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Pam King: We need a recovery of the sacred in our secular world. because the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles haunting society right now can’t be solved without addressing meaning, purpose, and the longing for connection to something beyond ourselves.
In other words, spiritual health is an essential part of our well being.
An attorney, religious scholar, and university chaplain, Varun Soni, is leading us back to our true north Through spacious and life giving spiritual conversations and sacred practices that realign us to our values and our identity.
Varun Soni: Religion has been the predominant meaning making community building enterprise of human history.
This generation we’ve taken religion away and instead we’ve given them smartphones, which are designed to keep them outraged and anxious.
What I see now is a spiritual health crisis of meaning making, of community building, and of awe that manifests as a mental health crisis of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. And my sense is that. If we’re just talking about anxiety, depression, and suicidality, we’re just talking about the symptoms? And we’re just triaging the crisis and then moving the next one.
If we really want to be serious about what’s happening, we have to think about what is causing anxiety, depression, and suicidality. And I believe what is causing it. Is the inability to think about what is sacred in one’s life, to think about how to build rituals and practices around that, and to develop deep and meaningful relationships over time and to tell a story about one’s life and to live that story.
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California.
Bringing together the spiritual and scholarly resources of the university, he provides moral and ethical leadership for the USC community, and he works closely with almost 100 religious groups on campus.
With degrees in religion and peace and justice studies from Tufts, Theology from Harvard Divinity School, religious studies and a Juris Doctor from UC Santa Barbara and a PhD in religion from the University of Cape Town.
His scholarship in law, Spirituality and ethics is as wide as it is deep.
Dean Soni is currently a university fellow at USC’s Annenberg Center on Public Diplomacy and is an adjunct professor at the USC School of Religion.
I am delighted to have Varun on With & For an enriching inter religious dialogue allowing Varun’s Hindu perspectives and my Christian perspectives to interact in fascinating and human ways.
Pam King: In my conversation with Varun Soni, we discuss religious pluralism and what it means to build trust that reaches across religious lines of difference.
The transformative power of finding your true North, your North Star, to orient our journeys of faith and spirituality.
Varun shares six pillars of flourishing, how to align our actions with our values, and the benefit of listening to the cultural narratives and stories we tell.
He reflects on the missing elements of spirituality in our understanding of mental health today. evidenced by his work with teens and emerging adults.
He offers us a Hindu meditative practice to provide inner clarity, stability, and calm. And he comments on compassion and a cultivation of sacred practices to counteract the loneliness.
Varun, I’m so delighted to have you on With & For. I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Varun Soni: Of course. So grateful to be here. and really grateful to you for doing the work that you do for having the conversations that you have. I can’t think of anything more important at this time than to be talking about thriving and flourishing in the age of outrage and anxiety. So thank you for leading us to where we need to go.
Pam King: As USC’s Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, Varun is the chaplain and spiritual leader on a campus of almost 50, 000 students.
And the pluralism he represents and the religious dialogue he encourages is a remarkable example of seeking truth and meaning in community in the heart of Los Angeles a city teeming with cultural and religious diversity.
One of the things that we hold in common is, an interest in spirituality and religion and how that can be helpful for thriving and flourishing. And that’s actually not something I hear a lot of people talking about. And so,I’m really intrigued with this incredible position that you hold at a leading university in America, as the Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life.
And I’d love to hear a bit about, that position and how you got there.
Varun Soni: Sure. Yes, it’s quite, I’m still trying to figure that one out 16 years later. It is essentially a job that Used to be called and is still called on some campuses, the university chaplain. So
I am essentially the chief religious and spiritual leader of USC. This is a job that is as old as colleges and universities are, you know, many of our oldest schools in the United States, were set up as seminaries and, are oriented around Protestant chapels. And so the idea of integrating the spiritual and the scholarly aspects of one’s life into what we might consider a traditional liberal arts education is really, as old as the American university system itself.
And historically, university chaplains would serve that role of, Chief pastor, chief religious leader, spiritual leader would oversee the chapel and liturgical services, especially at a time when many of our early universities had a religious identity. They were religious schools, training, seminarians or priests, et cetera.
Now, many of those schools are secular universities like USC. and, and yet they still, believe that, there should be an integration of the spiritual and the scholarly in one’s life and in one’s work.
I’m a very unusual person to be in this role. I am the first Hindu in American history to have a job like this at any university.
I am the second non Christian, and I’m a non ordained Hindu attorney. A very different background and point of view, I think, than a lot of people who inhabit these roles.
Our programming is our pulpit, and the scale of what’s happening is probably unparalleled.
we have 50, 000 students. I oversee, 90 different student religious groups. I oversee 50 campus chaplains. That’s more religious groups and more chaplains than any American university has in the heart of LA, which according to Harvard university is the most religiously diverse city in human history.
So there’s never a dull moment in my life or in my work or on campus or in our city. And I really have this great. vantage point to think about what the future of religious and spiritual life and community looks like?
Pam King: A practitioner of Hindu faith, Varun was born in India and raised in Southern California from a young age. He has family on five continents. And they collectively represent every major religious tradition in the world. And from early on, the exemplarity and inspiration of two of the 20th century’s most influential spiritual leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.
offered him a vision for spiritual and moral leadership.
Varun shared his personal background and the meaning of these two figures in his family and in his own life and calling.
Varun Soni: I was born in India, but I came, I moved here at a very young age. My parents were already living in the United States at the time. I was six weeks old when I came here. So I’m basically what they called, used to call ABCD, American born confused Desi
Desi is someone from India. And so really what that term signifies is that our generation was the first to be born and raised. in the United States after the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, which precluded Asian Americans, Asians to become Asian Americans, actually precluded immigration from Asia for the purposes of naturalization from 1924 to 1965.
And so my parents came after that.
But what that meant is that growing up in the United States, we didn’t know what it meant to be Indian or Hindu. We didn’t feel like we were either here or there.
My colleague, like my peer group, when we went to India, people thought of us as American. When we came back to the U. S., people thought of us as Indian, and we didn’t feel either Indian or American. And, when I was growing up, we didn’t have any role models in the public sphere.
There were no Indian Americans who were really thriving and flourishing. There were two. There was Deepak from The Simpsons. So thank God for Deepak, um, who kind of became a mentor for me and still is.but what we did do is
we asked a lot of questions about who are we? What does it mean to be Indian?
What does it mean to be Hindu? What does it mean to be American? What is this Indian American experience? How can the hyphen that sort of separates Indian and American not be a barrier, but a bridge to those identities, right? How do we bring together every aspect of us in a way that’s authentic and meaningful.
And we really struggled with that. Yeah. We really did because we didn’t know, like I said, what it meant to, to be American and neither did our Indian parents who are raising us in the United States.
But deep down inside, I was really wrestling with other kinds of questions about my own identity. And I was lucky that I was raised by my grandfather a whose mother, uh, My great grandmother, Saraswati Soni, was very close with Mahatma Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba Gandhi. They were best friends, and so my great grandmother and Mahatma Gandhi’s wife led the Indian National Congress Women’s Division together, the freedom movement for Indian independence against British colonial rule, and they would go to jail together often, and so my grandfather grew up around Gandhi, and so when he was raising me in the United States, he would tell me all these stories about Gandhi, and For me, that planted a seed as in terms of answering the questions I was asking.
What it meant to be Hindu was to be like Gandhi. What it meant to be, Indian was to be like Gandhi. what it meant to live a meaningful life was to live like Gandhi. And so. Even though I wasn’t conscious at the time, I think that experience, it sort of created a template that my life has followed, even though, like I said, it wasn’t intentional.
And, and because of that, you know, I kind of went down this path where, you know, Gandhi was a lawyer. I became a lawyer. Gandhi was an interfaith leader. I became an interfaith leader. Gandhi lived in South Africa. I lived in South Africa. Gandhi, did all this work with India, Pakistan. That’s the work that I’ve tried to do with India, Pakistan.
Gandhi spoke out for peace every chance he could, and that’s what I’ve tried to do as well. And I think that in my quest of understanding what it meant to be Indian and American, what it meant to be Hindu, you know, what it meant to be the Hindu kid at the Catholic school, or the Indian kid on the basketball court, when there were no other Hindu kids or Indian kids anywhere, that sense of psychological dislocation, I found answers to that.
By understanding the spiritual traditions of India. by thinking about what would Gandhi do in this situation, um, by thinking about, what does it mean to be Hindu? What does it mean theologically? What does it mean scripturally? And so I went to college. I continue to study religion as a way of understanding myself.
And I had a really powerful experience one morning, I was studying abroad in Bodh Gaya, which is the city where the Buddha was enlightened. And I was under the tree where the Buddha was enlightened. And it was the morning of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, which is a special day for our family. And coming towards me, it was Sunday morning, like six in the morning.
I’m meditating on this tree. I hear this laughter and coming towards me is His Holiness. The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, who was just in town paying his respects to the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, which is the holiest site for Buddhists in the world. And so that morning as a 20 year old, I sat with the Dalai Lama under the tree of the Buddha’s enlightenment as the sun was rising on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday.
And, everything changed for me at that point. And In the Dalai Lama, I began to see someone who had brought together very successfully the spiritual and the scholarly in his own life. And not only that, he in many ways had been able to professionalize it in some ways. and after that, the Dalai Lama became my teacher.
I’m really lucky. I’ve got to spend a lot of time with him. I named my daughter after him, and I got to grow up around the Dalai Lama in the same way that my grandfather grew up around Mahatma Gandhi. And I’m now telling my kids stories about the Dalai Lama in the way that my grandfather told me stories about Mahatma Gandhi.
but what the Dalai Lama showed me was that this quest, this personal quest to understand who I was through the study of religion could also be a professional opportunity for me that I didn’t have to leave behind something so personal as just personal and then go find a career.
That in some ways the quest for meaning and purpose could also be my career. And I never really thought of it that way. And I end up living in a monastery for a while. I went to divinity school, I have a PhD in religion. So I have done the things that other chaplains have done. Even though I don’t have the, Background that other chaplains have,
Pam King: it’s amazing. You have like a veritable Hall of fame of mentors and family members that are quite extraordinary and it is a really beautiful lineage and powerful. When you chose this job, leaving law and more academia and into the spiritual leadership capacity, what were your hopes and,what was your goal?
And what do you want now to happen through your work at Essie?
Varun Soni: The reason I wanted to be a professor is because I believe that if I were teaching classes like a my comparative religion class, then I can help people grow.
Open their minds and their hearts to other experiences and identities and perspectives. I could do the work of interreligious into interfaith trust building. I could open people’s eyes or bring them into communities that they might not have otherwise seen houses of worships that they might not have otherwise experienced.
And I do believe that’s true. I do believe that as a professor, I’m able to Hopefully be part of the solution to the challenge of religious prejudice and violence. But what the data tells us and what i’ve seen myself is that even more than learning about someone new what really changes your heart And mind is knowing someone not learning about them, but actually knowing them.
actually feel as though The work of chaplaincy is more powerful in getting to that end than even the work of the college professor, because when I’m doing chaplaincy worth or interfaith work outside of the classroom that and I think that the whole university in this way, that’s really where people go deep in their relationships.
And that’s really where people change hearts and minds. It’s one thing to know something about,Islam or Judaism, it’s another thing to have a Jewish or Muslim roommate. Having a Jewish or Muslim roommate will change your heart and mind much more than learning about Judaism and Islam in the classroom, even though both are important.
I look back on my college years, I don’t think I remember a single thing I learned in class. And many of those data points I could just Google anyway. But I will never forget the transformative experiences that happen out of the classroom in relationships with other people.
In the dorms, in study abroad, in sports, in community service, in the newspaper, at the debate club, in religious life. in Greek life, right? Those are where you come to know people and what you take from your college experiences more than anything are the relationships, at least at the undergraduate level, the relationships that really transform your life.
Pam King: When I asked Varun about his approach to thriving and how he defines it, he highlighted the importance of recovering a sense of the sacred.
In modern life, it’s all too easy to keep the secular and the sacred split.
But Thriving comes from the aligning and deep integrating of every aspect of who we are. Varun thinks we need sacred values and sacred experiences to inform the entirety of our lives. So what I hear you saying at the, as kind of your goal is to, nurture transformation, to promote thriving through relationships, and also teaching alongside that.
You said the word that I ask all my guests is what is thriving to you?
Varun Soni: You know, it means that word has meant different things to me at different points in my life. It might mean
something different to me on Thursday than it means on Monday. But I think that for me, when I think of thriving is in the abstract, not in,
Pam King: from a theoretical perspective, it’s the alignment of purpose and practice.
it’s like, what is my North Star and how do I get there?
That’s thriving. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get there. It doesn’t matter if your North Star changes, but as long as you have some sense of purpose and practice and alignment at any given point in your life, even if purpose and practice change over the course of your life, the very act of deal of alignment is the very act of thriving.
Varun Soni: And I think that when I talk to students about this, I really want them to think about the big questions in their life more than the big answers in their life. Our students have got to a school like USC because they have the right answer to every question in their Like they’re always had the right answer to the SATs, the ACTs, the achievement tests, their AP classes, every test.
I mean, they’ve been in school their whole life. They’ve had a hundred grades. The only reason they’re even at a school like SC is because they’re hyper focused on overindexing on all the right answers. But I don’t know if anyone has asked our students, what are the right questions?
Pam King: And to me, when you’re talking about spirituality, the questions matter more than the answers.
Varun Soni: The answers change when you talk about spirituality, but the questions don’t. The questions are the questions that every human has ever asked across space and time, the questions that connect us all together. Who am I? What does my life mean? How do I translate my values into action? What is the nature of God?
How do I live an authentic life? What matters to me? Why does it matter to me? Who am I? You know, who am I is the big one.and I think the one that kind of connects all the dots is what is my north star? What’s sacred to me? What gets me up in the morning? Now that changes my north star at five and 10 and 15 and 20 and 30 and 40.
And unfortunately, I can say 50. Now that’s of this year right? It
changes across decades, across years, across weeks, across days. But the aspiration to have a compass pointing to the north star does not change. And so while the answer to the question of what is my north star changes across time, right? The question doesn’t and so when young people are looking for anchors in their life, they’re not going to find those anchors in answers, which change, but they will find them in questions which don’t and the question of who am I or what is my north star doesn’t change. So to get back to the point of what is thriving, thriving is the act of asking the ultimate questions.
The act of asking the question of what is my north star? What is sacred to me? And a practice of trying to get there, even, like I said,
at 30, that North Star changes and the practice changes, the aspiration of aligning practice and purpose does not change. That is, I think, where we feel like we’re thriving.
And at the end of the day, Who’s thriving? Who’s flourishing? I was the chief wellness officer of a campus with 70, 000 people. And I asked myself that question a lot. Who is thriving and who is flourishing? And there’s a lot of data. And theoretical understandings.
There’s research studies about data points and measurable outcomes around thriving and flourishing and belonging. But I don’t see it that way. I see whoever thinks they’re thriving is thriving. And whoever thinks they’re not is not thriving, flourishing, belonging. These are self reported indexes. These are subjective experiences of the world.
You can be doing very poorly on everyone else’s metric on whether or not you’re thriving, but if you feel like you’re thriving, you are, and you can be doing absolutely brilliantly on every objective metric of thriving and not feel like you’re thriving your life, then you’re not. And so I think that it’s the feeling of thriving and that’s not dependent on the outcome of.
Practice or purpose. It’s dependent on the alignment and aspiration of outcome and purpose because that’s what we control. We don’t control outcomes of whatever we do, but we control intention. And so if we’re going to look to thrive, we have to look to find thriving in the things that we can control, which are often the things that are happening within us internally. As opposed to the things that are happening outside of us externally.
Pam King: That alignment of practice and purpose, and its solidity and stability in our lives, that really resonates with me. Yes, it’s true that as we grow and change, we might need to reorient our values, our beliefs, our hopes. But it’s the consistent pursuit of this alignment between practice and purpose. Our actions, and our beliefs, our behavior, and our values.
That’s an important key to thriving.
We have no control, evidently, about what’s going on externally to us. Okay, you set yourself up for a question. I hope you don’t mind me asking. Since you mentioned a significant birthday and that your North Star changes, so in your 50s, what is your North Star these
Varun Soni: Yeah. So I just turned 50 like a few weeks ago. So I’m really
like, you know, I’m really trying to process this one. I will say that I’ve felt a lot of anxiety coming to 50 and I felt like a great sense of, urgency around time that my time is limited. But then after I turned 50, I felt what a lot of my friends told me I would feel when I turned 50, which was a sense of relief and a sense of liberation. Which is like, listen, I know that my time is limited, you know what, I’m just going to do the things that,bring me joy. I’m going to do the things that I really want to do.
I’m going to do the things that I know are important. I’m going to make time for the people that I really love. I’m not going to take it for granted. And I’m not going to try to be the, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone anymore. I just need to prove to myself that in the time that I have left, I can do the things that I feel like I should be doing as a father, as a friend, as a mentor, as a husband, as a human being.
And whatever the external world wants to say, however they want to judge, however they want to critique, that’s the problem of the external world. But I felt liberated from having to play any game of validating What I’m doing to anyone other than myself,
Pam King: Are the practices that you actually practice that align you to that true north of being liberated and reminding yourself, you don’t have to conform or feel the pressures of the expectations of the world around you.
Varun Soni: you mentioned I had some good mentors and that’s absolutely true. I’ve stolen from the best and I steal a lot from Deepak Chopra who told me that they’re basically six pillars to well being that we all have. And I feel like if we can focus on those six Pillars of thriving, you can call it, six pillars of thriving, then you create the conditions for allowing yourself to think deeply about North Star and what is sacred to you.
If you don’t feel, if you don’t have the conditions for thriving the ecosystem around, it’s much harder to get to a clear headed answer for that. And so I would put the process before the answer, like try to create the conditions where I can even have what you might call a North Star or thriving mindset.
You know, it’s a, it’s kind of like, as opposed to like a fixed mindset to have a growth mindset or a thriving mindset, we’ll say, those six pillars are basically what you think they are. There’s three that’s they’re completely physical. And by the way, these are six pillars we control. This is like what do you control?
What you control is your superpower. You should never see control over that to anyone else. These are things we control. The first three are the obvious ones. Diet, sleep, exercise. We need at least six hours of sleep every night. You know, nutrition is extremely important, what we put into our body. and exercise.
Like, you need to keep your body as your temple, and if you’re physically healthy, then you can be spiritually healthy. those are things we all know. Diet, sleep, exercise. Those are the sort of physical practices of thriving. The other three you might call spiritual or emotional health practices of thriving.
The first is a contemplative practice. That is, a moment, where you’re trying to sort of cultivate the space between your thoughts. For some people, that could be a mindfulness practice, another kind of meditation practice. you could do it when you’re washing your dishes. You could do it when you’re driving your car.
The idea is can you have moments in your day where you get past your own ego, where you get past your own desire, your own thirst, your own hunger for whatever it is that you want, your own ambition. Can you just be Just be for a few moments every day. That’s the space between your thoughts.
That’s why mindfulness practice can be really important because you are not your thoughts and you are not your feelings. But when you live in the world, you think you’re your thoughts and your feelings and your ego begins to associate with the thoughts and your feelings and anyone who critiques your thoughts or says something, You know that you disagree with you suddenly internalize that as a critique of you as a individual as a person your own existence is being critiqued and that’s why I think it can be very triggering to get any kind of criticism because we think we are thoughts and our feelings when we’re not our thoughts and feelings will change tomorrow but we’ll still be here.
Right. And so having a contemplative practice that allows you to disassociate your being from your thoughts and your feelings, I think is really important. The second is a what he calls an emotional intelligence practice. that’s like a gratitude journal. smiling at a stranger or doing things that, are kind of focused on daily reminders of joy and gratitude and what you have in your life.
So my daughter and my wife and I, every night when we’re putting her down,we share some, one thing that we are grateful for that day. We don’t share one thing that we’re grateful for in life. We share one thing that we are grateful for that day, because I want my, for myself and for my family to be reminded daily that there is something to be grateful for if we look for it.
And if we honor it, if we affirm it, and the more we do it, the more we see it the next day, by the way. And the more we see it, the more that becomes our reality. And so how do you live in a gratitude consciousness? You plant the seeds every day through a gratitude journal or affirmation or whatever. So that’s an emotional exercise, intelligence exercise practice.
And then the third thing, which is the sixth thing overall is, communing with nature. And so diet, sleep, exercise, contemplative practice, emotional intelligence, practice, commuting with nature. Now, I find that I can do them all at once. If I am on my bike or if I am hiking, I am getting exercise.
I’m going to sleep better. I’m digesting better. I’m really grateful for the moment. I’m trying not to be focused on a thousand other things. I’m trying to be present in the moment with gratitude and I’m commuting with nature. And so for me, the very simple act of going on a hike or a bike ride
is the act that centers the six pillars of thriving for me.
If I’m going to have a thought of what is my north star or what is my sacred center or what gets me up in the morning, not what keeps me up at night, it’s going to happen when I’m biking or hiking and I’m not thinking about that stuff. All my best ideas at work happen when I’m not thinking about work.
All my best ideas about family happen when I’m not thinking about family. That’s why it’s important to take time away from work and family to take off the mask that we wear in every moment, every different moment of our life, and to actually let the spirit move through you in a way that when you’re just at work every day, looking at a screen, you’re not going to have the inspiring thought that you’re going to have when you’re watching a sunset over the ocean with your kid, like, it’s just not going to happen.
And so it gets back to this idea of, Of awe and wonder. Like I think as human beings fundamentally, we’re oriented around all being part of a larger whole things that, there are a lot of funny bumper stickers in LA, but there’s some good ones too. And one of the ones that I really like is, it’s not how many breaths you take in your life, but how many moments you have to take your breath away, right? It’s not the quantity of your life. Time on the planet. It’s the quality of your lived experience on the planet. And I think what contributes to the quality of your lived experience is the sense of magic and awe and wonder that we’re even on this planet as a human family able to express that.
These platonic ideals of love and joy.
Pam King: Mm
Varun Soni: we win when we wake up in that environment.
Pam King: you know, I think even in this day and age with the velocity of life and how much we’re bombarded, you know, whether it’s our smartphones or just the stimuli that being able to pause in marvel. To appreciate, to savor little things like distinct flavor or big things like a sunset that that adds to the quality of our life. We just need that as an antidote to the fast pace that our brains process things at these days.
Varun Soni: Yeah. I don’t know if we were built for this amount of information. I, we certainly were not built for this amount of bad news, the constant doom scrolling, the knowing about every terrible thing that’s happened in the world at every moment. It’s not the way I think we’re built with our compass pointing towards joy and hope and when we’re constantly bombarded by every terrible thing all the time, it’s hard not to feel anxious and outraged.
And the reality is this, I’m a father of two. I can’t think of another time in human history I would want my kids to be Born into than this one. I think this is the best time in human history for my kids to be born. And yet, if I look at my phone, I would think it’s the worst time in human history for them to be born.
we’ve had terrible things happen throughout human history, but there was still a lot of hope in the human condition, I think, because we didn’t know about every terrible thing that was happening in real time. And I don’t think that’s the way we were built. I don’t think that’s how we process information.
And I think it’s fundamentally changed Who we are as humans because of it.
Pam King: I find meditative practices incredibly helpful in my own Christian spiritual life. And there’s a long history of Christian mystics, contemplatives, and prayer warriors who use the gamut of spiritual tools and technologies, creative ways to connect with God and encounter the transcendent,
whether it’s the simplicity of the ancient Jesus prayer.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. The stability of liturgical prayers or the power of silence and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us in prayer beyond words.
There are vibrant contemplative and meditative exercises throughout Christian history. Varun points out that in this high speed age of overload, outrage, and anxiety, contemplative practices are especially beneficial, maybe even necessary, for empowering and realigning us.
I asked him to share about the calming Hindu Vedic practice of Soham.
Uttering a simple mantra of prayerful and meditative words, any word that means something to you in order to introduce peace, clarity, mental stability, and a sense of calm agency.
Whether this exercise fits in your own life and practice, or simply offers perspective and open learning, I found it helpful and really interesting. Well, and your comment about that fourth pillar, the contemplative practice, of being able to slow down your thoughts, to separate your sense of being and who you are from your thoughts, uh, in a world in which we’re bombarded by a lot of negative thoughts. I think that’s a skill that is.
really essential for mental health, spiritual health, and well being. And I’m wondering, if you would guide our listeners through a contemplative practice that you have found students find helpful or that you find helpful.
Varun Soni: What I’d like for people to feel empowered to do is to find contemplative moments that are built into their day.
It’s not that you have to sit on a mat. Or on a cushion to meditate every day. Although if you can, that’s great, but you can also try to be meditative throughout the day. In action, you know, there are a lot of traditions that have walking yoga practices. So you’re not just sitting, you’re actually walking and you don’t have to be contemplative or meditative for hours or even for minutes.
But can you find a moment in the morning? Just one mindful breath. Can you take one breath where you’re not thinking about all the things that you have to do in the world or in the evening when you’re not thinking about it? Just one breath. That’s not a heavy lift. That’s it. You know, in terms of a time commitment, and yet it will have a big difference in terms of one’s outlook or perspective.
So I would just say on the front end that people should feel empowered to find a contemplative practice that works for them. They shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by I can’t meditate 20 minutes a day. I can’t do my, transcendental meditation or mindfulness practice or Zen practice because I don’t have time or I get uncomfortable when I sit or, I meditate here and I work here.
And those are two different places. I think the goal is to live a contemplative life, not to just have a contemplative practice. And the way we live a contemplative life is by having contemplative moments throughout our life.
So the practice that I really is that has benefited from me is an old Hindu Vedic practice. Mantra practice and it’s basically a breath based practice with mantra It’s not that different than what you would find in transcendental meditation And the idea from the Hindu perspective is that we have different levels of consciousness We have sort of the gross level of consciousness, which is where we see the world It’s the world name and form.
It’s how we’re talking right now. This is You know, the way I experienced the world, it’s my top of mind consciousness, but then there’s subtle aspects of consciousness that are in the subconscious that are beyond ego. Think of it as like a wave, which is very turbulent on the top, but underneath the wave, it’s completely calm.
If you dive under a wave, it’s very calm, even though on top of you, it’s getting it’s pretty turbulent. So the subtle levels of consciousness are like the bottom of that wave. It’s the calm space. And in a Hindu contemplative practice, the idea is to get past the gross level of consciousness into the subtle level of consciousness to get out of the mind’s eye into the soul’s eye into Atman, which is actually, according to Hindus, our divine nature.
We believe that our souls are a reflection of God. When I say namaste to you, I’m literally saying. The divinity within me acknowledges and salutes the divinity within you. That’s what namaste means in Sanskrit. That means that my soul, which is a reflection of the divine, acknowledges and honors your soul, which is a reflection of the same divine and recognizes that they’re the same, right?
So any kind of Hindu contemplative practice is really meant to get you into that soul level, the divine level, the level where you’re, Your
soul with a lowercase s is part of the soul, universal soul with a capital S.
the practice that, I would, offer is called Soham. It’s called Soham because, That’s the mantra that comes from the Vedic tradition. And in Sanskrit, Soham literally is I am, I am, I am. It’s a meditation onyour being. So, um,the way I would offer instruction on this one is just to sit however you’re comfortable or stand however you’re comfortable.
Just to find a comfortable way of being, you’re sitting in a chair, maybe to feel really grounded in that where your feet are on the ground and your hands are at your side and just to start with a deep breath in the nose and out the nose, just deep breath, inhale and deep breath, exhale. so as you’re doing this, just, just let it all go, let your thoughts of the day go, let your emotions go.
Let all the judging go. There’s no judging. There’s no worrying. There’s no me. There’s no you. Think of your mind like the sky and the thoughts that you have like clouds and the clouds don’t belong to the sky. They’re just passing through the sky. Your thoughts and your emotions are just passing through you.
They don’t belong to you. You can recognize them. You can honor them. But let them go. Don’t be don’t cling to them. No need to be attached to them. If you’re feeling pain, you can think, oh, that’s what pain feels like.if you’re seeing images, you might say, oh, that’s what that image must look like to someone else.
But you can almost zoom out of your own body. And just watch your thoughts and your emotions pass like the clouds pass through the sky. And as you’re feeling comfortable now on the in breath, as you’re breathing in, think in your own mind of the word so. And on the out breath, think of the word hum. So as you inhale it’s so, and as you exhale it’s hum. Deep breaths of so and hum. And as you do it, just let everything else go. And just be focused on the so and on the humand recognize that ancient mantra that comes from one of the oldest spiritual traditions in the world is a kind of technology that connects what’s inside of us to this greater reality outside of us, our very essence. That’s what we are. And that’s why we recite I am
so hum.
Then after a few breaths, slowly come back to the chair. Back to the world, back to your body, out of your subtle consciousness, back into the gross levels of consciousness. Back into your mind’s eye and then back into the conversation.
Pam King: So
Thank you very much.
Varun Soni: course. Thank you.
Pam King: I really appreciate that.one of the things that I’ve really admired, from seeing you more digitally, but I’ve finally had the opportunity in person, is just how beautifully and deftly you navigate through very pluralistic and diverse settings. Also very secular settings and I’d love to hear. from you, how you do that and what enables you to connect so effectively with young people today.
Varun Soni: I think part of it is just my own experience of the world and who I am as a person and trying to be authentic You know, young people don’t come see Older people because of title anymore. They won’t go see a rabbi because that person is a rabbi or a priest or an imam because of the title, they won’t come see me cause I’m a Dean or a professor.
The title matters very little. They will come if they find that the person is authentic and if the person is helpful and the person can offer something. So it’s more about the individual than it is about. Sort of the title or anything else. and so I’ve just tried to be an authentic version of me.
I’ve tried to model the kinds of things that I’m asking my students to do in their own life. it’s hard to be the chaplain if you’re like, if everyone hates you. And I just try to do that, but it just happens that my own life is actually a life where I’ve been. I come from a very pluralistic family, and I’ve done a lot of work in different aspects of my career that isn’t just religious or spiritual, like I, produce films and a graphic novel company and,
You know, I’m helping one of my dearest friends with his company, Religion of Sports, and I’m advising on a video game company and I’m like, I do some real estate stuff. I’m like a crazy Los Angeles Clippers fan. you know, I used to have a radio show. I wrote a book on Bob Marley. I have all these things that I’ve done that are seemingly disconnected, that I’ve tried to bring together holistically. And I have family on five continents.
They represent every major religion in the world. You know,I. studied on multiple continents. So if I’m being authentic to who I am in my own experience of the world, it is, I think, a experience that is pluralistic and it is an experience that is grounded in the secular. It’s grounded in popular culture.
It’s grounded in digital media. It’s grounded in essentially storytelling, which can take place through film, through sports, through music, and by the way, through religion. And so if anything, I think storytelling is probably more of the. overarching kind of structure or arc of my career, more than even religion or spirituality, but this is a way that I can tell stories, but it’s not the only way that I can tell those stories.
And so I’m constantly trying to think about using ways to engage students where they’re already at to get to the bigger questions of meaning purpose.
If you’re already a sports fan, let’s think about meaning and purpose through sports. If you love hip hop, let’s think about meaning and purpose through hip hop. If you’re, if you’re a dancer, let’s think about dance as a devotional activity, right? if you’re a dentist, let’s think about service As a part of your spiritual discipline, let’s think about your medical practice or your legal practice as your spiritual practice, as opposed to trying to create a whole new way of being students have almost already walked away from, as opposed to thinking this is the box that you as a student has to fit into.
I’ve tried to think about what is the box that you and the student. have already built for yourself and how do we find the sacred in it?
Pam King: Asking questions about identity and narrative, Varun reflected on the power of stories to offer spiritual understanding. Listening back to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can be an instructive and enlightening practice. Varun comments on how powerful that is
because we have a way of enacting and becoming The stories we tell ourselves. So let me ask you what story are you telling?
That narrative story is such a great way of knowing and discovering who we are. one of the ways I understand spiritual health, that spirituality at its best enables people to tell stories. redemptive and productive narratives about their life that gives them an opportunity to tell an evolving story. and university students are obviously in the throes of identity development. And I’m, I’m curious how you have found spirituality or religion as a helpful means, a tool is the word you used, you know, to, to help young peoplewith their narratives, with understanding their journey of who they are.
Varun Soni: Yeah, I mean we I often talk to students about who are you at 5 and 10 and 15 at 20? What’s the same about you at 15 and 20 and as you break it down? It’s really hard to find that thing Your memories are different your relationships are different your hopes your dreams your aspirations are different.
Your values are different. Your morals are different even biologically There’s no part of you that’s the same. All your hair is different. All your blood is, all your cells are different. Your nails are, I mean, everything about you is different. There’s no you there to point to over time. unless you believe in the soul, right?
There’s nothing that connects the. 20 year version of the student life, except the fact that at 5, 10, 15, and 20, that student is telling a story about themselves. And so what our identity really is, what connects the dots in my life at all those ages is that at every point in my life, I’m telling a story about who I am.
And I ended up becoming the story that I tell about who I am. I think young people aren’t always aware that they’re telling the story about who they’re going to become. They might think that they just are going to become that person or that they’re inheriting it. They’re maybe not aware that the story that’s being told in their own mind is a story of their own creation.
And if they don’t like that story, they can recite it and they can rewrite it. That’s what Steve Jobs said in his famous 2005 commencement address at Stanford. He said, look in the mirror, and if you don’t like what you see, you can change it. I think what he was saying is like, Listen to the story you’re telling yourself, and if you don’t like what you hear, then rewrite it because you are the person who wrote that first story.
So you’re the person who should write the next story. And so just to empower students to think about how they become the stories in their life, how they become the heroes in their own life journey. It really is, it comes back to the hero’s journey. We’re all heroes on our own life journey. And our hero journey is to slay demons and dragons in our path, and to sort of traverse this treacherous path and to, Get to where we’re trying to go.
Our North Star. And so once you take the framing of this sort of hero’s journey and the story that has to be told about the hero and live by the hero, then I think that empowers students to feel like they’re proactive in their own identity formation, as opposed to reactive in what the world wants them to be,
Varun Soni: and it allows them to see that whatever seed they plant will grow over time.
It’s hard when you’re 20 to see how the seeds you planted it 5, 10 and 15 have grown To where you are at 20. But when you’re 50, it’s not hard to see how the seeds you planted at 40 have led you to where you are at 50, right? It’s very clear. It’s super direct. there’s a straight line between what I did in college and what I do now.
It’s direct causal relationship. And I think from the religion perspective, even if students aren’t religious, they can encounter religion as a type of cultural mythology. And what we talk about with students is in some ways, mythology is, A more accurate version of history. History is the story.
It’s of course what we teach at secular research universities, but history is often a story told by the winners about sort of specific facts that are told in a particular way, often in a political way for a particular reason. It’s a very small version of what happened, told by a very select group of people.
But mythology, history. Doesn’t might not talk about specific times, dates and places, but talks more about the hopes and dreams and aspirations of a people as a whole in that period of time in an era. And so by even if students don’t believe in God or religion or rejected religious identity, they can still appreciate the stories that are told across time that talk about what it means to be human.
And, you know, listen, you look at the top 10 grossing films of all time. I think I haven’t looked recently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if five of them are Marvel films of all time. Why? Because Marvel is now the cultural mythology of our day. Marvel is telling stories about good and evil that are complex and nuanced.
They’re selling stories about the human condition. They’re telling stories that young people are obviously flocking to because they’re seeing some version of what’s happening on the big screen in terms of the hero’s journey. In their own life in some ways, even if they’re not fully aware of that. And so I, I try not to disaggregate for non religious students, the cultural mythology of sacred texts and the cultural mythology of the silver screen.
And then the sort of hero’s journey stories that they tell themselves. Wherever they’re finding inspiration, it’s important to bring into their own life. But I think when they start to see, hey, I’m not religious, but for some reason I’m still gravitating towards all these other stories, whether they’re Marvel stories or other stories, that this can be a reservoir for me to draw from in telling my own stories.
Then that’s a tool that they have in their toolkit to I like I said, part of the solution to the problems of the world or part of the solution to the problems of their own life in a way that they often feel disempowered. our students feel like the problems of the world are too big. It’s I can’t solve the things I need to solve, and it causes them a lot of anxiety.
And there were brought up in a reality where too much is never enough. Like no matter what they do, it’s never good enough. Cause that’s kind of the way we’ve conditioned our kids. And that adds to the anxious generation, which Jonathan, Hey, so eloquently talks about. but, we get anxious, when we feel like we don’t have control, when we realize that there are things that we can control.
And one of the things we can control is the story that we tell about ourselves, which becomes the story that we become as humans, then suddenly we feel empowered by that and religion has been that story. It isn’t right. It isn’t the story for many of our students right now, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a blueprint for that story.
Pam King: You know, I’d love to ask we know scientifically that when people have a sense of agency, when they have hope, there’s a lot of mental health positive outcomes associated with that.
One of the things I’ve found in my research, in one of my early studies, was actually interviewing, teens around the world, who are nominated for living with profound spirituality in their culture, including an atheist in Northern Ireland. One of the things that was really common amongst them was having a sense of transcendence about having a narrative that was bigger than themselves.
So it was, in many instances, religious or sometimes cultural, familial, but They found there was power in being a part of something bigger. Like, and I mean, power, like it oriented their life. It changed their identity. It framed the way they saw the world and it did give them hope.
And I’m curious, like if you experienced that with young people, if like just having a sense of agency is enough, empowering them to curate, retell, write their own stories, Is it helpful that there’s something beyond themselves,
Varun Soni: Yes, I absolutely think it is. I think it’s a protective factor. You know, one of myOne of the most important research studies that really defines almost everything I do in my job is one by Lisa Miller that she talks about in her incredible book, the spiritual child, where she says, she points to say, says, if you have an intergenerational religious or spiritual experience growing up, that means if you go to church or a temple or a masjid or good Barra, synagogue with your parents or grandparents growing up, then you are 70 percent less likely to experience depression as a young adult.
That study explains so much of what I see at USC and in higher education as a whole. and it’s not always the case that correlation equals causality, but in this case, I think it’s true. So I have, like I said, in 1950, 2 percent of Americans were not affiliated with religion. Today, 51 percent of my incoming students are not affiliated with religion.
That’s a crazy shift in just two generations. We’ll never be a predominantly religious society again.
it’s the most important story in American religious history is the rapid, growth of those who are not affiliated with religion, especially those who are under 30, which is.You know, 20 percent of the American population is not affiliated religion, but 50 percent of Gen Z is not affiliated.
So we’re seeing an incredible generational shift. So in an age where less people have had these intergenerational religious experiences growing up, we’re also seeing levels of anxiety and and depression and suicidal ideation we’re seeing are, are off the charts.You know, 65 percent of college students are so anxious that they’re having trouble functioning 65%.
That means anxiety is baseline. 30 percent are wrestling with a mental health challenge like depression and 10 percent have had thoughts of suicide over the last year or so on my spectacularly beautiful Hollywood campus where every day is a picture perfect Southern California, sunny day, and there’s football and film and everyone is in there literally the campus of their dreams.
I have 5, 000 people. 5, 000 students walking around every day who are thinking about suicide. That’s what keeps me up at night. And so we know the opposite is true. We know that not having that is an aggregating factor. We know that not having a sense of belonging or a sense of transcendence or a sense of being part of a larger whole has a negative impact on your mental health.
We, I see that every day. And I think it’s also true to say that having that in your life, a sense of positive sense of belonging, a reality greater than yourself, a sense of transcendence and awe and almost like magic and wonder in your life is a protective factor that then mitigates the downstream flow of anxiety, depression, and suicidality.
If you don’t feel like there’s a reality greater than yourself or that you’re part of a larger whole, it’s hard to feel like you belong anywhere. If you don’t feel like you belong anywhere, it’s really hard to thrive in your life.
So I do think that. The protective factors of religion are directly responsible to people who have historically felt that they were thriving.
We’re now in this transition period where we’re moving past religion, but we haven’t replaced it with anything else. Religion has been the predominant meaning making community building enterprise of human history.
This generation We’ve taken religion away and instead we’ve given them smartphones, which are designed to keep them outraged and anxious. Are designed to keep them coming back for more and to keep them in some ways, disconnected, not connected. I think the great tragedy of social media is it’s become antisocial and our young people have 70 percent less human interaction before they’re 18 than we did because they’re living in a mediated world where every interaction is mediated through technology.
It’s not a primary experience of the world. And so we’ve taken the most important protective factor in human history. Religion. and replaced it with probably the most aggravating factor in human history, where we have no longitudinal study on, which is social media. And then we wonder why our students are so anxious and depressed and why they break.
And why they’re, why there’s so much suicidal ideation. So I, I absolutely think that’s, what it means for me is I what I tried to do now is build those protective factors for students who weren’t raised with them. How do I build a sense of meaning, purpose and transcendence for students who weren’t raised with religion?
How do I think about religion and mythology and the acknowledgement of life events? And pilgrimage and, the songs and stories that we live by the things that have historically been the domain of religion. How do I think about that outside of religion and offer it to students who are not religious in a framework?
That’s not theistic. The reason I want to do that isn’t because I think students need religion or even God, but I think they need a protective factor that allows them to feel like they’re part of a larger whole that allows them to feel like they belong wherever they are, that allows them to thrive and flourish in their life.
And So that’s why I don’t talk so much about religion or God, but I talk about what is sacred to you, what is sacred to you. That’s what I really want students to think about. That doesn’t mean you have to be religious or theistic, but there has to be something sacred to you. And if you don’t have anything sacred in your life, something, like I said, that’s your North star that you’re getting up for, it’s going to be impossible to feel like you’re thriving, flourishing, or that you belong.
Pam King: working with teens and emerging adults Varun has a front row seat to the existential and emotional lives of college students whether we have kids or not, these young people are the future leaders of the world.
For the sake of these future generations, we all need to reorient ourselves to these questions of mental health by asking them through the lens of spiritual health and the language of the sacred.
I’d love to hear from you, what you’re hearing young people find sacred today.
Like, wh What are their sources of meaning
Varun Soni: that’s a great question. I will say, if I’m speaking with like. Sort of sweeping generalizations about speaking, sweeping generalizations about generations, which, you know,I try not to do, but I am doing, I will say that the superpower for this generation that I have not seen in my generation, my parents generations, or even in millennials, the superpower for Gen Z is their empathy.
Pam King: students care so much about each other and about the world more than any, it’s maybe somewhat ironic that a. Generation raised without religion cares more than any generation raised with religion. Maybe that tells us something about religion, but they are super empathetic. They really care about each other.
Varun Soni: I never get emails from students saying, Do something for me. I always get emails from students saying, do something for my friends, do something for those students, do something for those workers, do something for those professors.
They’re always advocating for each other. And so I think what is sacred to young people is, is a sense of,of care. and I think what that means for them is justice, whatever that might mean. I think what’s sacred for them is a sense of justice or equity or fairness, however they may define it.
They’ll define that in different ways, but you will find, students have been very involved in various social justice movements over the last five or six years. They’ve, participated in movements that have become global movements. And I think that Makes them feel as though they’re connected to something bigger than themselves.
So this idea of what is bigger than me, well, for a lot of students, it’s this Global movement for justice or equity or to try to face and address the real challenges of the world. Income inequality, there’s so much existential angst over, climate change, like that’s like a baseline existential angst, spiritual angst for young people.
in this country, gunshot violence is, top of mind. So I think students really care so much about each other that they want to be part of the solution to the crises that everyone is going through. And that brings them, even though they may be socially disconnected, they may be lonelier than any generation has ever been.
There’s real data out there to assess. It’s to suggest that 18 to 26 year olds are not only the loneliest people in the United States, but lonelier than any generation we’ve ever measured loneliness from yet. They still have this drive to heal the world, heal themselves and advocate for each other. I really admire that so much hope amidst the despair and there.
Love for each other has become my north star as a chaplain. That’s why I do what I do. That’s what gets me up every morning. It’s how much they care for each other
that gets me up every morning to try and be part of their journey.
Pam King: that’s really profound. That’s really beautiful. Well, you were talking about despair, and obviously, and you brought up mental health issues. I’d love to talk a bit about mental health and spiritual health. I’d love to hear how you understand spirituality being able to address, like, the massive mental health crisis that’s going on right now.
Mm.
Varun Soni: so when I got to USC in 2008, there, there were all, The students here were millennials and I’m Gen X. I wasn’t that much older than them. Quite frankly, I was just 10 years older than some of my students. So I felt like I could, I felt like almost like now I feel like they’re annoying Indian uncle, but I used to feel like they’re cool older cousin for a little while.
but, I,what I noticed about these students, millennials is how filled with hope they were. They were so filled with hope. They were so excited. They felt like they could live their best possible version of their life. They had their conversations with me that I had with my university chaplain that made me want the job.
Who am I? What does my life mean? What is the nature of God? How do I live an extraordinary life? How do I translate my values into action? How do I live my dreams? Even though in 2008, when I was having these conversations at first with millennials, Their parents were going through a devastating economic crisis where they lost half their net worth overnight.
Millennials were still so hopeful in that really difficult job market, in that political moment about the future. But then about ten years ago, about five or six years into my job, I began to notice as the millennials left and their younger brothers and sisters, the post millennials or Gen Z, came to campus, everything started to shift.
And instead of asking me, how should I live? Students started asking me, why should I live? And instead of talking about meaning making, they were talking about meaninglessness and instead of talking about hope, they were talking about hopelessness. It all just happened suddenly. And I began to think, well, maybe it’s just cause I’ve been here long enough.
People know where to find me. But when I talked to colleagues around the country, everyone was seeing the same thing. So I began to see the mental health crisis in generational terms when Gen Z, the first digital natives in human history. Came to campus. Millennials were still digital migrants, but Gen Z was the first group of students coming to college who had been entirely raised in an online social media environment, who had spent their entire lives comparing their real lives to the curated Instagram lives of their friends, who felt like the metric for friendship was how many friends they had online.
And no matter how many friends online, They had, they felt like it was never enough. And 70 percent of whom on our campus feel like imposters on this campus, even though it’s, there’s a 9 percent acceptance rate to get into USC. Everyone who got in here had to move mountains. And yet when they get here, they feel like imposters.
Why? Because they’re constantly comparing themselves through their social media feeds with everyone else. So I began to see this new first generation of digital. natives who came to campus in a full blown mental health crisis on year one. So I began to talk a lot about this. I, I, I wrote aboutthe, mental health crisis of what I saw, anxiety, depression, and suicidality, and I lived it, you know, uh, over the last, In the 10 years, I’ve probably done more memorial services for students than anyone in the country.
I’ve sat probably with more student, with more parents of students who have passed away than anyone in the country. When I started in 2008, we would lose a few students every year. And it was mostly acts of God, almost entirely acts of God, meaning terminal illness or a car crash, something that you were like, well, there’s nothing you could have done, right?
And you have grief, but you don’t have guilt necessarily. But after 2014, instead of losing a few students every month, there was a time, or every year, there was a time where we were losing a student every month. Sometimes more than one student every month. And instead of acts of God, there were acts of man.
There were mostly accidental drug overdoses and suicide. And so it’s not just grief. It’s also guilt because people are like, I saw this coming. Why didn’t I do anything? So it was a different kind of emotional impact on campus too. I was also left with parents and students who kept thinking, what did we do wrong?
What did we do wrong? Why couldn’t we? So when I was in the middle of all this and I had parents in my office almost every week crying and I would feel guilty going home to my kids when they couldn’t get go home to their kids, I really started to speak as much as I could about the mental health crisis.
And a lot of people thought I was being alarmist. They thought I was being I was overreacting to a small, sort of a data set that I had in front of me. But, two or three years ago, 80 percent of college presidents said their number one concern is not fundraising, not free speech, not federal funding, not infrastructure, not tenure, not curriculum development, not tech, not A.
I. The number one concern of college presidents was the mental health of their students and their faculty. So even though in 2014 everyone thought it was alarmist by 2018, No one would disagree with what I was saying. And yet by 2018, 2019, I began to change my opinion on it. I no longer was talking about a mental health crisis, and I no longer see it that way.
What I see now is a spiritual health crisis of meaning making, of community building, and of awe that manifests as a mental health crisis of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. And my sense is that. If we’re just talking about anxiety, depression, and suicidality, we’re just talking about the symptoms? And we’re just triaging the crisis and then moving the next one.
We’re just rearranging the lawn furniture on the Titanic as it goes down. If we really want to be serious about what’s happening, we have to think about what is causing anxiety, depression, and suicidality. And I believe what is causing it. Is the inability to think about what is sacred in one’s life, to think about how to build rituals and practices around that, and to develop deep and meaningful relationships over time and to tell a story about one’s life and to live that story.
And I see all that is spiritual health is essential part of spiritual health. And so what I’ve tried to do is focus on those things, focus on meaning, making community, building Northstar consciousness, thriving and flourishing as a protective factor. Against anxiety, depression and suicidality, as opposed to just trying to treat the anxiety, depression and suicidality as it emerges to go deep into the root cause, and I believe that the root cause is spiritual, and therefore the root remedy is spiritual, and all this is manifest in what I think of as the underlying challenge of this generation.
Which is loneliness, which I think is a spiritual affliction. I wrote a piece on loneliness in the night times that a lot of people reached out to me about. And they basically told me the same thing, that wherever they are in the world, and if they were working with young people like I am, they will, they also see that.
Deep down inside, when you scratch the surface, everyone is really lonely. This is, like I said, the loneliest generation, according to Cigna in the United States are 18 to 26 year olds. We know that loneliness has the impact of smoking like a pack of cigarettes a day. It can decrease your lifespan by seven years.
We know that traditionally the oldest people in America were the loneliness and that led to sort of Premature death. But now the youngest people are the college students in America are the loneliest. We don’t even know what that means. We know that, in the age of social media where everyone should feel connected, people feel more disconnected than they ever have before. And,and it’s probably because we’ve raised our kids to talk with their thumbs and not with their tongues. it’s, it’s, it’s probably not that complicated to figure out why it’s happening when you lose religion and you replace it with social media. And so, um,so I really think my primary mission is to address spiritual health. When I talk about spiritual health to students who have never heard the term, it’s very intuitive to them. What I’m talking about, they seem to really appreciate the term because even though only half of our students are religious, 80 percent say they’re spiritual.
So they want to be spiritual. They might not have the tools of understanding what that means. But when you say, well, you have physical health, there’s, you have mental health, you have emotional health, you have financial health, they know what all that means. So then when you say, what about spiritual health?
They kind of know what that means, even if they don’t know what that means for them. And so I’ve been trying to socialize that term, trying to bring people back into what they control internally around, meaning, purpose, friendship, storytelling. Et cetera, and not focused on what they don’t control externally, who’s going to win the election, the wars of the world, et cetera, those are things we all have to work on.
But if our happiness or thriving is dependent upon things we don’t control, then how can we ever How can we ever
thrive?
Pam King: The way Varun framed this shocked me, really. So I think we need to hear it
again.
Varun Soni: instead of asking me, how should I live? Students started asking me, why should I live? And instead of talking about meaning making, they were talking about meaninglessness and instead of talking about hope, they were talking about hopelessness. This approach to spiritual health has a direct bearing on the very livability of life. So it’s absolutely imperative that we attend to the spiritual needs, not just of young people, but also ourselves.
Pam King: As every flight attendant’s speech ever has reminded us. First secure your own oxygen mask before you assist others.
Varun Soni: And so part of that is recognizing the two things can be true at the same time.
That we can be very concerned about the challenges and the suffering of the world and we can be actively involved in mitigating the challenges and suffering of the world. And yet we can also be thriving internally and have practices for joy and gratitude in our own life. And those things don’t have to be disconnected.
They’re not antithetical to each other. In fact, They’re probably one necessitates the other because we are thriving and flourishing with joy and gratitude practices in our life, we can be more present and we can be more impactful in addressing the crises, concerns and challenges of others. And if we can’t save ourselves, we can’t save others.
And if we’re not, if we don’t have a life preserver, we can. and so I think that, students almost feel like if there’s so much pain in the world, I feel guilty if I have any joy in my life because there’s so much pain in the world. And that is a really, that’s a really toxic spiritually toxic idea. I
Pam King: As you talk about spiritual health, something else I’ve heard you say about young people today is that they have a hard time developing like a moral or ethical framework, like somewhat uprooted from communities or traditions that offer that. How do you understand morality or ethics or virtue as part of spiritual health or spirituality or the sacred?
Varun Soni: mean, you know, for so many of us, a lot of that comes from religion. And so if you’re raised without religion, where does it come from? especially I would say in an age where we don’t really have a A lot of strong leaders in the public sphere who we might consider spiritually involved or compassionate or benevolent or are we may have political leaders, but.
They’re not a lot of political leaders. I want my Children to emulate in terms of their behavior so. we don’t necessarily see our morality in the political sphere. We might not see it in religion if we weren’t raised with it. So where are we getting it from? one of the things that I think students, young people respond well to is just being able to mind their own experiences to think about what might be.
Work for others. And so even around morality, like when people say things to you, how does it make you feel like when people do these things? How does it make you feel? So
it’s probably true that if you do that, that’s how it makes others feelon both sides of it. If people say things that make you feel terrible or mean to you, then maybe You don’t want to do that to other people.
But if people say things to you that make you feel really good, a stranger smiles at you for no reason, someone writes you a handwritten note to appreciate you and it makes you feel good. Well maybe you can do that for someone else and it will make them feel good too. So I try to bring it back to the lived experience of their own humanity.
And in doing so You know, it doesn’t have to be some complicated ethical framework that’s passed on through the generations in ancient texts. It can be like that. I kind of know that this is what it means to be a good person, and I’m going to embrace that. I’m going to feel confident in my knowing based on what I’ve experienced in my own life about who is a good person.
And so I want to empower students to try to find the way themselves based on their own experiences, but to let them know that’s actually, That’s good. Deepak Chopra told me religion is the experiences of other people, but spirituality is your own experience. So what is religion?
Religion is the experiences of the prophets and the priests and the messiahs and the mystics and the avatars of old. They’re the experiences of people written in sacred texts. They’re the experiences of people who came before us. They’re the experiences that we read about. But spirituality is your own empirical experience of the world itself.
And whereas we might have gotten code and creed and a legalistic and moralistic system from the religion that tells us about other people’s experiences. I also think that it’s possible to build a code and creed and ethical system for yourself through your own experience of the world, through a spiritual as opposed to religious experience of the world.
And that’s where students are anyway. And so, um,I think that’s how we get there because that way they trust the outcome because it’s their own experience. It’s not,
Pam King: it’s not telling them to trust something that they already don’t trust.
And it’s almost as if empathy becomes somewhat of a discernment tool, that continually gives you feedback regarding what is ethically and morally working well. if I’m treating people well, I’m going to experience that.
If I’m not, I’m going to get feedback really quick if I’m empathetic. I love all this. And I have a very optimistic view of young people, or all humans to be honest, but I do see some things like forgiveness, which might be a bit counter cultural, or like when you brought up political figures, people love power.
And I see it abused. How do you encourage younger people to think about what might be cultural norms that they might want to challenge? Some of those.
Varun Soni: I mean, it’s it’s really hard because they don’t see the thing that you’re telling, you’re asking them to see. Right? So in other words, if we were able to model what nuanced respectful dialogue across difference looks like, then we could point students to that. But if they see the dysfunction in American politics right now, what are we going to tell them about How to do that.
What we’re telling them is be better than everyone you see, but
we have provided them with no model for how to do that.
Pam King: And so I think that part is very difficult when the, when, like, when the adults are yelling at each other, then the kids are going to yell at each other. we’ve let our students down by not modeling what respectful and engaged leadership across difference looks like and social media has only contributed to that Silo ization where if you don’t want to engage with anyone who thinks any differently than you don’t have to and that’s not healthy either To not be able to engage across difference where it’s like I agree with 99 percent of what you say But if you don’t agree with 100 percent I’ll never talk to you again.
Varun Soni: Like that’s also a very important thing You know, difficult position to take if we’re trying to come to some kind of consensus on any issue. And so it’s really hard because we can tell them, to talk with, to speak across difference, to engage each other respectfully, to see themselves in each other, but they see it in almost no space now in the public sphere.
And what they see Makes people successful is the exact opposite. And so we’ve sold them an idea of success. That’s a very capitalistic idea that it’s all about you, that everything’s about you, that your net worth is your self worth that, by any means necessary, every man for himself, it’s like fully social Darwinistic. and then that’s how they’re behaving. because that’s what,that’s what we’ve told them to do.
Pam King: And I guess they’re not thriving and flourishing, probably, by even subjective matters.
Varun Soni: yeah, I mean, some, many students might be, but,but it’s not because of the way we’ve raised them or the values we’ve told them
they should emulate or the things we’ve told them matter.
Pam King: The last word that neither of us have said, but I feel like is present in much of what we’re talking about, is love. And Lo I’m curious, when you think about spiritual health, does love factor in, in any way?
Varun Soni: Yes, of course, love, joy. Those are, I fundamental aspirations as human beings, you know, but that told us 2500 years ago that, to live is to suffer. That’s the first noble truth is there is suffering. That means everyone who has lived will suffer. That connects us with everyone across space and time.
And virtually no one wants to suffer. So what he said is to live is to suffer. But what he also said is yes, suffering is the fundamental human condition. it means to be human is to suffer. But what we all also want is to experience joy. So even if suffering is the fundamental human condition, joy is a fundamental human aspiration.
And I think of love in the very, in a very much the same way that we might not always reside in love and joy, but I think as humans, that’s our aspiration. We actually may reside in suffering and pain, but our aspiration is to love and joy. And so where we live and where we want to go might be two different things.
We can’t just be focused on where we live. We have to be focused on where we want to go. We can’t just be focused on suffering. We know to live is to suffer. So it shouldn’t surprise us. What I see happening in the U. S. is the message we tell students young people is actually you should reside in joy or happiness.
You should be happy. And if you’re suffering, you’re doing something wrong. But if you’re happy, it just means you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. So when young people suffer, they’re like, Oh, it’s me. I’m doing something wrong. I’m not at the right school. I’m not in the right major. I’m not with the right person.
I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. And she’s like, but from a Buddhist perspective or Indian perspective, it’s very different. The baseline is suffering. Yeah. If you are suffering, it means you’re just a human being. That’s your baseline. If you’re experiencing joy, it means you’re doing something right.
Not that if you’re experiencing suffering, you’re doing something wrong.if I’m suffering, it’s just, hey, I’m human, and, oh, I have a moment of joy or love, oh, I’m doing something right, and then I don’t have that anymore, oh, I’m just human again. I’m not constantly beating myself up over the fact that I’m suffering, or I’m not good enough, or, when I’m socialized to the idea that’s actually the fundamental human condition is suffering.
I think These two different perspectives, which I’ve seen firsthand in my own life, American perspective versus maybe a Buddhist or Indian perspective can set a baseline in a way that makes, love or joy more aspirational than, than guaranteed, you know? So when we think of it as a practice, an aspirational practice, and we think of love and joy as things that we touch or taste rather than things that we always have, Then our expectations are different, and then there’s not the suffering of suffering.
There’s not compounded suffering over the fact that we’re suffering. There’s a baseline acknowledgement of suffering with the aspiration for something more, as opposed to the baseline understanding of happiness with the fear of something less.
Pam King: That is a wonderful place to land. Thank you so much, for all your wisdom, experience and insights and great spirit. really appreciate it,
Varun Soni: Thank
you. This was great. I really enjoyed it.
Pam King: Varun Soni’s mission, to create space for the sacred in contemporary life, offers a vision for wholeness and healing. A life giving approach to the practice of faith and spirituality today. Investing in future generations, he’s telling a new story about the importance of spiritual health.
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
It’s all too easy to fragment life into secular and sacred, but thriving in spiritual health require wholeness and integration of every aspect of ourselves, including our faith and spirituality.
Future generations of leaders need our guidance and support in their connection to community and in their search for meaning, purpose, and hope.
keep your seatbelt firmly fastened, your seat back upright, tray table stowed, and secure your own spiritual oxygen mask before assisting others.
We can counteract the outrage, anxiety, and information overload with simple daily practices that bring stability and clarity.
And finally, We thrive when we align our actions and our values, our behavior with our
beliefs, and our practices with our purpose.
With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our senior director and producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our social media graphic designer. Evan Rosa is our consulting producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Dr. Varun Soni
Dr. Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California (USC), with an extensive academic background, including degrees from Tufts University, Harvard Divinity School, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and UCLA School of Law. He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Cape Town, focusing on religion and popular culture. Dean Soni is also a University Fellow at USC Annenberg's Center on Public Diplomacy, an adjunct professor at the USC School of Religion, and the author of Natural Mystics. He has contributed to various publications and produced a graphic novel, Tina’s Mouth. Additionally, he organized the Concert for Pakistan in 2009 and has been involved in several interfaith initiatives. His diverse career includes legal studies, field research in South Asia, and significant involvement in promoting global religious and cultural dialogue.
Episode Summary
We need a recovery of the sacred in our secular world. Because the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles haunting society right now can’t be solved without addressing meaning, purpose, and the longing for connection to something beyond ourselves.
In other words, spiritual health is an essential part of mental health.
An attorney, religious scholar, and university chaplain, Dr. Varun Soni is Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, and is leading us back to our true north, through spacious and life-giving spiritual conversations and sacred practices that realign us to our values and identity.
In this conversation with Varun Soni, we discuss:
- Finding the sacred in our secular culture.
- Religious pluralism and what it means to build trust that reaches across religious lines of difference.
- The transformative power of finding your “truth north”—your North Star—to orient our journeys of faith and spirituality.
- Varun shares six pillars of flourishing; how to align our actions with our values; and the benefit of listening to the cultural narratives and stories we tell.
- He reflects on the missing elements of spirituality in our understanding of mental health today, evidenced in his work with teens and emerging adults.
- He offers us a Hindu meditative practice to provide inner clarity, stability, and calm.
- And he comments on compassion and a cultivation sacred spiritual practices to counteract the loneliness, anguish, and suffering in our world.
Show Notes
- Dr. Pam King welcomes Varun Soni, Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at USC
- Journey from Hindu attorney to first Hindu Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life in the U.S.
- “What does it mean to be Indian? What does it mean to be Hindu? What does it mean to be American? What is this Indian American experience?”
- 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act
- Inspired by grandfather’s connection to Mahatma Gandhi
- “ What it meant to be Hindu was to be like Gandhi. What it meant to be Indian was to be like Gandhi. What it meant to live a meaningful life was to live like Gandhi.”
- “ I continued to study religion as a way of understanding myself.”
- Sitting with the Dalai Lama on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday
- Mentorship from the Dalai Lama
- Deepak Chopra’s influence
- “Interfaith trust building”
- University Chaplaincy
- What is thriving to you?
- "Thriving is the alignment of purpose and practice—it’s not about arriving, but about moving in the right direction."
- “What is my north star, and how do I get there?”
- Spiritual well-being about asking the right questions, not having all the answers
- Religion once provided meaning, rituals, and community—now young people seek new structures
- "What is sacred to you? If you can’t answer that, you’re drifting without a compass."
- The urgency of time when turning 50 years old
- “I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone anymore.”
- “Put the process before the answer.”
- 6 pillars of thriving and well-being: diet, sleep, exercise, contemplative practice, emotional intelligence, connection to nature
- Basic physical pillars of thriving: Diet, Sleep, Exercise
- Spiritual pillars of thriving: Contemplation, Emotional Intelligence, and Communing with Nature
- Finding what is sacred—faith, relationships, personal values
- 51% of USC students non-religious, 80% spiritual
- Record levels of loneliness, imposter syndrome, comparison culture
- “Not just a mental health crisis, but a spiritual health crisis.”
- Loss of intergenerational religious experiences—key protective factor against depression
- "We took away religion and replaced it with social media, then wondered why anxiety skyrocketed."
- Social media fuels disconnection rather than community
- "We weren’t built for this much bad news. Our brains weren’t designed to process global suffering 24/7."
- “There’s no right way to do contemplative practice.”
- Find moments built into your day
- Exercise: So Hum breath meditation: Inhale “So,” exhale “Hum”
- Using meditation as a spiritual technology or tool
- "You are not your thoughts—you are the awareness behind them."
- Identity shaped by personal narrative—"If you don’t like your story, rewrite it."
- Telling the story of who you will become
- "Every individual is the hero of their own journey, whether they realize it or not."
- Cultural mythology, from sacred texts to Marvel movies, reflects search for meaning
- Spirituality helps build redemptive life narratives
- “There power in being part of something bigger.”
- The Spiritual Child by Lisa Miller—research on spirituality and mental health
- "It’s hard to hate the people you love—universities are one of the last places where people can learn to love each other across differences."
- Technology and mediated relationships
- What is sacred to you?
- "Gen Z’s greatest superpower is empathy, but they’ve never been lonelier."
- Building protective factors for young people
- Gratitude rituals shift focus from anxiety to appreciation
- Care, justice, and connection
- Mental Health Crisis
- Mental Health and Spiritual Health
- Awe-inspiring moments—nature, music, relationships—essential to well-being
- "Awe, wonder, and gratitude aren’t luxuries—they’re survival tools."
- “You can’t doom-scroll your way to joy. Presence and connection matter.”
- Religious institutions declining, but human need for transcendence remains
- Creating new rituals and meaning-making for a secular generation
- "Spiritual health is just as important as mental health—ignore it, and you miss a key part of the equation."
- What is your North Star? What gets you up in the morning?
- How do your daily practices align purpose and action?
- How do the stories you tell shape your identity and thriving?
- Try So Hum meditation as a daily mindfulness practice
- Engage in one act of gratitude—write a note, express appreciation, savor a moment
- It’s all too easy to fragment our lives into secular and sacred, but thriving and spiritual health require wholeness and integration of every aspect of ourselves, including our faith and spirituality.
- Future generations of leaders need our guidance and support in their connection to community and their search for meaning, purpose, and hope.
- Keep your seat-belt firmly fastened, your seat-back upright, tray table stowed, and secure your own spiritual oxygen mask before assisting others.
- We can counteract the outrage, anxiety, and information overload with simple, daily practices that bring stability and clarity.
- We thrive when we align our actions and our values, our behavior with our beliefs, and our practices with our purpose.
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Â Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
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