Are the Hills Liberating?

Questioner: Good evening, Acharya Ji. I'm Vishnu. I studied in a J. Krishnamurti school, which was called a "school without walls." We used to not only study in the curriculum, but also go to nature, learn from nature. We used to sing Kabir ke dohe. While we did sing Kabir ke dohe, I'm understanding more through your classes that we are taking.

So my question now is, while we are in this world, we are talking about education. I had the privilege of studying in such a school where I was closer to nature, where I was introduced to these notions of Kabir Sahab and everything.

Do you think that the education that we're having right now, let's say in Vidya or Vedanta, is that required? Or with that, should a person be closer to nature also and have certain other things for us to be better educated in these domains? With the rising population as well, it becomes challenging for the schools to impart such knowledge.

We see the schools nowadays are just buildings and not with a lot of nature around them. So my question is: what is the right role of education? And people being closer to nature, is that also, what do you call, important?

Acharya Prashant: What do you mean by nature?

Questioner: I mean to say, it was a valley in the school that I studied. I mean to say, nature is all the mountains and the birds or the animals and everything that we see around.

Acharya Prashant: You mean an environment of nonhuman species.

Questioner: Not only that, but I mean.

Acharya Prashant: See, classically everything is nature, Prakriti. Everything is Prakriti. There are obviously certain advantages when you sit next to a waterfall or a river or you are watching an untouched hillside. There is a certain tranquility, serenity. And that's why tourism flourishes so much. We know of that.

But if one has to come to himself, if students have to be brought closer to themselves, are we not exaggerating the role of being in tranquil surroundings? Please understand. If you look at the hilly states of India, we have nice people there, wonderful people. I’ve been there so often, hospitable people, friendly, everything. But the kind of superstition you see in the hills probably exceeds the levels of superstitions we see elsewhere.

In the north, if you look at per capita flesh consumption, it is the highest in the hills, where there is a prolific abundance of natural beauty. But there is animal slaughter and continuous consumption of all kinds of meat, and all that is happening.

So had it been greatly liberating to spend a week in the hills, then those who are spending their entire lifetime in the hills should have been automatically liberated, no? But do you see that? Do you see that instead of liberation, you find a lot of superstition? Are you getting it?

So let's observe the life we are leading. I too go to the hills or to the beaches occasionally, and I fully understand where you're coming from. It's a good relieving experience. I see that. I know that. But I'm trying to draw your attention to something else. I'm not going to live on a beach.

I go to my office, I earn my livelihood there. I return to my house. There is the family. There are the neighbors. These are my humdrum affairs. There's the wife. There are the regular issues and quarrels and these things. Should I not, first of all, aim to get into these deeply? Or should I say I have had a very tense fortnight at the office because I needed to reach the financial year-end targets? It's March, you see, it's March. So after this tense fortnight, I'm now packing my bags and going to Dalhousie or Mussoorie or Kasauli or some place, and that will be so relieving. There is a difference between approaching and escaping, no?

What do we go to the hills for? To change or to return rejuvenated and refreshed and revitalized, to resume the same old routine?

Please tell me.

15 days of hectic activity. Oh my God, I'm so tense. But yes, through all kinds of means, through hook or crook, sama dama danda bheda, I was able to fool the customers and achieve my targets, and I'll get a good bonus and a decent appraisal, so I can even afford to splurge on tourism a little. So I back off to the hills, and you know what the peace-loving tourists have done to the hills. You know that, right? They have taken away the peace of the hills. Visit any popular hill station or beach. Go to the Baga beach in Goa, or go to Nainital, or go to Shimla and see what tourists have done there.

And these are all tourists who ostensibly come to shed their tension. They very literally shed things, and what they shed remains where it is shed. And then they come back and resume their same old routines. How will that help? I'm asking, how will that help?

The saints have very amusingly been asking us, you know, if going to the rivers and taking holy dips were to make you a better man, then the greatest species would be the crocodiles and the turtles. They're always inside, and sometimes they come out. You are taking a dip for only 2 minutes. The crocodile is inside for 22 hours a day. The greatest sage! If going to the jungle were to help make you a better person, then all the animals, the chimpanzees and everybody continuously living in the jungles, would have been liberated beings.

If shaving off your head were to make you a better being, then sheep get shaven off very frequently. They should have been the most pious of individuals. And that's what the saints have been asking. But we don't realize that.

See, I don't want to discourage those who love the hills and the waters and the natural beauties. I too am among them. I too love a scenic sunset. I do, really. But I also know what goes with it. I also see that if we do not intend to change our center, it won't help to change our geographical, physical location. We have now been everywhere, and now we are going to Mars.

What do you think we are going to Mars for? What do you think we are going to the Moon for? We love Chanda Mama. We are missing him and that's why we want to land on, no? We say we'll come, we'll drill, we'll excavate. We want minerals. And especially if we can get some nice radioactive minerals like plutonium and uranium, do they help us build sand castles? No. These are very cute minerals – plutonium, uranium. We use them for very decent purposes? And since we don't have enough of them on this planet, we want to dig out other planets and the satellites. That is the height of tourism, literally the height of tourism.

So now you don't even talk of only terrestrial wars. We used to have the Air Force. We used to have the land army. And we used to have the navy, the ships and the submarines. And now we are talking of warfare in space.

Such great tourists we are! How will it help to even circumambulate the entire planet 40 times or the entire universe 100 times, if you don’t see where your action is coming from? Please see, action coming from the wrong center doesn’t help. Even if the action looks outwardly very noble or harmless, we’ll say it’s such a harmless thing, you know, to sometimes wander into the woods. Yes, it’s a beautiful thing to wander into the woods.

The one who chopped off the entire jungle maybe once just randomly wandered into the woods and then said, "Wow, such nice woods. Give me a mechanical saw, you know. Fishermen go into the sea and it’s great when you are in the middle of the sea, and they go there because they love the fish. Just as you say, "Oh, I love chicken. What are you going there for?"

And now we also have deep sea trawlers. So we go there because we want to reach the point in the sea where even sunlight refuses to reach. We are such great lovers of nature. No, you are going there because you want to dig deeper. It’s not for love. Obviously, it’s for cruelty.

If I do not know myself, whatever I will touch, I will destruct. So we better avoid touching stuff.

I’m not saying we should not take our kids for a walk in the jungle. But first of all, the kid has to be initiated. The kid must know why we are going there. The answers, and before that, the questions must start coming from the kid herself. And then you say, you know why the jungle?

Let’s look at this city itself. This too is nature. Is it not nature? Come on. Before we stepped in, every single place on this planet was a jungle. Everything is nature. And even this auditorium, classically in the philosophical sense is Prakriti. Just that, we think that if we have made it, it is not natural. No sir.

What do you call a bird’s nest? Natural or unnatural? So a bird makes something, it is natural, and man makes his auditorium. This is unnatural. No, this too is nature. What do you call a coral reef? Natural or unnatural? And there are a lot of organisms involved in the building up of that reef. And you call it natural. Similarly, this auditorium is also natural.

So before you take the kid off to the jungle, why not ask the kid, "What’s a relationship with these roads? All these are nature. The road is nature." Let’s see, what’s your relationship, kid, with the pillow you sleep on? What’s your relationship with these little lizards that come out in the summers?

There is that thing called the mosquito cracker. It emits, I suppose, UV rays or something. It attracts mosquitoes and then you hear a patt, a little burst, and the mosquito is gone. Why not take the kid closer to that first? See, this is nature. That lizard is nature. That stray dog is nature. Those mosquitoes, I mean half a dozen of them. No, no. Eight dozen of them have been killed today. They are all nature. Are they not nature?

Oh, you look tired, kid. Have a glass of milk. And as she begins to sip, ask her, "Where did this come from?” This came from a natural animal. Let’s inquire the process how it came to you. This white fluid that we call milk, where is it coming from? Is it not a natural product? So why not go into it? Why do we need to go all the way to the Himalayas or to the Andes or to the Alps? Why not first of all look at something as simple and as ubiquitous as milk? Is it not natural milk?

Tea, coffee, lassi, chhaach, buttermilk, yogurt. Let the kid be encouraged to ask a few troublesome questions. Where is this coming from? What is the entire process? I want to see the animal it is being extracted from, or are animals only worthy to be seen when they are in the jungle?

If an animal is in the jungle, you are saying, "Wow, it’s view worthy." Mama, look, a water buffalo. How about the buffalo that’s being milked to serve your exploitative mind? You look at animals in the jungle and you say, "Wow, wow, animals, animals." How about the animals in our vicinity first? Why not take the kid closer to them? The crows, the sparrows.

By the way, where are the crows and the sparrows? You have them in Bangalore? The north is missing them. Nobody’s missing them actually. Just that they are not there anymore.

Oh, when you go to a jungle and you spot a parakeet or some other fancy bird, migratory bird, you know, NRI bird or something, then — Wow! What a bird, What a bird. And not a word about the little sparrow that’s gone missing. Not a word about that. Only the jungles are fancy places.

Or look at the soil itself. We have places in the north where the soil has actually started looking white. So much fertilizer and pesticide has gone into it that it’s all now chemical even on the surface, and you cannot spot any microorganisms or earthworms or the basic bacteria that give it its essential organic nature that is needed for it to sustain the crops.

Is that not natural soil? I’m asking, please — is soil natural or not? So why should we not take the kids closer to soil in the first place? Is here natural or not? How about an AQI of 400? I know you don’t have that here in Bangalore, but I’m right now coming from a place where we sometimes have even 700.

Why should the kid not talk first about that? Or when the AQI becomes that bad, should we fly away to Switzerland? If you are rich enough, that is entirely possible. And many in the north do that. They say, “Come November, and we are flying abroad, with our kids, obviously.”

Is that the kind of love for nature we want to inculcate in our kids? Destroy nature and then run away to a place where there is still some nature left. Is that what we are talking about? But that’s what general tourism is about, actually.

Deniers of climate change, they are saying it’s not a problem at all. Great areas, large swaths of land in Russia, in Greenland, and in Canada will now become green because the ice will no longer be there. So, we’ll have more inhabitable land. See, such love for nature. They’re saying the land will become green now because the ice is now gone. The sheet is no more. So grass, green grass. Such love for greenery, you see. Is that love for nature?

Deny climate change, call it a hoax, and then say, “You see, because of climate change, we’ll now have more greenery. Even Alaska will become green. Even Antarctica might become green.” Wow. It’s overhyped.

We have nothing for the cows and buffaloes that we torture no end and then slaughter no end. And we talk of being nature lovers and forest lovers and animal lovers and what not. That’s not the kind of thing we want to teach our kids. That’s hypocrisy, pakhand.

Please start from where you are. And I know I’ve run the risk of being misunderstood. I’m not saying one must not approach the hills. What I’m saying is, let the center be right first. Otherwise, we’ll do to the hills what we have done to the hills.

You know what we have done to the Himalayas. You know that, right? Yes. That is because we go to nature without knowing our own nature, and then there is violence.

Everything is nature. The kid gets a little grown up. The kid gets attracted to another person. That person too is nature. For the male, the female is nature. For the female, the male is nature. And there is that attraction. And that attraction is violence. Violence in the name of love because you do not know who you are. So what looks like love turns out to be violence.

So should we just parrot the word nature, nature, nature, nature, or first understand what nature really means? Mindless walks or adventure trips or going up a certain very picturesque trail will not help. Let me assure you.

We need to inquire. We need to have questions. And when we approach the hills or the seas with those questions, with honest inquiry, then it makes sense.

That’s when we should say, “Yes, I want to go there. I want to go there because I have something to ask of the hills. Let the trees whisper it to me.” Otherwise, you are not going there to listen to the trees. You are going there to hack them down.

Questioner: Good evening sir. Following this discussion, whenever you are discussing various lifestyle choices, we have stressed upon that our decision should not be driven by our natural instincts but by consciousness or knowledge or intellect.

But when we see the history of humanity, when it was a purely natural species, it lived peacefully in its ecological niche without harming anyone. And as we have advanced towards civilization, although we have gained in knowledge and consciousness. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have had language or even Upanishads. But also during the advancements towards civilization, we have destroyed all the ecosystems. We have caused the impending climate disaster.

So this growth transition from nature to civilization, has it been beneficial for humanity?

Acharya Prashant: See, it’s not whether it has been beneficial or harmful. You cannot help it. Homo sapiens are fundamentally different from other species in the sense that they have a burning need for fulfillment.

If you look at any other species, look at a dog, a parrot, a buffalo, a lion — if they are well-fed and there is not much heat or rain, they’ll be cool sitting somewhere. We have instances where you have a pride of lions, four or five of them sitting together, and a herd of cattle is passing near at hand right in front of them, and they don’t bother to get up and attack because they are satisfied, right? They have only physical needs. That’s how they are configured physically.

And we are saying human beings are fundamentally different because, apart from physical needs, we have a deep psychological need. We are born unfulfilled. We need to reach somewhere.

No animal needs to reach anywhere. In fact, no animal ever reaches anywhere. A dog is born, lives a dog, dies a dog. Doesn’t it? Have you seen enlightened dogs? You cannot say this one is a very conscious dog and this is an unconscious dog. You cannot do that. You cannot say, “Oh, you know, this one is a saint among dogs.”

A dog is a dog, driven purely by its genetic nature. The same applies to all species. You cannot ask a coconut tree to not rise so high because the grass feels offended, and you cannot motivate the grass. You know, “You too must rise. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. Come on, show us what you can do. Rise. Why do you feel inferior in front of the coconut?” Nothing will happen. The grass is happy being grass. And the coconut, even if it tries to be humble, cannot arrest its growth. Bring it.

So a dog is born, a dog dies. Coconut is born coconut, dies coconut. And that’s been happening since millennia and that cannot change. But among human beings, there are great differences. No two coconut trees can be greatly different in terms of level of consciousness. But human beings can be greatly different because we have a special need. We are different from the other species.

I said it’s a psychological need. The knowers would come and give me a pat on the wrist and say, “No, no, no, use a better word. It’s called a spiritual need.”

We need to be fulfilled. Cats don’t care to be fulfilled. Cats are all right as they are. You need a particular fulfillment, and for the sake of that fulfillment, you rush towards objects, and you cannot avoid feeling unfulfilled. You are born with that. It’s a design feature.

This thing is born with a hollow here (pointing within oneself) that’s a part of your design. You could call it a part of your basic physical configuration here (pointing within oneself). A hollow is there.

It is to fill this hollow that culture and civilization came in. It is to fill this hollow that man walked out of the jungle. Rather, man hacked down the jungle to create space where he could initially farm, grow crops, and later on build buildings and other institutions and roads and other things and temples and all that you call a civilization.

We did that just so that we could gain fulfillment.

What remains, however, is that if you do not know the very nature of that dissatisfaction, discontentment that we are born with, then the direction of your treatment, the direction of your assumed solution will be all wrong.

So we are born, we said, with a certain discontentment, and we think that by acquiring this or that, by feeling more tangibly secure on the outside, we’ll be able to live lives of contentment to some extent.

That is true to some extent. If you don’t have a roof over your head or food on the table, then you will keep feeling uneasy, no? If you don’t have clothes to wear and it’s going to be terribly cold, it is unrealistic to expect that you will be at ease. So to some extent, material achievement helped us feel more secure and more content.

The trouble starts after that point. A point comes when more material accomplishment cannot help you feel more fulfilled. That’s when we said it becomes extremely important that we know the nature of the beast that is always hungry within.

What is this dissatisfaction about? Because dissatisfaction can no longer be taken care of using material things.

I have stuff, and adding more stuff gives me very little marginal utility. Even negative marginal utility. Two cars in the family already. When the third one comes, it is possible that you start having trouble over parking space. So instead of giving you more satisfaction, it has actually given you sleepless nights. You are parking it here and there and picking fights with neighbors. So the third car has actually not helped.

The first car greatly helped. The second car, there was some little additional benefit in terms of internal welfare. The third car has actually become a liability. That’s where mankind is today. We do not know what we really want, so we keep adding cars to our garages. So we keep adding stuff like furniture and jewelry and obviously bank balance and sometimes educational degrees.

I’ll have more, more, more. It’s obvious why a fellow wants more, more, more and more of anything. The fellow thinks having more and more of anything will bring peace.

There was a time when the constitutions were not so liberal and equal towards the genders. Men would have 15 wives. The first one couldn’t satisfy, the second one couldn’t satisfy. And then they discover that even the 15th one couldn’t satisfy.

Kings used to have entire harems in which sometimes hundreds of women would be there. The king might not even remember their faces. But after every war, he would bring another booty of these trophies and say, “You know, 50 more for what? You are still as miserable within as you always were, and you have been adding to the royal treasury, and that too hasn’t helped. The size of your army, the size of the lands you have occupied — nothing is helping.”

Are you getting it?

So what then is to be done? If the treatment is not working, it means the diagnosis of the disease has not been proper. You have not diagnosed the disease properly, and you are continuing with some kind of treatment, and that treatment is actually backfiring.

Climate change is another name for that treatment backfiring. More objects, more objects, more objects. And that’s what climate change is about. Are you getting it?

We’ll have to do something. As we are born, we cannot live like animals. That’s not possible. That’s not in our physical constitution. So something has to be done. But not what we have done. And that which we have done was useful to an extent.

We agree. Money is needed. Material prosperity is needed. We need those things. Good roads are needed. Obviously, we need those things. Clothes are needed. And we need to have enough money to at least, you know, if you cannot even read properly because your eyes are failing, you need to have money to buy good glasses. Education costs money — everything. So, you need those things.

But we have, as a species, far exceeded the point where money could be taken as directly correlated to internal welfare. In fact, we have tangible numbers for the point. Those numbers have emerged from research.

Till this point, till this level of individual income, you find internal welfare positively correlated to income. By income, I mean material possessions, because that's what income translate into. So as income increases, your internal welfare also increases. And then comes a point when it doesn't. That point was, I suppose, $75,000. Which university conducted the research?

Listener: Princeton.

Acharya Prashant: Princeton. It’s a Princeton research.

Till $75,000 annual income, you find that increase in income is leading to an increase in what you can call as internal welfare or satisfaction or contentment, whatever.

Beyond that, the curve starts plateauing. You have a flat curve. So you may keep increasing the income. Internally, you will remain equally miserable. And we said not just equally miserable, you might find that the welfare is actually declining, dipping.

What do we need now in this age when the doomsday clock is very, very close to midnight? What do we need? We need people who can look at themselves and say, “Yes, I agree, I am not fulfilled, but how do I be fulfilled? Is material the answer? Is more money the answer?”

Yes, we need money. We are not saying we should simply just forsake everything and renounce and back away to the jungle. No, we are not saying that.

What is the answer? What is the new way of living?

We need to be happy. Joy is a fundamental human demand. Where do we get that happiness from? One could say, “I get my happiness from burning fossil fuel.” Another could say, “I get my happiness from reading great novels.” We need to decide today, what is it that fulfills us better.

Isn’t it possible to just sit in a general café, an ordinary café, and do meaningful work the entire day and read and dance maybe and talk to worthy people and get your satisfaction, your happiness, your contentment from there?

Or is it really important to really wreak havoc on the planet, to kill all kinds of species, tear them apart, consume their flesh, and have a huge carbon footprint? Is it important to have all that in order to be happy?

That’s the question we need to ask today.

We are not to deny satisfaction or contentment or happiness to ourselves. We need to find a higher plane of satisfaction, a higher plane of happiness.

Is this close to something that could help?

Thank you.

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