A world raised on a false foundation || Acharya Prashant, on Ashtavakra Gita (2019)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?  Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...    Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?  Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...    Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~   Video Information: Shabdyog session, 22.05.2019, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India   Context:  Even when living without any support and eager for achievement,  the stupid are still nourishing samsara,  while the wise have cut at the very root of its unhappiness.  ~Ashtavakra Gita (Chapter-18,  Verse-38)   नायमात्मा बलहीनेन लभ्यो न  च प्रमादात्‌ तपसो वाप्यलिङ्गात्‌।  एतैरुपायैर्यतते यस्तु विद्वांस्तस्यैष  आत्मा विशते ब्रह्मधाम ॥  This Self cannot be won by any who is without strength,  nor with error in the seeking,  nor by an askesis without the true mark:  but when a man of knowledge strives by these means   his self enters into Brahman, his abiding place.  ~Mundaka Upanishad (Chapter-1, Section-2, Verse-4)   ~ What's the main reason you're unhappy?  ~ Why does liberation require strength?  ~ Why does the ego not reflect back to itself?  ~ How is the life of a human?  ~ What is the ego?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Acharyaji Pranam, Ashtavakra Gita, Chapter 18, Verse 38.

00:15Even when living without any support and eager for achievement, the stupid are still nourishing

00:24samsara while the wise have cut at the very root of its unhappiness.

00:33Dear Acharyaji Pranam, Is the root here the ego?

00:38And if the ego is without any support, how can it still continue to nourish samsara?

00:45Even when living without any support and eager for achievement, the stupid are still nourishing

00:55samsara while the wise have cut at the very root of its unhappiness.

01:02Yes, you could say the root is the ego, Subhankar.

01:21Then you are saying, and if the ego is without any support, how can it still continue to

01:26nourish samsara?

01:29It's a very good question, please answer it.

01:43How do you manage to live?

01:56It's almost like asking, why was I shrieking in the dream?

02:06Because you were in a dream.

02:13It's only now that you can say that the dream was a dream.

02:21In the dream, you hardly took the dream as a dream.

02:29When you are with Anashtavak, when you are sending over questions to me, then you come

02:40up with the fantastic revelation that the ego is without any support.

02:48But look at your dream-like day-to-day life, there do you realize that the ego is without

02:56any real support?

02:59In your dream, all appears so real.

03:07In your everyday life, all that the ego creates appears so real.

03:19The ego itself appears to be the foundation of your world.

03:27That is why the world stands, otherwise having seen that the foundation is non-existent,

03:36your world would have collapsed.

03:39The very fact that a personal world stoutly stands erect for you, testifies that for you

03:58its foundation is not unreal.

04:02You are inhibiting that world.

04:11You are living in that building.

04:15Would you ever live in a building if you fully well knew that it has no foundation?

04:25But not only do you live in the building of your sansar, you invest a lot in it.

04:33You decorate it.

04:35In that same building is your house and your office.

04:41Would you build your house and your office in a building that has no foundation?

04:50But you have done that and if you have done that, what does it prove?

04:55That you assume that the building has a very solid foundation.

05:01So now you are saying that the ego has no support Acharyaji.

05:08But look at your actions and your decisions.

05:12They prove that you think that the ego has a lot of support.

05:19What is the ego?

05:20Please tell me.

05:22The ego is your sense of yourself.

05:30The ego is your sense of yourself because it's not you.

05:36It is your sense of yourself.

05:48You are walking along an empty street in the middle of the night.

05:53Nobody around you.

05:54Nobody to really disturb you.

05:56Nobody to talk to you.

05:57Nobody to point to you.

06:02Nobody to intercept you.

06:10Nobody to remind anything to you.

06:15And still do you see how much keeps going on in the mind?

06:23That's the ego.

06:35All might appear all right around you in your body and yet your mind might be very,

06:50very laden, very gloomy, burdened and distraught.

07:05That's the ego, your sense of yourself.

07:15It does not have any foundation.

07:18It has no reality.

07:20It is not grounded in anything objective or metaphysical.

07:28It just needlessly exists.

07:30You can walk through that empty lane even without the buzz in the head.

07:44The buzz in the head serves no real beneficial practical purpose, but it still exists.

07:55Like the buzz in the minds of many of you right now, even as I speak, does it serve

08:04any purpose?

08:09You do far better to just shut down the buzz and simply listen, but the buzz refuses to

08:17be shut down.

08:19That's the ego.

08:21It needlessly exists and makes itself feel indispensable.

08:31Without me, how would things work?

08:33As if without all the internal chaos, you cannot walk through that street.

08:43Can you or can you not?

08:46But if you ask the ego, the ego would say, how dare you dismiss me and keep walking when

08:52something so very important is pending for you.

09:00So even as you walk, you must attend to the very important matter that I am presenting

09:05to you.

09:11Walking then becomes a sideshow.

09:15The center stage is occupied by the inner buzz.

09:24Does that happen or not?

09:30That's the ego.

09:31The ego of all important matters, the ego of things momentous, the ego of heaven and

09:50hell, ego of life and death, ego of urgencies, ego of emergencies, ego that does not allow

10:08you to do one thing straight in life because it always presents you with too many things

10:19too important to not to consider.

10:27And as you slowly get lost considering those greatly important things, that which is real

10:45keeps fading away from your inner radar.

10:52All that is inconsequential becomes your life.

10:58Reality turns into a distant star to be seen, to be coveted, but never to be had.

11:10One thing that ensures that the ego continues is its great weakness.

11:24It is not the ego's strength that enables it to continue, but its great handicap.

11:34What is that handicap?

11:36The ego has no power to observe itself.

11:41The ego cannot self-reflect and that enables it to continue.

11:47The ego cannot know itself.

11:50Had it had the faculty to know itself, it would have simply collapsed.

12:01It is quite strange, but it is the blindness of the ego that helps it survive.

12:12And that is why the day the ego comes to learn about itself, it finds nowhere to hide.

12:26And therefore the ones who know the least about themselves would be the ones who would live the longest.

12:42As you grow in self-knowledge, you find that death is nearer and nearer.

13:08So bad news, Subhankar, your D-Day just came closer by a couple of years, a few more months

13:35with me and you would probably be ready to take off.

13:47Bad news.

13:48While addressing one of the answers, you said that ego continues just because it is weak

14:09and that is what urges it to continue.

14:13In one of the scriptures, I came across a sentence, where balheen or the strength has

14:23been referred to what, basically the ego itself.

14:27So how are these things linked?

14:31I said the ego is weak, it has a handicap and what is that handicap?

14:36That it cannot look at itself.

14:40That it has no capacity to self-reflect.

14:42That is what I called as the weakness.

14:45So if you have no capacity for self-knowledge, if you have no capacity to look at yourself

14:50and know who you are, then would you ever know how weak are you?

14:59So the ego, in spite of being weakless, supportless, foundationless, rootless, keeps thinking and

15:08assuming that it is strong.

15:14Actually it is, but it takes itself to be and the illusion continues because the ego

15:24cannot know itself.

15:36And hence, because it cannot know itself, hence the truth is not available to it.

15:52And then it keeps wondering, it says, the truth should not have been available only

15:56to the balheen, to the powerless one.

15:59Who am I?

16:00The powerful one.

16:01Why is the truth eluding me?

16:04You think that you are powerful, you are not.

16:08The very fact that the truth is not available to you proves that you are powerless.

16:16But then instead of admitting that you are powerless, you keep struggling with the contradiction

16:23or a supposed contradiction that in spite of being so powerful, why do I not get the truth?

16:31If you do not get the truth, that merely means that you are not powerful, happens.

16:50There was a time when re-checking of board papers used to be free, for free.

17:03But that brought in a deluge of re-examination requests, rather re-checking requests.

17:10People would not say that I did not do well, they would say there lies a contradiction,

17:21I did well, but the marks are not as per the expectations.

17:28It's another matter that 99% of the re-checking requests proved to be of no avail.

17:37There were people who would attempt 70 marks worth questions and would be surprised when

17:48they would get 72, they would say we were expecting 85.

17:55Having attempted questions worth 70 marks, they would find it highly surprising that

18:01they got only 72.

18:07So finally the board authorities realized that a fees has to be kept, the fee was kept

18:18high enough to deter some of the daydreamers.

18:27We do not look at the hard facts, we operate from the center of our assumptions.

18:37So we say my assumption has to be the truth and if the fact does not tally with my assumption

18:44then there is something wrong with the fact.

18:46Now the fact is a fact, how can there be something right or wrong with the fact?

18:50The fact is an objective reality, you cannot quarrel with it.

18:57Obviously if something within you is in disagreement with the fact, then the thing within you has

19:05to be challenged and scrutinized and changed, but we don't want to do that, that's ego.

19:14The I assumption which has no grounding in fact but still exists, could we learn to really

19:28live by facts alone, sans any spirituality?

19:48That too would lead to liberation.

19:55Just living by facts alone is in itself liberation.

20:05But we live in a dirty contradiction, a chaotic mess, sometimes respectful to the fact, sometimes

20:19siding with the assumption, never fully knowing which way to go.

Category

Transcript

Recommended