“There’s always been war, But people quickly get accustomed to peace. So they think it’s normal. No, war is what’s normal.”
~ Albert Camus
Questioner: Acharya Ji, which ‘war’ is Albert Camus referring to?
Acharya Prashant: The questioner has asked that Albert Camus has said that ‘war’ is what is… read_more
Questioner (Q): Man is typically a social animal who seeks to coexist with the society around him. I am a vegan but many people around me are not, and that creates a difficulty for me. I want to speak out my thoughts on animal cruelty and get into animal activism,… read_more
AIR host (AIR): A very good morning to all our listeners tuned in! And a warm welcome to the brunch time show this Saturday morning with your friend Kiran! And this morning we have a very, very enlightened guest with us who is going to be sharing his views and… 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
Questioner: Sir, I want to ask, Robot doesn’t have ego. So, now what is the intersection between the urge towards freedom and your ego?
Acharya Prashant: You could say, the robot does have an ego planted into it by its designer. Therefore, the ego of the robot is totally in… 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
“The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.” -Khalil Gibran, ‘Sand and Foam’
Question: Once during a discourse on the Bible, you too have said, “The more you know the Truth, the more you want to know; such is … 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
Acharya Prashant: It has been told to us that there exist two centers. I suppose it has been very freshly told to you right? Very recently. He says, “How do I know that I am living out of the right center? How does a young man know whether he’s not… 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: Namaskar Acharya ji! I am reading a book called “Freedom from the Known”, where the author, Jiddu Krishnamurthi, talks about removing authority to be free from the ego. What does he mean by authority? Can we take anything to be the authority and then say, “I’m not going to… read_more
Questioner: Is there some scientific context to spirituality? Because, at the end of the day, as you said, ‘Religion forms a boundary, an outer shell, within which spirituality remains.’ Because this has to be something that stops you from doing something wrong or something that is fundamentally upsetting. So, how… read_more
Questioner: Sir, it is pretty evident that I exist and you exist, but you have also stated that the ego does not exist. So, when someone calls you Acharya Prashant and you reply, isn’t that an identification that reflects an ego?
Acharya Prashant: It is a thing that is useful… read_more
Acharya Prashant: You can not win the mind, you can not cater to the mind, you can not control the mind. And you are not responsible for everything that this ancient mind does. A thousand squirrels are sitting here, and five hundred monkeys, and the extinct dinosaur, and all the… 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
Acharya Prashant: What to do when you encounter a person with a lot of ego? He has used two words: High ego and bad ego. Let us understand this. When you use the term ‘bad ego’, you necessarily mean that there is something called ‘good ego’ as well. Correct? Logical?… read_more
Questioner: I was in a relationship with a person from the last eight years. Last three years while being with me, he was also seeing and dating other women. I have always been honest and loyal to him. After knowing that he is so mean, so dishonest, why am I… read_more
Questioner: Acharya ji, today I realized that without love in my heart, I cannot find joy in my life, however wonderful my external situations are. Just listening to, and singing a Kabir bhajan brings me so much joy, love, and tears, I really want to know this Love, and what… 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: What’s worse, there might be much more lethal and incurable viruses to come in the future.
We talk of the virus as the problem. In fact, if you go to social media to get a hang of how we are looking at the whole thing in a cultural… read_more
Acharya Prashant: One hallmark, one unmistakable quality of right action would be that it would require all your guts. It is only a false action that you can comfortably undertake. Falseness is never troublesome; Truth always is. Whenever you would be doing something that would be real, you would know… 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
Acharya Prashant: You are walking along an empty street in the middle of the night—nobody around you, nobody to really disturb you, nobody to talk to you, nobody to point to you, nobody to intercept you, nobody to remind you of anything, and still do you see how much keeps… 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
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
Acharya Prashant: The spiritual soldier, the religious warrior has to be extremely intelligent. You could go to the extent of saying that he has to be cunning in the service of Truth; I’m choosing this word with all deliberation.
He has to be cunning in the service of the Truth;… read_more
Acharya Prashant: The truth is not a side of you; the truth is not a part of you. The truth is the absence of this fictitious thing called ‘you.’ That's how the false survives by calling a part of itself ‘the truth.’ You know, yes, of course, I'm false, but… read_more
Acharya Prashant: Man, as he is, is bound to kill. Killing is necessarily associated with the human form. That’s how we are, and that’s why the saints loathed the human form. They didn’t say that it is a great joy to be born as a human body. They said, “Please,… read_more
