How to find joy? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question : Sir, how to find joy? Let us say that I want to do something and I want to find joy in that thing. How to find that joy?
Speaker : You don’t find joy. Joy is not the result of any doing.
Two things: One- you don’t find joy . Second- joy is not the result of any doing.
Because all your doing is reactionary. Doing is a manifestation of your identities. Intelligence is your very nature. You don’t have to go and find it. It is there but covered by layers and layers of conditioning.
Freedom is your very nature, you cannot lose it. It is always there, but covered by layers and layers of slavery, bondages.
Are you getting it.?
So there is no question of finding joy. If anywhere effort is required, it is required in clearing the rubbish, which has settled since such a long time. How do you clear that rubbish? By observing it.
You cannot clear something, you cannot get rid of something that you do not understand . You observe the rubbish happening daily, the rubbish in your relationships, in the way you come to your books, in the way you approach studies, career, entertainment, the world, everything. You observe the way you come to these things. There you will find out the truth of your brain, there you will discover the falseness of these things.
When you discover the falseness , it goes away. What remains is pure joy. You don’t have to find it. It is the doing. It is an observation.
For example, right now you are not doing anything, you are just listening. There is no doing involved here. You are just present and that presence is sufficient. In fact, if you do something then you may not be present. Some of us, even at this moment, might be busy doing something and those who are ‘*doing*‘ will be surely absent. Only those who are not doing anything, only they can be present.
Joy is not a doing. Joy is in fact an act of non-doing.
Don’t do anything. You are habituated to doing so much, stop what you are already doing. When you stop, then you are deeply and completely present. Just be present to life.
Are you getting it?
Look into the truth of all your doings, all your running, all your hunts and chases. Find out what are they are all about. And I am not talking about inactivity. I am not saying that a joyful person does not do anything. What I am saying is that when he does something, it is the response not a reaction.
In fact, the joyful person have loads and loads of energy. He is unstoppable.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
