What Women Should Watch Out For || Acharya Prashant, at St. Xavier's, Mumbai (2022)

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: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai   Context: ~ What is real feminism? ~ When should we express our emotions? ~ Who is the worst enemy of women? ~ When should one talk back to their parents? ¬ How to control our emotionality?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Hi sir, my name is Vaishnavi Gaikwad and I'm an FYBSA student. I would like to ask, when

00:10sometimes I do some things and my parents don't like it, of course they will scold me.

00:15So sometimes the matter goes too far and they hurt me. And then I don't talk back to them.

00:26I have never done that till yet. So I feel like if I talk back now, it will hurt them.

00:32So what should I do? Like, if I talk back and if I don't talk back, it's like bottling

00:37up my feelings.

00:43You must talk back, but not from an emotional center. Right? You must be 18, 20, 22, something

00:54an adult now. You have all the rights to engage anybody in a conversation. But engaging

01:03in a conversation is not the same as reacting emotionally. The chances are that because

01:14they hurt you, so you will react. Now don't do that. It's very difficult to say which

01:23of these is worse.

01:28The two options that we usually exercise are, one, we suppress our feelings, we block our

01:35expression. That's the option very frequently chosen and that's also the one you seem to

01:41be choosing. And following this particular option, there is the other one in which there

01:49is an explosion due to continued suppression. When you suppress your feelings and your instincts

01:56for too long, one day they will explode. And when that explosion comes, you know how the

02:08sight of an explosion looks. You only have debris all around. Things shattered and scattered.

02:18Sometimes not all the scattered things are visible to the eyes. They are all within the

02:23mind and there is so much toot-toot. What has happened? Look at the faces and you can

02:32know just by looking at the faces of the members of the family. There has been a civil war

02:40just an hour back. So, we all must, you all must rather, as young people, learn to engage

02:53your parents and your seniors and your teachers. In India somehow the culture has been of authority

03:05and silence. Authority from the senior side and silence from the junior side. And the

03:13direct blowback has been that a lot of the current generation is now becoming extremely

03:22disrespectful and disregardful. Precisely because they have not been engaged, instead

03:29been asked to just shut up. And you cannot have a person shut up till eternity. So, now you have

03:39people look at the kind of manners and etiquette that they display. And then the parents are

03:46horrified, so are the teachers. The kids of this generation, they just know no respect. Look at

03:55how they misbehave with their elders. But then it was the responsibility of the elders to teach

04:03their kids or their students where behavior must come from. Not how they should behave, but from

04:14where they should behave. So, I started my response by saying that you should not behave from your

04:20reactive emotional center. If you feel strongly like bursting out in a particular moment, that is

04:32just not the moment to open your mouth. Withdraw. Equally you cannot stay withdrawn forever. So,

04:42when you know that it's the right time, then speak up. At a time and place of your choice,

04:55respond. That's what they say in the military. When somebody attacks you, obviously he would

05:03be attacking you at a time and at a place where you are weak. That is not the time to engage the

05:09enemy. Of course, I am not saying that parents or teachers are enemies. Just raising a very broad

05:17and loose analogy. So, you do not just react then and there, though you'll be feeling very angry.

05:24Right? An army truck was going and it has been ambushed. But hey, this is not the point to engage

05:32them. Engage them as little as possible and just save your response for a better time. Because at

05:42that moment you will be afraid, you will be angry, you will be hurt from your feeling of being

05:49offended. Very hurtful words will arise. And the mind is a strange thing. It remembers all the

05:58nonsense. Two hours of a hurtful conversation will be remembered over two decades of a relationship.

06:11That's how the ego operates. Two decades of mother-daughter relationship, the ego will choose

06:20to just keep aside. And it will repeat, repeat, repeat to itself those two hours. Not even two

06:29hours, it does not last that long usually. 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes of bombardment.

06:36And every single word, hurt, abuse will be not only remembered but magnified. Your mother said

06:48something in two words. The memory will remember it as two sentences. Even casual glances will be

06:59remembered as weapons in sarcasm. You know she was not just looking at me. She was using her

07:08eyes as weapons. There was so much sarcasm and taunt in the way she glanced at me. And that's

07:15all the work of the ego, right? So do engage your parents. Figure out what is really happening and

07:25then talk to them. It's an art. It's an art. You know when you read the old wisdom stories belonging

07:37to the sages or the gurus or the Buddha, often you come across something very curious. The student

07:46comes up and asks a question. And the teacher does not respond at all. Sometimes the teacher

07:56responds after an entire year. He waits for the right conditions to develop. He knows that any

08:03explanation at this moment will be futile. And then after one year he says, now this is the

08:10answer to the question you had then asked. The teacher is hardly ever seen in a hurry to provide

08:20explanations. Because if you are a real teacher, a teacher of life, it is not your job merely to

08:27give explanations. You want to take the student to a solution. Not merely explain it but actually

08:33solve it. And that requires the right time and the right conditions. The student must be ready

08:41to listen. If the listening is closed, what's the point in speaking so much? And when two people are

08:49engaged in heated arguments, a de facto quarreling, believe me neither of them is listening. And if

08:59that fellow is not listening, why are you speaking so much to him? You are speaking so much. You are

09:05speaking beyond what is needed to be spoken. And not a word is reaching that fellow. And even if

09:11something is reaching that fellow, his receptors are totally distorting it. Because he is receiving

09:21it through his internal filters. And the memory is selectively magnifying and selectively deleting

09:28the chosen parts. Some part is blown up and some part is chosen not to be remembered at all.

09:38I'll give you an example. I would have spoken here like for 15-20 minutes now.

09:43If all of us are asked to pull out a sheet of paper and write down what I have just spoken,

09:50just the salient points, let's say. Sum up what has been said in 10 points, 10 points each,

09:57everyone. You will find quite a lot of divergence. Your 10 points will be at a significant variance

10:09from what she writes or from what he writes. How is it possible? The speaker is one. He has not

10:17said 10 different things to 10 different people. And yet we have heard the speaker differently,

10:22all of us. There would be obviously some overlap, but also a lot of variance.

10:30That's how we are. So wait for the other person to be in the right frame of mind

10:37before you can say something.

10:44These two things if you can get rid of, and that applies to everybody,

10:52not just to you as a person. It's a general answer.

10:57Reactiveness and emotionality. And I'm stressing more on that seeing that I'm speaking to a girl,

11:06to a woman. The way Prakriti, physical nature, has made the two genders and then later on the way we

11:18are conditioned by the society and the education and the various influences.

11:22Girls turn out to be more emotional and more reactive. And that's a serious handicap they face

11:32in life. The problem that I face when I address this issue is that many women take their emotionality

11:42as their strength, whereas it is not. It is something very untamed that arises from the body,

11:51the physicality, the chemicals, the hormones. And one ought to understand it and stay at a

11:57safe distance from it. I'm not saying you must suppress your emotions. I'm saying you must

12:01understand your emotions. And to understand your emotions, there has to be a certain detachment.

12:06If you'll not be able to see that, in spite of all the liberalism and all feminism,

12:13life can still be very hard on one particular gender, unfortunately.

12:24Life can still be very hard on one particular gender, unfortunately. We have come far

12:39from days of open and socially accepted oppression, but still the scales are not even.

12:55They are tilted in favor of one gender and against one particular gender. I do not want

13:05girls to suffer. And the one who causes them to suffer is both outside of them and inside them.

13:16Outside of them are the blind forces of patriarchy and body identification and materialism and

13:24all that. And inside of the woman, the forces of her physicality, they are the ones that cause her

13:35to suffer. Those forces are present within men as well. When I'll speak to men, I address that.

13:44But right now, since I'm speaking to a woman, it becomes very important.

13:48Do not locate your enemy just outside of yourself. Probably a bigger enemy is lurking within

13:58and that enemy is your own emotions, your own tendency to quickly react.

14:06And a lot of that has to do with insecurity as well. Because we do not educate and raise our

14:14girls well and wisely enough. So they are left feeling helpless, powerless and therefore insecure.

14:24And when you are insecure, then you will be even more emotional and even aggressive.

14:33When you are afraid within, then you become violent in many ways, explicit and implicit.

14:38Do not let all that happen to you. Life is too valuable to be wasted away in periods of

14:49emotional trauma and neurosis and fragmented mind. Something is saying, this is right. One part is

14:59saying, I love my parents. One part is saying, no, they offend me. I have to do something about it.

15:05One part is saying, family is important. The other one says, career is important.

15:09And all that is quite a lot of torture to handle. Do not let that happen. That's the reason why

15:17wisdom literature is essential and more important for women than for men.

15:22Because they are the ones who stand to lose more, who are more often than not the

15:32targets of aggression. Therefore, they are the ones who must have more centered minds.

15:42Make sure you do not get lost in the material and consumerist forces and that you pay adequate

15:51attention to the setting you might write. Sort it out and keep it centered.

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