Passion

What is the root cause of unhappiness? Why strength is necessary for liberation? Why ego can not reflect on itself?

Even when you are identified with being the winner or the loser, still there is something within you which can neither be a winner nor a loser. It is your fundamental nature. It is your fundamental nature that gets hidden when you are obsessed with winning or losing.

The fact…

When you are serious about victory, you do not strike at the enemy without being fully prepared. Those who just plunge themselves into battles without having checked their preparedness are the ones who don’t love victory too much. Because this battle is important, and because this battle must be won,…

Man wants progress, and progress means an ascension, an elevation. It is as if man wants to be elevated to some high sky. That’s what you say, right? “I am rising up, I am progressing.” What is the intention of this tendency to keep progressing? The intention is to progress…

Keep fighting. Keep fighting till your victory, and keep fighting in your defeat. The second part is more important. Keep fighting even when you have been beaten down. Keep fighting even when yours looks like a hopeless cause, a lost battle. Don’t just start wallowing in self-pity and self-abuse. “Oh!…

Luck means that you are getting something unexpected and big, right? That’s what you call as being lucky.

Keep working hard. Do not wait for luck. You can force luck. You can tell him, “I am working so hard that you will have to come to me.”

जो आदमी साहस के साथ अपने लिए एक सही लक्ष्य, सही काम, सही अभियान खोज लेता है, वो आदमी फिर बहुत मुश्किल से रुकता है। रुकेगा भी तो, पल-दो-पल को रुकेगा, हफ्ते-दो-हफ्ते को रुकेगा, महीने-दो-महीने को रुकेगा। वो कमर कस कर फिर आगे बढ़ जाएगा। हो सकता है वो आगे…

Passion, too, comes from surroundings, but passion becomes dangerous because it presents itself as if it is something internal. Not only does it present itself as something internal, it decorates itself as something of the heart.

The fellow will say, “My heart beats for cricket.” You must ask him: Why…

When you stand in front of a client and make an important presentation, what is it that makes you go weak in the knees? Expectations, greed… And there is only one solution to greed: Rama.

You try to feel like a champion. But in front of your boss, you discover…

Ashish Nehra retired and he said, “It isn’t as if there was pain in my body; sometimes I was searching for my body in the pain. Pain is everywhere—where is the body?” He used to have one surgery every two days. You get the idea, right? So many surgeries he…

You have to fight without strength. It is only then that you realize that you are not without strength. If you keep waiting for strength before getting into the fight, then you will never have the strength to put up any fight. Had Arjuna never made himself available to the…

What do you mean by supporting others? Providing them with crutches? Is that what you mean by support?

The greatest support you can offer to others is your own excellence. The greatest support you can offer to others is your own love and passion and determination and creativity and freedom.…

Passion is as much an external thing as, let’s say, peer pressure. Somebody chooses his work or occupation going by market forces or peer pressure or family pressure, and then there is someone who says, “I am choosing my passion for my livelihood”; these two are hardly different. Even if…

Set high standards and live up to them. And, in living up to them, if you have to fail many a times or pay a high price, be prepared.

Fight a high battle. Be your own hero. Heroes don’t have to cry in loneliness on their pillows, right? That’s one…

Set high standards and live up to them. And in living up to them, if you have to fail many a times or pay a high price, be prepared.

Fight a high battle. Be your own hero. Heroes don’t have to cry in loneliness on their pillows, right?

That’s one…

How much to spend on oneself? As much as is needed to extract the maximum work and value from oneself. There might be times when you need to spend on servicing the car. Fine, that much expense is needed. Otherwise, the car will not be helpful anymore. I need to…

Questioner: I worked as a software developer for three and a half years, but then I moved to soft-skills training due to job dissatisfaction. Then I left that as well, and worked in sales for three to four years. I was always interested in the field I was changing my…

Questioner (Q): During our preparation for IIT JEE, we had to pass through a phase where we were not socializing much in order to focus on our studies. But as soon as we enter IIT, we are faced with a scenario where we are required to be a social person,…

Acharya Prashant (AP): Ekansh is saying, “Sir alright, you said my work should come from my calling.” He is saying, “But today I am interested in one thing, five years later I might be interested in another thing. Then what will happen? Should I change my work, my trade, my…

Questioner (Q): What does Khalil Gibran mean, when he says, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.”

Acharya Prashant (AP): What is work?

All work involves action.

Questioner(Q): Sir, nowadays it is said that it is not the hard work that can lead you to achieve whatever you want it is actually the smart work. What is this smart work actually?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Jugaad! (everybody laughs) Nothing else!

That’s what the world means by smart work.…

Question: Pranaam Acharya Ji. From other’s perspective I look like a cool and calm person, which I think I am at times. But I do have a good amount of ego inside. How can I be the same ‘cool and calm’ person from inside as well?

Please guide me on…

Question: Acharya Ji, my family keeps asking that my I am never interested in doing general stuff. They keep asking what I want to do, and where I want to go. My reply to them always is, that – “I do not know.”

I don’t want to do this, that…

Question: Acharya Ji, we remain attached to the material things and eventually it all leaves us when we die. How do I detach myself from this old and disappointing pattern of material based existence, that I need a job and money, so that I can be happy?

Acharya Prashant Ji:…

Questioner: Sir, nowadays it is said that it is not the hard work that can lead you to achieve whatever you want it is actually the smart work. What is this smart work actually?

Acharya Prashant: Jugaad! Nothing else!

That’s what the world means by smart work.

Questioner: I am at a stage in my life, where I lack passion in everything. Be it my intimate relationships with my loved ones, or be it my career, I feel numb. It is like life has become a movie or a moving painting, and I am a detached viewer.…

Question: The creator is in every bit of the creation, then why do we call the world illusionary?

Acharya Prashant: Don’t call the world illusionary. “The creator is the creation” is not merely an aphorism. If you can look at the wall and see just creativity here, then wonderful, continue…

Listener: It is disappointing to see that the way I sit in your session and in a movie theatre is predetermined and hence conditioned. And that affects the learning.

Acharya Prashant: And then your learning would remain incomplete because a movie has as much to teach as a session like

Questioner: How do we understand the purpose of our being?

Yesterday we had a puja at our place and the priest said that even when the leaf moves, it moves due to the will of God. So, everything that exists has a purpose and there is a will of God.…

Question: How do I explore my passion?

Speaker: I am sure this question is relevant to many others if not everybody. First of all this question has to be asked on a clean slate. Those of us who have already believed some external passion to be the real passion, they…

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THis is AP Article

समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रिय:।

ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम्।।29।।

samo ’haṁ sarva-bhūteṣhu na me dveṣhyo ’sti na priyaḥ

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Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column

Love would have helped you fly. And now you have captivated love within four walls. As wise men and women, if you are married, wonderful. As wise men and women, if you are not married, wonderful. The point is not really marriage. The point is wisdom. https://dev-main8.vedant.life/en/articles/marriage-and-love-1_0ff5cad

Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.

How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren,