Is it love or only attraction? || Acharya Prashant (2021)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 03.07.2021, IIT-Patna session (Online), Greater Noida, U.P.  Context:  ~ How to maintain a good relationship? ~ What is the right time to be into a relationship? ~ What is relationship? ~ How to make relationship healthy? ~ When and how a relationship turns into a toxic relationship? ~ How to choose a life partner?  ~ What is real love? ~ Is live-in relationship sign of degradation of our culture?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 This is Rahul Preetam, 3rd year Mechanical Engineering student.

00:06 And my question would be on relationships.

00:10 Like as a boy, I get attracted to a girl and sometimes that girl might become one of my

00:18 close friends.

00:19 But how can I know whether the feeling I have is true love or physical desires like infatuation.

00:26 Aren't you the best judge, don't you already know?

00:31 You must be having male friends as well.

00:39 So you know what a relationship that does not involve physical attraction is really,

00:51 how it feels.

00:53 I'm assuming here that one is not physically attracted towards his male friends.

01:01 Now here is your female friend and if you are thinking a lot about her physicality,

01:13 then this in itself is clear proof that the relation has a strong physical dimension.

01:20 So that is sufficient.

01:25 What are you relating to the other as and what is it in the other person that you feel

01:37 attracted or related to?

01:41 What is the direction of your thoughts?

01:45 What are you wanting from that person?

01:49 When you think of that person, how do you think of that person?

01:56 And if you think a lot of that person as a body, then you know that the relationship

02:04 has a strong bodily component.

02:09 That's all.

02:10 If I am not able to differentiate between these feelings, like I might end up with a

02:15 breakup or how do I deal with that breakup and come back to the original state?

02:22 See one doesn't break up with friends.

02:27 Have you ever heard the use of the term breakup between friends?

02:41 So if the relationship is really healthy, a person to person relationship, then the

02:51 relationship may change course, the relationship may change color, the strength of the relationship,

03:02 the warmth in the relationship may increase or decrease, but this sort of a thing like

03:11 total breakup is hardly a possibility.

03:16 If breakup involves a total severing of relationship, I'll not speak to you, you'll not speak to

03:26 me anymore, then why would anybody want to do such a thing?

03:34 After all, there was something in the person, I am assuming there must have been something

03:39 in the person that you recently found valuable.

03:46 How is it that valuable thing is no longer of any value?

03:58 So a thing like breakup can happen only when there is a shop and customer kind of relationship.

04:12 As a customer, you enter a shop and if you do not find there what you desire or if you

04:22 do not find your desired stuff at an affordable price, then you just walk out.

04:30 Now this walking out is a breakup because you won't turn back to even look at that shop

04:34 again, you will now hunt for another shop where you can get what you desire.

04:40 So this breakup thing is something that I have never quite fathomed, because it's a

04:50 thing that can happen only in very low quality relationships.

04:59 Friendship cannot really end in breakups.

05:06 I said the color of friendship can change, everything about it can change, but still

05:13 a minimal relationship at least would remain.

05:19 If there is a total disjoining, then it tells something about how the relationship itself

05:32 was in the first place and how was it not healthy.

05:37 So have healthy relationships and what do healthy relationships mean?

05:42 Relationship is healthy when you are not with the other to consume the other, when your

05:51 objective is not really to extract something from the other.

05:59 When you are with the other for the other's welfare and the other is with you for your

06:07 welfare, the two of you are not looking for some kind of exploitation of each other, even

06:21 if it is exploitation, mutual exploitation with consent, even if it looks more like a

06:28 trade-off rather than exploitation, still it is unhealthy.

06:38 So have good relationships.

06:44 Any person, male or female is worth far more than the body.

06:54 If the body remains and that person is worth nothing more, you will very soon find that

07:03 you don't want to have much to do with that person.

07:11 So go for intelligence, go for innocence, go for qualities in a person that make him

07:25 lovable and admirable.

07:27 Those are the things that really mean something.

07:37 And then you won't be so torn within and then we won't have people who move into one

07:47 relationship after the other, ending one relationship, initiating the other and then and this and

07:52 this.

07:53 This is just shopping of some kind and when you shop for people, then you have reduced

08:03 them to unconscious entities, you have reduced them to dead material and that is very disrespectful,

08:12 disrespectful to them and also disrespectful to yourself.

08:14 Don't do that.

08:15 And I have a general question.

08:19 Most of the students are going to darker world because of pornography.

08:24 Could you please give your advice to all these people to get back to brighter world, avoiding

08:30 pornography and achieve their interests?

08:36 Have something to do in life, what other advice can be given.

08:42 If you will have nothing else that really deeply interests you, if you will have nothing

08:54 that really awakens and excites you from within, if nothing of higher order will be available,

09:06 then in the desperation to somehow entertain yourself a little, you will turn to pornography

09:13 and you will start playing with your own body and then you will do all these things.

09:20 These things might not be dangerous or condemnable in themselves, but what they surely indicate

09:35 is that the person has a lot of spare time and purposelessness.

09:44 You are a young man, you have energy and you can be adventurous.

09:56 There is so much in the world waiting for you.

10:00 You can know, you can talk and when the lockdown permits, you can travel, you can read, you

10:11 must read, you can gain skills.

10:15 There is so much in life available to you, great and beautiful things, they are all open

10:24 to you.

10:25 Why isn't your time going there?

10:30 Right now when your body is favoring you, why don't you spend all your energy mastering

10:38 a sport and then when you will return to your bed in the night, thoroughly tired, then you

10:49 will have no passion for stuff like pornography and all and even if it is there, it will be

10:55 greatly reduced.

10:58 But when you are almost living a good for nothing life, the entire day is vacant and

11:10 you have not given yourself any great challenge to live for, then you feel especially attracted

11:22 to those dark things that you talked of.

11:32 [MUSIC]

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