Sir, From Where Do You Get This Wisdom?
Questioner: How should women approach their quest for spiritual growth and empowerment?
Acharya Prashant: It should be easier to bring a girl or a woman to spiritual liberation compared to a man and it's just a travesty that through the course of history what we have witnessed is just the opposite thing. We do not instill in her love for great literature, for knowledge, for adventure, for realization, for the right kind of love, for compassion. Look at all the kinds of things that beam into our homes through the TV and now the internet. What is the message we are delivering to our girls and also to our boys obviously?
Questioner: Your discourses are very fascinating to listen to and rather whatever you are expounding upon is also very eye-opening. So, where do you get so much clarity from?
Acharya Prashant: You just look at life, how things are… And that's obviously the first thing. You look at life, you look at your own life, and you ask yourself, “Is this how the world can possibly and potentially be? Are people happy and all right? Why is there so much conflict? Why is there so much misery? Cannot there be beauty in existence?” Similar questions you pose to yourself, “Is there beauty within? Is there Truth Within? Am I deceiving myself?”
So, one has to begin with self-inquiry. One has to be conscious of what is going on externally-internally and how the two are related; The external happening and the internal happening. And when that happens, one feels like asking those who have probably asked the same or similar questions in the past. So then one reads, or one meets, or one watches. One goes and sees how they have been talking, one also goes to them to be assured—that it is not necessary to live the way commoners do, that excellence is possible, that exalted positions have been achieved, that it is not the lot of the human being to live like animals and insects.
So, these two things when they happen together or in tandem, one takes flight. You can call them as the two wings of the bird: Observation of the world including the observation of the self and honest study of, dedicated study of wisdom texts. If these two are together, things just happen.
Questioner: As you've just said, honest study of the wisdom texts and also meeting people who have reached such exalted positions. So, of all the people you've read about and met, who has been the greatest influence on your life?
Acharya Prashant: I would not venture into pointing at just one of them. I am indebted to many. I'll begin with Saint Kabir.
You know you introduced me and talked of me as a Vedant teacher. The fact is that Vedant is obviously wonderful. I live by it. I definitely see that Vedant is the basis of all great philosophies of East and West. It is the foundation of everything that is beautiful. Vedant brings me to a deep peace and silence. But it is Saint Kabir precisely among all the Saints who reduces me to tears. So, his is the name I must take first. So, there is Saint Kabir. There are all the known and unknown seers of the Vedantic literature. Then there are just so many of them and all of them have been beautiful and beneficial and I bow my head to all of them. Among the more recent ones we have Jiddu Krishnamurti, we have Ramana Maharshi, we have Ramakrishna Paramahansa. I have benefited from Osho's literature as well.
Then there are all the saints, I've already named Kabir Sahib of the medieval bhakti period. There is Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Ramcharitmanas, when I read it, it captured me. Then there is the entire Sufi tradition with Baba Farid, there is Baba Bulleh Shah. A few pieces from Amir Khusrow stayed for long with me.
Then the whole Buddhist Ten Zen [6:25] tradition. How many do I name? And there is so much that they have given me—The way Buddha fought to challenge and cleanse the Vedantic tradition, and then how the whole thing took the sublime form of the Zen way and Zen Koāns.
Then there are the western mystics, western philosophers. I have been open to greatness wherever it comes from. The ones that I have just now named constitute only a small fraction of the ones I have gained from.
Questioner: So, You mean to say that as you read them and poured over the text and partook of the Gyan which they were sharing to believe {7.44] in the world that alone was enough to send you into that state of knowing the experiencer and you did not really have to really do a lot of sadhana or meditation or things like that. You were like, so, you know, astutely able to understand that this is what they are talking about and that's it, there is no path as such?
Acharya Prashant: Obviously, I have not meditated in the conventional sense for even one second in my life. In another sense, even this conversation is meditation for me. So, the way people define the term meditation and sadhana today, I have had none of that and I'm glad and I'm lucky, I have had none of that because all that is not only useless but actually often quite disastrous. And a lot of my energy over the last decade and a half has actually gone into saving the victims of meditation and sadhana.
So, yes! You see, you look at Vedant, for example: there is a teacher, there's a student and that's the Upanishad, that's it! There is Arjuna, there is Krishna and there is the dialogue and that's it! What more do you need?
There's my favorite Kabir Sahib, and He's spinning and weaving and there are probably a handful of listeners around him, and He says a few things and that's it! And there is Ramana Maharishi, and He's talking to people and that's it!
There is nothing special or extraordinary or otherworldly or metaphysical in the whole thing, right? And that's it, that's it!
