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Love is the courage to lose oneself || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2018)
Acharya Prashant
1.8K views
8 years ago
Love
Attachment
Ego
Surrender
Wisdom
Commitment
Restlessness
Self-dissolution
Description

Acharya Prashant distinguishes between love and attachment by using the metaphors of metals and liquids. Attachment is compared to the physical proximity of iron and nickel, where both entities remain separate and retain their individual egos. In attachment, the primary goal is to remain oneself while attempting to be with another, leading to a flimsy and exploitative agreement that can easily be broken. It is described as a business deal characterized by cunningness and stupidity because it seeks the impossible: meeting without truly merging. Conversely, love is compared to the merging of water with water or milk, where individual identities are lost and both entities become inseparable. Love is the courage to lose one's ego, thoughts, and personality for something greater than oneself. Acharya Prashant emphasizes that life is impoverished and restless until one finds something so immense and valuable that they are willing to surrender their life to it. This 'something' could be a person, an idea, or even formlessness. Without such a commitment to something bigger than the self, a person remains unstable, mechanical, and easily influenced by external triggers of pleasure and pain. He asserts that the human mind remains restless because it is searching for this total immersion. True wisdom lies in finding a cause or entity worth living and dying for, which brings stability and meaning to life, regardless of one's professional or academic background.