Video Information: 15.04.2022, IIT-Delhi, Delhi
Context:
~ What work to choose in life?
~ Should one seek social validation while choosing work?
~ How important is money while choosing work?
~ Why do we often underestimate the circumstances?
~ Which work is the best to do?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#acharyaprashant #IIT-Delhi #IIT-D
Context:
~ What work to choose in life?
~ Should one seek social validation while choosing work?
~ How important is money while choosing work?
~ Why do we often underestimate the circumstances?
~ Which work is the best to do?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#acharyaprashant #IIT-Delhi #IIT-D
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Pranam Acharyaji, my question is regarding global warming. As you have talked in various
00:14videos that the root cause of global warming is nothing but more and more consumption.
00:19So when we come to our final year, the companies come and they spend opportunities. They offer
00:26a lot of money and they pick up the best minds. And so the people who don't want to be a part
00:32of this game, who want to work towards the green environment and don't want to be a part
00:39of this, they sometimes feel helpless because the enemy is getting bigger and bigger. And
00:45it's very hard for us to, you know what, sometimes we feel that most of the time we just go with
00:52the flow, most of the people. They think that okay let's go in the company itself. My question
00:59is how we should mold ourselves so that we don't get distracted from doing what is right
01:06instead of just going with the flow. My second question is regarding being a technical student.
01:13Sir, we usually don't come to know about Vedanta and Upanishads and how we can promote
01:20the ideologies which Vedanta teaches us. For example, I came to know about Upanishads
01:27when I came, when I got admitted to the IIT Delhi, before that I had no idea.
01:34You see, yes, companies come to the campus and they offer you fat checks and most of
01:47these companies are indeed involved in stuff that only exacerbates climate change. That's
02:05true. There might be one odd exception, right, but mostly the kind of goods and services
02:17most big corporations are providing are only worsening the state of climate change. So
02:29you say you know that and yet you feel a lot of pressure to go with the flow. The pressure
02:41is not from the flow. The pressure is from our very old basic physical tendencies. Even
03:03the little kid is greedy. You may have fat offers here that make you shiver in your legs.
03:25You go to another student probably from an ordinary campus and if they are getting an
03:36ordinary offer, that offer means much the same thing to them as your offers mean to you.
03:47It's not that the package is so large that it has overwhelmed you. We are born with the tendency
04:04to value our physicality much more than goodness. Money is something that appeals to our physicality.
04:19You join the company, right? You get the signing or joining bonus. You get your first salary.
04:29What do you do with it? You uplift your consciousness. Your understanding deepens.
04:37Your field of love widens. You become a simpler individual. What happens when you start earning?
04:49What is it in your life that changes? I am asking you, does your consciousness improve?
04:59Do you grow in compassion? Do you turn friendlier? Do you start understanding the world and life
05:12with more clarity? Does that happen? No, that does not happen. Yet something changes. What changes?
05:21You go and buy better clothes. You go and get a car. You get a well-furnished apartment.
05:33Or you take a chunk of that money and give to your parents. Don't you see all of these are in the domain of physicality?
05:44I got good clothes for myself. I got a car that hosts my body.
05:57I took the money and gave it to my physical parents who gave this body.
06:05What an apartment! And I am now visiting better hotels and restaurants.
06:15What is food all about? The body and the taste. We are born like that.
06:26And every single creature, no animal is born like that.
06:33Which animal have you seen valuing consciousness over physicality?
06:42No animal, right? And the closest example, if you want to understand your own condition,
06:49I said is the human baby. You teach something to the baby, you might find reluctance.
06:57You will almost definitely find reluctance. You give the baby something to eat,
07:04you will find instant acceptance. Oh, the thing has to be tasty.
07:10You have to be pushed to go to the school. Nobody pushes you to come to the dining table.
07:23Nobody pushes you to sleep. Have you ever set an alarm to fall asleep?
07:31Please tell me. I have set an alarm for 10 p.m. so that I can fall asleep at 10 p.m.
07:38Does that happen? No. First of all, you don't set an alarm to fall asleep.
07:43Secondly, even if you set the alarm to wake up, the sleep does not want you to wake up.
07:50That's our physical constitution. That's the way we are born. Are you getting it?
07:57We cannot fight our cells, our DNA. It is there in our DNA.
08:10It is there in the DNA of every animal to value physicality a lot.
08:17However, Homo sapiens are unique in a sense. We are animalistic, but we are not only animalistic.
08:30We are animals, but there is something in us that transcends animals.
08:36We have consciousness that aspires for heights. It has a vague restlessness.
08:50It understands that merely satisfying the body cannot be the purpose of life.
08:56There has to be something higher. So it searches for answers.
09:00What is that? What is that? What is that? Yes, there has to be something higher in life.
09:04Merely earning money and fattening yourself, getting better food, better apartment, better cars,
09:13better prospects in marriage, better sex, that alone cannot be life.
09:18There has to be something else, something higher to life.
09:21Our consciousness is looking around to get the answers.
09:27And to whom does it go to get the answers? Only to the people it sees around.
09:32It goes to the parents, to the teachers and to the influences coming from media.
09:38And there it asks, please tell me, what do I do in life?
09:42Please tell me. I have a vague idea. I have an inkling that life has to be beyond the physical compulsions.
09:53But what is it that is beyond the physical compulsions? Please tell me.
09:57And what does our education system tell us?
10:00Well, beyond your physical consumption, physical compulsions is societal respect.
10:08Do all the things that will make the society respect you.
10:14Now a fat pay package is something that the society attaches value to.
10:18So you say fine, now this is the purpose of life.
10:21It is another matter that as we just explored, the fat pay package is nothing but an extension of our animalism.
10:35Money can be used for the upliftment of consciousness, but that's not what we use it for.
10:41Money basically means the body.
10:48So this human consciousness then gets very focused on doing all the things that society teaches it.
10:58We call that as civilization and we call that conditioning as culture.
11:06And we think that our civilization and culture make us different from animals.
11:14We do not realize that our cities are an extension of the jungle.
11:21And our culture is an extension of our animalistic tendencies that we are born with.
11:31And that's the drama that gets played out everywhere, including in campuses.
11:40So just as in the jungle, you have various kinds of animals competing with each other for food, for trophy, for hunt or for sex.
11:54You find the same scenario being played out in a more sophisticated and civilized way in corporate offices and academic campuses.
12:06There the animals are competing with each other to get the largest share of the kill.
12:15A zebra has just been hunted down and hyenas and all kinds of other predators.
12:26There are vultures, there are lions.
12:29They all want to have the biggest share.
12:33Equally in the campus, we want to have the biggest offer.
12:37The jungle is not distant from us because the jungle is within us.
12:46We came out from the jungle.
12:50But the jungle lives within us.
12:54Outside we feel there is no jungle, there is only concrete.
12:57But within there is just the jungle.
13:00A very sophisticated jungle, however.
13:03Rare is the individual who understands this and says I am not born to live and die an animal.
13:12I cannot do all those things that animals anyway do.
13:17Think of the entire life cycle of the average human being.
13:21Is he doing anything that animals do not do?
13:26For us having a good house of our own is such a big priority.
13:34You look at any species, they all attach great importance to building their nest or owning their cave or whatever.
13:47And they fight with each other for territorial rights.
13:51This is my place, how dare you come to this place?
13:54Even street dogs, they mark their zones.
13:58Have you seen them lifting their legs and marking their area?
14:03That's what human beings too are doing.
14:05It's just that to dogs, we are very condescending.
14:09We say these are just street dogs.
14:13When the dogs mark their territory, how is that very different from the boundary walls of our homes?
14:21Please tell me.
14:27It's just that animals do not have much of intellect.
14:31So they cannot plan too much for the future.
14:34We plan for the future as well.
14:42Are you getting it?
14:44So when you look at that mad rush, where people are saying let the planet be reduced to ashes.
14:54Let there be global warming, let there be climate change, let there be biodiversity extinction.
15:04I don't care at all.
15:05I care only for my stomach, my conveniences and social approval.
15:10Then you should realize it's the ancient jungle you are seeing.
15:19Ancient jungle.
15:30Welcome to the difficult challenge of being human.
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