#AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita #survival #human #work
Video Information: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
Title : How to live, and not just survive? || Acharya Prashant, at St. Xavier's, Mumbai (2022)
Description : In this profound discourse, Acharya Prashant explores the essence of life, asking, ""How can we truly live, and not just exist?"" He challenges the common pursuit of physical sustenance and pleasure, urging us to rise above this limited existence. Life, he explains, is not about endlessly servicing the body and mind, but about living with purpose and freedom.
Acharya Prashant delves into the concept of true freedom—freedom not only from external forces but from our internal conditioning and desires. He cautions against becoming slaves to our ego, possessions, and society's definitions of success, which trap us in a cycle of unfulfillment. Instead, he advocates for detachment from all dependencies, leading to a life that is truly free and meaningful.
Music Credits: Milind Date
Video Information: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
Title : How to live, and not just survive? || Acharya Prashant, at St. Xavier's, Mumbai (2022)
Description : In this profound discourse, Acharya Prashant explores the essence of life, asking, ""How can we truly live, and not just exist?"" He challenges the common pursuit of physical sustenance and pleasure, urging us to rise above this limited existence. Life, he explains, is not about endlessly servicing the body and mind, but about living with purpose and freedom.
Acharya Prashant delves into the concept of true freedom—freedom not only from external forces but from our internal conditioning and desires. He cautions against becoming slaves to our ego, possessions, and society's definitions of success, which trap us in a cycle of unfulfillment. Instead, he advocates for detachment from all dependencies, leading to a life that is truly free and meaningful.
Music Credits: Milind Date
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Good afternoon sir, my name is Ushna Sheikh and I am a student of FIBSC here in this college.
00:10So I see all the people around me living a cycle, like a life cycle, who are just working
00:17hard and struggling to survive in the society.
00:21So my question is how to actually live and not just survive.
00:25So like when I am on my death bed, I know that my life was worthy enough.
00:30Girl, you are asking for just too much.
00:40This is what the best and the greatest among us in this human race strove for.
00:55And struggled all their life.
00:58So that's what you are asking for.
01:00I am really glad, wonderful, sit.
01:05So how to live and not just survive, wow.
01:14What does it mean to just survive?
01:22It means to exist for the sake of the body.
01:28I am just trying to put it in certain technical terms for the sake of clarity.
01:36If most of your waking time is spent in pursuit of physical sustenance or physical pleasure,
01:49then you are just surviving.
01:55Six to eight hours we sleep, another two hours are spent taking care of the body.
02:04That makes it 8 to 10.
02:08You are left with 14 hours, 16 hours.
02:10Of these 14, 16 hours, three hours are spent commuting, if you are in Bombay.
02:20So you are left with what, 10, 12 something.
02:23Of these 10, 12 hours, if you are spending 80, 90% just taking care of your livelihood
02:31or trying to maximize your physical pleasures, then you are just surviving.
02:41What's common between just striving for livelihood and maximizing physical pleasures?
02:48Livelihood is the thing that you enter into so that you can maintain your physical sustenance.
02:59So physicality is the common link.
03:04You ask someone, why do you work so much?
03:06Is there joy in your work?
03:10Is it a mission you are working for?
03:13Do you want to bring about a substantial change within you or in the world?
03:18And if the answer is no, they say, no, we work so that we can feed ourselves, our family,
03:25take care of needs and also provide for our desires and ambitions, then that's called
03:30as mere survival, just survival.
03:37Most of my effort goes towards taking care of my stomach, my body, my clothes, my accommodation
03:48and the remaining part, the excess amount that I earn.
03:52I spend that to take care of my desires, my pleasures.
03:58This is mere survival.
03:59Are you getting it?
04:02A fellow earns, let's say, 100 rupees a month.
04:0760 to 70 is spent in what he calls as fixed expenses.
04:18Of the remaining amount, the fellow spends rupees 20 in pleasing himself.
04:28And rupees 10 he keeps in the bank for future use.
04:32This is mere survival.
04:35And this must have begun to sound horrible to you because this is how 99% of humanity
04:43lives, merely for survival, just for survival.
04:52What is real life then?
04:57Real life is when the body, the physicality is not the end but the means.
05:07To live to feed the body is much the same as buying a car to keep refueling it.
05:22What does the car do?
05:25It goes from the home to the fuel station and comes back to the home.
05:33The car moves so that the car can be fueled.
05:40The fellow goes to office so that his stomach can be fueled.
05:45He goes to office so that he can enough for his stomach, both the stomachs, the physical
05:52stomach and the mental stomach.
05:56Why does the fellow go to his office?
05:58So that the stomach can be fueled is much the same as buying a car so that it can be
06:05taken to the petrol pump to fuel it.
06:07The car goes nowhere else.
06:09It goes only till the petrol pump or it goes till the garage so that it can be serviced.
06:17What's the point in buying and maintaining such a car?
06:23It takes you nowhere.
06:25There is no destination it can bring to you.
06:28Similarly, what is the point in having this body if the entire life has to be spent just
06:35servicing this body?
06:38And by body, I mean both, the physical body and the mental body just as the stomach is
06:44both, the physical stomach and the mental stomach.
06:47And the mental stomach, we all know, is hungrier than the physical stomach.
06:53Are you getting it?
06:56What is the point in having the body?
06:58By body, I mean the body and the mind.
07:01If the entire life you are working just to feed the body and the mind, how does the body
07:08demand to be fed?
07:10Through food, through clothes and through shelter.
07:13These are the three things that the body wants.
07:17How does the mind demand to be fed?
07:19Infinite appetite, unending desires.
07:26Both of these keep demanding, please feed us, please feed us.
07:30The body says, give me a better house, give me better clothes.
07:35The mind says, oh, that's what I want to have.
07:38That next thing remains to be achieved.
07:40I must have that.
07:42And life is spent just servicing the body-mind complex.
07:49It's been 10 years since you bought that car and it has never taken you anywhere else.
07:56And there is so much in the world, great and beautiful, that you must go to.
08:03But your car takes you nowhere because all your time you are just servicing the car.
08:09The car is of no use to you.
08:12Instead you are being used by the car.
08:16You do not own the car, the car owns you.
08:18You are a slave to the car.
08:21Similarly we are mostly slaves to our car.
08:25This is our car.
08:26You have been gifted with this so that you can use this to reach somewhere in life.
08:33Instead we act as slaves of the body, don't we usually?
08:37The body decides what we will do.
08:39And body means body-mind.
08:41The body and the mind decide what you ought to do.
08:44And the mind is nothing but an outgrowth of the body.
08:50Our desires, our thoughts, they arise from our physicality, don't they?
08:55Your hormones shift a little and your mood shifts, does that not happen?
09:03So what you call as your mental emotions are nothing but physical things in motion.
09:13So of what use is life then if all you have to look for is physical mental security and
09:22fulfillment of blind desires?
09:26You live when there is something beyond physicality to live for.
09:33You have that.
09:34As young people this question should be very very important to you.
09:39I do not know whether we will ever meet again.
09:43I do not know whether my words will mean anything to anybody at all.
09:49But if even one person here finds some significance in what is being said right now, the very
09:58center of life within will experience a change.
10:07I meet 25 and 35 year olds now and they say that it's probably too late.
10:16Why couldn't we meet you when we were in college?
10:22And every day there are hundreds and thousands of messages, emails, sir, what you are saying
10:30is perfectly right but it's just too late for me now.
10:35I'm 30.
10:37Fortunately you are not yet 30.
10:43So you are just in the right place to decide what your life is for.
10:49For missing the stomach and the mind or for reaching a lovely destination.
11:00Life is not about eating, breathing, sleeping, walking.
11:09You cannot even be called as living if you just eat, breathe, sleep, walk, take a bath
11:16and gossip.
11:19One cannot even be called alive.
11:21You know technology is progressing at such a rapid rate.
11:27We actually have robots today that can do most of what a normal human being does.
11:37Robots can even emote because emotions are just chemical.
11:42Therefore robots too can be made to emote.
11:47What's the problem in having a chemical arrangement that generates emotions?
11:52No issues.
11:58Is there something in life beyond what a robot can do?
12:03You say, you know, I'm not dead, I'm alive, why?
12:06You see, because I walk.
12:09Even a robot can walk.
12:10I speak, even a robot can speak.
12:12I see, even a robot can see.
12:21I love, but that's simply chemical attraction.
12:24Even a robot can be made to experience that.
12:27Just Google and you will find robots falling in love.
12:31They have been programmed to fall in love, just as we have been physically programmed
12:35to fall in love.
12:37There is no consciousness in our love.
12:40It's just material attraction and repulsion, like iron pieces to a magnet.
12:47Are you getting it?
12:53Can there be something in life beyond robotic?
13:02If we have a robot sitting here, it will register everything that I'm saying.
13:09In fact, using machine learning, using artificial intelligence, the robot will actually be able
13:20to prepare a very intelligent map of what has been said.
13:27It will be able to tell how one part of my response to one question mapped perfectly
13:34with another seemingly different part of response to a different question.
13:40You will find it difficult to do.
13:41The robot will do it better than you can.
13:45In some sense, if the robot sits here, it's gathering my words better than you can.
13:53What is it then about a human being that qualifies it, him or her, to be called alive?
14:04What is that?
14:06What is that?
14:07And that's something we need to have.
14:15You're waiting for me to give the answer?
14:18That's robotic.
14:24A robot can never exceed its programming.
14:29A robot can never go beyond its programming.
14:33One thousand years from now, when you will have unimaginably fast and smart supercomputers,
14:44the supercomputers of today will appear like an abacus in front of them.
14:51That kind of computing ability you will have a thousand years is too much, within 50 years.
14:58That's the rate at which computer science is progressing.
15:02Even then, no computer will ever be able to go beyond what it has been created for.
15:12No machine, therefore, can ever be free.
15:17And that's the only characteristic of living.
15:22Can there be freedom?
15:24No machine is free.
15:26All machines are operated by some operator outside of them.
15:35They are designed by a designer outside of them.
15:40They are programmed by a programmer outside of them.
15:44They therefore cannot be free.
15:46Can you be free?
15:48And if you can be free, then you have lived, otherwise you have just existed and survived.
15:56Like a piece of flesh, bacteria, fungi, insects.
16:04The whole lot of animals, they all exist, don't they?
16:10And there is nothing wrong in their existence because they are not even supposed to be free.
16:16They don't even want to be free.
16:18But human beings, if we are not free, something within us keeps weeping, does it not?
16:28You can very coolly have dogs as pets and kitten.
16:36And if you feed them well and if you treat them well, they'll never go away.
16:42Even if you push them out of your house, you'll find them returning, right?
16:50And you take them out for a walk.
16:57And there's a collar around their neck.
16:59But no human being can ever be satisfied with such an arrangement, provided he deserves
17:06to be called human.
17:09No human being will ever say that if I get fed properly and if I'm given enough money
17:17and if I'm given a cozy place to live in and a nice bed to sleep in, I'm ready to live
17:25like a dog in your house.
17:26No human being will say that because human beings are constituted to value freedom more
17:34than anything else.
17:39The dog will happily survive in its bondages.
17:45Man cannot happily survive.
17:48We know of people who would rather die than be enslaved, right?
17:55I hope we all were like that.
18:00I prefer death over slavery or bondages.
18:04That's the defining and exclusive characteristic of a truly alive human being.
18:12Freedom.
18:13Freedom from everything.
18:15Freedom from your external masters and more importantly, freedom from your inner conditioning.
18:21Inwardly, we are badly conditioned.
18:26Each strand of your hair, every particular cell in the body is simply conditioned.
18:36There's nothing new in life therefore.
18:38That which you are doing, that which you are experiencing, your emotions, your thoughts,
18:42your instincts, your reactions, they are all pre-scripted in a sense.
18:51And on top of that script, there is another script imposed on you by the society.
18:58First of all, we are all born conditioned and then the social influences from us, coming
19:06from family and the media and the college and the religious stream we belong to, they
19:17all burden us even more.
19:22And we become thoroughly mechanical.
19:26The fellow loses all sense of freedom.
19:30What's scary is most of us lose even love for freedom.
19:38We resign, we surrender, we agree to live like slaves.
19:46We start calling the master's orders as our own thoughts and desires.
19:55Are your desires your own?
19:57Are your targets your own?
19:59No, they are mostly coming from a master outside, who's dictating terms to us.
20:10Sometimes we know the master, most of the times we do not even know that the stuff we
20:14are chasing is actually of no use to us.
20:23Some blind force has taught us to respect something, to chase something, to value something,
20:29to live for something and we are blindly obeying the commands.
20:38Like a clerk receiving dictation from an officer.
20:47Like a master commanding the dog to fetch the newspaper.
20:58Like a programmer asking the machine to fetch a certain result.
21:08That's how most of us live.
21:11Can you be free from all this?
21:14Can you see that your existence is threatened from all sides by blind forces that are violent
21:29and senseless and meaningless?
21:33And because they are blind and senseless, they want to capture others' lives.
21:44One mark of ignorance is that it suffers.
21:49When you are ignorant within, you suffer.
21:52And when you suffer within, you know what you become?
21:55You become violent so that you can make others suffer.
22:02When the society in general is ignorant, it suffers and it makes everybody suffer.
22:16Young people must be cautious.
22:21Suffering bondages should not be labelled as responsibilities, as virtues, as sanctimonious
22:40stuff.
22:45You must question all the definitions that have been fed to you.
22:53You must figure out what is really sacred in life.
22:58You must figure out what is important, what is not, on your own.
23:03And then you are free or at least are walking towards freedom.
23:11I do not know whether absolute freedom at all is possible.
23:14I began my response by saying that you are asking for too much.
23:19I do not know whether in your lifetime you will ever be able to come to something called
23:26as absolute freedom.
23:28But life is made worth living by striving for freedom at all costs and all times, irrespective
23:36of how lucrative bondages appear, reject them.
23:45It does not matter that you are wearing respectable chains, no, even if your fetters are made
23:58of gold, just drop them.
24:09Are you getting it?
24:11That's what a robo cannot do.
24:17If I ask a robo, are you getting it?
24:21It will just look into the code and database to figure out what to say when somebody asks,
24:27are you getting it?
24:28And if it finds nothing there, error or bad input, that's how machines respond.
24:42So are you getting it?
24:52No robo can ever understand what has just been said.
24:56It can comprehend but not understand.
25:01Not today, not hundred years from today.
25:06Do you understand the difference between comprehension and understanding?
25:14To understand is to live it.
25:18When you understand freedom, then you drop your bondages and you start living freedom.
25:28Comprehension means, oh, I know what those words imply.
25:33So if you can know my language, if you can turn active voice into passive voice, if you
25:40can translate what I said from English to German or to Hindi, you have comprehended.
25:46But comprehension means nothing.
25:50Understanding means living.
25:53Comprehension simply means intellectual translation.
25:58Intellectual translation never helps anybody.
26:00There are so many people who know so much intellectually, it doesn't change their lives.
26:07But to understand is to commit to what you have known to be true.
26:14Now that I have understood, I'm living it.
26:17And that's what a machine cannot do.
26:20If I speak of freedom to a robo, it cannot drop its programming.
26:28A thousand times I'll speak of freedom to a robo or to a computer, it will still remain
26:34programmed.
26:35And that's how human beings are human beings.
26:39It is possible for you to go beyond your programming.
26:44It is possible for you to be free.
26:46It is possible for you to understand.
26:52Do you choose to understand?
26:55That's an unfortunate ability bestowed on us, choice.
27:01Why unfortunate?
27:02Because typically we choose the wrong option.
27:10Freedom is a choice.
27:13Bondages too are a choice.
27:1699 times of 100, we make the wrong choice.
27:23The robo, well, it cannot choose at all.
27:26It is simply programmed.
27:27And even if it will choose, the choice will come from the programming.
27:32True.
27:36Can we make the right choice?
27:38We'll have to live rightly then.
27:43Right choice is not just about uttering something from the mouth or nodding your head.
27:49It's about beginning to live in a free way, from the center of freedom.
27:58Possible?
28:02First of all, beautiful or not?
28:06Yes.
28:07When you'll find it beautiful, then you'll make it possible.
28:13There must be beauty in a young person's life.
28:17If there is no beauty, then there is no inspiration.
28:24Why will you move if there is ugliness all around?
28:28From ugliness of one kind who wants to strive to reach ugliness of another kind, somewhere
28:34you must see greatness and brightness and beauty.
28:39And then you are inspired and then you move.
28:42And that's when you can fight your slavery.
28:47And fighting requires a lot of energy.
28:55Be strong.
28:56Okay, sir.
28:57I am Manojendra Chowdhury, I am in the Department of Physics.
29:02You see, just as a corollary to what you just said, I want to ask, a robot doesn't have
29:09ego.
29:11So now what is the intersection between the urge to be towards freedom and your ego?
29:18You could say, the robo does have an ego planted into it by its designer.
29:32Therefore, the ego of the robo is totally in bondage and therefore choiceless.
29:42You could either say the robo has no ego and that would be perfectly correct.
29:45Or you could say the robo has an ego, a sense of I.
29:50What is ego?
29:51A sense of I.
29:54The robo has an ego that cannot choose.
29:58We utter I, we utter I exist, I am.
30:05And this I am-ness could either be robotic or real.
30:12It is robotic when your I am-ness is dependent on others.
30:20And if you feel threatened that if the other disappears or withdraws, the I am-ness itself
30:29will disappear.
30:32That's the slave ego.
30:34For example, I am rich.
30:39What is the ego?
30:40The I am thing is the ego.
30:44And if the ego says I am rich, and if the riches vanish for some reason, some reason,
30:50a stock market crash, let's say, the fellow says, oh my God, I am gone.
30:57Because who was I?
30:58The rich one.
30:59And the riches have gone, so I am dead.
31:02I am rich.
31:03Now strike out the word rich.
31:06What remains?
31:07Nothing.
31:08That's false ego.
31:13But most of us choose to live in this kind of false and dependent ego.
31:21Real ego is self-dependent, free.
31:28It does not find it necessary to identify itself with something.
31:35It does not experience a kind of vacuum that it must compulsorily fill up with something,
31:46anything, some trash.
31:51Many of us, for example, might be finding it difficult to just sit silently and listen.
31:58Because in the moment of silence, you have to say I am.
32:02In fact, you don't even say I am, there is just silence.
32:06And that's a threat to the ego, because the ego must say something, I am X, I am Y.
32:10So the ego chooses to say I am gossiping.
32:14Now gossip makes the ego feel alive, oh I exist, otherwise there is the danger of inner
32:21death.
32:22Obviously a false death.
32:25No real danger, actually.
32:28Do you get this?
32:31The way we are, the way we are born, we are born with the sense of I am.
32:40It is this sense of I am that works all life to gain fulfillment.
32:49Being unfulfilled is our condition right since birth.
32:56But we choose because of ignorance, fulfillment from the wrong kind, not even wrong, useless
33:05kind of sources.
33:08We choose to be associated with something that will fail in delivering fulfillment.
33:17So I am rich or I am traveling, I am a tourist, I am a husband, I am a lover, I am educated,
33:24I am intelligent, I am Hindu, I am Muslim, I am male, I am female, I am smart.
33:35We want at all moments to associate ourselves with a certain identity in the hope that the
33:45association will bring fulfillment.
33:48That association does not bring fulfillment because it is an exercise in the wrong direction.
33:53We require not association, but actually dissociation.
33:58That is called freedom.
34:02Freedom is to dissociate yourself from all your dependencies.
34:07Would you remember this?
34:09Freedom is to dissociate yourself from your dependencies, whereas the ego is constantly
34:16clamoring for more and more dependencies.
34:21Even the things that you call as your assets actually become your dependencies.
34:27For example, I own a Rolls Royce.
34:34In language, I seem to be implying that I am the master of the car.
34:40But tell me, one day the Rolls Royce isn't visible, something has happened and you need
34:45to go from place A to place B and all that is available is a humble hero splendor.
34:55What will happen to you?
34:58Think of your condition.
35:00Now who is the master and who is the slave?
35:04Who is the master?
35:05Were you the owner of the car?
35:07No.
35:08The car became so important to you, you got dependent and now when the car is not there,
35:12the car is not suffering, you are suffering.
35:14So who is the master?
35:16The car is the master.
35:19The ego chooses to associate, associate, achieve, obtain, accomplish, thinking that all these
35:25associations will give it fulfillment.
35:28No, they don't.
35:31Freedom comes from dissociation and dissociation does not mean that you throw your Rolls Royce
35:40away.
35:42Freedom simply means that internally you are not dependent on the car for your identity.
35:49The car is there if it needs to be.
35:54I don't think mostly it needs to be there, Rolls Royce kind of thing.
36:00But even if it is there, it is at your periphery, mental periphery.
36:06It does not become so important to you that you keep it at the center of your life.
36:13Similarly with persons.
36:16You start idolizing someone.
36:20You call someone as your role model and that person becomes so important to you or because
36:30I am talking to young people.
36:31You fall in love and that person becomes your entire universe.
36:38If not the entire universe, at least the center of your universe.
36:44That's the way of the ego, to depend, to constantly experience a hollow and look towards the world
36:53to somehow fill up that hollow.
36:56Can this fill up my hollow?
36:57I want to attain this.
36:58So I will work very hard to earn money to have this, hoping that this will reduce my
37:04feeling of being unfulfilled.
37:09Rolls Royce, a higher degree, a better paying job, a bigger house, a new boyfriend, all
37:20these are in the same category.
37:22The ego is using them to somehow get rid of its state of incompleteness.
37:30But these efforts do not succeed.
37:34What the ego really wants is freedom, not association.
37:39More associations will not make you feel better.
37:46Freedom from associations is what makes you come alive.
37:52And freedom from associations does not mean being a loner.
37:56It simply means not being a slave.
38:01Can't you be in a relationship without being a slave?
38:06Can't there be a healthy and free relationship?
38:09Or do you really have to become somebody's pet dog for the relationship to exist?
38:20So that's the choice that you have.
38:22Do you want to live in freedom or do you want to chase associations, assets, accomplishments
38:29all your life?
38:31The more you chase, the more you will be disappointed and suffer.
38:41Is this making sense or is it just too much and too fast?
38:52Not sure.
38:55I hope this at least gives you a start.
38:59You are young, you have a long way to go and you have time.