Video Information: 22.11.21, Shastra Kaumudi, Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh
~~~~~
Context:
~ How to get rid of attachments?
~ How does renunciation become a celebration?
~ What is really important in life?
~ What is right knowledge to get rid of misery?
~ How does Vedanta help?
Music Credits: Milind Date
#acharyaprashant #vedanta #attachment
~~~~~
Context:
~ How to get rid of attachments?
~ How does renunciation become a celebration?
~ What is really important in life?
~ What is right knowledge to get rid of misery?
~ How does Vedanta help?
Music Credits: Milind Date
#acharyaprashant #vedanta #attachment
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Acharyaji, the next question comes from Bangalore.
00:12The participant is a quality analyst and she says that, Acharyaji Pranam, when you say
00:21renunciation is celebration, it is for the one who is already a king.
00:28But for us who is not really living in that reality, we are not any kings.
00:35So sometimes the whole renunciation act seems like a punishment.
00:44Our love for renunciation is a strange thing.
00:47Sometimes it is brimming with pleasure and with gratitude and sometimes it is very weak.
00:55So how can our renunciation still be a celebration?
01:02Knowledge is the key.
01:05It is not the object of renunciation or the object of attachment that matters to you.
01:18Rather what matters to you is the idea that you have of that object.
01:30Because we anyway do not really know.
01:33We know neither ourselves nor the object.
01:36Now let's say there is this object in my life and I am very attached to it.
01:42What am I attached to?
01:45The idea of this object.
01:49And the idea obviously I take as the truth because we all need truth.
01:52When we do not have truth, we use ideas as the truth.
02:01So first of all, the suffering does not lie in giving up the object.
02:09It lies in giving up the idea of the object.
02:15Let's take for example, you are very attached to something or somebody and then somehow
02:28you lose your memory.
02:34Would you still be attached to that person?
02:37So that attachment is not to that person because that person still exists.
02:45What is it that you have lost?
02:47You have lost the idea of that person.
02:50That same person might still be sitting next to you but you will no more be attached to
02:54that person.
02:56You have not lost that person but you have lost your idea of that person and now there
03:00is no attachment.
03:03So firstly understand that it is ideas that we deal in.
03:08Vedanta is a destroyer of ideas.
03:15It tells you where your ideas come from and what the reality of those ideas is.
03:23When the idea is gone, the attachment is gone.
03:27The object may still remain but the attachment won't remain because the attachment was in
03:32any case never with the object.
03:39You had a story with respect to the object and the attachment was a part of that story.
03:47The memory loss example might appear an extreme one.
03:51Take another example.
03:52You are very attached to a person and somehow you come to learn that the story that you
04:00have with respect to that person is flawed or there are things with respect to that person
04:08in the life of that person that the person kept hidden.
04:12Some kind of secret information gets revealed to you.
04:17You hired a private detective or something.
04:20All kinds of things happen and you come to know of something and having known that particular
04:28something what happens to your attachment?
04:30Attachment is gone.
04:31Is the person gone?
04:32No, the person is not gone.
04:34The person is right in front of you.
04:37Is the memory gone?
04:38No, even the memory is not gone.
04:41We are not dealing with something as extreme as the memory loss example.
04:49Memory is there, the object is there and the attachment is gone.
04:52Why?
04:53Because the story is gone.
04:54The idea is gone.
04:59In our usual lives, one idea is gone when it is supplanted by another idea.
05:09We drop a story or modify a story only when some other story makes its way, pushes itself in.
05:19Vedant does something far more deeper.
05:28It goes to the root of storytelling itself.
05:33It does not destroy one particular story.
05:37It exposes the storyteller himself.
05:43The storyteller is called the mind.
05:44The mind is a great storyteller.
05:47It just keeps telling the stories.
05:49Why?
05:50Because it wants to avoid the truth.
05:51Therefore, it must have stories.
05:53It keeps weaving stories.
05:55The mind lives in narratives.
05:58Once the narratives are gone, the attachment is gone.
06:08And then renunciation is a celebration.
06:12Because what you have dropped is not something precious.
06:25What you have dropped is your misery itself.
06:33Nothing but right knowledge can save you.
06:38Nothing but knowledge of the knower can save you.
06:46Therefore, knowledge makes renunciation facile.
06:55Having known something truly, dropping the false becomes so easy.
07:08Let's have an example.
07:22You are to go to Chandigarh from Delhi.
07:35You have to take a train.
07:39And you already have a confirmed ticket, first class.
07:44You forgot.
07:46You forgot you have a first class ticket.
07:50First class confirmed ticket.
07:55So you come to the station.
08:00And you rush to the ticket counter.
08:06And he gives you an unconfirmed ticket of the lowest class possible.
08:13Unconfirmed ticket of the lowest class possible.
08:18And clutching that ticket in your fist, you run towards the platforms.
08:32And then suddenly, somehow, somebody reveals to you that you have a confirmed first class
08:42ticket.
08:44Now what happens to this closed fist?
08:48What happens to this?
08:50It opens and the thing drops.
08:52This is renunciation.
08:55Having known that you already have something far more magnificent, far more lavish, far
09:03more luxurious, what will you do with this lowly ticket?
09:09This is renunciation.
09:10Therefore, I called it celebration.
09:13The fist has opened in celebration.
09:16You are celebrating.
09:17It's a wow.
09:20So the thing opens and the measly thing drops.
09:24This is celebration.
09:27Remember, Vedanta is not about getting a fresh first class ticket.
09:31Vedanta is about realizing you already have it.
09:38You already have it.
09:39You just have forgotten.
09:43That forgetfulness is called maya.
09:48To feel that you do not have it in spite of having it is called maya.
09:58And to feel that this petty thing is important in spite of it being really very unimportant
10:07is called maya.
10:08Maya does these two things.
10:16Getting it?