Living for Others?

Questioner: Some people say that you should live for yourself, and some people say that it gives you more happiness if you live for others. So, which of these approaches is the right one?

Acharya Prashant: So, she is asking whether to live for oneself or others, right? That’s the way the question is framed. There is a side where you live for yourself, and contrasted to that there is a side where you live for others. Yes, there indeed are two sides, but they are not quite the way you are seeing them and presenting them. The two sides can rather be seen like this.

There is a center within us from where we see that working for oneself is different from working for others; that’s one center we operate from. And if you operate from that center, then it’s an either/or situation, a zero-sum game. From that center, self-interest is always contradictory to, and pitted against general interest; and most people operate from that center, right?

We can have two centers within; we can have two drivers within from where we come; we can have two identities within. If you operate from the first center or the first identity, you will feel that your welfare and the welfare of others, the world, the society, these two are mutually exclusive. You will feel as if there is a piece of bread and if you have it, then your brother can’t have it; and if he has it, then you can’t have it. Even if the two of you decide to have half of it each, still it’s not the same as you enjoying the complete portion, the full bite, right? So, this is just a zero-sum game. Do you understand a ‘zero-sum game’? If it’s plus one for you, then it’s minus one for the other. If I win, then you lose; the two of us can’t win simultaneously. That’s a zero-sum game.

So, that’s the common way of looking at the world, at life itself; that’s the way this question too is coming from. “Should I live for myself, or should I live for others?” Look at the assumption behind the question. The assumption is: that it’s either this or that. Therefore, it’s a tough choice, and that’s also the way it has been traditionally represented. If you want to live for society, it has been said that you have to renounce all self-interest, right? Look at the concept of the sannyāsī (ascetic, renouncer). If you want to live for the world, then you have to partake in austerities, you have to become a renunciate, an ascetic, right?—because if you are doing it for the world, you can’t do it for yourself. And that’s the idea that has clutched us—this either/or situation.

This either/or situation appears to us only because we operate from the wrong center; that’s the center of the ego. And the ego says, “My interest is different, rather contrasted to the interest of the world. If I have to be happy, then somebody has to be sad. If I have to win, then somebody has to lose. Or if I have to get something, then there has to be at least a barter.” So, the situation is either competitive or one of the bargain, but the situation is never symbiotic, right? That’s how we commonly think, and that’s how we have been made to think, and that’s how even our systems are, right? If you want to win the gold medal, obviously the other one cannot. If you are running a race, not everybody can win a race, right? So, it’s an either/or situation—“Either I win it or somebody else does.”

Then there is the other center, where you start seeing that actually your interest and the interests of others are inseparable, and if you try to take care of only your own personal, divided, limited interests, then you will not be able to take care of even your own interests; that it’s easy and tempting to assume that you can have happiness at the cost of others—if not at the cost of others, then at least by being oblivious or insensitive to the condition of others—but then, such happiness would be no happiness at all. This means that if others are suffering, it is impossible that you can be happy or prosperous. That’s the center of maturity. That’s the center of wisdom.

From that center, this question becomes invalid. That center says, “Well, if you are taking care of your own real interests, then even without your knowing you will find that you are directly or indirectly helping others as well. Equally, if you are really helping others, then directly-indirectly, consciously-unconsciously, you will find that you are helping yourself as well.” So, these two become one, united, undivided. “If I am doing something, then, for you, parallelly, something good is happening for me as well even without my conscious effort. My consciousness is fixed on doing something good for you; my consciousness is not caring about my own personal self-interest; and yet if I just take care of your welfare, my welfare is automatically taken care of because the two of us are inseparable.”

It’s like a lot of people on the same plane or the same boat: if even one of them is to reach the destination, it is discovered that all of them have reached their destination, right? If the pilot is flying the passengers to a particular place, it is inevitable that the pilot too would reach that place. And not only would the pilot reach that place, but he would find that he has reached that place and now has good company. What’s the fun of reaching a great place alone? You have reached there, and you have flown so many others to that great place; that’s the center, we said, of maturity and wisdom.

Remember that the other center not only does not work for others, it also does not work for you. The center of superficiality, immaturity, what does it say? It says, “I can be good, happy, fulfilled at the cost of others, or by ignoring the welfare of others, or by closing my eyes to the condition of others,” right? That’s what the center of immaturity says. Remember, if you are operating from this center, you are creating suffering both ways, not just one way.

I am not asking you to be a do-gooder, to be altruistic, to involve yourself in social work. What I am saying is, that social work is personal work; what I am saying is, that universal good is personal good; and these two are indistinct. If by what you are doing, if by how you are living, you are causing suffering to others, then your way of living is causing suffering to you as well, even if you do not recognize that.

So, there is a stray dog on the road and there are these kids, brats, and pre-teens who are having fun by throwing stones at the animal, right? And the animal is getting hit and hurt, and those kids are all laughing. It appears as if one party and one party alone is the sufferer; that’s not true. That’s what appears on the surface. The fact is both are suffering. It’s just that the suffering of one is visible and the suffering of the other is not visible; it will become visible at some other time. It will not come at some other time; it will just become visible at some other time. They are already suffering; they are already condemned. It’s just that it will take time for their suffering to express itself.

It’s like getting infected by a virus—we are talking of Covid again these days. Your suffering does not begin the moment you get infected, or does it? You get infected today, and the symptoms show up five days later, right? So, that’s the thing. We do not realize that we are already suffering; that realization comes after five days. For five days we can party and enjoy and infect others as well, and that’s what most of human life is actually about—we suffer and we teach others how to suffer.

Everybody is a philosopher, everybody is a teacher, everybody is a preacher, and all of us in subtle or unsubtle ways are relaying our own concept and philosophy of life to everybody around us. And we tell them, “Dude, do this. Go that way. I have been there, and done that. Look how happy I am!” And who is this fellow? He is the fellow in whom the symptoms have not yet appeared, but he is already infected. It’s just that he is not getting himself tested properly. With a virus it’s easier to get yourself diagnosed, right? You can visit a pathology lab and the report would be out in a few hours. But when it comes to inner infection, mental infection, it can be detected only by careful self-observation.

Unfortunately, our upbringing, our education, our media, and all the influencers around us, they do not educate us on the importance, of the art of self-observation. So, we do not know that we are suffering. It’s a very funny thing. People suffer and yet keep behaving as if they are not suffering, right? So, you meet a commoner on the road and you ask him, “So, how are you?” Chances are he will say, “All is well.” You very well know nothing is well with his life, but he will say, “All is well,” right? And it’s not just that you are trying to fool the other by saying, “All is well”; you actually do feel, “No, it’s almost okay, it’s almost okay. Badhiya hai, changa si (All good, all good).” When things are horrible and rotten, we still keep saying, “Mast (good)!” And that’s not because you have a positive attitude; that’s because we are blind to our real situation. It’s not about positivity; it’s about blindness.

We do not know how we are, and it is out of this blindness that the concept that “I can make the animal suffer, or I can make my neighbor suffer, or I can make my family suffer, or I can make the neighboring country suffer, I can make other species suffer, I can make my customer suffer, I can make my student or my teacher suffer, I can do all kinds of nonsensical things to others and get happiness in return”—this idea continues to prevail. It’s a very stupid idea. It’s a very, very stupid idea.

What to do then? Please see that the thing you want is nearly much the same thing that others want from life. Also, see that you cannot really have that as long as you want it only for yourself. Wanting something only for oneself is exactly the dissatisfaction that you want to get rid of. Because when you want something only for yourself, think of what you have put at the top place. When you say, “I want something only for myself,” what is it that you have given the highest place to? Yourself. And those who have tried to look into life have said that the self itself is the biggest bondage, that the greatest bondage is the self.

The narrow kind of selfishness says, “Whatever I have to do, I have to do only for my little self.” Even if you manage to do something wonderful for your little self, whom have you managed to now inflate? The little self, because you have done so much for it. And the little self was the fundamental suffering. So, if you do so much for the little self, you have only inflated your suffering. The one that you want to do so much for, the one that you call as ‘I’, the self, is exactly your suffering. So, if you do so much for that self, you are only aiding your suffering, you are only increasing your suffering.

What is to be done then? What is the purpose of life? The purpose of life is not accumulation around the little self—“I want this, I want that”; the purpose of life is knowing what you really want. And when you try to know what is it that you really want, you get surprising conclusions very individually. And people have come to the same conclusion two hundred years ago, two thousand years ago, four thousand years ago, in India, in China, in Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Japan; irrespective of where one has gone into this question, the answer has been more or less the same. The answer has been that no, all these things that we commonly want, that’s not what we really want. All these things that we are commonly conditioned to want, that’s not what we really want; those are very superficial desires. There is a much, much deeper desire, and we all deserve to get that desire fulfilled. There is no point in spending your life in just dealing with your superficial desires and inflating your little ego.

Do you know what the deeper desire is? Usually, this answer comes only to those who have invested themselves in knowing the answer, but let me just point at it out to you. The deepest desire is getting rid of the self itself. Not doing much for the self but getting rid of the self—that’s your deepest desire. And that’s not a duty somebody else is imposing on you; that’s your own fundamental deepest desire; that’s what you want.

In fact, that desire is so great and so deep that it has been called as true love. True love is about seeing your own inner extinction. You do not want to continue the way you are inwardly, and that’s what you love—your own dissolution.

So, when you operate from the right center, you start seeing the falseness of the question itself, right? I do not know to what extent I am able to communicate this to you, but even if it does not reach you fully, let something, something vague resonate within you; it will probably help you in the time to come.

Questioner: You just said that the deepest desire is getting rid of oneself. What exactly do you mean by that?

Acharya Prashant: You think of yourself as somebody, right? So, if I ask you, “Who are you?” you will reply in those terms—very conventional terms, very popular terms, very predictable terms, right? “I am a human being. I am X years old. I am a male. I am a student, a student of such subject. I am a Hindu. I am a Muslim. I am a Christian, something, I am a socialist. I am a capitalist.” When you look into these things, you discover these are identities that are given to you either by your body or by society, both of which are rather random. You did not decide to give birth with black hair and black eyes. Had you been in Europe, you would have had blue eyes and blonde hair. But today you will say, “I am somebody with such features.”

You did not decide to take birth as a boy; it happened. The body has been randomly given to you. And that which is random, how can that be your fundamental identity? Can a random occurrence be allowed to be called your fundamental identity? Please. You are born in a particular religion, a particular caste probably—did you choose that? It’s a random occurrence. You say you, probably, love cricket. Were you born a Russian, would you still love cricket? So, can your love for cricket be your fundamental identity? You love mutter-pulao. Born in the north-east? Unlikely. Born in the deep south? Again, unlikely.

But these things, they start becoming so important to us that we forget that they are things. The body is a thing; the ideology is a thing; the gender is a thing; the likes and dislikes are a thing. They become our core. Self-observation is about seeing that none of this is your core.

What is the core then? There is no core. At most, you could say that your ability to see that there is no core is your core. Your ability to see that there is no core is your core. That’s all! All else is random, all else is in the stream of time; it randomly came one day, and randomly it will depart one day. So, does that answer your question?

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