Right work is its own reward || Acharya Prashant
Questioner (Q): It is said, “The one who is not able to incorporate the knowing in his doing is worse than the one who does not know at all.” Just wanted some clarification on this.
Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, man has an active mind. Man has a mind driven by a so-called self-supporting ego. Man is the only creature in existence that feels that he is all by himself. That is why man faces the kind of worries and tensions that no other creature does. You feel greatly responsible for yourself; you feel as if your welfare and upkeep is all upon you.
The mind is small, and it cannot admit of anything immense, large, beyond itself. It is impossible for it; it is not even a matter of intention. It is just impossible. The cup cannot conceive of the ocean.
So, one has no Faith. The more active and self-supporting the mind becomes, the more faithless it becomes. The more you start living supported by, and according to, your concepts, ideologies, inventions, constructs, social orders, the more insecure you become. You are wearing clothes manufactured by you. You are living in a building made by you. You are following an ideology made by yourself. Even the most intimate affairs of your life – cohabitation, mating, copulation, reproduction – are according to social orders and norms made by?
Q: You.
AP: Even your love is man-made. Even your love is a man-made love. It is a manufactured love. It is a factory love. Now, there is no possibility of reliance upon anything except yourself.
To really rebel one has to be very dismissive of the outcome of the rebellion. One must have a mind that says, “Whatever comes is alright; whatever comes will be taken care of by something beyond me.” To really be able to play with life and play through life, you must feel secure in the lap of a caring father. We have lost all touch with the one who takes care. Because according to our limited perception and beliefs, we take care of ourselves. And we feel we are the only ones who take care of?
Q: Ourselves.
AP: Now, how can you rebel? If you have to take care of yourself, then you have to be very careful. And there can be no rebellion in an environment of carefulness. Such carefulness just impedes the flow of rebellious action. It asks you to wait, watch, analyze, compromise. It does not let you have.
That natural impulse of the mountain spring—do you see inhibition there? Ever seen a young river flowing down the hills? Do you see the swiftness, the frictionless movement, the impatience? There are boulders blocking her way. And she is not the one to wait and negotiate. She sometimes jumps over them, sometimes make survey besides them, and when it is in her might, she just breaks through them. But one thing is certain: she won’t stay with them. They may stay – she has somewhere to reach. Are you getting it?
And the river has not yet reached there but she is so full of sureness. Man has denied himself that unreasonable sureness. If you ask the river, “How are you so sure that you are doing the right thing? Maybe you are more secure here, you know? The plains are all polluted. The moment you reach the plains, they are going to dump sewage into you!” The river won’t listen to you. She will say, “I will meet my fate. And my fate is not to halt at the hills. I might be polluted, contaminated, raped in the plains, but yet the plains are the gateway to the sea. If I hate the plains, there is no way I am going to reach the sea.”
That is what I am calling as being dismissive of the future, being dismissive of the result. We are just too careful because we feel that we have to take care of ourselves. We are just too careful. We start shivering the moment we feel that the future is not going to be as per our plans. That must have happened with most of you at some point or the other. Oh, I am sure it happens very regularly. What’s the point in understating things?
You want your son or daughter to have a certain kind of academic future. And she comes and says, “Nothing after class XII, I am done.” Ever seen how the guts start squirming? You must have experience that. And there can be worse admissions that your son or daughter can make in front of you. Even the sons and daughters know the reaction they will get when they come out and talk. So, often they keep things to themselves.
You have arranged so much of money and jewelry for her marriage. One day she comes and says, ‘Papa…’ – Seen how the inner world collapses? Even imagining such a thing makes you go weak in the knees. As if you are so certain that what you have thought of for her is the best thing that could happen. But man lives in the belief that he knows what is best for himself. “I will decide how my life should be. I am a self-made man, you see. I don’t leave things to chance. I will decide when I will have cancer.” And cancer comes at the exact hour and second and date appointed by you, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
Do what is right. And forget all about the result. If the action is right, then whatsoever the result is, the result is right. Right action cannot have a wrong result. If it appears wrong to you, it is because it is clashing with your beliefs and expectations. It is actually right. The right tree cannot bear the wrong fruit. But it may appear wrong to you if you are expecting mangoes from a guava tree. But guavas too have their own beauty, their own sweetness, their own aroma. And the guava tree is not saying that you cannot have mangoes. Mango trees too are abundant. You can have both guavas and mangoes.
The right action is its own reward. There is no need to split the action from the result of the action. We do that. We say, “Oh yes, this thing is right, and it must be done, but…” If the thing is right and it must be done, from where has this split arrived? What is this but? Rightness is one. Right action is its own fruit.
Now you can rebel. If rebellion is the right thing to do, why bother about the result of rebelling? Now rebellion is no more a scary, or even a big event. Now it just happens. It’s hot in the sun, you seek shade—is this rebellion? You are thirsty, you take some water—this is rebellion? What’s big and monumental about it? What makes you think ten times about it? It is natural. It’s free flowing. It requires no thought and it entails, involves no violence.
He is listening carefully. Whenever we have a session, he comes and sits carefully and listens like this. But if you try to disturb him, he will run away, sit somewhere else. He is just rebelling. Rebellion is as smooth as that. Sit somewhere else – that’s the essence of all rebellion.
‘Sit somewhere else’. That’s incidentally also the meaning of the word ‘Sanyaas’ – to be rightly placed. To be rightly placed. Sit somewhere else—you are sitting at the wrong place. Be Sanyasth. Take Sanyaas. When the rabbit leaves this place and goes somewhere else where people are a little less curious about him, then he is just taking Sanyaas. Sanyaas is rebellion. Is that clear?
The mind obsessed with its upkeep, its security, its welfare, its wellbeing, its preservation, its continuity, cannot rebel. Only a carefree mind can rebel. Only a faithful mind can rebel. Only an assured mind can rebel. And that assurance, mind you, does not come from any fact or reason. It’s a reasonless, baseless, absurd assurance. As they say, ‘God is niradhaar’. It’s a niradhaar assurance. It has nothing concrete behind it. It rests on nothing and therefore it cannot be shaken – that kind of assurance.
And someone comes and tells you, “You know what? Your confidence is baseless!” Then you must know that you are really confident. Our confidence is always based on certain things. If those things are taken away, the confidence falls.
When you can be confident, and just confident, for no reason at all—you neither have knowledge, nor have possessions, nor do you have anything material to assure you, and yet you are so confident – then you have arrived.
There are two kinds of students, you know. If there is a mathematics exam and you go and stand in front of the examination hall, you will find two kinds of students: Ones who have really mugged up the theorems and the axioms and have really practiced the sums—and therefore, they are confident. They have gone through the syllabus over and over again. They have seen the past years’ question papers and predicted what is likely to appear in this years. So, they're confident.
Now, if the question paper changes pattern; now if there is something out of syllabus; now if there is something that does not match with their expectations, then all the confidence evaporates. Then they start shivering. They had prepared so much, and the preparation is of no use now. Such confidence is the confidence that the mankind has. If a man has money, then he is all puffed up. He looks so assured – but when the money is gone? Our confidence is always ‘reasonable’.
And then there is another student who just knows Maths. At most he has memorized a few formulae—at most. Even the formulae he can actually derive from the basic principles, so he does not need even that much of memory. He works from the first principles. He has not mugged up a textbook. His certainty does not come from rehearsals and practice. He just knows Maths; he has become one with the language of Mathematics.
Mathematics is not something artificial; it is the language of existence. Mathematics is happening all the time. This fellow has now started understanding that language, speaking that language. He won't depend on a particular paper format now. You can keep changing the formats, the sections, the time duration, objective questions can change to subjective questions, and such things. This fellow is undaunted. This is real confidence; confidence that proceeds from nowhere. Niradhaar. “I'm just confident. Take away everything that I have, and I would still be confident.” Such a confidence is called Faith. If you don't have this confidence, then life is not worth living. You will be all the time shivering in insecurity. You will be all the time trying to protect something or the other.
Rebellion happens when you just have confidence. If you rebel, what's the worst that can happen to you? Everything can be taken away, but you would still remain confident, so you haven't been harmed. “My welfare does not depend on things. My welfare does not depend on possessions or knowledge or relationships. I am just alright.” Now you can rebel because, well, you have nothing to lose. You can lose everything and yet stay perfect. I'm already, and simultaneously, at the climax and at the nadir. How am I at the climax?
Q: Internally confident…
AP: I am perfect. And how am I at the zeroth level? I don't have anything to lose. I don't have anything to lose. I have already lost everything. That's a condition of the Buddha. That’s a liberated man. Simultaneously at the peak and at the lowest point in the valley.
