Feel nice wasting yourself away? || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2021)
Video Information: 24.08.2021, Shastra Kaumudi, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
Context:
~ What is spiritual love?
~ What is consciousness?
~ What is free will?
~ What is that which really chooses?
~ Do we really have the right to choose?
~ Is your life your choice?
~ What is a choice?
~ How liberation depends on you?
~ How to get rid of the fear of making the wrong choice?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Context:
~ What is spiritual love?
~ What is consciousness?
~ What is free will?
~ What is that which really chooses?
~ Do we really have the right to choose?
~ Is your life your choice?
~ What is a choice?
~ How liberation depends on you?
~ How to get rid of the fear of making the wrong choice?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 The man of knowledge avoids action that leads to miscellaneous places.
00:16 Suvad or samvad is an utterance that brings clarity and truth to yourself and the other.
00:37 That's the mark of the right action.
00:42 It brings clarity to yourself and the other.
00:48 That's the litmus test.
00:52 He is alert all the time.
00:54 This that I am thinking, this that I am saying, this that I am doing, what is it going to
01:04 lead to?
01:09 If I am talking to someone, is it for the purpose of bringing clarity to the other or
01:20 is it for the sake of dominating the other?
01:26 The moment he detects that his intention is to prove a point, to dominate the other, to
01:38 bully or coerce the other, he simply withdraws.
01:44 This is no, no, no. I am a traveler and every action is a step.
01:59 Every uttered word is a step.
02:03 Every thought is a step.
02:05 I am a traveler.
02:06 I must step only in the direction of the destination.
02:13 If I am stepping in any other miscellaneous direction, I am wasting time and energy.
02:20 I won't do that.
02:24 So he freezes.
02:27 He retreats.
02:33 In the middle of a heated discussion, it might just strike him.
02:40 What the hell am I doing all this for?
02:43 Why must I be entangled in this debate?
02:50 And then you might find that in the middle of a sentence, he stops and withdraws, not
02:58 caring even to finish that sentence.
03:02 That's the hallmark of honesty.
03:04 Now that I know, now this moment suddenly that I realize that I am into it for egoistic
03:12 purposes, I won't continue for even half a second more.
03:20 Till this point, unfortunately I was misled.
03:25 I did not remember.
03:30 So I was being carried away by emotion, by passion, by Maya.
03:36 But suddenly I have woken up.
03:40 You always wake up suddenly, right?
03:43 You are asleep till now and now you have woken up.
03:47 Now that I have woken up, I cannot pretend to still be in dreams.
03:54 The dream is gone and I am back to sanity.
04:09 The man of knowledge will just not waste his precious moments, his energy, his words.
04:22 You will not find him just splurging himself away.
04:35 And one common, rather necessary characteristic of the man of ignorance is that he dissipates
04:55 himself a lot.
04:59 You will find this person wasting himself away in a very regrettable way.
05:10 Dissipation, dissipation and dissipation.
05:20 Like a block of ice, a lump of frozen water in sun, melting down, disappearing away.
05:50 Its substance, its life, melting and meeting the soil and becoming mud.
06:11 Streaks of soiled water flowing in six different directions.
06:20 Can you visualize?
06:23 This is the life of the dissipator.
06:28 Parts of him keep randomly flowing away, wasting away in six different directions.
06:40 At the end of each day, there is very little of him left and very little comes from each
06:50 day he spends as a living entity.
06:54 If you ask him, so what comes out of this day that you have lived?
07:02 He will have no substantial answer.
07:06 Something here, something there, bits and pieces, nothing concrete.
07:22 Because most of the day, most of the energy, most of the opportunity has anyway been just
07:29 squandered, filtered.
07:36 Basically the ice was made of distilled pure water.
07:41 What happens to the water once it melts and meets the soil?
07:47 What happens?
07:48 That's how we waste ourselves.
07:54 I'm getting it.
08:00 As I had said, stop in the middle of a sentence.
08:06 Do not bother even to finish that sentence.
08:12 I used to watch a lot of movies and I used to walk out of a lot of movies.
08:42 Maybe it was my vritti, my tendency to try out movies, late night shows, 11, 11.30 PM
08:59 when the hall would be practically empty and then so many times, 10 minutes, 20 minutes
09:09 into the movie I would decide to walk out.
09:14 Once I know it is junk, what's the point?
09:17 I've already made a mistake by entering this hall.
09:22 How can I prolong the mistake by staying in the hall?
09:26 You're getting it?
09:32 Typically I would walk out in the middle of a song and dance sequence.
09:40 That's what would conclusively suggest to me that I'm at the wrong place.
09:47 Acharyaji, you said that a man, whenever a man of knowledge finds himself in a situation
09:57 which he realizes is not the right situation, he just quits or leaves.
10:05 It sounds like one has to keep finding oneself in such situations and then keep leaving.
10:12 So this sounds like someone who will be in constant conflict.
10:20 But then that's what life is all about.
10:25 Your body is not going to accept defeat very easily.
10:33 The body will keep doing its thing and the body will do it very deceptively.
10:41 When I say body, I mean the body-mind complex, body and the mind.
10:47 You won't always be on top of the body-mind thing.
10:52 They will play their game, they will make their shrewd moves.
11:01 You will be deceived quite often.
11:04 Your job is to discard it all, shrug it off immediately.
11:14 The moment you see through their wickedness, the moment you realize the plot.
11:29 So yes, you are right.
11:30 It is something you are going to constantly find yourself in.
11:40 This kind of an interlocking, this kind of a game of chess that was guaranteed, that
11:58 was scripted the day you were born as a human being.
12:07 Life is in one sense you versus your body.
12:19 You versus your body.
12:24 It's a dialectical movement.
12:37 There is you, the consciousness versus you, the body.
12:46 The direction your life takes depends on which of these two sides keeps prevailing.
12:58 Mind you, it would always be the body making the first move.
13:06 Because the first move anyway was made by the body when you were born.
13:14 So you would always be the defender.
13:18 You would always be the one reacting to or responding to the shrewd moves of the body.
13:27 And remember when I am saying body, I mean body-mind.
13:32 The body will make the first move and the move will be unknown to you, very unpredictable.
13:39 So you will take your time realizing what your body is doing to you.
13:44 You will take your time decoding what has been just communicated to you by your own
13:53 physical system, physical mental system.
13:58 The shorter the time, the better.
14:06 And if the realization can be spontaneous, then you have arrived.
14:12 What do you mean by spontaneous realization?
14:15 The body makes its moves and you are so alert, so present, so conscious that immediately
14:24 you see through the moves of the body.
14:29 You say, 'Ahh, I know this is what you are trying baby.
14:33 Sorry, I am not going to fall for it.'
14:53 That's the way it is.
14:55 You are the goalkeeper.
14:59 She has all the penalty strokes.
15:02 You are the defender.
15:03 That's what life is.
15:09 She has no goal post behind her.
15:11 You have a huge goal post behind yourself.
15:16 You need to successfully defend 10 out of 10 times.
15:21 She needs to breach your defense just 1 out of 10 times.
15:28 If you are successful 9 out of 10 times, you have lost.
15:34 If she has failed 9 out of 10 times, she has won.
15:39 To win, you have to win 10 out of 10 times.
15:45 To win, she has to win just once.
15:49 This is tapasya.
15:51 To win, 10 out of 10 times.
15:58 And as the goalkeeper, as a defender, you are left just to respond.
16:05 You do not know where the ball is going to come from and to which direction.
16:23 You look tense.
16:31 Instantly means that the ideal has to always be beyond you.
16:39 The ideal which is being targeted, the point of instantly or instantly recognizing whenever
16:52 you are restrained, that is the ideal.
16:55 You have to be in love with recognition.
17:01 You have to be in love with freedom.
17:03 When you are in love with freedom, then the moment somebody tries to take it away, you
17:17 respond with a jerk.
17:22 Love gives you alertness.
17:30 If you love something, then you might stay alert and awake the entire night to keep it
17:37 secure.
17:40 That's what.
17:49 Love freedom, love truth, love reality, so that when somebody is trying to take these
18:01 away, when somebody is trying to encroach upon your sacred territory, you do not hesitate
18:14 for a moment to spontaneously respond.
18:21 Then there is fearlessness.
18:24 Love alone can make you fearless.
18:32 In the moment, a lot of times in that moment of decision making, there is, there comes
18:37 a certain blankness.
18:41 That blankness can only occupy a space devoid of love.
18:53 If love fills that space up, where is the opportunity for blankness to come and sit
19:07 and squat?
19:10 Because you leave the mental space vacant, so blankness comes and occupies it.
19:19 Don't leave it vacant.
19:23 Is that what love is to not leave the mental space vacant?
19:27 Yes, obviously, because that space just cannot survive vacancy.
19:35 Nothing or the other is necessarily going to fill it up.
19:41 Love is to fill it up with the highest possible to you.
19:51 That option of not having anything in mind is not available.
19:59 A mind totally free of any stuff is the last thing to happen.
20:09 It cannot be an immediate thing.
20:11 It cannot happen today or tomorrow to you.
20:16 Right now you are in a situation where you will definitely have some stuff, some thought,
20:22 some object in the mind.
20:27 Love is to have the highest object in the mind.
20:34 And when you have the highest object in the mind, you will not tolerate somebody substituting
20:41 it with something inferior.
20:45 Are you getting it?
20:51 If this desk in front of me is totally free and you come and keep something on it, I am
21:09 not going to resist.
21:11 Right?
21:12 It's a free desk.
21:16 It's an empty desk.
21:19 The space here is available.
21:23 So you came and kept something on it.
21:25 I don't have a great incentive to resist.
21:30 But what if this table, this desk is full of the great books that I love.
21:44 You have the Upanishads here, you have the great saints here, you have the great philosophers
21:51 there and the surface is fully occupied.
21:58 Now you come and you want to keep some trash on it.
22:04 What will you necessarily have to do?
22:06 You will have to remove some of my books and now love will make me resist.
22:12 That is love and that is the importance of keeping your mental space occupied with the
22:18 highest possible.
22:21 If your mental space is occupied by the highest possible, then you will definitely resist
22:33 somebody trying to play a trick with you.
22:42 But if it's free, then you can come and keep your rubbish here.
22:47 I don't have an incentive to react.
22:49 The space was free, you kept your rubbish here.
23:01 Don't leave your space, your plot vacant.
23:09 It will be taken away, it will be occupied.
23:19 It has to essentially be, all the time is the problem there because even if it is there
23:27 for, even if it is vacant for 5 seconds and that 5 seconds expands.
23:31 Yes, that's true.
23:34 So not much can be done then, it's just that whether it's 5 seconds or 5 minutes, the moment
23:43 you realize something untoward is happening, jam the brakes immediately.
23:53 As long as you don't realize, you are optionless, you are kind of asleep.
24:00 You are asleep and the snake is crawling upon you, can't do much.
24:08 You do not exist to resist, no, you are asleep.
24:13 The moment you wake up, jerk the thing away.
24:23 Again I am using snakes here only symbolically, we have nothing against reptiles.
24:30 Thank you.