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Lover of Truth versus beggar of world || Acharya Prashant, on Guru Kabir (2019)
Scriptures and Saints
475 views
1 year ago
Kabir Saheb
Duality
Liberation
Happiness
Simple Harmonic Motion
Truth
Ego
Worldliness
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that for a lover of truth, the world and its experiences are a single, unfulfilling entity, which Kabir Saheb metaphorically describes as dry bread pieces. In contrast, a worldly person perceives the world as a vast spectrum of infinite possibilities and distinct tastes, ranging from happiness to sadness. This person spends their life oscillating between these two poles, much like simple harmonic motion, mistakenly believing that each new point in this oscillation represents a fresh experience or a new beginning. Acharya Prashant clarifies that this movement is actually a form of captivity within a linear dimension of duality, where the pursuit of happiness inevitably leads to sadness. He further elaborates that the common man's life is driven by the philosophy that the purpose of existence is to attain worldly happiness. This ignorance ignores the fundamental law of duality. Spiritual teachers or advertisers may claim that life is new every moment, but Acharya Prashant argues that without liberation, one is merely repeating old tendencies, fears, and hopes under different names and forms. The saint, however, recognizes the world as a 'dry bread piece' regardless of its 'toppings'—the superficial diversities like status, wealth, or sensory pleasures. While the common man seeks happiness in the world, the saint uses the world as an opportunity to find the 'crack in the wall' that leads to liberation. Finally, Acharya Prashant interprets Kabir Saheb's call to 'sever one's head' as the necessity of destroying the ego and the intellect that acts as an internal enemy. He explains that the head often misguides an individual by projecting enemies outward, whereas the real obstacle to truth is one's own identified mind. In the path of love and devotion, the seeker must be willing to sacrifice this internal resistance. True victory in life is not found in the pursuit of happiness, which is fleeting and dualistic, but in liberation from the cycle of worldly attachments and the deceptive nature of the mind.