Questioner (Dev Ji from US): He is saying that a sense of hurt seems to arise when the sense of who we are? This notion we have about what I am is challenged and the smallness of the person I come to the fore. Put another way when one ego manages to convince another ego that it is somehow smaller inferior lacks some essence not worthy enough etc. then there is hurt. Since the ego drives it sense of self from outside and if the apparent cause of hurt is from outside, then in theory one would be able to see through it and avoid personal involvement. What’s cognize by the mind and accepted by mind in a tranquil situation goes out of the window when confronted by situation that give rise to the sense of hurt and natural tendencies seems to overtake the operation. Why is this and what can be done about it?
Acharya Prashant: We are hurt by hurt. What is it that hurt hurts? Hurt hurts the concept that there should be no hurt. In the concept that there should be no hurt. There is both ignorance and arrogance. The way we are! The way man is born, hurt is a natural accompaniment of our existence.
What is hurt? Where there are two and one does not have acceptance of the other as a legitimate one then their mutual contact is called hurt. So hurt requires these conditions. Firstly, there should be two. Secondly, one of them or both of them must have a concept that the other has no right to exist or other is illegitimate. Now, whenever these two would come in contact there would be hurt. So I asked, what is it that hurt hurts, Hurt hurts only our notion that there should no hurt.
The day one is born, one is born in hurt, the entire life is game of duality and there is bound to be disorder and friction and chaos, and all of these if seen as unjustified would cause hurt. I said there is both ignorance and arrogance in seeing disorder and conflict and collision and chaos as unjustified. Why is there ignorance in this? There is ignorance in this because we do not see that wherever there is duality, there is bound to be conflict and why is there arrogance in this? There is arrogance in this because the one existing in duality is assuming himself to be beyond duality.
