Sarvasara Upanishad

Questioner: Acharyaji, you mention about Vedanta, at my age, should I start reading about it?

Acharya Prashant: You haven’t yet started?

Questioner: No sir.

Acharya Prashant: It’s too late.

Questioner: (laughing). Sir, how late? I wasn’t actually sure if I’ll be able to digest it or not.

Acharya Prashant: How… read_more

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… read_more

Acharya Prashant: A fly comes and sits on my arm here (pointing towards the arm), I reject it, I discard it – Is the game over? Is she not ever going to return? Why? Because I discarded the fly and not my arm, so irrespective of how strong your resistance… read_more

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… read_more

Fulfillment is what you want, don’t you? There won’t be any fulfillment until you break your inner bondages. And the most central, critical, and primary bondage is body-identification.

Use everything that your birth, your body, and Prakriti (physical nature) have given you. Use all of that for the sake of… read_more

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.

And if you are not forced to… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Love is the fire that melts down the bondage that is you. Knowledge is merely the light in which you can see your bondages. Even if you are able to look at your chains in the light of knowledge, that does not rid you of the chains. In… read_more

Acharya Prashant: The very urge for liberation, when it doesn’t find an outlet, becomes the urge to consume. Do you see this? Where does the tendency to consume so much come from? It comes from the misidentified and thwarted urge toward liberation. If you will not provide liberation to a… read_more

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.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, suffering is always optional.

But you cannot have your world and the rest of what you are,… read_more

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… read_more

Questioner: I’ll start by introducing myself. I’m a second-year graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. So, in my daily life, my habits that I think have morphed into compulsion with time, and it disturbs me when people don’t do the same as I do. Like for example, I have… read_more

Questioner 1: In my experience, what’s happening is that I really like reading scriptures, so I’ve been reading them for quite some time. But with time, what I’ve observed is that earlier there used to be a freshness and it would stay with me. There was a sense of excitement… read_more

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… read_more

Questioner: Namaskar Acharya Ji. You talked of Mukti. So, I would like to know, is it a Mukti from life and birth? I mean, more, If you can elaborate?

Acharya Prashant: Mukti from internal compulsions. The goal of life can be talked of as Mukti which is Liberation, which is… read_more

Questioner: My question is that I heard that there are two cosmic energies, these two Cosmic energies will take out all the sufferings of the people, which are from treta yuga of Lord Sri Ram and Lakshman get received the cosmic energies from Sage Vishwamitra, those are called some bala… read_more

Questioner: Sir, what is clarity?

Acharya Prashant: Clarity is two things together: One, it is the absence of readymade concepts based on which one lives, one reacts, one sees the world, and parallelly, simultaneously, on the other hand, it is the ability to respond greatly. So, on the one hand,… read_more

Questioner: Why think so much about decisions? Shouldn’t our decisions be spontaneous? I like to decide in a free flow.

Acharya Prashant: So the questioner is stressing on the spontaneity of decisions. He says that he likes to decide in a flow. It's a good thing, your intention is good.… read_more

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: Austerity is needed because you are suffering in the company of your objects.… read_more

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.

Question yourself: “What am… read_more

Acharya Prashant: We anyway live in attitudes, try to have a carefree attitude. Try to have an attitude of reasonless security, try to have an attitude in which you don't get daunted easily, you don't start shivering easily.

The world might be stamping its feet in front of you, angrily,… read_more

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… read_more

Questioner: Acharya Ji, a good discussion happened yesterday in which many seekers participated and shared their understanding of Prakṛiti , Puruṣha and other things.

During the discussion, it was put that Prakṛiti , Puruṣha , Māyā , are mere concepts and that one is pure Ātman , never threatened and… read_more

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, commentary on Bhagavad Gita, Chapter… read_more

Questioner: What is the price of freedom? What is it that convinces someone to pay that price? What is the reason for someone wanting freedom in the first place?

Acharya Prashant: Certain things do not even require a reason to validate them, because they are . What is need not… read_more

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… read_more

Questioner: Sir, we just heard one of the couplets of Kabir, saying,

“जो सुख साधू संग में, सो बैकुंठ न होय”

(The Joy that I find in the company of Saint, that Joy is greater than the Joy of heaven).

Is this verse being used in a negative connotation? What… read_more

Acharya Prashant: If you find religion bad, then just honestly consider a world totally without religion. Then probably you will not find religion so bad.

I assure you, there is nothing in man’s physical constitution that prevents him from being envious or lustful or tense or attached. In fact, man… read_more

Questioner: Acharya Ji, the concept of Maya, or the idea that the whole universe is an illusion, is at the core of Advait Vedant . However, Maya as a concept is unfathomable to many of us. So, how can your book help the general audience, who do not having deep… read_more

Overview

Hell focuses on what you have. Heaven reminds you of who you are. And once you clearly remember who you are, you don’t even need heaven; then what you have is Liberation. Do not starve yourselves of happiness. If you are giving up on lower happiness, make sure that… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Chandogya Upanishad — Chapter 3, part 11, verses 2 and 3:

न वै तत्र न निम्लोच नोदियाय कदाचन । देवास्तेनाहंसत्येन मा विराधिषि ब्रह्मणेति ॥ ३.११.२ ॥

na vai tatra na nimloca nodiyāya kadācana | devāstenāhaṃsatyena mā virādhiṣi Brahmaṇeti || 3.11.2 ||

Never does this happen there; never did… read_more

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… read_more

Acharya Prashant: You have to ask yourself what your primary identity is. If your primary identity is that of the body, then do what the body commands you to do. Good. The body has an inbuilt software of its own, and it’s a self-improving software. Its capacity to keep improving… read_more