How To Watch One's Tendencies? How To Associate With The Right Objects?

Acharya Prashant

12 min
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How To Watch One's Tendencies? How To Associate With The Right Objects?
So, you look at your current state. “This is what I abhor so much.” “This is what I like so much.” “This is what I just don’t want to look at.” “This is what I must daily look at.” “That’s my favorite TV show.” “That thing, that shop, that product is what I feel addicted to.” And you then ask yourself, “Is all of that or is any of that doing any good?” Because it is all about me. And then things get dropped. And then the right things happen on its own. This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

Questioner: Namaste Sir, I am Varsha. I live in Virginia in the United States. It’s an honor to watch you live and learn from you today. So, thank you for the opportunity.

I have two questions, the first one being you spoke about associating ourselves with the right objects and I want to understand how do I do that in my day-to-day life. I live as most people do—wake up, go to work, come back, cook or order, watch TV, sleep. How do I associate myself with the right objects in that practical day-to-day life?

The second one is you also spoke about observing your tendencies and knowing yourself through that. And in my experience that observation is also very hard. Observing your tendencies without engaging with them is also exhausting because then you start noticing that there is so much of clutter that goes on in your mind, and if you start paying attention to each one of those without necessarily interacting with them or acting upon them, you are tired at the end of the day. So, how to keep doing that?

Acharya Prashant: See the second point contains the answer to the first one. The first one you said, “How to enter into right relationships?” But are we starting from a point where there is no relationship at all? No, that’s not the starting point. The starting point is the point of lot of relationships, we already are into lot of relationships, right? There is a relationship with the handbag, there is a relationship with the car, there is a relationship with that particular flower, there is a relationship with the favorite meal and obviously there is a relationship with the people in life. So, they already do exist.

So, one starts by asking, “What is the nature of these relationships?” One does not start by asking, “How to get into the right relationship?” One starts asking, “Are the current relationships, right?” Because one is not available, one is not free to enter into anything new. All the benches in the hall are already occupied, there is no possibility of a new entrant. So, one begins by asking, “Are these the right occupants? Why have I accorded these places to these objects?”

And those objects could be your hopes, desires, things, memories, money, fame, obviously people; so, those things are there. One begins by asking, “What is it that makes me cling to them? What is it that makes me at least retain them?” Because no objects stay in your life without the contribution of your energy. Relationships, as you know, require a lot of investments.

We keep expending our time, our energy, our money to keep the chairs occupied. It’s not that the occupants of the chair are sticky. If we leave them, they might as well leave. But we find that we have a stake in those relationships. One begins by asking, “Is the stake real at all or am I just in illusion?” So, one begins with things as they are. One begins and that’s the only possibility—you have to begin where you are.

So, you look at your current state. “This is what I abhor so much.” “This is what I like so much.” “This is what I just don’t want to look at.” “This is what I must daily look at.” “That’s my favorite TV show.” “That thing, that shop, that product is what I feel addicted to.” And you then ask yourself, “Is all of that or is any of that doing any good?” Because it is all about me.

All my relationships are for my own stake, are they not? So, I must ask, “What am I getting from that? What is that doing to me?” And then things get dropped. And then the right things happen on its own. Please, please remember this—the right thing will always happen on its own. The wrong thing often has to be forcefully done.

That doesn’t mean that everything that happens on its own is the right thing. A lot of unconscious things also seem to happen on their own, right? One slips, as they say one falls in love, and love in first sight and all those things; they also seem to happen on their own. We are not talking of that. We are talking of a point of clear consciousness, from there things just spontaneously happen, and the right things will happen. Whatever will happen will be right, one need not even think about that.

One has to rather think about the status quo—things as they are right now. “Why are these chairs occupied by these objects? It’s my mind, my sanctum sanctorum. Why must these things, these thoughts, these people, these objects, these events, these memories, these whatever, feelings, emotions, why must they be present here? This is my fiefdom. This is my sacred zone. What right do these things have to be present here?” That’s how one proceeds.

The second thing that you asked, is it’s difficult to observe oneself. You see, there are rabbits in the lawn, it’s a large wide lawn. It is not at all exhausting to observe the rabbits, but if you chase the rabbits, obviously you will be exhausted. Observe things as they are, don’t chase them, don’t desire anything from them. If you desire to catch a rabbit and hold it in your lap, then obviously you will be exhausted. So, thoughts, feelings and all these things are these rabbits. They keep operating in that wide expanse that lawn of the mind.

Observation takes no energy, all it takes is attention. But if you want to have a relationship with the objects that you are observing, obviously that will sap you out. When we observe, we don’t observe without motive. When we observe, we become policemen. “Oh, I just observed a bad thought, so it must be suppressed.” Now that suppression will require energy. And you don’t need to suppress it, it’s just a rabbit. Let the rabbit do its own thing in the lawn. You are there to observe, not to catch it.

Questioner:: Yeah, thank you, appreciated.

Acharya Prashant: Wonderful.

Questioner: Thank you so much Acharya Ji for doing this. I have been waiting for the privilege and the honor of being able to interact with you and to listen to you in English. I keep looking for English content, hard for me to understand Hindi.

My question was essentially the same as what Varsha just asked, in terms of what are the things, for example, you said, there could be a small tumor growing in your stomach and that’s external, but a thought like that terrifies me. So what are some of the things that we can do to sort of, get to that point, was my first question? And then just to observe is your answer. You don’t have to do anything but just to observe and that is how you get start to know yourself.

But the additional question that comes to my mind then is, 'In a world, where we only know and we only comprehend relative truth, you know, if everything that I am thinking, the opposite of that is also is true, and there is no clear way to define what knowledge is. Bertrand Russell’s paradox for example. If a universal set contains all sets, does it contain itself?

In a world like that, when we are dealing with that as a limitation, how do we even begin to start thinking about ourselves and thinking about observing ourselves? Because those observations are fundamentally thoughts.

Acharya Prashant: The observation becomes false when there is a motive behind the observation. It is difficult to explain what motiveless, desireless observation is like. You talked, for example, of being frightened by the thought of a tumor in the stomach. Think of that, there has to be a motive, please.

What can the tumor do? It can destroy the body, right? Now the body is something that I have and I have a motive. I have a motive. My motive is that I must live freely and joyfully, right? That’s the fundamental motive of every human being. And the body is a means, a vehicle through which much can be done to move into that freedom and joy, right?

So, if I have a car and that car is to be used for a decent purpose, and if I find that the car is developing a snag in the engine, why must I not be worried? It’s alright to be worried, but it’s alright to be worried only when I know who I am and where I am to go. Else, why must the state of the car worry me? Why must the state of the car worry me? If the car is to just to remain parked, or if the car exists just for the purpose of getting fueled and serviced, of what use is the car to me? Are you getting it?

Then the thing— that opposite of one thing, or opposite of one truth is another truth—no, all that is valid in the domain of concepts and ideas. But when we are talking of the Truth in the Vedanta, it is something beyond me. That which is beyond me is the Truth because whatsoever is in my domain, carries the same limitations as I do. And since I am not okay with my limitations, I dare not call myself as the Truth, because the Truth by definition has to be the final thing. If I am the final thing, then my limitations are the final thing. That would mean that I am condemn to bear my limitation and suffering.

Therefore, I will never, never want to call myself as to be the Truth. How will I proceed to call one thought as a truth and the opposite of that too as the truth? No, no, no. That’s not how one has to wisely look at it. “This thought, that thought, they are all my thoughts. And no thought is the Truth, because all thoughts are to me. All thoughts are to me.” “Who am I?” “I am my own suffering.” “What do I want to do?” “I want to get rid of my suffering.”

Therefore, I have to go beyond my little self, and that which is beyond my little self is the Truth. I cannot even name it, so I just point at it by saying, “That which is beyond me.” All that I can know is myself. So, I use myself as the center of reference and say, “That which is beyond me.” Because I know myself, and I also know that as far as I am concerned, as far as the domain of my thoughts, feelings, existence, opinions is concerned, none of that manages to satisfy me. So, I know that I don’t have to take them seriously. I don’t have to take myself seriously. I am not the Truth, I am not the Truth. I am not the Truth, how can my thought be the Truth?

I don’t think the place you are coming from has been fully addressed, so please counter question.

Questioner: So, my question would be, I understand that the Truth is not something I am generating, it is something that is outside and that. So then, is that an article of faith then to some extent?

Acharya Prashant: It is just a humble admission that as far as I am concerned and the domain of my thought and experiences is concerned, there is no peace there. That’s a humble admission. I identify falseness, that’s the maximum I can do. My job is to identify all that is false, I will not utter a word about the Truth. And in other words, all that I can identify is by the virtue of identification to be considered as false. If I can identify it, it is false, because it’s being identified by me.

Questioner: Thank you, Acharya Ji. That is a lot of perspective. Thank you.

Acharya Prashant: Welcome.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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