Sarvasara Upanishad

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युवावस्था बहुत ही नाज़ुक समय होता है। यही समय निर्धारित कर देता है कि जीवन किस दिशा जाएगा।

How did the Buddha look then? Who is the Buddha? Let’s try to understand with the story of Gautama Buddha, The ‘Shakya Muni Buddha’ as we call him. So, who was he? Let’s look at his central characteristics. One, someone who is well versed in the knowledge of his time. Buddha had deep scriptural knowledge. He was born in a Hindu Kshatriya family, he was a prince and ever since his childhood he was quite talented. So, one thing about him is that he was quite well-read. Second thing is, he was deeply interested in knowing the depths of life. He did not want to remain merely at the superficial levels, so he would observe a lot, he would think a lot. https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/todays-buddha-1_4d1b6bf

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.

Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

Have you looked at kids playing? If you look at kids playing and if you look at animals playing, you won’t find much difference. In fact, human kids go along very well with animal kids. Later on, when we cover ourselves with a lot of acquired knowledge, with a lot…

Welcome pain. You have no option. That’s the way life is meant to be. Life is suffering. Because not only are you designed to have pain, you are also designed to resist pain.

Have pain, and have a lot of depth in your being. So much depth that it can…

We all need space. Man’s inner nature is freedom. When I say man, I mean both man and woman, mankind. Just as you need free mental space, you also need free physical space.

In fact, I find the idea of a shared bed quite vulgar. The double bed is an…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.

If something good has happened, “I did it!”

If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”

You were once a girl; you would have read mathematics, history, science, geography, languages. Didn’t you find inspiring figures there? Didn’t those books arouse fantastic ideas in you?

I am sure that when you were younger, you thought of excellence, didn’t you? You would have had dreams. In your dreams,…

Happiness and sadness are both wonderful, are both welcome.

But in some deep sense, sadness is a little better than happiness. It teaches us a little more than happiness does. It elevates us a little more than happiness does. It has a certain purifying effect that happiness does not quite…

If you are suffering, there is nobody but you who is responsible. Unless you fully accept that responsibility, there is no freedom. If your suffering is just incidental, then how can there be freedom from it?—because incidents can happen any way, any day.

You have to, first of all, clearly…

Both the genders have become even more anchored to their physical identity. The more you do that, the more you are in misery because, really, the body is not who you are.

There are places better and higher than the place of your gender specific hormones. Why do you want…

When you say sadness is just sadness, then you have gained freedom from sadness. It means being free from the obligation to label sadness as a loss of self-worth. If you let sadness go deeply into you, there is no way it is not going to touch joy.

It is…

How do we justify our anger? We justify our anger by feeling short-changed, cheated, or victimized; by continuing to assert that we are incomplete, while simultaneously bemoaning the incompleteness. If you have grudges within, if you feel a victim of situations, or past, or persons, and if you lend credence…

The approach of self-help is: “I am sad because my desires have not met fulfillment. So, the way to help myself is: fulfill desires.” It’s a dimensional difference. Therefore, self-help pleases but helps not. It is not then ‘self-help’; the genre should be more correctly called ‘self-gratification’.

And if you…

If Facebook is satisfying you, it is not called as time wasted. Full stop. If the purpose of time is your satisfaction, and if doing all kinds of nonsense on Facebook satisfies you, then you cannot call it as wasted of time.

The only thing that determines whether time or…

Know your duty and give yourself totally to it. Will there be pleasure? No sir, not at all. There would be some higher than pleasure, more fulfilling, more satisfying than pleasure. Pleasure is a turncoat: today one thing, tomorrow another thing.

The one who lives by his duty, his dharma…

You are a bird; your nature is to fly. You don’t need to be taught your nature; you need to be freed from the cage.

But we are pretty special characters. Instead of opening the door of the cage, we try to teach the bird to fly within the cage,…

There is someone you say you love dearly. You tell that person, “You are my life!” That person passes away; within a few hours, you are found having your meals. You are in grief—the body is not in grief, the brain is not in grief. The brain is telling the…

If it was possible for one man to move towards greatness, it was possible for everybody. Nothing hurts the small man more than seeing a great man in his vicinity, or a small man trying to move towards greatness. It’s an utter insult.

The moment even one person defies smallness…

Facebook spirituality says, “The greatest religion is not to hurt others.” Just Google it, you’ll find a million responses. What is the greatest religion? To not hurt others.

If there is one fellow who is a bigger culprit than the fellow who gets easily hurt, it is the one who…

For us, life means reactivity. Life is not peace to us. Life is not meditativeness to us. We feel alive when we are tense, reactive, and agitated. Then you say that now you have come alive.

The fellow is sitting silently and peacefully, unnoticeable. You will say he is a…

What is the wrong choice? Anything that involves helplessness is the wrong choice. That’s the definition. Whenever you say, “I got angry”; whenever you say, “I am depressed,” it is a wrong choice because you are not admitting that you have chosen to be depressed. You are not admitting that…

We deeply disagree with freedom. We may keep saying we want it, but we agree only with the cage. Why do we agree to the cage? Because the cage gives us fruits and vegetables. Freedom means, no more fruits and vegetables. Freedom means, now you are on your own. Go,…

The lion kills all his life, but he cannot be called violent. He cannot be called non-violent either. He is just doing what his physical conditioning compels him to do. He has no option. Man has the option to kill and not to kill. Man has the option to choose…

Who told you that rape is merely a sexual activity? Anything that you look at just as a body, as a material to be consumed, is rape. A mind that cannot love will only rape. And we all rape. Look at the way people spread dirt around. Is that not…

Is there discipline without pain? You have to get up at some point in the morning—doesn’t that involve pain? Pleasure is to keep sleeping even after the alarm has rung—is that not pleasurable?

So, all discipline is nothing but pain. It’s very well-directed pain, it’s very discrete pain, but nevertheless,…

If you are occupied in something really worthwhile, would you really care for things like pain? Even an ordinary sportsperson would tell you that when you are pursuing something even as normal as victory in a match, pain ceases to be a big botheration. Unless it becomes crippling; then you…

Those who suppress their loneliness become victims of suppression. Those who keep in touch with their loneliness come up with great creativity.

Beautiful songs have risen out of human melancholy. People talk of songs written in joy. I say that all songs that have any truth in them have actually…

Spiritual practitioners, those who have really wanted to know and live life fully, have invited pain. Knowing fully well that the road they are taking would hurt them, they have still gone down those roads.

To the common man, pain is incidental, uninvited. It comes as a surprise: “Oh! Pain…

Life will certainly teach you, but at the cost of great suffering. And there is no guarantee you will be able to learn in a lifetime, because when your life teaches you then life has no conscious agenda to teach you. Life just operates on the principle of result of…

Yesterday I was reading that the male snake chases the female snake following her scent, the trail of her odor. Snakes can’t generally see much. They can’t even hear much. So, the deodorant that you use is Prakriti and the purpose, too, is prakritik. The odor of the female…

You are doing the right thing but not finding validation of it from your peers. So, in spite of doing the right thing and living rightly, or at least beginning to live rightly, you feel as if something deeply wrong is happening with you. It’s a bad situation.

Change your…

Companionship is wonderful. Be with one person, ten persons, anybody who helps your mind be centered. Being with such a person or a group of persons is wonderful.

If marriage is another name for beautiful companionship, marriage is wonderful. But what matters is not the social institution of marriage but…

If the kid has observed half an hour of a fight at home, then he has probably absorbed more than what he would usually absorb in a week’s time. The fights are usually not in the service of divine matters, are they? You fight for the sake of money, or…

Doesn’t it behoove the intelligent one to ask: Am I born to just wallow in this nonsense? Is it my fate to crave, cringe, yell and shriek, and then, when I am fed up of yelling, put on a fake laughter or something?

Those honest questions need to be asked.…

In habit, there is no decision-making involved, right? You just do it. So, habit is not the problem. The problem is that we are habituated to the wrong things. Habits should be where there is really only one right decision possible. In all those matters be fully habituated.

In fact,…

You’re asking me, “Is it possible to act rightly with trembling hands?” I am saying, you can act rightly only with trembling hands.

One unmistakable quality of right action would be that it would require all your guts. It is only false action that you can comfortably undertake. Falseness is…

There is no remedy against any of the torments of our lives except calling them out. You have to expose them. You have to name them. You have to call them out.

You already know. It’s a matter of acknowledgment rather than realization. Acknowledge it.

There is nothing greatly mystical…

The belief that life is just crumbs and dredges thrown at you—that’s your undoing. You are content with too little.

To avoid facing pain, you have become numb and insensitive towards yourself. Deeper sensitivity results in deeper pain. To avoid facing pain we become insensitive, and when you are insensitive,…

Even in those situations that we call as utterly woeful, utterly hopeless, if we just do that which we are capable of doing, would there be space and opportunity and time to despair? If you do what you must, where is the time to suffer?

In fact, the more impossibly…

Do attractive girls actually get more love? I know they get more of attention—sexual attention. Surely a lot of attractive girls try to keep themselves attractive, and even more attractive, in the hope of getting more love. That’s tragic!

Somebody needs to shout it out very loudly, and in the…

You cannot wish for health only in the moments when the virus attacks you. When pain hits you, then you cry out, “Awareness, awareness!” but in your moments of pleasure you forget all about it.

Health will not suddenly come to you. But if you have been healthy, then health…

In vikarma (sinful action) you say, “I am already liberated and I don’t need any liberation.” In vikarma, the one who is in bondages is so deeply dishonest that he starts proclaiming his liberation and says, “I am already liberated. Who needs liberation? I am happy and I will…

It indeed does help to feel like a victim. It does not help you, but it helps that within you which is a product of victimization. Because if you are a victim, then you are entitled to certain rights. All victims get entitled to special rights.

Operate from a…

When someone says, “Oh! I am suffering so much in a toxic relationship and I am yet continuing to tolerate it,” then he is just stating only half the story, either ignorantly or deliberately. The fact is, if you are tolerating a toxic relationship, you are deriving some pleasure out…