Questioner: Good Evening Sir. My name is Tarun Singh from IIM Nagpur. Sir my question is this, actually we understand this thing that in life everything is temporary. Be it my existence on this earth, or any relationship, or my friendship, or any environment around me, everything is temporary. So, this thing actually keeps me detached, but at the same time, this thing actually keeps me demotivated to start something new, because I know that ultimately everything is temporary and everything will be gone. So, how to start, or how to keep myself motivated, knowing that everything is temporary?
Acharya Prashant: You see detachment and compassion come together. If you say you have detachment, there must be compassion alongside. What do I mean by that? What is the one source of the entire misery of this world? If you want to talk of detachment, you need to talk of “Anityata.” Right? Things are Ephemeral, but we take them as permanent. We try to seek not only permanence but actually timelessness, where it is not. And that leads to the great amount of misery and violence we see all around us.
So, you are detached because you can see that things are ever-changing, everything is in flux and it’s all a process. There are, in fact, no things either, there is only a stream. Right? I am coming from the Buddha at this moment. You can see all this. But does everybody see all this? And if everybody does not see all this, where is your compassion?
You say you have detachment, where is that necessary accompaniment of detachment, called compassion? Or is detachment something, for just your own benefit? Are you detached just for your own sake? So, you are detached from everything in the world, but not from yourself. I have detachment, and I keep it to myself because I am not detached from myself. Like little kids, who hide their fruits to themselves.
