The Power of Choice and the Illusion of Helplessness

Acharya Prashant: You say that you are able to drive well only when you are driving wrong side, and when you are in the right lane, you cannot drive well? You are cheating yourself.

If you ever happen to be such a driver, what would you do? You are riding Ola or Uber, and the driver is constantly driving wrong side, and he says, “I can drive well only when I make the wrong choice, wrong side.” I tell you, save your life, press the emergency button. This driver is a cheat. This driver is you.

You are very good when it comes to making all the noise and all the mischief. Then you are very alert and energetic. But when it comes to doing the right thing, you say, “You see, I am dull and foolish and I don’t understand anything.”

When it comes to creating chaos, then he knows everything. You send him to fetch a few vegetables from the market. He will say, “I don’t know where pumpkins are and potatoes are,” but he very well knows from where to get all the chemicals to assemble a bomb. Then he is very smart. This kind of dishonesty won’t do.

When it comes to all the nonsense, see how you succeed, don’t you? You want to go and create chaos, you want to go and satisfy your lust, and see how you find out ways, don’t you? Like a rat, you find your way into the house. Then you know where the hole is. And if the hole is not there, you even dig a hole. But when it comes to doing something a little religious, a little less impure, then you say, “I am such a fool! I am a duffer! I am irresponsible! I do not know which way to go! I have no intelligence, no smartness!”

All the smartness reserved only for your demonic acts, right? Don’t you see? Are you really so dull? You are not. In hot pursuit of your hot targets, you are able to bring the heavens down to earth. All the energylessness, all the forgetfulness is reserved only for the right things. The right things you forget. Don’t say you are forgetting. It is a…?

Questioner: Choice.

Acharya Prashant: Choice to forget. I will call you a bluff. I will expose your hypocrisy. You are not so big an idiot as you show yourself to be. In fact, you are no idiot at all; you are extremely smart. Just that your smartness is self-destructive.

See the things that you covet and chase, and see how you devise clever mechanisms to get what you want to. But, as I said, the one thing that you cannot fetch is potatoes from the market. Then you become a dodo. You say, “What is a potato? Do they grow on trees? Do they fall from skies? Do we manufacture them in factories? I am a dodo!”

Choice! You are not helpless. Wake up to your power. You cannot just be carried away. Nothing can happen to you without your consent. I’m talking not in the material sense. In the material sense, yes, a stone can hit you without your consent. But you cannot suffer without your consent. Restfulness is your nature. You cannot become restless without your consent.

Discover your choice. Better still, admit your choice.

Admitting choice entails responsibility, and that’s why you want to evade it. That, I say, is the very definition of the human being: the one with a choice. The human being is the one who always sees two paths ahead of him: one that will fetch him what he really wants, the other that would only deceive him.

Keep making the right choice. If you are a human being, you have no option but to live rightly; otherwise, there is suffering. What is the wrong choice? Anything that involves helplessness is the wrong choice. That is the definition.

Whenever you say, “Oh, but I could not have not done it! Oh, but I could not have helped it!” then you are deceiving yourself, and it is bound to be the wrong choice.

Whenever you say it just happens, whenever you say I got angry, whenever you say I am depressed, it’s a wrong choice because you are not admitting that you have chosen to be depressed. Dishonesty and wrong choices go together. You are not admitting that it is not happening to you. You are choosing it, admitting it.

Worse still, inviting it.

Worse still, manufacturing it.

Worse still, nothing is happening! You are just narrating a cock-and-bull story.

When rest is your nature and the only Truth, from where has restlessness come? Obviously, it has to be a silly fabrication. It cannot exist. It’s a myth. But see how you declare, “Oh, I’m so depressed!” First of all, it is a choice whether or not to be depressed; secondly, when joy is your nature, how can depression even exist? But we not only do claim that we are depressed, we also expect some sympathy, you see. (Smiles) A little bit at least?

You never forget. You decide to forget. And if you can decide to forget, you can equally well decide to not forget. No, you cannot decide to remember; remembrance is nature. You can only decide to not forget.

Full aritcle link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/choicelessness-is-only-for-those-who-choose-rightly-on-ashtavakra-gita-1_9b6aebf

show_less