

Questioner (Q): I am reading J. Krishnamurti’s Freedom from the Known, where the author talks about freedom from authority as a means to be free of the ego. What does he mean by authority? What does freedom from authority mean? He also says that we should not accept even…

प्रश्नकर्ता: कृष्णमूर्ति साहब सभी वृत्तियों, विचारों, भावनाओं वगैरह को बिना निर्णय के देखने को कहते हैं। ये मुझे असंभव लगता है। किसी भी विचार या भावना के उठते ही मैं या तो उसके पक्ष में हो जाता हूँ या विपक्ष में। कृपया समझाएँ।
आचार्य प्रशांत: विचार जिसको उठ रहा है…

Questioner (Q): What is the relationship between witnessing, the observer, and the observed? How does witnessing relate to J Krishnamurti’s statement “Observer is the observed”?
Acharya Prashant (AP): What is observation? What is the observed one? Who is the observer? Who is the observer?

Can you honestly, seriously, bring yourself to find out whether you are free from authority? It needs tremendous enquiry into yourself, great awareness.

Explanations blind you,
they prevent you from actually seeing ‘what is’.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Questioner: Acharya Ji, there is a quote by you, “Seek Light, See Light, Be Light.” I was reading a book by Krishnamurti where he said, “Seeking is a kind of expansion. It’s an escape. You cannot get freedom from it.”
I am confused between the two. Please help.

“Love is a state in which there is no ‘me’; love is a state in which there is no condemnation, no saying that sex is right or wrong, that this good and something else is bad.
Love is none of these contradictory things.

“We seek happiness through things, through relationships, through thoughts, ideas and do not realize their impermanence. To find out the true meaning of happiness, we must explore the river of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not an end in itself. Is there a source to a stream? Every drop of water from…

Questioner (Q): Dear master, Jiddu Krishnamurti asks, “Has love an object? Or is love divine or profane? You follow? Sir, when you love, you are neither giving nor receiving.”
Acharya Ji, could you explain how can we love in daily life, without giving or receiving? What is love, if it…

Question: Acharya Ji, what does J. Krishnamurti mean when he says “Become deeply aware”.
Acharya Prashant: It is said, become deeply aware.
Now, we already live in problems and challenges. We already live in incompleteness. We already live in the quest to achieve something, to become something. When it is

Question: Acharya Ji, what does J.Krishnamurti mean when he says, “the observer is the observed”?
Acharya Prashant: As you are, so you see the World. Simple.
That there is no objective reality about the World. The ‘subject’ and the ‘object’ are intrinsically linked; they are One. The subject and the

Question: Acharya Ji, what does J. Krishnamurti mean when he says, “To understand what is, is more important than to create and follow ideals.”
Acharya Prashant: Actually, the first part of that sentence, is the absolute, the second part is the actionable. Understanding what is, is not really a task.…

Question: Acharya Ji, J.Krishnamurti says, “In a right relationship, you come to know yourself.” Please explain.
Acharya Prashant: The question is, Krishnamurti says, “In the right relationship, you come to know yourself.” So, how does one know himself?

प्रश्नकर्ता: कृष्णमूर्ति कहते हैं कि “हम ‘*अननोन*’ (अज्ञात) से तो डरते ही हैं, और तो और, हम ‘*नोन*’ (ज्ञात) से भी डरते हैं।”
ऐसा क्यों?
आचार्य प्रशांत:

प्रश्नकर्ता: गिरते हुए समाज में मेरा सही कर्म क्या है?
आचार्य प्रशांत: समाज या दुनिया क्या है? हम हैं, आप हैं; जैसे हम हैं, आप हैं, वैसा ही संसार है। अगर आप समाज को और संसार को गिरता हुआ पाते हैं, तो उसका कारण यही है कि इंसान गिर रहा…

“It is the incapacity to understand a challenge that brings about a problem.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Acharya Prashant: “It is the incapacity to understand a challenge that brings about a problem”, this is what Krishnamurti says. And habituated we are of concluding, we are very habituated to conclude; we immediately take

Question: “Observe the disorder without the observer.” How will it be possible?
Acharya Prashant: A man is driving his car in a drunk state. In an absolutely drunk state and the car is moving about in a very disorderly way. There are two rear seats. Will one seat know that…

Questioner (Q): Sir I have read that a few teachers have spoken about the consciousness and life after death. So, I am confused that how did they come to know about this. Are these just concepts or anything?
Acharya Prashant (AP): It’s just a concept.

When you teach a child that a bird is named ‘bird’, the child will never see the bird again. ~ J. Krishnamurti
Acharya Prashant (AP): Beautiful quotation.
Because naming comes with a total bundle of association, references, memories, past, prejudices. Having named something, having tagged or labeled something, you are

प्रश्न: इसका क्या मतलब है कि, “ट्रू ऑब्ज़रवेशन इज़ विदाउट थॉट(असली अवलोकन बिना विचार के होता है)”? इसको कृष्णमूर्ति बहुत बार कहते हैं कि, “ट्रू ऑब्जरवेशन इज़ ऑलवेज़ विदाउट थॉट।”
वक्ता: सोच-सोच के कुछ भी देख कैसे सकते हैं? थॉट विल एनलाइज़, थॉट विल नॉट ओब्ज़र्व, थॉट विल नॉट…

Question: “To be alone, is to be against the whole set-up of the society.” J. Krishnamurti
Sir, what is ‘being alone’?
Speaker: Society is not one thing; society is the very substance of the conditioned mind. And it’s very deceptive.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, today let’s talk about the two very famous and inscrutable Masters of the 20th century.
Acharya Prashant: (Reading the questioner’s mind)

To understand the nature of sorrow, and the ending of sorrow, one must understand time and to understand time is to understand thought.J. Krishnamurti
Speaker: To understand sorrow, one must understand time, and to understand time is to understand thought.What is ego?We usually say the ego is “I am this”

A religious man must be both masculine and feminine
~ J. Krishnamurti
From that clarity comes a totally different kind of action, an action that is not fragmentary, that is not divided politically or religiously – it is a…
Please throw some light on this.
Acharya Prashant: The problem…
~…
(Here, ‘I’ is used for the conditioned mind)
‘I’ belong…
Q:…
Speaker: You could read it either way that – he must be both feminine and masculine, or he must be neither masculine nor feminine. You know what masculinity stands for in popular parlance, as a psychological state, as…

Love is not a mental or physical need. Love is not for the faint-hearted. Love is not for those who fear the loss of relationships, reputation, possessions or life. Love is not for those who are afraid of family, society, or uncertainty. Love is not for those who seek sanction from tradition or culture.


Short description for the E2E smoke test article.


What is the root cause of unhappiness? Why strength is necessary for liberation? Why ego can not reflect on itself?

Questioner(Q): What is the process of clarity? Is it just listening with immersion and no resistance? What is Truth? How we decide it?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Listening without effort, plus if there is Truth in what you hear, there is change and transformation, and that Truth becomes the master. We…

Love would have helped you fly. And now you have captivated love within four walls. As wise men and women, if you are married, wonderful. As wise men and women, if you are not married, wonderful. The point is not really marriage. The point is wisdom. https://dev-main8.vedant.life/en/articles/marriage-and-love-1_0ff5cad

अध्यात्म की रोशनी जीवन के हर क्षेत्र पर पड़ती है, तो राजनीति पर भी पड़ेगी ही पड़ेगी। ऐसा कुछ नहीं है कि आध्यात्मिक आदमी राजनीति के प्रति अंधा हो जाता है। बल्कि हक़ीक़त तो यह है कि राजनीति को आध्यात्मिक लोगों की बहुत सख़्त ज़रूरत है, क्योंकि राजनेता ताक़त की ऐसी गद्दियों पर बैठते हैं, जहाँ से वो आपके जीवन को बहुत तरीके से प्रभावित करते हैं। राजनेता अगर आध्यात्मिक नहीं है, तो देश रसातल में जाएगा। राजनीति त्यागनी नहीं है, सही राजनीति करनी है।https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/raajneeti-mein-adhyatm-kyon-zaroori-1_795988a15

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

"I am fully in support of learning in all ways from everywhere and everybody but I am not at all in support of foolishness and hypocrisy. Get the difference please. I am absolutely in support of learning from wherever it is possible to learn but I am not at all in support of using the various avenues to learn to not to learn."

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.

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, एक तरफ़़ तो फ़िल्में हमें मनोरंजन देती हैं, हँसाती हैं, रुलाती हैं और दूसरी ओर उसी इंडस्ट्री से दुःखद और चौका देने वाली खबरें भी आती रहती हैं। कुछ कहिए।
आचार्य प्रशांत: सबसे पहले तो हमें इस धारणा से बाहर आना होगा कि फ़िल्में हमें मात्र मनोरंजन…


Does the person you are with encourage you to read? You have to ask, “What does he bring for me, roses or books?”
Be very cautious of those who bring roses for you, especially red roses. Books are what we all need, and books are dangerous. Books are dangerous because…

अब देखिएगा, क्या हो रहा है। कोई कृतज्ञ कब अनुभव करेगा? जब पहले उसकी हालत ख़राब हो और कोई बचाए। आपके भीतर अभी यह इच्छा शेष है कि आप कृतज्ञ अनुभव करती रहें और कृतज्ञता अनुभव करने के लिए ज़रूरी है कि कुछ गड़बड़ हो और फिर उस गड़बड़ से आप उबार ली जाएँ। तो फिर आप कृतज्ञ अनुभव करेंगी कि, अरे, मेरा सौभाग्य कि मुझे किसी ने बचा लिया।

कृष्ण का खुद ऊँचा होना, कृष्ण के पूरे जीवनवृत्त में, उनकी ज़िंदगी की जो पूरी कहानी है उसमें और श्री कृष्ण की प्रेमकथा में एक सूत्र है जो साझा पिरोया हुआ है। गीता की ऊँचाई, कृष्ण के जीवन की ऊँचाई, और कृष्ण के प्रेम की ऊँचाई तीनों एक हैं। ऐसा नहीं हो सकता कि कृष्ण बहुत ऊँचे हों और उनका प्रेम निचले तल का हो जाए। ये संभव नहीं है।

“माँसाहार गरीबों के लिए वरदान है क्योंकि माँसाहार के माध्यम से गरीबों को सस्ता प्रोटीन मिल जाता है।“ १ ग्राम प्रोटीन अगर आप मटन से लेते हैं तो लगते हैं ३ रुपये। उतना ही प्रोटीन, १ ग्राम, अगर आप अंडे से लेते हैं तो लगते हैं १ रुपय ३० पैसे, उतना ही प्रोटीन, १ ग्राम, अगर आप चिकन से लेते हैं तो लगता हैं १ रुपया।

I had to unlearn a lot of things, and I am grateful to all the sources—the books, the people and the experiences that helped me unlearn. And I am grateful to that within me that had the courage to unlearn.
A lot of unlearning is needed. I often say you…

I had to unlearn a lot of things, and I am grateful to all the sources—the books, the people and the experiences that helped me unlearn. And I am grateful to that within me that had the courage to unlearn.
A lot of unlearning is needed. I often say you…

श्रद्धावान् लभते ज्ञानं तत्पर: संयतेन्द्रिय: | ज्ञानं लब्ध्वा परां शान्तिमचिरेणाधिगच्छति || ४, ३९ || जितेन्द्रिय, साधनापरायण और श्रद्धावान मनुष्य ज्ञान को प्राप्त होता है तथा ज्ञान को प्राप्त होकर वह बिना विलम्ब के तत्काल ही भगवत्प्राप्तिरूप शान्ति को प्राप्त हो जाता है। —श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, अध्याय ४, श्लोक ३९प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी,…

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\n\n29 अप्रैल से 1 मई, 2022 तक आयोजित हुए वेदांत महोत्सव के एक प्रतिभागी की प्रेरणास्पद कहानी\n\nमेरा नाम राकेश कुमार है। मैं कानपुर नगर से हूँ। पिछले चार माह से मैं हर…

◾ एक ही जाति होती है - वह है "बल"। बल विकसित करो अपने भीतर।
◾ आत्मा का इस पूरे देह व्यापार से कोई लेना देना ही नहीं।
◾ मिथ्याचारी वह है जो आगे के लालच में अच्छा काम करता है।
◾ आत्मा का विकृत सिद्धांत ही भारत की दुर्दशा…


भारतीयों को शायद यह लगता है कि हिंदुस्तान से बाहर जहाँ कहीं कोई मिलेगा वह ‘अंग्रेज़ी’ ही बोल रहा होगा। एक तो यह बहुत बड़ी ग़लतफ़हमी है – बाहर जैसे ही हम निकलेंगे वैसे ही जो मिल रहा होगा अंग्रेज़ी ही बोल रहा होगा। हिंदुस्तान बेचारा बस पिछड़ा हुआ है,…