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From Suffering to Serenity: A Transformational Odyssey || Acharya Prashant (2020)
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1 year ago
Void
Suffering
World as Marketplace
Demand and Supply
Purpose
Identity
Vedanta
Jagat Mithya
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that the extent to which the world's names and forms become appealing to you depends on the size of the void in your life. He compares the world to a marketplace with shops on either side of a road you must pass through. The extent to which these shops, with their loudly advertised names and forms, become meaningful to you is determined by the void within. These things assume importance when you have a bigger void inside you. The advice is not to allow this void to grow too big, but to live life in a way that diminishes it. If you have a need within, the world will happily come promising to fulfill it. The speaker emphasizes that the demand comes first, then the supply, which is a core concept in Vedanta. Therefore, one should not blame the world, as it is an infinite supplier that caters to your demand. The bigger your demand, the thicker the supply. The solution is to not allow your demand to grow big by filling the inner void in a suitable, right way. We are born with this void and cannot have nothing in our lives. So, one must either have the right things in life or become prey to the wrong ones. This means choosing the right company, the right identity, and the right purpose. The speaker clarifies that one cannot be without an identity or purpose. The best one can have is a high, sublime identity. Life must have a great and intense purpose, as purposelessness is an ultimate state not to be talked about casually. Having the right desire is the way to avoid foolish desires. Similarly, one cannot avoid labor, but one can avoid laboring like a donkey by laboring like a royal elephant for the right cause. Right suffering for a right cause reduces the sufferer. The indicator of freedom from suffering is when the world becomes irrelevant. It exists, but not to you. This is when one can truly say 'Jagat Mithya' (the world is an illusion), meaning it does not exist for you.