What is Sanatan Dharma? || Acharya Prashant, with 'Virat Hindustan Sangam' (2021)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 11.11.2021, ASH-Talk (Online), Greater Noida  Context: ~ What is Dharm? ~ What is Sanatan Dharma? ~ How is Sanatan Dharm related to Hindutva? ~ Why is Sanatan Dharma needed at all?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 Dharma asks what to do, how to live. Who am I and hence what should I do? That's

00:14 Dharma. Sanatana Dharma implies your only job, your only task or responsibility is

00:22 to look for that which is beyond you. That is Sanatana Dharma. Nothing else

00:31 should concern you and hence only these two entities really matter. The truth

00:40 which is the destination of the seeker and the seeking which is a constant in

00:51 the flow of time. What keeps changing? The modes and methods of seeking. The colors

01:00 keep changing, the scenes keep changing and the sounds, the background remains

01:06 constant. It's as if we are asking for something without knowing what we are

01:14 asking for. Therefore we keep asking for it in a thousand unconscious ways. The

01:25 first step in the dharmic process is to recognize that irrespective of what we

01:32 are doing we are asking for just one thing and the second step is to see that

01:38 the one thing that we are asking for is not a thing within time. In fact it is

01:43 not a thing at all. That is Sanatana Dharma. To understand that irrespective

01:52 of the period of time we are living in, the mind has remained the same. Its

01:59 fundamental tendency is unaltered and its fundamental tendency is to seek

02:07 liberation from itself. That is a constant. 50,000 years back, 5,000 years

02:15 back, 500 years back today and 500 years into the future, the human tendency, the

02:23 fundamental I tendency, the fundamental ego, the mother ego tendency would always

02:30 be asking for contentment and fullness, a closure and ending, a final rest. A final

02:41 rest in the Sanatana. So that is Sanatana Dharma. Doing only that which will take

02:47 you beyond yourself, beyond time, beyond your dissatisfaction, discontentment,

02:57 restlessness. That is Sanatana Dharma. Therefore what cannot be Sanatana Dharma?

03:05 Anything that asks you to take a piece of time-bound concept as the truth

03:17 cannot be Sanatana. Anything, for example, any religion that starts with saying that

03:26 you have to believe in such and such things if you want to be called a good

03:33 follower of this religion, that cannot be Sanatana. Because beliefs are all within

03:43 the mind and that which is Nitya, Sanatana, is beyond mind. Within the mind there is

03:53 obviously so much, an entire universe but that's of no point because all that

04:00 is within the mind, we have seen how it fails to satisfy the mind. So if we come

04:08 up with a belief and say that this belief is the truth and you believe in

04:12 it and you say that I surrender to it unconditionally, then that kind of a

04:22 thing just cannot be Sanatana. Similarly if one is simply following traditions in

04:30 the name of Dharma, that cannot be Sanatana. Because traditions come and go,

04:37 we have seen that. Rituals come and go, we have seen that. That is what separates

04:47 Sanatana Dharma from so many other so-called religious streams. They might

04:56 be religious but they are not Sanatana because their allegiance, their devotion,

05:04 their loyalty is not towards something that is beyond the mind. They are trying

05:13 to give a high place, a lot of value and respect to stuff that is very much

05:19 within the mind and when you do that, that might console you, that might even

05:25 satisfy you for a while, that might help a small or large group of people to

05:33 organize below the umbrella of a shared belief but that kind of a thing is not

05:42 timeless, let alone eternal. It is not Sanatana. So Sanatana Dharma therefore is

05:50 very simple. It consoles itself only with two. One that is beyond time and the

05:58 second that which occupies all of time. Irrespective of the point of time, one is

06:08 located or situated or present in. Irrespective of age or gender or

06:19 nationality or economic status, there is something common in all of us and that

06:27 commonality is not really the truth. It is rather the presence of that which is

06:36 seeking the truth. Though we do not in a very obvious way, in a very professed way

06:45 seek the truth, we rather seek peace. It's just that we often do not know that

06:53 there can be no peace without truth. If you ask people what do you want, they'll

06:59 say we are stressed out, we need some relaxation, we want peace. Hardly anybody

07:05 wants a truth. Though the fact is that you cannot have real peace without truth.

07:13 Peace that is not founded on truth proves to be very harmful. So that is

07:21 Sanatana Dharma. To constantly move towards that which will take you beyond

07:27 yourself because within yourself there is no peace.

07:31 (music)

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