Video Information:
Video Information: 23.12.22, DTU, Delhi
Context:
~ Why has India been a birthing ground for religions and saints?
~ What is special in India?
~ How does religion flourish?
~ Is India inherently religious?
~ How does Indian philosophy emerge?
~ What is religion?
~ Were our hunter-gatherer ancestors religious?
~ What differentiates man from animal?
~ What is your destiny?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 23.12.22, DTU, Delhi
Context:
~ Why has India been a birthing ground for religions and saints?
~ What is special in India?
~ How does religion flourish?
~ Is India inherently religious?
~ How does Indian philosophy emerge?
~ What is religion?
~ Were our hunter-gatherer ancestors religious?
~ What differentiates man from animal?
~ What is your destiny?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
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01:05 - Namaste, sir.
01:07 So I have observed one thing that if we look
01:11 at the major religions and spiritual traditions
01:14 around the world, we see, and which are well accepted,
01:18 we see that they emerged from certain places only.
01:21 For example, the Abrahamic religions,
01:25 all of them happened in the Arab world
01:27 and around Israel and Saudi.
01:29 Then Zoroastrianism happened in Iran.
01:32 And then India has been the most fertile land
01:34 for the growth of these traditions and religions.
01:36 For example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism,
01:39 and even the foreign traditions when they came to India.
01:42 For example, Sufism, when it came to India,
01:45 it flourished in a very unique fashion.
01:47 And we have, the Indian subcontinent especially,
01:50 has had a long list of saints.
01:54 So, and we don't see these things in the European history
01:59 or in the Americas or any other places.
02:02 - Heard of a place called Greece?
02:06 - Oh yes, sir, even I, okay,
02:09 I'm ready to include Greece as well.
02:11 - Heard of Athens?
02:12 Heard of the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle?
02:18 They were not Europeans.
02:20 It's just that at particular patches in time,
02:25 there exist favorable ecosystems.
02:28 There was a wonderful ecosystem in Greece before Christ,
02:34 and you have excluded China, you have excluded Japan.
02:42 - Yes, sir, even China, yes, sir.
02:43 - So what remains then?
02:44 - Taoism and Confucianism.
02:46 - And then we have the Middle East, then we have Iran,
02:50 then we have India, and India, the entire subcontinent.
02:53 We have also included China, we have included Japan,
02:56 we have included Europe, what remains?
02:58 - But, sir, Europe is again, sir,
03:00 but the way it has flourished in India
03:02 and places around India and Pakistan.
03:05 - India is one, India, Pakistan, the subcontinent,
03:07 let's take that.
03:08 - It's a bit unique, the way they have flourished.
03:10 - Ecosystem, nothing else, ecosystem, ecosystem.
03:13 - Once something starts somewhere,
03:16 it becomes the thing for that place.
03:21 What do you know Detroit today for?
03:23 What do you know California today for?
03:28 Okay, what do you know Bangalore today for?
03:33 So is there something particular
03:36 in the geography of Bangalore
03:38 that makes it conducive to silica or something?
03:43 No, nothing.
03:46 It's just that due to historical and coincidental reasons,
03:51 an ecosystem develops there.
03:53 And once the ecosystem is there,
03:55 more and more stuff starts happening.
03:57 There's nothing, if you want to investigate more into it,
04:01 India was a more fertile land for religious inquiry
04:07 because the soil was fertile
04:08 because the monsoons were guaranteed
04:15 and you could do nothing about the monsoons.
04:20 Remember, in those days, there was hardly any irrigation.
04:26 So you simply had to wait for the rains.
04:29 What do you do when you wait for the rains?
04:31 And the population was sparse.
04:36 So there was good food, ample food for everyone.
04:38 And the Indus basin and the Ganga basin
04:44 are one of the most fertile basins in the world.
04:47 The alluvial soil here coming right from the Himalayas.
04:50 So you had abundance of everything.
04:54 When you have abundance of everything
04:55 and there is not much you can anyway do
04:57 because the monsoons will come when they have to.
05:00 What do you do?
05:02 You have ample leisure.
05:04 And in that leisure, you sit, you observe,
05:08 you talk to people.
05:10 There is space for intellectual inquiry.
05:14 For hours and hours, can you visualize the thinkers,
05:18 the sages, the seers just purposelessly
05:21 talking to each other?
05:22 And from that purposeless discussion,
05:27 from silent observation of life for hours, days, months, years,
05:32 come those insights that you today take as Indian philosophy.
05:37 You cannot have philosophical development
05:42 if you are running behind your ambitions
05:44 and if you have a tied up day
05:46 and you very well know that 8 a.m. you have to do this
05:49 and then 6 a.m. this and 8 a.m. that.
05:51 That kind of clockwork will never allow
05:54 any kind of internal leisure.
05:56 And if that internal leisure is not there,
05:59 no insight, no wisdom can develop.
06:02 You all must remember this.
06:05 Give yourself space, freedom, opportunities to take stock.
06:10 You understand what is meant by taking stock?
06:12 Just stop.
06:14 Stop for long durations, at least for a few hours.
06:18 And recollect what's going on.
06:21 Am I just running?
06:23 What's going on?
06:24 And this period of taking stock can extend to months.
06:29 If possible for you.
06:30 In fact, in my own growth,
06:35 the breaks that I used to get from school
06:39 and later on from IIT were very important.
06:42 Most of my initial poetry was composed in breaks
06:47 and the breaks were significant.
06:49 The entire December used to be free
06:51 and then May, June, July.
06:54 And that used to provide an ample space
06:59 in which one could just be himself.
07:01 So that's what it is.
07:04 Ecosystems are very important.
07:07 That's the reason universities are very important.
07:10 So as you said that,
07:14 because ecosystem was favorable in India,
07:17 but in the Arab world,
07:19 the survival conditions were very brutal.
07:21 They were very tough.
07:23 So how did Prophet Ibrahim or Prophet Muhammad
07:27 or Christ managed to awaken their consciousness?
07:33 Same thing can happen when the ecosystem is very unfavorable.
07:36 You very well know that nothing will happen
07:40 however hard you try.
07:42 So what do you do?
07:44 You stop trying.
07:44 If you think of the process of the Quran,
07:52 Prophet Muhammad used to go up a hill
07:56 and sit there for long durations.
07:58 That sitting alone for long durations
08:04 is at the core of insightful realization.
08:08 If you are someone who cannot be by himself,
08:12 if you are afraid of being alone,
08:15 if you cannot remain silent to yourself,
08:22 you will never realize anything.
08:24 The fact is, please understand,
08:30 even if you go to the Paleolithic times,
08:35 what you find is religion emerging in a very preliminary way.
08:45 So it's never specific to one geography.
08:49 Where there is man, there is dissatisfaction.
08:53 And where there is dissatisfaction,
08:56 there is an inquiry into the reason of dissatisfaction.
09:01 And that inquiry itself is called religion.
09:04 I am not whole, I am not well.
09:07 Why do I remain restless within?
09:09 How do I take care of this?
09:12 That itself is religion.
09:13 So that is found even in the caveman.
09:16 They did not know that they are restless
09:20 because something within is immense.
09:23 So what would they do?
09:25 They started out by looking into the physical universe.
09:30 So they would say, "Oh, probably that tree is great.
09:33 If that tree blesses me, I'll be all right.
09:37 Oh, probably that river is great.
09:39 Probably the sky God or the sun God,
09:44 they are the greatest, they are the absolute."
09:46 So there is a search within the human being.
09:49 Always, always for the greatest, the best, the absolute.
09:53 And that's what differentiates man from animals.
09:57 Animals do not search for the best, the greatest,
10:00 the final, the infinite, the absolute.
10:02 Man always searches for that.
10:05 And if life is not used in searching the absolute
10:09 and meeting it, then life is wasted.
10:13 So there was, you know, there was a,
10:16 there is a point in the history of evolution of human beings.
10:20 When we started to think,
10:23 that point comes 70, 80,000 years before today.
10:32 And the moment that point comes, also you start seeing
10:37 the emergence of some kind of worship.
10:43 Our brains, the moment they gain some maturity,
10:47 one of the things that come,
10:49 one of the things that come immediately to the brain,
10:52 the mind, is that it starts to worship.
10:55 Now what does worship mean? Think of it.
10:57 Worship means there has to be something bigger
11:00 and I prostrate in front of it.
11:02 So this search for bigness, bigness.
11:08 That bigness is your destiny.
11:10 That's what Vedanta calls as Atma.
11:14 And it's not a doctrine, it's not a dogma.
11:17 It's contained within you.
11:19 Even if you deny Vedanta, that restlessness will remain.
11:25 So Vedanta is not a concept or a principle.
11:28 It is just expressing what is already within you,
11:31 irrespective of whether you believe in Vedanta or not.
11:36 That's why I said that there is no need to believe.
11:38 It is. What is, need not be believed in.
11:43 It can be known.
11:45 There is no need to believe.
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11:51 without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.
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