The root cause of all problems || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)

Questioner: Sir, we have so many problems in life. Only the small problems keep us occupied. We concentrate on them and forget about the major issues of our life.

Acharya Prashant: Not really. Major or minor that does not matter. What is major for one will be minor for the other. Even for the same person, a problem that appears minor today will start appearing major tomorrow and vice-versa. That will happen. We are not talking about major and minor problems. We are not saying that we are concentrating only on the minor problems and forgetting the major problems.

I repeat: we are not saying that we are concentrating only on the minor problems and forgetting the major problems.

We are saying that the root of all problems whether major or minor is one.

We are saying that the root of all problems whether major or minor or whatever nature; is one. And we do not look at that root. Instead we occupy ourselves finding solutions to the secondary and tertiary problems. The primary is one and we do not look at that. In some sense we do not want to look at that because as you said, ‘Problems keep us occupied.’

Mind wants something to be busy with. For the mind it is a nightmare if all the problems are resolved. The mind will say, ‘What will I do then? How will I remain alive? I remain alive only when I am struggling. I remain alive only when I am in conflicts.’ So problems are like toys for the mind. Problems are the mind’s fodder.