What Sanatan Dharma is not || Acharya Prashant, with 'Virat Hindustan Sangam' (2021)

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?...   Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl... ➖➖➖➖➖➖  Video Information: 11.11.2021, ASH-Talk (Online), Greater Noida  Context:  ~ What is meant by egolessness?  ~ How to get rid of ego?  ~ If there is no desire for fruit, for whom does one perform that action? ~ How is true religion is important for our lives? ~ What is Sanatan Dharma?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Namaste Acharya ji. Namaste. Welcome one and all. It's a very special session. We have

00:09with us today Acharya Prashanth ji and most of us we know Acharya Prashanth ji very well.

00:19He's an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad and he's also an ex-civil services officer

00:27and I myself have been following Acharya ji for a very long time and what attracted me

00:37more towards his talks was his pure logic. Rather that lecture, the first lecture which

00:45I heard in which he said, how will you recognize God if he comes in front of you? If you have

00:51no experience of God, then how will you recognize even if he is right in front of you?

00:56So that is what, that was the defining moment I can say. And from that time I started listening

01:06to his lectures and I find them very enlightening and I'm sure all of us will be enlightened

01:15further today by Acharya ji. So for some time he will enlighten us and after that there

01:21will be a question and answer session. So I request Acharya ji to please start the session.

01:28Thank you for the kind introduction. There couldn't have been a more important topic

01:51than the one we have at hand today. Sanatana Dharma and Vedanta. So there is Sanatana Dharma

02:06and Vedanta. Sanatana first. All that is can be very neatly, very clearly classified

02:23into three. The timeless, Nitya. The eternal, Shashwat. And the time bound. You could call

02:51that Vyavaharik, Pratibhasik, Mayavi, Kalabhadra, anything. Purely, only the truth is Sanatana.

03:22Sanatana refers to the timeless. That which is beyond time, not even that which does not

03:31change in the course of time, but beyond time. Only the truth really is Sanatana. And what is

03:42the truth? As we said that which is beyond time. How do we know what is beyond time? We first need

03:52to know what is within time. All that the mind can think of, conceptualize, imagine, speak of,

03:59is within the realm of time. So the Sanatana is really beyond the mind's reach. It is beyond the

04:14capacity of the words to describe. That is Sanatana. Now why is that Sanatana topical,

04:25meaningful, significant at all? Because as we are, as the mind is, it is constantly in need of,

04:42in search of, something that is beyond itself. Anything in the world, in the grasp of mind,

04:54simply fails to quench the mind, bring it to rest, bring it to contentment. We said mind is

05:05constantly in a flux. The mind is constantly seeking, searching. So that is Shashwat. That is

05:12eternal. That brings us to the second part of the classification. The first part was the truth

05:22alone is Nitya and Sanatana. Second is throughout the flow of time, there is a certain thing that

05:31is constant. This constancy is the fundamental human tendency. It is the fundamental vritti that

05:42we have. So in a loose way, we could even say that the existence itself is Sanatana. But that

05:59would not be very correct. Only the truth is Sanatana. And then there is the content of mind

06:07which is all time-bound. It rises one moment, it falls the next moment. Now these three exist. We

06:16live, we experience mostly that which is time-bound. Attractions, repulsions, desires, likes, dislikes,

06:26happiness, sorrow, attainment, loss. We live in all that. All that is time-bound. Most people fail to see

06:38beyond things that are a product of time. We are so enamored by them, so captivated by them, so

06:47absorbed, so obsessed in our daily events that it becomes very difficult to look beyond them.

06:58So the first thing, if one wants peace, which is the objective of dharma, is to see what is

07:10constant. And what is constant? Our restlessness is constant. Our search is constant. And what are

07:17we searching for? We are searching for something that is beyond us. So what then is Sanatana dharma?

07:25Dharma asks what to do, how to live. Who am I and hence what should I do? That's dharma. Sanatana dharma

07:40implies your only job, your only task or responsibility is to look for that which is

07:48beyond you. That is Sanatana dharma. Nothing else should concern you. And hence only these two

07:58entities really matter. The truth which is the destination of the seeker and the seeking which

08:13is a constant in the flow of time. What keeps changing? The modes and methods of seeking. The

08:23colors keep changing. The scenes keep changing and the sounds, the background remains constant.

08:30It's as if we are asking for something without knowing what we are asking for. Therefore we

08:40keep asking for it in a thousand unconscious ways. The first step in the dharmic process is to

08:53recognize that irrespective of what we are doing we are asking for just one thing. And the second

09:00step is to see that the one thing that we are asking for is not a thing within time. In fact

09:06it is not a thing at all. That is Sanatana dharma. To understand that irrespective of the period of

09:16time we are living in, the mind has remained the same. Its fundamental tendency is unaltered and

09:27its fundamental tendency is to seek liberation from itself. That is a constant. 50,000 years

09:38back, 5,000 years back, 500 years back today and 500 years into the future, the human tendency,

09:47the fundamental I tendency, the fundamental ego, the mother ego tendency would always be

09:54asking for contentment and fullness, a closure and ending, a final rest. A final rest in the

10:06Sanatana. So that is Sanatana dharma. Doing only that which will take you beyond yourself, beyond

10:12time, beyond your dissatisfaction, discontentment, restlessness. That is Sanatana dharma. Therefore

10:25what cannot be Sanatana dharma? Anything that asks you to take a piece of time-bound concept

10:39as the truth cannot be Sanatana. Anything, for example, any religion that starts with saying

10:49that you have to believe in such and such things if you want to be called a good follower of this

10:59religion, that cannot be Sanatana. Because beliefs are all within the mind and that which is Nitya,

11:12Sanatana is beyond mind. Within the mind there is obviously so much, an entire universe. But

11:20that's of no point because all that is within the mind, we have seen how it fails to satisfy

11:29the mind. So if we come up with a belief and say that this belief is the truth and you believe in

11:36it and you say that I surrender to it unconditionally, then that kind of a thing just

11:46cannot be Sanatana. Similarly, if one is simply following traditions in the name of dharma, that

11:55cannot be Sanatana. Because traditions come and go, we have seen that. Rituals come and go, we have

12:05seen that. That is what separates Sanatana dharma from so many other so-called religious streams.

12:17They might be religious but they are not Sanatana because their allegiance, their devotion, their

12:28loyalty is not towards something that is beyond the mind. They are trying to give a high place, a

12:39lot of value and respect to stuff that is very much within the mind and when you do that, that

12:45might console you, that might even satisfy you for a while, that might help a small or large group of

12:56people to organize below the umbrella of a shared belief. But that kind of a thing is not timeless,

13:06let alone eternal. It is not Sanatana. So Sanatana dharma therefore is very simple. It concerns itself

13:16only with two. One, that is beyond time and the second, that which occupies all of time. Irrespective

13:28of the point of time, one is located or situated or present in. Irrespective of age or gender or

13:42nationality or economic status, there is something common in all of us and that commonality is not

13:53really the truth. It is rather the presence of that which is seeking the truth. Though we do

14:02not in a very obvious way, in a very professed way seek the truth, we rather seek peace. It's

14:15just that we often do not know that there can be no peace without truth. If you ask people what

14:21do you want, they'll say we are stressed out, we need some relaxation, we want peace. Hardly anybody

14:29wants a truth. Though the fact is that you cannot have real peace without truth. Peace that is not

14:37founded on truth proves to be very harmful. So that is Sanatana dharma. To constantly move towards

14:47that which will take you beyond yourself because within yourself there is no peace. That is Sanatana dharma.

14:54Now how is Sanatana dharma related to Vedanta? Vedanta talks exactly of these two only and has no place for

15:07miscellaneous stuff. There is the mind and there is the truth. The mind is referred to in myriad ways.

15:15The truth too is sometimes called the self, sometimes called Brahm, sometimes called Nitya.

15:22But it is very very clear irrespective of the breadth of Vedantic literature that only these

15:32two are really present there. Vedanta does not concern itself with community or you know

15:46identities of various kinds or rituals or practices which is very interesting because the Vedic

15:54corpus starts with Anushthan. Anushthan meaning practice, ritual, Karmakand, a lot of that. That's

16:08how the Vedas start in the mantra part, in the Sangita part and then as they journey through

16:16the Brahmins, the Aranyaks and finally the Upanishads are reached. What you find is a total

16:25absence of prescribed action. There is no emphasis at all on do's and don'ts, on commandments,

16:41on worshiping in a certain way, on sacrifices, nothing. All of that is just gone by the time

16:50we come to the Upanishads. All that is left is a very relentless, very austere, very pure

17:02investigation into the truth by the mind. Only these two entities remain, the truth and the mind.

17:08Mind stuff is discarded as trivial. So truth, Sanatan, Nitya, timeless. Mind, Shashwat, eternal and what is

17:22discarded is mind stuff, Kalabhadra, time-bound. No heed, no respect is paid to what you think of, what

17:33your feelings are, what you are attached to, what you like, what you do not like, where you come from, how much

17:43money you have, how much knowledge you have, what's your gender, which community do you hail from. All these

17:52things are just kept aside. That is Vedanta. Therefore, you would see that what we call as

18:01Sanatana Dharma is nothing but Vedanta itself. One cannot be Sanatani if one is not a Vedanti.

18:12Without Vedanta, there would be the Sanatana. Obviously, the Sanatana is not dependent on anything totally

18:22unconditional, but there would be no Sanatana Dharma. The Sanatana is unconditional, but Dharma is for man to tread and

18:35Vedanta suggests the Dharma that would carry man to Sanatana. So Sanatana Dharma is de facto, Vedanta itself,

18:47Vedanta, the summit of the Vedic literature, Vedanta, the very essence, the juice, the nectar of the Vedas.

19:01That is Sanatana Dharma. I repeat, even as we talk on what Sanatana Dharma is, it is extremely important to

19:14realize, negate and reject what Sanatana Dharma is not. Because unfortunately, in the Hindu fold, there is a lot going on in the

19:28name of Sanatana Dharma. As someone who respects the Vedas, as someone who is absolutely in love with Vedanta, I clarify

19:42here that Vedanta does not concern itself with what we believe in. Culture or civilization or ways of thinking or ways of life or

20:02this or that, Vedanta absolutely dismisses them. It says only that is to be accepted or retained, which helps you move into the truth.

20:17All else is just a burden on the already fatigued mind. So please drop it. So that is Vedanta, pure and simple Sanatana Dharma.

20:49No part of this recording may be reproduced without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

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