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Can Nature Worship in the Vedas Hold Deeper Meaning Today? || Acharya Prashant (2024)
Video Information: 15.11.2024, Greater Noida
📋 Video Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - Nature Worship vs. Consumption
3:09 - Desire and Worship Explained
5:12 - Real Worship vs. Rituals
6:53 - The Concept of Sacredness
9:31 - Observing Nature Mindfully
11:44 - The Attitude of a Worshipper
15:44 - The Role of Desire in Consumption
17:21 - Joy vs. Pleasure in Experience
22:38 - The Impact of Desire on Perception
Description:
The session delves into true worship, highlighting its foundation in sacredness and desirelessness. Acharya Ji explains that genuine worship isn’t about seeking favors or consuming but respecting and recognizing the higher essence of the object of worship. Using examples like nature worship, he emphasizes the distinction between exploitation and reverence.
He differentiates joy and pleasure: pleasure arises from desire and past experiences, while joy comes from desirelessness, where the ego dissolves, allowing pure observation. Acharya Ji critiques distorted notions of religion, stressing that true sacredness involves non-consumption and deep respect.
Desire blinds perception, obstructing clarity and truth. Worship without desire enables clear vision and spontaneous connection with existence. Acharya Ji concludes by emphasizing that desirelessness, rooted in self-knowledge, frees one from superficial pursuits, fostering authentic worship and alignment with higher truths.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquiry-gita-course?cmId=m00026
📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00026
📝 Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles?cmId=m00026
➖➖➖➖➖➖
#AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita
Can Nature Worship in the Vedas Hold Deeper Meaning Today? || Acharya Prashant (2024)
Video Information: 15.11.2024, Greater Noida
📋 Video Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - Nature Worship vs. Consumption
3:09 - Desire and Worship Explained
5:12 - Real Worship vs. Rituals
6:53 - The Concept of Sacredness
9:31 - Observing Nature Mindfully
11:44 - The Attitude of a Worshipper
15:44 - The Role of Desire in Consumption
17:21 - Joy vs. Pleasure in Experience
22:38 - The Impact of Desire on Perception
Description:
The session delves into true worship, highlighting its foundation in sacredness and desirelessness. Acharya Ji explains that genuine worship isn’t about seeking favors or consuming but respecting and recognizing the higher essence of the object of worship. Using examples like nature worship, he emphasizes the distinction between exploitation and reverence.
He differentiates joy and pleasure: pleasure arises from desire and past experiences, while joy comes from desirelessness, where the ego dissolves, allowing pure observation. Acharya Ji critiques distorted notions of religion, stressing that true sacredness involves non-consumption and deep respect.
Desire blinds perception, obstructing clarity and truth. Worship without desire enables clear vision and spontaneous connection with existence. Acharya Ji concludes by emphasizing that desirelessness, rooted in self-knowledge, frees one from superficial pursuits, fostering authentic worship and alignment with higher truths.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Sir, my question is that, can we take nature worship part of the Vedas?
00:05But when you go to Prakriti asking favors, can you give me that, can you give me, like
00:09you go to a cow and say, can you give me milk, that's not worship, please.
00:13Worship and sacredness go together.
00:15Worship is not all this theatrics that you see in the name of religion.
00:18Somebody is rolling on the road, somebody is climbing some tree and all other kinds
00:22of gymnastics that you call as religion.
00:24You don't have to fold your hands to worship.
00:26You once mentioned that there is just joy in seeing it.
00:32Sir, how is it different from a consumption through eyes?
00:36The river is now arising as a mermaid, sexy mermaid.
00:40The river is now arising and now the river is coming to me and saying, you know, if you
00:46kiss me properly, I'll be your wife.
00:48That's consumption.
00:49What I'm saying will not be very lucid to you right now.
00:55You're just 18, but let these words remain.
01:02Namaste Acharya ji.
01:04I am Saransh, an 18 year old student from Lucknow.
01:08Sir, my question is that, can we take the nature worship part of the Vedas with a special
01:17meaning today, with a higher meaning today?
01:21Because I've heard you saying once that there would have been a great consciousness which
01:27would have addressed Ganga as Ma or worshipped a tree.
01:32Can we take these Vedic Gods with a special meaning, a higher meaning today?
01:36The higher meaning is desirelessness.
01:38You cannot worship something with a view to obtain favors from it.
01:43That's exploitation.
01:44That's consumption.
01:45That's worship only in name.
01:49That's like worshipping Margarita.
01:52You don't worship Margarita because you are charmed and you want to become one day like
01:58Margarita.
01:59You want to lose yourself and one day be dissolved.
02:02You worship Margarita so that you can consume it fully and finish it off.
02:10So, the real kind of nature worship that we talk of, let's say in Durga Saptshati, that's
02:18different.
02:20That's where the relationship is not of bhog.
02:25You remember that particular quotation?
02:27Prakriti maa hai, bhog gaya nahi.
02:33That's worship.
02:34But when you go to Prakriti asking favors, can you give me that, can you give me, like
02:40you go to a cow and say, can you give me milk, that's not worship, please.
02:47Real worship is when you do not use any dairy product and yet you have respect for the
02:52cow, that's worship.
02:56You have respect for the cow because you will be getting ghee and doodh and lassi and then
03:01you will also sell it off to the butcher and that's not worship.
03:10You cannot have worship along with desire.
03:17To worship, first of all, you must have something that's above you, right?
03:28In consumption, the thing is always at your own level.
03:38How can you consume and worship at the same time?
03:44These two are incompatible.
03:45Do you see that?
03:46If I am to consume something, it has to be at my own level, whereas to worship it, it
03:52has to be above me.
03:54So, consumption of Prakriti and worship of Prakriti do not go together.
04:03Those who worship Prakriti and then consume it are like those who worship the goat and
04:11then slaughter it and eat it.
04:15Does that not happen?
04:19There are people who will pattern it for an entire month and say, you know, this is like
04:24our own son and then slaughter and eat it.
04:29Is that worship?
04:31Does that carry any feeling of respect?
04:34Is there any sacredness in all this?
04:38Sacredness, the touchstone is, you will not consume.
04:45You will not look at the other as means to fulfill your desire.
04:49That's the attitude you must have towards Prakriti and that attitude itself is called
04:55worship.
04:57You don't have to prostrate or offer goodies.
05:09Worship is not all that.
05:12You understand sacredness?
05:16I'm not to touch it.
05:19It's above me or it reminds me of something that is untouchable within me.
05:26It is so high, it reminds me of my highest possibility.
05:30That's worship.
05:32I look at the flow of the river and my attentiveness reminds me of the pure flow within myself.
05:39Now that's worship.
05:42River worship is not about going and taking the holy dip and polluting the river.
05:47That's not river worship.
05:48Watch the river from a distance, please.
05:57The river does not want you to enter it.
05:59The river is totally fed up of you.
06:03River worship means watch it from a distance, very attentively and that's meditation.
06:11Just sit there, look at it, purposelessly.
06:14You don't have to say I've come here and I have only 20 minutes to watch the river.
06:17So, let me extract the value.
06:22The flight tickets were so expensive.
06:26Then you'll start hallucinating, you'll start thinking that the river has taken a female
06:30form and is coming out to bless you.
06:36And you'll say can I have a very juicy wife?
06:39The river will say Tathastu, Babaji.
06:46He made his career on this.
06:53You understand worship.
06:57Worship and sacredness go together.
06:59The problem with the common man is that for him nothing is sacred at all.
07:04Everything is an object that he can lay his hands on and consume.
07:09Is there anything that you will never never agree to, dare to, want to touch?
07:17If there is even one such thing in your life, then you know sacredness and only with sacredness
07:22can there be worship.
07:25Most of us can lay our dirty hands on anything.
07:29Nothing is sacred.
07:37Learn to touch things without spoiling them.
07:47Learn to enter a room without disturbing the room.
07:56Learn to exist as if you are not.
08:03Learn to make your presence unfelt.
08:06That's worship.
08:15That's one mark often of the spiritual man.
08:20He enters and leaves silently as if he was always there or as if he was never there.
08:33That's sacredness.
08:36I am not here to consume.
08:37I am not here to destroy.
08:39I am not here to alter the scheme of things.
08:44I am here to flow in the scheme of things.
08:49That's worship.
08:50Worship is not all this theatrics that you see in the name of religion.
08:55Somebody is rolling on the road.
08:59Somebody is climbing some tree and all other kinds of gymnastics that you call as religion.
09:10You don't have to fold your hands to worship.
09:13Not needed.
09:15You don't have to take off your shoes.
09:19You don't have to visit a special place.
09:29When you look at the world, do not ask what can I get from it.
09:37Ask what is it.
09:39That's worship.
09:43And you don't have to ask what is it.
09:45You just have to see and you will know what is it.
09:55That's the attitude of the spiritual mind.
09:58That's the worshipper.
10:05You don't find thirst and perpetual hunger and craving in his eyes.
10:17Some swanky car and how can I get it.
10:24What is the whole thing about?
10:34You remember Ashtavakra saying just day before yesterday.
10:39No great wonderment here.
10:41In the sense that no great fulfillment in that.
10:47Therefore I don't need to be amazed by all this.
10:51Yet I am an observer.
10:54In some way, it is indeed mesmerizing but not in the way of fulfillment of desire.
10:58Are you getting it?
11:00Yes, I look at it with awe, with wonderment in terms of knowing it, not in terms of consuming
11:09it.
11:14I look at a magnificent tree and I dance around it.
11:23That's wonderful.
11:24That's fine.
11:25Not that I start thinking of chopping it down and calculating how much can the proceeds
11:34be sold for.
11:45If you have, it happened once.
11:52We had Jeetu, the legendary cock.
12:02Books department should publish a book, Jeetu, the legendary cock.
12:14There were these carpenters who came and Jeetu was always trotting and prancing around
12:22like he owned the place.
12:25He was never kept caged.
12:27The entire thing belonged to him, could go wherever and you really needed to be in his
12:31good books to even enter Bhojsthal, otherwise he would chase you.
12:36Many here might have experienced what it meant to not have Jeetu's favor.
12:42Pack, pack, pack, pack and you are out and he really had an evil beak.
12:50So they came, the carpenters and they were looking at Jeetu and discussing something
12:57that got me curious and I went and they were discussing how much is the weight and how
13:01much would it cost.
13:05Now that's not sacredness, that's not worship.
13:08In fact, they were thinking, how come this acharya is raising, but they said fine, might
13:20be such a thing happens in Hindus, but they were pretty delighted to look at this.
13:29How much did he weigh?
13:30They said, we have never seen a rooster weighing some 11 kilograms or something, this big,
13:38always eating.
13:43You look at an animal and you start thinking of pounds of flesh, that's not sacredness.
13:53You look at a man or a woman and you start thinking what it would be like to bang her,
13:58that's not sacredness.
14:08But that's the way we are.
14:20You have these mannequins, what are they there for?
14:29Look at it and imagine how the thing would look on you.
14:36It is assumed that that's the normal way of our being that you would look only to consume.
14:47Look at the mannequin and imagine how that dress or ornament would look on you.
14:56Look at Jitu and imagine how it would look on the plate.
15:15We have a very corrupted notion of religion, worship, sacredness, devotion, bhakti, extremely corrupted.
15:45And the result is that today, if you have to choose between a devotee and an atheist,
15:56my advice is that you go with the atheist.
16:06The atheist might be debauched but he cannot match the depth to which the devotee can plunge.
16:25The so-called religious man is a real menace to be avoided as much as possible.
16:53What I'm saying will not be very lucid to you right now, you're just 18, but let these words remain.
17:05One day, gradually, half a decade, 20 decades.
17:22If you are just a small follower, if a person is witnessing a river and you just once mentioned that there is just joy in seeing it.
17:35Sir, how is it different from a consumption through eyes?
17:41Is it not a consumption which we are doing through eyes?
17:45Very nice. Whenever there is consumption through eyes, there is a pre-planted image.
17:59You already know what you want from it. You want to repeat a previous experience.
18:05Joy, on the other hand, is about sublimation of the experiencer.
18:13You can consume even through your eyes and that's what the religious mind does.
18:18The so-called religious, the Lok Dharmi mind, that's what he does.
18:21He will go to the river and he will say I'm supposed to watch the river and in the process of watching, as I had warned,
18:28in the process of watching, he will invoke all the pre-existing images.
18:33The river is now arising as a mermaid. You understand mermaid? Half woman, half fish.
18:45Sexy mermaid. The river is now arising and now the river is coming to me and saying,
18:53if you kiss me properly, I'll be your wife. That's consumption.
19:03That's the pleasure of consumption. Joy is a different thing altogether.
19:10In joy, the watcher, the experiencer, the consumer finds no place to remain.
19:20You allow the fact to take over and you are gone because the ego is not a fact.
19:29When you allow the fact to dominate you as it rightfully must, then all that which is not a fact is gone.
19:37So the ego too is gone and that's joy.
19:42Pleasure is ingratiation of the ego. Joy is disappearance of the ego.
19:48There is a great difference. Pleasure is never in the present.
19:52Pleasure is always about recycling some old experience and whatever you got out of it.
19:59In joy, there is no question of experience. If someone says, you know, I experienced joy.
20:04He's a bluffing buffoon. Joy is nothing to be experienced. Joy is like deep sleep.
20:16Only when it is gone, can you say that you had it.
20:23When in deep sleep, can you claim that you are asleep? Joy is like that.
20:32Joy is a state of negation, of disappearance. You are not.
20:38However, when somebody brings you back to the mortal plane, then you say, now something precious is lost.
20:48Only in that way can joy be pointed at. Only in the sense of its absence.
20:58When it is there, then you will not say, I am so joyful. You are not joyful. You are just yourself.
21:05Joy is no state of exuberant pleasure. Some people equate joy with subtle pleasure.
21:14They say, you know, when you are laughing, then that maps to pleasure.
21:18But when you are just gently smiling, that's ananda, joy.
21:23Baba ji. Baba watch. No, sir, no. It's not that way.
21:33Poorpakshi Baba ji. He has his own argument. See, he claims this is joy.
21:41Look at his face. This is not joy.
21:46Remember, claiming to be joyful is like claiming to be deeply asleep.
21:55You are lying.
21:58The joyful one is just sahaj. One with existence.
22:11Not separate. Therefore, not desirous.
22:16Not desirous. Therefore, very spontaneous.
22:29You getting it?
22:32Classically, the thing that you refer to is called chakshu vilas, chakshubhog.
22:43Indriyabhog. All the senses have their own channels for consumption.
22:52Every sense is de facto, a separate channel for consumption.
22:57So you can consume through eyes also. You know that very well, right?
23:01You come from Lucknow, 18 year old.
23:04Popular culture will not allow you to easily consume through your other senses.
23:09So in Lucknow, you consume more through just this.
23:14Chalna bhai tapne chalte hain. Ganjing karenge.
23:22You understand Ganjing? Hazrat Ganj.
23:27You can go there and look at a few pretty faces and consume through eyes.
23:38That's not that.
23:41Pleasure is when the eyes are looking for.
23:51Joy is when the eyes are just looking.
23:55When you already know that you want a particular object.
24:02When the object in question is already a thing of a previous experience.
24:10Then the maximum you can get is pleasure.
24:14You are looking for repetition. In joy you are just looking.
24:21There is no desire because there is nobody to desire.
24:26So the sense is just operating without anybody to be fulfilled from the sense.
24:33There is a vacuum in the eyes.
24:39The eyes are operating but without and then the eyes can see very clearly.
24:45Shri Krishna calls that as being Nirmal Indriya.
24:49Whereas when the eyes are operating from a center of desire, the eyes cannot see.
24:55When the eyes are operating from a center of desire, the eyes cannot see.
25:14The world is very afraid of eyes that do not want.
25:19People almost collapse.
25:22If you look at them with desire, they will know this fellow belongs to our own clan, our tribe, he is one like us, I have desire, this fellow too has desire, but if you just look at them, they shiver and almost collapse, that's the power of desirelessness, the desirous mind cannot face somebody who doesn't have desire and it's
25:51not a moral virtue or something, not having desire, it's a consequence, you very well
25:55know, where does nishkanta come from, atma jnan, if you know yourself, when you also
26:03know it is foolish to run after that thing, we are not talking morality here, we are talking
26:14practicality, that's rat poison and I am not even a rat.