The joy of choosing a great suffering || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2021)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi, 20.12.2021, Rishikesh, India  Context: ~ Why there is so much suffering in life? ~ Do we suffer by our own choice? ~ How to avoid pain and suffering?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  #acharyaprashant #suffering

Transcript

00:00You see, the world has a certain existence of itself.

00:27You know, to what extent its names and forms become appealing to you depends upon the size

00:42of the void in your life.

00:50The world could be compared to a market place.

00:54It houses stuff, all kinds of stuff.

01:01And you are passing through that market place every day.

01:04The road is there, the shops are lined up on either side.

01:11You have no option but to pass through the road every day, every evening.

01:17Wherever you go, there are these shops lined up.

01:25To what extent these shops become meaningful to you?

01:33Everything in the shop has name and form, right?

01:35In fact, because they are shops, they demonstrate and advertise those names, forms quite loudly.

01:44That is what they are supposed to do.

01:47But you always succumb to the advertisements.

01:53When do those things assume importance for you?

02:01When you have a bigger void within you.

02:08So that's what I advise.

02:11Don't allow that void to exist.

02:15It does exist.

02:16Do not allow it to grow too big.

02:20Instead, live life in a way that diminishes the void.

02:28If you have a need within, the world will happily come promising to fulfill the need.

02:42You want to blame the world.

02:45What came first?

02:46The demand or the supply?

02:48The demand comes first.

02:50That's what Vedanta is all about.

02:53Why blame the supply?

02:58You demanded, the world supplied and the world is an infinite supplier.

03:10The bigger is your demand, the thicker is the supply.

03:21Don't allow your demand to grow big.

03:26How to not let it grow big?

03:29How to not allow those names, forms, things, people, shops to become too significant?

03:40By filling up that void in a suitable way, in the right way, because the void does exist.

03:49We are born with it.

03:52Either you plug it rightly or you allow it to become your nemesis.

04:03Either have the right thing in your life or become a prey to all the wrong ones.

04:15You cannot say you'll have nothing in your life, that's not possible.

04:20You lost the right that day you were born.

04:25The day you were born, you condemned yourself to companionship, identification, a purpose.

04:46Either have the right company or you'll have wrong company.

04:51Either have the right identity or you'll fall prey to wrong identity.

04:56Either have a right purpose or you'll be invaded by a plethora of wrong purposes.

05:06Don't come up and say that you are not identified with anything.

05:10That's a privilege not accorded to you.

05:15If you wanted that privilege, you shouldn't have taken birth.

05:20The day you took birth, you were destined, condemned, sentenced to be identified.

05:31The best that you can have is a high identity, a sublime identity.

05:40Don't say you'll have no identity.

05:42If you say you have no identity, then you are just being fooled in a spiritual way.

05:53By saying you have no identity or maybe just trying to protect all the false identities

05:57you nurture.

06:03Have the identity, have the right company and have right purpose.

06:12Do not start parroting that life must be purposeless.

06:19Purposelessness is the ultimate pinnacle, don't talk of it.

06:32It will come when it has to.

06:35It has nothing to do with your blabber.

06:40As far as you are concerned, you must have life of great and intense purpose.

06:47And if you don't have the right purpose, don't complain if life is full of wrong purposes

06:54and desires.

06:56Have the right desire if you want to avoid foolish desires.

07:03Have the right mission if you want to avoid petty errands.

07:14Getting it?

07:23There's no substitute to hard work.

07:29If you want to avoid laboring like a donkey, labor like a wild elephant, labor you cannot

07:44avoid.

07:46Being a donkey you can avoid.

07:54Those who want to avoid laboring at all become donkeys of donkeys, mules of mules.

08:19The world makes you labor so much, the world makes you sweat so much, you squirm, you cringe.

08:30It's not that you are being toasted to a feast by the world, are you?

08:41If labor you must, why not labor for the right thing?

08:45If suffer you must, why not suffer for the right cause?

08:53Those who don't subscribe to right causes, are they all enjoying or they are suffering?

09:02There's no promise that you won't suffer if you live rightly, but at least it would be

09:07right suffering.

09:08And one hallmark of right suffering is that it reduces the sufferer.

09:17Right suffering reduces the sufferer.

09:20When the sufferer reduces, how can suffering survive?

09:27How would we know if the sufferer has reduced or is reducing?

09:36How would you know whether the sufferer has reduced?

09:39You won't know.

09:42You know only when you suffer.

09:45When you don't have a headache, do you know that you don't have a headache?

09:59Right now, do you know that you don't have a headache?

10:05You don't know, you don't know.

10:13When you have a headache, then you know you have a headache.

10:18When you don't have a headache, you don't know you have a headache.

10:25Life becomes light, you don't have to keep knowing, you are free of thought.

10:34So many things that concern so many other people are not material to you at all.

10:43Your neighbor is thinking of how to pay his son's fees, don't bother.

10:57You don't have a son.

11:13The sufferer has reduced, the suffering is not making itself felt.

11:22You have been relieved of so many concerns that plague so many people.

11:39You do not want to defeat suffering, you don't want to defeat the world.

11:45You want to make all these things irrelevant.

11:51They will exist, but they will be irrelevant.

11:54They will exist, but they will not exist to you.

11:58So as you pass through the street, the shops exist, but are irrelevant.

12:07That's what you want.

12:08That's an indicator of freedom from suffering.

12:11It exists, but is irrelevant.

12:21Are there adverse situations?

12:22Yes, they exist, but they are irrelevant.

12:28At least they are not as relevant to me as they are to other people, as they are not

12:32as relevant to me today as they were two years back.

12:38I can sleep, I am not continuously thinking.

12:48I am not bugged, I am not under the yoke.

13:04I don't have to till the field of suffering, carrying the yoke.

13:15Everything is, but not for me.

13:22And then with a mischievous smile, the Rishi asks, does it really even exist?

13:33If it exists, but not to you, does it really even exist?

13:39And then you realize how the seers could say the world does not exist.

13:45At a physical level, at a Vyavaharic level, the world always exists.

13:50But when it becomes irrelevant to you, then you can say Jagat Mithya.

13:56To me it does not.

14:04The choice is between choosing a higher suffering, a higher problem versus choosing multiple

14:13small sufferings.

14:15So, how can we be sure and confirm that this higher suffering is worth taking and the smaller

14:25sufferings are not worth taking?

14:29What gives this supremacy over smaller sufferings?

14:36Dignity?

14:38What do you want to die fighting?

14:41A million mosquitoes or a mighty tiger?

14:51How do you want to be remembered or known even to yourself?

15:00What do you want to be written on your Samadhi?

15:12Fell prey to a million mosquitoes?

15:20Your nature is large, infinite, prihad, brahm, immeasurable.

15:36You won't like to be known or seen, encumbered with mosquitoes.

16:00You're a soldier, a born soldier.

16:04You don't want to die on the battlefield.

16:11You don't want to have a death that behoves a martyr.

16:25You won't want to be run over by a truck because you were lying on the road in your

16:41drunken state.

16:49See, there are certain things without reason, it's just that you cannot like these things.

17:07Given your human form, you just cannot like pettiness.

17:18Why are some deaths considered higher than others?

17:24Why are some dead people called martyrs and the other dead are just dead people?

17:35Why?

17:38Because your consciousness aims for that which is high, beautiful, pure and the proof

17:51of that is you ask questions.

17:56If you do not want purity, which is clarity, why would you ask even this question?

18:03Tell me please, why did you ask this question?

18:11The fact to ask this question is proof that you have a consciousness that wants elevation,

18:20clarity, purity.

18:26Therefore, you cannot enjoy pettiness.

18:37If you have to argue, would you want to argue with a fellow whose brains have been eaten

18:49out by mosquitoes?

18:55Would you enjoy arguing with such a person who cannot even comprehend your arguments?

19:05Now one wants victory in arguments, no?

19:09But would you even want victory over such a person?

19:13You would rather prefer to be defeated by a scholar, by somebody who really knows, no?

19:26Rather than prevailing over a dimwit.

19:33That's the nature of our consciousness and there is no reason to that.

19:36That's the way it just is.

19:42We are not petty and we cannot be satisfied with pettiness.

19:47If you'll ask why, I'll say because that's the way we are.

19:50There's no reason there.

19:53That's just the reality without reason.

19:56Or if you'll insist, I'll say truth is the reason.

20:03You come from truth, therefore nothing short of truth suffices to satisfy you.

20:14Thinking of this and what you have just said and then when one thinks of the world and

20:22the common culture nowadays, we see that pettiness and the forces which propagate pettiness,

20:29they are very fast quickly becoming the norm.

20:34Maybe that's where my question also came that what is wrong with being petty in a way?

20:45If it doesn't make you puke, it cannot be explained to you what is wrong with it.

20:59Dirt, filth, meanness, pettiness are just not things your consciousness can

21:29agree to.

21:38And if you force yourself by training yourself wrongly, you subject yourself to deeper misery.

21:50It is that when things get deep, they also get hidden.

21:55The deeper your misery is, the danger is, the more hidden it would be.

22:05That's why you require an Upanishad.

22:09Otherwise, misery would have been its own antidote, like Newton's third law.

22:21More the action, more the reaction.

22:25More the misery, deeper the resistance to misery, but that does not happen.

22:31The deeper the misery, the lesser is the resistance to misery because the misery itself takes

22:36away your ability to resist it.

22:42There's a danger with learning to tolerate the wrong kind of suffering for too long.

22:53If you have been tolerating nonsensical suffering for 10 years, 20 years, the danger is you

23:03will become acclimatized and you will lose your resistance to suffering.

23:10Then you require good company, then you require Upanishads, then you require somebody to shake

23:16you up, slap you hard and remind you that you are not born to suffer, that you must

23:26at least not make peace with the one who makes you suffer, at least resist.

23:41At least don't worship the ones who make you suffer.

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