Love and Detachment || Acharya Prashant, at IIT-Delhi (2022)

Questioner (Q): Pranam Acharya Ji. Sir, some minutes before you said that it requires a deep thinking to arrive at what is the right thing to do. So, my question was, that in terms of if we have to analyze something and it is quite a far thing, like suppose we have to analyze the environment or anything that is happening outside.

But when we try to objectively analyze something that happens with us or is associated with us, it gets a kind of messy affair to arrive at anything or worth following or anything that is clear. So, my question is in the context of how you started this quest of finding of what is right and what was your way of thinking and how did you arrive at knowing what is the right thing.

And how did you face the challenge of investigating those things which demand, which may have a risk of losing something that you have been holding for a long time. So how do we investigate those things.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Right. What’s your name?

Q: Siddharth Singh.

AP: Siddharth is asking- it is easy to investigate objective world, phenomena outside of us. Right? You go to a laboratory and you can conduct experiments there. Because really you don’t have much to do with the equipment there. You go and there is an engine you are conducting experiments on or a computer you are writing a code on. You are not personally related there. So, its easier to be objective there. But when it comes to investigating what is going on in our life, within us, then it becomes difficult. The word that he is struggling to come to is detachment. You will be surprised from where detachment comes from.

Detachment comes from love. If you really have self-love, then you want to know what is going on in your life, and he is right, it becomes a complicated thing, it becomes a hauch pauch; a mess within. You just cannot know what is happening, from where is this emotion arising? From where is that desire coming? Why do I hate that direction? Why am I falling for such a thing? All these things happen inside and it becomes so difficult to remain objective. Because now the subject itself is involved. Right?

In such situations you require to be detached. And that detachment I am saying comes from love. Detachment therefore is not an opposite of love. Detachment is a product of love.

If you are suffering, do you really want to keep suffering? If you are in a bad situation, do you want to remain there? If you love yourself you will say,” I want to get out of this place”.

And if I want to get out of this place, I have to very independently, very neutrally, without prejudice, understand what is going on. That is called detachment. To not to be prejudiced towards yourself. To not to have inner biases. To not say, “oh I am a good man but bad things are happening with me because the world is conspiring.” “No, no, I am a good man. I deserve to be JEE rank 1. Its just that the examination center was too noisy and that’s why I am JEE 2714.”

I do not know of your batch, but most of us in my batch were aggrieved and kept fretting for all four years that we didn’t get the JEE rank we deserved. And all of us had reasons of this kind.

“You know the topics I specialized in, there was no question from those topics.” “There was just too much optics in the physis paper. 25% of the paper was from optics. Now who does that?” “This a scandal. I had declared myself JEE 1 even before writing the JEE, even thrown a party, even published in papers. But look at my rank now- in four figures.” We live very biased towards ourselves. Sometimes we also live biased against ourselves.

“Sir, what can I do? I cannot speak even in the front of the mirror. Even if there are four people in the audience I faint. I am no good. Please take me away, hide me somewhere, better still bury me in the earth.”

We can be biased for, we can be biased against, but hardly ever are we realistic. And it’s a very important thing to have in life- realism. Know yourself rightly. Know yourself rightly with the faith that your potential is infinite.

Irrespective of your infinite potential, if your current reality is of mediocrity, accept it. But accepting your current reality doesn’t mean remaining limited to your reality. You should say “This is where I stand, however I am not destined to stand here. Very frankly, very honestly, I accept I am standing at a very mediocre level but this is not where I will perpetually stay. My destiny is elsewhere. I will climb to the skies.” I will climb to the skies; I will not say I am already sitting up there. Now both of these are problems.

There are those who say, “oh I am born to be great. Swami Vivekananda told us.” I will declare, “I am already great.” You are born to be great that doesn’t mean you are already great. Be realistic. And then there are those who say “ I fully well realize, I am in a very in-between position, I am not great and that seals my fate, my entire life I will spend like this.”

Don’t limit your flight, irrespective of where you are. You are capable of reaching the highest; and when I say highest, I do not mean a plum job in the US and four luxury villas there. That’s not the conception of highest you should have. I have nothing against the US. But the common conception that we have of being successful in life is deeply flawed and dangerous.

Self-love- If I am being partial, I am hurting myself. Do I want to hurt myself? No I don’t want to hurt myself. I don’t want to hurt myself. When you were preparing for the JEE do you guys still use Irodov? Or is it out of fashion now?

Q: It’s still in use.

AP: It’s still in use. I do not know what’s your response to Irodov was. As far as I was concerned, first three months I didn’t get a single problem right. Not one problem. In class 11, I was able to pick it up in august or September. Till the winters set in I was clueless, what was going on?

One pulley here, one mass there, something is hanging, now what do I do then? Tell myself that I am already proficient because the answers were there at the back; in the editions that we used to have. Sometimes the hints too are there. You could pick up the answer and reverse calculate and say I have done it. Is that what you do? Or do you honestly accept I am not yet there. That’s also the thing you must do in life.

How much of jealousy do I have? What is my jealousy coefficient? How possessive I am? How niggardly, how lazy I am? Shouldn’t you ask these things?

Should you be assessed only on questions in physics and chemistry. Should you not assess yourself internally? What’s my discipline quotient? What’s my attention quotient? This thing has been on since an hour or so or one and half hours, I do not know. How much have I been attentive to?

Should you not know that? Or are you saying that everything in the world is important except yourself?

This is important (pointing towards the table), so I will know about this. This is important (pointing towards the microphone), so I will know about this. Everything is important. This is not important (referring towards own body) I am not important, my life is not important. How many of you want to say that? Please.

If you are important, your life is important. Then which knowledge is the most important? Self-knowledge. Right? But we have been told that you must be knowledgeable about everything: history, constitution, geography; of course PCM(Physics, chemistry and math). You must also know international affairs and geo politics. You must also know NFTs and bitcoin and crypto and you know all these things.

What is it that you do not know of? The self. Because the self is of no use. We are worthless. Everything is worthy of being known but we are worthless. Why should we know ourselves?

When you want to know something then your mind gains sharpness. Have you not experienced that? When you really want to solve a problem, have you seen how your entire mental energy gets focussed?

Then there is no question of attachment and prejudice. Then you are just hellbent on tackling the problem. I want to know what’s going on. The same thing happens when you want to know what is happening internally. Then irrespective of what your hormones are doing, what emotions you are experiencing, you still know the reality. Are you getting it?

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