Education and Career

A guide to handling difficult periods, adapting to unexpected changes, learning from experiences, seeking support, and continuing forward with confidence and patience.

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True yoga is not primarily about physical postures but about examining the ego, attachments, and motivations that shape one’s life. While the body can be trained and displayed, real discipline lies in honestly questioning desires, ambitions, and borrowed goals. Techniques and routines alone cannot bring inner freedom. Yoga begins when one repeatedly investigates who is setting the direction of life and whether that direction has ever been consciously examined.

The Truth cannot be objectified as a thing, place, person, or book. So, don't be too quick to accept your own assessments, judgments, likes, dislikes, and experiences. Whatever you're seeing is seen by "you" — the Ego — and you are no absolute. Everything must be available to enquiry, investigation, and questioning — and questioning cannot happen if you declare that you’ve already come to the Truth. Never believe that the journey has ended or that the ego itself is the Truth.

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…

If you have seriously something worthwhile to do in life, then time is a friend. But if you are just loafing around and you fully well know that you are just killing time, then obviously time is an enemy. Every passing moment reminds you that you are committing a crime…

Man has the capacity to choose, and man must take responsibility of how he is living his life, what he has turned the Earth into.

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…

There is a kind of entrepreneurship that says, start the company, see which sectors are hot and booming, and when you reach a certain stage after n rounds of funding, sell it off and add a few more zeroes to your personal bank balance. That’s one kind of entrepreneurship. It…

There is something honorable about dying against a major enemy. But what honor is there in being consumed by the little?

Set a great goal. Even if you lose, it will at least be a great defeat. And if you set a timid, scared, conventional, narrow goal, then even if…

You have been entrusted with time not so that you while it away.

Somebody once asked the Satan, “How do you corrupt a being?”

He says, “It’s easy. I just whisper into his ears: your time is your time.”

We really do not know how to spend a Sunday, but we want to live two hundred years. If you are given one free day, you do not know what to do with it. You start looking here and there, wondering, “What to do? Some free time is there. How…

One of the things in the Japanese manufacturing philosophy is JIT, ‘Just in Time’. They say that inventory hides mistakes, so we will not carry any inventory. Everything has to be just in time. The process has to be lean enough, smart enough, and efficient enough.

For example, a video…

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 day has infinite time, you know. You are able to say it has twenty-four hours only because you have defined the hour in a particular way.

A day has just twenty-four hours, but how many minutes does a day have? See how time has increased.

Oh, you want even…

People talk of personal time as opposed to professional time, right? They forget that the profession that they have chosen has also been chosen by the person. So, even that which they are mistakenly calling as professional time is only personal time.

Worrying is nothing but an unauthorized concern for results. First of all, it is a concern for results. Secondly, it is an unauthorized concern for results. You are trying to speculate about something you are not authorized to think about. You have no authorization, no locus standi to think about…

Don’t you see you are bound to have a midlife crisis after forty? Why? Because of the ways you have gone through your youth. The most wasteful period of one’s life is often the time between twenty and thirty-five.

You are at the peak of your powers between, let’s say,…

The teacher’s role is to show that a teacher is not needed. That is the rightful role of the teacher. I repeat, the teacher’s role is to show that you are unnecessarily coming to the teacher. You are self-sufficient.

Look at the way the world is—violent, chaotic, anarchic. Every thought…

Remember, it is not situations that defeat you. Situations are just situations. A situation by definition is something outside of you, whereas defeat is something inside of you.

Situations can at worst be adverse, correct? And a situation is always external. The sense of defeat is an internal thing; that…

You have to be cautious towards the investment of all your resources. But among all the resources, the prime one is time.

Be careful about everything that you spend. The other things that you spend can be regained—money lost can probably be regained—but there is one resource that is not…

Be mindful of what the company of that person is doing to you. Is it a good investment of your time when you are with him, or could you have expended your time in a better way? What kinds of thoughts does that person introduce in your mind? What kinds…

Immerse yourself in the right action, and then where is the space and the time to worry? Surely you are stealing time away from work so that you can indulge in worries and anxieties and fancies of all kinds.

Young people fantasize, don’t they? Some fantasize about beautiful, pretty, exciting…

You are the one who is allotting time, and you allot time according to your values. You are spending time exactly according to your values. Not even a second is spent otherwise. Be convinced, time does not slip away; time strictly follows your values.

If you say, “I don’t know,…

One thing I have always advised those who are on the verge of choosing a career, or even those who are deep into their careers: Let there be no dissonance between who you are and what you do.

Your work is who you are. Do not say that you work…

Unfortunately, this is the way most people look at the future: not with an intent to become better or improve, but with the intent to remain exactly as they are. That’s why future is such a big issue.

Then there is the other kind of mind. It says, “Obviously, I…

The yakṣa (demon) asks, “What is the most surprising thing about life?”

Yudhishtira says, “The most surprising thing is that we all know that death is coming, and yet we pretend as if we are immortal.”

Let not death come as a surprise. Live in the remembrance of death every

People talk of personal time as opposed to professional time, right? They forget that the profession that they have chosen has also been chosen by the person. So, even that which they are mistakenly calling as professional time, is only personal time.

Our lives have only personal time. To be…

Is poverty something that existence gave you, or is poverty something that the society has given you? If existence were to be blamed, then ask yourself, why is nothing else poor?

The rose is shining so majestically without earning anything. The animals are leaping and playing so beautifully without going…

Waiting for that fabulous holiday, we do not allow the mind to experience a certain inner vacation at all. The entire year, we remain tense in expectation of the year-end vacation. Why can’t you have your little vacations everyday? What prevents you? Why can’t you have half an hour of…

The good news is that at any level, the maximum you do is sufficient. You are not demanded to do something beyond yourself. Just do the maximum that is within your capacity.

Good news is, you don’t have to exceed your capacity. The challenge is, you have to do the…

We do not deserve to celebrate. What is there to celebrate in our life? Every festival is like an examination day.

Yes, certain people do have all the rights to celebrate on an examination day; but who will be those people? Who have prepared well for those exams, who have…

Ruthlessly question everything, and patiently and devotedly seek to understand. You must ask the most fundamental questions. What is the school? What does it mean to be an American versus an Indian? Why do we call somebody a girl and the other a boy? What is our relationship with the…

The mind of the economist has to now stop thinking in the language of consumption. All they talk of is demand and supply, production and consumption. Consumption is not the way ahead. Economics and spirituality have to converge now. You cannot keep measuring human wellness by human consumption anymore. Not…

We just say, “I am successful” or “I am a failure”. The more important question is, what are you failing at? Equally, the more important question is what are you succeeding at? Or is it so that we didn’t bother to go deeply into that, and we just went by…

Man is the only animal that is always sexually active. Why? Because man is the only animal who is always ambitious. Because you are constantly a seeker, because you are constantly feeling that hollow, because you are constantly feeling inferior, so you are always seeking something from the world. Always.…

A lot of corporate networking is nothing but gossiping. In fact, people feel comfortable with each other only when they can share trivia with each other, which is nothing but gossiping.

You say, “Now I am intimate with that person.” How? Why? “Because, you see, now I can engage in…

Man is the only animal that is always sexually active. Why? Because man is the only animal who is always ambitious. Because you are constantly a seeker, because you are constantly feeling that hollow, because you are constantly feeling inferior, so you are always seeking something from the world. Always.…

Walking down the same lane, how will you come to a new destination?

Look at the lifecycle of the normal human being: Be born, get educated, get a job, get married, get a house, get a few luxuries, get a car, deal with your kids, deal with your wife or…

There are cuisines around the world where animals are eaten alive. You like to have an octopus, a living octopus on your plate, and then you take the octopus and you take it in.

You have to address the entire value system. You have to ask man: Who are you?…

Questioner (Q): Recently you had a talk at IIT Delhi, and now you are here at IIM Ahmedabad, and both of these universities are your alma mater. Today, your batchmates would be at various corporate positions, but you have taken an unconventional path of becoming a spiritual teacher. So, how…

Questioner (Q): I have heard you say that life should be purposeless and aimless. But if we do not aim for anything, then how will we crack our exams? When you were our age, you too prepared for exams like MBA, IIT-JEE, civil services, etc. But now you say having…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, you often talk about the importance of time, and that is something that bothers me in the context of my career. I don’t know if I should continue in my current job or not. I took the job for very ordinary reasons: money and position in…

Questioner (Q): In this age of competition, we try very hard for various types of exams, and sometimes it is possible that we come very close but may still end up on the losing side. If that keeps continuing, then won’t the repeated failures hamper our self-confidence? If they do,…

Questioner: I am frequently confused in situations where I have to prioritize one thing over the other. For example, work versus family, work versus rest, saving money versus spending money, etc. There never seems to be a clear answer. How to keep our priorities right in every situation? Please guide.…

Questioner (Q): I lack confidence when it comes to decision-making. I am always doubtful of whether I am making the right decision or not, and this results in a lot of stress and having to take a lot of time to decide anything. How can I be more confident in…

Questioner (Q): When we are with our friends on the campus, we usually end up wasting our time doing all kinds of nonsense. It serves no real purpose and takes us nowhere, but we do need to relax sometimes and enjoy ourselves. The problem is that this usually leads to…

You asked me how I became a mad man. It happened thus: one day, long before many Gods were born, I woke up from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen- the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives- I ran maskless through the…

Questioner: Sir, I worked as a software developer for three and a half years, and later moved to soft-skills training due to job dissatisfaction. Left that as well, and worked in sales for three-four years. At every point, the career transition happened because of my interest in those fields. But…