Living in the Present

Questioner: Why does the mind wander when we sit to study? How to control the mind?

Acharya Prashant: What’s your name?

Questioner: Aman.

Acharya Prashant: Aman is asking, “How to control the mind.” What he is saying is we sit down to study, right? And the mind wanders here and… read_more

Acharya Prashant: You see you are a human being. It is neither possible nor advisable for you to just give up on the past. The body is nothing but a flow of the past stretching over time. So, you cannot just wish away the past. It won’t happen.

If the… read_more

Acharya Prashant: That's why the rājasika mind is better than the tāmsika mind. The rājasika says, “I’m not alright. I need to do something to become better. I feel inferior. I feel incomplete. I need to rise. I need to achieve.” That’s the rājasika mind. The rājasika mind at least… read_more

Speaker: The question asked is that why can’t the brain be in the present? Because the present is not. You see, your mind makes sense of the world around. Your mind continuously makes sense of this world all around. But can your mind make sense of this moment? This moment… read_more

Speaker : Before we chase something and want to be consistent in our chase, it’s very important to understand whether consistency is a worthy thing at all. Is that not important? Before you chase something, won’t you want to know whether the thing is worth chasing or not? Otherwise, you… read_more

Question: Is acceptance of everything that comes in life is same as living in the present?

Speaker: What is acceptance? What are these things that come to life? What do you mean by ‘my life’? What do you mean by ‘acceptance’?

Listener 1: ‘Acceptance’ means that the things that are… read_more

Question: Sir, people these days emphasis on the idea of the ‘Power of now’. But you say that the present is different from the now. Please elaborate.

Speaker: This whole talk about the power of now is a great sham. It is deep materialism disguised as spirituality. The present is… read_more

Questioner (Q): How can we, in daily life, go closer to the Truth? Is that through sitting, walking, working, meditation, by living mindfully in the present moment? Isn’t mindfulness taught by the Buddha himself?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Which Buddha are you referring to (asking the questioner)? The Buddha of the… read_more

Question: Sir, my question is, ‘How to focus on the present?’

Acharya Prashant: Do you need to focus on the present?

Listener: Sir, that is my only problem. When I study, all the shortcomings of my past keep coming to my mind.

AP: Present is there. You don’t need to… read_more

Acharya Prashant (AP): You may plan to go and meet somebody, will you also plan how to hug him and what all to say to him? Will you also plan that?

Now, what is essential, the time at which you meet him, or the time that you spend with him?… read_more

Questioner: When I am busy in doing certain activities that I enjoy doing, there are expectations from the future, but no frustrations at present. What is this state? Can it remain forever?

Acharya Prashant: If this can happen, it is a very welcome thing. There are certain actions that produce… read_more

You might be twenty-five today; where is the one who was twenty yesterday? Isn’t he gone? How can you stop the other from departing when you couldn’t prevent even your own old self from departing?

Remember your old self, the one that was there at the age of five, ten,… read_more

“Enjoy the moment! Go with the flow!” What is that flow? Where is it coming from? Why should I go with it? Why don’t you just pause and ask, which flow are we talking of?

The tsunamis are coming to take you away, and the great master is teaching you:… read_more

Questioner (Q): Most often we are asked to live in the present and be here and now and mindful. Can you talk to us about that?

Acharya Prashant (AP): The same thing, I mean, when we were talking about what to do with knowledge, I said it depends on the… read_more

Acharya Prashant (AP): There is this question about direct observation and how the world when ‘directly’ observed appears muddled up, appears quite confusing. There is a question that what is all this. One of the aspects of the question is, ‘What is love? When I look at the world around,… read_more

Worrying is nothing but an unauthorized concern for results. First of all, it is a concern for results. Secondly, it is an unauthorized concern for results. You are trying to speculate about something you are not authorized to think about. You have no authorization, no locus standi to think about… read_more

Attentiveness can only be to that which is present. The past is a filler. Do not blame the past. If you have nothing right now with you, then as a filler, past and future would flow in. Do you want to blame them?

The present is not merely engagement in… read_more

Speaker : What is the present? We keep on talking of the present, what is the present?

The present is the source, present is nothing but the Truth.

The present is that from which everything emanates. The present is all, there is nothing but the present and the present is … read_more

The mark of the one living rightly is that he doesn’t have the need to think too much. Thought, in some way, is a compensatory mechanism: what you couldn’t do right you want to think right. But you cannot think right what you have done wrongly, or can you?

In… read_more

Immerse yourself in the right action, and then where is the space and the time to worry? Surely you are stealing time away from work so that you can indulge in worries and anxieties and fancies of all kinds.

Young people fantasize, don’t they? Some fantasize about beautiful, pretty, exciting… read_more

Questioner: What is the exact way to live life?

Acharya Prashant: Are we right now living inexactly? Is there something wrong right now? You want to correct it?

What do you mean by exact? What is missing that you want to achieve? What exactness are you running after? When you… read_more

The past is a great resource. It is not to be wasted away or thrown away or forgotten. If you do not really decode your past, you are bound to repeat your past. Forget all the propaganda coming from the neo-spiritual circles that say that the past is something to… read_more

When you say that you go to your workplace for a purpose, is the purpose ever the work? The purpose is the salary cheque. In fact, if work could be bypassed and you could straightaway reach the salary cheque, then who would want to work? Is work the purpose really?… read_more

Why do the regular events of life succeed in deceiving you? Because you are not available to them; because you are not looking at them as they are; because you are not listening to what they are really saying right now. Instead, you are carrying images and echos—images of scenes… read_more

Listener 1: Sir we talked about ‘now’. We look at the past, conditioning starts getting activated. If we look at the future, fear gets activated. But if we look at the ‘now’, because there is only this moment, this ‘now’, so can we say that this moment is timeless? It’s… read_more

Let’s assume for a while that your worries about the future are founded in facts. Let’s say some grand evil army is invading your little fortress and you can see them all coming with your binoculars, and you are estimating that they will reach you in another four hours. They… read_more

Question: Is it real that human beings can live forever?

Acharya Prashant: It depends on what you think of human beings. If you think that they are born, then they will die.

L1: I mean the human body.

AP: The body never dies!

L1: The body never dies?

AP: Never… read_more

Speaker: Be present to life and that is sufficient, improvement will come. It will happen on its own. You know, there are people who when they want to reduce weight make great plans. When it comes to the moment of exercising and jogging, then I am absent. After that, what… read_more

Worrying is the other name of hope. When you think negatively about the future, you call it worry. When you think positively about the future, you call it hope. So, worrying is just as equally bad as hoping.

Conserve your energy. Train your thoughts. Discipline your little self. Time is… read_more

You don’t have to think of the final victory. The final victory will always be a gift immense beyond your imagination or desire. You have to think of your current daily battles. You have to think of your little daily victories. If you think of the final victory, all you… read_more

The old would either turn into the new or will have to go away. And if it is not turning into the new, then it will keep you too old. If you are moving towards the new, now there can be no carrying of the old. Either the old will… read_more

There is a subtle pleasure in worrying. Surely you are stealing time away from work so that you can indulge in worries and anxieties and fancies of all kinds.

The opposite of this self-centered worry is immersion in action. Immerse yourself in the right action, and then where is the… read_more

A. Living in the Present

The Present is not an object of thought. To live in the Present, first of all you must know what is really ‘Present’. You know what is meant by Present? What really is ‘Presence’? Living in the Present means living in the Truth, because only… read_more