The world is all messed up! How do we live here? || Acharya Prashant, IIT-Madras (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00My question is about life. How long we should wish to live. I mean, I'm getting a reference

00:19from one of my textbooks during my school days. There was a shloka, I don't know from

00:26where it was picked up, but in Sanskrit books, like random shlokas, there is a chapter in

00:31which they mention shlokas from different spiritual books. So in that, my teacher told

00:47me that it is saying that one should wish to live for a hundred years doing work.

00:54So that's Vedanta, that's coming from the Upanishads. That's not a random shloka. That's

01:01an Upanishadic shloka. I think it's the Isha Vasa, if I'm not mistaken. Can somebody Google?

01:10This is the Isha Vasa. Yes. This is the Isha Vasa.

01:16So I mean, my question is, what is that work or Karan they are talking about and do I really

01:22need to wish to live for a hundred years, given that the current situation of the world,

01:27like every second I'm living, I'm like, some way or the other, disturbing this whole universe.

01:32I mean, not maybe the whole universe, but at least the world.

01:38Humans can never be great once you are born as a human being. They are not great today

01:52and they were not great even then. This verse is around 2,500 years old. And even then,

02:09the seer, the Rishi sees that there is a need to live for a hundred years because that's

02:17the time that a certain project demands. You cannot be over with great projects in a jiffy.

02:28Can you? Can you just prepare for the JEE for five days and get in? Difficult, difficult.

02:39So there is a much, much bigger project that demands your entire lifetime. And that project

02:50is not the project of happy living with a lot of consumption and self-gratification.

03:01No, that's not the project called life. That project is called liberation, project liberation.

03:10I said, you cannot ever be in a great situation once you are born because one is born into

03:22bondages. That's the Upanishadic view. What is the bondage? Ignorance is the bondage,

03:30lack of knowledge. Once you are born, what do you know? Think of the baby, the newly born baby.

03:40What does she know? Nothing. And that state of ignorance continues throughout life. We do not

03:51know what this universe is all about. We do not know who we are. We do not know what kind of

03:56relationships to have and with what particular objects. We do not know what decisions to make.

04:02We do not know how to proceed in life. And all that has been cumulatively called as sorrow,

04:09dukkha. That's also the Buddhist view. Vedanta and Buddhism conquer on this one. They say the

04:19beginning is sorrow and therefore the end has to be liberation from sorrow. That's project

04:28liberation from you. Man, when I say man I mean human beings, is born into sorrow. The world

04:37itself is called dukkhalaya, a place of sorrow. And they are not being unnecessarily pessimistic

04:43or cynical. They are seeing it. They are seeing that everybody is suffering and a lot of that

04:50suffering is needless. It is just coming from our useless preconceptions, false notions,

04:58lack of right knowledge. And that needs to be then removed. Our false notions need to be scrapped.

05:08Our superstitions and all the beliefs that we hold about life, we need to get rid of them. And it's

05:15not easy to get rid of them because we got those beliefs from somewhere. There are several supply

05:24lines that are delivering nonsense to our mind. So project liberation then widens into the project

05:37of liberating everybody. Because as long as those supply lines are active, they will keep draining

05:45garbage into your mind. Please understand. If I understand but others do not, then I am related

05:55to others in such a way that they will keep pulling me down. They will not allow me to rise

06:02in liberation. So the Upanishads say that the purpose of your life is liberation of the self

06:14and welfare of others. Now neither of these objectives is easy to meet and these two go hand

06:24in hand. Your own liberation and the extent to which you can be of use to others. These two go

06:30hand in hand and they are not easy to accomplish. Therefore one needs hundred years to ceaselessly

06:39strive. That's what the verse is saying. You need hundred years. Obviously if you are charismatic,

06:48you might accomplish it in a smaller time. But that does not usually happen. So let's simply

06:53play safe and demand the entire quota of hundred years. Chances are even the hundred full years

07:02will prove inadequate. So immense is the task at hand. What are the implications? If even hundred

07:15years are going to be insufficient, where is the time to waste? Tell me. If even hundred years are

07:24insufficient and you are not going to have hundred years, given the state of the world, neither you

07:30nor me will go that far. First of all we will have 60-80 something if we are lucky and even in

07:40that 60-80 we spend a lot of time just snoozing and gossiping and idling and wasting in all

07:50possible ways. That's what that verse is supposed to caution you against. Even hundred years are

07:59insufficient, from where have you found time to waste, son? That's what the seer is asking you,

08:07rather reprimanding you. One has to understand the purpose of life before one can understand

08:17the meaning of this verse. Life is not for the purpose of self-gratification. Life is not so

08:25that you get a cozy job from the campus or you get into an MS or an MBA program and go out and

08:33make big dollars. No, the Upanishads don't forbid that. They say do that if you want to do that,

08:42but remember that is not the purpose of life. If all that happens along the way, fine. If all that

08:49aids the process of your inner enhancement, fine. But that cannot become an end in itself.

09:00Getting it? When you realize who you are and what you are born for,

09:05then suddenly you are struck with the immensity of the challenge in your face.

09:13It's a colossal challenge because we are not human beings. We are masses of ignorance. The

09:29scriptures put it euphemistically and say that it is ignorance that is born and ignorance that

09:38speaks and breathes and walks about. Just a huge bundle of ignorance. That's what a human being is

09:50and that ignorance is sorrow. It's just that we get so used to that sorrow, so acclimatized that

10:00we start taking it as normal. Because you would want to question that if there is an all-pervasive

10:08sorrow, why aren't people yelling and shrieking and beating their chests and running somewhere

10:15to just give up their lives? If indeed the sages of Vedanta and the Buddha were right, because

10:24Buddha said, you know, his first noble truth is sorrow. Sarvam Dukham. Life is sorrow. If that

10:35indeed is the case, why don't we find people shrieking and weeping? Because as human beings

10:44we have a very unfortunate capacity, the capacity to get adjusted, the capacity to get acclimatized

10:53or conditioned. So if you remain in a particular state for very very long, you start taking that

11:00as normal. But the fact is what you take as normal is not your nature. There is a difference between

11:13your behavior and your nature. Classically it is called as the difference between vritti and

11:22sobhav. Sobhav is your real nature which remains hidden beneath heaps of conditioning and we get

11:37so deeply conditioned that we lose all, for want of a better word, memory of our true nature. We

11:49start behaving as if this daily getting up and washing your face and just going randomly to

11:57some place and cheating in exams and, you know, then sending spam to somebody or receiving nonsense

12:09from somebody and going and just slapping somebody from behind. We start behaving as if all this is

12:19our nature, as if this is what we are born for. Think of human life, the ordinary human life,

12:25keep the few exceptions apart. What does a normal human being do apart from this?

12:34Nonsense from morning till night and then more nonsense in the dreams. Right? So first of all

12:47you have to see that this is not what you are here for. This is the way animals operate. Living

12:55for the sake of absolutely nothing. Go and ask a buffalo what it lives for. It will look at you

13:02with great wonderment, rather amusement. What a silly question. Purpose of life. The same kind

13:09of look you will get from most so called human beings as well. You just ask them what is the

13:14purpose of life and you will be wondering whether it is a man or a buffalo you are looking at. The

13:23same kind of looks you will get. Purpose? The purpose is to eat and get fat and have sex and

13:35produce calves and have some kind of a lord who will milk you and feed you in return. Is that

13:52not the life of most people? You will go to some corporate master and he will milk you. Not

14:01physically obviously and then he will feed you and you will feel so grateful. You will display

14:14your whatever n-figure salary to everybody and you will say you see I am so lucky. But how is

14:22that different from being a milk cattle? And there have been certain people who have asked

14:31this question and it is only those people who have really lived on this planet. All the others

14:38like us we are just somehow surviving. They have asked is this what I am here for? To graze

14:51and to be chained and to deliver some output and to be fed in return. You know buffalos they

15:06cannot even breed at will. The master decides when they will get pregnant and how many times.

15:14You must know that that too is the story of most of mankind. Even such intimate decisions

15:29are never individual. Somebody else decides all these things for us and we accept those

15:41things consciously unconsciously. Sometimes we don't even know that we have accepted those

15:45things. That is sorrow. It's just that you know because it happens continuously so we have lost

15:54sense of it. The purpose of life is to beat this sorrow and Vedanta says, Buddha didn't go that

16:05far but Vedanta says the purpose of life is joy. The purpose of life is joy and if you cannot get

16:16to that joy, you have wasted. And that's the reason why those hundred years are being prayed

16:26for. Not so that you can have a good time. The general urge to keep just living on that is called

16:37in the scriptures as Jijivisha. Jijivisha too guides you to have a longer life. You go to any

16:47dying person and he'll say I want to live longer. No that's not the kind of desire being expressed

16:53in this shloka. Not the usual quest to live a few more years. That's not what is being expressed.

17:03Here you are asking for time so that you can complete the project and the project is not

17:13consumption. The project is liberation and this is called Mumuksha. Mumuksha is the desire to

17:24be liberated. Jijivisha is the desire to just live on so that you can consume more and more.

17:30The verse has to be interpreted rightly. So if I may connect it. So right now I'm doing physics

17:42and the reason I chose, I mean it was not randomly allocated, I chose this branch. The reason was that

17:49I wanted to work for fundamental sciences to gain more knowledge and to give more knowledge to the

17:56world. That was my main motivation at that point of time. I think that's kind of more or less same.

18:04So am I going somewhere in the right direction or should I be cautious at some point of time?

18:10See anybody who makes any choice all by himself, all for himself is for sure going right and when

18:24in the Indian society someone consciously opts for science, chances are that the decision is

18:34auspicious because the Indian society does not really respect science. We have respect for

18:44religion and we have respect for technology. But we have disrespect for spirituality and we have

18:51disrespect for science. So if you have chosen science wonderful, the challenge would unfold

19:00here on. Can you stick to your guns? Because in the sciences, in the pure sciences or basic sciences,

19:11still in India there is not much. So you will find all these chaps around you, they are you know

19:19walking away with fat packages and then it will be your moment to be with the seer,

19:32the one who came to you during your school days. So I have seen a lot of people succumb at that

19:40stage. Does not matter the stream you come from. You start opting for consulting or finance or

19:48information technology or something else you know that is trending. So you will be tested,

19:56you will be tested and I pray that you pass the test, not just pass it but pass it again

20:06and again and again because the test is continuous and you keep passing it for 100 years.

20:10Thank you so much. It means a lot to me. Thank you sir.

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