Women Empowerment

Anybody who believes in astrology cannot be rational. All you have is a set of beliefs—the belief that this thing will happen. There is no logic in it, only fear and insecurity. Science is based on verifiable and falsifiable experiments, whereas astrology is not subject to verification; hence, it is just a story. It's a story that is making big money for a lot of storytellers.

A woman is murdered—even that is just a two-inch thing in some newspaper. But if it is a sensational rape case, then the entire country joins in.

A strange situation is that a beautiful woman’s life is perhaps more complex than an average-looking woman’s life, because a beautiful looking woman has a lot of men eyeing upon her, and she can get whatever she wants. And what you will get for your beauty, that is the real…

The problem is, the usual feminism always proceeds keeping the man at the center. The woman is saying, “The man is alright, and I want to be like the man.” This is such a low standard to set. Whereas, true feminism would proceed keeping the person that the female is,…

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfilment of life lies, and teach them that it is not in birthing or breastfeeding.

Teach them creativity. Teach…

Just watched this movie, Chichore. It is based on IIT Bombay. In the campus, there is one girl in a batch of forty boys. But the girl’s only contribution in the whole story is that she is extremely beautiful, and all the guys are after her. So, in the…

‘Save the girl child’ campaigns, many of these campaigns say, “If today you kill the girl child, how will you find a bride for your son tomorrow?” So, the girl has no independent worth of her own, right?

If we go by the government propaganda, even if she is to…

As a young woman, you must be open to going out, experiencing, seeing what the world is all about. Won’t you want to explore it—the rivers, the mountains, the people? Yes, you needed somebody’s hand to walk, but it doesn’t quite look nice now. Test your legs. And how will…

Be the user of the car, not the doll in the car. Learn to be on the driver’s seat, not on the rear seat, or the seat next to the driver. Learn to hold the steering. Get out of your nest, and don’t be some damn particular about your sexuality…

Cooking, cooking, cooking, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, washing, washing, washing—is this what you are born for? Three kids are there, somebody needs footwear, somebody needs underwear—that is all there is to your life? Footwear for the younger one, underwear for the elder one, thermal wear for the husband—is this what you…

One feels like worshiping the woman for enduring so much. One feels like worshiping the woman for being so willingly exploited. And one feels like slapping her hard in the face for being so stupid. Her own worst enemy she is.

Talk emotions to her, and she will be pleased.…

You never take out a candlelight vigil on India Gate when a little girl is being badly conditioned by media, by society, by the school, by all the websites, by all the influences upon her. Have you ever seen a candlelight vigil against all the corrupting forces on the little…

A woman is not allowed to work after marriage—nobody cares. It doesn’t make headlines at all.

A woman has unsafe work environment—doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make headlines.

A woman dies during childbirth—who bothers?

Don’t give in to emotional traps. The man says, “Darling why do you have to work? You stay at home; I will work. You take care of the bed and the eggs and the babies and your mother-in-law; I will bring in the booty.”

As long as the woman keeps…

Ignorance starts from the body itself.Even in a well-educated and spiritually liberated woman, the desire for a kid would probably be relatively larger compared to that in a man.What we want to talk of is whether the compulsive desire to keep the kid and the family at the center of…

The woman is the more oppressed of the two. Once the revolution begins, obviously man too will be liberated. But just as woman gives birth to the man, woman will also need to give birth to the freedom of man. Man will not be able to give birth to his…

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfillment of life lies, and teach them that it is not in birthing or breastfeeding.

Teach them creativity, teach…

The woman is such a perpetual mother. She is a mother even to the husband! She begins as a girlfriend and ends as the mother. Six months she remains a girlfriend, one year she remains a wife, rest of the life she is a mother to everybody. And she finds…

We cannot blame somebody for history. History is determined not merely by the fact that there are two genders; there’s so much else that’s involved, a lot of freak accidents. Do not discount the possibility that you can have—and we do have, as a matter of fact—very, very healthy women,…

The man has seen the emotional side of the mother, so the man knows the woman’s emotionality. But the woman has never seen the sexual side of her father, so the woman really does not know man’s sexuality that much.

Do you get this? The man knows the woman’s emotionality,…

Feminists who didn’t like men and envied the power and the pelf and the position held by men, soon became so much like men. And what did they get? They started doing everything that is the bane and curse of manhood. They started wearing like men; they started smoking like…

Every woman attracts you because you go close to no woman. Go close to a few women, and then very few women will attract you. Those who have gone close to women know that. Have two or three affairs, and then you will be protected from next twenty or thirty.…

Questioner (Q): My question is regarding abortion. Broadly, there are two schools of thought regarding abortion. The first one is, because it is the woman’s body, she is the one who gets to decide whether to abort or deliver the child. The second school of thought says that the woman…

Questioner (Q): Sir, first of all, thank you for taking out your time for this discussion. A few days back, the nation somehow woke from its sleep, when a case happened in Hyderabad—a woman was brutally raped and murdered. People started asking for justice in their own ways; somebody for…

Question: Sir, I was reading a study in the 'Times of India'. It said that women are happier being single. Now, when I read this as an Indian woman, brought up in the Indian culture, this is very conflicting because women in India are looked down upon if they are…

Question: Acharya Ji, my mother doesn’t allow me to enter the puja room (room for worship), or touch the deity during my menstrual days. This has been a practice ever since I was a kid.

Why is menstrual cycle considered impure? Why does the stigma continue to exist even today?…

Questioner: Why are females silent players in sex in this society? Why do they spend their life as deaf, blind and dumb in matters of sex? Why does the society make them like this?

Acharya Prashant: What is the society? The society is what you and I are. If you…

Question: A woman seen just as a body, it hurts a lot. I am saying this from my own experience. How can it stop? When will it stop? How can a person be seen just as a ‘body’?

What is the root cause? Where does it start?

Question: We come from a society which is patriarchal in nature, everything around revolves around a man and there is a general subjugation of a woman in the sense that the laws, the rules and regulations around whatever woman can do, not do; things like that. My question is that,…

There is nothing called woman’s liberation in isolation.

Woman is oppressed and the man too is oppressed, albeit in a different way.

Woman’s liberation is man’s liberation.

Speaker : The question Nidhi has raised is about security and especially with respect to being a woman. We will have to understand it fully and completely. Firstly, what does security mean in context of being a woman?

What is danger? Because you talk about security when you are in…

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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

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

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.

In our country, most people marry because that is sometimes the only way of getting some good sex—good and assured sex. Otherwise, the fellow would either have to spend a lot of money or a lot of time, or both, and then still return empty-handed. Isn’t that so?

Whenever you will give a lot of importance to what others give you, you will be afraid, and then you will want to play safe. Make a list of all that others give you—company, attachment, reputation, and these are the things that are at the core of your fear.

The politician, we very well know, is a criminal and yet we belong to his fan club. So, who is it who is promoting crime, then? Look at the parliament of the country. I suppose half the parliamentarians have criminal cases against them, close to half. And they didn’t muscle…

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…

Most people never evolve beyond their psychological age of three, four, ten, or twelve years. So they have to be consoled like kids.

One can become an entrepreneur, for example, in the field of killing animals, cutting animal flesh, and supplying freshly cut flesh to people at their doorsteps. And this might be a successful business model.

This kind of an entrepreneurship is idiocy, perversion, profanity. The evil was present right in the…

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…