Made mistakes It's ok! || Acharya Prashant, with IIT-Hyderabad (2022)
Video Information: 26.04.2022, Interview Session, Rishikesh, Uttrakhand
Context:
- What is the ultimate advice for the right partner?
- How to choose the right partner for marriage?
- How to be committed in a relationship?
- How to have a deep and spiritual relationship?
- Is marriage good or bad?
- What about sex before marriage?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Context:
- What is the ultimate advice for the right partner?
- How to choose the right partner for marriage?
- How to be committed in a relationship?
- How to have a deep and spiritual relationship?
- Is marriage good or bad?
- What about sex before marriage?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Sir, my question, simple question is about handling pressure, sir. Pressure of expectation.
00:11 Sir, when God in Bhagavad Gita says that human being is bound to make mistakes, why the society is not ready to accept mistakes?
00:21 Everybody is judged by end and in the end by only results. How would you work if you make a simple mistake, your graph nose-dives always?
00:32 It is not only with education or your career, sir. I am seeing this in every field. We expect the same from our children. Our family expects the same from us.
00:44 My question is that has Bhagavad Gita lost relevance in the present times or we human beings are not worth Bhagavad Gita?
00:54 Thank you. The answer is so simple, we all miss it. You see, we are two. This unit called the human being
01:22 is not one but two things within. So, it is not elemental. There is the two of us.
01:43 That which is true, perfect, blemishless, that which Vedant calls as the true self, Atma.
02:02 And there is the body, mind complex that we share with animals and that which can be called as Prakriti.
02:19 So, the human being is Prakriti and Atma. Prakriti is our reality. Atma is our potentiality.
02:37 And because we remain at a large distance from that potential, therefore we can rightly call ourselves almost purely Prakritic.
02:59 We are the body and we are the consciousness arising from that body. In that sense we are much the same as animals.
03:11 Animals too have their body and the body has a genetic code and the consciousness arises from that code.
03:20 And all animals act and behave as per their bodily constitution. So do all human beings.
03:30 The only difference is that human beings potentially have something else possible to them, just potentially.
03:40 But that potential is extremely lucrative. We want to be there.
03:52 When I say we want to be there, who wants to be there? The body-mind complex, the impure consciousness, the Prakritic consciousness that is there, wants to be there.
04:04 It considers itself as a free agency. That free agency is classically or technically called as the ego, aham.
04:17 But that aham is really nothing very different from the agency driving all sentient creatures, all animals.
04:32 So the ego is there and the ego is a bundle of imperfections.
04:41 But the ego loves to call itself perfect. Are we together till this point?
04:48 We are the ego and we are the ego just as all animals are the ego and that ego is nothing but a product of the body.
05:00 And therefore, like everything else associated with the body, the ego is highly imperfect.
05:06 But the ego takes great pride in calling itself perfect.
05:13 And the ego is deeply insecure about its imperfections and falsenesses being exposed.
05:24 That's who we are, the ego. The ego that wants to say I am good, I am alright.
05:31 Verily I am the Atma, I am the pure self. I need no corrections.
05:40 I need not rise, I need no ascension, I need no discipline.
05:47 Why does the ego ever that way? Why is the ego so insistent on calling itself the pure self?
05:57 Because, the reason is quite practical, because if the ego does not call itself as the pure self,
06:04 it will have to work hard towards becoming the pure self.
06:10 Becoming is not quite the right word but let's take it for practical reasons.
06:16 If I do not accept that I am the Atma, then I'll have to work very hard to reach the Atma.
06:31 If I do not accept that I am already at the destination, right?
06:35 If I concede that I am very far from the destination,
06:40 then the onus will be on me to travel fast and travel rightly towards the destination,
06:48 to reach the destination and all that is hard work.
06:53 And the ego being governed by Prakriti has a lot of Tamsa.
06:59 And what is Tamsa? Tamsa is a tendency to not work hard enough. Tamsa is laziness.
07:07 Now if I do not want to work hard enough, a cheap solution is to say I am already good enough.
07:14 I do not need to work hard. I do not need to work hard because I am already at the destination, you see.
07:24 So each of us wants to somewhere assert that I am already good enough.
07:35 I am already good enough. I am already good enough by dint of my birth.
07:40 I was kind of born perfect. And if I say that about myself, I'll have to say that equally about others as well.
07:49 So I say I am perfect and then I start expecting perfection from others as well.
07:55 Because you see I was born the true self, the pure Atma.
08:00 And if I was born that way, then you know my younger brother too has to be born that way.
08:05 My wife too has to be born that way. My neighbor too has to be born that way.
08:09 So who are all of us? We all are pure Atma.
08:15 Therefore we can make no mistake. Therefore if we make mistakes, that is something of a shame.
08:21 That is something to be censored. That is something to be shown down.
08:26 Because Atma is not supposed to make mistakes. But the fact is we keep making mistakes.
08:32 Why do we keep making mistakes? Because we are not at all the Atma.
08:36 We are the animalistic ego and therefore we keep making mistakes.
08:41 The moment we honestly admit that we are animals and therefore we behave like animals.
08:49 The path to correction will open up.
08:55 But for us to be corrected, first of all we'll have to admit that we are human beings only in name.
09:08 We are de facto animals. And animals mind you do not make mistakes.
09:14 They just do what their body orders them to do. They don't make mistakes.
09:19 Similarly the fact is even human beings don't make mistakes.
09:24 They just do what their body orders them to do.
09:27 And when I say body, I mean the body-mind complex.
09:33 I mean thoughts as well. I don't just mean the hormonal tendencies.
09:38 The one who goes by his thoughts is every bit as much of an animal as someone who operates purely by his instincts.
09:49 Right? So we keep peddling a lie to ourselves and that lie is that we are not animals.
10:01 We are not animals. You just accept you are an animal and you'll find that you are making no mistakes.
10:09 You are just being animalistic.
10:13 Someone steals something and you say he has made a mistake. Oh he has made a mistake.
10:18 But he has not made a mistake. He has just done what animals do all the time.
10:24 Animals keep stealing from here and there and it is not a mistake.
10:30 By any standard, no animal has ever felt morally ashamed on being a thief.
10:39 Have you ever seen an animal, let's say a monkey feeling ashamed because it took away your fruit or your popcorn or whatever?
10:54 It happily takes away the stuff, eats it, enjoys it without displaying a trace of shame or anything.
11:08 We are that same monkey except that we have convinced ourselves that we are better than monkeys.
11:20 So we behave like monkeys and additionally we feel ashamed that we are behaving like monkeys.
11:31 We are monkeys who behave like monkeys but have convinced themselves that they are not monkeys.
11:37 Therefore they feel ashamed when their monkeyness comes to the fore.
11:47 There is a reason. The reason is that we are monkeys but are not supposed to be monkeys.
11:53 Our true nature is something else and therefore we feel ashamed and therefore shame can be a very constructive force.
12:04 I do not necessarily dislike it when people feel ashamed.
12:08 In fact sometimes it is very important that someone develops a sense of shame after all.
12:18 But that shame has to be real and that shame has to arise from understanding.
12:24 That shame cannot just be a social or moral construct.
12:31 Are you getting it? Instead of feeling ashamed of our fallacies, we should use them to see who we really are.
12:42 When you behave like a monkey, you are a monkey. Now why are you feeling ashamed?
12:46 Take that as a fact. Oh so at this moment I am a monkey. I am not the true self, I am not the atma, I am the monkey.
12:56 I am behaving like an animal on heat, so lustful the entire day.
13:03 There is nothing to be felt ashamed of. Instead this should tell us who we are.
13:10 And that's the important question in Vedanta. Who am I?
13:14 How to answer that question? By looking at your current condition.
13:18 Look at your condition and that will tell you who you are.
13:22 There is no other way.
13:28 You are territorial and possessive and violent and you are prepared to kill for the sake of your stomach.
13:41 There is nothing here that animals don't do.
13:45 What are you ashamed of? You are only behaving in the way of your cousins in the jungle.
13:56 Right? And when you behave like your cousins from the jungle, you should know that you are a creature of the jungle.
14:05 There is no need to hide that jungleness beneath a veneer of moral shame.
14:14 I am an animal. I am an animal. And when you say I am an animal, that must be accompanied by I need not be.
14:22 I am an animal. I am needlessly an animal. I can be far better. Being better is my nature.
14:29 I cannot come to rest without being better. But unfortunately I am behaving like an animal.
14:35 Alright. I am not going to despise the fact. I am not going to hide the fact.
14:43 I am not going to label the fact as a mere mistake. It is not a mistake. It is a fact. It is my reality.
14:51 Now what do I do with it? I see where I stand and when I know where I stand, I know the direction to take.
15:02 Are you getting it? And that's why this society comes down so heavily on mistakes.
15:11 Because you are not supposed to make mistakes because you are an Atman.
15:15 How dare you make a mistake? A more awakened society would say he is not making a mistake.
15:24 He is just displaying his animal nature. Right. He is just displaying his animal nature.
15:32 And there is hardly anything in the social milieu to raise people from their animal planes to their conscious planes.
15:43 We do not want to accept that. We do not want to accept that all of us are being forced to live like animals.
15:52 That's what our education is doing. That media is doing. Our literature is doing. Our parenting is doing.
16:02 We are promoting animal values in beings that are not supposed to continuously live like animals.
16:12 Yes, the baby is born an animal but it is not supposed to die an animal.
16:22 We make the animal even more of an animal by the way we bring up the animal.
16:30 And when that animal makes mistakes, we submerge him in shame without admitting that he has been brought up wrongly.
16:53 He has been given no exposure to true spirituality.
17:02 Words like Vedanta and Upanishads have been alien to him and therefore he will behave the way he currently does.
17:12 What's the surprise? Are you getting it?
17:20 So do not call anything a mistake. We are two of us and therefore we operate in two ways.
17:28 We operate in the conscious way and we operate in the animal way.
17:33 It's the conscious way and the animal way. There is no mistake.
17:37 There is nothing called mistake. Mistake seems to imply that I am the true self but I have accidentally made a mistake.
17:46 Now the true self cannot accidentally make a mistake.
17:50 Mistake, you see, mistake. There is nothing called a mistake.
17:55 You are just being true to who you are. If you are an animal, you are behaving like an animal.
17:59 Why are you calling it a mistake? Are you getting it?
18:05 So when you see someone behaving in an abominable way, do not call it a mistake.
18:12 Call it an expression of his beastliness.
18:20 And then you have to ask yourself how to remind this animal that he need not remain an animal.
18:32 There's a fundamental difference here. Please understand.
18:34 If you say he has just made a mistake, then what you are saying is, oh, an accident has happened.
18:41 It is not an accident. It's a structural thing.
18:47 It is not a one-off thing. It is systematic.
18:53 It has not randomly happened. It has been made to happen.
19:02 So it is not a mistake. The system is making us remain like animals.
19:10 So see how his environment can be changed. See how he can be brought to the right company.
19:18 And then the fellow will shift to the other center, hopefully.
19:29 Are you getting it? See, it's like this.
19:40 A group of all unwashed men decide to pretend that they are well washed and all cleaned up.
19:53 Right? And they use all kinds of deodorants and other pleasant odors on themselves.
20:04 And it's a mutual conspiracy.
20:10 All of them have convinced themselves and each other that they are all pretty clean.
20:20 As they say, speak and span.
20:26 Now one of them, one of them somehow finds himself unable to hide his bitter odor.
20:40 And it becomes obvious that the fellow is smelling like something extremely rotten.
20:55 And then you all start saying, oh see this one is so filthy, so unwashed.
21:02 The fact is not that he is just filthy or unwashed.
21:08 Everybody is filthy and unwashed.
21:11 It's just that this fellow was unable to pretend as smartly as the other ones probably.
21:27 The other ones were veteran mischief makers.
21:33 They knew how to put on a facade of pleasant odor.
21:41 This one was probably unwise.
21:44 You could even say this one probably had some honesty left.
21:50 So his reality got exposed.
21:54 That does not mean that he is the one who has made a mistake.
21:59 The entire environment is promoting falseness.
22:06 That has to be changed.
22:08 It's just that when one person is seen as failing in faking,
22:23 then we start calling that one person as a failure.
22:32 But he is failing just in faking.
22:41 He is not the bottom most one.
22:45 He is not really the laggard when it comes to a true hierarchy.
22:51 Right?
22:56 Yes.
23:07 Thank you.
23:09 Thank you.
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