Questioner (Q): Sir, what is the meaning of being opinionless?
Acharya Prashant (AP): It is not the same as being shirtless. When you are shirtless, it means you are not wearing a shirt at all. And if you do that we’ll object to it.
Being opinionless means not taking your personal opinion seriously. Having a near-total flexibility when it comes to opinions. Your opinions must be a slave of the facts. The way the mind is, and the way one is bound to operate in the world, you will necessarily have to tether yourself to some opinion or the other, just for the sake of functioning.
But, you should never be rigid about your opinions. The moment you come across a fact, the opinion must be surrendered to the fact.
You are standing at a crossing and you do not know whether you go right or left. Because you are clueless, you start walking towards the left. That is some kind of an opinion, alright let’s go to the left. It may come from your past experiences, it may come from the condition of the road, it may come from something that you see towards the left or towards the right, so you start walking. But you go a little distance to the left and you discover that you should have gone right, then you immediately turn around. That is what is meant by being opinionless.
I will not become a slave to my opinions. The moment I discover, that something else needs to be done, I will oblige, I will comply. There will be no resistance, there will be no inertia. I’ll be a slave to the Truth. I’ll go in the direction it commands me to. I’ll not take even one second dithering over what to do. The moment it is seen that I should have gone to other direction, I’ll correct my course. I’ll not say that "I have invested so much in walking towards this direction, how do I, now suddenly take a U-turn?" I’ll suddenly take a U-turn. Irrespective of how much I have invested in my current opinion. I’ll give it up.
