In India, anything that you do, people will ask: "Is there money in it?" This is because there was no money for centuries. But today, that has been taken care of for most of you. So, you can proceed towards things of higher value. But if 80% of what you think about is money and survival, how will you do anything meaningful in life? Money is an enabler, not the purpose of life. It allows you to live more freely, but it cannot become life itself.
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Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. It is nice to meet you. So I would like to introduce ourselves. I am Ravisha. I am Varun and we both are PhD students at the University of Georgia here in the US. Like, for the last two years, Varun was listening to you on YouTube, and since day one, I was very reluctant to listen to you or even see you on YouTube. It was like, I can't hear him. But he persuaded me over a year, and through his persistence, when we came to the US, I started listening to you with an open mindset, and I started liking you — your words, the way you speak, and something went inside.
Very recently, I decided to join the Gita community. It was from the past three months that I have joined it, and we left our well-settled jobs in India, and we are in our mid-30s, married. So, it was like, everybody was against us, like, "Why, in your mid-30s, are you going to the US pursuing something different, which people don't do much, and just have a baby before going there?" So, it was like, we were like, "No, we can't do this." And I joined the Gita community and started listening to you now while going to classes and coming back, while going to the gym, I continuously listen to you.
Question is, like, we both are PhD students, and I'm researching in financial planning, and he is researching in engineering education. And we have noticed that most of the Indian students who are abroad, especially in the US, tend to choose fields like computer science, which are mostly driven by job prospects and societal approval. In contrast, fields like humanities or core sciences or social sciences, we can see there are very few Indians, though these fields attract a lot of students from other countries.
