Acharya Prashant is a philosopher and author, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad. He is among the most widely read philosophical columnists writing in India today, with more than 190 published columns ranging across climate and consumption, elections and ideology, caste and religion, gender, education, geopolitics, technology, and the inner life.
What unifies this range is a single method: tracing every public crisis back to the unexamined self that produces it.

FOR COMMISSIONING EDITORS
In this special Janmashtami feature published in Rajasthan Patrika, philosopher and author Acharya Prashant explains why the true Krishna is not an idol to be worshipped from a distance, but Truth, the Self, and Realization (Satya, Atma, Bodh) itself.

In this article published in The Pioneer, Acharya Ji questions the prevailing fear surrounding AI and raises a fundamental question: who is the one who is afraid, and what is he actually trying to preserve?

"How much does it take to reduce emissions? In principle, nothing much. No invention is pending, no launch window has to be waited for, no breakthrough in materials science is required, no treaty has to be signed by anyone who does not want to sign it. What is required is that a very large number of people desire less than they currently desire, and that is the one thing no engineer can deliver and no summit can negotiate. So the simple route goes untried, and in its place arrive proposals of escalating magnificence."

"What is everybody saying? The education system has failed. That is the first sentence of almost every article you will read on this topic. I want to say the opposite, and I want to say it plainly. The system has not failed. The system has been magnificent. It has delivered superbly over well over a century. What must be asked is something else. What was it designed to do, and hence what has it delivered?"

"The flood that tore through Nepal’s Rasuwa district did not begin in the mountains, philosopher and author Acharya Prashant has said. It began, in his account, in the restless human desire that treats the earth as fuel for itself. Asked why climate change was conspicuously missing from the news coverage of this tragedy, he said the word was kept out because naming it would implicate everyone who lives an ordinary consuming life. “Every emitter is responsible for these deaths,” he said."

"This was a climate catastrophe, and not the first; the very same valley was struck in almost this way a year ago, and the whole Himalayan arc now does this two and three times a season. The word, then, is available, and it is accurate, and still it is the one word we will not say plainly. That refusal deserves more attention than the flood itself, because the refusal is the disease, and the flood only its symptom."

"That flood did not come from the cloud, and it did not finally come from the glacier. It came from the way we have been taught to see life. The ice of the Himalayas is not melting in any factory's furnace. It is melting in our tendencies, in the ego itself."

"What is being called a generational shift is a momentary situational phenomenon, and everybody has mistaken it, the celebrating and the nervous alike, including the political parties. This badge of honour is being awarded far too quickly. They are rebels, we say. But are they really?"

"A movement can rise from the natural centre, and a movement can rise from the centre of delusion, and the same person carries both. The ego can block the right movement and can also cause the wrong one. The problem is never the moving or the staying in itself; the problem is the center from which it is being done."

"In this article published in The Pioneer, Acharya Prashant raises some fundamental questions regarding animal cruelty and says, "I do not talk about being kind to animals. I talk about where violence actually lies, and my only work is to situate it rightly."

"Memory itself is neutral, mechanical, the same function that lets you recall a phone number or the way home without any preference for one over the other. Left alone, it would let most things fade, including the old slight that still bothers you for no reason you can name. The ego is what keeps the slight alive, picking through that storage and pulling out exactly what serves its story while leaving the rest to fade on its own."

"I have no problems with a street protest. I have a problem with blindness on the street. Send the blind onto the road, and you will have accidents, not revolutions. First let the eyes open. Then I will myself say: now march."

"Indian spiritual figures have been travelling abroad for more than a century. Halls have filled, applause has sounded, and followings have formed across the world. My tour of Britain in May to July 2026 might, at first glance, look like one more link in that same chain. But what mattered in those rooms was not the name of the venue; it was who sat across from me, and the standard against which the argument was placed."

"Even the students of Oxford and Cambridge, brilliant in their fields, can sense that something remains missing, some lack that neither degrees nor money can fill. But their education does not tell them that what is missing is the cleansing of the eye and the clearing of intent. Because if the knower himself is fearful, greedy, and inwardly unclean, then even the best knowledge will finally serve ego and violence."

“A scene can look clean for two very different reasons: because the dirt has been removed, or because the dirt has been hidden. The whole of this article is about learning to tell those two apart, because the difference between them is the difference the developed world has spent decades refusing to examine. The question feels sharper this summer than ever, with Europe scorching under record heat and the climate crisis sitting at the centre of every serious international conversation.”

"The accusation that the Gita is casteist and the accusation that it is misogynist both rest on roughly the same move: take a verse out of the sentence it lives in, and the sentence out of the chapter it lives in, and the chapter out of the text's own stated definitions, and almost anything can be made to say almost anything. The discipline this calls for is not loyalty to a text. It is the same discipline owed to any sentence before judgment is passed on it: read it whole, in its own sequence, before deciding what it was made to confess."

"The case for treating yoga as primarily a physical correction was always weak. Arjuna stood on the battlefield of Kurukshetra as one of the most physically accomplished warriors of his age, trained since childhood in archery and combat, his body in no need of correction. Yet it was to him, not to some unfit or unwell bystander, that Krishna delivered eighteen chapters on yoga. Whatever yoga is, it was never primarily about the body, and a tradition that arrives there has mistaken the address for the resident."

"A person never produces a stable figure for enough. Ask someone with savings what amount would let him stop checking, and the number retreats as it is approached. The Swiss population referendum makes visible that the same movement runs at civilisational scale, without anyone wanting more of anything. Together they form a structure with the exact signature of an ego that cannot say enough."

"The theme I was asked to speak on at the House of Lords in the British Parliament this week was lovely: Indian roots, global wings. Lovely things charm us, and a charmed audience nods before it has time to look. So I begin by declining the nod, because both halves of that phrase mean something quite different from what they are taken to mean, and that difference is the whole of what India can offer."

"A man reaches a mountain pass at first light, three hours of walking in the dark behind him. The valley below has not yet been entered by the sun; the river on its floor is a grey thread, older than the language he thinks in. He stands still for perhaps a minute."

"The parks of London do something to the mind, if one lingers in them long enough without an agenda. Walking through one in the late evening, when the city has begun to loosen its grip, and the light is going amber behind the beech trees, something in the usual interior traffic pauses."

"On the 30th of May, I spoke at the Cambridge Union as part of the Cambridge India Business Dialogue, in conversation with Professor Jaideep Prabhu of the Judge Business School. I had been told the session would run for about an hour; the room had other intentions."

"Every year, as Eid al-Adha approaches, the debate reappears: should the practice be restricted, is public sacrifice acceptable, are there hygiene concerns? The protests and defences line up on cue, and when the festival passes, the argument goes quiet for another twelve months. The animal that was slaughtered is forgotten; the position that was held is remembered."

Almost every historical crisis has produced its version of the same thought: what is happening is happening to someone else. The climate crisis has produced a version of this thought particularly well-suited to the Indian urban professional class: climate change is real, but its primary victims are the farmer without irrigation, the construction worker or the landless labourer. The crisis the middle class has assigned to someone else is visible in the city's own property markets, its own seasonal calendar, its own streets after an hour of rain, and the exemption the middle class believes it holds has already been declined, though its holders have not yet checked the correspondence.

"The dowry demand is typically presented in public discourse as an anachronism, a stubborn remnant of a less enlightened India that education, urbanisation, and explicit legal prohibition have somehow failed to dislodge, a framing that mistakes the institution’s most explicit expression for a departure from it. But is dowry an aberration within the institution of marriage, or the institution’s own operating logic, followed to its economic conclusion?"

"The connection between fuel consumption and the absence of a genuine inner life is not metaphorical. It is a mechanical chain. The human being who believes that satisfaction must be sought outward, because he has found no access to genuine sufficiency within, acts upon his emotions and desires without examining what drives them. Every desire acted upon requires energy. Energy, in a civilisation built on fossil fuels, means burning them."

Years pass, and the absorbed becomes the assumed, and what is assumed long enough, we defend. What entered us as someone else’s anxiety we now call our values. What was handed to us without our knowledge we now guard as conscience, as responsibility,... Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-burden-of-borrowed-expectations-4011780

"The investigation into 2026 NEET-UG cancellation will produce arrests, possibly convictions, and a reformed NTA with a strengthened testing protocol; the twenty-two lakh students who sat on May 3 deserve nothing less. But the reformed examination will still fill its halls with candidates who do not know why they are there, whose years were arranged around a credential that was always standing in as a substitute for the self-knowledge that no curriculum, reformed or otherwise, has ever offered them."

“When scriptures are reduced to symbols of identity instead of instruments of inquiry, tradition loses its living essence. Reverence without study creates pride, not understanding. And a civilisation that stops reading itself slowly becomes vulnerable to noise, imitation, and hollow ritual."

“The mother being honoured today is the first person her children watched accept the settlement. The daughter who watched her mother’s labour go unnamed, unthanked, and unquestioned did not even consider that cooking may be a form of oppression. She learned something subtler and more durable: that this is what care looks like, that devotion does exactly this, and that a settlement accepted without complaint and carried with grace passes, in most households, for love itself.”

"Beneath all the noise of Super Monday, there's only one question worth asking: if the voter has changed his government for the seventh or the fifteenth time, and if the quality of what is governed has remained constant, if the problems said to have motivated each successive verdict continue in their essential form, at what point does the ceremony of changing governments begin to look less like the exercise of popular sovereignty and more like the elaborate activity of a self that has decided never to examine what has not changed?"

"The mountains are on fire and India's cities are furnaces. The bill for two centuries of mispriced consumption is arriving on a schedule that runs ahead of every published forecast. The question that remains is a simple one: whether the person who drove up to the hills, ate the Maggi, and tossed the packet into the ravine is willing to reckon with the distance between what he paid and what it cost."

"The end of violence ought to be the simplest good news in the world. That it so rarely functions as such is a phenomenon worth pausing over. Something about the structure of collective life makes enemies necessary. Understanding what that something is, requires looking not at the conflict but at the one watching it."

"A delimitation that diminishes the political standing of societies with its highest-performing institutions is not simply an injustice to them; it is a statement about what India believes political standing should be based on. A country that wants to earn its place in the world as a knowledge economy cannot build that future on a political architecture that the builders of its knowledge economy will experience as a systematic penalty for having built it."

"Women’s reservation means little unless society first transforms the lives women actually inhabit."

"The Women's Reservation Act will soon reach implementation. More women will enter legislatures, which is preferable to the alternative. But the question being avoided in all this discussion is more uncomfortable: has anything changed in the relationship between a woman and her own sense of self? The hardest evidence against the adequacy of external liberation is not political. It lives in her inner life. That doesn't yield to legislation or to awareness of patriarchy as a social structure."

We live in what is probably the most comfortable era our species has known. In practical terms, the body is safer than it has ever been.

"A parent who has not questioned her own conditioning, who has not sat with her own fear and traced it to its source, who has not asked what she is outside her own social performance: such a parent has no light to offer. The state of the child is a faithful record of the state of the parent, and the relationship with the child cannot change until the parent begins to change what she is."

There is a reason the entertainment apparatus grows more elaborate, more expensive, and more omnipresent when the ground-level facts of existence are becoming harder to look at. Political theatre, religious spectacle, franchise cricket: the products differ but the mechanism is identical in every case, each offering the ego a ready-made emotional world to inhabit so that it need not examine the actual world it lives in.

"The decision to depart, when genuine, must be the person’s own, arrived at in full awareness, not extracted by family exhaustion, economic pressure, or a system that has run out of ideas. It cannot come from pain alone, because suffering without self-knowledge produces desperation rather than clarity, and desperation and dignity are not on the same register."

"If the ego is always filtering information through what it has already decided to protect, then what does misinformation actually mean? Both misinformation and disinformation assume a stable, agreed-upon baseline of truth against which the falseness of a given claim can be measured. This is the assumption that has not been examined."

"The sense of incompletion that propels a young professional to book a flight to a destination he has already mentally photographed, to build a house with rooms that will rarely be used; this is not a rational economic decision. It is the ego’s oldest and most relentless reflex: I am insufficient as I am; adding, acquiring, displaying will resolve the insufficiency."

"Every civilisation in crisis reaches first for the solution that requires it to change the least. This is not cowardice; it is the structural behaviour of the human ego, which will accept any modification to its tools before it will accept an examination of its wants."

"The real war is the one the ego wages against honest seeing, the war between what it is and what it insists on being taken for. It is the hunger the ego carries meeting a reality that will not satisfy it; the persistent feeling that something is missing whose name cannot be found because finding it would require looking at the one who feels it."

"Democracy does not give you what you want—it gives you what you are. A hard look at how the voter’s inner state shapes the nation more than any leader ever can."

"What makes this machinery particularly effective is that it finds its subjects already converted. By the time a young aspirant is old enough to question the direction he has been pointed in, he has already invested years, and the sunk cost holds him in place."

“War is not only a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental one. Modern warfare devours fuel, burns cities, poisons soil and air, and leaves behind scars that last far longer than the battles themselves. Even as nations pledge to fight climate change, the machinery of war continues to run on a scale that quietly undermines those very promises.”

"On 8th March every year, International Women’s Day is observed, speeches are made, and achievements are listed. But the woman sitting quietly behind all of it, the one who has given and accommodated her way through life, is not waiting for a celebration. She is waiting, perhaps without knowing it, for permission to ask who she actually is beneath everything she was told to be."

"The inner condition that produces belligerent foreign policy is the same one that produces the epidemic of depression, anxiety, addiction, and inner purposelessness that's become the defining psychological signature of the most militarily powerful societies on earth. You cannot burn your neighbour’s house and rest in peace, not because of some mystical law, but because the act of burning changes the one who burns."

"Most education concerns itself with objects. Chemistry studies substances, physics studies matter and energy, economics studies exchange, etc. Even psychology studies behaviour as something observable from the outside. The curriculum grows more detailed each year. Our grasp of the world becomes more precise. But you, the self, are not an object in that world. You are the one to whom the world appears. And that fact is seldom examined."

"There is a question beneath the question whenever a society turns its full legislative attention to what a woman wears, where she walks, whether her voice may be heard in a public space, and how much pain her body may absorb before the law takes notice."

"Look closely at what usually passes for happiness: A promotion, a holiday, approval, entertainment."

"Every rebellion imagines itself as the subject of history: we, the people, are acting; we are choosing; we are remaking the world. But look more carefully, and a disturbing possibility emerges. The crowd that fills the streets is not the author of the revolution"

"Summits will improve their screening, and budgets may rise, but these corrections address the temperature of the room while leaving the fire untouched. What must change is the inner posture toward inquiry itself, beginning where the distortion was first installed."

When a social arrangement is given the name of religion, it becomes nearly impossible to dismantle. You can legislate against it, protest against it, write constitutions that explicitly forbid it, and it will survive, because people will obey the law in the open and worship the belief in private.

"Every few years, a similar pattern keeps repeating. A set of names tumbles into public view, and the world performs its ritual of shock. And then, quietly, the cycle completes itself: the outrage fades, the names are absorbed into the archives, and the pattern continues."

"Nations often behave remarkably like insecure individuals. They nurse historical wounds for centuries. They demand recognition. They measure themselves against rivals and mistake expansion for strength."

"If one relies on events, shock is guaranteed, again and again, because most misdeeds never come fully to light. Scandals are not reliable teachers. If one understands the principle, shock loses its grip, because what unfolds is recognised rather than discovered."

"One civilisation may invest in instruments that measure the world; another may invest in instruments that offer comfort and reassurance. The consequences of that choice can take centuries to unfold, but they always unfold."

“Revolutions always promise change, and they usually deliver something that merely looks like change. Regimes collapse, flags are replaced, slogans change, but something remains untouched. The question we refuse to ask is simple: when the wheel turns again, what will have changed?”

“But what was the human being doing during this so-called peace? Per capita consumption, carbon emissions, and animal kills kept rising continuously, even through the decades we remember as stable. The superficial learning from World War II remained: do not collide with each other, pile more on your own plate, but buy it from the market rather than snatching it from the neighbour. The hunger never diminished. Only the hunting strategy changed.”

"Without self-enquiry, rationalism turns outward-only. It scrutinizes religion, superstition, tradition, politics, and the beliefs of others, but it never pauses to examine the psychological centre doing the scrutinizing. The ego remains untouched, and rationality becomes its armour."

"AI has arrived not as a villain but as a mirror, reflecting back exactly how mechanical our lives have become. The tragedy is not that machines are growing intelligent; it is that we have been living unintelligently, and now the fact is exposed."

"The believer says ‘Exists’ and clutches scripture, the atheist says ‘No’ and clutches logic. In either case, the ego experiences some relief after speaking. In questioning the existence of God, the ego successfully hides its own non-existence."

"Prisons multiply, crime persists—an inquiry into justice, consciousness, and responsibility."

"Violence never arrives announcing itself as violence. It arrives wrapped in reasons and slogans, in duty, in faith, in law, in nation, and demands that you honour it as necessary. It extracts your moral consent first, and only then does it spill blood."

People run from it into noise and distraction and shallow bonds. But running only makes it worse. Suppressed pain does not heal; it festers.

"Two nations entered the 1990s as poor economies. In fact, India was ahead of China in per capita GDP until the mid-1980s. By 1990, they were roughly equal. Today, the gap is stark. China’s economy stands at around $18–19 trillion; India remains at $4 trillion. The Chinese citizen is five times wealthier."

"What we call new is almost always the old in fresh wrapping. The calendar changes; the person does not. A digit shifts from five to six, yet the one who reads it remains imprisoned in the same patterns, the same desires, the same fears. New programmes, new resolutions, new routines: none of it works, because we have tried all of it before in different forms."

"The hills perform services that never appear on any balance sheet. They blunt desert winds, hold back fine dust, allow rainwater to seep underground instead of rushing away as floods, and release heat at night, offering the region what little relief it gets from brutal summers. None of this enters the calculations of those trained to see only stone to sell and land to develop."

"As generally practised, culture is not wisdom; it is repetition. It is behaviour carried forward because it was once useful, once meaningful, once powerful, or simply because it has not yet been questioned. It belongs to the past by definition. It has momentum because it becomes society’s collective habit."

"Meditation techniques, however sincerely adopted, rarely produce transformation. A technique reassures the ego that it can remain intact while adding a spiritual activity to its repertoire. Such methods become refined forms of dishonesty because they divert attention from the real task of examining the seeker, and instead keep the seeker busy with well-intentioned rituals."

"The test is straightforward. Whatever aligns with Shruti is dharma. Whatever defies Shruti, however old or beloved, is not. Shruti demands only one thing: self-knowledge. Everything else is ornamental."

"The tragedy is not only that the world manipulates, the deeper tragedy is that one cooperates. One scrolls, watches, compares, and willingly walks into the marketplace looking for something the marketplace cannot stock. The inner void remains untouched, and quietly, it expands."

“When a society changes what it respects, the economy changes what it produces, because output is only the shadow of values. If status comes from owning, life becomes a showroom, politics becomes the management of craving, and relationships become transactions.”

"Fear wants predictability and protection. It wants a world that rearranges itself for its convenience. This turns the adult into a demanding being, and demand is always the language of the child. When the inner child is unexamined, it becomes the ruler of the house while the so-called adult acts as a polite spokesperson."

"The ego is terrified of groundlessness, so it grabs a chair. It clings to labels because labels give it continuity. When someone says, ‘I am a Leftist’ or ‘I am a Rightist,’ this is not identity but insecurity. The chair is a crutch. The row is a refuge. The ego loves ideology because ideology is a respectable form of bondage. The real question is not Left versus Right. You were not born to sit on the Left or the Right. You were born to stand free."

"Overpopulation is not merely a policy failure; it is a failure of consciousness. A species that cannot see where its hunger comes from will consume its own home. A civilisation that defines success through accumulation will accumulate until nothing remains. The forests shrink, the aquifers fall, the soils erode, the oceans empty, the rivers dry, the species die, the climate destabilises, and the slums expand. These are not warnings of the future; they are descriptions of the present."

"Yes, the planet is overpopulated, but not merely with human bodies. It is overpopulated with high‑consumption lifestyles and with the ideals that glorify them. The way we are living, every additional human birth often means one more wound to the forests, the rivers, the climate, and the other species that must make space for us. When one more human is added in this prevailing culture of ignorant consumption, the rest of existence has one more burden to carry."

"Clarity is not confidence, which can exist without wisdom. It is not certainty, which often masks fear. Clarity is the mind’s ability to see things as they are, without the lens of desire or fear. It allows the mind to perceive without bending reality toward what it wishes for or what it dreads. When clarity is present, choices reveal themselves not as battles between competing forces but as natural movements arising from understanding."

"Marxism is not wrong for seeking justice. It is incomplete in believing justice can come without awakening. When awakening does come, whether in a Kolkata adda, a Dakshineshwar temple, a Russian factory, a Wall Street floor, or a village panchayat, one sees that every great outer revolution begins when one has the courage to challenge one’s inner structures."

"In a healthy life, work does not stand outside life as a burden. It is a major part of life itself. A suitable job is not one that forces a person to seek regular rehabilitation from it, but one that does not require such rehabilitation at all."

"Governments cannot enforce what people do not inwardly accept. The same person who demands climate action as a citizen demands consumption as a buyer. The voter and the consumer are the same person, unwilling to live with less. No political system survives long by asking its people to sacrifice comfort. So governments sign accords, issue statements, and return home to protect normalcy."

"This win reveals what becomes possible when women stop being ornaments and start being participants. For centuries, India celebrated women as symbols of purity, patience, and sacrifice, but seldom as doers. This reverses that. A woman is not sacred because she endures, but because she acts, strives, transforms."

"If caste were only a social structure, reformers would have erased it. If merely legal, the Constitution would suffice. But caste is sustained in religious belief. It persists because it hides behind Dharma's name."

A true victory is not over an external opponent, But over one’s own limitations: personal, cultural, historical. When women play freely, the nation breathes freely. When women claim their place, the planet finds its peace.

"Technology can process information, but it cannot live life on our behalf. It cannot love for us, understand for us, or grow for us. To remember one’s ability for discretion is the essence of wisdom. If we neglect this inner development, our outer power will remain unearned, misused, and ultimately self-destructive. If we grow inwardly, then technology becomes a servant rather than a master, a means of liberation rather than destruction."

"What does the world look like after COVID? What has changed? The answer is uncomfortable: very little. What species returns so quickly to delusion after staring death in the face? We have not learned that we are not separate from nature; whatever we do to harm it rebounds on ourselves."

"Bihar’s tragedy is not that it is poor; it is that it refuses to wake up. A state cannot rise if its voter remain inwardly unaware. The quality of the government is never higher than the quality of the people who elect it. When people vote unconsciously, by habit, caste, or anger, elections become nothing but a ritual. A sleeping mind elects a sleeping system."

"In their own ways, all three ideologies protect the ego’s independence, form, or memory. And because they begin from ignorance of the true Self, none can lead to real welfare. All rest on the same foundation: the belief that the ego deserves preservation. Where the ego is sacred, suffering is inevitable."

"To honour Shri Ram is to cultivate the same grace, doing what is right without bitterness and staying steady in the storm. The lamp outside is just a symbol; the real light has to come from within. When the mind is still, and when truth is more important than comfort, Diwali is no longer a date; it becomes the measure of one’s living."

"We mistake freedom for something the world grants us: the right to speak, move, or choose. But whatever the world gives, it can also take away. This is why the scriptures speak of an inner freedom: the one that's untouched by time, politics, or power. It doesn't ask for permission and is independent of praise or censorship, admiration or indifference."

"Those who think that Ladakh's turmoil is only happening in one area don't grasp what it really means. It’s not only about politics; it's more about physics. Dismissing Ladakh would be like dismissing the tremor because it started at one edge of the map. The trembling doesn't stop where it starts."

"It’s easy to think of Ladakh as India’s most remote area, useful for tourism brochures and border maps. In reality, it is a mirror that shows our common fate. You can see the hunger of the farmer in Bihar, the thirst of the worker in Delhi, and the worry of families on the beaches in those glaciers that are melting."

"Buildings, rituals, and identities all come and go. They cannot be the heart of religion. What is timeless is our love for truth, for reliability, for eternity itself. That love explains why we shrink at dishonesty, why we resist betrayal, and why we fear death. Deep within, something in us yearns for the changeless."

"True respect does not arrive from visas or tariffs, nor from applause abroad. It is born only when we stop looking outward for validation, and begin to live from inner strength. That alone is dignity. Everything else is illusion"

"It is not goods leaving our shores but young minds, restless to find elsewhere what they cannot build here. This reversal explains why a tweak in an American visa policy can create such tremors at home."

"In a world where exploitation and greed mirror the demons of old, Navratri is a reminder that true worship, true sacrifice, and true restoration begin with reverence for nature — and the courage to confront the poison within ourselves"

"Navratri’s point is simple: what is beyond form is reached only by going through form. The task, then, is to meet life as it comes, without shortcuts or avoidance. In these nine nights, the real ‘vrat’ should be simple and exact: approach the Durga Saptashati with your whole heart, as a ‘sankalp’ not to remain as you currently are."

"What we parade as growth is, in truth, liquidation. Like a company selling its last assets to dress up quarterly profits, we are liquidating the only deep asset we possess: the planet. Forests, aquifers, soil, and biodiversity: all depleted, none accounted for."

"Growth as a measure may have once been useful. Growth as an obsession is ruin. The future will belong not to those who consume the most, but to those who live with clarity, and who recognise that life’s worth is not measured in things."

"Crowds may fill avenues and squares, but a society as a whole rarely revolts; only individuals do"

"Until honesty is valued as much as external success, we will raise generations who are informed but not awakened. Climate denial, then, is not just a policy issue. It is a crisis of attention, of sincerity, of willingness to respond. And the crisis will not wait for us to agree. It does not negotiate. It proceeds, hour by hour, indifferent to our narratives. The only question that remains is: when the truth knocks, will we answer, or pretend not to hear?"

"The Nepali youth’s courage is unquestionable. The demand now is that their sacrifice should not end in repetition. The real honour to their lives lies not in hashtags or fleeting slogans, but in a revolution that strikes at the root of slavery."

"Fearlessness is not noisy. It is not a performance. It is a silent freedom. It arises when you no longer wait for the world to tell you who you are, but begin to live from your own centre of self-knowledge."

"The future will not remember how many millimetres of rain fell; it will remember the choices we made when the warnings were clear. Did we rush to rebuild on the same shaky ground, or did we stop long enough to take a different path, the right path?"

"Teachers’ Day should spark gratitude but also reflection on education’s deeper purpose."

"It is tempting to see these floods as seasonal wrath. But they are not accidents of weather; they are a mirror to our misplaced idea of progress. Describing them as 'natural calamities' dangerously denies their man-made roots."

"India’s future, and humanity’s, will not be decided by how many targets we meet on paper or how many green labels we parade. It will be decided by whether we can look at ourselves without disguise. The measure of sincerity is not in reaching milestones early, but in reducing the harm we continue to cause."

"Domestic violence, dowry, and oppressive marriages are symptoms of a deeper poverty — absence of inner clarity. They thrive because society at large runs on fear, desire, and unexamined habits. Outrage after each tragedy has become a ritual, but that cannot cure the blindness of the mind."

"Integrity does not mean balancing desire and duty; it means seeing they were never separate. True integrity means no division between oneself and the world. One who lives from clarity does not need to 'add on' responsibility; their very living becomes responsible."

True independence combines political freedom with spiritual liberation, as the Gita teaches inner clarity and self-governance.

Self-harm isn’t just about physically hurting ourselves. It is also when we live unconsciously, chasing goals given to us by society and family.

"A nation does not fall only to war. It crumbles when its own people begin to lose trust in it. When the youth no longer believe that merit leads to opportunity, they begin to lose faith in the very idea of a nation. The social contract is not printed on paper; it lives in the heart. When that heart withdraws, the contract collapses."

"Somewhere along the way, being ‘green’ became a way to signal that you’re thoughtful and responsible. So it’s no surprise that people, and even companies, feel a quiet pressure to look like they care about the planet, whether they truly do or not."

"A remark by a public figure or religious authority may spark discussion, but beneath the noise lies something far older than any single controversy. At the core of this idea of ‘the woman as the body’ is an old belief that treats women as physical stuff to be owned, utilized, and consumed."

"Most people do not arrive a t religion through inquiry but inherit it— through tradition passed down by parents, neighbors, and priests. They often put sacred texts on a high shelf, calling them holy, but hardly examine them with genuine curiosity. "

"Even with the facts of such disproportionate emissions being clear, the powerful nations often turn a blind eye to this disparity. This silence is not ignorance; it is calculation. We often assume that people at the top don’t act because they don’t understand. But that’s rarely the case. They understand, perhaps even better than most, but their interests are tied to the very structures that fuel the crisis."

"It is time we understand and redefine cleanliness. Is a glittering street in a city that burns fuel cleaner than a dusty road in a carbon-neutral village? Can a society be clean if it runs on fossil fuels and emits heavily? These questions challenge us to look beyond the surface, and should be asked more frequently."

"True rebellion begins when one stops performing a role written by others and starts living from the center of understanding. Your body is a resource. It is meant to serve consciousness, not define your identity. Freedom lies in transcending inherited conditioning, whether biological, emotional, or cultural."

"Climate change is not just about data and systems. It reflects something deeper: the confusion in the human mind. We are not just harming the planet by accident. We are driven by wants we do not understand, chasing comfort, status, or identity without pausing to ask: What do we really need?"

"True religion does not start with belief. It starts with a question: Why am I not at peace? It begins when a person, tired of running, pauses and looks within. That’s how religion came into being, not as a tradition or community, but as an honest response to the suffering within."

"The climate crisis isn’t just an environmental emergency — it’s a reflection of our restless, consumption-driven lives. Operation 2030 urges a radical shift: from chasing more to choosing wisely, from outer accumulation to inner clarity, before irreversible damage becomes our new normal."

"The Gita challenges caste by promoting inner qualities over birth, urging liberation from all social identities We live in a time when the line between spiritual wisdom and social distortion blurs daily. In a land that proclaims unity in diversity, caste remains the quiet contradiction."

"When the skies grow dark with smoke and the earth quakes beneath exploding shells, the world once again asks: Why does this never end? Why is war still so close, so constant, despite all our advancements? These questions are not only for politicians or diplomats. "

"There is always something breaking—some headline, some outrage, some meme. Most of us have become accustomed to reacting more than reflecting. Even when we believe we're acting out of concern, we often find ourselves swept up in the rhythm of the moment."

"Life unfolds beyond our control. We don’t choose our gender, birthplace, or time of arrival. The belief that we control everything is comforting, but false. A tragic accident, where many lives were lost, reminds us of this."

"You hear a familiar answer: a way to stay fit, reduce stress, or maybe a sequence of well-practised postures. You see glossy images: flexible bodies on Yoga mats, people meditating with closed eyes and calm faces. The worn-out cliche rings hollow: the union of mind, body and soul."

"Every now and then, a disturbing news story grabs the nation’s attention – one that seems too extraordinarily gruesome to be real, yet involves seemingly ordinary people. We would like to call such incidents as aberrations. "

"Every era produces a few who seem not to belong to it. For their contemporaries, their being and expression seems overly bold, too inconvenient, too unsettling. Still, their words transcend centuries, like a wildfire that refuses to be put out."

"Amid echoes of wartime hysteria, the daughter of an Indian diplomat became the target of collective vulgarity - not amid gunfire, but amid hashtags and headlines."

"Humanity today faces a self-inflicted crisis. Unlike past mass extinctions caused by nature, this one is born of human choices."

"On June 5th each year, the world commemorates World Environment Day. The occasion invites reflection and introspection. We must ask: has it become just another ritual, well-intentioned yet lacking practical impact?"

"For the first time in recorded history, humanity faces an existential crisis entirely of its own making — the sixth mass extinction. Unlike earlier extinctions triggered by natural forces, this one is driven by human activity."

"Recently, amid the hysteria usually associated with wars, the daughter of an Indian diplomat became the object of collective vulgarity — not in a war zone, but in public discourse."

The divide between India and Pakistan is far more profound than politics. It represents a spiritual poverty, identity, and understanding crisis.

"After the terror attack in Pahalgam and the retaliatory action by India, the region is now standing at the precipice of war. Public opinion is getting more jingoistic, and the brute spectre of war stares us in the face."

India must rethink delimitation to prevent a population-based seat increase from unfairly stripping political power from more developed Southern states.

"Language is not merely a communication medium. It is tied to the history, values, and worldview of the people using it. Every language is a voice for a unique story and culture in India, a land of incredible linguistic diversity."

"Climate change is no longer a future issue but a defining reality of our time. Human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and accelerated industrialisation have severely disrupted Earth's natural equilibrium."

"In a tragic event at Pahalgam, more than twenty innocent tourists were brutally murdered in a terror attack. Reports state that the terrorists specifically chose their victims along religious lines before killing them."

"These things are not new. The predation, the cover, the reduction of religion to a numbers game: all three have been operating, visibly and continuously, across this society for as long as anyone currently registering horror at the case has been alive. And yet the country received these events as though they had arrived from somewhere else entirely. That astonishment is not innocence. It is the ego’s preferred method of self-protection: to locate the problem at a sufficient distance that no self-examination becomes necessary. To be shocked is to be excused."

"When powerful narratives in all walks of life are seeking to monopolize public conversation and crowd out, or forcefully silence dissenting voices, freedom of expression becomes even more valuable."

"There was a time, not so long ago, when I would confront and agitate people by asking them how they would justify their inaction on the climate crisis to future generations. I no longer ask that question."

"Cleanliness has traditionally been tied to order and discipline, usually showing up in the most obvious ways: a tidy home, a spotless office, or a neatly kept public space. We’ve come to associate these things with civility and a sense of social responsibility."

"The Constitution, in this regard, is a deeply spiritual document. At its heart lies a return to the Self—the quest for self-realization. It seeks not superficial compliance but deep, personal commitment. Such spiritual foundations reinforce, rather than undermine, the secular character of our democracy."

"Where do we currently stand on climate change? We are seeing catastrophic long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns, driven by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrialization."

"A language is not merely a tool of communication; it carries within a worldview, a way of life, and an entire cultural and spiritual lineage. Its sounds are the history of a people and the thread that ties them to their roots. In India we speak hundreds of languages, and each one tells a unique story with a deep sense of belonging."

"Young adults, ready to begin a career after college, often face a dilemma regarding the right work and its financial implications. Society tells them to fulfill their social responsibilities."

"Delimitation is the process of redrawing the boundaries of territorial constituencies in a state for the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies to ensure fair representation. Since populations grow and shift over time, this process helps maintain balanced representation so that each MP or MLA represents roughly the same number of people."

"Women’s Day is approaching, and soon discussions will emerge across various platforms. New slogans will be coined, and policy tweaks will be grandly announced."

"With Mahashivratri around the corner, many of us find ourselves struggling to discover the actual and deeper meaning of the festival. We wonder: surely there has to be something beyond the rituals and performances. More importantly, it strikes us when we are contemplative: who is Shiv?"

"The debate on working hours has intensified recently. Initially, it was suggested that Indians should work 70 hours a week, and recently, the chairman of a major organisation proposed 90-hour workweeks."

"As wildfires rage, glaciers melt, cities drown, and farmlands crack under unrelenting drought, climate change is no longer a distant catastrophe—it is here, unfolding before our eyes."

"He appeared very average, even unattractive. Short in stature, with a slender body, a dark complexion, and an ordinary face, those disproportionate earlobes! No broad shoulders, no wide chest."

"What constitutes a nation, and what does it really mean to love a nation? When someone says they love their country, what are they really expressing? Is it love for the land, the flag, or the cultural patterns that make a nation distinct?"

"Amrit—that is at the essence of the story behind the Kumbh festival. Where does the Amrit come from? It comes through self-reflection."

"Another Kumbh festival is here. There are several ancient stories behind Kumbh. If the stories are taken merely as tales or folklore, then religion risks becoming merely traditional ritualism."

"Our society embodies a stark contrast between its proclaimed life-affirmative ideals and the underlying suffering that prevails. Relationships, especially marriage, are often transactional and materialistic arrangements rather than expressions of love and understanding."

"In honor of Swami Vivekananda’s birthday, celebrated as Youth Day, seminars, meetings, and resolutions around youth empowerment take centerstage. The discussions surround Swami Ji’s feat in taking Vedanta to the world, yet the immense struggles and challenges he faced often go unacknowledged."

"According to the recent Global State of Connections report, a quarter of the world’s population, around 1.92 billion, felt ‘lonely’ or ‘very lonely’. Research indicates that loneliness is closely linked to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, heart disease, and a shortened lifespan."

"The kind of challenges we face as we approach another new year are unprecedented. Given the novel and cataclysmic nature of these challenges, old approaches are not going to succeed."

"Meditation is the submergence of the ego in its essential nature. It is at the root of all self-knowledge and wisdom. However, most often, what we call meditation is just escapism—using some ‘method of meditation’ to superficially soothe our restlessness or gain temporary and deceptive relief from stress."

"You look at the world, you look at two or twenty things, and an immediate discrimination arises within. You pick one of those things, thinking that one particular element, object, or option is better than the rest."

"Ostensibly, no one likes being lied to. Yet in our social and familial transactions, lies are so prevalent that they appear almost foundational to our relationships. Why?"

"As humans, we often find ourselves trapped in an elaborate illusion—the belief that life is a perpetual negotiation between self-interest and collective welfare."

Right since our birth, we are trained to conduct ourselves according to others’ expectations. Everything about us seems to come from outside; every single identity is social.

Acharya Prashant tackles India’s urgent issues—climate change, animal rights, education, marginalized communities' rights, and youth employment. He stresses the dual need for external corrective actions and internal spiritual awareness, highlighting the anthropogenic roots of climate problems. The piece advocates for a transformative shift towards sustainable lifestyles and governance, envisioning a future where India leads with mindfulness and collective effort. Read more in this The Pioneer article.

Acharya Prashant delves into the intricacies of feminism, exploring identity, financial independence, and the paradox of empowerment. He addresses the dynamics of relationship choices, the question of motherhood, and the true meaning of freedom, challenging conventional notions and advocating for genuine liberation. Read more in the Indian Express.

Acharya Prashant emphasizes that true success lies in making the right choices rather than simply achieving goals. He highlights the importance of aligning decisions with one's core self and inner needs, asserting that victory is found in the act of choosing the right path itself, rather than in the attainment of external outcomes.

Acharya Prashant emphasizes that true success lies in making the right choices rather than simply achieving goals. He highlights the importance of aligning decisions with one's core self and inner needs, asserting that victory is found in the act of choosing the right path itself, rather than in the attainment of external outcomes.

Acharya Prashant challenges the self-help illusion in The Pioneer, asserting true spirituality begins when the ego accepts it needs no aid, and transformation occurs by relinquishing ego control.

Delve into Acharya Prashant's illuminating perspective on consumption and inner peace in The Pioneer. As a renowned Vedanta teacher, he advocates for mindful consumption, urging readers to align their consumption habits with personal well-being and environmental sustainability.

Delve into Acharya Prashant's profound views on the intersection of science and spirituality, as covered by The Pioneer. He emphasizes the logical foundation of true spirituality, contrasting it with prevalent superstitions in today's spiritual market. Acharya Prashant's teachings highlight the importance of honesty and clarity in understanding both oneself and the world, advocating for a scientific approach that transcends mere materialism.

In the New Indian Express article, Acharya Prashant suggests using the coronavirus lockdown as an opportunity for self-reflection and spiritual growth. He emphasizes the importance of spending this time in self-observation, fostering genuine relationships, and reading spiritual literature. Acharya Prashant highlights the works of Upanishads, Rumi, Hafiz, Adi Shankaracharya, Dhammapada, and Kabir as valuable resources for spiritual enrichment during the lockdown period.

A criminal doesn’t just drop from the sky. He is produced in an ecosystem, which refers to how we are deciding to be, right now.

In a article published in The New Indian Express, Acharya Prashant explores the profound impact of spiritual intimacy in marriage. He emphasizes that spiritual togetherness transcends the socio-physical arrangement of marriage, turning it into a harmonious and fulfilling union. By focusing on spiritual growth and understanding, couples can overcome psychological distances and enrich their relationship. The article highlights the importance of seeing marriage as a journey towards mutual spiritual evolution.

"In a article published in The New Indian Express, Acharya Prashant emphasizes that spirituality is not for everyone and should be pursued only when one feels a profound dissatisfaction with worldly offerings. He explains that a true spiritual journey requires readiness and inner realization. Until then, individuals should continue living their lives, acknowledging that spirituality demands a deep understanding and the right disposition."

In a article published in The New Indian Express, Acharya Prashant emphasizes that true spirituality integrates with everyday life, rather than being a separate practice. He argues that intelligent spirituality involves honest self-observation, detachment, and understanding both the world and oneself. Addressing internal conflicts and living authentically are crucial for spiritual growth. Acharya Prashant encourages a holistic approach, blending spiritual wisdom with daily experiences to achieve genuine inner peace and fulfillment.

"If you find yourself procrastinating, if you find that you have fixed a schedule for yourself and you can't stick to it, then that is a clear indicator that you have filled up your life with things you don't love. One does not postpone joy. One only postpones suffering. And that is procrastination."