How to deal with pain and hurt? || Acharya Prashant (2019)
Question: How to deal with pain and hurt?
Acharya Prashant Ji:
Dedicate your time to something sublime, and then you will not be available to get hurt. You are hurt because you are available.
Why are you walking around with free mental space, and spare time?
Be fully dedicated to something worthy, then all these little bruises and wounds, and rubs, will not bother you.
Life hurts and wounds, only those who are jobless.
Why are you jobless?
To be born, is to be born into one great job. What is that job? The life-long mission of Liberation.
You have to be fully employed there. It’s a full-time job, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three sixty five days a year. But you do not do justice to real occupation. You steal time. And then your punishment is, that the world will hurt you.
Your theft costs you very dearly.
Be fully consumed in the one, great, divine mission. Otherwise, life will beat you down very badly.
You have been entrusted with time, not so that you while it away. You have been entrusted with your fifty or eighty years, so that you make the best use of every second.
Your time is not your personal property. It has been entrusted to you.
You better use it for the designated and assigned purpose.
Somebody asked the Satan, “How do you corrupt a being?” He says, “It’s easy. I just whisper into his ears, ‘Your time is your time’.” And that’s the assumption we all have bought into – ‘I have the personal time.’ Not a second of your time is your’s.
Caught in petty politics, caught in this and that, whenever you will come to me citing these things, I will have just one quick question to ask, “From where did you get time to be caught in pettiness? You thief.”
It’s like entrusting a kid with his books, and you have told him to be with his books, the mathematics lessons to be finished-off. And after a while he comes and says, “You know daddy, I got bruised in the football field. Look at my knee, it’s bleeding.” Before I offer him any first aid, I will probably offer him a question, “Why did you steal time in the first place? You were supposed to be with the book. Why did you violate my trust and run away with your brat friends? Why?”
So the band-aid will come later on.
If you are suffering, there is nobody but you, who is responsible. Unless you fully accept this responsibility, there is no freedom. If your suffering is just incidental, then how can there be Freedom from it, because incidents can happen any way, any day?
You have to first of all clearly realise that suffering cannot come to you, without your consent. Not only your consent, but your active participation is needed in your process of suffering. Not only your participation, but your active doership is needed for you to suffer. Otherwise, you cannot suffer.
Any bit of suffering, is a clear indicator that you have been messing up with somebody’s trust.
You know whose trust I am talking of? The One who gave you time. He gave you time, trusting that you will use time piously. He didn’t give you time to smoke it away.
Questioner 1: Acharya Ji, while feeling pain, if we start to look at it from a distance, so who is the who is looking at the pain? Is it the ego? What should we do in such situations? Should we watch it from the distance?
Acharya Prashant Ji: If you are watching pain, then you are interested in pain. If you are not watching pain, then you are even more interested in pain.
You go to a dispensary, where kids are being vaccinated. When the needle goes in, some of them very keenly watch it. “Oh! The needle is going in.” Why? Because they are interested in the process. They feel they have a stake in the process. So, they keep watching the process. “Oh! The needle is going in.” Aghast!
And then, there are some who are so interested in the process, that they get terrified. And when the needle goes in, they start looking elsewhere. “It is such a deadly sight, we do not even want to look at it.”
Whether you are watching the needle go in, or whether you are avoiding the needle go in, you are interested in the needle in both cases. How come you have so much time to watch pain? Why aren’t you occupied with something else? I assure you right now, some part of my body is paining. Am I watching it? Not at all. Am I not watching it? Even that is not true. I am just elsewhere.
The body is where it just must be. I am where, I must be. Why are you with pain? What is the body? A storehouse of pain, what else? But if you start associating with the pain, it becomes your personal suffering. Let the pain be. For how long will you avoid pain? After all, you are a product of pain. Ask your mother.
Questioner 1: Is it some kind of escaping from body?
Acharya Prashant Ji:
You don’t have to do anything to escape from body. You do a lot to stick to the body.
I still ask you: “If you are occupied in something really worthwhile, would you really care for something like pain?”
Even an ordinary sportsperson would tell you that when you are pursuing something even as normal as, victory in a match, pain ceases to be a big botheration, unless it is crippling. Then you have to be carried on a stretcher.
(Pointing at a group of listeners in the audience) It’s noon Sun that is falling directly on them, are they bothered? I don’t think they are even taking cognizance of it. It is not even reporting, because they are where they must be.
The Sun is where it must be, the body is where it must be, why are you not where you must be? Why are you wandering here and there? Why are you so homeless?
There would never be a day when the body would not pain, believe me. And I am not talking of old-age and infirmity. Ask these young people. *(Looking at a bunch of youngsters sitting in the audience) “*Is there never a day when no part of your body pains for a while?”
Listeners: There is never a day.
Acharya Prashant Ji: How much do you want to concern yourself with stuff like pain? This body is anyway going to pain a lot one day, and be reduced to ashes.
Question 2: Does it mean we should never think of worst moments of our life?
Acharya Prashant Ji: You have to be busy, absolutely busy with the Absolute.
Questioner 2: And how to do that?
Acharya Prashant Ji: He will teach you.
Questioner 2: And what about life’s plans? How do we go about them?
Acharya Prashant Ji: Junk them.
Your plans are anyway of no avail.
Ask Him what to plan and how to plan.
Yes, in asking him, you can plan for little things, little things like reaching on time, so that you may ask Him.
