Where Your Behavior Really Comes From
Some of the ways you think and behave were never created in this life, and looking at one lifetime alone often gives you too little data to see where they came from.
Dandapani traces his own purpose from meeting a monk at four or five to realizing by eight or nine that what he wanted was self realization, and shows how that purpose has decided every choice since. He argues that a single life rarely gives you enough data to find your purpose, and describes patterns in himself he cannot explain by upbringing or genetics.
What this talk covers
- He met a monk at around four or five years old and said he wanted to be one, without knowing what a monk was, and by eight, nine or ten he realized it was not about being a monastic but about enlightenment and self realization.
- At 51, that purpose still drives everything, including what he built after leaving the monastery rather than taking any other job.
- Having clarity of your purpose lets you build your entire life around it.
- Looking at one life often gives too little data to see your purpose, but a mountaintop view across many lives shows the common thread you have been pursuing.
- He has ways of thinking and doing things that were not created in the last 51 years and are not in his family history, since no parent, grandparent or great grandparent of his was ever a priest or a monk.
Having clarity of your purpose allows you to build your entire life around that.Dandapani
Questions
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Dandapani says clarity comes from finding the common thread you have been pursuing. Within a single lifetime there is often too little data to draw a conclusion, but across many lives the common denominator becomes much easier to see.
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He points to patterns in himself that he was never exposed to in this life and that appear nowhere in his family history, and concludes they come from past lives.
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It decides them. When he left the monastery he did not weigh up jobs; he asked how to build a business around self realization by sharing teachings and impacting people's lives.
Transcript
567 words · 3:00
You've talked a lot about purpose, and that's a tough one. Is that what we've been talking about for the past 10 minutes? Is this purpose? I'll use me as an example because it'll be easy,
and I can give a shorter answer. When I met that monk around four or five years old around that time, I said, I want to be a monk. I didn't know what a monk was.
I didn't know what he was, what monks do. It wasn't until I was like nine or 10 or eight or nine around that age that I realized it wasn't about being a monastic, it was enlightenment was looking for us,
looking for self-realization. and that's my purpose in life. And I realized that purpose was something I've carried along for many lives in the past.
And in this life, I came to that realization that this is my purpose around that age. Obviously couldn't articulate it as clearly as I do now. And then by meeting my teacher and helping,
having his guidance, I could frame that. And that has remained my purpose. I'm 51 years old and it's been my purpose and it drives everything.
So when I left the monastery, even deciding what I could do, should I go be an engineer? Should I go work at McDonald's? No.
What is my purpose in life, self-realization? How can I build a business around that by impacting people's lives, by sharing teaching? So having clarity of your purpose
allows you to build your entire life around that. And if you looked at one life, sometimes it's harder to see purpose. If you pull the lens back and climb to the top of the mountain
and had a mountaintop perspective, and you saw your series of lives, and you could find the common thread, the common denominator you've been pursuing over many lives,
it would be easier to take that data and form a conclusion. But to get enough data from one life, sometimes it's very difficult. But over 50 lives, much easier to make a decision.
I realized the data said you should be a monk or priest. Do you have any perception of how many lives you've lived? No perception, but definitely very keenly aware of some of my past lives, you know, what I've done. And that made sense of certain behavioral patterns I have in this life, ways of thinking in this life.
There are some things that I have in this life, the way I think, where I do things that wasn't created in the last 51 years, because I was never exposed to anything in the last 51 years I know my life that would create those ways of thinking. So where did it come from? Is it genetic? While I look back at my parents and my grandparents
and great-parents, none of them did any of these stuff. So it's not genetics. Where's the influence? Where's it coming from?
Like this monastic spiritual life, priest life. None of my parents, my grandparents, great-grandparents, nobody in my family history was ever a priest or monk. But I am so deeply so in this.
It's important to me, like you said at the start of the podcast. Is this who you are? It's what you love.
Where is it coming from? Coming from past lives. It's what I've done.