Dreams

You were once a girl; you would have read mathematics, history, science, geography, languages. Didn’t you find inspiring figures there? Didn’t those books arouse fantastic ideas in you?

I am sure that when you were younger, you thought of excellence, didn’t you? You would have had dreams. In your dreams,…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, you once said that motivation and ambitions are symptoms of suffering but I think if one lives with ambition, the journey will teach him a lot. Life will become disarrayed. Please explain.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Don’t you see an obvious contradiction in what you are saying?…

Questioner: You advise us to have a purposeless, aimless life. But if we will not aim for anything, then how will I crack my exams? In your younger days, you too prepared for exams like MBA, IIT JEE, Civil services, etc. But now you say having aims is no good.…

Questioner: If I make a goal in life then how do I stick to it? How do I keep myself focused towards the goal?

Acharya Prashant: Choose the goal properly. Let the goal be so compelling that the goal itself is a defense against distractions. If you choose a goal…

Questioner (An engineering student): Acharya Ji, what made you inclined towards Spirituality, after education from premier institutions like IIT-D and IIM-A?

Acharya Prashant (AP): A couple of decades ago, I was on that side where you all are sitting now, in another engineering college, IIT-Delhi. We too used to

Questioner: What is daydreaming?

Speaker: The ones who coined this word ‘daydreaming’ used it as a kind of a pejorative, as a condemnation. Their assumption was that, dreaming befits only the sleeping state of consciousness and in the waking state, dreaming must not happen; that dreaming must not be…

Questioner: Sir, how to get rid of the problem of daydreaming?

Acharya Prashant: Are you day dreaming and knowing that it is day dreaming?

No! It’s not possible. You know that you have been dreaming only after the dreaming ceases. Right?

Listener: Sir, in the last session we were told that all dreams arise from past experiences. I agree that dreams arise from past but then how do I dream of something which is not at all present in my past? How do I dream of something that I have not…

How did the Buddha look then? Who is the Buddha? Let’s try to understand with the story of Gautama Buddha, The ‘Shakya Muni Buddha’ as we call him. So, who was he? Let’s look at his central characteristics. One, someone who is well versed in the knowledge of his time. Buddha had deep scriptural knowledge. He was born in a Hindu Kshatriya family, he was a prince and ever since his childhood he was quite talented. So, one thing about him is that he was quite well-read. Second thing is, he was deeply interested in knowing the depths of life. He did not want to remain merely at the superficial levels, so he would observe a lot, he would think a lot. https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/todays-buddha-1_4d1b6bf

If you are someone who cannot take care of herself, how will you be sure that your presence, your company is not becoming an influence of sickness on the other person?

Be very, very alert about cohabitation. Just don’t start living with anybody. Be very, very conscious of your personal…

If you take yourself as primarily physical, then beauty too for you would be something just physical. You will look at the woman most capable of successfully reproducing. That’s the prakritik definition of beauty.

The first thing that comes to mind is flowers. What are flowers? Flowers are the reproductive…

The world is your playground. So don’t be so particular about moving only within your pre-existing circle. If your cause is worth it, show some courage and move out.

If you have a tender and precious sapling in your palm, would you plant it in a desert? No. You will…

“You know what, I lost money in stocks and I still didn’t get a heart attack!” Why must you get a heart attack? It is a small matter. Let it happen. It’s okay. Every day more people lose money in the stock market than what is the number of those…

What is the ultimate purpose of life? Earning money or happiness? How can this stupid thing be the purpose of life?

The common happiness that we know, I have said, has two characteristics: one, it is an acquired conditioning, and second, it depends on the presence of sadness. So, if…

Fight for the right cause and let it consume you fully. That is the only way of living life. Fight for the right one and devote yourself totally to him. That is the only way of living and fighting. Give yourself up so totally that you cannot now be blamed…

We all need space. Man’s inner nature is freedom. When I say man, I mean both man and woman, mankind. Just as you need free mental space, you also need free physical space.

In fact, I find the idea of a shared bed quite vulgar. The double bed is an…

When you say that you go to your workplace for a purpose, the purpose is never work, or is it? The purpose is the salary cheque. In fact, if work could be bypassed and you could straight away reach the salary cheque, then who would want to work? Now, why…

Swami Vivekananda has said, “First of all, our young men must be strong; religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita.”

Swami Vivekananda was no soccer evangelist. His…

Giving birth is not for kids. Law just says that there is a legal age—eighteen, twenty-one and such things. First of all, giving birth requires that there has to be mental maturity. Unfortunately, 99% of the world’s population is not at all mentally mature enough to be parents. The funny…

Let your situations, your circumstances, your possessions, your particular destination in life not become important enough or significant enough to define you. Let your self-worth not be dictated by things that are external.

But since everything is external, let your self-worth not be dictated by anything at all. Which means,…

If you want to know why you kept working, slogging for the thirty days, the most effective way is to see what you are doing with the paycheck. What you are doing with the paycheck will very loudly demonstrate why you kept working the thirty days. See what you do…

Both the genders have become even more anchored to their physical identity. The more you do that, the more you are in misery because, really, the body is not who you are.

There are places better and higher than the place of your gender specific hormones. Why do you want…

You must know what the place of security and money and sex is in your life. If you don’t know their right places, then for the purpose of sex you will give somebody a high position in your life, and then you will suffer. Persons are essentially harmless; harmful is

If your goals are small, they are no goals. You will be frustrated if you don’t achieve them, and you will be doubly frustrated if you achieve them. Having achieved them, you will find that the next goal is waiting for you, and that is deep frustration. You will feel…

When you are serious about victory, you do not strike at the enemy without being fully prepared. Those who just plunge themselves into battles without having checked their preparedness are the ones who don’t love victory too much. Because this battle is important, and because this battle must be won,…

Man has the capacity to choose, and man must take responsibility of how he is living his life, what he has turned the Earth into.

Every young person who is about to choose a career, decide on work in life, must keep this in mind, my humble advice: See what is it that really, really troubles you, and then work should be the medicine for your trouble. That’s the way you must choose work.

Therefore,…

Pay attention to all your thoughts, emotions, actions. Something unknown is waiting there for you. Most people know nothing about themselves.

If you are angry, it tells you that there is something within you that is resisting the world now. Why is it resisting the world? Go into it. Try…

If the mind is a diseased organ, then why do you trust it so much? If it is a diseased organ, then whatever you see through it, why can’t you just reject it? Why do you trust this unfaithful servant so much? If I have a machine that continuously gives…

Man wants progress, and progress means an ascension, an elevation. It is as if man wants to be elevated to some high sky. That’s what you say, right? “I am rising up, I am progressing.” What is the intention of this tendency to keep progressing? The intention is to progress…

If you want to know an atom, you have to go to nuclear physics. There you do not just proudly claim, “Oh, I know atoms. Everything is an atom. I have been with atoms since my birth!” There you want to read a book. There you want to consult somebody…

As long as the goal is not tremendously big, life has no real purpose. If your goals are small they are no goals. You will be frustrated if you don’t achieve them, and you will be doubly frustrated if you achieve them. Having achieved them, you will find that the…