Simran Jeet Singh

Simran Singh: . Simran, welcome to the Unmistakable Critic. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this. It is my pleasure.

Srinivas: I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time.

You have a new book out called The Light We Give, which is all about seek wisdom. And, it's funny, despite being Indian, I think that when I read this book, I was surprised by how little I knew about Cism despite having Seek friends. And I just absolutely love this book. Before we get into the book I wanted to start by asking you what birth order were you and what impacted that up having on the choices

Simran Singh: that you ended up baking away your life and career?

It's a good question. I have three brothers. I'm number two, and we're from top to bottom. We are five and a half years apart, so we're all really close in age. Part of what that meant to be number two is, My older brother, who's 13 months older than me was constantly paving the way for us. Which I know I learned later was annoying for him because he would fight for stuff and then we'd all get to enjoy it.

But also it meant that I was paving the way for my younger brothers too. And so I, I also felt the annoyance of fighting my parents to go to the school dance. And then by the time it's my younger bro, my youngest brother's turn, like there was no question, right? Like that kind of thing was probably the most annoying.

But I think the other thing that I think in terms of being number two is I really got to experience the closeness of what I meant to have siblings at that age and felt like the, this sort of protectiveness for my younger brothers especially. And I still feel it actually where, at home we would fight and I think you're supposed to, but then when you're out with people like you always have each other's backs. And that was really like a key part of our relationship that hasn't even really gone away at this point. Yeah,

Srinivas: it's funny because I always I'm the older sibling, like I'm the oldest and I'm guessing if I talked to your older brother, he would probably be like, Yeah, someone got away with murder

Simran Singh: in compared to what I got away with

That's true. I was really annoying and I love getting in trouble like that. They used to call me the troublemaker. Yeah I think you're right that if you said this to my older brother, he would say the exact same thing.

Srinivas: Yeah. It's funny because I think the stereotype of the middle child is always the one that's neglected and, it's like either you're not the baby, you're not the, the first son.

Do you ever feel any sense of and, struggling

Simran Singh: to be heard? Growing up at least in, in like in terms of siblings? Not really. May, maybe part of it was like, I liked sliding under the radar and people not knowing what I was doing. Like our parents were really involved growing up and so like any opportunity you got to tend not be noticed.

Seemed like you'd get away with something. And so that's probably part of it. But yeah I never felt like there was, at least in our household, this this struggle to get attention because if anything was the opposite, it was like so much attention that it was like we were always looking for opportunities to get away.

Srinivas: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny cuz like when you mentioned, you know the thing with the school dance, I remember thinking, my sister telling me this story when she was a freshman, my dad drops her off like two blocks from a party that she's going to. And she's Yeah, Dad thinks I still go to cake and ice cream parties.

And I'm thinking to myself, if I had got anywhere near a party with alcohol when I was in ninth grade, like my parents would've basically never let me leave the house again. She got away. Exactly. Like I remember she had a party, she came home from Berkeley and she came home for, a weekend, I think was homecoming weekend.

And she told a few friends to come

Simran Singh: over and 150 people showed up at my parents'

Srinivas: house, , smoking pot in the backyard, drinking. And she literally told my parents, Go upstairs, I'll take care of this. And then on Sunday she went back to be. Now, like I would've been like in so much trouble if I had pulled that, that's stunt and she

Simran Singh: just got away with it.

Yeah. In trouble or murdered. I dunno which one would come first. But yeah, I feel like I wouldn't have lived to tell that story if was, if that was No, I definitely wouldn't.

Srinivas: I think that, the thing that really struck me most about your story, it was that it was so parallel to mine because we both grew up in Texas.

And both of us grew up in, in Texas. Maybe you probably had more exposure to Indian communities than I did, but I can tell you for damn sure, like you definitely felt like an outcast as an Indian kid in a place like College Station, Texas. What about you? Did you, like from reading the book, my sense was that it was very clear that you were definitely not somebody who just

Simran Singh: blended in.

Yeah, it's so interesting to talk to because so often, I live in New York City now it's diverse. There's people of all backgrounds. Like even when I say Yeah, my life is, my life was different and I look different where I was growing up. So many people have a similar kind of story that it doesn't even feel all that unique at this point anymore.

And sometimes I meet people like you where they're like, I grew up in, not just in Texas in the eighties but in College Station I'm like, Oh my God, that must have been so different, even though, oh that's a night it gets, Remember going to College Station when I was in, when I was in college actually going to visit my friends at a and it just felt so different from San, one of the things I can say about San Antonio is, although it's not.

A place where there were many South Asians when I was growing up, there were a lot of brown people. There were, there, it was majority Hispanic. And part of that experience meant that there were people who looked somewhat like me even if they weren't wearing turbines.

And then I got to College Station. It was probably one of those shocking moments where you feel like you got put into a movie set or something, and I was walking around with my friends and being like, Oh, there are no people of color that I'm seeing. And I, I really feel like a. Like, I'm sticking out like a sore thumb.

And yeah, I can't even imagine what that must have been like for you and your family growing up.

Srinivas: We moved from Edmonton, Alberta where we knew hundreds of Indians. And I remember for the first like month and a half, my mom thought every Mexican person was Indian. She was like, Oh, that girl

Simran Singh: was Indian friends with,

Srinivas: her name is Jessica and she's Mexican

Simran Singh: That's so funny. And we had in some ways the opposite experience in San Antonio where I was born and raised there. And so my parents were aware of of the ethnic and racial makeup of this city. But other people weren't aware about who we were. And so often the reverse would happen to us where people in grocery stores would come up to us and just start speaking Spanish.

They'd see our brown skin and assume we were Mexican too, and they'd start speaking Spanish, and then we'd get in trouble for not being fluent in Spanish. And they'd be like, Why don't you. Why don't you respect your heritage? Yeah, there's different kind of relationship over here.

So

Srinivas: as far as career advice, was your parents' career narrative, like the typical Indian kid, narrative, doctor,

Simran Singh: lawyer, engineer? Not really. And especially not later. They wanted financial stability for us, but they were pretty open to what that would look like. Even in college when I said I wanted to be a journalist they were for it.

I think the real challenge for them was I ended up choosing a career a trajectory that they knew nothing about. And it was really hard for them to imagine what a career would look like. And that for me was also, To be fair to them, Like I had no idea what the career path looked like.

Like no one, I knew I had done what I wanted to do. I didn't even fully know what I what it would look like to be successful in the world that I was entering into. Yeah they weren't, they were open to anything. In fact, they really appreciated any kind of community service that, that to them is like the best and most important thing you can do.

So that's what they really pushed us towards. And so they were happy that I was going down that route. I think was just for them to not know, will I have a job once I get outta school? Yeah.

Srinivas: So what, it's funny because I remember sitting at a bar with a Sikh friend. He came up to meet us and I remember just sitting here and was like, I realize this is a really stupid question.

I was like, What are the general principles of Sikhism ? And, I was like, I should, you'd think I would know this as a Hindu person or an Indian person. And having been in Berkeley where there are a ton of Indians and been an officer in the Indian Student Club,

Simran Singh: but I knew nothing

Srinivas: But I was I was stunned to find that nobody had actually taken all of this and put it into a book that made it, accessible western form. Because I'd always thought when I read this book and I remember going to my agent saying, somebody needs to do that.

What Ryan Holiday did for the obstacle is the way in stoic wisdom. Yeah. I thought you've done for seek wisdom and. I feel like somebody needs to do that for hi mythology. And she's Is this really a project you wanna undertake? She was like, You realize it's gonna take years and years of work? I was like, or she was like, Do you just want another book deal?

And I was like, Ah. I'm like, I gotta be honest with you. I don't really know that I wanna do that. But there's so many timeless lessons in this, but which, that raises question. What prompted you to want to write this book? What led to this?

Simran Singh: Yeah. It's a good question.

And in some ways this is the book that I'd always wanted to write. Growing up in Texas, as you can imagine, people coming up to you all the time and doing like, Why do you look like that? Why do you have that thing on your head? Why do you speak that language? There was always this desire of if I could just be in a world where people knew who we were, then we wouldn't have to constantly explain ourselves.

And it wasn't like, I wasn't, A lot of people are. Talking about being exhausted of constantly justifying their existence and doing the emotional labor of sharing their stories like that hasn't I understand that, but it's never really been something I've struggled with. I love that stuff.

It's more like recognizing the consequences of people not knowing who you are and seeing how damaging our cultural ignorance can be like, hate crimes, hate crime murders , this stuff really literally ruins people's lives and takes away their loved ones. And so that to me was like, it's something I recognized really just because of our lived experience.

. And I would look on the bookshelves and see there was nothing about our tradition or our community or what we were about. And so I resolved early that I wanted to write. I think what really changed for me over time, and this was especially after Trump's election was recognizing that actually it's not really the information and the literacy itself that helps us to become more compassionate to one another.

It's actually the connection to one another stories, and that's where the. Shift came for me from, giving people the basics and the facts about who we are into trying to share it through my own personal storytelling of what my life is like as a sick in America, and how it's different from other people's, and how it's similar and the challenges we face and how we can move forward together.

Srinivas: Yeah. Rather than starting at the very beginning of the book, there's a quote that I wanted to start with from the book that I remember just really stood out to me. You said, This is what it's like to be a sick in modern America. People notice me wherever I go, walking down the street playing Frisbee at a park, and most definitely at the airport.

Everyone

Simran Singh: notices

me at the airport. .

Srinivas: And the funny thing is, despite being Indian, I can absolutely say that's true. I notice when sick people are in the airport, not because I think they're terrorists, simply because they're noticeable. And I remember, before we, we had recorded here, I was telling you Astoria about, this friend I had when I was in ninth grade, he moved from India.

Nicest kid. He was super smart, and we became very good friends. And and he was the only kid in that entire school. So we didn't even live in College Station. We lived in

Simran Singh: Brian, which is the, sisters.

Srinivas: Yeah. Brian is even more redneck than honestly, they were very nice people and Brian and but it's even more Friday night lights than college station.

Yeah, I think, I told you the story when I remember, we went to India for summer vacation. I came back and there was a bookstore called Hastings. I don't know if you remember those. They used to be in Texas. It was kinda like Barnes and Noble before Barnes and Noble. And I see him outside of the place and he's

Simran Singh: Hey, Shie.

And I'm like, Who is this?

Srinivas: And then he is Hey, let's turn around. I'm like, Oh my God, you cut your hair. And I thought for a moment I was like,

Simran Singh: Wow, the pressure, to

Srinivas: conform or, the amount of like just, torment he must have dealt with to get to that point. So I'm

Simran Singh: guessing there are people who

Srinivas: choose to cut their hair and we don't even know it.

And then there are people like you. So what do you think leads to that and why is that? And

Simran Singh: what do you want people to know more importantly? Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question. I appreciate that story. I think, part of what I've learned in my own journey in this world is it's especially true in the context of religion.

It's so easy to judge people for their decisions or their actions or whatever it is that they do. And often like the way that a lot of people that I know in the sick community and in other religious communities too, right? Like people make decisions and you don't know what leads to those decisions.

You don't know people's lives. You dunno the details of what their struggles are. And so it's really easy to look from the outside and be like, Oh, that's wrong, or that's messed up, or whatever. And I will say now where I am personally as I see stories like that and I'm like, Man, it's so sad that people live in a place where they feel that kind of pressure where either, either you conform to what society expects of you or your life is gonna be hard and it's gonna suck.

And it does for a lot of people. And that's not just on the basis of religion. It's on the basis of. Gender, sexual orientation, or all these things that make us who we are. And so that's my immediate reaction to a story like that. It's just man, what if we didn't live in a world where we were ourselves, how we could fit in and instead we could just live as we are and then really move forward instead.

So that's one, one

,

immediate reaction. I think the other is to your question and your reflection it's absolutely true that there are many six who come to this country wearing turbines and having uncut hair and they decide it's not something they want to do anymore. And there are others who come Without their turbines and don't have the practice of not cutting their hair and they decide, you know what?

I'm gonna start living into my identity. So it's actually been a really interesting experience for me to see these, the diversity of these stories and these experiences. I just heard from a friend of mine and I, we were sitting on talking on Sunday. He was telling us his story, which I'd never heard of.

He grew up in Ohio. There were no six there. He was. He was into like he was wearing a turban. His family wore turbines, then they moved to Connecticut and he felt overwhelmed by the pressure of wanting to fit in, and he cut his hair. And then the next year he started to regrow his hair and wear his turban again.

And there's that too, right? Like you make one decision and it's not final and you make another decision, and that's life. Yeah I guess what I would want people to know as I'm sharing these stories, I'd want people to know that there is no single. Journey that any of us has, right?

Everyone's experience is different. We all have different challenges we made in our lives. We make different decisions. And more important than anything else is that as we meet people and try and understand them judgment has no place right there. It's not helpful. We are in no place to judge one another, and at the end of the day, we don't know what's in people's hearts and what drives their decisions and their choices.

And so that's become a really important aspect of my own living.

Srinivas: Yeah. So one thing I wonder, these are silly questions, how old were you when you first put the Turbin on? And you must need a decent amount of hair to actually start wearing that thing,

Simran Singh: right? ? Yeah, that's true.

I was probably three or four. Yeah, it's, that's exactly the issue, right? Like you I'll tell you in a humorous way, but also because it's true until your hair is long enough to put in a turbine the standard, and there's no rule about this, but it's just what people do and it's what my mom did too.

Your hair is in pigtails so until your hair is long enough to put in a turbine. So I was three or four. There's no real self consciousness about it because you're too young. But definitely people confused my gender because of yeah, my hairstyle. And so that was. That was annoying to me, as a four year old, like your gender identity is really important, right?

It , it really shapes your consciousness. And so I remember that being annoying. But yeah it's only when your hair is long enough and, three or four is usually the case for most kids. Yeah. And and up until, probably, almost until middle school my mom used to tie our turbine every morning like she would comb our hair.

Like it was, she would braid it, she would put it up for us, and then she would tie the turbine on our heads. And so that was like a really it's probably one of those things that I never really thought about as being unique for us, because it was just our normal lives. But other people are like, Oh that's like such a commitment, such a, daily routine that you had that nobody else has.

Srinivas: I, the reason I asked that question is because I think you alluded to it. I was wondering what. Point, do you start to feel, you recognize your own self consciousness

Simran Singh: about this? Like for you? Oh, it's early and I think, as I, I thought maybe it was earlier for me because I was in Texas, and what I'm realizing now that I have kids of my own and they're young is that kids are more astute than we give them credit for, right?

Like the studies now show that kids are able to identify racial difference before their one year old. And so the awareness is there and then the self consciousness is there. And as we know about kids too, like kids are egocentric right in the sense that they see the world through their own eyes and they experience the world not through what happens across the globe.

Globe. Like they're not worried about what's happening in Russia. They're worried about what's happening around them, right? They're the center. And so if we understand it from that perspective then it's pretty clear to us that Yeah, of course. A kid who is entering into preschool and noticing the kids around him, and they're noticing him of course they're gonna ask questions, right?

My daughter who's in preschool asks me questions about difference that she sees, whether it's on the basis of race or accent. She was asking about accents the other day. And so I, I started noticing it as early as preschool. I would say, I, for a long time, my, my impression of it was it just happened.

It never really bothered me. It was just normal for me, which I think is maybe something I developed later. But part of what I've been reflecting on as well, if I can vividly remember those experiences where people. For example, pushed me out of the boys' bathroom and said, Go to the girls' bathroom or things like that when I was super young.

Then probably there was something more profound that I was feeling about my own identity as being different and wishing that I wasn't. And yeah it's hard to, it's hard to really pin down your memories cause who knows how accurate they are sometimes. But definitely some of these feelings are coming up from me when I'm in preschool, like really socializing with other kids for the first time.

Srinivas: Yeah. I know that there are several experiences in the book you actually reference, which we'll get to here in just a second. For people listening and then, from interest, what is the significance of not cutting your hair? Like, why do you

Simran Singh: do it? Yeah it's interesting because there are a lot of different reasons that six will give.

And so this is I'll just share my own with the intention of, here's me I'm not speaking for everyone else but for me personally the tradition is that in the 16 hundreds as the tradition is being formed there's a really important moment where one of our leaders is being executed by the state.

And as he's being killed no, no one really steps forward to stand up for him. And the, his successor is really bothered by this. And he says, what good are your values if you're not willing to stand up for them and stand up by them? In moments of difficulty of this is just theory, right?

This is, these are just ideas if you're not living by them. And so he says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a unique appearance where you can no longer hide. You can no longer hide when moments get tough, like you're gonna stand out in a crowd. And so there's this, what we describe and how we understand it is it's a gift, right?

The guru Goldman gives us the gift of our identity, and one aspect of that identity is uncut hair. And so for me, the both of these two pieces compliment each other really nicely, right? On the one hand, the hair and other aspects of our identity are gift from our guru who we love. And so we cherish them just as we would any other gift that we get from somebody we love.

And it's almost like a marker of our identity. That demonstrates to the world and reminds us individually too that these are our values. This is who we are. This is how we're going to live and everyone is going to stick with it no matter how difficult our moments or our lives get.

And so that's, that to me are is the sort of two piece puzzle that comes together in, in explaining what the hair means to me personally. .

Srinivas: I wanna talk about your first experiences with racism because I think that you and I will both have very, similar stories here.

But one of the things that you say in the book is, this was my parents' general response to the racism we encountered. To ignore it, to let it go, to turn the other cheek, to be the bigger person. We talked often about the importance of maintaining composure in these moments. This advice served me well for most of my youth.

Walking away from conflict ensured that we wouldn't get into baited, into fights, sucked into negativity or distracted from the things in life that truly matter. I know you, you referenced the soccer game. I remember that very specifically. And I'm just curious, what were your earliest experiences with racism, particularly growing up in Texas was, I remember just hearing some shocking things in the back seats of

Simran Singh: my parents, friends parents, cars.

Srinivas: And I think we were very fortunate cuz Indians, for the most part were the model stereotype does

Simran Singh: model minorities. Yeah. It's interesting because I think especially before nine 11 people in Texas didn't have a strong conception of of Muslims, of six of South Asians. If there was a reference point, it was probably either Indiana Jones, which I don't think was, It was a great one, right?

Yeah. These are people who are uncivilized and eat monkey brains and we should conquer them. Or maybe it was Johnny five, the, what was it, Short circuit, The movie's. Yeah. So there's, there are these like small touch points, but for the most part people seeing us didn't know what to make of us.

They, it was almost like there was a blank slate. These people are different. We don't know them, we don't get them, but at least we don't have a strongly negative feeling about them, aside from, Subconscious, et cetera. And so the racism that came our way was less tightly scripted than it became after nine 11, right?

Like after nine 11. Everyone knew what the stereotype was and how they were supposed to see us. But until that point, like I remember, for let me say it in this way. When my dad first came to this country in the seventies, and that was during the Iran crisis people saw him as Iranian.

They called him Coman or Ito, right? That was their conception of who he was. And then in the eighties when I was growing up, in the early nineties we were involved with Operation Desert Storm. And so all of a sudden we became Iraq. Saddam Hu saying that's the kind of thing people said to us.

And and in a way it's the story of. What we mean when we say race is a social construct, right? Depending on what is in people's minds that's going to affect how they react to you when they see you on the street. And so for the most part, I guess what I'm trying to say is like people didn't really have strong as strong of reactions then.

Like people would call us a Latin or genies those kinds of things. But it was, whatever was popping up in pop culture. Yeah, it was, I guess part of it is to say like it was all over the place. I remember when my brother played college basketball and traveled around the south because he was in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

Like sometimes people would call him racist names and say he was Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, and sometimes they would say he looked like Jesus and be really excited to meet him. So like it really depends on the eye of the beholder,

Srinivas: yeah. And your brother's jersey

Simran Singh: is in the Smithsonian.

It's in the Smith Zone. I don't know if it's up there anymore. I, hopefully someone took it down. I'm a little jealous of him still. . But yeah, it's been up in the Smith.

Srinivas: Wow. So let's talk about one other experience in particular that struck me in the book. And this is when you were teaching, you had this experience in which you were like, apparently somebody found something on Twitter and weren't you

Simran Singh: asked to resign from the university

Yeah. Yeah. That was a fun one. That was right when I started my dream job. That was a scary one for me. Yeah, the short of the story is, this Muslim kid in near Dallas takes a clock to school that he had made at home. And because he is Muslim he was, they, the teachers and the administration, everyone across the board it was a systemic failure, perceived him as at their eter as a terrorist and arrested him.

Detained him illegally. He is a kid. I think he was like 11 or 12 at the time. And, I felt the pain of it and I was teaching Islamic studies in Texas at the time. And so I, I felt the desire to do something and, the easiest thing often to do is to post on social media. And so I did, and I posted a picture of me holding a clock just to say, I'm I brought my clock to work in solidarity or something simple like that.

And it happened to be, one of those like moments where a random message goes viral. Like my tweet went viral. It was all over the news. I was getting phone calls and whatever all night. It was just like, something that you can't predict or control or whatever.

And then I get to my office the next day and the school was saying that they were ready for me to resign because, or that I, they were getting calls from people in the community saying that I should not be teaching at the university, and that I didn't, I was giving them a bad name and that I was racist and hateful in all these things.

And yeah, it was a very strange position to be a a few months into my dream job.

Srinivas: I think that, makes perfectly when talking about some of the principles of Seism. But one of the things that you say before we get into the principles, you say racism always discriminates, but rarely discerns.

What do you mean by that? Explain that for people

Simran Singh: listening. Part of my experience in this country, and I think this is true for a lot of folks who deal with racism, is that you always get a short stick when you're on the receiving end of racism. And the people who are discriminating into don't actually care about who you are.

And there's something nice about that in that it's easier to not take it personally once you realize that somebody's. Somebody's being Nas to because they're racist and it's something in their hearts, and you haven't done anything wrong like that kind of frees you to understand that this is not about you and you don't have to be so upset.

But also it the sort of underlying piece here is people who are being racist towards you. They don't, they're not actually making any effort to get to know who you are as a person. They're really focused on who they think you are and who they perceive you to be. And so that's what I mean by racism.

Always discriminates, but rarely discerns. No, nobody's actually. Out there who's being racist and saying, Let me actually look into you as a person and understand you. And that's the real shame of it. Yeah.

Srinivas: Let's get into some of the principles of this wisdom. You talk about this concept of, I Kar and you say, I refers to the oneness of the world, the connectedness of reality, the intermingling of creator and creation, the integration of all, we know the wholeness of our being.

The second component, Kar, refers to a dynamic divine force that permeates every aspect of a world. The most relatable way of understanding this concept is to consider it on an atomic level. If everything we know in our physical world is composed of atoms, then think of each atom as being infused with the same divinity.

There's no escaping this force because it's infused to everything we encounter and

Simran Singh: experience.

Srinivas: So talk to me about, how these principles apply day to day in our lives. Because, it's funny, as I recognize a lot of these sort of self improvement teaching, I'm like, Anytime I read about religion, I think the thing that I'm always struck by is how much overlap there is between the basic foundational

Simran Singh:

,

principles of morality and almost every religion.

. . Yeah. And I, that's part of what I was hoping to do in this book was introduce some of sick teachings in ways that are universally applicable, which I think so much of spiritual wisdom is, that's part of what makes it so powerful is that, these teachers and thinkers and philosophers lived centuries ago and they happen to have answers to questions that we're all struggling with today.

Like, how do I fight hate with love? The best among us have been talking about that for centuries. And yeah, absolutely. I think there's quite a bit of. Overlap and insight for us to draw from spiritual traditions writ large. And our cultural move away from them is actually our own loss.

I believe that deeply with regard to these ideas and how they fit into a practical day to day experience. I think that's exactly what I have found to be so powerful, right? Again, like ideas are just ideas until you put them into practice. And here and especially with this concept of interconnectedness I, as we call it in benja, as you said There, there's something really in, in many ways, countercultural about this approach to living, which I think addresses part of what is the source of our suffering in America and the West in our world.

And the easiest way for me to explain this as in, as a daily practice is to perhaps speak about some of the challenges that I've faced with it. And, one of one experience I've had recently that I share in the book is about dealing with Covid and our family. We live in New York City.

We were at epicenter of the pandemic when it first emerged. My wife is a doctor, one of the hospitals. She was serving patients. And we got it pretty quickly pretty immediately. And as we are navigating this crisis, one of the. Things we are thinking about constantly is what is the appropriate amount of risk we're willing to take here?

So I'm like, let's get outta here. And she's Let me serve people when they need it. And that's a real conversation. Another constant conversation is the fear of, Hey, we need to take care of ourselves. If we're choosing to be here let's focus on what we need to do to survive.

Again. Totally appropriate. Glad we did that. I think everyone should in a situation like that, and it's critical for our survival. , but then part of the experience becomes, I am so wrapped up in. The challenges that we're facing and so concerned about what might happen that I start to become obsessed with this, right?

Like even when we've gotten through the brunt of it, even when we've figured out what we need to at home to be safe, I, I'm still like trapped in the cycle of focusing on whatever it is we need to survive. And it's crippling, right? Anybody who has dealt with anxiety or depression can understand this.

Like, when you go through moments like this in your life, and for some people it's constant. It's, it gets really hard to see your life and perspective, right? In relation to what else is going out in the world. And so for me the experience was, The when you feel like the world revolves around you.

The experience is how do you bring these principles back into focus so that you were able to see the world for what it is and get your life back into context. And for me and from sick principles, the practice was with serving other people. And it sounds so simple and so obvious, right?

Like of course when you go out and meet people and understand what their struggles are you will have more perspective on your own, And so it's almost obvious. But the, but that experience like you, you just forget in these moments of what the basics. Are and so you need these reminders and these practices to get you there.

And so for me just to wrap this up, like the practice in this moment is something that we've been taught all our lives in our tradition, right? If you really want to see yourself and relationship with other people, if you wanna see divinity in other people, like the best way to do that is to serve them.

And that helps you reduce your own obsession with yourself and your ego. And it helps you connect with the people around you. And that's exactly what happened for me in a moment where otherwise I just felt totally lost. Yeah, I,

Srinivas: It's funny cuz I, I was telling my parents that I was gonna be talking to you and we were talking about seeks and they're like, there's two things you should know.

One, they're incredibly generous and they're some of the hardest working people you'll ever meet. And they say, anybody is welcome in a seek temple and can go there and you'll also get one of the best meals you've ever had. Which I couldn't help, but, I laughed when you wrote that thing about the RO and prefer pizza over

Simran Singh: ros.

I was like, Yeah man, you're inspiration. You own people.

Srinivas: I was like, what kinda Indian prefers

Simran Singh: pizzas over ros. That's hilarious. At ger this weekend actually was the first day of Sunday school for the kids for the semester, and. And they had regular longer with the whole meal. And then they had pizza for the kids, and all the parents were like sitting there rolling their eyes, including a thing.

And then I ate the pizza, of course, because I would choose that day. We were all rolling. I remember even in our Hindu

Srinivas: temple, one of our one of our aunties was like, Yeah, we need to get a pizza oven for the kids. And I'm just like, What kinds of kids are these that they're entitled to a pizza?

Like we have equally served. Nobody ever said, Hey, you want some pizza,

Simran Singh: We're gonna make pizza. Exactly. Come on. No complaints. Yeah, no, no complaints. No special treatment. Yeah. Kids these days.

Srinivas: Yeah, no, I, the reason I wanted to bring that up is because I think that, we see a girth bar from the outside and all we see is, this place that seems intimidating.

But I, when I real, Cause I think, I'm trying to remember, I think it was up in the mountains of India. I went to a Sikh temple and had lunch there and like anybody, I was welcome here, it doesn't matter, race, religion,

Simran Singh: whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of, it's one of my favorite things about the tradition.

This, there's an idea of radical equality, which I think, of course our world could learn from that right now, especially given where we are and how we're treating each other, right? Like in our tradition, the teaching is everyone is equally divine. There's no place for discriminating, there's no place for hierarchies.

And even in the scripture, like it'll say over and over again You are not better than anyone. Get over yourself. You're not worse than anyone. Empower yourself, right? We have to find that right balance. But one of the things I love about the sick philosophy, and I write about this a little bit in the book is that it's not just.

It's not just so let me say it this way. In, in, in the American context today, our approach to activism is to identify all the things we disagree with and just call them out, right? That's what call out culture essentially is. That's what we're referring to. Find out what you don't like and then let everyone know that you don't like it, which is fine.

There's a place for that. But the sick gurus like their approach was much more than that. They said, Find the things you dislike or you disagree with, and then build a solution. And this tradition of feeding people that's about dealing with poverty, that's about bringing people together and having them understand their social relationships with one another.

And it's also about de destroying hierarchies and ensuring that everyone is treated as equal and sees themselves as equal. And I think there's something really beautiful about building something that's, now lasted over 500 years and really is. Continually challenging the norms of division that are plaguing us.

Whether here in America or in India, because it's everywhere. Yeah. So I,

Srinivas: I wanna ask you about fatherhood and being a parent, obviously this really stands out to me because my sister just had a baby last night as we're having this conversation and one of the things that you say is viewing the world through their eyes for the first time, I realize that love is an unstoppable force.

One that gives life to hope and inspires rightful action no matter how hard it is or what the consequences might be. I don't have a child and the closest thing to a child with my out I've experienced was last night. And it's amazing how immediately, like I was just texting my sister, I was like, Tell my new nephew when he wakes up, I can't wait to meet him.

And I.

Simran Singh: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about this the experience for you of fatherhood,

Srinivas: Particularly like the first time you experienced it. Because like I said, I only have experienced it peripherally

Simran Singh: or, through other people. Yeah. It doesn't sound all that different.

And actually you said to talk about the first time experience it, and I'm, one of my, one of my embarrassments about the book, maybe it's not an embarrassment, but something along those lines is that I write about the first time I became a father. And then I don't write about the second diamond.

So I'm sure one day if my second daughter reads the book, she's gonna What the hell why did to write about me? Yeah.

Srinivas: Every kid is guarded and you never seen the TV show Parenthood at the very, very other guy's. He was like, that's what

Simran Singh: parents do. They screw their kids up.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it is true that there's I would find it really annoying when parents would say to me like you'll know it when it happens. And I would like, whatever. It's, it can't be that special that you're everyone's just talking about how great it is or how special it is, but you there's a way to put it into words.

And anyone who's skirting that is, is like, overblowing it, right? Like they're, they think they're cooler than they are. And then it happened to me right? My daughter's born and I knew she was gonna be born, we were preparing for her to be born. I knew that she was e even like the 30 minutes before she was being born, like I was in the room.

But then there's something that shifts suddenly, or at least it did for me, and maybe it does for other people. But there was this remarkable shift and experience for me where I was like what? The way I describe it in the book is, You think you know love and you do to an extent, but it's your experience of love just expands so rapidly and so drastically that it's almost like you never knew love at all.

Like it's just a completely different level. And that's, Now I understand if you haven't experienced that, like how do you tell somebody who's never tasted chocolate, like what chocolate tastes Like you can't explain it. It just, you just have to experience it. And so now when I talk to parents I try not to be annoying about it in the way that I felt annoyed when other parents would talk about it.

But I do understand that there's something inexplicable about this feeling that you can't know until, you know. And that's part of the.

Srinivas: I want to finish

Simran Singh: with one final part of the book. And

Srinivas: This really struck me particularly because, what is this show, it's a story in which we use language to capture emotion.

We tell, stories. You say that language cannot fully capture the depth of human emotions. Words can help us approximate what we mean in terms of common experiences, but they'll never carry the full force of the feeling. And then you go on to say, because we each have different experiences, we all use and understand language differently.

The word turban may mean something different to me than it does to you. I've worn one every day since my childhood. And for me as a sick, the word turban, connotes, royalty, dignity, equality, and justice. On the other hand, most westerners hear the word turban and immediately think of terrorism, violence, extremism and hate language is not uniform.

How we understand words is informed by our own perspectives, perceptions, and yes, prejudices. Which, I think the thing that is so striking to me about that is that, terrorists for the most part are not like, I don't know any sick terrorists based on all the terrorists history that we've seen, none of those people are sick,

Simran Singh: are they?

Yeah. What I would say is every religion, every ideology has, its. Can be weaponized, right? And so there are six who use sexism to justify bad actions, just as you see in any other religion. And so I don't wanna let anyone off the hook and just say there's no such thing.

It happens and it happens in Christianity, and it happens among Buddhist and it happens among Hindus. Like it happens, right? And it's a real thing. But I do think there's something really interesting here about the way that we consider, here's a way to think about it. So much of what's in our heads we take for granted as if.

This is how people always viewed the world, or this is how the world is for everyone. And it goes back to like our inability to see each other for who we are, right? We're so focused on being right and thinking that we have all the right answers, that we forget that other people have different experiences too.

And to me, part of what I'm trying to open up in this book, and even in this point about language is to say, actually all these things that we think are universally true. And there's only one right answer. There's actually more to it than that. Life is more complicated.

Life isn't just black and white. And it's okay to be open to other people's experiences and ways of living without judging them for it. And I think that's something we're really not good at as a society. Yeah, absolutely. Wow.

Srinivas: I feel like I could sit here and talk to you all day about this cuz this is just such a profound and deep concept to really, understand each other in a way that we don't before.

And I think that, like I said, despite being Indian, I was shocked at how little I knew about Cism until I read your book and I thought, this is so well done. Thank you. So I wanna finish with one final question, which is how we finish all of ours. If you unmistakable creative, what do you think it

Simran Singh: is that makes somebody or something unmistakable

to make somebody or something unmistakable? Man I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's I don't think anyone can be perfect and I think the the cultural expectation that, that we can get there or that perhaps that we are or closer than others, is actually a real problem. And I think opening ourselves up to our fallibility as human beings creates more openness and more respect for one another.

And yeah. I I love your podcast and I'm also anti unmistakable .

Srinivas: That's the beauty of the, the question is that there is no one definition of what.

Simran Singh: Exactly. Exactly. I love that you really

Srinivas: articulated that beautifully. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us, to share your story at your wisdom and your insights with our listeners.

Where can people find out more about you at the book, your work, and

Simran Singh: everything that you're up to? I spend way too much time on Twitter. So my name there is Simran, S I M R A N. And then I'm also on other social media pro platforms. You actually got Simran as a name on Twitter. It took a long time, but but it happened.

All the others I didn't get. So I'm sick prof, S I k H p R Os. And one day maybe I'll be, maybe I'll be simmering on those, but imf, so that's where I live, that's where I hang out. So yeah, would love to connect with anyone who's interested. All right.

Srinivas: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.