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Video Information: 15.04.2022, IIT-Delhi, Delhi
Context:
~ What is pleasure?
~ Is pleasure a necessity?
~ How to find joy?
~ What is real joy?
~ What is the difference between joy and happiness?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita #vedanta #IIT-Delhi #IIT-D
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquiry-gita-course?cmId=m00056
📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00056
➖➖➖➖➖➖
Video Information: 15.04.2022, IIT-Delhi, Delhi
Context:
~ What is pleasure?
~ Is pleasure a necessity?
~ How to find joy?
~ What is real joy?
~ What is the difference between joy and happiness?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita #vedanta #IIT-Delhi #IIT-D
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Pranam Acharya ji. My question is, is pleasure a necessity for humans? Do we as human beings
00:12need pleasure for survival to be sane?
00:19The question is, is pleasure a necessity? Do we human beings actually require pleasure
00:27for survival? What is pleasure, first of all? See, we all, we all operate at a certain level
00:43of the mind. Call it the level of consciousness. Right? You can take that as our current potential
00:56level. This is where we stand. And our potentiality is huge, tremendous. So you stand here and
01:12your potentiality is huge. Now what will happen when you connect these two points of differing
01:23potentials? What happens when you connect two points having potential difference? There
01:37is a flow. It could be the flow of water or the flow of electrons. Let's say electrons,
01:43current. This flow is called pleasure. This flow is called pleasure. Something is happening.
01:50I was at this level. I have been connected to something at this level and so there is
01:57a flow and I am hopeful. I am liking the experience. Something is happening. Are you getting it?
02:06Now this is the right kind of pleasure. The pleasure of ascension, the pleasure of rising
02:14up, the pleasure of flying high. Unfortunately for us human beings, another kind of pleasure
02:21is possible. You connect this level of your potential to a place that has only this level.
02:30Still what you would experience is a flow. No? Are you getting it? Still there is a potential
02:40difference. If you are connected to something lower than your existing state of consciousness,
02:46even then you will have a flow. This flow again is pleasure. This is the kind of pleasure that
02:53sinks you. For example, the pleasure that you get in doing something utterly lowly.
03:01Is there not pleasure in random debauched mischief? That is when 240 volts is getting
03:17connected to 100 volts and you experience the flow and that flow titillates. Well,
03:28something is happening. Something great is happening. The flow of energy in the downward
03:31direction. Unfortunately, most of the pleasure that we experience is the flow in the downward
03:42direction. Pleasure is greatly important. We all definitely need pleasure but we need pleasure
03:52of the upward kind. Instead the market serves us pleasures of the downward kind.
04:01So much so that the word pleasure has become synonymous
04:05with fall. You would hardly find anyone rising in pleasure.
04:13If you want to see somebody falling, go and watch his moments of pleasure. Those will be
04:19the moments in which he will be falling in life. That's the sad situation we have come to. But
04:26that's not necessary. In fact, without pleasure you cannot rise. That is the importance of pleasure.
04:33And that kind of pleasure that takes you higher, there is a special name for it. It's called joy.
04:42It's not ordinary pleasure, not ordinary happiness. It's called joy. It takes you higher.
04:48But it's a very demanding and very extracting, very expensive pleasure.
04:57The lowly kinds of pleasures are cheap. You can get them very easily.
05:06Go get drunk. Go fall in a brothel. And those lowly pleasures will be very easily available to you.
05:14Go binge and then fall asleep, knowing fully well that you have assignments to submit.
05:20There is pleasure, right? There is pleasure in overeating and then falling asleep. Is there not pleasure in that?
05:27Most of our pleasures degrade us. But equally, Vedanta tells you that without pleasure you cannot live.
05:39It's just that you have to choose the higher kind of pleasure. You have to choose pleasure that takes you upwards.
05:49And mind you, if you think you are doing the right thing in life and it is not giving you
05:56that high pleasure, then that thing cannot be right for you.
06:01One characteristic of the right thing is that it is immensely pleasurable.
06:05However, this is not an exclusive characteristic.
06:10Even wrong things are greatly pleasurable. And you have to be discreet. Pleasure comes from both directions.
06:19You look at a great work of art, there is joy.
06:26You start wandering on the road and randomly abusing everybody or chasing monkeys.
06:32There is some pleasure in that.
06:36There is a lot of pleasure in that because that's what most of people are doing.
06:42With great application and discipline, you learn how to play the guitar or the sitar.
06:52There is joy in that. But that's an expensive joy we said.
06:57You get angry and you pick up the guitar and put it five times, bang it on the floor and it breaks.
07:04And for one minute there is great pleasure.
07:09Playing tennis, you play a great shot and then kiss your racket. There is joy.
07:14You play an awful shot and then hit the ball.
07:21You play an awful shot and then hit the turf with your racket ten times and smash the racket itself.
07:30There too you have some pleasure. Have you not seen players doing that?
07:35As if the racket has played the shot.
07:39So they want to explode the racket.
07:42And there are players who play wonderfully well and they put the racket on their forehead.
07:48Playing a great shot requires discipline. It is expensive.
07:54It requires you to control your animalistic instincts because your instincts are telling you,
07:59what is the need for further practice?
08:01Coach, let me go home. I want to sleep.
08:04Coach, my legs are on fire.
08:10And my shoulder is hurting and there is this tennis elbow to boot.
08:14Let me please go. That's the lower kind of pleasure.
08:18You avoid work. You shirk your responsibilities. There is the lower kind of pleasure.
08:26The higher kind of pleasure we all need. We cannot live without pleasure. I agree with the questioner.
08:32But I repeat, please, please ask yourself, the pleasures that you are having in life,
08:39are they taking you higher?
08:40The pleasures that you are having in life, are they taking you higher?
08:44Or are they making you more of animals?
08:48Now what's wrong with being an animal, sir?
08:51That's not your nature.
08:55You will suffer. You are not an animal. Why are you trying to be an animal?
09:02Why are you doing things that animals do?
09:07The kinds of pleasures most of us are into.
09:11Marijuana, weed. Do these turn you conscious? No, but they are pleasurable.
09:17They are pleasurable because there is something happening.
09:20There is something happening so you feel probably the right thing is happening.
09:24At least I am no more in my current state because the current state is of suffering.
09:29So some displacement has happened. Some movement is happening.
09:32And you hope that the right movement is happening. No, the right movement is not happening.
09:36Most of the times, the default movement is the wrong one.
09:43The right movement, you have to be very careful about. It's a sensitive, delicate thing.
09:49It has to be crafted. It has to be engineered with all your intelligence and devotion.
09:57The wrong thing is like free fall in gravity. It just happens.
10:00What does it take to take an airplane up 35,000 feet?
10:08It takes generations of engineering to put the plane up there.
10:13What does it take for the plane to crash? Nothing.
10:17One drunk pilot and the plane is gone.
10:22It's always easier to fall.
10:26And there must be some pleasure in letting the plane drop.
10:30Right? I am sleeping.
10:35I can't help it. I am sleeping.
10:42Go for the right kind of pleasures.
10:44Spirituality is about having great pleasures.
10:49The kind of pleasures that normal people cannot even think of.
10:53Do not think that the spiritual person leads a boring or dull or dead life.
10:59No. The really spiritual person is drunk on pleasure.
11:08You cannot imagine his state of inner euphoria.
11:15He is ecstatic on something that is totally unavailable to the commons.
11:24Are you getting it?
11:26So kindly don't be so serious.
11:30Even I am not.
11:32It's just that one happens to appear serious.
11:38Are you getting it?
11:42Joy is for the real human being, for the real adult.
11:48Cheap pleasures are for kids.
11:56Go for the highest joys in life.
11:58That's what makes life worth living.
12:02Go for tough attainments.
12:05And by tough attainments I do not mean
12:08things that you get by competing with a million other people.
12:13They are not tough attainments.
12:16If a million people want the same thing that you do,
12:20then you are just one of them.
12:21Are you not?
12:24Please see that.
12:25The toughest attainment is about wanting something that no one else wants.
12:34But that's not what our education and society has taught us.
12:37We have been told a million people wrote the JEE
12:41and you are in the top one percentile, therefore you are special.
12:45Well, special we probably are.
12:50But think of it.
12:54Please think of it.
12:56How special are we if we have all the common desires?
13:03The one who did not get selected desired to get selected.
13:07The one who got selected desired to get selected.
13:10The desire is just the same, so where is the difference?
13:15Can you desire something that transcends commonness?
13:20Can you question the common desire itself and ask it,
13:23why am I obliged to fulfill you?
13:27You rascal, you petty desire.
13:30Why should I invest my time, my life, my energy in fulfilling you?
13:39Did your desires take your permission to arise?
13:43Please go into the process of desire.
13:46Go into the process of desire.
13:48Do desires come with your consent, your permission?
13:52No, desires just arise.
13:54And once they arise, you are a slave to them.
13:58Normal human tendency.
14:00Once the desire arises, we become a slave to them.
14:03It's just that we say, oh, these are my desires.
14:05How are these your desires when you never desired them?
14:12Do we desire our desires?
14:14No, they just come.
14:15And where do they come from?
14:16They come from influences.
14:18They come from conditioning.
14:19And they arise from the bodily configuration.
14:23And once they arise, we act as if we own them.
14:26We say, oh, this is my desire.
14:28And then we run after those desires.
14:30And thousands of others are running after the same desires.
14:33And if we succeed in the competition, we say we are special.
14:35No, we are not.
14:40Can you question desire itself?
14:43And when you question desire itself, then you learn the right desire.
14:47And the right desire is very, very rare.
14:52And that's where joy is.
14:55That's where the highest pleasure is.
15:06Am I connecting?
15:09Are we together?
15:10OK.