How to correct one's mistakes? || Acharya Prashant (2017)

Questioner (Q): Sir, I see that the mistakes are happening over and over again. What to do?

Acharya Prashant (AP): When the right intent will be there in all its power then these things will not happen, because these things are not natural. These are not your inner order. These things happen only when an external agency is sitting on your head powers them to happen, otherwise, they cannot happen.

When it will be really your desire to not let these happen, they cannot happen. When they are happening you must know that you are supporting the happening, maybe, in a hidden way, maybe behind your own back.

Q: Behind my own back? Then how can that be stopped?

AP: By not doing that.

Q: That is the intention every time.

AP: That is the intention post the event. That is the intention after the event has happened.

Q: As I wake up in the morning, now that morning has come up I know there are things to do. The intention is in the mind.

AP: That is the intention before the event.

You have intentions before the event and after the event.

What about 'in' the event?

Then you have other intentions!

Q: To rush through it.

AP: Yes, of course.

To rush, to consume, to revel in fantasy, to swim about in the future — talk of those things. They are the things that are important.

Your fantasies, your great ideas about how life should be, and your concept of what a good life is like — that’s what dominates your mind.

Q: Yes. The concept really dominates and a part of it is that life would be wasted if the whole of life is spent working. And as far as the situation now is, work is a lot. So there is always this resistance that let’s find some time out! So, how do I really get over it?

AP: Drop this concept.

Q: But the dropping apparently takes a lot of time.

AP: Do you want to drop it?

Q: As of now, I don’t think.

AP: Then why are you asking this question?

Q: Because it is obviously causing me suffering.

AP: But still you don’t want to drop it?

Q: Because there is fear.

AP: Because there is a temptation.

Q: Temptation of what?

AP: You have a temptation that if you drop it, you may not get it.

Q: And also that by the end of the life it will be like, "Oh my God! I wasted this one life."

AP: Don’t waste it then. Keep holding to it.

Q: But if I hold it then there is suffering.

AP: Then decide!

Q: But decision really doesn’t power the whole thing.

AP: It does. If it is a decision.

You haven’t even formally decided!

Q: But the decision is very obvious looking at the situation I am in.

AP: No. No, it is not about deciding with respect to this situation. It is deciding that the concept that you hold as the good life is a rubbish concept. It is about deciding that. And that you don’t even decide in theory, let alone in practice. That is something that you hold very dear to your mind. You hold to it with your clenched fist. You say, "That is the good life I want."

Not even in your dreams do you want to drop that dream.

As long as you think that it is a very worthy dream, you will be dreaming.

That’s what you do: Dream!

Directly see, and acknowledge that what you think of life is all rubbish. What you think of as the good life, what you think of as a wasted life, all these are useless concepts. Once you have seen that, then your mind will not rush to that dreamland, that Lala land.

Q: This is what I’ve seen that what I call as a good life is actually not something that I want to question.

AP: Obviously!

Q: But how…(Stops himself in the middle of the sentence)

I think I’ll just stay shut and just try what you said.

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