When lust overpowers you || Acharya Prashant, with IIT-Hyderabad (2022)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?  Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...    Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?  Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~   Video Information: 26.04.2022, IIT-Hyderabad, Greater Noida, U.P   Context:  ¬ How to maintain a good relationship?  ` What is the right time to be in a relationship?  ¬ What is relationship?  ¬ How to make relationships healthy?  ¬ When and how does a relationship turns into a toxic relationship?  ¬ How to choose a life partner?  ¬ What is real love?  ¬ Is live-in relationship sign of degradation of our culture?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00I have a question, sir. Like you said that we know that when we have that, say lustful,

00:12an example, we have that lust, and we know that it's like animal, we are animal now.

00:17And you say, you said this, we need not be an animal, I need not be animal. But the thing

00:23is when we are in that situation, it is very difficult to get reminded of ourselves that

00:31we should not be an animal like that. Take an example of any negative feeling,

00:36not only lust, say anger, or being egoistic, or having any powerful negative feeling,

00:44when we have at that time, how to remind ourselves how to be conscious and come out of

00:51that animalism? That is my question, that how to?

00:58You see, there is a pleasure that lust or anger or envy

01:11or hatred or possessiveness offer you.

01:14And there is another pleasure that is offered by the high stuff of life.

01:27It says that the ego is not convinced that there is any pleasure at all in the higher things.

01:36Why is the ego not convinced? Because the ego has a history of deriving pleasure from all the lowly

01:42things. The child is born, where does the child get its first pleasures from? From the Bhagavad Gita?

01:54No, it gets its first pleasures from skin to skin contact, from something very sensual.

02:03From something very bodily, right? So the ego is convinced of that dimension.

02:13In the sensory dimension, in the dimension of flesh, there indeed is pleasure and I can

02:21experientially verify that. It is in my history, I know of that. Nobody need to come and convince me.

02:30Since the moment of my birth, I have derived pleasure from all the sensory things.

02:38The mother wants to put the baby to sleep. She need not tell the baby stories from Upanishads.

02:51She has to just hum some meaningless tune and pat the baby a little.

02:59And it sleeps off. So there is pleasure and that pleasure is not coming from any

03:06higher domain. That pleasure is coming from something very basal. So the ego is convinced.

03:15Now the Bhagavad Gita comes into the picture and someone says,

03:21well there is higher pleasure in the Gita. Why must the ego believe that?

03:26The ego has derived pleasure only from food, from the bed, you can have a comfortable sleep,

03:35or from sex, or from other things like snatching something away from somebody.

03:42There is pleasure there. The ego knows all of that. And now suddenly you are saying,

03:47no, no, no, you go to the Bhagavad Gita and there is higher pleasure there.

03:51Why should the ego believe you? So the ego needs to be given a taste.

03:58And that's a difficult thing to do because the ego already knows where to get its dose of pleasure

04:04from. So how to lure the ego away from that place? Something has to be done, some trick,

04:11some method, sometimes a little force has to be applied.

04:19Something has to be done. That's why the world of religion has been so colorful, you see.

04:26Do you see how colorful our religious practices are? Do you see how religious festivals have

04:31been designed to offer you pleasure even to the kids? Throw colors on someone.

04:38Now the festival is arising from a spiritual core, but care has been taken to add an element

04:46of very normal pleasure to it so that the normal public can be attracted.

04:52No, you come, you come, you come. And as you come closer, you find that now the spiritual core

05:00starts beckoning. So some trick has to be used, something has to be done.

05:06Somehow the mind has to be brought close to Vedanta. And once the mind has sufficient proof

05:15that pleasure need not necessarily come from all the lowly things only,

05:20it can come from a higher place too, then it becomes easier for the mind to make a better

05:26choice. Well, you see, there is pleasure in envy, greed, whatever, anger, lust, but there is pleasure

05:37in solitude. There is pleasure in reading something sublime.

05:43There is pleasure in singing the couplets of saints. Why not go for that pleasure?

05:52The ego is a calculator, you see. It calculates. It is very animalistic and it is very calculative.

06:03If you can display clearly to the ego that a higher quantum, a bigger dollop of pleasure

06:15awaits at a higher point, then it will be possible for the ego to rise higher.

06:24Otherwise, you can keep ceremoning. You can keep lecturing. The first experience, that first

06:32glimpse has to be given. Sometimes that glimpse comes not by way of a book. That glimpse sometimes

06:40initially comes in the form of a person. A person stands in front of you and that person is a living

06:48proof of spiritual joy or spiritual power. And then you say, well, well, well, there is something

07:00important. There is something rather magnetic in the personality of this person.

07:05How do I refute his fact?

07:09When Gautam Buddha was to deliver his first sermon, he started looking for listeners. There was nobody

07:20to listen to him. So he thought, to whom should I speak? He thought of one person

07:28and started looking for him. It came out that the person had already died. Then he thought of

07:35another person. He too had already died. The Buddha had been searching for more than a decade

07:42and in that period people had expired. And then he thought of the five chaps who had abandoned him

07:51when he was rejecting the path of severe austerity, Kayaklesh. So he said, why not

08:00go to these people? And they were my good friends and they were good listeners. Just that they got

08:08very angry with me because I rejected the doctrine of senseless austerity. So again he tried to

08:17somehow locate them and found them and he went to them. And when he was approaching them,

08:23they saw him coming and they were angry with him because he had refuted their doctrine.

08:31So they thought among themselves, when he comes to us, we will not offer him any respect.

08:37We will not even talk to him. It is considered courteous to take the other's belongings

08:49when he approaches. When a senior one approaches, then you go and you take his luggage as we still

08:54do in India, don't we? So they said to each other, when he comes close, we will not offer

09:02to take the luggage or whatever stuff he is carrying. We will be very obviously disrespectful

09:10to him. We want to make a point loud and clear. But literature says that as the Buddha approached them,

09:22they forgot all that they had planned.

09:25It was the sheer weight of his personality that made them bow down.

09:36And they bowed down to him and they offered him a decent place to sit.

09:41And he sat there and they had nothing else to ask.

09:47You know what was the first question they asked? What did you do sir after we left you?

09:56That's the childlike simplicity that an awakened personality can induce in you.

10:04It was induced simplicity.

10:09So there has to be a proof. Now those five got a proof. They said just by looking at this man,

10:16it becomes obvious that there is something of the truth within him.

10:21So now they opened up to listen to him. They said, please tell us. Please tell us.

10:27We want to listen to you. And he preached to them and it was the first sermon.

10:36So it's a long drawn statement I have made. But the point is, the short and simple point is,

10:44short and simple point is, convince the ego of some higher happiness.

10:53And then you will find that the lower things do not remain relatively that attractive. Relatively.

11:04To the body, the attraction of all the sensory things will remain because that's the way the

11:10body is configured. But something else, something higher in comparison will open up.

11:20And therefore you will lean towards the higher thing.

11:28And sir, one small doubt was there. Can you give some examples of what are those highest things

11:37which we can remember at that time?

11:41See, there are

11:46pleasures that come from the world and there are pleasures that come from the truth.

11:57You sing a beautiful couplet, very insightful couplet.

12:03Insightful, yet very simply put.

12:10And there is a deep pleasure there. It's not as if there is pleasure only in making merry,

12:19eating and frolicking and such things.

12:25There definitely is pleasure in all those things and those pleasures we share with the animal kingdom.

12:33But there are pleasures exclusive to our species. Pleasures that only we can enjoy.

12:42So when you, for example, are witnessing the conversation between Krishna and Arjun,

12:50there is a deep, subtle joy there. The joy of understanding what is going on. The joy of

12:58seeing how Arjun's condition resonates with yours and how Krishna is able to very simply

13:10and yet very tactfully communicate to Arjun who he is and therefore what he must do.

13:18This understanding is something very unique to human beings and in this understanding,

13:26there is that higher pleasure called joy. So, look at the world, look at your condition.

13:35The internal training must be to try to understand and you understand when you are not lost,

13:45when you are not lost, when you have the intention to know and that is called attention.

13:52The intention to know, attention. And then you do not need

14:02those little filthy pleasures. Equally, those little pleasures actually now become little to you.

14:11Therefore, you do not despise them either because you cannot despise something so small

14:18and then things are put in their place. It's not as if you started a question by talking of lust.

14:25It's not as if you read the Bhagavad Gita and you will totally abstain from sex.

14:35That does not happen and that is not supposed to happen.

14:40It's just that the thing is put in its right place.

14:46The thing is put in its right place. By the way, that was also the content of the Buddha's first sermon.

14:55He told those five, you know, obviously the ones who are living lives of relentless consumption

15:04are idiots. But look at you five, you have chosen the path of starvation. You have said we want to

15:16simply kill the body through starvation. Now even this is not proper.

15:22Everything has to be put in its right place. Those who are appeasing the body all the time

15:27are body-minded. You too are body-minded because you are hurting the body all the time.

15:35Are you getting me? So when you know of the higher thing, then everything else falls in its proper place.

15:45And that's the yardstick of your humanness, the depth of your understanding

15:55in which there is deep joy.

15:56Okay. Yeah.

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