Original subtitles

uh one of the things I know you do to

detox is vipasana it had a a big um

impact on you tell us a bit about

pattern you know for for our audiences

here in India how Indian culture and

vasana has had a huge role for you yeah

so I've been meditating vasana for 24

years now I do two hours more or less

every day and I come almost every year

to India to do a long meditation with

treat of one month or two months of of

the Persona and for me the the key

question in meditation is what is

reality the mind is constantly

producing uh fictions fictional stories

imaginations and they come between us

and reality humans almost never

encounter reality we only encounter the

fictions produced by our minds or by the

minds of somebody else or increasingly

the fictions produced by AIS and we

don't react to the reality we react to

the fictions to the

images meditation is all about learning

to tell the difference what is a fiction

and what is reality like when you close

your eyes and sit down at least for me

the the question that keeps repeating is

what is really happening right now you

know it starts with the simplest

exercise of just feeling your breath

coming in and out of your nostrils oh

now the breath is coming in now the

breath is going out this is reality

the breath is really coming in the

breath is really going out you don't try

to create or control anything you just

observe reality and the amazing thing is

most people can do it for maybe 5

Seconds 10 seconds and some image comes

some fiction comes some memory comes and

hijacks our attention and then for five

minutes you roll in some fantasy Until

you realize hey I'm supposed to be

watching the reality you come come back

to breath again something fantasy comes

and this was like maybe the the the

first thing I understood when I started

meditating 24 years ago is that I have

no control of my mind and I spend almost

my entire life engaged with

fantasies and not with

reality and meditation is just an

exercise for the mind how to let go of

the fantasies and get in touch with the

reality people sometimes think that

meditation is escape from reality you

have all these things in politics in

business in your personal life and you

say oh I I just sit in the corner and

close my eyes I disconnect from reality

I think it's the opposite that we spend

most of our Lives engaged with fantasies

we have no idea what the reality is and

at least for two hours a day I train my

mind to get in touch with reality if I

cannot observe the reality of my breath

going going in and out of my nostrils

because of all these fantasies what hope

do I have of understanding the reality

of the political situation in the Middle

East or of the economic crisis or

whatever it will only be fantasy