional place as well and there's a couple of practices we could talk about how to do that oh go ahead please don't threaten me with a good time the the primary thing that we're looking at here is we're trying to create new neural pathways so there's a stimuli and there's a response and we're trained and one of the best ways i've heard this explained is you could think of a mountain a side of a mountain with fresh powdered snow on it and if you go to the top of that mountain and you take a sled down at once there'll be a little little smooth ridge that's come.

8:27And every time you go to the top and you go down that same ridge, you're imprinting that new pathway more and more and more and more. So what happens is even if you wind up going to a different part of the mountain, because that indent has gotten so prominent, even if you go slide down on a different area, you're always going to get sucked back into that slope that's been created. So similarly, what happens is we have a stimuli to the mind and therefore we have this unconscious programmed response to that stimuli. And even when we're trying to change it, what happens is even if we're trying to change the response of stimuli, we often still get sucked back into that old pattern, that old program.

9:09The primary thing that we're trying to do is create new pathways so that when a similar stimuli happens, as opposed to responding with say anger or sadness, or you fill in the blank, it's going to change for each person with their conditioning, as opposed to going down that same pathway, which leads to that unconscious reaction of say anger. What we want to do is when that same thing happens to you, we take it to a different location. We take it to a different result, to a different destination. And the primary way that we do that is through, well, for the sake of being cliche is through practice, but not practice in things we should do.

9:49Oh, because if you're shooting on yourself, I'm not a big fan of shooting. I don't want to shoot on you. I don't want to shoot on me. But if we're looking at it, if we're looking at doing things from a place of like, I have to, the heart's not going to get into it. What we want to do is we want to find real true desires and motivations to get to that end result. And let's just say it's, if we're talking about dealing with anger and what you want to do is deal with compassion, somebody cuts you off as opposed to, there's a cool hand gesture people do. I won't show you on here that people do if they get cut off, but we switch it to this hand gesture.

10:22And there's this cool mantra that goes with this hand gesture. When we put it up like this and we say, I forgive you, I forgive you. So how do we change it from that other gesture, which I want to show to this gesture to say, I forgive you. And the primary thing is we must connect the particular practice with a real desire, an intrinsic desire. And let's just say, if that's for compassion, we want to respond with compassion. Then what we do is we develop, we reverse engineer that process of what would I need to practice on a small microcosmic way on a daily consistent basis until that new neural pathway has been developed.

10:57Now there's a couple of different tools we could do to short circuit and short wire that, but that's the primary mechanism we're looking at is creating a new response to the same stimuli. So you end in a different place than you are, you've been trained to from your childhood. Yeah. You know, I actually was just thinking about this because I think also too, in our world right now, you know, there can be a lot of polarization, a lot of folks that maybe can kind of get sucked into a certain way of thinking, you know, be it religious or political or just really, really, really strong opinions. And sometimes that can be really challenging.

11:38You know, he'd mentioned about, you know, being on the road and someone offending you in that way. Well, I think it's pretty easy, you know, particularly in today's connected world, you know, to be exposed to, well, that wasn't very nice of them. And, you know, one thing, my wife is a couples therapist and, you know, therapists are taught to, you know, when you experience something like that, to get curious, to lean forward and go, you know, almost in fascination, you know, and, you know, and obviously there's some degree of empathy here too. It's like, I have no idea what's going on in their life.

12:13But, you know, for me, that's been something that I've been trying to work on lately, because again, there's a lot of messages out there and not all of them resonate with us. Any thoughts on that? Well, what I will say is that polarization can be very helpful in many ways. And at the same time, it usually springs from a place of lack of knowledge of connectivity. Because as you mentioned, if you understand, let's say somebody cuts you off, but you find out it's because they're driving their wife whose water just broke to the hospital. You'd be like, no problem. You're like, I'll help. Like, I'll help clear the way.

12:51You know, so that same person that you're like, I hate that person is now like, oh, my God, I get to help this person. Like the complete polar opposite. It's because of the intention behind it. And so usually this me versus you mentality, which is going to be inevitable as long as you have a mind and the mind perceives things in duality, at least on an unconscious level. It just accepts and rejects. And it says, I like, I don't like in a very primitive, instinctual level. That's always going to be there. But the way that we start to overcome that me versus you mentality is understanding a deeper connectedness in the same way as I'm going to help this person go get to the hospital in time so the baby can be delivered or whatever the case might be.

13:33If we can practice always giving people the benefit of the doubt, even if they don't deserve it, even if they don't deserve it, what we're doing is that we're saving our mind. The idea of criticizing someone else is like drinking and getting angry with someone else and getting contemptuous of them or criticizing them is like us drinking poison, hoping to kill them. Wow. It's like saying, how did you do? How could you do that to me? Oh, I'm going to get angry. I'll show you. While we're just killing ourselves, while we're dampening our nature, while we're only illusioning ourselves deeper. Wow.

14:10All right, Madhu. I want more. And to our friend that's been listening to us, you know, before we get to our little impromptu ditty or song or whatever you want to do. By the way, you don't have to grab this guitar. Whatever you want to grab off the wall there. You got guitars. You got electric guitars. You got a little, looks like a ukulele. And that is a Hawaiian way of saying that. But how do you work with folks? What does that look like? And also, you know, for our friend that's been listening to us now, do you have any resources and things you'd recommend for where you go from here? Yeah, well, there's maybe a tool or two I'd like to share that.

14:48And everyone could just, it takes a few seconds, everyone can immediately do. And what it's going to do is it's going to stop us from reacting and allow us to respond consciously. Take us from that unconscious, X happens and I just, I just respond to a place where, wait, how do I want to respond? How do I want to react to this? And so I'm going to give you a tool there. But what I will say too, is we have a whole free site called the monk. It's called monk mindset mastery. If anyone wants access to, we have a whole huge community there where we just share tools and knowledge for anyone to benefit from.

15:20If anyone wants access to that, the easiest way is you could just send us an email at info at madu.life, M-A-D-H-U dot L-I-F-E. Or you can find us on any social platforms, M-A-D-H-U dot L-I-F-E. And we'll send you access to that free group where, yeah, all the information there, it's just for anyone to start to take and make their life a little bit easier. That's my passion is that especially those who are doing good in this world, they should have as many tools as possible so that they can do the best job in changing other people's lives. And that's our hope there. One immediate practice, which is really easy, and the last couple of years has become more prominent.

15:57Actually, one Stanford professor named Dr. Andrew Huberman that's kind of popularized. Oh, yes. So love it. Love his stuff. He's taken a lot of that stuff, which was considered like woo or weird and like given data behind it. So we're like, oh, that's why people are doing this for thousands of years. But anyway, there's one practice that he coined the physiological sigh, which is really helpful, which is functioning a double inhale through the nose and big audible sigh out the mouth. and even just doing it once, twice, thrice, what it starts to do is you feel a kind of wave come over you of relief and relaxation, which gives you a little bit of a space to react.

16:32Doing something like that, without getting so much in the mechanism of why that first inhale fills up the lungs, it's some oxygen in that second inhale, floods the lungs and the little sacs that are in the lungs that takes the oxygen into the body, it floods that. And then when the big side of the mouth is a big release of CO2, which makes the body acid. Anyway, and I don't wanna get into the boring stuff, But what we're going to do here in a second is I just encourage, we'll just do three together. And the beautiful listener who's taking this in, as long as you're not maybe operating heavy machinery, I would encourage you to try this with us.

17:02And just watch what happens as it gives you a second to be able to respond instead of just reacting however your mind wants to make you react. So, again, it'll be a double inhale, big inhale through the nose and a big sip at the top and a big sigh out the mouth. I'll do it once and then maybe we can do it three times together. Here's what it's like.

17:23let's try that all together

17:35and you can just sit for a second and feel that space created ah what did that take five seconds not even practices like this and man there's millions more, but like that takes no time. There's certain things you could do just to get into the physiology that just changes your mind, that gives you the chance to become in control of your mind, as opposed to your mind being in control of you. And that's the primary thing that we help people with is the mind says, how do we actually train our mind to become our best friend, as opposed to our worst enemy? Otherwise we get caught in addictions. We get caught in, I mean, everything from sex to drugs, to gambling, to food addiction, whatever the case it might be.

18:15That's just a lack of control of the mind in terms of training the mind we can actually achieve our goals the whole mind monk mindset method is approached that how to actually achieve whatever you want in a sustainable way in terms of getting clear of your goals getting an idea of what the destination that goal looks like what are the behaviors need to achieve in that goals what are things going to stop you from getting those goals there's a whole protocol that that we have there in the uh in our free group which forces one to be in control of the mind and that's the primary thing that we do with people.

18:43And of course, there's other things help, help you get healthy through your diet and through your routine and lifestyle. And, you know, inevitably how to grow your business through this. So there are other things as well, but everything comes down to training the mind to become your best friend. I love this, Madhu. Thank you so much. Now to make good, would you be willing to add whatever you're? Let's try. How about this? We'll try it. If it's tuned, I'll do the sitar. If not, we'll do 30 seconds for another instrument. All right, let's try this on. And I'm going to narrate here. So he's, no, no, no, you keep going.

19:15You keep going. All right, all right. He's running back. He's grabbing the sitar. Here he comes. Boy, he's got, you got drums back there. You got all kinds of stuff. Look at this thing. This is beautiful. Thank you. We do a lot of musical meditation because 100 % of humans like music, but you know, there's no argument there. 100 % of us like music. So what we do is there's tons of meditations where we get music involved so as to capture the mind. Because if you just sit there and empty the mind, it don't work. It don't work. That's why people give up on meditation. They think, oh, let me stop thinking.

19:50Your brain don't stop thinking. You got to engage the mind in something worth paying attention to and focus it there. So we do a lot of mantra and musical meditation where we use the vehicle of melody and rhythm to capture the mind and give the mind something worth paying attention to. Perfect for someone like me. Do you think there's audio things that I could search for that I could listen to that might be helpful? Yeah. So actually, we have recordings on Spotify and pretty much platforms that are out there. Yeah. The best way probably would be just sending us an email, info at madu.life. Otherwise, any social media platform that's there, if you send us a message at madu.life, M-A-D-H-U.L-I-F-U, we can send you.

20:37We've got tons of resources there that people can get into these types of meditations. Even if you look up on YouTube, mantra meditation, M-A-N-T-R-A meditation, you're going to find some lots of free resources online as well there. But this is a practice that people have been doing for thousands of years all around the world. It's just really fascinating. And the chanting mantras, which are sounds that actually capture the mind. and as opposed to listening to a sound on the radio, which everyone's going to get sick of at some point, you like it for a week, you like for two weeks. And before, if you keep listening every day, you're like, oh my God, I never want to hear it again.

21:13So what we do is mantras, which bring in inherent happiness, wake up that supreme dormant consciousness within us that allows us to realize our potential so that we can actually do some crazy stuff in this life and really change our lives and in turn change and transform the lives of others around us. Before you play, I'm looking at what you're holding there. I just started picking up the bass guitar just over 50 days ago. And I love it. I only have to worry about four strings. Yeah, we've got 20 here on this instrument. We've got 20 here. So you only play seven of them. But there are 13 sympathetic, which means they resonate.

21:54So whenever you play a note on the sitar. So let's just say if you were to play, according to Western notation, if you played a C, there's say two or more C's in different octaves. And if don't worry if you guys know what this means, but, uh, and so when I play one C on the note that I'm playing, the other C's will resonate more of a robust, uh, sound with more depth. Yeah. So in, in playing the bass, you know, one thing I have to be very mindful of is muting the other strings. Otherwise they will pick that up and it doesn't sound good. So, so you have to like, learn how to like cover a note and, you know, mute the strings and stuff while you're playing.

22:30All right, Madi, enough of me. Go ahead and take it away. Let's see if she's tuned. She's tuned enough. We'll have to do.

23:22All right. I love it. Madhu, thank you so much. And again, I know we're not in a professional studio or anything recording. So I apologize if that audio was not awesome for our listener. Madhu Dasa, again, this was such a delightful conversation. Your website, madhu.life, M-A-D-H-U dot life. You shared your email address. Was it info at madhu.life? Perfect. Yeah, yeah. Email, send an email. Any questions, particularly if there were some resources that Madhu that you shared that folks were interested in grabbing. Madhu Dasa, it's been a pleasure having you. Again, you are a holistic lifestyle coach and again, the CEO of Madhu.

24:07Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

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