Sisyphus pushes a rock up a hill forever, knowing it will always roll back down. A regular workman does the same thing inside a job: he keeps pushing too, except he hopes it will eventually pay off, a promotion, a house, a better life. This hope is often just a comfortable lie. Sisyphus, who expects nothing and still keeps going, is actually more honest than we are. The real question is not whether the effort is worth it, but whether we can stop lying to ourselves about it.
It's a very, very dangerous notion if you say—"You know, all the fun, all the pinkness, all the tenderness lies in stupid kind of notions. And everything that is conscious, elevated, sublime—is dry." It's very dangerous and you are becoming a victim of the propaganda of the juice sellers. There is nothing more fascinating than the truth. Go ask that to those who have dedicated their lives to the service of truth—exploration, discoveries.
Laugh with no care at all. Why take oneself so seriously? What hurt, what wound can be so big? When we fully well know that the only thing that really is the Truth. Can there be two truths? The truth and the wound. The wound has to be a lie. But it will continue to pretend to be the truth as long as you avoid looking at it. The more you look at it, the more you will see that the wound is just some kind of dressing up that has been needlessly done.
A lot of progress, even in the material sense, happens only by inviting pain. That which we call as discipline, even in the loose sense, is nothing but an invitation to pain. Is there discipline without pain? You have to get up at some point in the morning—doesn’t that involve
What is the punishment of having a wrong goal? What is the punishment? You will suffer. And if you keep having one wrong goal after the other, your suffering will keep compounding, so you will be forced to give up your false goals.
Questioner: There is a well-known saying, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” My question is, Is suffering really optional? Whenever I go through persistent issues, I suffer, even after knowing.
Questioner: There is some image of something and you are not conscious, where then there is that blocked energy, so to speak? Fear or whatever it is, you act out of reaction. So, what would be… at the moment there is no choice, you are just reacting. What would be
Acharya Prashant: Had you been completely broken from the inside then there would have been nobody left inside to experience the hurt. What you call as the inside is just the ego inside and the ego is a very magical thing. It becomes stronger when it gets hurt. It is
Questioner: Is penance a mandatory step in the spiritual process? If the mind is such that there is no attachment or suffering involved in relating with objects, then should it still practice austerity or abstinence?
Acharya Prashant: You must never be afraid of questioning others. More importantly, you must never be afraid of questioning yourself. The second part is tougher. It is easy to question others, relatively easy at least. Questioning oneself hurts the ego, but that’s what one must practice.
Kauravas are scattered on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, not unified. Bheeshm is there because of promise. Dronocharya is there because of loyalty to the state. Karna is there to replay an old debt. Pandavas, on the other hand are unified by Dharma.
Acharya Prashant: The topic is the infectiousness of boredom. Not only is boredom infectiousness, anything and everything that the mind experiences is contagious, infectious. You experienced it with respect to one particular way of the mind, one particular move of the mind right now. That does not mean that only
Acharya Prashant: Arjuna's hell was in his day-to-day activities, your hell too lies in your day-to-day activities. Arjuna could sense the evil in what appeared normal to the others, you must also be able to sense that there is something extremely fishy in what appears normal to others.
Questioner: You know, I would just cite this example of people from happy families or normal families, seemingly happy families, whatever, and people who have a bona fide past of a trauma like, you know, domestic violence and abuse and mind games and a lot of lowly things that do
That’s the thing about responsibility. If you cannot accept that you are responsible for your own suffering, then say, “Yes, the other is responsible for my suffering but I am responsible to reform, transform, elevate the other. I will have to agree that the other is causing me suffering but just as he is responsible for my suffering, now I will be responsible for his transformation. Read more....
The atman is called 'the enjoyer' in the sense of the watcher, just as in a cinema hall you enjoy the show. How do you enjoy the show? By leaping into the screen? In the cinema hall, you enjoy the show by relaxing in your seat. That's what the atma does—it keeps relaxing in its seat. Even suffering is enjoyed in this detached manner, much like how we can enjoy tragic scenes in a movie. For the atma, there is no tragedy, as all suffering is false.
Questioner: Pranaam Acharya Ji!, You have told that individual Liberation is not possible. Either we can go together, or nobody can go. So we have to help others to cross-over.
Questioner: I have strong ego resistance and my ego resistance is health issues. Sometimes, I wake up at 4’o clock with this heavy migraine and today I woke up with this eye infection and these things, they come and go.
Questioner (Q): My question is related to failures. I’ve been a very positive-minded person, and I’ve been trying my best to do everything that I can, give my best in everything; but I’m disappointed with myself - not disappointed with others - but with myself. Now, I feel that there’ve
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As a doctor, can we limit our responsibility to the one particular body or to the set of few bodies that come to us for treatment? Or is the patient actually a representative of an entire society, an entire ecosystem? Can I really be a good doctor of the lungs, if I support a society that pollutes the environment in the name of development? So, if I'm a doctor, then health is my responsibility in the holistic sense, not just one patient.
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It’s not going to be right when the patient starts playing the doctor. We need to grow up; and having a kid, in that sense, is an opportunity. You want to be of some use to the kid, then grow up with the kid.
A suicide is a sad event because it prevents us from realizing our possibility and potential — there was an opportunity to live, learn, grow, realize, and be liberated, but it was wasted. But how many of us actually manage to realize our potential even if we live to 80 years? Hardly anybody. For our species, the extent of aliveness is proportional to the freedom and height of our consciousness. So ask yourself honestly: How close am I to the best I could have been?
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The hurt that you have received is a result of your own lack of understanding about the nature of life. This is an opportunity to understand life. It is an opportunity to not let the previous mistakes be repeated.
Excerpts from Articles
Justice Without Boundaries: Why Compassion Cannot Stop at Species
Oppression should not see caste, gender, creed or colour, and it should not see species either. The moral threshold is sentience, not intelligence. An animal feels pain as fully as a human does, whether or not it can explain its suffering.
Climate change is more than an environmental crisis—it is a crisis of human choices. Our patterns of consumption, consumerism and endless pursuit of more are putting increasing pressure on the planet. But meaningful change does not necessarily begin with new technology or stricter policies. It begins with a deeper question: what are we willing to change within ourselves?
Struggling to choose between a secure job and the path you actually feel drawn to? This isn't really a question about careers. It's about why other people's opinions have so much power over you in the first place. Real clarity doesn't come from finding the 'right' choice. It comes from honestly looking at your own fear, again and again, until it stops running the decision for you.
कई तरह के डर—अकेले पड़ने, छवि खोने या छोटा समझे जाने—की जड़ अक्सर अतीत में बनी पहचान और कहानियों में होती है। शरीर की हाइट जैसी चीज़ों को समस्या मानकर उनसे जूझने के बजाय उनकी अप्रासंगिकता को समझकर आगे बढ़ना चाहिए। अतीत को दबाने से मुक्ति नहीं मिलती; उसके करीब जाकर अपनी स्मृतियों, धारणाओं और पुराने पैटर्न को निष्पक्षता से देखना ज़रूरी है।
ज्योतिष कितना सच है? कुंडली, ग्रह-नक्षत्र: इनका क्या अर्थ है?
वेदांत को केवल इसलिए सही या श्रेष्ठ नहीं माना जा सकता कि वह किसी विशेष परंपरा से आता है। विज्ञान जहाँ भौतिक जगत की वस्तुनिष्ठ जाँच करता है, वहीं अद्वैत वेदांत सीधे मनुष्य के ‘मैं’, उसके दुख, बंधन और मुक्ति की पड़ताल करता है। इसकी कसौटी वैज्ञानिक प्रमाण नहीं, बल्कि अपने जीवन में इसकी सच्चाई को देख पाना है। किसी दर्शन को मान लेना नहीं, बल्कि उससे स्वयं को मुक्त करना ही उसका वास्तविक उद्देश्य है।
I'm not asking you to be a loner or an avoider of human company. It's just that things must be given their due place — and their due place depends on their quality. If you do not have good quality people around you, there are many other better options. Why not spend your evenings learning to swim or sing? And there could be so many other things. I mean, you would know better.
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The parts of the Upanishads that do not deal with self-enquiry can be taken as outdated. They do not want to address things that change with time. Mankind today is more prosperous than it has ever been in its history — but internally, are you not still afraid? Are you still not greedy? That’s the problem of the self that the scriptures seek to address. The Upanishads are dealing with a very peculiar problem that time alone cannot address — and that is the problem of fundamental human suffering.
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Whenever the past bothers you, you should immediately know that some danger is lurking in the present. Had the right thing been happening to you right now, then you couldn’t have been bothered with the past. And that is what the past does. It serves as a very deceptive distraction from the present. Figure out what is happening today.
The reason is that we have internalized a utopian image of a suffering-free life. And our current state of suffering, compared with the utopian heaven, makes us very frustrated. So, keep this comparison aside by seeing that this utopia is purely imaginary. You are not born to be in bliss. In fact, suffering is an inevitable part of life. Take life as it is, and then do your best to raise it as much as possible — this is excellence.
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Question: What do I do to cross the river? To me, it is such a challenge.
Acharya Prashant: Crossing the river is easy. Just hold the hand of someone who knows the other side, and cross. You have already crossed the river a thousand times with me. Your failure is…
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The same suffering that we hide behind so many things— entertainment, even knowledge, so-called distractions, achievements, pleasures, accumulations, prestige, sanctions, and approvals from all around. We hide that fact of human suffering behind all these things. So, it's a big problem. It's a big problem that we want to address. So now, I want to look at — why am I suffering? Why am I suffering?
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There has never, ever been anybody 100% sorted. There are always challenges, and those challenges arise from the body itself; your enemy is within you, and it will remain as long as you are alive. So, learn to revel in this situation — it's called life. And instead of asking for a final victory, start asking for a good battle — battles where, even in your pain, you can say, “This one was good!”
And with human beings becoming more powerful technologically, economically, the little being at home is even more staggeringly at the mercy of the grown-ups. The little one is absolutely at the mercy of everybody else. And these grown-ups, they have so much today. Don't you see how human consciousness and the corruption within it is manifesting itself in a 100 ways and sexual exploitation of vulnerable sections is just one way this corruption is manifesting itself.
You didn't have anything special in the past. Had we had anything special in the past, then we wouldn't have come to the state of suffering we find ourselves in today. So, the past is not the solution. You have to realize how things are with you today. You have to look at your interactions with human beings today. You have to see how you relate to your body, to your friends, to your workplace—all these things. And from there, you—you develop an insight, and that insight offers, some freedom.
Shallow philosophies and false treatments do not work for anybody. It's another matter if we want to keep fooling ourselves. There has to be self-love. There has to be courage. One has to say it's all right to be devastated and destroyed but it's not all right to keep yielding moment by moment the way I do.
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Outgrow. Outgrow your past. Look at your past and say, ‘Oh, she's a different girl. She's not me. And, I find no pleasure even looking at her. I mean, all right, she's a younger self, some kind of a younger sister— cute, all right, but nothing of much interest to me now. I have better things to look at. I have more important stuff to attend to.’
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Questioner (Q): Man is typically a social animal who seeks to coexist with the society around him. I am a vegan but many people around me are not, and that creates a difficulty for me. I want to speak out my thoughts on animal cruelty and get into animal activism,…
Why do you have so much personal time? How are you available to grief? Your consciousness is too self-centered; it needs expansion. Even as you grieve over one death, billions of goats, rabbits, lambs, fish, cows, and chickens are slaughtered. Commit your time. Dedicate it to a higher purpose. We attach great sanctity to our personal lives. Give it up!
Any kind of harm that comes to you can only come due to a lack of self-knowledge. If you do not know who you are, you will be forced to believe whatever others tell you about yourself. We don’t even realize how big a slavery that is! Every time you allow circumstances to rule you, you are actually acting like a dead object. You are alive only if you have something within that circumstances cannot touch.
If you are suffering, all that you need to be told is that freedom from disease is possible. No positive, affirmative statement needs to be given. If you are really crying out of pain, do you need to be given dreams of the pink of health? No, You only need to be assured that this pain is not your nature, and that is all.
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Questioner: I am a research scholar. I am in my fourth year of PhD, and it is kind of my second inning. Earlier I was a teacher, I was teaching at a university, but I’ve left that and I have started my PhD.
I’ve been suffering from a condition for…
…
And if you are not forced to…
Acharya Prashant: Yes, suffering is always optional.
But you cannot have your world and the rest of what you are,…
…
…
Acharya Prashant: Austerity is needed because you are suffering in the company of your objects.…
Question yourself: “What am…
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Acharya Prashant: A monk met me once, I was in Dharamshala at that time. Had a very long conversation with him, he had come to visit. It’s a cold place, Dharamshala. And the fellow would be, always in just one piece of cloth. I said to him, “Why are you…
~ Acharya Prashant, commentary on Bhagavad Gita, Chapter…
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The mind can suffer when the body is in pain. The sufferer is always the mind. The mind is the subject, the sufferer, and it is possible that the subject mind is suffering because the object body is in pain. But that's not a compulsion upon the mind. The mind has a choice. The mind always has a choice whether it wants to suffer or it wants to realize.
…
We came from the jungle in the hope of doing better in our villages and cities, but our villages and cities have failed. Man had the potential to either rise above the animal or fall way below it. Man has continuously been making the wrong choice. If you cannot build your cities and your social systems on spiritual foundations, then it is better to stay in the jungle. If your family, your workplace, your institutions do not run on spiritual grounds, then they better not run at all.
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Acharya Prashant: The question is from Sonali, “I got married after six years of relationship and five years of married life now. Due to contrasting personalities, my husband and I fight a lot. In April, we had a very big conflict and the police got involved. Now we are living…
It is not others that you have to be cautious of. You have to be cautious of that within you which gets influenced by others, which does not know others but gets influenced by others. It does not live in knowing. It lives in indoctrination. How to know the real master? See, who is treating your disease. How do you know a doctor? Not by his degrees but by his ability to treat you.
Do not…
Research has shown that loneliness is found throughout the society, including among people in marriages along with other strong relationships, and those with successful careers. As a subjective emotion, people experience loneliness even when surrounded by other people.
…
Acharya Ji, I can’t even help the people close to me, they are caught up either in routine work or…
So, I believe it is ego resistance to my…
Questioner: What is Duḥkha?
Acharya Prashant: The thought, the desire of all that which is fleeting, ephemeral is Duḥkha. Why is it Duḥkha? To whom, is it Duḥkha? Few things have to be understood. Everything likes to be in its most stress-free state. That's what even…
तेन तत्सदृशं पश्येद्द्विधादृष्टिर्विपर्ययः।।
There is only one very clear moon on the full moon night. One should perceive That (the Self) like the moon. Seeing duality is perversion.
Avadhuta Gita (Chapter 2, Verse 21)
Speaker: This one is from The Avadhuta Gita.
It says, “There…
Question:
Is self-realisation for everyone? Many people would choose to live a life of illusion, take comfort in that. Do we really need to wake them up? And of course, the struggles of life don’t end even after self-realisation.
Speaker: It is something like that of a mountain bus driver…
Speaker: If you will not suffer, how you will write this question? If you will not ask this question, how will this form get filled? If your form does not…
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Questioner (Q): Put in some difficult situations and old locations, I am surprised to see my old tendencies of hurt and dependence are back; they never did leave. I am selfish, difficult and stubborn. Help me Acharya Ji. Help me move ahead of this pettiness. Please!
