Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi, 20.12.2021, Rishikesh, India
Context:
~ Why there is so much suffering in life?
~ Do we suffer by our own choice?
~ How to avoid pain and suffering?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#acharyaprashant #suffering
Context:
~ Why there is so much suffering in life?
~ Do we suffer by our own choice?
~ How to avoid pain and suffering?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#acharyaprashant #suffering
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00You see, the world has a certain existence of itself.
00:27You know, to what extent its names and forms become appealing to you depends upon the size
00:42of the void in your life.
00:50The world could be compared to a market place.
00:54It houses stuff, all kinds of stuff.
01:01And you are passing through that market place every day.
01:04The road is there, the shops are lined up on either side.
01:11You have no option but to pass through the road every day, every evening.
01:17Wherever you go, there are these shops lined up.
01:25To what extent these shops become meaningful to you?
01:33Everything in the shop has name and form, right?
01:35In fact, because they are shops, they demonstrate and advertise those names, forms quite loudly.
01:44That is what they are supposed to do.
01:47But you always succumb to the advertisements.
01:53When do those things assume importance for you?
02:01When you have a bigger void within you.
02:08So that's what I advise.
02:11Don't allow that void to exist.
02:15It does exist.
02:16Do not allow it to grow too big.
02:20Instead, live life in a way that diminishes the void.
02:28If you have a need within, the world will happily come promising to fulfill the need.
02:42You want to blame the world.
02:45What came first?
02:46The demand or the supply?
02:48The demand comes first.
02:50That's what Vedanta is all about.
02:53Why blame the supply?
02:58You demanded, the world supplied and the world is an infinite supplier.
03:10The bigger is your demand, the thicker is the supply.
03:21Don't allow your demand to grow big.
03:26How to not let it grow big?
03:29How to not allow those names, forms, things, people, shops to become too significant?
03:40By filling up that void in a suitable way, in the right way, because the void does exist.
03:49We are born with it.
03:52Either you plug it rightly or you allow it to become your nemesis.
04:03Either have the right thing in your life or become a prey to all the wrong ones.
04:15You cannot say you'll have nothing in your life, that's not possible.
04:20You lost the right that day you were born.
04:25The day you were born, you condemned yourself to companionship, identification, a purpose.
04:46Either have the right company or you'll have wrong company.
04:51Either have the right identity or you'll fall prey to wrong identity.
04:56Either have a right purpose or you'll be invaded by a plethora of wrong purposes.
05:06Don't come up and say that you are not identified with anything.
05:10That's a privilege not accorded to you.
05:15If you wanted that privilege, you shouldn't have taken birth.
05:20The day you took birth, you were destined, condemned, sentenced to be identified.
05:31The best that you can have is a high identity, a sublime identity.
05:40Don't say you'll have no identity.
05:42If you say you have no identity, then you are just being fooled in a spiritual way.
05:53By saying you have no identity or maybe just trying to protect all the false identities
05:57you nurture.
06:03Have the identity, have the right company and have right purpose.
06:12Do not start parroting that life must be purposeless.
06:19Purposelessness is the ultimate pinnacle, don't talk of it.
06:32It will come when it has to.
06:35It has nothing to do with your blabber.
06:40As far as you are concerned, you must have life of great and intense purpose.
06:47And if you don't have the right purpose, don't complain if life is full of wrong purposes
06:54and desires.
06:56Have the right desire if you want to avoid foolish desires.
07:03Have the right mission if you want to avoid petty errands.
07:14Getting it?
07:23There's no substitute to hard work.
07:29If you want to avoid laboring like a donkey, labor like a wild elephant, labor you cannot
07:44avoid.
07:46Being a donkey you can avoid.
07:54Those who want to avoid laboring at all become donkeys of donkeys, mules of mules.
08:19The world makes you labor so much, the world makes you sweat so much, you squirm, you cringe.
08:30It's not that you are being toasted to a feast by the world, are you?
08:41If labor you must, why not labor for the right thing?
08:45If suffer you must, why not suffer for the right cause?
08:53Those who don't subscribe to right causes, are they all enjoying or they are suffering?
09:02There's no promise that you won't suffer if you live rightly, but at least it would be
09:07right suffering.
09:08And one hallmark of right suffering is that it reduces the sufferer.
09:17Right suffering reduces the sufferer.
09:20When the sufferer reduces, how can suffering survive?
09:27How would we know if the sufferer has reduced or is reducing?
09:36How would you know whether the sufferer has reduced?
09:39You won't know.
09:42You know only when you suffer.
09:45When you don't have a headache, do you know that you don't have a headache?
09:59Right now, do you know that you don't have a headache?
10:05You don't know, you don't know.
10:13When you have a headache, then you know you have a headache.
10:18When you don't have a headache, you don't know you have a headache.
10:25Life becomes light, you don't have to keep knowing, you are free of thought.
10:34So many things that concern so many other people are not material to you at all.
10:43Your neighbor is thinking of how to pay his son's fees, don't bother.
10:57You don't have a son.
11:13The sufferer has reduced, the suffering is not making itself felt.
11:22You have been relieved of so many concerns that plague so many people.
11:39You do not want to defeat suffering, you don't want to defeat the world.
11:45You want to make all these things irrelevant.
11:51They will exist, but they will be irrelevant.
11:54They will exist, but they will not exist to you.
11:58So as you pass through the street, the shops exist, but are irrelevant.
12:07That's what you want.
12:08That's an indicator of freedom from suffering.
12:11It exists, but is irrelevant.
12:21Are there adverse situations?
12:22Yes, they exist, but they are irrelevant.
12:28At least they are not as relevant to me as they are to other people, as they are not
12:32as relevant to me today as they were two years back.
12:38I can sleep, I am not continuously thinking.
12:48I am not bugged, I am not under the yoke.
13:04I don't have to till the field of suffering, carrying the yoke.
13:15Everything is, but not for me.
13:22And then with a mischievous smile, the Rishi asks, does it really even exist?
13:33If it exists, but not to you, does it really even exist?
13:39And then you realize how the seers could say the world does not exist.
13:45At a physical level, at a Vyavaharic level, the world always exists.
13:50But when it becomes irrelevant to you, then you can say Jagat Mithya.
13:56To me it does not.
14:04The choice is between choosing a higher suffering, a higher problem versus choosing multiple
14:13small sufferings.
14:15So, how can we be sure and confirm that this higher suffering is worth taking and the smaller
14:25sufferings are not worth taking?
14:29What gives this supremacy over smaller sufferings?
14:36Dignity?
14:38What do you want to die fighting?
14:41A million mosquitoes or a mighty tiger?
14:51How do you want to be remembered or known even to yourself?
15:00What do you want to be written on your Samadhi?
15:12Fell prey to a million mosquitoes?
15:20Your nature is large, infinite, prihad, brahm, immeasurable.
15:36You won't like to be known or seen, encumbered with mosquitoes.
16:00You're a soldier, a born soldier.
16:04You don't want to die on the battlefield.
16:11You don't want to have a death that behoves a martyr.
16:25You won't want to be run over by a truck because you were lying on the road in your
16:41drunken state.
16:49See, there are certain things without reason, it's just that you cannot like these things.
17:07Given your human form, you just cannot like pettiness.
17:18Why are some deaths considered higher than others?
17:24Why are some dead people called martyrs and the other dead are just dead people?
17:35Why?
17:38Because your consciousness aims for that which is high, beautiful, pure and the proof
17:51of that is you ask questions.
17:56If you do not want purity, which is clarity, why would you ask even this question?
18:03Tell me please, why did you ask this question?
18:11The fact to ask this question is proof that you have a consciousness that wants elevation,
18:20clarity, purity.
18:26Therefore, you cannot enjoy pettiness.
18:37If you have to argue, would you want to argue with a fellow whose brains have been eaten
18:49out by mosquitoes?
18:55Would you enjoy arguing with such a person who cannot even comprehend your arguments?
19:05Now one wants victory in arguments, no?
19:09But would you even want victory over such a person?
19:13You would rather prefer to be defeated by a scholar, by somebody who really knows, no?
19:26Rather than prevailing over a dimwit.
19:33That's the nature of our consciousness and there is no reason to that.
19:36That's the way it just is.
19:42We are not petty and we cannot be satisfied with pettiness.
19:47If you'll ask why, I'll say because that's the way we are.
19:50There's no reason there.
19:53That's just the reality without reason.
19:56Or if you'll insist, I'll say truth is the reason.
20:03You come from truth, therefore nothing short of truth suffices to satisfy you.
20:14Thinking of this and what you have just said and then when one thinks of the world and
20:22the common culture nowadays, we see that pettiness and the forces which propagate pettiness,
20:29they are very fast quickly becoming the norm.
20:34Maybe that's where my question also came that what is wrong with being petty in a way?
20:45If it doesn't make you puke, it cannot be explained to you what is wrong with it.
20:59Dirt, filth, meanness, pettiness are just not things your consciousness can
21:29agree to.
21:38And if you force yourself by training yourself wrongly, you subject yourself to deeper misery.
21:50It is that when things get deep, they also get hidden.
21:55The deeper your misery is, the danger is, the more hidden it would be.
22:05That's why you require an Upanishad.
22:09Otherwise, misery would have been its own antidote, like Newton's third law.
22:21More the action, more the reaction.
22:25More the misery, deeper the resistance to misery, but that does not happen.
22:31The deeper the misery, the lesser is the resistance to misery because the misery itself takes
22:36away your ability to resist it.
22:42There's a danger with learning to tolerate the wrong kind of suffering for too long.
22:53If you have been tolerating nonsensical suffering for 10 years, 20 years, the danger is you
23:03will become acclimatized and you will lose your resistance to suffering.
23:10Then you require good company, then you require Upanishads, then you require somebody to shake
23:16you up, slap you hard and remind you that you are not born to suffer, that you must
23:26at least not make peace with the one who makes you suffer, at least resist.
23:41At least don't worship the ones who make you suffer.