Neither exact, nor perfect; just life, simple and direct || (2013)
Questioner: What is the exact way to live life?
Acharya Prashant: Are we right now living inexactly? Is there something wrong right now? You want to correct it?
What do you mean by exact? What is missing that you want to achieve? What exactness are you running after? When you are asking a question, I am listening, I am responding, then you are listening, this is life, what else is life?
What do you mean by the exact way?
Whatever there is, is there right now, there is nothing apart from it, where will you search for exactness?
But I understand why you are asking such a question. You are asking such a question because role models, ideas of perfection, ideals, they have been inserted in your mind. You have been constantly made to think that there is something missing with this and that can be achieved from somewhere else, that a right way, a correct way, an exact way lies somewhere.
The exact way is this and this is all that there is. If you are listening attentively right now, are you? This is exact. This is exactly the way. This is perfection. Absolute perfection. Nothing missing in it. Don’t search for anything else. Life is what is.
Sitting over here what else can be life for you? On Mars? In Canada? Under the ocean? Where else can be life and when can be life? When Mehak (questioner) will be 45 years old? Or in her memories when she was 8 years old?
Right now. This. Here. This is exact. This is life. There is no alternate life. Do not carry imaginations of perfection or any ideal in your mind. The only perfection is this. The only ideal is right now. You did the ideal thing.
What did she do?
She raised a question. This is the ideal thing. This is the exact thing. Those of us who keep thinking that there is something missing, they will not find that missing-something, somewhere else. You will find it here itself, nowhere else. And here does not refer to this room, it refers to where you are, it refers to your being, it refers to who you are, it refers to your essence.
Do not keep searching, do not keep seeking, all searching and seeking invariably takes you away from yourself. It will take you to the future. It will make your mind run in imaginations. That will not help.
We all have dreams, right?
We all have ambitions.
They are much the same as this question. Something exact.
"I will have an exactly good life when my dreams are fulfilled. This, what is right now is not good enough. It is not ‘exactly’ good, it is all right, it is tolerable but it’s not that, my dream heaven, my ideal. Life will be exact when I start earning so much. Life will be exact when I get the Bharat Ratna. Life will be exactly good when I will have a good house with a nice husband and two kids and a big car; right now it’s not all right, right now there is some problem, some inaccuracy, some inexactness."
Nothing is wrong with right now. It’s alright. It’s beautiful. The exactness is already there with you. Do not look for it. There is no exact way. In fact, there is no way, this is it, and this is exact. You are exact. You are perfect. You are the ideal.
What takes you away from yourself is the thought that ‘I am not good enough’. What makes you miserable is the thought that ‘There is something wrong with me’.
Give up that thought and everything is good. Give up your dreams. Give up the future.
Start living.
All your dreams arise from a notion that there is something wrong with me and only when I will achieve my dreams that life will be worth living. Right now there is some problem so I have a dream for the future.
If I am contented right now, will I dream?
When you are very happy, are you still dreaming?
You are dreaming the most when you are the most unhappy. The one who dreams the most is the one who is suffering the most. Only the one who is deeply dissatisfied keeps dreaming and the more he dreams the more dissatisfied he becomes.
Your way is good. Your way is alright. There is no other way. There is no alternative.
