Maya

Yesterday I was reading that the male snake chases the female snake following her scent, the trail of her odor. Snakes can’t generally see much. They can’t even hear much. So, the deodorant that you use is Prakriti and the purpose, too, is prakritik. The odor of the female…

Questioner: My question is not about concept, it's more about attitude. I see in the spiritual community, normally we spend a lot of time talking about thoughts, about god, about concepts, about the subjectivity of things and when we go back to our daily life, we just do as everybody…

Questioner (Q): Isn't everything just Māyā? Then what is God? What is the relationship of God with Māyā?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, Māyā becomes all things, correct? Māyā becomes all things. So, you find it expressed in both ways. Sometimes, it is said—Māyā becomes all things…

Acharya Prashant: Māyā and Brahm are beginningless for you. ‘For you’ because the question is coming ‘from you’. So, to you, these two are beginningless. Why are these two beginningless? Why can’t their origin be known? Because Māyā does not comprise of an entity called ‘Māyā*’. *…

Questioner (Q): My question is about renunciation. I find within me the response about what I have to do, like renunciation and poverty. I see in myself inside but somehow I am fighting very strongly with the opposite in the opposite direction. And I never find the bravado to really…

सदृशं चेष्टते स्वस्याः प्रकृतेर्ज्ञानवानपि।

प्रकृतिं यान्ति भूतानि निग्रहः किं करिष्यति।। 3.33 ।।

sadṛiśhaṁ cheṣhṭate svasyāḥ prakṛiter jñānavān api

Question: Acharya Ji Pranaam! Once we are attached to anything, there is so much of suffering.

Please help me understand this.

Acharya Prashant Ji: End of suffering is just an idea for us. Let’s rather talk about suffering – that is a fact, that is our daily experience. The questioner

Question: When I sit in open Sky, I see the vastness, and the vastness feels like Freedom to me. It gives me lot of calmness and peace. The cool breeze, the rains, the Sun, these elements of physical nature give a lot of peace.

These elements of nature, especially the…

Questioner (Q): Lots of layers of Ego are dropping and I wake up in the middle of the night and realize that I cannot trust anyone, anything including myself. My mind is going crazy and underneath it, I think I know all the answers to my questions. It feels so…

Questioner: Our education system is at fault because it has been designed to make you a worker, not to live life the way it should be.

Speaker: Yes, yes. It is designed to make you into ‘something’. At some places, it is designed to not to make you…

सभि जीअ तुमारे जी तूं जीआ का दातारा

नितनेम (रहरासि साहिब)

All living beings are Yours.You are the Giver of all souls.

Question: Sir, daily life puts forth so many insane demands and expectations that it becomes difficult to understand what to follow and what not to follow.

Answer: We all have felt that occasional boredom while reading our texts. We all have often felt that inertia to stay back at home…

THis is AP Article

समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रिय:।

ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम्।।29।।

samo ’haṁ sarva-bhūteṣhu na me dveṣhyo ’sti na priyaḥ

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Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column

युवावस्था बहुत ही नाज़ुक समय होता है। यही समय निर्धारित कर देता है कि जीवन किस दिशा जाएगा।

हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।

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

Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.

How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren,

सङ्करो नरकायैव कुलघ्नानां कुलस्य च ।। पतन्ति पितरो ह्येषां लुप्तपिण्डोदकक्रिया: ।।1.42।।

Overview

We want to reach the end of wanting. We want completion, fulfillment in such a final way that we are left with nothing to want anymore. That’s the destination. Born a human being, you will have to act. Act rightly. Act for the right purpose. Live for the right

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…

“I will beat him!”

“I will destroy her!”

“Did you just insult me? Did you?”

Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.

Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

Worrying is the other name of hope. When you think negatively about the future, you call it worry. When you think positively about the future, you call it hope. So, worrying is just as equally bad as hoping.

Conserve your energy. Train your thoughts. Discipline your little self. Time is…

There is nothing in spirituality that will ever violate science. It’s just that spirituality will venture into areas where science never goes at all. Spirituality, for example, will talk about you. Science never talks about you. That’s the difference—that’s the only difference.

It is very, very sad that 99%, I…

Have you looked at kids playing? If you look at kids playing and if you look at animals playing, you won’t find much difference. In fact, human kids go along very well with animal kids. Later on, when we cover ourselves with a lot of acquired knowledge, with a lot…

Hope is a very dangerous animal. It can make you do the most stupid things. It can make you fall in the same trap one million times.

There was the Cricket World Cup in 2003, and the finals were played between India and Australia. I know of a man who…

Welcome pain. You have no option. That’s the way life is meant to be. Life is suffering. Because not only are you designed to have pain, you are also designed to resist pain.

Have pain, and have a lot of depth in your being. So much depth that it can…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.

If something good has happened, “I did it!”

If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”

Happiness and sadness are both wonderful, are both welcome.

But in some deep sense, sadness is a little better than happiness. It teaches us a little more than happiness does. It elevates us a little more than happiness does. It has a certain purifying effect that happiness does not quite…

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…