Articles by Acharya Prashant

India’s educated youth face a strange paradox — the more qualified they are, the longer they may remain unemployed. But the problem runs deeper than a changing job market. Degrees often become identities, making it difficult to accept work or change that does not fit the image one has built of oneself. In the age of AI, the real question is not only what new skill to learn, but who remains when the old label is set aside.

Janmashtami is not merely a festival of celebrating child Krishna through idols, sweets, and rituals. It is an invitation to confront the ego, attachment, fear, and ignorance within. The idol, scripture, and guru are mirrors meant to reveal the truth about oneself. The real birth of Krishna happens within when one surrenders to truth, faces inner conflict, and moves beyond limited identities toward self-knowledge and freedom.

We often defend a bad choice by pointing to a worse one: stay dishonest or starve, keep the wrong grip or stop playing. But the real trouble is not the option we picked. It is the option we never let ourselves see. Action does not need greed or attachment to find its energy. The third way begins by rejecting both false choices, without knowing what comes next. Which of our everyday choices are really false dilemmas?

Sisyphus pushes a rock up a hill forever, knowing it will always roll back down. A regular workman does the same thing inside a job: he keeps pushing too, except he hopes it will eventually pay off, a promotion, a house, a better life. This hope is often just a comfortable lie. Sisyphus, who expects nothing and still keeps going, is actually more honest than we are. The real question is not whether the effort is worth it, but whether we can stop lying to ourselves about it.

The climate crisis is not merely an external environmental problem but a reflection of inner human greed, desire, and psychological disorder. Drawing from the Gita’s idea of yagya as desireless action, it says real ecological healing requires inner transformation. Outer pollution, exploitation, and destruction mirror the ego’s inner confusion, making personal consciousness and planetary health deeply inseparable.

Superficiality offers pleasures. Superficiality offers cheap salvation. Therefore, it is easy to be attracted to superficiality. On the other hand, true spirituality challenges you to pay a heavy price. So, you see, all this knowledge has existed since antiquity. Yet there are people who do not want to read the Gita.

Many of us look for role models of our own gender and hope to succeed as a man or as a woman, yet no one great was ever great as a gender. The moment we tie our aims to being a woman or a man, we tie them to the body, and much of our attention goes into how we look and how we are seen. So much around us keeps reminding a woman of her body, from songs to the fear of a street at night. But the body has never achieved anything by itself. What might we attempt if gender stopped mattering?

True God is the Truth right now in your heart. That is true godliness, true bhagavatta. The problem is that people want to avoid the real living Truth in their heart. Therefore, they come up with stories that place an imaginary God somewhere up in the skies. God is wonderful, but the stories and the imaginations about God are all very disrespectful towards God. When there is love for God, God is held very close to the chest, and that God is called Truth. That God is the very purpose of philosophy and the very origin.

Climate change is more than an environmental crisis—it is a crisis of human choices. Our patterns of consumption, consumerism and endless pursuit of more are putting increasing pressure on the planet. But meaningful change does not necessarily begin with new technology or stricter policies. It begins with a deeper question: what are we willing to change within ourselves?

Rakshabandhan is not merely a festival celebrating the protection of a sister by her brother. Its deeper meaning is about recognizing vulnerability and taking responsibility for what needs protection. Today, that responsibility must extend to the environment—rivers, mountains, trees, oceans, wildlife, and the planet itself. True religion lies in self-knowledge, compassion, and understanding that greater power brings greater responsibility.

Should women choose marriage or career? Society often forces this question, but Vedanta asks a deeper one: are these choices truly yours? This discussion explores family pressure, the biological clock, gender equality, and social conditioning, revealing why freedom, consciousness, and self-awareness matter more than living according to expectations or traditional roles.

Women cannot be truly liberated through education, income, or legal rights alone if they remain psychologically identified with socially conditioned ideas of “womanhood.” While external barriers may fall, inner bondage persists through inherited identities, roles, and expectations. Real freedom begins not by rejecting the body, but by seeing oneself primarily as a conscious human being rather than a gendered identity, because lasting liberation starts at the root of self-identification.

Bose's contribution to radio technology was kept in the dark and came to light only recently. Francesco Marconi, grandson of G. Marconi himself, in one of his lectures, addressed Bose as the inventor of radio, and his grandfather as its propagator. Additionally, the international organization IEEE gave Bose the title of ‘Father of Radio Science’. Many scientists believe that Bose deserved two Nobel Prizes – one for his research on radio waves and the other for his semiconductor research.

The real issue is not about time at all. You are spending time exactly according to your values. Don’t ask how to utilize time. Ask yourself, "Do I know what is truly valuable?" When you are clear about what is truly valuable in life, all your time will be devoted to that. Become clear. Know what is truly valuable.

Overview

Fighting Duryodhana is Dharma. Fight Duryodhana in the way you can, that is swadharma. Dharma is the same for everybody, but swadharma varies according to your physical, social, temporal conditions.

But remember that swadharma can never be in contradiction of Dharma; swadharma will always be something…

Clarity is not confidence, which can exist without wisdom. It is not certainty, which often masks fear. Clarity is the mind’s ability to see things as they are, without the lens of desire or fear. It allows the mind to perceive without bending reality toward what it wishes for or what it dreads. When clarity is present, choices reveal themselves not as battles between competing forces but as natural movements arising from understanding.

Struggling to choose between a secure job and the path you actually feel drawn to? This isn't really a question about careers. It's about why other people's opinions have so much power over you in the first place. Real clarity doesn't come from finding the 'right' choice. It comes from honestly looking at your own fear, again and again, until it stops running the decision for you.