Want a life free of suffering? || Acharya Prashant (2024)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Thank you. I tend to be an restless, overactive and anxious overachiever. The main reason

00:17for it seems to be that if I stop, I become in touch with suffering in me. I have understood

00:25that facing this pain is the way to self-knowledge, even if the watching means feeling the hurt.

00:32Still I notice myself behaving repeatedly on this dissociating addictive way. It is

00:39a kind of an autopilot mode and it is exhausting. Could you help me with this? Thank you.

00:46This too is a story. This too is a very convenient part of the fiction that observation of the

00:59continuous desperate movement will bring you suffering. It is not the observation that

01:07brings suffering. Suffering is inherent in the desperate and blind movement and the blind

01:17movement wants to continue itself. Therefore, it has woven a very convenient story, a cock

01:27and bull story which is that if you observe what is happening, then the observation will

01:34give you pain. Does it really pain you? No, it does not. Just this morning I tweeted,

01:41before the tweet ran something like this, before, what is fun? Maya. Maya meaning illusion. So,

01:58when you really don't know stuff, then it sometimes happens that you start decrying fun

02:08itself. You say, no, if you go for fun, then you will land in trouble and all that. The more

02:17interesting part is the second half of the tweet. It said, after, after, what is Maya? Fun.

02:26What is Maya? Fun and that's what I am pointing at. If you can observe the play of Maya in yourself,

02:38it is not really painful. It's a lot of fun. I put it this way sometimes that it's a great thing

02:53to catch yourself red-handed. Catch your own thief red-handed. See, you are already smiling.

03:04There is a certain pleasure in catching somebody else with his pants down. The fellow has been

03:13lying and you just catch him in the act and also click a few pics or make a video. Now you have

03:21irrefutable proof and now the fellow would be begging, no, no, please, please, don't make the

03:25thing public, whatever. So, there is a certain pleasure in that and there is a greater, much

03:32bigger pleasure in catching your own inner thief. See how one deceives herself and in the moment of

03:42deception, you just say, nah, I got you. I can see what you are up to. You are devising that same

03:51story once again. I can catch you. So, that's fun. What is Maya? Fun. Good fun. If you keep

04:01believing that you will experience suffering in the process of self-observation, obviously you

04:08see the result. The result would be that the story will not allow you to see anything and you must

04:16also see very clearly where the story is coming from. The story is coming from the refusal to see.

04:23The refusal to see must have something that represents an argument, something that appears

04:32at least faintly logical. So, this kind of logical argument, so to say, is concocted. If you

04:46look at the wound, it will pain all the more. This is nonsensical, is it not?

04:56On the contrary,

05:01when one develops a taste for humour,

05:09probably this self-observation is the mother of all jokes.

05:16You see what you were pretending to be, not just to others but also to yourself and what you

05:25actually are. And the more dispassionately you look at yourself, the bigger is the laughter.

05:31And really free is the person who can laugh recklessly at herself,

05:51laugh with no care at all.

06:01Why to take oneself so seriously? What hurt, what wound can be so big? When we fully well know that the only thing that really is, is the truth.

06:21Can there be two truths? The truth and the wound? The wound has to be a lie, right? But it will continue to pretend to be the truth as long as you avoid looking at it.

06:35The more you look at it, the more you will see that the wound is just some kind of dressing up that has been needlessly done.

06:51I have wanted to ask you also this, because I know this is also this story, but I tell you still it.

07:02I have this PTSD, this post-traumatic stress disorder, and I go to therapy and some peer support groups.

07:13And I have been thinking that what is it doing to this process of trying to get this self-knowledge?

07:23Because there we are so much talking about that I do suffer and I have this story and there is this pain.

07:33Could you shed some light on that?

07:38There is the pain that you experience and there is the therapy. So there is stuff going on, right?

07:48The more you can, in an uninvolved way, with detachment and abandon, see what is really happening, the more you will find that the therapy works better for you.

08:03In fact, you will be able to more correctly deduce when you are no more in the need of any therapy.

08:12If the disease stands exaggerated, so will the treatment, no?

08:21If my disease is this big, the treatment will have to be proportionately bigger.

08:31What if I discover slowly that the disease is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking?

08:38That will help me opt out of the treatment one day, no?

08:51Don't be afraid. Watch yourself in all the small things that happen.

08:57There is nothing big anyway inside us.

09:01All kinds of puny pettinesses and trivialities, they get together and coalesce to form this thing called the self.

09:13Nothing gigantic, nothing fabulous, nothing overwhelming is there within oneself.

09:19We would want to believe that something enormous is sitting in our heart. Well, there is nothing.

09:28Only very little things are there. Only very little things are there and when you look at them, you are relieved of them.

09:38All those littlenesses are worth some good jokes.

09:47Come up with really, really wicked jokes.

09:52You should be the butt of all your own jokes.

10:00Yeah, humour has helped a lot to be able to laugh at anything.

10:09But still there is this tendency to take this pain too seriously.

10:17It's a mark of both freedom and intelligence, the ability to just suddenly burst out laughing at oneself.

10:26And it's a mark of stupidity and heaviness, dullness.

10:36That one takes himself just too seriously all the time.

10:41Only very dull people do that.

10:44The dull people we find being just too touchy and too sensitive about things like self-respect and such things.

10:54All the intelligent people, they will relish having a crack at themselves.

11:02Socrates it was who said, you know, I am the most stupid person. All I know is that I know nothing.

11:09It takes a Socrates to admit that one is de facto stupid.

11:23Thank you so much. I have been listening to these newer Vedanta English sessions a lot lately.

11:33And it just keeps giving and giving and getting deeper.

11:40I feel like every time I hear something new.

11:44I'm so thankful for this teaching.

11:48I'm glad. I'm glad. Welcome.

11:55No part of this recording may be reproduced

11:57without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

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