By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar| Posted: October 30, 2018

The stress of too much to do and too little energy, as well as the lack of enough to do, can drive human beings into addiction, anger, and violence.

A mind without direction requires purpose, and the body requires activity. Without these, laziness and desire for intoxication are more likely to take hold. Unless we involve ourselves in helping and becoming an inspiration to others, depression and lethargy can give rise to desperation for the temporary and inauthentic pleasure that alcohol and other substances bring.

When we have nothing much to do, the mind goes into addictions. You know, there’s a proverb in English that goes, 'An empty mind is a devil's workshop.’ It’s a different type of emptiness – it isn’t the emptiness that Lord Buddha taught, 'Be hollow and empty.’ That's a different type of emptiness.

Inside every culprit, there’s a victim crying for help

You know, an idle mind goes into all sorts of addictions, and addiction is the root cause of crime in society.

I say we should spend one day with the victims in jail. I call them "victims" even though they’re culprits because inside every culprit there’s a victim crying for help, and they’re all victims of addiction.

There are many reasons to spend one day in jail (but without committing a crime). You’ll realize that the individuals we label as criminals and put in prisons landed there due to circumstances and ignorance.

When anger grips a person, they lose control. If you ask the most hardened criminals, they’ll say, “I didn’t do it. Something came over me and it just happened.” When you see them from a different perspective, compassion will arise in your heart. If you hate anybody, that’ll vanish.

Violence, I’ve seen, happens because of addictions, because people aren’t normal when they’re under the influence of alcohol, drugs, and other substances.

Stress: the root cause of alcoholism and violence

What is stress? It’s when we have too much to do, too little time, and no energy. This is the definition of stress. We all have a lot of things to do. When we have a lot of things to do and we’ve no energy and no time, then what happens to us? We get frustrated; we get questions that we can’t answer. Some people start to drink.

When the unanswered questions get fermented in our minds, like alcohol gets fermented, they turn into violence—domestic violence—on children, on women (and even on men).

Domestic violence, societal violence, alcoholism, and suicidal tendencies are all because we have not taught our children how to deal with their negative emotions.

Learning to manage difficult emotions

Neither at home nor at school does anyone teach us how to get rid of the negative feelings that come to us. See, feeling negative is normal. People feel frustration, anger, jealousy, greed, and all these things. But no one teaches us how to get rid of these emotions.

The Art of Living volunteers and teachers (through different programs) have been able to teach people how to handle and manage their own negative emotions and transform them into the positive emotion of love, compassion, and a sense of belongingness. This is very important.

Alcohol destroys everything

I want to share an anecdote with you. Once, a gentleman said, "I have a terrible headache. I have been sitting in a conference from morning till evening with so many people talking, and everything they say just went above my head.”

His neighbor, the one who was sitting next to him, told him, "Never mind, just go have a drink and it will go.”

The gentleman said, "How would alcohol take away my headache?!"

The neighbor said, "What won’t go with alcohol? With alcohol, I lost my job, my wife, my home, my money – everything is gone! A headache isn’t a big thing for it at all. It’s a great remover of everything, including life from the planet!"

We want to infuse life and enthusiasm in our youngsters, and not substances that take away life. We need to make life a celebration on this planet, not a point of contention and conflict.

[These excerpts are part of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s address to the conference, “Faith in Action – Interfaith Response to Alcohol, Drugs & Violence against Women and Children” held in Kerala, India and organized by Art of Living, UNICEF, and the Kerala Government. For full reading, click here.]