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Video Information: Shabdyog session, 22.05.2019, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India

Context:
Even when living without any support and eager for achievement,
the stupid are still nourishing samsara,
while the wise have cut at the very root of its unhappiness.
~Ashtavakra Gita (Chapter-18, Verse-38)

नायमात्मा बलहीनेन लभ्यो न
च प्रमादात्‌ तपसो वाप्यलिङ्गात्‌।
एतैरुपायैर्यतते यस्तु विद्वांस्तस्यैष
आत्मा विशते ब्रह्मधाम ॥
This Self cannot be won by any who is without strength,
nor with error in the seeking,
nor by an askesis without the true mark:
but when a man of knowledge strives by these means
his self enters into Brahman, his abiding place.
~Mundaka Upanishad (Chapter-1, Section-2, Verse-4)

~ What's the main reason you're unhappy?
~ Why does liberation require strength?
~ Why does the ego not reflect back to itself?
~ How is the life of a human?
~ What is the ego?

Music Credits: Milind Date
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Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00Acharyaji Pranam, Ashtavakra Gita, Chapter 18, Verse 38.
00:15Even when living without any support and eager for achievement, the stupid are still nourishing
00:24samsara while the wise have cut at the very root of its unhappiness.
00:33Dear Acharyaji Pranam, Is the root here the ego?
00:38And if the ego is without any support, how can it still continue to nourish samsara?
00:45Even when living without any support and eager for achievement, the stupid are still nourishing
00:55samsara while the wise have cut at the very root of its unhappiness.
01:02Yes, you could say the root is the ego, Subhankar.
01:21Then you are saying, and if the ego is without any support, how can it still continue to
01:26nourish samsara?
01:29It's a very good question, please answer it.
01:43How do you manage to live?
01:56It's almost like asking, why was I shrieking in the dream?
02:06Because you were in a dream.
02:13It's only now that you can say that the dream was a dream.
02:21In the dream, you hardly took the dream as a dream.
02:29When you are with Anashtavak, when you are sending over questions to me, then you come
02:40up with the fantastic revelation that the ego is without any support.
02:48But look at your dream-like day-to-day life, there do you realize that the ego is without
02:56any real support?
02:59In your dream, all appears so real.
03:07In your everyday life, all that the ego creates appears so real.
03:19The ego itself appears to be the foundation of your world.
03:27That is why the world stands, otherwise having seen that the foundation is non-existent,
03:36your world would have collapsed.
03:39The very fact that a personal world stoutly stands erect for you, testifies that for you
03:58its foundation is not unreal.
04:02You are inhibiting that world.
04:11You are living in that building.
04:15Would you ever live in a building if you fully well knew that it has no foundation?
04:25But not only do you live in the building of your sansar, you invest a lot in it.
04:33You decorate it.
04:35In that same building is your house and your office.
04:41Would you build your house and your office in a building that has no foundation?
04:50But you have done that and if you have done that, what does it prove?
04:55That you assume that the building has a very solid foundation.
05:01So now you are saying that the ego has no support Acharyaji.
05:08But look at your actions and your decisions.
05:12They prove that you think that the ego has a lot of support.
05:19What is the ego?
05:20Please tell me.
05:22The ego is your sense of yourself.
05:30The ego is your sense of yourself because it's not you.
05:36It is your sense of yourself.
05:48You are walking along an empty street in the middle of the night.
05:53Nobody around you.
05:54Nobody to really disturb you.
05:56Nobody to talk to you.
05:57Nobody to point to you.
06:02Nobody to intercept you.
06:10Nobody to remind anything to you.
06:15And still do you see how much keeps going on in the mind?
06:23That's the ego.
06:35All might appear all right around you in your body and yet your mind might be very,
06:50very laden, very gloomy, burdened and distraught.
07:05That's the ego, your sense of yourself.
07:15It does not have any foundation.
07:18It has no reality.
07:20It is not grounded in anything objective or metaphysical.
07:28It just needlessly exists.
07:30You can walk through that empty lane even without the buzz in the head.
07:44The buzz in the head serves no real beneficial practical purpose, but it still exists.
07:55Like the buzz in the minds of many of you right now, even as I speak, does it serve
08:04any purpose?
08:09You do far better to just shut down the buzz and simply listen, but the buzz refuses to
08:17be shut down.
08:19That's the ego.
08:21It needlessly exists and makes itself feel indispensable.
08:31Without me, how would things work?
08:33As if without all the internal chaos, you cannot walk through that street.
08:43Can you or can you not?
08:46But if you ask the ego, the ego would say, how dare you dismiss me and keep walking when
08:52something so very important is pending for you.
09:00So even as you walk, you must attend to the very important matter that I am presenting
09:05to you.
09:11Walking then becomes a sideshow.
09:15The center stage is occupied by the inner buzz.
09:24Does that happen or not?
09:30That's the ego.
09:31The ego of all important matters, the ego of things momentous, the ego of heaven and
09:50hell, ego of life and death, ego of urgencies, ego of emergencies, ego that does not allow
10:08you to do one thing straight in life because it always presents you with too many things
10:19too important to not to consider.
10:27And as you slowly get lost considering those greatly important things, that which is real
10:45keeps fading away from your inner radar.
10:52All that is inconsequential becomes your life.
10:58Reality turns into a distant star to be seen, to be coveted, but never to be had.
11:10One thing that ensures that the ego continues is its great weakness.
11:24It is not the ego's strength that enables it to continue, but its great handicap.
11:34What is that handicap?
11:36The ego has no power to observe itself.
11:41The ego cannot self-reflect and that enables it to continue.
11:47The ego cannot know itself.
11:50Had it had the faculty to know itself, it would have simply collapsed.
12:01It is quite strange, but it is the blindness of the ego that helps it survive.
12:12And that is why the day the ego comes to learn about itself, it finds nowhere to hide.
12:26And therefore the ones who know the least about themselves would be the ones who would live the longest.
12:42As you grow in self-knowledge, you find that death is nearer and nearer.
13:08So bad news, Subhankar, your D-Day just came closer by a couple of years, a few more months
13:35with me and you would probably be ready to take off.
13:47Bad news.
13:48While addressing one of the answers, you said that ego continues just because it is weak
14:09and that is what urges it to continue.
14:13In one of the scriptures, I came across a sentence, where balheen or the strength has
14:23been referred to what, basically the ego itself.
14:27So how are these things linked?
14:31I said the ego is weak, it has a handicap and what is that handicap?
14:36That it cannot look at itself.
14:40That it has no capacity to self-reflect.
14:42That is what I called as the weakness.
14:45So if you have no capacity for self-knowledge, if you have no capacity to look at yourself
14:50and know who you are, then would you ever know how weak are you?
14:59So the ego, in spite of being weakless, supportless, foundationless, rootless, keeps thinking and
15:08assuming that it is strong.
15:14Actually it is, but it takes itself to be and the illusion continues because the ego
15:24cannot know itself.
15:36And hence, because it cannot know itself, hence the truth is not available to it.
15:52And then it keeps wondering, it says, the truth should not have been available only
15:56to the balheen, to the powerless one.
15:59Who am I?
16:00The powerful one.
16:01Why is the truth eluding me?
16:04You think that you are powerful, you are not.
16:08The very fact that the truth is not available to you proves that you are powerless.
16:16But then instead of admitting that you are powerless, you keep struggling with the contradiction
16:23or a supposed contradiction that in spite of being so powerful, why do I not get the truth?
16:31If you do not get the truth, that merely means that you are not powerful, happens.
16:50There was a time when re-checking of board papers used to be free, for free.
17:03But that brought in a deluge of re-examination requests, rather re-checking requests.
17:10People would not say that I did not do well, they would say there lies a contradiction,
17:21I did well, but the marks are not as per the expectations.
17:28It's another matter that 99% of the re-checking requests proved to be of no avail.
17:37There were people who would attempt 70 marks worth questions and would be surprised when
17:48they would get 72, they would say we were expecting 85.
17:55Having attempted questions worth 70 marks, they would find it highly surprising that
18:01they got only 72.
18:07So finally the board authorities realized that a fees has to be kept, the fee was kept
18:18high enough to deter some of the daydreamers.
18:27We do not look at the hard facts, we operate from the center of our assumptions.
18:37So we say my assumption has to be the truth and if the fact does not tally with my assumption
18:44then there is something wrong with the fact.
18:46Now the fact is a fact, how can there be something right or wrong with the fact?
18:50The fact is an objective reality, you cannot quarrel with it.
18:57Obviously if something within you is in disagreement with the fact, then the thing within you has
19:05to be challenged and scrutinized and changed, but we don't want to do that, that's ego.
19:14The I assumption which has no grounding in fact but still exists, could we learn to really
19:28live by facts alone, sans any spirituality?
19:48That too would lead to liberation.
19:55Just living by facts alone is in itself liberation.
20:05But we live in a dirty contradiction, a chaotic mess, sometimes respectful to the fact, sometimes
20:19siding with the assumption, never fully knowing which way to go.

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