Acharya Prashant addresses the question of how to deal with reactions of pleasure and pain that arise from the ego. He begins by challenging the idea that sorrow and pleasure simply appear out of nowhere. He explains that their causes are already present within us, like hidden seeds. If sorrow or pleasure manifests at a particular time, it's because the seeds were already there, waiting for a conducive external event to sprout. Therefore, the period before the manifestation is crucial. Instead of waiting for these feelings to arise, one should be actively engaged in uprooting their hidden seeds. Using an analogy, Acharya Prashant compares life to a house made of paper walls soaked in kerosene, which is highly flammable. The purpose of life, he suggests, is to salvage what is valuable from this house before it inevitably catches fire. The absence of sorrow is what we call pleasure, which is merely a state of waiting for sorrow to manifest. The correct approach is to be constantly working on removing the seeds of suffering. When sorrow does manifest, it should be seen as an indication that the work of removing the seeds was not happening fast enough. The response, then, is not to get entangled in the feeling but to double the speed of the inner work of uprooting the cause. Acharya Prashant further clarifies that one does not need a book to understand feelings like fear or jealousy; the experience itself is immediate and direct. The reason people don't recognize their own ego-driven states is that they have become habituated to them, much like one becomes accustomed to a constant noise and only notices it when it stops. He concludes by stating that the ego is not a tangible thing but a tendency, a disposition, which can only be known through its actions and activities. Therefore, to know oneself, one must observe one's own actions, as there is no existence of the ego apart from its manifestations in one's deeds.
