React or Respond

“Learn to respond, not react” – A Zen quote

You must have heard this quote many times that we must avoid to react and try to respond to the situation. In this article, I will try to explain the difference between these two terms, why responding is better than reaction, the psychological and neurological phenomena behind these two terms and with the practice how we can learn to respond and to avoid reaction. Though both of same dictionary meaning but their impact on us life is huge and both affect our life in entirely different ways.

Difference between React and Respond

Reaction is an automatic or unconscious response while Response is a conscious, planned reaction. Reaction is an emotional stimulus, when we react we don’t think much. It happens instantly with in a second. Someone called you stupid and instantly you replied you are stupid. Someone provoked you and you instantly shouted. Your habits, your body language and all the activities that happen at the heat of the moment fall under reaction category. Since Reaction is an emotional response so it contains different type of emotions (Praise, love, Anger, Fear etc) but doesn’t contain reasons. Response is a logical stimuli and it comes after considering all the facts. Response is slow compare to reaction. It’s a time taking and calorie consuming activity. Reaction occurs automatically and we can’t easily control our reaction but response we have to make and it doesn’t occur instantly. We respond normally in that situation where stakes are high and margin of error is low like in business dealings, legal matters, dealing with superiors.

Mind and Brain Concept

As explained in theory of mind and brain, we have two decision making units- one is mind that unconscious, automatic and fast while other is intellect or brain that is conscious, logical and slow. Reaction is the mind’s nature while response is the brain’s nature. Mind is dependent on impressions stored in subconscious mind so whenever something happens when immediate reaction is required mind takes control on our decision making and subconscious mind automatically search the database of previously stored impressions and select the suitable impression and prepare mind for suitable reaction. All process happens with in a blink. So in the reaction we mostly depend upon our past impressions so if you see a person calling stupid to another person and another person reacts by saying you are stupid then later if someone call you stupid your reaction will also be “you are stupid” since its stored as impression in your mind. Decisions makes that are merely on the basis of impressions are prone to have bias. It can instantly give you emotional satisfaction but at a long term gives you only pain so it is taught to us to avoid react in the situation since its comes under a wrong decision but it’s not easy to avoid reactions. 

As explained in first chapter mind can’t be our friend either it’s a obedient servant or ruthless master and these days normally people are slave of their minds so they act accordingly to mind. Brain who is responsible for respond can take decision freely only that time when mind is under control. It doesn’t mean that some people 24 hours make decision by mind or some 24 hours make decisions by brain. Both mind and brain keep shifting their duties. At the most of the time mind is in charge while at crucial time brain is active, especially where self-control is required.

Amygdala Hijack

The term Amygdala Hijack was coined by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ. Amygdala is part of our brain within the temporal lobe that is responsible for our emotional reaction. Amygdala automatically hijacks our logical brain in the fight or flight situation. Fight or flight situation consist of perceived harmful attack, or threat to survival. In that situation, Amygdala triggers the HPA (hypothalamic –pituitary – adrenal) hormone and hijacks the rational brain. Every individual’s amygdala maintains a list of threat situations. This emotional brain activity processes information milliseconds earlier than the rational brain, so in case of a match, the amygdala acts before any possible direction from the logical brain can be received. If, however, the amygdala does not find any match to the stimulus received with its recorded threatening situations, then it acts according to the directions received from the neo-cortex (logical brain). When the amygdala perceives a threat, it can lead that person to react irrationally and destructively. So basically when we react we are in amygdala hijack situation. Since threat situation is perceived differently by different persons so in same situation some people react while some persons react.

Why reaction is not good

Human brain evolved through the million of years. We kept learning from environment and kept adapting. May be thousand of years ago reaction was not bad for human at all since situations were different that time. Human used to live in forest, life was very difficult and threat of life was there any time so combating those situations Human learn to react instantly to save his life but in today's scenario life has changed tremendously. There are no as much 24x7 life threats that it used to be earlier. Life has become more intellectual than physical and we have more opportunity to control the situations so controlling has become more important phenomena than speed in this era. That's why responding is considered better than reaction since better control is possible only in response so those people who are more apt in responding do better in their career and social life.

The controlling phenomena can be explained by cause and effect theory. When we react to some person or situation than control in the hand of situation or that person we just become puppet. So that person or situation is cause and we are effect of that cause so in reaction we can easily be manipulated and can be used by anyone and eventually ends at being hurt and regret. While in responding, control is completely in our hand, no one can manipulate us. We examine the situation and take rational decision so we don't fall in the trap of cause and effect. But it doesn't mean that reaction is always bad. Reaction have one advantage and that is speed. So whenever there is life threat situation, reaction is best alternate since nothing is more important than life.

Do you react frequently ?

It's very easy to find our your basic nature is reaction or response. Just ask following question to yourself-

1. Do you often feel regret of your decisions ? feeling of "I should have not done this", "I should have avoided this", "it was my mistake".

2. Do you often lash out on your loved ones ?

3. Do you often apologise ?

If your answer is yes in most of the time then it means you are reactive kind of person. So its time to move from reaction to response. These are some of the points by using it you can start to respond rather reaction.

How to start Responding 

The simplest answer is you cant avoid reacting. Our biological system is designed in such a way that reaction is our automatic response and it cant be turned off but you can program your reaction.So how ?

 I read lot of thoughts on this topic and read comments of intellectuals talking about rejecting your first response, keep silence, count one to ten, take deep breath, take full sleep, avoid spicy food etc. These all tips can be used but they are not much effective and the reason for this is in amygdala hijack state we can't think logically so normally in that conditions decision is taken by emotional mind in place of logical brain so no logical solution will serve the purpose here. Since mind is in charge here so any idea related to mind will work and mind can be trained and controlled. So you can program your mind to tackle certian situations where you usually react and later feel regret and technique to program mind to react in a particular way in particular situation is called - Simulation 

Simulation : Simulation or conditioning is a technique by which we can prepare our mind for a particular situation. As explained earlier that our mind maintain a threat list and event related to that list happened amaygdala immediately take control. S the idea is editing that threat list. In normal condition mind cant distinguish between the situation of 100 people coming to beat you or 100 people sitting front of you to listen you but by practise we can create the difference in these situations. So the idea is list down situations when you often react. It may be in heated discussion with your spouse, or giving speech in front of large audience or anything where you feel you lose your control. Sit in the room alone, imagine that situation and do role play with yourself like you are calmly resolving discussion with your wife or give speech in front of 8-10 knowns. These all are simulation techniques extensively used in military. The idea is to remove uncertainty from an event. I learnt this technique from my martial arts training. Earlier I used to react in street fights by randomly hitting kicks and punch but after learning simulation I became more trained in fight in place of moving hands and leg immediately I see opponents move and takes rational decision. Same applies to trained swimmer, negotiator, pick up  artists etc they practise and they know how to respond in place of react.  

Meditation is the mother of all mind controlling technique. After getting proficient in meditation, your mind becomes your slave. Your can control your hormones, Your amygdala doesn't take any decision without asking you. It's an ultimate stage

We lose lot of relations, things in our life just because of we reacted when we needed to respond. No one is immune from it, I too have lot lot of things in my life but need of hour is to understand this phenomena and get ride from it.

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Mental Accounts

Why do we often feel pain and sorrow in inter personal relationships?

Human is a social animal, born and nourished in a society. From birth to death we interact with lot of people and keep making interpersonal bonds. Our first interaction happens with mother, then father, relatives, friends, society, we keep interacting with people and keep creating interpersonal bonds with the entire group of persons we interact in our life.

Social need is one of the most fundamental needs of human including sense of belongingness and acceptance among their social groups.  Human have need to love and to be loved.  Whomsoever we meet in our life we unconsciously keep rating them and classifying them as per our subjective criteria.  We keep some people in our good books and some people in our bad books. We expect love, affection, respect  and support from those persons who are in our good book but the problem happens when we don’t get as much love, respect, support, understanding as we were expecting. That brings feeling of anger that subsequently converted in to frustration, pain and suffering. Interpersonal tussle is one of the most important reasons for pain and frustration in our life. In this article, by using my theory of mind and brain I will try to explain how the psychology of interpersonal relations works, how do we rate persons and how does it turn into pain or pleasure. How we can overcome it and how we can be permanently immune from this interpersonal pain and suffering

The term Mental Account was first coined was behavior specialist Richard Thaler. His research was focused towards people’s emotional response related to economical decision making but the concept of mental account is not limited to economic decisions only. We keep mental accounts for interpersonal relations too. We keep an emotional account of every person we have met in our life and it happens unconsciously and our mind doesn’t let us know about it. As explained in theory of mind and brain and previous articles that we use two systems- mind and brain for decision making. While brain is responsible for logical evaluations, mind is responsible for emotional evaluations. It was also explained that function of mind is automatic that means it keeps working and we cannot stop it. Since interpersonal relations come under mind’s jurisdiction so it keeps evaluating the persons whom we meet.

Rule of accounting says that every account should be in balance that means give should be equal to take same concept applies in mental accounting. Our mind always try to keep relationship emotions in balance that means if we have done good for someone so to keep account in balance our mind wants that person should also do good for us. If we have done something bad then our mind will be scared that in return it will also get bed. In this way we keep evaluating relationship accounts with everyone.

It can be explained by this example. The give column is about you have done for other and take column talks about what he has done for you

Mental Account of Neo for Uno
Give		Take
Activity	Value	Activity	Value
Gave him a smile	100	Praised me	800
Borrow him money	1000	Gave me respect	300
	1100		1100

 Status: balanced

This is the example of a very simple mental account kept by our mind. One of the most important phenomena is how do we rate the activities carried out in interpersonal relationship. Mind is completely subjective so everyone perceives same activity differently. You gave a smile and you rated it equal to 100 points, you borrowed him money when he was in need and you assume you have done great work for him so you rated it equal to 1000 points. (Pl note that points system shown here are completely artificial phenomena and used here only to explain and simply the concept. Whenever we do something for someone we assigned a subjective value like I have done “so much” for you. Point system is mathematical representation of “so much”) He praised you in a discussion and it was great feeling for you so you rated equal to 800 points. He gives you respect and you rate it equal to 300 but there are 100% chances that he must be rating you differently. Now see the Uno’s mental account for Neo:

Mental Account of Uno for Neo
Give		Take
Activity	Value	Activity	Value
Praised him	200	Gave me a smile	100
Gave him respect	700	Borrow me money	800
	900		900

Status: balanced

You can see that how complex is the interpersonal relationship accounting. Both person giving different rating for same activities but right now they are in happy relationship status since their relationship status is balanced but problem happens  when status is not in balance and that is phenomena with most of the people at most of the time. See the mental account of Arun and Ria:

Mental Account of Arun for Ria
Give		Take
Activity	Value	Activity	Value
Taught her music	5000	Supported me	2000
Always supported her	2000	Gave me respect	2000
Always gave her respect	3000
	10000		4000

Here status is imbalance; Arun believes that he has done lot of things for Ria but in return Ria hasn’t done same for her. As par the rule of accounting the account statement can’t be in imbalance so Arun has to make it balance now see how does he make it balance

Mental Account of Arun for Ria
Give		Take
Activity	Value	Activity	Value
Taught her music	5000	Supported me	2000
Always supported her	2000	Gave me respect	2000
Always gave her respect	3000
Mental Pain due to Ria by Hurting self (adjustment entry)	-6000
	4000		4000

Status: balance

To make account balance mind punish itself by giving pain. It is called feeling of regret. When imbalance is very huge then there will be great pain when imbalance is small there will be less mental pain but you have to suffer through this enormous mental pain and feeling of regret. This is the one of the method to bring account on balance since mental peace only at balance position and some people hurt another to bring account on balance

In the interpersonal relations, we keep noting all the things that we do for others that create lot of expectations and in return we also want to same thing for us but due to subjective difference in rating we start to believe that our partner is not fulfilling our expectations and then come sense of regret and to bring mental peace we start to hurt ourselves or hurt our partner. Here in the case Arun believed that he has done lot of things for Ria but didn’t get so much from her in return now see what Ria believed about Arun:

Mental Account of Ria for Arun
Give		Take
Activity	Value	Activity	Value
Supported him	3000	Taught me music	4000
Gave him respect	3000	Supported me	4000
Gave him love	10000	Once he disrespected me	-          2000
Hurt him by Ignoring (adjustment entry)	-6000
	6000		6000

Ria believes that she has done lot of things for Arun but he didn’t do enough things for her so status was imbalanced to bring that status on balance she started to ignore him and due to understanding two good lovers start to dislike each other. This exactly happens in each and every relationship. So in the nutshell the entire process can be explained

:

• We keep mental account of every relationship
• We keep noting down entry on two bases, what we have done for him and what he has done me
• We rate every transaction subjectively. It depends upon personality type and mood
• We note down good deeds in positive value and bad deeds in negative value
• Balance situation is called peace of mind
• Imbalance situation is when expectation doesn’t meet the experience
• To make it balance either we hurt ourselves or we hurt others.

You may say that you don’t keep mental accounts but believe me it happens automatically without knowing you. You are completely unaware about what is going on in your mind and you feel only end results that are either happiness or sorrow.

Why giving gratitude is so difficult

There are lot of stuff has been written on giving gratitude but giving gratitude is very difficult and normally ends into dissatisfaction and reason of this can be explained by mental accounts concept. Whenever we do gratitude for someone we make an entry in the give column and mind automatically demands favor in return and when you don’t get in return you start to feel sorrow. Exactly same happens when you are continuously giving gratitude to someone but he is not acknowledging your gratitude and you start to feel frustrated. That’s why giving gratitude is so tough and normally people are not able to give gratitude so if someone gives you gratitude you must acknowledge it and must give something in return that can be a smile or just a word thank you

Regret

As explained earlier, when we have done lot of things for someone as par mental account concept it automatically increases our expectations and our mind thinks that I have done so much for him so in return he should do also do lot for me but when we do not get as much in return, a gap occurs between what we expected and what we got and to cover that gap we either hurt ourselves or we hurt him. Regret is self-punishment. It’s a painful emotion and very common in interpersonal relations and reason for most of our misery. So what is the solution? How we can overcome this feeling?

State of steady wisdom

If you have read this article thoroughly till not then you must have understood the hidden process occurs in our mind whenever we interact with someone. If you can understand the system, you can control the system and you can modify the system. First of all you should understand the mental accounting system of your partner. You may be assigning a great value to an activity that is not so great for him or an activity that you think very ordinary for you may be a great importance for him so you must understand his mental accounting system and adjust your own entries. Some persons have amazing ability to understand the mind of their partner and change themselves according to person to person.

There is one more method that is bringing the mind of steady state that means deleting all the mental account and to keep only one account. The mental account with destiny, omnipresent, life or with God, you just need to keep only once account and that is with God irrespective to whomsoever you interact. Assume them representative of god and make all the entries in a single account. If you have done something good for someone that it means you have given something to God, if someone has done something good for you that mean you took something from God. If someone has done wrong with you that mean God has taken back something to you and if you have done something bad that means you have taken back your good deeds from God. Mental account with God is a continuous process and always tries to move towards balance. So in that case when you know the system you won’t feel any regret and pain since whatever happens with you, you will accept happily it as a grace of God. The state when you don’t add any happiness or sorrow, when you don’t build any expectation from someone when you don’t have any mental account with human being, when you treat everyone equally is the state of steady wisdom. At that state there is no pain, no sorrow. Everyone objective should be move towards that state.

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Meditation (Part - 3) The Seamless Flow

Part – 3 The Seamless Flow

Till now we have learnt that in meditation we select an object and keep focus on it. Focusing an object means only one thought (object) in mind and as we try to focus on object other disruptive thoughts keep coming in mind and don’t allow us to keep focus on object. By practice, gradually we are able to focus on one thought continuously by 30 to 40 seconds and now we are ready to enter second stage from concentration to meditation.

Step 2: Meditation

Many people confuse between meditation and concentration and often take concentration as meditation. They sit for 20 to 30 minutes and try to focus on one thought but other intrusive thoughts keep coming and actually they never enter in meditation stage from concentration stage. The major transformation occurs when you enter in meditation stage from concentration change is that you start to observe Swarupa of object. Till now you were only seeing Rupa of object. (Pl read Part - 1 to understand the difference between Rupa and Swarupa) As you will see Swarupa of object something change will happen in object. It may be change in color or change in shape or something else depends upon object selected by you. But still you can’t see Swarupa of object. You just reached near to it. The actual Swarupa of object emanates clearly in Samadhi. The uninterrupted flow of mind towards the object chosen for meditation is called the Meditation. In this stage the distractions are eliminated completely and practitioner can focus on the object as long as he wants. When you see a drop of water from a microscope your field of vision is defined and limited and you can’t see anything else outside the periphery of water but you can see lot of movements going on in drop of water. You can see suspended particles and bacteria etc. The same thing occurs in meditation. When you confine your focus in a limited area you are successful to eliminate intrusive thoughts but lot of action happens in object and you are ready to dive in the ocean of marvels of meditation. The Rupa of object is lost and Swarupa that is actually the real nature of object starts to emerge out.

Continuity (The Seamless Flow) is the most important parameter in this process and on technical parameters, continuity is the only thing that distinguishes meditation to concentration. Continuity of mind on one object is very important since if other thought comes in your mind that means mind lost the grip over object and that means mind griped another object. Continuity is the unit to measure the control over mind. How long you can continuously focus on an object is the criteria that how well you are advancing in practicing and are you able to enter in next stage that is Samadhi or not. The diagram below explains the thought processing going on in meditation stage. You can observe in the meditation there is no other thought only one object and as you go deeper you are losing your consciousness. The circle over alphabets represents your consciousness. You can see as you are going deeper in meditation you start to lose your consciousness and when you lose your consciousness completely you are ready for last and final stage: Samadhi

Step 3: Samadhi

The main difference between meditation and Samadhi is consciousness. In meditation there are two entities: You and Object but in Samadhi there is only one entity and that is object. There are no you. You don’t exist at the time of Samadhi. You completely lost your consciousness and become one with object. There is no mind at the stage of Samadhi.

Welcome in the real world.

Now you are ready to explore real world that is hidden behind the phenomenal world.

In the meditation stage, Practitioner almost has reached on the gate of real world, he is successfully removed all the distractions but still he can’t enter in the real world since a last distraction is still exists and that last distraction is your mind. The mind itself is preventing to realize the very essence of object in meditation stage. So it is necessary to remove this final distraction before to reach in the stage of Samadhi. Mind is consciousness so if there is no mind no self-consciousness and all the great work has been accomplished when we completely lose self-consciousness. Just imagine a jug full of water pouring water into a glass. Imagine water in jug as mind, glass as object so when jug has poured all water into glass, there is no water in jug to pour so no filled jug at all. Same happened in Samadhi as the object of mind feel continuously the mind there is no question to empty the mind.

What happens in Samadhi?

In the state of Samadhi, Your physiological functions of body keep going as usual but there is no response of the body to the outside world and there is no mind object relationship. Mind and object becomes one so as we lose the mind there is no brain. There is no mind and brain and at this stage a new higher faculty comes into picture and reality hidden behind the object takes place through this faculty.  Samadhi is the source of transcendent knowledge, wisdom, strength and mystical powers. Now one question may arise in your mind why we can’t see real nature (Swarupa) of object in normal state? Why it is compulsory to go into Samadhi to understand the real nature of object and answer of those question is very subtle and pl try to understand it clearly:

As explained in previous articles about the automatic nature of mind. Any impression, thought or bias which mind has apart the object of meditation will stand in the way between you and object and you can’t understand the real nature of object. The knowledge that you get in your normal state about object is actually the knowledge that what mind thinks and not the real knowledge so when there is no mind then there is no bias and real knowledge of object comes out. In very simple words it can be explained by the example of sunglasses. When you are wearing sunglasses you will see the world by the color of glass, you can’t see real color of world so if you want to see the real color of world you need to remove the sunglass same is with mind. Compare mind with sunglass. If you want to see the real nature of object you need to remove the mind between you and object and it happens only when we have completely lost our consciousness. Till there is desire in your mind it will be very difficult to diffuse the mind since that desire won’t allow mind to diffuse. So a long step by step practice required for reaching the stage in Samadhi and here the first 5 steps of Patanjali played very crucial role but it doesn’t mean that you should not do practice. You should keep practicing. I know the persons who reached the Samadhi in just first attempt. Life is continuous. You don’t know in your previous births you almost had reached to doors of Samadhi.

In these three articles we talked about Dharna (Concentration), Dhyan (Meditation) and Samadhi. The entire process can be summarized in 4 easy steps:

1. Choose the object for meditation
2. Concentration: keep focusing on object. Slowly slowly remove all other thoughts and keep focus only on one object
3. Meditation: Now there is only one thought in your mind. Thought of object of mind
4. Samadhi: Now there is only object. There are not you. You lost your consciousness

Samadhi is the last step in this process but actually its first step in the real world, the state of super consciousness. Samadhi itself is a long process. Moksha obviously the last stage of Samadhi but in between there are lot of stages. There are different stages of Samadhi. Sabija Samadhi, Nirbija Samadhi, even Sabija Samadhi can be classified in four different type of Samadhi. Purpose of this article is not to explain different type of Samadhi. It’s a different and long subject and better to experience it. Different types of objects disclose their real nature at different stages of Samadhi and that depends upon complexity of object.

If you have read all three articles of series then till now you must have understood that meditation is not an exercise of stress management or anger management or self-talking or relaxation as self-called Gurus talk about it. It is muck beyond then these materialistic benefits. Pl beware of the fake gurus or meditation teachers. No one can teach you meditation. It’s only you who can experience it. If anyone charges money from you to teach meditation then assume he doesn’t know anything about meditation because there is no value of materialistic things in the ocean of this real world.

Samyama

The complete process started from concentration to Samadhi is called Samyama. Samyama opens the door to not only for real knowledge but also so super physical powers and Sidhis.

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