When personal life interferes with professional life || (2015)
Questioner: Sir, what should be done when our personal life interferes with our educational life?
Acharya Prashant: These are no different lives. Life is one. There is nothing called an 'educational life'. All life is one. You do not become a different human being when you step out of the campus. The distinction that you are talking of is largely mind-made, artificial. There is just one life.
If you can be distracted outside the campus, chances are you can be distracted even within the campus, because it is the same mind. So, do not say that your personal life is disturbed, hence, your academic life is being disturbed.
A mind that is prone to being disturbed will get disturbed anywhere; and the mind which is centered, still and calm, will not get easily disturbed anywhere.
Are you getting it?
We too easily attribute things that are basically internal, to external sources. The external is fundamentally nothing. The external can at best be a stimulus that provokes something which is already present in your mind. Neither is fear external nor is greed external. Nothing is external. So, do not say that the external has disturbed you.
The disturbance is within. Then external situations appear in a way that disturbance seems to happen.
Let’s say the mind has an inherent tendency to be violent. He will easily find a lot of enemies and then you can claim that the world is full of enemies. And then you can coach yourself, motivate yourself that "The world is full of enemies, and I must resist them."
What do you mean by an enemy?
Is there really an objective entity called 'enemy'? The person you call as enemy, the same person is friend to many others. Is he not?
Q: Yes, Sir.
AP: So, is there anything really called as an 'enemy'? But you will say that the world is full of enemies, and I must do something to defend myself. You say that your personal life is disturbed. You are probably talking about some person who is disturbing you. Am I right? Either a person or a situation. The person who is disturbing you, does that person disturb everybody?
Q: No, Sir.
AP: Let's say that the person is an enemy. Let's say that person is a girl. Let's say that the person is somebody intent upon forcing his will. Let's say a relative. Is that person disturbing everybody?
Q: No, Sir.
AP: It’s all to do something within you. Don’t lay blame on the external. The external means nothing at all. If the external appears pleasant, it’s got to do with your configuration; if the external appears monstrous, it’s again got to do with your own configuration.
Poor external!
What has the relative done? What has the girl done? What has that so-called enemy done? But the mind will say that they have done a lot. They are demonic, right?
Try not blaming the situations. The moment your eyes turn inwards, that is the moment when all kinds of lives - personal, professional, academic, inside the campus, outside the campus - they all become relatively less stressed, right? Is that making sense? Is that being useful?
Alright!
