Something is hiding behind the smoke, and we're missing it

Questioner: Namaste sir. Sometimes, if I see something going wrong, for example, I saw a couple of kids bursting crackers on dry grass and I was afraid that it would catch on fire, so I tried to stop it, but it did not really happen because they are kids and it’s crackers. It left me feeling very frustrated and quite helpless. I did take some action there. Thinking about why crackers are so attractive to kids, and what the thrill of it is, and all those things, gave me a little bit of clarity, but still left me feeling quite helpless. How should I look at it? How do I move past it? I know that this is not about me, none of this is about me, but still, how do I deal with that sort of frustration and helplessness?

Acharya Prashant: The biggest problem is when we succeed in these little acts of charity, goodness, kindness. Had you succeeded in somehow persuading the kids away, you wouldn’t even have raised this question, and a self-awarded sense of morality and righteousness would have held you high. That’s the whole problem. When you said the kids wouldn’t go away because it is a festival and it is crackers, then do we really understand why the kids wouldn’t go away? Do we really understand?

But if we succeed in our little acts of goodness, that helps perpetuate the delusion. There is an entire system to be fought, not these kids really, who are at the absolute periphery of the machine. Even if you succeed in shooing away the kids, so what? They’ll find some other place. They’ll do what they have to do.