Difference between satisfaction and Contentment || Acharya Prashant, with students (2014)
Speaker: See these are two different words- satisfaction and contentment. And one has to understand the difference between them very clearly. Satisfaction is gratification. Satisfaction comes out of achieving something. Satisfaction is a demand. A demand that is never really met. You say, ‘I will be satisfied when I get something’. So, it is always conditional. There is a condition imposed, ‘If I get this I will be satisfied’. And then there is contentment. Contentment says, ‘Not that something is to be achieved for peace, I am already alright, already full, already peaceful and in this peace I am operating.’ The satisfied person says, ‘I am working so that I may get peace’. The contented man says, ‘I am already peaceful, that is the reason I am working’. You know only the first way of living and that is a very horrible way of living. Because you are saying that I will work only when I am dissatisfied. So to keep working I must be..?
Listener 1: Dissatisfied.
Speaker: So you are condemning yourself to torture. You are saying, ‘Keep me perpetually dissatisfied so that I may keep moving, like a rocket. Like a rocket, my back must always be on fire, only then I can move ahead.’ This is the way the entire world moves. ‘Why am I studying? So that I may not fail.’There is the fear of failure in examination, that is why I am studying.’ So what is the environment in which this studying is happening? The environment of fear. This is what happens to a man whose engine is dissatisfaction. But the world wants you to be dissatisfied so that you can move in ways that please the world. So, they’ll teach you, ‘Go ahead, get this! and unless you get this, you are worthless’. Unless you become somebody, you are not even worthy of love’. As I said that this is a very horrible way of living. This is slow torcher. All your life you are being kept dissatisfied. There is something more to be had, something more to achieve. And this is being given the name of progress, that this is progress. This is rubbish.
