What makes me dissatisfied? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question : How to get satisfaction?
Speaker : Is there anybody here who can say that he or she was listening with complete intent, complete immersion, even for say five or six seconds? In those moments, when you were listening, just listening, were you feeling dissatisfied? Did the thought of dissatisfaction come to you? Just listening, deeply listening, was there any dissatisfaction? In those moments of listening, was there a thought at all?
Listener 1 : Yes, Sir.
Speaker : Ah! If you are thinking, could you be really listening? If there is a thought going on parallely, then how is listening possible? Is there someone who could say that he was listening, just listening?
Listener 2 : Yes, Sir.
Speaker : Was there any thought?
Listener 2 : No, Sir.
Speaker : That’s the law of the mind. If you are still with your thoughts, then you are with your thoughts, you are not with me. If you are still with your thoughts while listening, then you are with your thoughts, then you are physically here but you are not here.
This dissatisfaction that you are talking of is a thought . It is a thought that comes to you when you are not fully present to the reality, and the reality is this moment. The reality is not your future, not your past, not your ambitions, not your memories. The reality is this moment.
Now, the problem that you face is, that this moment has been told to you to be worthless. All your training and education has been about preparing you for the future. All your training and education has been about results and ends. You are here, so that you can get a job at the end of the fourth year, and a degree too. This moment has never been emphasized upon. In fact, you have been told to sacrifice today for tomorrow. So, this moment is worth sacrificing, there is nothing in it.
When you sacrifice this moment, you also sacrifice satisfaction. Because, satisfaction is being present now and here. Satisfaction can’t come as a result of an achievement. Please understand this. Satisfaction is nothing to be obtained by your work. Satisfaction will not come when a particular event happens. Either you are satisfied or you are dissatisfied. RIGHT NOW ! Everything else is imagination , unreal.
Either you are satisfied right now or you are not, as simple as that. The trick is, the catch is, that in being dissatisfied right now you are constantly imagining satisfaction in the future. Do you see this? Do you see the absurdity of this? Why are you dissatisfied right now? “Well, I am dissatisfied because I am looking for satisfaction in the future.” Now, what is this? What is this going on? It is so absurd.
How to get satisfaction in life? From where will you get it? From somewhere else, from outside? Will you go and buy it from the shop? You think that you will get it from a particular moment in the future , such is your conventional wisdom. Of course, that wisdom has no wiseness in it. But such is your conventional wisdom that says, “I’ll be satisfied when ‘that’ happens. The classes have no value. I’ll be satisfied when the result comes. These four years have very little value. I’ll be satisfied when I get a job at the end of the fourth year. The journey has no value. I’ll be satisfied when the train reaches the destination.”
The only problem is, life is time and time is journey. If you are dissatisfied with the journey, then you are dissatisfied with life itself, because life is time, mind lives in time.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
