How to obtain a satisfactory future? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Questioner (Q): In this present college scenario, there is one thing, which is the academics which I focus on, and there is an equivalent pool of activities which will help me develop my personality, in the sense that if I get better in a specific activity, it might help me in future, in my life. So, in general I may have the belief that I am good in academics and for that I need to excel in academics, but academics might not help me in my life, in the future.
How should I balance and how should I prioritize things? What is contentment? Is it right to compromise on contentment because I may do something today which will help me in the future, irrespective of whether it is making me happy or not? Is it the right way to lead life?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Thanks for raising this. There are two questions in this. First, what is contentment? Second, can it be obtained by doing something in the future?
Is contentment a thing of the future? The answer is contained in our own daily activities and what we see around us.
What satisfies a terrorist? Killing.
What satisfies a scientist? More time spent in the lab.
What is a Hindu interested in? Temples.
What is a Muslim interested in? Mosques.
What would an Indian nationalist be interested in? India.
What would a man be interested in? Women.
Don’t you see that what satisfies you comes deeply from how you are conditioned? You find satisfaction only in that in which you are conditioned to be satisfied in.
So, this satisfaction, then, happens to be quite an ugly word, because this satisfaction is nothing but a continuation of the repetitive patterns of the past. This satisfaction is not even yours; you have been trained to be satisfied in this and that, and that is the reason why this satisfaction is never really complete. Is it not obvious?
You do something and that never really satisfies you, and then you hop on to something else. You reach there, but that point is never final, so you want to hop on to something else. Had that really satisfied you, would you still have tried to do something more and more and more?
He wants to ask: What kind of balance should I take up? What would be a satisfactory balance?
The answer cannot be given directly, but yes, what can be certainly said is that let it not be an external influence that decides this. Let it not come from your seniors or anybody else. If it is coming from there, it cannot be your own; it cannot be a product of your intelligence. Let it not come from a general trend. There is no fun really in being a part of the crowd, and also there is no fun in remaining separate for the heck of it, that everybody is going towards one side of the road, so you start driving the wrong side. “I don’t do what the crowd does, so I drive on the wrong side, against the crowd.” Not that, not really that. Because even in that you are dependent on the crowd. “If the crowd goes right, I will go left.” You are still dependent; you are still a follower of the crowd.
The word ‘satisfaction’ is quite intriguing; it is always something to be obtained, right? Always. And it lies in the future, and the word ‘future’ must ring a bell. When we say future, we mean the…?
Q: Time.
AP: Yes. Time, and hence…?
Q: Space.
AP: A hunt for satisfaction necessarily means that right now you are…?
Q: Dissatisfied.
AP: Correct! Unhappy, dissatisfied.
Now look at this absurd logic of the brain. It says, “Right now I am dissatisfied, right now there is a disease, and I will cure it in the future.” If you are sick right now, you need a medicine right now. You cannot say that “I am so miserable and my life is pathetic, but the day I will graduate and get a nice job, then I will be satisfied and happy.” And what about the remaining four years?
You live life today and you think you will be satisfied then. Don’t you see what you are doing with your life? You are wasting it, absolutely wasting it. Everybody who lives in dreams and ambitions is making a terrible waste of his life. Everybody and anybody who is running after results of any kind is surely wasting his life, because chasing results means you are not in love with the moment, and in the moment there is always a process; you are not in love with the process.
It would be on one particular day that the results would be declared, right? But life is continuous, every moment. If happiness belongs to that one moment when the results are declared, then it is a very poor life. You get your salary cheque on one particular day in a month. How many days do you work? If happiness belongs to that one particular day when you get that cheque, then what about the other twenty-nine days? How do you spend them? In misery. That’s what we do; we spend those days in misery.
“I will be happy when that result comes. I will be happy when I beat him. I will be happy when my C.G.P.A. exceeds 8.5. I will be happy when…” and that ‘when’ is always in future, and future is always in the brain.
There is no future. Life is this moment, and those who live in their aims and objectives necessarily miss out on life.
Look at the poverty of those who say that, “You know, this is a stepping stone and there is a ladder, that proverbial ladder of success, and we are climbing up that ladder,” and then you put your leg on one rung and then you put your leg on another rung. What they don’t say is: you are not satisfied at any rung of the ladder, you are miserable at every step, and that is the reason why you keep climbing up, up and up and up. And there is no real movement taking place because at every step you are still miserable.
Is the patient improving if day after day his condition is still miserable? And the doctor keeps telling you, “Tomorrow he will be satisfied with his condition.” And in our life there is always a tomorrow, right? That “Tomorrow something will happen and I will be satisfied.” You go to a doctor and he keeps telling you, “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow”—and there is this infinite series of tomorrows. What kind of doctor is that? Surely a quack.
Our brain is that kind of a doctor; it keeps you in illusions all the time, that there is something great in the future. And we have understood why the brain is always looking at the future: because of its own insecurity, because of its inability to live in the present.
Q: How can we condition our brain to live in the present?
AP: You cannot condition your brain to live in the present. You can only be aware of the processes of the brain.
You see, the brain is like a machine. Howsoever much you alter it—you may change its design, you will do a few other changes, you can entirely change its programming—but howsoever much you change its programming, it would still remain a machine bound by its programming. Old programming or new programming, programming is programming. And programming is slavery.
The brain can never go beyond its programming. Yes, there can be different kinds of programming: Hindu programming, Muslim programming, Young programming and Old programming, Male programming and Female programming. There can be different kinds of programming, but the brain can never go beyond the programming.
So, don’t talk of doing too much with the brain. Talk of that intelligence that can understand this programming. The brain is programmed and it cannot understand that it is programmed. Intelligence understands that the brain is programmed. What does intelligence do? Intelligence looks at the brain—this is called witnessing—and understands that it is a machine and hence not to be taken very seriously. That’s the only way you become a master of the brain rather than the brain becoming a master of you.
How do you look at the brain? By looking at what it does everyday from the morning till the evening; by remaining alert, awake, and conscious. So, you see how habituated it is. And what is a habit? A repetition of the past. You see how habituated it is. You wake up in the morning and you immediately reach out to what your habit tells you. You go to the same set of people every day; you are habituated to calling as friends.
To be intelligent is to look into all this and more, the habits that the brain follows, its sense of insecurity, boredom, frustration that we come across every day. It is to be alert right now. What is it doing? Even right now, is it listening or is it wandering in thoughts?
And we all know that thoughts are time. That is the only way you go beyond the brain, and to go beyond the brain is to go beyond slavery and become a master; not by trying to alter the shape of the brain, not by enforcing some discipline upon you, but by intelligently understanding the limitations of the brain. And the limitations of the brain can be seen only in its functioning—how it functions, how you get angry very soon, how lust and other impulses arise in you that are of a purely mechanical nature, chemical driven, hormone driven—by observing all this, not by suppressing all this, not by fighting it.
You do not fight a machine. What fun is there in fighting a machine? You understand the machine. As intelligent people, what do you do? Do you fight machines? No. You understand their design, you understand their input and output methods, and then you have understood the machine, you have mastered the machine.
So, you understand the brain. You are sitting and a thought comes to you, and you don’t become a slave of that thought. You say, “Oh, alright; now I understand where this thought is coming from, let it be there.” You have become very emotional upon hearing something or reading something; you do not let the emotion overpower you. You say, “I know what this thing called emotion is. It is nothing but the manifestation of thought. When the thought becomes very intense, it takes the shape of emotion.” And then life is different, very very different.
That is the way the intelligent being deals with the brain—observes it, witnesses it, looks at it.
