Love, Compromise, Magic, God.... || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)
Speaker: Fear, what about fear?
Listener 1: What is fearlessness ?
Speaker: No fear, simple, light, straight forward; no thought that something can go wrong.
Listener 2: It is something like karma (action) ?
Speaker: Like?
Listener 2: Karma (action) .
Speaker: Obviously. If you toss a ball, it will come down – cause and effect . In the world of material, there is always cause and effect , that is the law of karma (action) . It is nothing but the law of material. If you throw something, it will move forward. Every cause will have an effect , that is the law of karma (action) , but that law does not apply to conscious beings.
So you are affected by the law of karma (action) only as long as you are unconscious. The more you are aware , the more you realize, the more you become free of all karma (action) ; that is freedom from karmafal (result of action).
Listener 2: In Gita, there is one line ‘The one who see activity in inactivity and inactivity in activity’, what it means?
Speaker: ‘Karma in Akarma and *Akarma in Karma*’ (Inaction in action) , not only Krishna , Lao Tzu has talked about it – effortless action . It means that you are at the center of everything.
The center should never move, and all the movement should be on the periphery – the circumference. So inaction at the center, and deep and vigorous action on the periphery. And the two are related. If the center starts moving, then the system will collapse.
Think of a fan, for the blades to rotate rapidly, the center must be firm and constant – inaction; for action to happen inaction is needed ; for action to happen, inaction is needed, so that you can live well in the world.
The world is the world of action. Everything is moving here. Action means movement, time. The world is the seat of action. To live well in the world, you must be very-very inactive within.
Listener 3: Calmness.
Speaker: No movement; complete stillness.
Only when you are still within, can there be good action outside. This is action in inaction and inaction in action.
Listener 3: Sir, what is fear of failure?
Speaker: Fear of failure is actually the fear that I stand to gain something from success, that I am dependent on this or that. You have a target; you want to gain something from there, right? It’s related to your question (pointing towards another student) , you have a target, you want to gain something from that, your basic assumption is “There is something missing that can be gained by achieving that target”, so the fear of failure is actually the fear of incompletion. The fear that the world can supply something that I do not inherently have.
Fear of failure, ambition for success – are they different? Are they different? But you target success without knowing, that with the ambition of success necessarily comes the..?
Listeners: Fear of failure.
Speaker: Fear of failure. Anybody who is going for success, targeting success, will always spend his life in…?
Listeners: Fear.
Speaker: Fear.
Listener 4: Sir, is success the only limitation of human life that what we pretend the success to be? Actually, we know what the society claims, what they are coming with – that, this, is what success is, is it that only success or something beyond that?
Speaker: Success is something that makes you feel good, right? And if success is really success then it should stop your chase for success because chase means “I am not feeling good, that’s why I am chasing.” If you are feeling good, already good; then will you chase something? What does chase mean? Not feeling good.
So success is success, worthwhile, only if it stops the chase. Have you ever seen any success that stops the chase? You are talking of something beyond success, I am questioning success itself. You are probably talking of a bigger success; I am asking whether even the smaller success is worth it? You have been chasing and chasing, and are you chasing less today than you were chasing five years back? Five years back you were chasing, were you not?
Listeners: Yes sir.
Speaker: Today again you are chasing.
Listeners: Yes sir.
Speaker: Tomorrow ? Chase will continue, so what is the point of success in which the chase always continues? Even till
Chase will continue. So, what is the point of success in which the chase always continues? Even till your last breathe, will your chase stop? Have you ever seen a dying man who says “Stopped”?
Listener 4: But Sir, if we are not suppose to chase anything, then what we are we supposed to do?
Speaker: What does the grass do?
Listener 4: Grows.
Speaker: Then?
Listener 4: If we do not cut-off then it will distribute.
Speaker: What does the sky do? What does the river do? The clouds do?
Listener 4: Flow.
Speaker: What do they do?
Listener 4: But Sir, we have to do something, we are supposed to do something.
Speaker: What do you mean by ‘supposed’ to? Were you born crying that I am supposed to do something ?
Listener 4: Then what’s the point?
Speaker: What’s the point? Need there be a point? Who told you that there ought to be a point? Who told you that there must be a point for something? This is the language of the businessman – “Do you know, that there must be some profit in something.” By point you mean some kind of profit ?
Listener 4: Not all, but there suppose to be a reason why this world is.
Speaker: Yeah, reason is profit. When you say that I am doing this, for this reason, you mean that I get this from this; reason means profit.
Listener 4: One has to get something from this world.
Speaker: ‘One has to get something from this world.’ Now, who taught you that this world is there so that some profit or something may be there?
Listener 5: This world.
Speaker: These peoples, they themselves have come and told you.
Listener 4: No Sir, but it doesn’t make sense. All these things doesn’t make sense.
Speaker: Obviously nothing makes sense, it’s a mad world.
Listener 4: It’s just there.
Speaker: It’s just there. And we have made it into what it is not meant to be.
Listener 4: But Sir, like in Bhagavad Gita they always say ‘You have to do Satkarma (Right action) . You have to do Satkarma (Right action) .’ So then what we are supposed to do? We can’t lie…
Speaker: What does the river do?
Listener 4: It flows.
Speaker: Is karma (action) not happening?
Listener 4: Karma (action) is happening Sir, but in human, that is different Sir, what are we suppose to do?
Speaker: Nothing. What are we doing right now? Why is just being so difficult? And why do you think that in just being there would be no action ? What is so difficult about just being and not trying to become something?
Listener 4: Sir, there is no problem but others…
Speaker: Yeah, that is right, that is the problem you are facing.
Listener 4: What Sir?
Speaker: What will other say.
Listener 4: No.
Speaker: Obviously. The other will not speak from outside, they will speak from inside.
Listener 4: No, that what an introvert is.
Speaker: They are already speaking from inside, whose voice are you talking in? Is it not the voice that you have internalised from outside? The others are speaking.
Listener 4: Sir, I think that I should be just here .
Speaker: Just here .
Listener 4: Just here .
Speaker: And that does not mean that you have to keep sitting on this chair. Just here does not mean that action is prohibited. It means – action need not have a profit motive. It means that there can be action without reason, and that is the most beautiful action, action without reason, like in love, action without reason. You see a small child and you just give your shirt to the child, what profit? Is action happening or not?
Listeners: Yes.
Speaker: Explain the purpose, the reason, the why?
Listener 5: You want to have this feeling of giving away.
Speaker: Then there will be a problem. If it is for that feeling, then you will take back the shirt if the child starts abusing you, because you wanted to have a good feeling about yourself and instead the child started abusing you.
Listener 5: Not to the child but to ourselves, we feel light.
Speaker: Then you will not do this if you see a child of some other religion or cast, or some other violating some other tenet of conditioning that you have. When I gave that example, I meant something that has absolutely no reason, absolutely no reason.
Listener 4: So you are saying if I will speak, the action is automatically happening?
Speaker: Yes, very well captured.
Listener 5: Intuition sir?
Speaker: Not intuition, that’s something else.
Listener 4: That’s why you are saying that if we are still from the center, the action automatically happens.
Speaker: Yes, yes, well related, well related.
Listener 4: But Sir, I don’t get this, for example, in Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjun “You must fight”
Speaker: You must fight.
Listener 4: You must fight.
Speaker: You must fight.
Listener 4: But Sir then I want to know that – Arjun will be able to fight with this intensity if he doesn’t have any target?
Speaker: Double the intensity.
Listener 4: If he just be here .
Speaker: Yes. You don’t know any intensity. Your intensity is proportional only to the greed that you have towards the target. Have you noticed that? If the target is big, your intensity is?
Listener 4: Big.
Listener 5: More.
Listener 6: Threshold.
Speaker:
When you work without a target, then the intensity is just right.
Listener 4: Sir, the work will come; it’s definite that work will come.
Speaker: Not the same work, not the same work that you want to do with target, because it’s coming from a different quality of mind .
Listener 4: My mind will give the work?
Speaker: Things happen.
Listener 4: Thing will happen.
Listener 5: Sir, then it might become magical.
Speaker: Yes, it is magical . It is magical.
Listener 4: Sir, what about a student?
Speaker: That we are just student.
Listener 4: I want to hear.
Speaker: Alright.
Listener 4: If I just be here , then?
Speaker: What are you doing right now?
Listener 4: Asking question.
Speaker: No, you are just being here .
Listener 4: Right now be here.
Speaker: That’s enough. You are a student, and learning is happening by just being here .
Listener 4: Sir, but it will start a bit but if I just be here, and my majors are coming, next week are my majors. Automatically I’ll start preparing for major? I mean I can’t get this thing? We are right now in a world where targets…
Speaker: Come to see. Had you really been there in the classroom?
Listener 6: Yes.
Speaker: Had you really been there in the classroom, would you have been thinking of the major right now?
Listeners: *(All together)*No.
Speaker: Why do you need to think of the majors? Because you have never really been here . And then things happen, you are there, things will happen, and then you don’t need to think of the exam, things will happen .
Listener 4: If I just be there, obviously, I will learn automatically, and then what’s the point of majors?
Speaker: What’s the point of majors? What’s the point of targets? Why do you need a purpose?
Go there, be there and that’s it. Your presence is sufficient. You will automatically do the right thing, by just being.
Listener 4: By my own presence.
Speaker: And Krishna has said nothing more or less than this.
Listener 5: Sir, while choosing any of the career as future thing, what we do that, like that after doing graduation we will give some papers to go for a government job, to go for a corporate life. What should be the, like those things attract us and we are going to get that, that’s why we are doing this.
Speaker: Are they attracting you right now?
Listener 5: No.
Speaker: When do they attract you?
Listener 4: When you think.
Speaker: Do you have the space to think right now?
Listeners: No Sir.
Speaker:
The more you are absent, the more you will be wandering in the future.
Anybody here who is thinking of the government job right now?
Listeners: No Sir.
Listener 4: Like when we play football, then we don’t think whether we bore or not?
Speaker: But you will think of the job where you are being scolded, let’s say by teachers or at home, and you are being, constantly being reminded that “What will you be doing three years from today?” Then you will think because now fear has.. (By hand gesture signifying that fear comes into you)
Listener 6: No body ask those things now.
Speaker: You have been realizing it subtly, for example, you look at a hoarding, and the hoarding is shouting “For your great future, invest in this plan.”, some financial instrument, now that hoarding is transporting you to the future.
Listener 4: It’s inducing fear.
Speaker: It’s inducing fear .
Listener 5: Sir mostly when we start studying, the thoughts of future comes up. How to get rid of them?
Speaker: Does that question need to be answered? Won’t you know? You see, we are so afraid, so afraid that we are constantly seeking consolation. We need somebody to keep supporting us, to keep consoling us, by telling us “No no don’t worry, the future will be good.”, and if we don’t get anybody else then we cry on our own shoulders, “Will everything be ok?” Have you seen people very afraid, they are always, they are constantly asking this. And what are the others around them doing? They are telling them “No, don’t worry, things will be alright, things will be alright.” Things ‘will be’ alright, the future will be alright. That happens when you are very afraid, and we are being kept in a perpetual state of fear by the systems around us, they all the time as you said inducing fear in us. That is what systems do – induce fear; sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly.
The child is made afraid, then the young man is made afraid, then the husband is made afraid, then the father is made afraid; *fear is the engine of this world .*
Listener 4: Sir, basically influences are causing fear in us. So Sir how can I make a wall around so that nothing affects me? I mean influence Sir, I can’t control every time.
Speaker: No, you see, I can say this, that, or whatever to you, but if you already know the Truth, if you are already seated there, firmly stationed, then you will have no space for what I am telling to you. Have you seen abandoned houses? Anybody can come and sit there or sleep there or even deficit there, dirty it or even break it and go away. Why does that become possible? – Because the house is empty, abandoned, there is nobody there.
Similarly, when the mind does not have the Truth, then influences come and occupy that position; very faithfully you have to let the one Truth rule your mind, and that is your armor, that is the wall that you are talking of. Your defense against all kind of diseases. But you know, in the beginning of the conversation you said “like magic”, We don’t have Faith ; we don’t have Faith in Magic. We are suspicious, very rational people, so that the seat of Truth is vacant, because the Truth can be seated there only in Faith.
To not to live in Faith, to refute Magic, is to live in suffering. The one who has nothing to do with Magic, will live a very terrified life.
Listener 4: Fearful.
Speaker: Very good, yes. You must know, you must know, your heart must be full of Faith and then the world can have no influence upon you, that is your armor. Everything else must be secondary to you, that is the first thing to which you should give primary importance, but we give our primary importance to so many other things – money , career , this or that, relationships , man, woman, reputation, prestige, the result of that is this.
Listener 5: Sir one thing I want to ask about how to choose the career right ? Like after just graduation. If anything does not attract you, means that you should just go this way, you should go that way. What will lead to correct action? What should I do?
Speaker: Nothing, nothing. All roads emerge from where you are standing right now. Be very clear about where you are standing and you will see the right road. In fact, the right road will see you and will call you and you will go there. You don’t need to choose, you just need to open your eyes , stay attentive and not be shaken by the world . You don’t need to determine in advance, you don’t really need to go out and choose.
Things happen, from nowhere. You will not know from where it is happening; things happen. They are already happening; you had lunch a couple of hours back, right? Do you know how it is being digested? If food can be digested, if your body can be built without your knowledge , why can’t a career be built without your knowledge?
Listener 4: Sir in class, Mam says, *‘*As soon as you move towards existence, existence moves towards you.’
Speaker: Wonderful! Yes. Yes.
Listener 5: Like the things will happen, we have to just stay.
Speaker: And the most beautiful things happen that way – without your planning, without your doer-ship, they just happen.
Listener 3: Sir is there anything called luck?
Speaker: Everything is luck. Obviously, there is luck.
Listener 3: Good luck, bad luck, something like that?
Speaker: There is luck, you can call it good, bad, whatever; but there is luck. The question is to live subject to luck is just like living subject to influences; both are external, right? Influences comes from outside and destiny too is not determined by you. You didn’t decide when to be born? How to be born? You don’t decide whether a truck will come and hit you. So luck is there, obviously luck is there, but do we want to live dependent on luck? The man who lives a life of reasons will be always dependent on luck because luck is reasons.
Listener 4: You will think “What will happen? How will happen?”
Speaker: That is all destiny, the network of cause and effect . So luck is there, but never forget that something far bigger and far more important than luck is available to you. It over-rides all luck, it supersedes, luck cannot do anything. You might be born in the poorest of families, yet you may shine like a diamond. Luck is gone, luck is superseded. That is what is captured in those very famous lines ‘jako rankhe Saiyan , baal na banka kar sake, jo jag bairi hoe’.
Your bad luck that the entire world is against you, bad luck, very bad luck; but there is something else that is with you and you are the winner. So in spite of such bad luck, you are still the winner. Baal na banka kar sake, jo jag bairi hoe, the entire world is an enemy and yet I am the winner.
Listener 3: Sir it is like something bigger than us.
Speaker: Something bigger than you and something bigger than luck. It is not very different from you, it is not very far away from you, but you have to have…, I return to that word – ‘*Faith *’ – in it. The password is F.A.I.T.H. It’s like having the best of the gadgets with you without knowing the password. What use is the best of the gadget if you don’t know the password?
Will you remember this five letter word beginning with F? You know enough of four-letter words, right? Let’s have a five letter word, beginning with F (Smiles). Yes Prashant? F.A.I.T.H.
Listener 6: Sir whatever we do every day, in the regular college and in the classes. So these things are being done by us or some external force is tending us to do?
Speaker: This tube light is shining (pointing towards a tube light on the ceiling), work is happening. You can measure that work. You can either see how much current is flowing into it and do the calculations, or you can say how much light is emanating from it and do the calculations, that is our life. What does this tube light know? What does it understand? Under these lights I have conducted dozens of samvaad sessions, what does it know? Does it know anything? Does it know the fact ? Can it go beyond the fact into the Truth?
Same is our life, there are so many tube lights who come and attend the session and do not understand anything. They sit in this hall like these light sit and yet they don’t understand anything. That is our life – mechanical, programmed, like an instrument, knowing nothing and yet operating, like that wrist watch (pointing towards a student’s hand) , see it knows time. (Laughs)
Listener 5: So we are instruments?
Speaker: No, you are an instrument of instruments.
God never produces instruments, God only produces God. Or if you want it more specific – God produces Godliness.
Bhagwan se Bhagvatta hi nikalti hai, kuch aur nhin nikal sakta – How can the cleanest give rise to the dirty? Can it? So from God only Godliness can come. This rubbish comes from man’s mind, it doesn’t come from God.
Listener 4: God gave this mind.
Speaker: God gave this mind all the freedom , because the nature of God is freedom itself. So God gave your mind all the freedom. God said “Fine, you can either live in Godliness or you can wallow in all rubbish and dirt, your wish.”
Listener 4: Why does he gave us this choice?
Speaker: Because choice is his nature , freedom is his nature . God means absolute freedom.
Listener 5: Sir, God has no boundary.
Speaker: No boundary. So when something is coming from absolute freedom, that thing too has freedom. So you have the freedom and this is the way you are using your freedom. You are sitting here in this session, right? It is out of a choice, you had a freedom, a freedom was given to you “Go to the samvad (dialogue) or don’t go to the samvad *(dialogue)*”, you made a choice, this is a very good example, and others have made other choice.
God loves you so much that he has left you with lots of freedom, now what you do with that freedom determines your life. No boundation, he has given you all the freedom, he has even given you the freedom to abuse God. Don’t you see people abusing God? So he has given you so much freedom, you can abuse God; but what will happen is upon you to suffer, that is called the law of karma, cause and effect. Simple, law of karma – jaisi karni vaisi bharni (Reap as one has sown) , simple cause and effect.
Listener 5: So where is the destiny?
Speaker: This is destiny – what you do, you will get. You toss a ball, the ball will come down.
Listener 5: That part is destiny.
Speaker: That is the destiny part.
Listener 5: Destiny cause all this moving.
Speaker: Yes of course, the only thing is here we are taking the example in which you are tossing the ball and the ball is coming down to your own hand. So here is the element of personal knowledge involved, “I toss the ball and ball came in my hand” but it is also possible that somebody behind you tosses the ball and the ball lands on your hand, that too is destiny, but that is destiny without personal knowledge. “I don’t even know what is going to happen to me, somebody else is tossing a ball and hitting my head.” But still, remember this is cause and effect . If a ball hits your head, it means somebody else tossed it. If a truck hits you, it means truck driver is drunk, and why the truck driver is drunk? There is another cause and then there is another cause and then there is another cause , then there is another cause and so that.
Listener 4: You don’t know.
Speaker: You may not know, and if you investigate you can also know to an extent, at least you can know. You can launch an inquiry and you will come to know the cause of the accident. So this entire universe is a network of cause and effect , a few things are known to you but most of it is unknown to you.
Listener 4: Sir, so the freedom part is within me.
Speaker: Wonderful, very well said. Yes.
Listener 4: Sir, so in a way everything is under me.
Speaker: Everything outside of you.
Listener 4: The only thing I am having control is me.
Speaker: But that is all that you have. What else do you want to control? What else do you want to control?
Listener 4: That’s why you are saying that if I just being here and I have complete Faith , then no matter how many things happen to me, point will come..
Speaker: Ultimately you are bothered with how you feel about those things, right? A ball hits your head; ultimately the question is how do you react to it ? What you feel about the ball hitting your head? Does that depend on the ball?
Listener 4: No it depends upon me.
Speaker: And that is why you have all the power in the universe.
Listener 5: Sir in life we make many choices, so there is a statement ‘Jo hota hai acche ke liye hota hai’ (Which happens is for the best), is it true?
Speaker: It depends on whether you realize it. It cannot be a statement made in desperation; you have heard the story of a fox, right? Story of the sour grapes, ‘angur khattein hain (Grapes are sour)?
Listeners: *(All together)*Yes Sir.
Speaker: That first of all you try for something and when you don’t get it then you say jo hota hai achche ke liye hota hai, koi baat nhin yaar (whatever happens is for the best, it’s fine); just to hide your frustration. It’s a realization, and it doesn’t say jo hota hai acche ke liye hota hai , that all is well, whatever is happening is the best and all that. It says whatever is, is just there and there is no option, so “I will not even ask the question of accha and bura (good and bad).” It is there. It is there. Is there an alternative? Is there a choice? So what do I mean by accha and bura (good and bad) ? Where is the choice? Where is the choice?
This is it, and if this is it, let me be better present to it. Why should I be swinging here and there in imaginations and comparing it to the non-existent? This is it . So don’t console yourself by saying that “All this is happening for the good”; *all this is happening ,* this much is sufficient; for the good, remove that part, reddened.
Listener 4: We have no choice.
Speaker: Yes, you are fooling yourself into thinking as if there is a choice.
There is no choice in the happening; the choice lies only in your response. And the response again has only two choices: a response of awareness versus a response of conditioning; only two choices are there. Either you can respond in your most aware state, or you can respond like a machine in a conditioned state.
Listener 7: Sir, what is Neti-Neti (not this – not this) ?
Speaker: Neti-Neti (not this – not this) means that when I start opening my eyes, I start realizing that things are not what they appear to be. ‘Na-iti’ – not this, and then I cry out in realization and in excitement “Oh it is not the way I thought it to be.” Things are not what they seem like, that is Neti-Neti (not this – not this) . And anyone who ever opens his eyes always says Neti (not this) . “Oh this is fresh, this is new, this is not what I was assuming it to be and nothing is what I assumed it to be. The entire world is a substance very different from its appearance, that is Neti (not this) .
Listener 8: Sir, there is this statement that when you want something, you get it…
Listener 9: Law of attraction.
Speaker: It is rather the law of conditioning , there is nothing in this. There is nothing of value in this statement. You cannot read out this statement and the statements of Krishna in The Bhagwad Gita in the same breathe. These are at two very different levels, they should not be spoken of together.
What is this so called law of attraction?
What it means is, suppose you are fat and you are obsessed towards a girl, because you are obsessed and because you know what a girls like, what will you do? You will start going to gym, so after a few months, what do you get? A lean physique, and because girls like lean physique, that girl starts feeling attracted towards you.
So you are attracted towards the girl, then you automatically do a few things that made the girl attracted towards you, what’s the big deal? That we anyway know is the law of conditioning. Never think that the universe wants to fulfill your desires . No, the universe doesn’t want to fulfill your desires, the universe has nothing to do with your desires. In fact, in desires you can never know what the universe is. Because the desired mind is a confused mind; a desired mind is a mind that is asleep, a desirous mind. A mind full of desires; desirous mind will never know what the universe is, so what does it mean by saying that “The universe will conspire, or the universe will come together to grant me my wish.” These are all very superficial statements.
Listener 5: So, should planning be done or not?
Speaker: As long as you are dealing with the world, plan, why not? But don’t take it seriously.
Listener 5: But, if I make a plan for tomorrow and all that goes well, is that just a coincidence or it may be..
Speaker: What do you mean by ‘goes well’? All wellness is within, how can the plan go well? Are you not getting it? The plan may fail and yet you are feeling very well. So what do you mean by all went well?
Listener 5: As it would go as per my thought.
Speaker: Everything can go as per your thoughts and yet you may find yourself feeling miserable. Everything can go exactly as per your plan and yet you are feeling miserable. So what do you mean by well? Wellness is here (pointing inwards) not there (pointing outwards) ; but yes as long as the matters of the world are considered, consult and go ahead. Don’t take planning too seriously. But don’t expect that planning can give you anything.
The Real, the most important, is not the product of planning, it just comes. Can magic be planned? (Smiles)
Listeners: (All together) No sir.
Listener 4: Magic is anything that is unexplained.
Speaker: Magic is something that is unexplainable. If it is just unexplained, it is superstitioned. You take sodium to some totally uneducated tribes man and you put some water over it and the sodium boom explode, to him it is magic; but that is not magic. Magic is that which is beyond explanation, no science, no logics, no reach of mind can ever explain it – that is magic. Magic is not the slide of hand in which you know, you produce sweets by waving your arm in the air; that is not magic.
Listener 7: Sir, what is difference between compromise and satisfaction?
Speaker: All satisfaction is a compromise because you are never fully compromised, or fully satisfied. So whenever you say “I am satisfied”, you are actually compromising. Are you ever fully satisfied, absolutely satisfied?
Listener 7: So we can never be fully satisfied?
Speaker: We can never be fully satisfied, because satisfaction assumes that you are dissatisfied and you are trying to gain something through which you can be satisfied. It will never give you perfect satisfaction, you will always be feeling a little frustrated, a little unwell, a little short, deficient; so all satisfaction is compromise . There is another thing that is called contentment, that is not compromise.
Listener 7: What is contentment?
Speaker: Contentment means I don’t want anything.
Listener 7: Sb kuch moh maaya hai. (Everything is illusion)
Speaker: No, when you say this moh maaya (illusion) , do you know what you mean? Do you understand what is maaya (illusion) ? Or is it just a clever way to escape from understanding.
Listener 5: Something picked up by someone else.
Speaker: Yeah and I just keep throwing around without understanding and without even having the intention to understand.
What is maaya?
Contentment is feeling of fullness. Contentment is a feeling that I cannot be harmed, that I cannot gain much and I cannot lose much. Fundamentally, contentment is: “I am alright”. That subtle constant realization that “I am alright, things are alright”, this is contentment.
Listener 3: How does it come?
Speaker: By removing all the rubbish, you find that this feeling is already there. You only have to remove all the rubbish that you are carrying in your head; you discover that this feeling is already there. This feeling does not arise from anywhere, it is already there. You only have to give up your attachment to your notions – “I have to achieve this, I have to rise to that level, I must have this much of money, everyone has a girl friend, where is mine?, everyone is being respected, why is nobody caring for me?” all these things, “a good life is only when you have a job that pays you so much, good life is only when you are riding a Mercedes by the age of forty or you know, whatever, twenty five. (Laughs) There is no limit to your notions.
