Is life pre-destined? || Acharya Prashant, with IIT Bombay (2021)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?  Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...    Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?  Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   Video Information: 24.10.2021, IIT-Bombay session (Online), Rishikesh   Context:  Are you afraid about your future?  How to overcome the fear of the future?  What is fear?  What is fear of failure?  Is there any scriptures who says everything is predestined?   Music Credits: Milind Date

Transcript

00:00The question is, there are some scriptures in the Hindu texts which suggest that everything

00:07we do is predestined and we are actually controlled by Brahman.

00:11So if that is the case, what are the incentives for me to put my hard work in my life?

00:16No, no, there is no such scripture, please.

00:20Or if there is, I do not know, kindly come and quote.

00:27At least over the last one decade, in fact more than that, I have been absorbed in scriptures

00:37and never have I come across anything that suggests that Braham controls the strings

00:44of this universe.

00:45No, no way.

00:47All that is just popular iconography.

00:52Those things are figments of popular culture and imagination.

00:57This is not spirituality.

01:00This is some kind of fatalism that Vedanta has nothing to do with.

01:11You as you are, are the ego, right?

01:17First thing, you as you are, are the ego.

01:21And the ego is characterized by choice.

01:25If there is no choice, the ego is gone.

01:29So you have choice.

01:33Nobody is operating you through a remote control from some other look.

01:40You have choice.

01:41Now that choice can be a boon or a bane.

01:45It depends on you.

01:47Choose rightly and life is heavenly.

01:54Choose wrongly and you will live as commoners do, right?

02:02So you are aham, aham.

02:06And aham is aham precisely because it at least thinks it has choice.

02:14And you are choiceless in having a choice.

02:18Even if you tell yourself you don't have a choice, it is a choice you have made, right?

02:26You are condemned to be a choosing agency.

02:31So choose rightly and do not play the dirty game of attributing your wrong choices to

02:39some God.

02:42If you suffer today, it is because somewhere you have been making wrong choices.

02:46Now do not say this is what God has had in store for you.

02:49No, no, no, no, no.

02:51It's not about your horoscope or God or something, something, no.

02:55Don't even call it a random event.

02:58Random events can inflict pain on you.

03:01Suffering is always a choice.

03:04You chose wrongly, therefore you suffered.

03:07Getting it?

03:11Advaita Vedanta is a thing of immense power, immense power.

03:19It takes away everything that is feeble within you.

03:26It won't allow you to continue feeling a victim of circumstances.

03:36It will take away everything from you that makes you lifeless, dull, insipid, fragile,

03:46fearful, none of that will be allowed to remain.

03:53That's Vedanta for you and that's why Vedanta is the mother of all Indian philosophies and

04:00religious streams.

04:02Irrespective of where you are coming from in India, directly or obliquely, you are a

04:10Vedanti.

04:11In fact, I dare say that everything in the world that is beautiful today has actually

04:18its philosophical roots in Vedanta.

04:24If there is something that can be called as the core of Indian religion, rather all religiosity,

04:33it is Vedanta.

04:36You can't be religious if you do not have anything to do with Vedanta.

04:44And if you are religious, then you are a Vedanti even if you haven't ever studied Vedanta.

04:56Vedanta is the very essence of religion, Vedanta is spirituality itself.

05:08I didn't say one particular religion, I said religion, dharma.

Category

Transcript

Recommended