We had a launch event for the book “Mindfulness: Connecting
with the real you” in Bangalore on 24th November 2019. The event
took place at Higginbothams bookstore near M. G. Road Metro station. At the
event, Dr. Kajoli Banerjee Krishnan and I had a conversation followed by
Q&A. It was lucky to have Kajoli as the host. She is a medical imaging
researcher, poet, blogger (blog: Unfold the wings) and carries a keen interest in the topic of
mindfulness. She covered a lot of ground during the interview and also asked some probing questions. Many friends & family members joined the conversation and asked good questions.
The event began with Kajoli and my wife Gauri singing a
welcome song – Yei akashe amar mukti – a poem by Tagore. You can listen to
their version here
(3MB, MP3).
Here are Kajoli’s questions:
00:44 You have three streams of interest: design thinking,
innovation and mindfulness. Do you see a connection among all of these?
6:15 If I have a reaction, what should I do? This is a
practical question.
8:00 If someone derives pleasure in arguing and does that in
a sustained way, and such a person may not see himself as doing anything wrong.
Is there a message from the Gabbar story here?
10:00 What is the connection between sustained negative
emotion, absolute necessity and self-deception?
13:15 What if I do all of this and feel good. What could be
the ways in which I suddenly realize that may be there is something wrong here?
I may not ever figure it out in my lifetime, right?
15:20 One of the stories from the book that fascinates me is
the “reverse bike”. Do you want to tell the story?
19:15 Could human species survive if we are all mindful?
22:20 Evolutionary biology implies that a large number of
tasks we do, we do automatically with certain model in the brain and take quick
decisions.
26:10 Do you want to talk about how we define ourselves with
respect to culture or a gender, the dance of necessities?
28:50 Why made you call it a “dance of necessities”? Would
you call it a “song of necessities”?
32:00 I worked for seventeen years in a multinational
organization. The two things HR would say are: perception is reality and
actions should be consistent with organization values. I felt perception is not
necessarily reality. I felt actions are important but your belief system is
somehow fundamental. Do we as humans set up simple models so that we take
decisions more easily?
1:40 Have you been asked by organizations to come and do
mindfulness workshops?
3:20 Has this idea of investigation something you thought
of?
4:30 In the last part of your book, you describe experiments
like the dancing droplet. And then on page 114, you say, “The idea is not to
understand the science behind these experiments. It is to use them as
analogies.” Isn’t it inconsistent with the
spirit of investigation?
Questions from the audience:
10:00 On page x you say, “JK says process of becoming could
be the root cause of human suffering” and then later you say that mindfulness
is an investigation of the process of becoming. I am not able to connect the
two.
12:58 Human beings are supposed to have emotions. And if we
are following an engineering approach for understanding the mind and taking the
right decisions, we could be taking emotions, happiness away. The second part is, looking
at the Padmaavat example, won’t this approach lead to inaction? There has to be a criticism if something wrong is happening. If everybody becomes mindful then
people will be expressing less.
0:00 When somebody criticizes Prime Minister Modi, I am
upset and I cut his friendship off. I don’t want to see the bad comment at all.
Is it right or wrong?
2:19 Would you call mindful person a rational actor the way
economics talks about? Isn’t the goal to become a rational person?
5:12 How do you connect mindfulness to meditation?
9:08 The seventh chapter “searching for the real hero”
presents concepts similar to existentialism. Is mindfulness similar to existentialism?
11:03 How do I write-off expectations on the go? I realize
it only after the event is over.
14:05 You have mentioned “do’s”, but are there any “don’ts”
in this practice?
15:55 Have you seen the snake illusion? It is something to
do with the rate at which eyelids move.
18:56 You say mindfulness is a journey. So there is no “What
next?” right?
I would like to thank Mr. Ananda of Higginbothams for providing the space in the bookstore. Thanks to Mr. Shivendra Singh of HarperCollins for helping with the marketing activity.
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