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सीखना चाहो तो बहुत सीख सकते हो || आचार्य प्रशांत, बातचीत (2020)
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4 years ago
Mahatma Gandhi
Inner Enemy
Self-Transformation
Weaknesses
Determination
Celibacy (Brahmacharya)
Sanatana Dharma
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that it is easy to either directly condemn someone or to deify them and start worshipping them. However, what is necessary is to see a person as a human being and evaluate them correctly. The special thing he sees in Mahatma Gandhi is that he truly fought against his inner enemy. He had nothing that was divine from his childhood or youth. He was of a very ordinary build and did not have a very attractive personality. Despite this, he emerged as a great public leader. He was afraid to speak in front of people. He was educated in Britain, yet he was afraid to argue in court, so he started writing petitions. A man who could not speak in court later addressed thousands of public meetings throughout his life. This is a very good thing. This person had conquered his weaknesses. His lust was as strong as any common man's, so much so that he could not be with his father in his last moments, being drawn towards his wife. Later, at the age of 38, this man understood the true meaning of celibacy and entered into it. The man who was so fond of the British that when he went to Britain to study, he spent a lot of his money just on learning English manners and acquiring English clothes, later mounted an assault on the British, and they trembled before him. This person had conquered his own weaknesses. At one point, he became so skeptical of Sanatana Dharma that he was thinking of converting to Christianity. Later, he reached a point where he was called a Mahatma, referred to the Gita as his mother, and his last words were 'Hey Ram'. There is no flaw that an ordinary man has that he did not have. In his childhood and youth, he had all the common faults of any child or young man. But he achieved victory over all those faults. He stole money from home, ate meat, went to prostitutes, and also lied. But he admitted to all these things and also gained victory over all these faults. This is what is impressive about him: a man who was very ordinary, a man of the earth, how he kept conquering his weaknesses and moving forward. This is the thing we have to learn from him. Otherwise, to condemn someone, to use abusive words, to hurl insults due to political ideology is a very cheap thing to do. One should see a human as a human. Every human has some weaknesses and there can be a lot that can be learned from them. What can be learned should be learned.