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Who is the lover the saint sings for? || Acharya Prashant, on Hafiz (2016)
Acharya Prashant
463 views
9 years ago
Love
Truth
Ego
Separation
Surrender
Duality
Death
Mysticism
Description

Acharya Prashant discusses the profound nature of love as expressed by mystics like Rumi, Hafiz, and Kabir Saheb. He cautions that their poetry often uses familiar, worldly language—referring to lovers, the moon, or the night—which can easily mislead the listener into thinking they are talking about mortal, material attraction. However, these terms are symbols pointing toward the unknown and the divine. He explains that the ego often appropriates this wisdom to inflate itself, turning what should be medicine into poison. True understanding requires humility and the realization that these poems are not what they appear to be on the surface. Using the metaphor of the earth and the sun, he describes the human predicament. The sun represents the truth that never sets, while the night represents the ego's situation of facing away from that truth. He explains that the earth's constant circling movement, driven by its own effort and 'doing,' is exactly what creates the centripetal force that maintains separation from the sun. Similarly, the mind's very effort to reach the truth acts as a barrier. Love is described as the 'angst of separation' and the pull of the source on the ego. To achieve unification, one must drop the 'doer' and surrender, trusting that the truth is already eager to pull the seeker in. Acharya Prashant emphasizes that for a wise person, there is no better topic than love and truth, whereas fools occupy themselves with miscellaneous, worldly talk. He redefines death not as the end of the physical body, but as the total vanishing of the mind and the cessation of the 'flow' of duality. He challenges the audience to move beyond intellectual, 'moderate' thinking, which stays within safe boundaries. He suggests that one must either drop thinking entirely through meditation or think so intensely and boundlessly that the machinery of the ego eventually crashes, leading to liberation.