Tempted by Campus Placements? || Acharya Prashant (2022)

Acharya Prashant

~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Video Information: 15.04.2022, IIT-Delhi, Delhi  Context: ~ What work to choose in life? ~ Should one seek social validation while choosing work? ~ How important is money while choosing work? ~ Why do we often underestimate the circumstances?  Music Credits: Milind Date ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 My question is regarding global warming. As you have talked in various videos that the root cause of global warming is nothing but more and more consumption.

00:12 So when we come to our final year, the companies come and for placement opportunities, they offer us a lot of money and they pick up the best minds.

00:22 And the people who don't want to be a part of this, who want to work towards a green environment and don't want to be a part of this,

00:32 they sometimes feel helpless because the enemy is getting bigger and bigger. And it's very hard for us to...

00:40 Most of the time we just go with the flow. Most of the people, they think that okay let's go in the company itself.

00:50 My question is how we should mold ourselves so that we don't get distracted from doing what is right instead of just going with the flow.

01:01 My second question is regarding being a technical student, we usually don't come to know about Vedanta and Vishal sir.

01:12 How we can promote the ideologies which Vedanta teaches us? For example, I came to know about Vishal sir when I got admitted to higher delivery.

01:26 You see, yes, companies come to the campus and they offer you fat checks and most of these companies are indeed involved in stuff

01:51 that only exacerbates climate change. That's true. There might be one odd exception, right?

02:03 But mostly the kind of goods and services most big corporations are providing are only worsening the state of climate change.

02:21 So you say you know that and yet you feel a lot of pressure to go with the flow.

02:33 The pressure is not from the flow. The pressure is from our very old basic physical tendencies.

02:55 Even the little kid is greedy. You may have fat offers here that make you shiver in your legs.

03:18 You go to another student probably from an ordinary campus and if they are getting an ordinary offer,

03:34 that offer means much the same thing to them as your offers mean to you. It's not that the package is so large that it has overwhelmed you.

03:54 We are born with the tendency to value our physicality much more than goodness.

04:08 Money is something that appeals to our physicality. You join the company, right?

04:19 You get the signing or joining bonus. You get your first salary. What do you do with it?

04:25 You uplift your consciousness. Your understanding deepens. Your field of love widens.

04:36 You become a simpler individual. What happens when you start earning?

04:43 What is it in your life that changes? I am asking you, does your consciousness improve?

04:53 Do you grow in compassion? Do you turn friendlier?

05:02 Do you start understanding the world and life with more clarity? Does that happen?

05:08 No, that does not happen. Yet something changes. What changes?

05:14 You go and buy better clothes. You go and get a car.

05:22 You get a well furnished apartment. Or you take a chunk of that money and give to your parents.

05:31 Don't you see all of these are in the domain of physicality?

05:39 I got good clothes for myself. I got a car that hosts my body.

05:51 I took the money and gave it to my physical parents who gave this body.

06:01 What an apartment! And I am now visiting better hotels and restaurants.

06:10 What is food all about? The body and the taste. We are born like that.

06:21 And every single creature, no, animal is born like that.

06:28 Which animal have you seen valuing consciousness over physicality?

06:35 No animal, right? And the closest example, if you want to understand your own condition,

06:42 I said is the human baby. You teach something to the baby, you might find reluctance.

06:51 You will almost definitely find reluctance. You give the baby something to eat,

06:58 you will find instant acceptance. Oh, the thing has to be tasty.

07:08 You have to be pushed to go to the school. Nobody pushes you to come to the dining table.

07:19 Nobody pushes you to sleep. Have you ever set an alarm to fall asleep? Please tell me.

07:26 I have set an alarm for 10pm so that I can fall asleep at 10pm. Does that happen? No.

07:34 First of all, you don't set an alarm to fall asleep. Secondly, even if you set the alarm to wake up,

07:40 the sleep does not want you to wake up. That's our physical constitution.

07:45 That's the way we are born. Are you getting it? We cannot fight our cells, our DNA.

08:02 It is there in our DNA. It is there in the DNA of every animal to value physicality a lot.

08:13 However, Homo sapiens are unique in a sense. We are animalistic, but we are not only animalistic.

08:25 We are animals, but there is something in us that transcends animals.

08:32 We have consciousness that aspires for heights. It has a vague restlessness.

08:44 It understands that merely satisfying the body cannot be the purpose of life.

08:50 There has to be something higher. So it searches for answers. What is that? What is that? What is that?

08:55 Yes, there has to be something higher in life. Merely earning money and fattening yourself,

09:02 getting better food, better apartment, better cars, better prospects in marriage, better sex,

09:09 that alone cannot be life. There has to be something else, something higher to life.

09:14 Our consciousness is looking around to get the answers.

09:20 And to whom does it go to get the answers? Only to the people it sees around.

09:25 It goes to the parents, to the teachers and to the influencers coming from media.

09:31 And there it asks, please tell me, what do I do in life? Please tell me.

09:37 I have a vague idea. I have an inkling that life has to be beyond the physical compulsions.

09:46 But what is it that is beyond the physical compulsions? Please tell me.

09:50 And what does our education system tell us? Well, beyond your physical consumption,

09:56 physical compulsions is societal respect. Do all the things that will make the society respect you.

10:07 Now a fat pay package is something that the society attaches value to.

10:11 So you say fine, now this is the purpose of life. It is another matter that as we just explored,

10:18 the fat pay package is nothing but an extension of our animalism.

10:28 Money can be used for the upliftment of consciousness, but that's not what we use it for.

10:34 Money basically means the body. So this human consciousness then gets very focused

10:47 on doing all the things that society teaches it. We call that as civilization and we call that conditioning as culture.

11:00 And we think that our civilization and culture make us different from animals.

11:06 We do not realize that our cities are an extension of the jungle.

11:13 And our culture is an extension of our animalistic tendencies that we are born with.

11:24 And that's the drama that gets played out everywhere including in campuses.

11:33 So just as in the jungle, you have various kinds of animals competing with each other

11:40 for food, for trophy, for hunt or for sex.

11:48 You find the same scenario being played out in a more sophisticated and civilized way

11:55 in corporate offices and academic campuses.

11:59 There the animals are competing with each other to get the largest share of the kill.

12:08 A zebra has just been hunted down and hyenas and all kinds of other predators.

12:20 There are vultures, there are lions. They all want to have the biggest share.

12:26 Equally in the campus we want to have the biggest offer.

12:30 The jungle is not distant from us because the jungle is within us.

12:40 We came out from the jungle but the jungle lives within us.

12:47 Outside we feel there is no jungle, there is only concrete.

12:50 But within there is just the jungle. A very sophisticated jungle however.

12:58 Rare is the individual who understands this and says I am not born to live and die an animal.

13:06 I cannot do all those things that animals anyway do.

13:11 Think of the entire life cycle of the average human being.

13:15 Is he doing anything that animals do not do?

13:21 For us having a good house of our own is such a big priority.

13:28 You look at any species, they all attach great importance to building their nest

13:36 or owning their cave or whatever.

13:40 And they fight with each other for territorial rights.

13:44 This is my place, how dare you come to this place.

13:47 Even street dogs, they mark their zones.

13:51 Have you seen them lifting their legs and marking their area?

13:56 That's what human beings too are doing.

13:58 It's just that to dogs we are very condescending.

14:02 We say these are just street dogs.

14:06 When the dogs mark their territory, how is that very different from the boundary walls of our homes?

14:14 Please tell me.

14:20 It's just that animals do not have much of intellect.

14:24 So they cannot plan too much for the future.

14:27 We plan for the future as well.

14:35 Are you getting it?

14:37 So when you look at that mad rush,

14:41 where people are saying let the planet be reduced to ashes,

14:47 let there be global warming, let there be climate change,

14:50 let there be biodiversity extinction.

14:56 I don't care at all.

14:58 I care only for my stomach, my conveniences and social approval.

15:03 Then you should realize it's the ancient jungle you are seeing.

15:13 Ancient jungle.

15:16 Right?

15:23 Welcome to the difficult challenge of being human.

15:35 No part of this recording may be reproduced

15:37 without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

15:42 No part of this recording may be reproduced

15:44 without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

15:46 [Music]

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