How to lose stillness? By trying to keep pace with it || Acharya Prashant (2016)
Questioner (Q): In analyzing, in concluding what you are saying, I miss the flow. What am I doing wrong?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You are ‘trying’ to keep pace with the speaker. See, what happens in a really truthful discussion is that the speaker is still but the audience is habituated to running. The audience thinks that the speaker is moving in a direction. So, the audience tries to keep pace with the speaker. Now, the speaker is still and the audience is trying to match the speaker.
So, what will happen when the speaker is still and you are trying to run as fast as the speaker? In your imagination, the speaker is moving. But in reality, the speaker is still. And what are you trying to do?
Q: Match him
AP: So what happens?
The more you are trying to keep pace with the speaker, the more you lose the speaker; you go away. The only way to be with a still being is to be still.
But we think when the speaker is there, saying something, then we need to do something to be with the speaker. And what do we do? We analyze, we dissect, we conclude. And in the end, what do we get? Only distance from the speaker.
Q: But sir, I wanted to ask, for example, there is a chemistry lecture going on…
AP: That is a very different thing.
There is movement involved there. There what you are getting is knowledge, and where there is knowledge, there is movement. There you must surely keep pace with the speaker. Not here. In a chemistry lecture, you are supposed to absorb knowledge. Here, knowledge is of very little value.
That (chemistry lecture) and this (Bodh-Satr) are dimensionally different. There you must move, and move swiftly. Here, you must not move at all. There you have to keep in mind many things. Here, you don’t have to have a mind!
