Facing Inner Emptiness: Where Do We Find Purpose?
Questioner: Good evening, sir. Sir, as in the session, you mentioned stepping back from the world and resting in your own sacred shrine. When I heard this, I felt very scared, as I felt that within ourselves, there is nothing. So if there is nothing, then what will we live for?
Acharya Prashant: You can just live. You can just live without living for something. What else is the central message of the Gita? Nishkamna—what does kaamna mean?
Questioner: Desires.
Acharya Prashant: What does that mean?
Questioner: Living for something.
Acharya Prashant: Yes. So can you not just live instead of living for something? Alright. I bring you to a beautiful sunset on the beach, right? Okay, and just then, somebody tells you that your younger brother, who accompanied you, has gone missing. He accompanied you to the beach, but he is one bundle of mischief, and now he has run away, and nobody can locate him, where is he? And there, the beautiful sun is about to set, and the waves are gorgeous, right? What are you doing now that the boy is missing?
Questioner: Not living and focused on—
Not that the boy is missing.
Acharya Prashant: You are looking for the boy. You're looking for the boy, correct? And the fellow standing next to you is just looking. He’s just looking, and everything is just so damn beautiful. Who is in a better state—you or your neighbor?
Questioner: That other fellow.
Acharya Prashant: Because the sunset now is totally lost on you. You cannot look at the sunset because you are looking for something. All the glory of life becomes unavailable to you because you are looking for something in particular.
So, living and living for are different things. Looking and looking for are different things. Listening and listening for are different things. Reading and reading for are different things. Observing and observing for are different things.
So many people fail in their observation. I advise them to observe themselves—self-observation is the key, I say. But they fail. Why? Because they are observing for something. Their observation is not nishkaam; it has a motive. Whereas, observation can succeed only if it is motiveless, purposeless.
You are not looking for something—you are just looking. Just looking. What am I doing? Just living.
Now, that does not mean that you are a bum with nothing to do in life. That simply means that whatever you are doing is not with the purpose of some petty attainment.
I’m doing, not doing……Complete me, please.
Questioner: For.
Acharya Prashant: I’m doing, not doing ‘for’. So, there's a great difference—looking and looking for, doing and doing for. Yes. I'm doing this. Yes, I'm fighting. Not fighting….please
Questioner: Fighting ‘for’.
Acharya Prashant: So, Arjun—fight. Does he say, "Arjun, fight for victory"?
Questioner: No.
Acharya Prashant: No. Fight. So, look. Fight. Do. Listen. Not fight for—equally, relate. Not relate for. Love. Not love for.
When you love for, then that's exploitation. When you just love—oh, that’s cool. Smooth. So, if someone comes to you and says, "I love you for—whatever, your eyes or your intelligence," that's a problem. Take that as some kind of a red signal. There is a problem there.
Great things must be for their own sake, not for something that you will get from those things. And life is a great thing, is it not? Life is the mother of all great things.
So, life must be for its own sake, not for something else.
The Kurukshetra fight is a great thing in itself. So, fight. Not fight for the sake of riches or gold or the throne or glory—nothing. Just fight. The fight itself is wonderful.
Do not fight for something. If you fight for something, your heart will break. It is not the nature of life to give you what you want. So, do not needlessly expose yourself to terrible vulnerability. When you start demanding stuff from life, you become pitiable and vulnerable. Now, you stand in front of life like a beggar. No need.
Love with an open heart—not so that you can get something. Work. Work like a machine—not so that you can get something. If you work for something, again, you will get a heartbreak because ‘Maa faleshu kadachan.’ You will never have any handle on what life will serve to you.
Do not look for stuff. Just look.
Questioner: So, but this state—we achieve by choosing, making better choices. So, it feels like a very distant thing—to not love for something.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, doesn’t it feel like love—to be with the thing for the thing’s sake, not for something that you will get from the thing? Or does love sound too alien?
It’s just so beautiful. What else?
What do you get by getting up early and watching that red ball rise? How many dollars? Or what—a certificate from the Sun?
Nothing. It’s just beautiful. In itself. In itself. I don’t care for what happens the next day. The night itself is so beautiful—who bothers for the morning?
Let yourself be dissolved in the night.
Arjun, be dissolved in the fight. Die before you bring death to others, Arjun. Die.
Die, and then fight. Reminds you of somebody?
Ahhh! That’s what—die, and then fight. So that your fight is not for something. That does not forbid you from having goals. That merely tells that no goal should have a meaning bigger than the action itself.
By all means, have goals. But the goal should not be more important than the game itself. If there is any meaning, the meaning is in the game. The goal might be achieved in the process of the game—fine. But the meaning does not lie in the goal. The meaning lies in the game.
Play with abandon. You’ll forget to count the number of goals. Somebody will have to draw your attention towards the scoreboard.
"I got so much into the game, I lost count of goals." This is not some impractical, utopian fiction. This is what the greats have lived by. This is the very substance of greatness.
