A clear mind does not need willpower || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Listener: Sir, what do you have to say about the will power of a person, and what is the meaning of strong willpower?
Speaker: You are speaking to me right now. You stayed back when everybody else has gone, didn’t you? We had hundred odd people over here, they have left but you stayed back. Did it take tremendous will power to stay back? At this moment, does it require will power to ask this question? Do you think I am using willpower to answer this question? What is this willpower thing? You require will power only when you are confused , only when you need to push yourself.
Where there is clarity, there is no need for will power. Just spontaneous happening, that is sufficient.
If you have a fracture in your leg and you have to come up to me and climb up this staircase, then you will require will power. If you are all right, will you require will power to come up to me and climb the staircase? So don’t ask how do I get willpower, ask how to have clarity, how to be clear.
Again let me ask you, when you have to study throughout the night, what do you require? Willpower; but when you have to watch a movie beginning at one in the night till four in the morning, do you require willpower? You don’t even know when the clock has struck four, time just flies away. So when do you require willpower?
Listener: When we do not have interest in something.
Speaker: Yes, when you do something which puts you in conflict, where there is no love only then you will require willpower.
When you love something, no will power is required, then it’s always spontaneous.
Listener: There are certain moments in my life when I want to do something which I really love, but I am unable to that. I am quite clear about it, but still I cannot act. Why?
Speaker: Probably two reasons, either you don’t love it fully, or there is some great fear sitting in the mind.
You have to ask yourself if there is some great fear sitting there, and if it is sitting there, just drop it.
It’s not difficult; it’s simple. Very simple!
You all put up in hostels, all of you right? There would be surely mornings when you feel lazy and you do not want to come to the campus, don’t you? Does it happen sometimes? Then you require willpower. How much do you have to walk from the hostel to the academic block? Say, a hundred metres. When you play soccer in the evening or play something else, how much do you run around in that? A kilometre or two, sometimes even five kilometres. When do you require willpower? For those hundred metres, or this five kilometres? Isn’t it strange?
Just getting up and walking a hundred metres requires a lot of willpower. The alarm goes off twice, thrice, and ultimately you gather all your willpower, somehow pushing yourself towards the classroom; but when you are playing soccer, then? Do you gather willpower and then run after the ball or you just run after it? Yes? What is the use of willpower? When you are into it, things will happen on their own.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
