Do you know who you worship? || Acharya Prashant, on Bhagavad Gita (2020)

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: Shastra Kaumudi Live, 29.05.2020, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India   Context:  सत्त्वानुरूपा सर्वस्य श्रद्धा भवति भारत।  श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो यो यच्छ्रद्धः स एव सः ॥   The Sraddha of each is according to his natural disposition, O, descendant of Bharata. The man consists of his Sraddha; he verily is what his Sraddha is.  ~Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (Chapter-17, Verse-3)   यजन्ते सात्त्विका देवान्यक्षरक्षांसि राजसाः ।  प्रेतान्भूतगणांश्चान्ये यजन्ते तामसा जनाः ॥   Sättvika men worship the Devas; Rājasika, the Yaksas and the Rākşasas; the others--the Tamasika men-worship the Pretas and the hosts of Bhūtas.  ~Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (Chapter-17, Verse-4)   अशास्त्रविहितं घोरं तप्यन्ते ये तपो जनाः ।  दम्भाहङ्कारसंयुक्ताः कामरागबलान्विताः ॥   Those men who practice severe austerities not enjoined by the Sastras, given to ostentation and egoism,  ~Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (Chapter-17, Verse-5)   कर्षयन्तः शरीरस्थं भूतग्राममचेतसः ।  मां चैवान्तःशरीरस्थं तान्विद्ध्यासुरनिश्चयान् ॥   endowed with the power of lust and attachment, torture, senseless as they are, all the organs in the body, and Me dwelling in the body within; know them to be of Åsurika resolve.  ~Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (Chapter-17, Verse-6)   ~ How do I identify who I am worshipping?  ~ What does it mean to worship?  ~ What is the relation between achievement and worship?  ~ What is the role of sacrifice in worship?  ~ How to find the object of utmost value in life?   Music Credits: Milind Date

Transcript

00:00Shreemad Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 17, verses 3 till 6.

00:21The Shraddha of each is according to his natural disposition, O descendant of Bharat.

00:28The man consists of his Shraddha, he verily is what his Shraddha is.

00:34Sattvic men worship the Devas, Rajasic the Yakshas and Rakshasas.

00:40The others, the Tamsic men, worship the Pretas and the hosts of Bhutas.

00:47Those men who practice severe austerities not enjoined by the Shastras, given to ostentation

00:52and egoism, endowed with the power of lust and attachment, tortured, senseless as they

00:58are, all the organs in the body, and me, dwelling in the body within, know them to

01:05be of Asurika resolve.

01:09Namaste, how do I identify who I am worshipping?

01:17Here Shri Krishna is saying Shraddha of each is according to his natural disposition.

01:22If that is so, how does one elevate the subject of Shraddha from the one given by his natural

01:29dispositions?

01:30What are these austerities that Shri Krishna is referring to in the verses?

01:41How to identify the object of your Shraddha?

01:52How to know who is it that you are worshipping?

02:04You will have to look at your life, actions, decisions.

02:13When we say worship, what do we mean?

02:19We mean holding something as higher than ourselves.

02:28When you hold something as higher than yourself and also you want to achieve it, then the

02:39sense of worship comes in.

02:45The object of your worship has to be tremendously big, beautiful, worth attaining, worth being

02:54one with.

02:57Then the sense of worship comes.

03:00How to know what is it that you are worshipping?

03:03Just see what is it that you are prepared to sacrifice the most for?

03:14What is it that you are prepared to sacrifice the most for?

03:21Look at your value system.

03:24Look at the daily decisions that you make.

03:29What would you give up your food for?

03:33What would you give up your money for?

03:40Keep questioning.

03:42Keep striking out all the stuff that can be given up for something else and keep listing

03:51the stuff that you find so valuable that you are prepared to give up a lot for its sake.

03:59Once you have listed all that you hold to be valuable, then see what is it that you

04:08are prepared to give even these things up for.

04:13What will bring you to the object of your utmost value?

04:19That will bring you to the thing that you value the most and typically it is just one

04:29object that you value the most.

04:33It is almost like a rule.

04:39So you could say, for example, that you value a person the most in your life, right?

04:49Let's say you love someone.

04:51As love goes, you love someone.

04:57And you would say, I am prepared to give everything up for this person.

05:03I have already done that.

05:07I left my society, my family, a lot of money, a lot of conveniences, all of that behind

05:15for this person.

05:19Now what is it that you would probably leave this person for?

05:24No, I won't leave this person for anything in the world.

05:28You might be right.

05:29Probably you won't leave this person for anything in the world.

05:32But what if you have a terrible fight with this person?

05:36No, no, fights come and go.

05:37I won't leave this person.

05:38What if you have a prolonged spell of strife and bad relations with this person?

05:58What if this person says or does something that hurts or offends you?

06:09And such a thing happens repeatedly?

06:11No, I probably still won't give this person up.

06:17Are you serious?

06:20You would still not give this person up?

06:22I am not sure, maybe.

06:24So you see that a fissure is opening up.

06:29You see that the possibility is now showing up.

06:36Ultimately, you are prepared to give up even the one most precious and dear to you for

06:45the sake of preservation of your ego.

06:49And that's what we all usually worship the most.

06:57All other worships are secondary to it.

07:01Are you getting it?

07:06Oh, my teacher is great.

07:08I left the world behind to come to my teacher.

07:11I left a lot of money behind.

07:13I left conveniences behind to come to the teacher.

07:18Now, oh, the teacher is quite a jerk, it seems.

07:27He says nasty things, hurts me, offends me, threatens to beat me up.

07:37So he hurts you and offends you.

07:39Then I am probably on my way to leave the teacher.

07:43So what is it that is higher than the teacher?

07:47That which is offended.

07:50And that which is offended is called the ego.

07:53Ultimately, it's the ego that we worship.

07:57For the sake of the ego, anything can be dropped.

08:01And for the sake of the ego, anything can be attempted to be obtained.

08:07You know, I worship my God the most.

08:15What if your God keeps failing and disappointing you?

08:20No, I don't really foresee how I can drop my God.

08:25He is my favorite God.

08:28Your favorite God, right?

08:30And that which you decide of as favorite can one day be unfavorited as well.

08:44You are the one who tagged the word favorite to that God.

08:54You are the one making the decision.

08:58And if you can make a decision in one direction, you retain the authority to reverse the direction

09:09of the decision, don't you?

09:11If you are the decision maker, the decision can change.

09:15The decision is always subservient to the decision maker.

09:18The decision maker rules the decision.

09:26So that's what we usually worship.

09:30The ego in its several forms, several manifestations.

09:36But then nobody says that I worship the ego.

09:38People say, I worship this, I worship that.

09:42If you conduct a general survey and ask people, what is it that you worship?

09:47And can you list down 5 items, 5 things, objects, people, places, anything that you worship?

09:54Nobody would list the ego.

09:57Would people do that, no?

09:59Nobody.

10:00And nobody would say that I don't have 5 things to worship.

10:05And worship, here we are talking of not necessarily in a religious sense.

10:10Worship is devotion.

10:11What is it that you are devoted to or committed to?

10:13What is it that you hold as high and worth attaining?

10:19So people would be able to put down the 5 things that they worship.

10:26But very rarely would you find the word ego in this list of 5 things.

10:35Why do we worship so many other things if centrally we all worship nothing but the ego?

10:45All these things that we appear to be worshipping are the things that strengthen the ego.

10:53So maybe we do not worship the ego directly but we worship it indirectly by worshipping

10:59the servants of the ego.

11:02And that's an even deeper worship, is it not?

11:07I worship the ego so much that I am prepared to worship all those things that serve the

11:14ego.

11:15In other words, I worship the ego so much that I am prepared to worship the servants

11:20of the ego.

11:22For example, your ego is bolstered by money.

11:25So you may start worshipping money.

11:28For example, your ego is bolstered by some kind of knowledge or by being at a particular

11:33place or by proving a point to the other or by being in a particular way, cultivating

11:40a personality of a particular type.

11:43And you may start doing all those things just for the sake of the ego.

11:49All that is nothing but ego worship.

11:52So generally, whenever you would ask, Sir, what is it that I worship?

11:57I really don't have to think about the answer.

12:03To be born is to be born an ego worshipper.

12:09To be born is to be born with the tendency to preserve the little self.

12:19The little self is born and it wants to remain alive, knowing fully well that being born

12:28it's going to die.

12:30So all its life, all its time, all that it occupies itself with is self-preservation.

12:39Self-preservation because it is always haunted by the spectacle of its imminent demise.

12:49It knows fully well that the end is approaching and fast.

12:58And the end is approaching not merely in the form of physical death.

13:03The end keeps approaching in a thousand ways.

13:11Your concepts, your beliefs, your thoughts, your plans, your projections, your memories,

13:18your relationships, all are proven false by the facts of life again and again, over and

13:27over again on a daily basis.

13:34That's death.

13:36And when death surrounds us from outside and threatens us from inside, then obviously

13:47our central effort is towards self-preservation.

13:52That's what we are doing all the while.

13:57Therefore we worship nothing but the ego.

14:02You have to figure out the ways in which you worship the ego.

14:06You have to figure out the appendages of the ego that you worship.

14:11You have to figure out the concrete ways that apply to your particular case.

14:21Those ways might differ.

14:22One might worship the ego as his beloved wife.

14:28One might worship the ego as his bank account.

14:33One might worship the ego as his political power.

14:36One might worship the ego as his Bohemian ways.

14:43One might worship the ego as the idiosyncrasies of his personality.

14:49All those things can change, the names and forms, the particularities, but the central

14:58fact remains the same.

15:06How does one elevate the subject of Shraddha from the one given by Prakriti?

15:29You say natural dispositions, that is Prakriti.

15:34I have repeatedly said the only method is suffering.

15:40Look at the beauty of Shri Krishna's words here.

15:43He says, you are your Shraddha.

15:49A person verily is what his Shraddha is.

15:53You are the one you worship.

15:58The quality of your being, the quality of your life, is decided by the quality of your

16:07devotion, the quality of your love.

16:11You want to know who you are, just look at the one you really worship.

16:17Just look at the one you are prepared to leave a lot for.

16:24Who is it that compels you to leave even very valuable things behind for its own sake?

16:35That is the one that you worship.

16:38Now don't deny the fact, now don't be ashamed of the object of your worship, admit

16:45that you are worshipping an unworthy object.

16:53All change starts from here.

17:02It's not that we do not ever have or come upon valuable things in life.

17:12There is none so unlucky or impoverished.

17:18We all do get chances.

17:22We all are beneficiaries of grace.

17:26We all do get blessed with, gifted with valuable stuff once in a while.

17:39And then what do we do?

17:42We sacrifice it at the altar of our primitive tendencies.

17:50You had a beautiful thing, and what did you give it up for?

17:57Your lust, or your fear, shame.

18:09Now suffer.

18:24Suffering is the method.

18:35That is one reason why in one major world religion, Christianity, sin and repentance

18:48have a very central position.

18:58You are a sinner, are you not?

19:01See what you have done.

19:02See what you have been continuously doing.

19:04Look at your decisions.

19:07See what you have been trading and for what.

19:12See what you have sold off and at what price.

19:33That is sin.

19:36To give away, sell away or sacrifice the essential for the sake of the inessential, the frivolous,

19:46the fleeting, the temporal, that is sin.

19:51Sin is a decision.

19:57Sin is an act of a clouded consciousness.

20:02Nevertheless, it is an act and therefore the responsibility lies squarely on the actor.

20:13And since the responsibility belongs to the actor, therefore the actor must repent.

20:21That is the only method.

20:23Acknowledge your sin and repent.

20:24That is the only way you advance in your consciousness.

20:29That is the only way the object of your devotion changes.

20:45Don't you daily trade away peace for prestige?

21:01Don't you daily trade away love for comfort?

21:14That is what sin is, a wrong deal, a raw deal, a bad decision.

21:31Acknowledge that your decisions have been false and that it is very tempting to be taking

21:47wrong decisions continuously.

21:53That is the method.

22:12What are the austerities that Shri Krishna is referring to?

22:17Austerity is tap, tap, understand tap?

22:24Tap literally means passing through fire.

22:32Passing through fire so that all that which can be burnt down does get burnt down.

22:42All that which is combustible actually simply burns away.

22:50That is tap.

22:54Tap is to allow the passing to pass away.

23:07Tap is to allow the fleeting to flee.

23:19Tap is to allow the false to fall.

23:31It's a decision, you know.

23:34The false really doesn't need to be forcibly knocked down.

23:41It is ready to fall down.

23:46You stubbornly, diligently uphold it.

23:51You support it, no end.

23:55Tap is to gather the courage and the love to let the false fall.

24:07Why is it called tap then?

24:08Why is it named as passing through fire?

24:13Because when the false falls, it falls with a large part of your being.

24:23It is not the false that appears like falling.

24:28You experience as if a great part of yourself has fallen.

24:34It's almost like death.

24:38Therefore it is being called as tap.

24:44It requires a special kind of integrity and great love which gives courage.

Category

Transcript

Recommended