How much importance will you continue giving your sickness? || Acharya Prashant (2020)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information:  Myth Demolition tour, 20.2.20, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India   Context:   ~  Is sickness obstacle to progress in spiritual path?  ~  How to overcome though of physical sickness?  ~  What is importance of healthy body in spiritual path?  ~ What is sickness?  ~ How to live truthfully?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00Pranam Acharyaji, somewhere I read in Osho's book that the body is sick, it will not help

00:15you to progress more in the spiritual path, because most of your attention will be on

00:19the body, then you will not progress like that.

00:21Is it so?

00:22It is true.

00:23So then if I am sick, then I cannot achieve freedom or…

00:29It is not absolutely true, you see.

00:32There is nobody who is absolutely sick in the body and there is nobody who is absolutely

00:40physically healthy.

00:47People are healthy in degrees.

00:53Similarly, people are sick to various extents.

00:59Now it depends on the extent of your inner resolve.

01:12How much weightage you want to give to your sickness.

01:20There might be somebody who would be perturbed by the common headache, oh I have a headache,

01:32I cannot live truthfully.

01:44Why did you miss your daily reading?

01:49Because I had a headache.

01:57And there might be someone who is very, very sick physically and yet decides not to deviate

02:16from the path of dharma.

02:19It depends on the depth of your love.

02:39In fact, physical sickness is a good way to test your resolve.

02:51Episodes of physical sickness are occasions when you can truly test how much spiritual

03:00metal you have.

03:07When all is hunky-dory, then one can develop the illusion that he is the most determined

03:27spiritual seeker.

03:34But one fractured bone and all determination vanishes.

03:52That is the reason why dharmic literature is full of unbelievable stories where people

04:04have fought holy wars carrying their severed heads in their hands.

04:15Somebody has fought for many days without a drop of water.

04:28Somebody has stood on one leg for an entire year or many years fasting and praying.

04:42All kinds of physical austerities are mentioned and they all sound so incredible, don't they?

04:58So there is this fellow who is sitting still under a tree and he is so still and he sits

05:08for so long that termites grow on all his body like termites occupy a tree.

05:24What do such stories indicate?

05:28They tell of the resolve of the spiritual seeker to not to listen to the body.

05:36I will not listen to the body.

05:39The body is a conditioned machine whose only job is to continue, continue, continue, seek

05:47pleasure, seek pleasure, seek pleasure and reproduce, reproduce, reproduce.

05:52That's what the body wants.

05:55I am not going to listen to the body so much.

06:13So when Osho says that you should have a healthy body, obviously that is preferable.

06:25You do not want to deliberately have a sick body.

06:32As far as possible, avoid sickness, good.

06:36But then sickness is inevitable, just as old age is inevitable.

06:44Sickness will come.

06:47You might have a case of coronavirus lurking somewhere around here.

06:55How will you avoid, tell me?

06:59And how much can you avoid?

07:05So sickness will strike and that's when your resolve will be tested.

07:16It's a love game, it's a love game.

07:21You need to have a heart to continue in spite of a heart attack, otherwise one episode of

07:43even a minor heart attack is enough to give up on all fancy claims towards spirituality.

07:59A little bit of physical trouble and vegetarians turn flesh eaters immediately.

08:06The doctor would say, you must have chicken soup, fine, fine, fine, yes, yes.

08:11And this fellow was a vegan since a decade and the doctor says, no, you know, chicken

08:17soup will be good for you.

08:33And it's an unfortunate situation when in the name of spirituality, people start cultivating

08:45the body.

08:50I'm referring to what yoga has come to mean today.

09:09L-shaped bodies, chiseled bodies, attractive bodies, sexy bodies.

09:31That's not yoga.

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