Shri Ram

"As long as you are giving me pleasure and satisfying my needs, there will be peace. The day you stop, there will be war.” This is the usual social contract in which we exchange pleasures and dependencies. This is why there is a lot of violence. But there can be another way of relating to the other, where you are existentially complete within. There can now be beautiful, loving, compassionate relationships because you are not looking to be a parasite or a commander.

There is no compulsion, it's either a slavery you buy into or just an expensive luxury that the rich afford. All this that we are doing: success, marriage, fidelity, money, prestige, whatever, all these are founded on self-ignorance. Somebody tells you, “Go get married, bear kids.” What do you know? You don't know your own birth, and you are giving birth. No point playing blind. Before you start walking, start opening your eyes.

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.

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.

This in itself is a philosophical question. This is why you should study philosophy, because you already have this question. Philosophy is your affection for the Truth, your leaning towards the Truth. Don’t you want to know the Truth? How many of you are happy with lies? Nobody. So, it is this love for Truth that we all innately have; that’s called philosophy.

The fellow is the worst kind of human being possible. But you will not accuse him of disloyalty, infidelity, or cheating, because he still reserved his body for you. This simply tells that the relationship is founded on the body. The woman has been trained to consider herself the body, and so has the man. Why don't we broaden our definition of loyalty? Please ask, “You couldn’t be loyal to any kind of virtue. How will you ever be loyal to me?”

Drop the center of confusion, come to the center of clarity. Drop what the masses practice, come to the direct route of self-realization. That’s what it means.

You were one person when, let’s say, the relationship started, and now you are another person, and this change must reflect in the nature of the relationship. You cannot say, “Because I used to behave in this way with this person five years back, I’ll continue to hold the same practice, the same mood, the same ritual, the same identity, the same mask,” even after you have graduated to being somebody else. There’s no need to do that. If you have evolved, improved, let that show in the relationship.

In the rule books of the courts, there are offenses of a thousand kinds, but when it comes to life, there is just one offense, ‘Did you live by the Truth or did you betray it?’ Remember that chap called Bhagat Singh and his associates. The courts declared they were guilty, and they were still joyful because they were absolutely not guilty in front of life. Live rightly, and then don’t apologize. That’s it.

You need to earn the right to even utter ‘Shri Ram’. If, for 364 days, you have really lived up to Shri Ram, only then must you celebrate the festival of Ramness. For 364 days, your life had nothing to do with Shri Ram, and on the 365th day, you join the noisy bandwagon. Shri Ram, who stands for that which can neither be bought nor sold, his festival has been turned into an orgy of sales and discounts. Live your life just as Shri Ram lived his life, and then you will have the right to celebrate Diwali.

If you know no philosophy and you are just celebrating Holi, Diwali, or Eid, or Christmas, that's dumb. Very dumb. And you call that as your great culture. No, I will have to sacrifice goats. Bloodshed is the name of religion. What kind of religion? No crackers are needed, even if that kills the air. What is this? AQI of 1,400. But I don't bother. I'm a religious man. What are you celebrating?

We are limited beings and limitation means boundaries. Any successful marriage will have boundaries. Spend quality time with each other and then leave each other free, both physically and psychologically. Get rid of the romantic notion that the two of us have now dissolved into each other and therefore there are no boundaries. Good fences make good neighbors. You must know where to stop. You must know that.

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?

The Bhagavad Gita, in essence, is a struggle of mukti (liberation) against sanskriti (culture). Shri Krishna urges Arjun to discard misogyny and cultural superstitions; the only thing that matters is mukti — liberation. Culture and traditions are time-bound; they hold meaning only when they point towards Truth — timeless, Sanatan. Have great traditions, and always be careful that your traditions are pointing towards the Truth. Only then do the traditions have life.

This evening in Delhi, a new book steps into the world—Truth Without Apology by Acharya Prashant. The launch takes place amidst seekers, readers, and companions of his work. In times when words are often polished to please and truths are dressed in comforting disguises, Truth Without Apology arrives like an uninvited storm—direct, raw, and uncompromising.

Life comes to us in an unending number of ways and you never know what's going to happen next. We are starved of something that really penetrates the surface. So, it is the intensity that this book brings — arrow-like depth, striking like lightning, immediately, so you don't have a chance to escape away from it. Like a Zen koan: very brief, very effective, and does its work in a snap. You could open just any chapter from anywhere and find it as if it was written just for you.

Relationships are everywhere – with partners, family, friends, and even ourselves. As long as we're alive, we're constantly relating to someone or something. You have a choice: continue struggling with the same relationship patterns, or gain real understanding through Acharya Prashant’s Books on Relationships that reveal the deeper truths about love and human connection.

Truth enlightens, so it is attractive. Maya enthrals, so it is sometimes even more attractive. Where to go — that is the battle.

Religion is the way that brings the lost mind back to its center, its home. That is religion.

The Truth is not a complicated puzzle. Everything is laid open, right in front of you. So, if it is not happening even now, then it is just because of your own mischief. We give preference to the trivial and miss out on the important. We drift from one thing to another, with no thing meaning anything to us. You are not missing the secret; you are missing the obvious.