Bhartrihari

Joy is not something that you can think of as something wonderful. You cannot go somewhere and say that, looking at a mountain, I experienced joy. Joy is something which is always there, obfuscated; hence, it is the absence of obfuscation. A complete absence of all rubbish is joy, and that rubbish includes both pleasure and pain.

Shiv isn’t a person who existed at some point in time. Shiv isn’t confined to a specific place. Stories are sometimes useful pointers to the truth, but in our ignorance, we take the pointers themselves as history, facts or Truth. Shiv is the joy of pure consciousness. When false identifications and attachments are dropped in the light of self-knowledge, what remains is called the untainted essence of Shiv.

If you do not understand spirituality, you will fail even in economics. Look at how common people live their daily lives. Do we inquire into what we are doing? We do things because others are doing the same things. Out of ignorance, you act; and out of greed, you keep acting. Economics does not address the problem of ignorance. Economics also does not address the problem of greed. It is the Upanishads and the Gita that address these problems.

Often, in the name of financial pressure, what we are really kneeling down to is something else. But because that something else is not nice enough to be named, what we quote is financial pressure. Nothing is ever forced in a tangible way. The way is kept gentle in appearance. But there is something else at work inwardly. What is that thing? That is what you have to uncover. You have to be honest towards yourself, very honest.

All happiness that your mind feels is directly proportional to how unhappy you are. So, if you want to be really happy, become totally unhappy. This is called the law of duality. The deeper your pain, the more relieved you will be. That is the nature of the mind. When you are moving towards happiness, actually the journey towards unhappiness has begun.

“Immersing myself in deep meditation.” What do you mean by meditation? And who is being immersed? Please tell me, beyond a trick of words, what is this? But you’ll never ask these questions, because some Baba-ji totally dominated your faculty to question with his get-up and demeanour. Real spirituality is not about something that sounds elevated or respectable. Whenever you are bombarded with high-sounding fluff, learn to ask this question; what exactly does that mean?

This breath-in, breath-out, stomach-in, tummy-out; this is not meditation. Even animals do not need training in breathing, and we are being taught how to breathe. What’s going on? You know, you should breathe mindfully. Why? Is there anything wrong with your breath? Meditation is nothing but an observation of the naked inner fact. That is meditation. To stand naked and honest in front of what is, that is meditation.

The other must exist in your life, and vice versa, only for the sake of internal elevation, to make you into a better person. Don't you see the impact the other one is having on your life? Seeing is the key. What does seeing mean? Seeing implies understanding. See and ask yourself: What is the impact upon me? And if you see that, you'll just push it aside. It will be spontaneous. You won't even require to think, because now you have seen.

The money you pay for something must be commensurate with its practical utility, but how do you know something is worth its price? For example, does jewellery really have any utility that you pay so much for just a piece of metal? The average Indian household spends much more on the girl’s dowry than on her education. And poor farmers in India are often pushed to suicide because they spend a lot on weddings and funerals by borrowing at exorbitant rates. This is what happens when you are not deeply spiritual: you can be easily conditioned to earn from the wrong source and spend at the wrong place.

When you are passionate about the one right thing, then you become impervious to many other things. Come pleasure, come pain, come attractions, come distractions, nothing matters to me, because now I have something extremely worthwhile in my life. One thing, one life, one love, one passion. Isn’t that a great way of living life?

What is life without real passion, real commitment, real love? What do you live for? Just wake up each day and say, "Another day, another day," and a day will come when you will run out of days. They will tell you, "Look at that beggar on that street, that will be you in 20 years." They will paint all these terrifying pictures. Don't listen. The real deal is work, not money. Just do not be afraid.

It is one kind of misfortune to not have money at all. The next kind of misfortune is to have a lot of money rotting in your bank account. Why must it be there in your bank account? You are so impoverished, you couldn't find a right place where you can spend your money. Money is meant to be spent. Spend it at the right places. Go enroll in a hobby class. Get a tennis coach. All that is expensive. Spend your money. If you won't, then you will end up just buying whatever your friends buy.

It is not really happiness that is to be found through self-knowledge. In fact, self-knowledge often is a danger to happiness. Self-knowledge dissolves both happiness and sadness, and you are left with nothing but a naked and silent joy. If you can see yourself clearly, without motivation, then the seeing itself is great fun.

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…

Do not consume that which will poison you, even if it appears attractive. Now that is spirituality.

Explore Books on Lord Shiv by Acharya Prashant, revealing deep Vedantic insights into Shiv’s true essence, symbols, and spiritual wisdom beyond misconceptions.

Shakti represents everything in motion, everything that can be experienced, everything in space-time. We move in search of a final destination. That point is symbolically represented by Shiva. Those who are inclined towards having the right kind of movement worship Shakti. Those who have fallen in love with the destination itself, worship Shiva. The fact is that the two are inseparable.

It was Guru Nanak who said, "You may try as hard as you can, but you will never get to know the mind of the liberated one." That's from the Adi Granth. You keep trying. You keep speculating. And the ego has a serious urge to know what is going on in the mind of the Buddha. But you'll never know what's there in the mind of the Buddha. Being who you are, how will you know the mind of the Buddha?

Our culture has turned attachment into value, very proximate to love. However, attachment is poison and has nothing to do with love. We don’t feel ashamed admitting that we are attached, as if something beautiful is happening. If you are with the wrong one, and not even prepared to see that you are with the wrong one — that’s attachment. And you can never be attached to the Right One; there is only dissolution.

If the word ‘Yog’ comes to be synonymous with physical exercise, then it’s a joke. When you look at the mass of people, what is it that you find more unhealthy — the body or the mind? It is the mind that is extremely unhealthy. And all of that is because the mind is in ‘Viyog’ — the mind is separated from something that it desperately wants. So, Yog has to be an inquiry into who we are, and what it is that we really want.

Acharya Prashant: You will see that I'm repeatedly stressing on Shri Krishna as the demolisher, on Shri Krishna as someone who not only does not accept our prevalent definitions of right-wrong, true and false, humility, authority, right action, non-violence but, in fact, unabashedly and actively demolishes them. It is one…

Yoga is action without attachment. Yoga is to refuse everything that keeps you little and limited. To live without a reason, to love without a cause, to act without greed and desire, that is Yoga. Total purposelessness is Yoga. Yoga is freedom from all whys.

Now comes the deeper symbolism of Shivlinga. It says—look, if you have taken birth, then you are there in the body. But even while living in the body, you have to live as if you are without a body. So, the shape of the Yoni that you see in the Shivalinga is actually the world or the body, and this Lingam that you see in the middle of it is the Consciousness—the Consciousness which is located in the body.

The Gita has nothing to do with sāttvikatā. Even sāttvikatā is to be rejected as destiny, while even rājasikatā is to be embraced if it serves as a means to freedom. Everything and anything is fine if it is usable in the context of liberation. Even sattva can become an object of consumption — don’t we see learned people whose knowledge becomes their identity? The Gita is about getting rid of all traps — be it sattva, rajas, tamas, or anything.

Sex, whether premarital or postmarital, depends on the people who are engaging in it. Even in postmarital sex, there can be a lot of violence. Equally, there can be a very bad kind of sexual encounter before marriage. The word marital does not matter. If two people are not meeting in actual love, then it doesn't matter whether the thing is postmarital or premarital — it is simply abominable. If you love someone, give them wings, light, and self-knowledge. Liberation is the foremost indicator of love.

Questioner: “Acharya Ji, my whole life, I treated sex as fun due to my early age experience. I would treat it as fun-just to relax my body. But now, at my mature age, I feel that it’s a responsibility to have a son or a daughter for humanity, to strengthen…

We all have our moments, our episodes of failures. We all let ourselves down at some time or the other. What to do then? Rule number one – do not go down tamely. If there is an inner conflict, and you know which side should win, fight hard to ensure that the right side prevails. Rule number two – keep fighting till your victory and keep fighting in your defeat. Even in defeat, remain a winner.

Good spirituality is good economics. We do not know what to purchase. We do not know what really is valuable, even in the material domain. The punishment of not being spiritual is that you lead a very bad, a very ruined worldly life and that includes an economic life, a ruined economic life. It is not merely the person, even nations, actually the entire world suffers when the one making the economic decision is spiritually bankrupt.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Great things are happening on the screen, don't get so excited, it's just the screen. Irrespective of what happens on the screen, it's not real. That's how you have to look at things. Great silence on the screen. Is it silence? No, it is the silence of…

The truth that we all inwardly love without even knowing we are in love. That truth is independent of time. It is independent of everything that's temporal, geographical, spatial, cultural. Spirituality has nothing to do with the clothes that you choose to wear, the language you speak, the way you behave, whether you address someone as this or that. facing a particular direction while eating or sleeping. No.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, whenever any conflict arises between myself and the ones I am attached to, why does it hurt me?

Acharya Prashant: It is because we don’t comprehend the nature of duality, so we want to have one side of duality while trying to avoid the other side. And…

Attachment is just a promise. A lack of fulfilment. It is a substitute for love because the real thing is not available. If you find yourself attached, it means there is a desire for love; it means there is a call for love. Know that a fake is presenting itself as a substitute for the real thing.

Question: I want to know why the world is at the moment so harsh?

Acharya Prashant: There is nothing that one group, one community or one person experiences that the other has never experienced or is not experiencing even to the slightest degree. Fundamentally we are all one. As human…

Happiness that is neither temporal nor chemical has been classically called as joy. And it is not something to be obtained. It is not something to be obtained. It is nature. It is who you are. Provided you refuse to abide by what you are not. Happiness is not something you have to hunt for. Otherwise, happiness remains eternally elusive.

It’s not capitalism versus socialism; if the center I am operating from is itself animalistic, then I will want to earn profits for myself, whatever be the social cost. The change that we need is inward- ‘self-knowledge’. We need an education system in which the child is very openly helped to face his/her animalistic nature, then we will develop a certain humility to look for solutions beyond our tendencies.

For you to make your parents happy, the first requirement is that you must be happy. If you are not happy, how can you give happiness to your parents? There is a basic law of existence: you can only give what you have. How can you suffer and still make others happy? Please, get rid of the notion that you can compromise your life to make others happy.

Sex has to become something small, something not very important, not a great monster that you are fighting all the time. Just as you do not remember what you took for breakfast yesterday, sex is something you do not even remember. If it is instead present in the mind all the time, what to do?

How does it matter whether you are homosexual or heterosexual? You're still body-identified. The lust for the body is still there. If one has homosexual desires, they are desires. If a man lusts after a woman, that too is a desire. And neither of these desires takes you anywhere. The superior being is the one who stops running after the body.

On one hand, because you don’t understand what this thing called sex is all about, so you can’t resist it. You have no understanding of what this entire process is. You have never bothered to understand what this hormonal business is. So, you come to a particular age and your body becomes mature; there is a chemical action within the body, and you start getting influenced by it. You cannot resist it because there is no understanding. Only out of understanding there is freedom from influence.

Rishikesh is the city of Shiva; it is the city of ending. While many cities mark beginnings, Rishikesh is where you come to stop. Haven’t we already had enough beginnings? Things must end somewhere. Having passed through Brahma and Vishnu, it is now time to meet Shiva. Shiva is annihilation—a full stop.

Shiv is unthinkable—beyond words, thought, and representation. He cannot be captured in pictures or idols. Yet, for most people, imagining truth without form feels impossible. This is where Shankar arrives. Shankar is the highest point a man’s imagination can reach. The maximum flight of the mind is Shankar, and Shiv is the disappearance of the mind into the sky.

You are born in India — hardly anyone does not play cricket and what if you go to Brazil or Argentina? So, is cricket a choice, or is it rather an imposition of the circumstances? I’m asking you. You say you love cricket. Do you really love cricket? Love involves a very, very conscious choice. If cricket has come to you only because you are born in a particular country, how is cricket a choice? Now, cricket is some kind of helplessness, choice-lessness. What do I do, being born in India, I’ll have to love cricket. Is it a choice then?

So 'know', don’t try to know about Shiva. Shiva is not furniture. Shiva is not a tree. Shiva is not a cloud, not even the sky. How will you know Shiva? Do you know of anything that has no shape, no form, and is eternal? How will you know Shiva? But know, do know. What can you know? This world and yourself. Know that. That knowing is Shiva-ness. Shivatva.

Meditation is the submergence of the ego in its essential nature. It is at the root of all self-knowledge and wisdom. However, most often, what we call meditation is just escapism—using some ‘method of meditation’ to superficially soothe our restlessness or gain temporary and deceptive relief from stress.

True meditation…

The big thing is not about attaining the big thing. The big thing is about fighting the stuff that keeps you away from the big. That fight is a very real thing and one needs to take that up. That's called love. That's called love. You cannot ever fully completely have it, but it's still worth the fight. And when you plunge yourself into the fight, then you do not care about these small things.

It’s unfortunate that today, methods of meditation are being mistaken for meditation itself. Meditation is what makes us human—it must be continuous, 24x7. No method can be continuous or 24x7. Meditation is a way of life, a beautiful love affair. Just as the body cannot wait to breathe, consciousness cannot wait to meditate—it’s a madness of love, not dry, ritualistic, or time-bound.