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Video Information: AIIMS, Nagpur, 08.03.2022, Nagpur, India

Context:
~ How to set priorities?
~ How to be free?
~ What is freedom?
~ How to bring woman's revolution?
~ How to bring about a Total Women's revolution?

Music Credits: Milind Date
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Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00Acharyaji, the meaning of reservation is providing equal opportunities in every sector to those
00:10who don't have proper resources or enough resources.
00:13So, you also said that you had a batch of 350 students and there were only 30 girls.
00:19In 2020, Government of India decided to have 20% reservation for girls in IITs.
00:26So, why are we giving reservation to the girls in IITs?
00:30Are we thinking that they are not capable of correcting things?
00:33Or are we just creating good numbers in these institutes?
00:38See, all these are ad hoc measures, reservations and all.
00:49I think reservation, the very concept, militates against the dignity of the human being.
00:55Reservation in any form, at any place, for anybody.
01:00I would rather empower the person.
01:04I pick up a person who has been disempowered and disabled for various reasons
01:12and I put that person in a particular institution without challenging the fundamental reason
01:21that caused him or her to feel weak, then I am not doing much.
01:28So, I take this very idea that women or girls should have more reservation as not very dignified.
01:40What we rather need is that girls and women should know who they are,
01:48their energy, their power has to be unlocked
01:54and a point has to come where there is no need for this concept of reservation.
02:03It's an ad hoc thing, it's a temporary solution.
02:06It's not even a solution, it's a temporary treatment that will not cure anything.
02:13But just for the temporary duration, it may have some utility.
02:19It has to be remembered that it has to be temporary
02:22and it has to be remembered that the real solution lies elsewhere.
02:28But Ajay, this temporary solution asks men also,
02:32like if a boy gets 6000 ranks and a girl gets 8000 ranks and she will not get admission,
02:38the boy will not get admission.
02:40So, this temporary solution is also…
02:43No, this kind of thinking is not good.
02:46Let's say they have 100 seats, right?
02:48And if you very well know that 20% have been reserved for a particular section,
02:54why do you still assume there are 100 seats?
02:57Fight for the remaining 80, raise your own level.
03:00Why crib later on that I had more marks than the ones who were in the reserved category
03:07and I didn't get admitted.
03:11First of all, be it a man or a woman,
03:17you have to stop energizing the victim within you.
03:21We take great pleasure in feeling victims
03:25because once you feel victimized,
03:27you feel authorized to claim compensation.
03:30And this is such a bad road.
03:34Don't go down this road.
03:37Even a lot of feminist narrative includes the story of victimization.
03:44I am a victim, so you better compensate me.
03:47The fact is we all are indeed victims at some point in our lives.
03:52But it's not very dignified to claim compensation.
03:56It is against the human spirit to play the sissy baby and say,
04:02Oh, the world has messed up with me.
04:05Things have gone wrong with me.
04:07Now come and correct those things.
04:09What happens to your own strength?
04:11Where are you?
04:12Rise and challenge.
04:14Rise and challenge.
04:16And that's why I don't, even if I try to,
04:19I can't agree with stories of victimization and oppression.
04:23How can somebody ill treat you for centuries without your passive consent?
04:30Please tell me.
04:31You surely had a stake in the system.
04:34Why don't you want to talk about that?
04:37Your real oppressor is not the other,
04:42but your own inner fear and greed and insecurity and ignorance.
04:47But you don't talk of your inner oppressor.
04:50You talk of the external oppressor and you can talk of that.
04:54And when you talk of that, you do get certain advantages.
05:00Somebody will come and say, well, you know, so many wrong things have happened.
05:05So, so much has to be paid to this person.
05:07But that does not build up your capacity.
05:10You are not born to live on compensation money.
05:15Right?
05:16Why do we take birth?
05:17Go back to the first principles.
05:19Why are we born?
05:20Why do we exist at all?
05:21We exist for the sake of liberation.
05:24We do not exist to seek compensation.
05:29You getting it?
05:31And so much of our behavior, whether as men or women, is determined by this kind of reactionism.
05:39Somebody has done me certain wrong, so now I get the rights to turn the tables on him.
05:48You messed up with me, so I'll mess up with you.
05:53History tells that you have denied me of certain things,
05:56so now I'll deny you of certain things.
05:59This takes you nowhere.
06:01This takes you nowhere.
06:03Realization of your true nature awakens a power that no privilege or compensation can match.
06:16You better awaken that power.
06:22See, these two sides of the same coin.
06:27A group of people comes and says, we are the victims, so you give us reservations.
06:32And the moment you give them reservations, another group stands up like this and says,
06:36oh, the seats have been all taken away and our cut-offs are way higher than their cut-offs,
06:43so now we are the victims.
06:45So what do we want now?
06:47We want compensation.
06:48Who will come to compensate you?
06:50If everybody is to be compensated, who exactly is the one making the compensations?
06:56We don't go into these questions.
06:58Don't ask for compensations.
07:00Even if you feel somebody has wronged you, take it in your stride.
07:05Tell yourself, you have taken away so much from me, now I'll show you who I am.
07:10You have taken 10 units away from me and that further awakens my spirit to earn 100 units.
07:19In fact, I thank you for snatching away those 10 units or whatever.
07:23Had you not challenged me that way, I would not have awakened to the potential.
07:30I would not have taken up the challenge and become bigger.
07:35Have that approach in life.
07:37Bit of an advice.
07:39As this year's Women's Day theme stands for gender equality,
07:43there still exists gender inequality in every aspect of the society.
07:49So do you think that education can bridge the gap of gender inequality
07:56and what are the changes that we can make in our education system
08:00to move towards a more gender equal society?
08:04No, I'll repeat that.
08:06Let's see.
08:11You are coming with a pre-prepared sheet of questions and that's why.
08:16Gender equality is a very ordinary objective.
08:21I am repeating that.
08:23It's a very, very ordinary objective.
08:26Gender equality is much the same as saying that since he is the male chimpanzee,
08:33so I want to be his equal as a female chimpanzee.
08:38How glorious does that sound?
08:40Please tell me.
08:41Do not ask for equality.
08:43Men are stupid.
08:47Why do you want to be equal to them?
08:50Why do you want to even proceed in the same dimension as they have?
08:57Political power has been with men.
09:00Economic power has been with men.
09:02Don't you see what they have done with their power?
09:05Please.
09:06Do you want to go down the same road as enlightened women?
09:10Please tell me.
09:13Do you want to be female copies of men remaining females biologically
09:22but trying to become men psychologically?
09:26Is that what you want to become?
09:27No.
09:28So, just don't try to seek parity with men.
09:32In fact, you can learn from all the misdeeds of men and woe to not repeat them.
09:38That's the only thing you can look towards men for.
09:42Look at men and say, I don't want to be equal to him.
09:46Being equal to him is an insult.
09:50Gender equality is a very, very ordinary objective.
09:54You need liberation from your gender identity.
09:59Gender comes from society, sex comes from biology.
10:02To begin with, kindly seek liberation from your gender identity and as you progress in life,
10:10see whether you can also be liberated from your sexual identity.
10:15That is what we are here for.
10:18That is the purpose of life.
10:20The purpose of life is not to fall in the same well as generations of men has been doing.
10:29That's not what we are here for.
10:39Sir, this liberation of women is such a new concept to me.
10:44Even the basic need like gender equality which is much less than liberation of women,
10:50I came to know about it such a later age.
10:53So, I want tomorrow's children to know about this or to get the ideas of this such a younger age than myself.
11:03So, how can that be brought about?
11:05Education is the key.
11:07Unfortunately, our education focuses almost completely on the material.
11:13The physical dimension of living is all that we address in our education.
11:17We need to address the real, the inner dimension of life.
11:23That which I am talking of is fundamentally Vedanta.
11:27Vedanta is not some abstract stuff in arcane Sanskrit that you cannot make head or tail of.
11:36Vedanta is this.
11:38Vedanta is a very living thing.
11:41It tells you what your next decision in life should be.
11:45It tells you how to live.
11:46It tells you who you are.
11:49That education needs to be there in our schools, colleges, universities and if our formal system
11:57fails to provide that or accommodate that, then there needs to be an informal way.
12:04By informal, I mean something outside the formal governmental system.
12:10I am trying a bit of that.
12:12The things that are happening here, the books that you are seeing in front of you are all that.
12:18I just hope that such books were rather present in our formal syllabus when we were in class 8th or class 10th.
12:29That's the time when these books must have been read, but better late than never.
12:34Now we are trying to disseminate the message of Vedanta and to the extent I can see, that is the only way.
12:48Sir, the idea of including sex education in a primary syllabus to cut down criminal rates etc.
12:59So what is your take on that?
13:02It's just that we call ourselves cultured and civilized.
13:09Therefore we call certain behaviours as unacceptable and criminal.
13:16But irrespective of how we label those behaviours, those behaviours have largely continued.
13:24Because those behaviours are commonplace in the jungle.
13:27I'll keep going back to the jungle because that's where these behaviours are really coming from.
13:35You are holding that sheet of paper, I snatch it away from you.
13:39You will say, see this is a crime.
13:41My property has been taken away, right?
13:44But is that not happening all the time in monkeys?
13:47You go and observe monkeys.
13:50They continuously keep snatching things away from each other.
13:54Because we are monkeys, we too do that.
13:59As long as we are monkeys, crime will remain.
14:04Because all crime is nothing but an attempt to extend the material self.
14:10That's the Vedantic definition of crime.
14:13An attempt to extend the material self at any cost, that's a crime.
14:20When you do not know who you are, then you take your welfare as completely divorced from the welfare of the other.
14:29Then it's a zero-sum game.
14:30She has something, then I don't have that thing.
14:33For me to have that thing, I must take it away from her.
14:37That's the material approach to life.
14:41You understand a zero-sum game?
14:44Plus one, minus one.
14:46If I have it, I have plus one.
14:48She has it, then it is a minus one for me.
14:53You flip the sides, it is still plus one and minus one.
14:56The sum remains zero.
14:58That's how Prakriti operates.
15:00If you have it, I don't have it.
15:01If I have it, you don't have it.
15:03And that's the thing that applies to all material, does it not?
15:07If I have this, how can you have this?
15:11And then there will be crime.
15:13Because you too want to have it, that is called desire.
15:16I too want this.
15:18And desire cares for nothing but itself.
15:21I too want to have this.
15:22And desire is what is killing this planet.
15:25Everybody wants to have a good life.
15:27All of us want to have lots of this.
15:31But the planet does not have enough to give each of us enough of this.
15:38And desire is saying, no, I too want this, I too want this.
15:41We too want to have the same kind of per capita consumption that the United States has.
15:45We too want to have the same kind of per capita usage of electricity that Germany has.
15:54I want to have the same number of kids as my neighbor has.
16:00And that's what is bringing us to a total destruction now.
16:05Please understand, that is crime.
16:08To care for the material beyond the worth of the material.
16:14To think that the material can give you what it really cannot, that is crime.
16:19That is the real definition of crime.
16:26But we do not have that definition because that definition is too much for us to handle.
16:31So we define crime in a very narrow way.
16:34We make certain rules, certain laws.
16:37And if somebody violates them, we say that fellow is a criminal.
16:41The fact is everybody who lives only in the material dimension of life is a criminal.
16:48Just that the crime might not have yet come to light.
16:52Just that the crime is not yet recognized by the rule books.
16:58But the fellow is a criminal, no doubt.
17:01Therefore, the only real way to eradicate crime is to wean the man and the woman away
17:09from only the biological material self.
17:13Otherwise crime is the reality of our biological existence.

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