Many of us look for role models of our own gender and hope to succeed as a man or as a woman, yet no one great was ever great as a gender. The moment we tie our aims to being a woman or a man, we tie them to the body, and much of our attention goes into how we look and how we are seen. So much around us keeps reminding a woman of her body, from songs to the fear of a street at night. But the body has never achieved anything by itself. What might we attempt if gender stopped mattering?
Women cannot be truly liberated through education, income, or legal rights alone if they remain psychologically identified with socially conditioned ideas of “womanhood.” While external barriers may fall, inner bondage persists through inherited identities, roles, and expectations. Real freedom begins not by rejecting the body, but by seeing oneself primarily as a conscious human being rather than a gendered identity, because lasting liberation starts at the root of self-identification.
Todays educated and financially independent woman says, “I am free,” yet still feels deeply confined within. Why? Because external freedom alone does not dissolve inner conditioning. The old idea of “womanness” still sits at the center of identity. Real liberation begins when one stops seeing oneself merely as a gendered body and starts living as human consciousness first.
Irrespective of her station in life, it has been drilled deeply into the Indian woman that her life is foremost about the husband, kids, bed, and meals. But how can this be the primary reason for a conscious human being's existence? We use decorated phrases like “Queen of the House”, but the moment the "queen" gets some money, all her queenly tasks are dumped onto somebody else. So, we are just deceiving ourselves. Give yourself the courage to question things and not accept them blindly — it will give you a blossomed personality and a great life.
Questioner (Q): My question is regarding abortion. Broadly, there are two schools of thought regarding abortion. The first one is, because it is the woman’s body, she is the one who gets to decide whether to abort or deliver the child. The second school of thought says that the woman
That could be one necessary mark of a true feminist: she would not be dependent on anybody else for a single rupee, especially not on the male partner.
Acharya Prashant: What if you were never, never trained in womanhood? How would you live? You can’t even think because right now, every bit of you is a trained bit. How do you know that a woman must have long hair? How do you know? That’s how it is! Nine
Acharya Prashant: Socially, we have been trained to visualize the happy family as a kid with his two arms being held by two people of opposite gender. That’s really not needed. The kid is already being held in the palm of his real Father. The real Father is not even
The fact is that Vedant is obviously wonderful. I live by it. I definitely see that Vedant is the basis of all great philosophies of East and West. It is the foundation of everything that is beautiful. Vedant brings me to a deep peace and silence. But it is Saint Kabir precisely among all the Saints who reduces me to tears. Read more....
A strange situation is that a beautiful woman’s life is perhaps more complex than an average-looking woman’s life, because a beautiful looking woman has a lot of men eyeing upon her, and she can get whatever she wants. And what you will get for your beauty, that is the real
The man has seen the emotional side of the mother, so the man knows the woman’s emotionality. But the woman has never seen the sexual side of her father, so the woman really does not know man’s sexuality that much.
Don’t give in to emotional traps. The man says, “Darling why do you have to work? You stay at home; I will work. You take care of the bed and the eggs and the babies and your mother-in-law; I will bring in the booty.”
The problem is, the usual feminism always proceeds keeping the man at the center. The woman is saying, “The man is alright, and I want to be like the man.” This is such a low standard to set. Whereas, true feminism would proceed keeping the person that the female is,…
‘Save the girl child’ campaigns, many of these campaigns say, “If today you kill the girl child, how will you find a bride for your son tomorrow?” So, the girl has no independent worth of her own, right?
A modern woman calls herself liberated, yet lives anxious — anxious about age, desirability, marriage, motherhood. Acharya Prashant exposes this anxiety as proof that feminism never touched the real wound: centuries of conditioning that reduced women to bodies for pleasure and reproduction. External equality isn't enough. True freedom demands she reject the entire inheritance of tradition and simply become human — not woman, not wife, not mother by decree, but free.
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Should women choose marriage or career? Society often forces this question, but Vedanta asks a deeper one: are these choices truly yours? This discussion explores family pressure, the biological clock, gender equality, and social conditioning, revealing why freedom, consciousness, and self-awareness matter more than living according to expectations or traditional roles.
Women are often valued not only for their abilities but also for their appearance, desirability, and conformity to social expectations. This conditioning begins early and is reinforced through family, workplaces, media, and culture. As a result, many forms of discrimination continue not only because they are imposed from outside but also because they are accepted and normalized from within. Real freedom begins when a woman refuses to define herself through roles, approval, or standards created to keep her dependent on external validation.
Excerpts from Articles
Climate Change: The Solution Is a Choice
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?
Animal cruelty: Who deserves mercy, and who doesn’t?
Violence begins long before the knife or the slaughterhouse—it begins with the ego, the one that draws boundaries, seeks justification, and decides who deserves compassion. Laws and reforms may reduce suffering, but they cannot end violence while the ego remains intact. When the ego dissolves, exploitation ends naturally, and compassion no longer depends on regulation or moral boundaries.
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.
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।
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।
You Don't Understand the Bhagvad Gita, But You Still Claim That You Love Krishna?
The Bhagavad Gita deserves reverence not because of inherited beliefs about its author, but because of its power to dissolve falsehood and reveal Truth. Real devotion is not ritual or blind faith—it is understanding, inquiry, and living the wisdom of the Gita. Through sincere study, one discovers the true meaning of Krishna, making the Gita the most authentic path to knowing and worshipping Him.
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.
Women's oppression survives not only through external control but also through the internal acceptance of identities imposed by society. Freedom cannot be permanently granted from outside; it must arise from an individual's own sense of dignity, agency, and responsibility. While laws, institutions, and support systems matter, lasting liberation begins when people stop defining themselves through inherited limitations and choose to assert their own consciousness, freedom, and self-worth.
Curiosity and honest questioning do not oppose love; they deepen understanding. Blind obedience creates dullness, while genuine inquiry keeps the mind alive and engaged. True questioning is not self-defense but a sincere search for clarity. Most people remain psychologically hypnotized by fear, entertainment, and ego, yet a small conscious voice within always seeks truth. Real change begins when one chooses love and self-realization over fear and self-preservation.
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Questioner: All the forms of multimedia, the film industry and advertisements, have presented images of both sexes that are very often unrealistic and debatable. The very quality of femininity has been portrayed in the film industry, ironically, as victimizing them, merely pretty faces, and sidekicks. Why do you think women…
Women do not need sympathy, reservation, or compensation; they need awakening. Victimhood may offer temporary advantage, but it slowly erodes dignity and strength. Education that stops at jobs and numbers fails both men and women. Unless education addresses the inner fear, insecurity, and ignorance that sustain oppression, no policy can truly empower the girl child.
The point always to be proven and maintained is that the woman is weak and fragile, because that is exactly what patriarchy always sought to prove: “She can’t work.” Coming from a man it will appear harsh, but being a human being much like a woman, what I can broadly say is that I will not trade away my freedom for the sake of avoiding physical inconvenience. Even if favors are offered to you for free, refuse. There are no free lunches.
If the woman really understands herself and therefore her choices, why would there be a need to be affected by others? But we bother. That happens because we have borrowed our sense of self from history, tradition, and society. When dependence is glorified, be it physical, financial, emotional, or psychological, it definitely coexists with bondage. If you feel bulldozed or forced, there is only one reason: you’re not walking on your own legs. Go out and earn. No price is too big for freedom.
“That brother is such a rascal. He roams all over the city and does this and does that. But this one is such a nice girl. She follows all the parental instructions, does her homework properly, gets good grades in school, and the brother is a rascal.” But the brother will end up in Silicon Valley, and the sister will end up in the kitchen. Don't be a good girl with your mother sitting next to you. That's the advice I'm offering.
Remember, if you want men to look at just your body, they would actually always be looking down at you. But if people, men or women, look at you because of your qualities, they would always be looking up to you.
Millions of working women are continuously carrying the guilt of neglecting an important duty in the household. This is emanating from centuries-old conditioning. In the jungle, it often did happen that, especially during long periods of pregnancy, the woman couldn't really gather for herself, so the man became the provider. But where is the jungle today? Why are we still behaving as if we are still in the jungle? There is no disadvantage that the woman has today, so there is no need for her to feel that her primary commitment is at home.
Freedom is not an ideal. Freedom does not mean conforming to certain notions. Freedom does not mean that you have to be a superwoman — the kind of things that they show in the movies: "See, look, this is the modern, liberated, progressive woman. And this is what she does. She's a super boss. She's a super mom. She's a super wife. She looks fit and sexy. She is everything all at once." Freedom does not mean conforming to these things. Freedom is about knowing what is not me.
If you start living your life founded on emotions, you won't go very far. You would go only in the direction of your bodily constitution. That's where your biological life wants to take you. And the places where your biological life intends to take you are not very glorious or dignified places. Do not let those things happen to you.
Women are physically a bit weaker, and men could coerce them using sheer muscle power. But those days are behind us, because now we have institutions, the law, and the police — systems that do not listen to muscles. There is something in you that agrees to the demands being made by the patriarchal system — question that. What is it in you that surrenders — and that thing is called greed and fear. So that's what you need to fight against — your greed and fear.
The way Prakriti has made the two genders, and the way we are conditioned by society, girls have turned out to be more emotional and more reactive. And that’s a serious handicap they face in life. Many women take their emotionality as their strength, whereas it is not. It is something very untamed that arises from the body. One ought to understand it and stay at a safe distance from it.
Your target should be to accomplish the most extraordinary task in your life. The one at the bottom should also aim for the highest one. It is illogical to say that being at home means washing clothes. You have a washing machine for that! Why don't you leave it and wash them manually? All the technologies are available because you can allot your time to all those things that are much more important so that you are able to complete the task of the highest order.
In the jungle, the woman existed only to breed — not to be an artist, scientist, explorer, or thinker. Internally, women still live in this bondage today, driven by these primal instincts, seeking security and protection, even if they appear externally empowered. And internal bondage is far worse than external. This is where wisdom literature becomes her true rescue—when she knows herself, she can use her body for liberation.
The woman is not beautiful; the man is not beautiful either. Truth and compassion are beautiful. The compassionate one stands head and shoulders above the gorgeous woman or the handsome man. And this is possible only when love and appreciation for the right, gender-independent values are fostered in both the man and the woman.
If you are well-educated, use your education for your empowerment, and that power will give you the leverage to live life on your own terms. Else, anybody—everybody—they'll ride roughshod over you. And you will internalize it. One resists only to the point there is a point in resisting. And after that point, what do you do? You succumb. You start pretending as if you are in the situation by choice. Because you know very well there is no point resisting anymore. You flip sides. Let that not happen to you.
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Acharya Prashant: You have said, “What kind of change our education system needs to have so that our coming generations live together in peace and fulfillment?” Live together with each other, right? You haven’t said they live together with animals. The trees, the rivers, the rabbits, and the lions. That…
Your only obligation is your liberation. These are just loveless social customs and economic structures where a woman is seen as a factor of production that produces babies. There’s no need to go to the husband’s place or even stay at your father’s if you are unloved and unwanted. The world is a vast opportunity. Live anywhere, stay anywhere, do whatever is the right work, and fly free—simple.
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Vedānta is about the person gaining liberation from both of these—body identification and mental conditioning. So, ideally spirituality should be the woman’s best friend. But practically, evidence has been rather mixed; in fact, evidence has been that religion historically has been on the side of the oppressors when it comes to the women, oppressors of the women. The reason is that religion itself has not been well understood. Religion itself has been a victim of contamination, and when religion is contaminated then religion becomes a tool towards exploitation of women.
True feminism is really when the woman, the female, stops taking being a female as her primary identity. If you want to talk of feminism in the context of women's liberation, then this alone is liberation. As long as she is fighting for her rights as a woman, she is not liberated. She, first of all, needs to be liberated from the concept that she is a woman. If she continues to be a woman, then her genetic conditioning and biological impulses and physical drives would continue to rule her. And that would obviously make the achievement of her potential as a human being very difficult.
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Questioner: Thank you for meeting with me again, Acharya Ji! I have a question.
Every time I see an attractive woman, I’m gonna feel the impulse to drop everything and look at her.
Men’s headspace is occupied with conquering women. Can I train myself out of it?
But I have…
“Financial independence and then still having kids, is that something that can be counted under feminism as such?”
No, you see, these…
Man keeps on fantasizing about sex as the ultimate remedy to his mental chaos. And to get this remedy, he must have the woman’s body. To ensure that the woman’s body is available, the man must keep the woman in bondage. Otherwise, she may, or she may not acquiesce.
Patriarchy is the belief that one’s job is determined by gender, oppressing both men and women. It’s not about men versus women; it’s wisdom versus ignorance. If a man continues to be a man, he can only be a predator who hunts women, while women hunt passively in return. Ultimately, no one can find joy while others remain in misery.
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To those who articulate that women should mind their clothes and dressings, the question arises: what kind of person are you, man or woman, if anything is able to disturb or provoke you so easily? The allegation is that when watching a woman dressed skimpily, it becomes a disturbance, a distraction, even a provocation. How will you insulate yourself, and how much will you insulate yourself from the world? And what are the limits to what you want to see and not see? Today, it is said that a woman’s legs or thighs provoke you. What prevents you from saying tomorrow that her ankles and fingernails provoke you? Would you then demand that she should cover up from head to toe?
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The usual feminism always proceeds keeping the man at the center. The woman is saying, “The man is alright and I want to be like the man.” This is such a low standard to set, whereas true feminism would proceed keeping the person that the female is, her real potential at the center. Real feminism is raising to your own individual center, called the true self or Atman.
A man has to give up on greed, on this and that. A woman has to give up on the feelings related to the body. On all the assumptions and other stuff related to the body. Leaving the house, for her, is like becoming naked. And then the rest of the journey is very easy for her. If you have a woman who can drop her physicality, who can get rid of the basic woman-ness, then you have a great saint in front of you.
The man says, “Darling, why do you have to work? You stay at home, I’ll work. You take care of the bed, babies, and mother-in-law. My money is your money.” Never accept this temptation. His money is never your money. If you don't earn anything, you are a beggar. He might be earning millions, but if you don’t earn, you have nothing. Emotions, tears, biology, nest—that's the woman's world, and she is so easy to fool. Men have been fooling women forever, and women still don’t want to wake up.
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Real women empowerment isn't about simply making choices, but about making wise ones. If you do not know how to make decisions, autonomy in decision-making becomes a curse, doesn’t it? Today, many teens and college-going girls embrace a radical mindset: 'I’ll live life my own way, I decide for myself.'
'You only live once, my way or the highway,' and similar attitudes stem from the same center of ignorance as previous generations. Now, the exploiter is within, and this false sense of freedom leads to disastrous choices. True women empowerment demands wisdom, not just autonomy. Spiritual education is crucial, especially for girls.
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Questioner: Acharya Ji, recently I had a small argument with my parents regarding marriage. They have been pushing me for the last seven years, trying to somehow convince me to get married. I’ve got kind of really sick of it. I’m trying to push it, saying that I don't need…
Questioner: Sir, first of all, thank you for taking out your time for this discussion. A few days back, the nation somehow woke from its sleep, when a case happened in Hyderabad—a woman was brutally raped and murdered. People started asking for justice in their own ways; somebody for lynching,…
A woman has unsafe work environment—doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make headlines.
A woman dies during childbirth—who bothers?
Public spaces are not women-friendly—who bothers?
Women themselves are getting conditioned to look at themselves as mere…
…
Do you get this? The man knows the woman’s emotionality,…
As long as the woman keeps…
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If we go by the government propaganda, even if she is to…
One feels like worshiping the woman for enduring so much. One feels like worshiping the woman for being so willingly exploited. And one feels like slapping her hard in the face for being so stupid. Her own worst enemy she is.
