~~~~~
Video Information: 04.02.22, Conversation, Greater Noida
Context:
~ what is Personal space?
~ How do Hindus feel about personal space?
~ Why do some people not respect personal space?
~ What is considered disrespectful in India?
~ Why should we not be distant?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 04.02.22, Conversation, Greater Noida
Context:
~ what is Personal space?
~ How do Hindus feel about personal space?
~ Why do some people not respect personal space?
~ What is considered disrespectful in India?
~ Why should we not be distant?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Another thing we had talked about and noticed was, did you feel that, I know you had mentioned
00:13to me that if in Finland two people see each other, they try to avoid each other, they
00:21keep physical distance, and even if they met, they wouldn't ask a lot of any personal questions.
00:28And I'm just curious, what's your experience been here?
00:31I know you said at the hotel there was something that happened.
00:36Well, yes.
00:39I mean, yes, in Finland in general it's, I guess it's considered polite to just leave
00:45people alone, keep your distance.
00:48And most of the-
00:49Not to do this?
00:50Yeah, definitely not, no, no, no.
00:54And definitely like, there are certain things that are good etiquette maybe, but if you
01:02don't know the other person, it doesn't-
01:04See, this again comes from just taking a bit from the sense and discarding the rest.
01:16Frankly, this kind of a touch you behavior and pat you and hug you behavior, even if
01:23I'm sweating, and you two are sweating, I still want to touch you all over.
01:29This frankly comes from a very distant point of love.
01:36I do not want to treat you as distant.
01:39I do not want to treat you as the other.
01:41I do not want to treat you as an alien or a foreigner or, you know.
01:49So that's why I come even physically close and I feel entitled to do so.
01:54I can just come and slap on your, not on your face, on your back, and that's considered
02:03very jovial of me.
02:07Frankly it is because of the heritage coming down from the saints.
02:13Do not be so distant.
02:16There is no need to give so much space to the ego.
02:20Come a little closer.
02:22But then love is not about this physical kind of nearness.
02:30Love is about first of all knowing what is right, doing it for yourself and enabling
02:36the other to live the right way as well.
02:41So that's called really getting close to the other.
02:46Getting close to the other implies helping the other get close to the truth.
02:50That is real love.
02:53So the saints said get close to the other to enable the other to get close to the truth.
03:00That's the complete statement coming down from let's say Vedanta.
03:04Now what did we do?
03:06We kept one convenient half of the sentence and happily disregarded the rest of it.
03:13Which part of the sentence did we keep?
03:16Get close to the other, get close to the other.
03:19So this much we remember.
03:22All over Southeast Asia, this is the culture.
03:27In a crowded place, nobody would mind brushing shoulders.
03:31If someone goes past you while brushing against any body part, any body part, the fellow does
03:42not even feel to say sorry because it's fine.
03:49Why are you acting so distant?
03:51Why are you acting so special?
03:52Can't I even touch you?
03:56After all the saints have said that all bodies are the same, we are just the soil we rose from.
04:02So why are you trying to act so pricey?
04:06What's special about your body?
04:07I can touch it.
04:10That's not what we explicitly say, but in some sense that's the feeling coming down
04:15from there.
04:17It's alright to not to treat the other as distant or alien or separated one, but one
04:30has to know the full thing.
04:33If you know only half the thing, that's worse than knowing nothing at all.
04:42So we have people who would intrude into the other's lives.
04:46The concept of personal or private space does not exist.
04:51People happily barge in and they can ask you such questions, they could even ask you, well,
05:02you know, how are your things with your wife?
05:06An elderly one can actually come and ask this, an elderly one from, let's say, the extended
05:13family and can come and ask you, so how are you doing in your married life?
05:18When are you getting your daughter married?
05:24Somebody may even ask you, how much are you earning?
05:29You are just standing somewhere and somebody can come so close to you, you can smell his
05:33mouth and if you step back, that's rude.
05:44So these are all corrupted flavors of love.
05:52So they come from the tradition of love, India has a very strong thing about love and Indian
05:59may not know anything else, there is a popular movie song from movie Pura Band Pashyam, East
06:07and West, so this popular thespian Manoj Kumar, he was the actor singing this one, so the
06:20line says, kuch aur na aata ho humko, humein pyaar nivhana aata hai, we as Indians may
06:29know nothing at all, but we know what is love, we remain loyal, we remain steadfast, that
06:44obviously cannot be the case, if you know nothing at all, you will not know, you will
06:49not know love either, but somehow this thing has gone into the Indian psyche, that lovers
06:59we all are, and love means having some kind of a right over the other's life, yes of
07:19course in love you do have a right over the other's life, but in what sense, that's
07:23a question lost to India, we don't address that question, West knows love of the personal
07:38kind and no other love, India was fortunate it came to know of a higher love, but it reduced
07:50that higher love to one of personal kind, no I do not know which one is the worst tragedy,
08:01to not to know love at all or to reduce higher love to a personal point, I would think the latter is worse.