Acharya Prashant explains that ugliness is defined as anything that happens in contradiction to one's fundamental nature. He identifies the fundamental nature of a human being as being characterized by beauty, truth, joy, freedom, and knowing. Therefore, ugliness arises when the mind acts in violation of these qualities. For instance, acting without honesty violates truth, acting out of hurt or revenge violates joy, acting from a conditioned or slave mind violates freedom, and acting out of ignorance violates knowing. He emphasizes that ugliness is essentially a form of fakeness or trying to be what one is not. While everything in nature is inherently beautiful because it does not attempt to be anything other than itself, only humans can be ugly because only humans wear masks. These masks hide one's essential nature and represent a state of being suppressed by external influences. He concludes that being simply oneself is the state of being most beautiful, whereas acting under influences or wearing a mask is what constitutes ugliness.