Full video: Is Meditation Really as Beneficial as People Claim? || Acharya Prashant, NIT-Trichy (2024)
🧔🏻♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquiry?cmId=m00026
📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00026
🧔🏻♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquiry?cmId=m00026
📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00026
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00There be goals. Goals are not an issue. But the goals should not carry meanings.
00:06Financial, physical sustenance, that's all going to the gym.
00:09The goal has to be a meaningless goal. But if you'll start looking for meaning in this shop,
00:15all you will get is a lot of disappointment. Life is a meaningless affair,
00:20which means that meaning, if any, is contained within life, not in the objects of life.
00:30Sir, so in that you said that just look without looking for anything.
00:37So I can understand a little bit of it because even Krishnamurthy keep on saying this thing
00:43time and again, that just look without giving any name to the drish that you are looking at.
00:51But when I implement this thing in my day to day life, I can't see my day without
01:00looking for any motive. So tomorrow is Monday. If I wake up tomorrow and as soon as I'll be,
01:09I'll gain my consciousness. I have many motives in front of me, right?
01:13I need to log in for my office. I need to cook breakfast. I need to go outside for gym.
01:19So how can I just look without having any motive in my day to day life?
01:26When we talked of that, we said that let there be goals. Goals are not an issue.
01:34But the goals should not carry meanings. The meaning either lies nowhere at all,
01:43or you could say the meaning lies in the game, not in the goal.
01:49So in your day to day life, practically, obviously you will have these goals. You
01:53have to go to a workplace. You have to go to this thing, that thing. Fine. Those goals are there.
01:58But you have to remember that ultimately going to a workplace yields you nothing.
02:03Maybe financial, physical sustenance, that's all. Going to the gym,
02:07in the final sense, yields you nothing. So the illusion of meaning has to be destroyed.
02:20The ego will otherwise keep looking for meaning where there can be no meaning.
02:26And in that lies a lot of suffering. So there is a goal. Alright. There is a goal. But the goal,
02:34and this might sound strange, but try to understand. The goal has to be a meaningless goal.
02:43And when I say meaningless, I mean desireless. There can be, there can be
02:50no desire as such towards the goal. No fulfillment is possible from the goal.
02:57If the goal is achieved, your inner state remains one way. If the goal is not achieved,
03:05then your inner state must remain the same way. The fun must lie in the game, not in the goal.
03:15Are you getting it? Obviously, one has a goal. There are so many people attending this session.
03:21I travel to this place for the session. So there are goals of that kind.
03:26The problem is when we attach unreasonable meanings to those goals,
03:38then, as Shri Krishna said today, pleasure becomes happiness.
03:45Then that which is not possible from a thing,
03:53the thing starts standing for that. And then there will be a lot of disappointment and heartbreak.
04:02You want to go to that shop, go there. Fine. And we all go to shops every day. You want to go to
04:09that shop, go there. But you should not expect to purchase meaning there. Because there is no
04:14meaning there. There is just the shop. You go to the shop, you want something, you want some
04:19washing powder, get washing powder from the shop. All right, finished.
04:25There can be no meaning there. And the world is a mega shop.
04:29There are things there. But if you start looking for meaning in this shop,
04:33all you will get is a lot of disappointment.
04:39Unfortunately, even when we get disappointment, we do not get disillusionment.
04:46So in spite of the disappointment, the illusion continues,
04:51which is quite strange. So many disappointments, yet the illusion continues. Nobody is disillusioned
04:58So many disappointments, yet the illusion continues. Nobody is disillusioned ever.
05:03You will meet people and say, oh, I am so disappointed. But you will never meet someone
05:07who will say, now I am disillusioned. People are never disillusioned. So they think, you know,
05:13the meaning that they wanted was not available in one particular shop.
05:18So they will rush to the next shop. There is no meaning anywhere. It does not mean anything.
05:25Life is a meaningless affair, which means that meaning, if any, is contained within life,
05:33not in the objects of life. You must understand that life ultimately is just a meaningless thing.
05:42You might drop dead tomorrow. Tell me, what is the meaning of life?
05:47Covid came and so many, several lakhs, millions perished. What is the meaning of life? Please
05:51tell me. Is there any meaning to life? There is no meaning to life. Life is random. No meaning there.
06:00And equally it can be said that meaning lies within the living one. It does not lie
06:08in the objects of life. Things happen, events happen. There is no meaning there.
06:14Look at them with equanimity. Yeah, things are happening. What is happening? Things are happening.
06:19No meaning. So something happened and then somebody says, what does that mean? Oh, nothing.
06:26I lost 10 lakh rupees. Ah, what does that mean? Nothing. The loss is real. The meaning is not.
06:35The loss is real. It will reflect in your bank statement. You lost 10 lakh rupees.
06:40But is there any meaning to that? No, there is no meaning.
06:43Will you file a complaint now? Obviously, you must. Will you try to recover it with the bank?
06:48Obviously, you must. But even if you recover it, is there some meaning?
06:52No. So play the game. Let the meaning be there in the game, not in the goal.
07:02So, I should just remember that my, the final motive or final desire of my life is to become
07:11a good person. My final desire of my inner self is just to destroy my inner bondages, right?
07:16So whatever I'm doing outside, if that is helping me with that,
07:22then that is my correct action. Otherwise, any other action doesn't make sense.
07:30Yes, if you can identify your inner bondages, obviously,
07:35there will be an impetus to challenge them and get rid of them. And that's
07:40all very nice.
07:48Okay, I got the answer. So while writing down the notes, I have written one statement that
07:55death is an imagination for the ego. So I can relate that death is an imagination for me. My
08:05death is an imagination for me, right? Because when I die, experience is no more there to
08:11experience the thing, right? But death in general is not an imagination for me because I can see
08:19the other person dying. If I take example of you or me in this situation, then my death can be an
08:27imagination for me, but your death can't be an imagination for me. I can see you going.
08:33So how death is an imagination? Do you know what happened when the man fell down?
08:42All you can see is the coconut falling, right? All else is imagination.
08:51All else is imagination. How do you know what really happened?
08:56And if you do not know what really happened, your definition of death will be limited
09:02to the fall of the coconut. The body only.
09:08Obviously. But when the ego thinks of death,
09:19what is it scared of? Reflect on it. Just the body dropping?
09:26It is scared of something else, right?
09:29Did you see that something else happening?
09:35What did you see? The body is going.
09:39The body is dropping. Now the ego was scared of death and what the ego was scared of was just not
09:46the body dropping, but something else. Reflect on this. In the moments when you are scared of death,
09:55in the moments when you are scared of death, what are you scared of? That the body will fall?
09:59Is that what you are scared of? No.
10:04There is something else that you are scared of, right? Right, right.
10:09Now you see a man dying.
10:13Now you see a man dying. Have you seen that something else happened to that man? No.
10:21You have just seen the coconut fall.
10:24That something else is an imagination. How do you know that something else has happened?
10:35So, whatever you are saying that ego is concerned with,
10:42ego is just not concerned with the body, but something else.
10:45Obviously, and that's the reason. And that's the reason why the ego must weave
10:53a lot of imaginary stories that when somebody dies, something from within flies to the other
11:00body and to the other universe. Doesn't this tell you that death is an imagination? Otherwise,
11:04why was there a need to weave all these imaginary stories?
11:07Okay, I got the answer. Thank you.