Does an Early Morning Routine Matter?
Questioner: Good evening, sir. My name is Malvika. My question is that we have seen many celebrities talk about their morning routines as the key solution to their achievements, so according to you what is the perfect daily routine for everyone?
Acharya Prashant: I have never had a set routine, so I am not the right person to ask this one too. But, see I wake up and stretch my hand to my workstation which is my phone and that’s a routine, that sets it. The ball is rolling now and I don’t realize when the day ends, I have very little idea. So, routine—you know, when you are on the battlefield—they say that all your plans are only valid till the first bullet is fired. Before the battle begins, obviously you draw very meticulous plans on both sides, the generals on the two sides are sitting and saying, “This is my strategy, we will do this, we will do this, attack from here.” But the moment the first shell is fired all the plans are gone. Then it’s just your sincerity towards your cause that takes you home. So that’s how it has been in my case.
If there is work to do, how do I say that my routine necessitates going to bed at 11 pm. But there is work to do and work is still not finished. So, I will have to awake till 2 am or 3 am and that’s what. Two hoots to the routine. What can I do with the routine.? That’s a bad advice, don’t take it, because it’s a difficult one to bear and it really requires a bull’s body to take and live this advice because this kind of thing is actually harsh on the physical system.
When you commit yourself fully to something worthwhile in life, then you have to disregard your body quite often and sometimes in a big way and in course of time it will take its toll. Not to be denied.
So, it depends on the depth of your love, right? A successful life, in some sense, is about dancing to somebody else's tune. Who’s tunes? Something bigger than yourself. Something bigger than yourself. And then, you when you don’t care for your own preferences, your own likes, dislikes, routines, or food habits or this and that.
I don’t think I will ever have the luxury of waking up at a particular time, I live in a kind of community environment, people keep barging into my room all the time and that wakes me up. What do I do? There is never a lock here in this campus on any room, so not even on my room. People are free to walk in anytime as they please and they exercise their right, with all their gusto. There are times when I am so tired in the night, that I just don’t have the energy to pull down the curtains, so its 4 am and exhausted. Just want to crash and the windows are all open. What’s the result? The result is that — at 6’am you are again woken up by the sunlight and that's how it happens, no regrets.
That might be a short-lived way, but it’s a beautiful way — to surrender your routine to your cause. When you have an exam tomorrow do you say that this is my time to sleep or this is when I watch my favorite tv show, do you say all that? Routine goes for all that. What routine? There is an exam tomorrow. So, give yourself a life in which there is an exam everyday. Then you live very tightly. There is no slack. Then there is automatic discipline. A discipline beyond an imposed routine. Because a routine definitely makes space for leisure etc. as well right. When you say routine that means, these are the hours I will study, these are the hours and I’ll do this, do that and these are the hours when I will have my spare time for leisure etc. So, a routine is some kind of luxury, you require a discipline beyond a routine. When you commit yourself totally. There is that song “Menu ishaq nachaya thaiya thaiya”(Love made me dance round and round). You are dancing to somebody tunes and the master is not you. The master is beyond you. Funny? It should be. It’s actually quite funny.
Questioner: Hello sir, my name is Sohail. My question to you is —Youngsters nowadays are very cautious about their diet, their health, they try to live a good lifestyle. So, they try to wake up early, first thing they do is yoga or meditate. You know, they try to follow a good diet etc. At the end of the day, they complain about ‘not being enough’, ‘feeling empty’, ‘feeling incomplete’ why do you suppose this happens?
Acharya Prashant: Because you are not born to just have a great lifestyle, you are born for a purpose. And we have already spoken of a purpose. The purpose is — “freedom from your preexisting bondages.” This happens in Tihar, they arrange yoga for inmates. Does that liberate them? Yoga classes are arranged for all the prisoners, that makes them more peaceful prisoners. Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of yoga and meditation has become, you remain inside your prison and keep meditating. What else can you anyway do? You have been served a life sentence. You have gotten into something you cannot get out of your entire life, right? So, meditate. That will keep you peaceful till you pass away. Meditation then becomes an obligation. Real meditation is revolution, if you are really meditative you will rise and blow yourself up like a suicide bomber. That’s what real meditativeness is. If you do not want to challenge your fundamental problems, instead you want to keep giving yourself superficial treatments. “I have only salad for dinner,” how will that help? How will that help? The fellow takes only salad at night, how will that help? It’s all within the cage, nice salad, Greek salad, served in the cage. How will that help? Very fit chap he is, extremely fit, and the face glows, all the fitness within the cage, pushup and pullups, leg press and chest press everything, come on, come on.
Questioner: Within the cage.
Acharya Prashant: Within the cage. Duly sanctioned by the jailer. How will that help? The hollowness will remain. But that’s the unfortunate ideal of this age, a very destructive, very pathetic ideal. Even spirituality has become so body centric. All the spiritual teachers are talking about great diet and this and that and superfoods. What does self-knowledge have to do with superfoods? All that is just a trick to keep you confined and satisfied in the cage, in the cage.
Think of the parrot in the cage, you don’t want to let the parrot die so you keep serving the parrot nice things and sometimes you can even bring it a golden cage. The parrot is very happy. See, look at all the gold that I have, I even eat gold. And I say Ram-Ram in the cage. If you really loved Ram, would you continue to live in the cage? Then what is this “Mithu bolo Ram-Ram” in the cage. What is all this spirituality and meditation and yoga if it is not making you rebel in the loudest way possible, in the most authentic way possible.
Questioner: Hello sir, sir my question, you were talking about the cage, so what came to me was, this cage is of tendencies and things that arise in me without me knowing, did I get it right?
Acharya Prashant: The nature of the self is freedom. When you value something more than freedom, then you give up on the freedom to accept that thing around you. Please understand the nature of the cage. What is a cage? Something around you. Something, you are there and there is something around you that’s called a cage. That thing is around you because you have accepted it, allowed it to be around you. Basically, you have said, “I am trading away my freedom for this thing.” Because, if you want to retain your freedom then you cannot have the cage. If you retain your freedom, can you have the cage? Ok. So, it’s a deal, you have bartered away your freedom for something else. Now whatever it is you have bartered away your freedom for, that’s called a cage.
So, for example, I am prepared to compromise on my freedom for the sake of your love — that’s a cage. Anything that takes away your freedom is called a cage. That’s a definition of a cage. A cage will not always look like a cage.
When a bird is confined it is obvious to see that there is tangible material, metallic cage. The cages that we are confined at are not so tangible. So how do you detect whether you are caged? See what is it around you, that exists at the cost of your freedom. See what is it around you that exists at the cost of your freedom. Whatsoever exists within or around you at the cost of your freedom is called a cage.
Questioner: And it will include that barter that one does to get, there’s a thought that wraps one around, so that is also at the cost of my freedom?
Acharya Prashant: Even thought, can aspire to be free. It is no mean thing to be a free thinker. Thought can obviously never be absolutely free, thought always has the thinker at the center. So, absolute freedom of thought is not possible. But even relatively, it is not a small thing to try to think freely. Even that freedom we barter for something else. Most people do not think freely because they cannot afford to think freely, if they think freely, they will be losing out on a lot of their conveniences. So, they just don’t think freely, they pause their mind at a certain place. Beyond that they dare not go, even in their thoughts they do not dare to transgress certain limits.
Questioner: This is what I have noticed in myself as well. Because once my securities are at stake, then I stop my freedom of thought at that point. So that’s what happens. Acharya ji one more thing, you were talking about authenticity, just before you were talking about being authentic. So, either this me, this comes either from the body or the social conditioning that I have around me. So, what I can see is, there is just artificiality and there is no authenticity, so how can one inculcate this authenticity because it was very attractive word for me, being authentic? Because I find myself to be very artificial at times and that gives me suffering. So how can one inculcate this?
Acharya Prashant: No, You don’t have to inculcate authenticity, authenticity is your nature. You just have to figure out what is it that you are considering more important than authenticity. Once you see that there is something that you consider more important than authenticity, you would want to investigate its true value. Here, there is something, let’s say attachment, that I am considering very, very important, even more important than authenticity, that is truth. So, you go close to it and figure out whether attachment is really worth all that value, whether attachment is really worth all that value? When you investigate you find, it does not have that kind of value. Then attachment drops, authenticity shines. Authenticity is something you have to gain from somewhere, it’s just that we start valuing other things a lot, the other things that you are valuing, you must figure out whether they are really worth it.
Questioner: Sorry, but I am not able to understand this with attachment per say.
Acharya Prashant: Something, anything. There is authenticity that you are claiming to respect and value, at the same time, you are saying there is not enough of it and you want to obtain it, which basically means there is something else that you are valuing more than authenticity. Something, I don’t know what, you figure out. So that other thing let’s call it ‘A’ that you are valuing so much. I am saying, “look at it, find out whether it really makes sense to give so much of value.”
Questioner: Usually it is just the pleasures that I tend to give value. Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: Thank you.
