Question: Why do we sacrifice in the name of Life?
Acharya Prashant: Who says that? What is your name?
Listener: Ankush.
AP: Ankush, who told you that Life is a big ‘sacrifice’? And whenever there is a ‘sacrifice’, there is somebody collecting the sacrifice. Who is collecting the sacrifice? You are giving your Life who is taking that Life? Have you ever seen this?
Life is not a sacrifice.
It was surely a very defeated, a very sad man who has said that Life is the ‘sacrifice’. Life is there to live . It is your one precious Life and you are ‘young’. It is meant to be lived. It is not even meant to be given away. But a divine part is this that
When you live your Life fully, you actually give a lot to others as well.
Like a candle. A candle shining brightly is able to light a hundred other candles as well. And that takes nothing away from its own Light. It does not have to sacrifice its own Light.
Ensure that you are up and aflame like that candle then others will also get something from you. But that will be just incidental. You don’t have to sacrifice. Sacrifice what and why?
Attain your fullness and then there will be of great use to others as well. You will be able to help everybody and there will be no sacrifice in that. No sacrifice at all. The Upanishad, that is the very puzzling thing, it is the Shanti-Path of many of the Upanishads. They say when the full is taken away from the full what remains is still full.
There is no ‘sacrifice’. The full has not yet been reduced. It cannot be reduced.
Are you getting it?
Only a limited can be reduced. And what can a beggar give to others? If you are a beggar, of what use is a sacrifice. Gain completeness , gain richness. And then you will find that this richness is overflown and everybody is benefitting. A madman cannot help another madman. But madmen are too eager to sacrifice their lives for another madman and the entire world is becoming mad because too many madmen are sacrificing their Lives for another madman.
Don’t sacrifice. Find yourself out. Gain your completeness.
~ Acharya Prashant Ji speaking at the ShabdYoga Session at KEC, Ghaziabad on 29th January 2013
