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Why don't Indians respect personal space? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2022)
Acharya Prashant
Follow
3/2/2024
Video Information: 04.02.22, Conversation, Greater Noida
Context:
How do Hindus feel about personal space?
Why do some people not respect personal space?
What is considered disrespectful in India?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
📚
Learning
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Does the person you are with encourage you to read?
00:06
You have to ask, what does he bring for me?
00:09
Roses or books?
00:12
If someone has a stake in making you better, that person will push you towards books.
00:17
Books are what we all need.
00:21
Another thing we had talked about and noticed was, did you feel that, I know you had mentioned
00:44
to me that if in Finland two people see each other, they try to avoid each other, they
00:52
keep physical distance and even if they met, they wouldn't ask a lot of any personal questions.
00:57
I'm just curious, what's your experience been here?
01:01
I know you said at the hotel there was something that happened.
01:06
Well, yes, in Finland in general it's considered polite to just leave people alone, keep your
01:17
distance.
01:18
Not to do this?
01:21
No, no, no.
01:24
Definitely there are certain things that are good etiquette maybe, but if you don't know
01:33
the other person, it doesn't matter.
01:35
This again comes from just taking a bit from the saints and discarding the rest.
01:47
Frankly this kind of a touch you behavior and pat you and hug you behavior, even if
01:53
I'm sweating and you two are sweating, I still want to touch you all over.
02:00
This frankly comes from a very distant point of love.
02:06
I do not want to treat you as distant, I do not want to treat you as the other, I do not
02:11
want to treat you as an alien or a foreigner or you know.
02:20
So that's why I come even physically close and I feel entitled to do so.
02:25
I can just come and slap on your, not on your face, on your back and that's considered very
02:34
jovial of me.
02:38
Frankly it is because of the heritage coming down from the saints.
02:43
Do not be so distant.
02:46
There is no need to give so much space to the ego.
02:51
Come a little closer, but then love is not about this physical kind of nearness.
03:00
Love is about first of all knowing what is right, doing it for yourself and enabling
03:06
the other to live the right way as well.
03:12
So that's called really getting close to the other.
03:16
Getting close to the other implies helping the other get close to the truth.
03:21
That is real love.
03:23
So the saints said get close to the other to enable the other to get close to the truth.
03:30
That's the complete statement coming down from let's say Vedanta.
03:35
Now what did we do?
03:36
We kept one convenient half of the sentence and happily disregarded the rest of it.
03:43
Which part of the sentence did we keep?
03:46
Get close to the other.
03:50
So this much we remember.
03:52
All over South East Asia, this is the culture.
03:58
In a crowded place, nobody would mind brushing shoulders.
04:01
If someone goes past you while brushing against any body part, the fellow does not even feel
04:13
to say sorry because it's fine.
04:19
Why are you acting so distant?
04:21
Why are you acting so special?
04:23
Can't I even touch you?
04:27
After all the saints have said that all bodies are the same.
04:29
We are just the soil we rose from.
04:33
So why are you trying to act so pricey?
04:36
What's special about your body?
04:38
I can touch it.
04:40
That's not what we explicitly say.
04:42
But in some sense that's the feeling coming down from there.
04:47
It's alright to not to treat the other as distant or alien or a separated one.
04:59
But one has to know the full thing.
05:04
If you know only half the thing, that's worse than knowing nothing at all.
05:12
So we have people who would intrude into the other's lives, the concept of personal or
05:18
private space does not exist.
05:22
People happily barge in and they can ask you such questions.
05:31
They could even ask you, well, you know, how are your things with your wife?
05:37
An elderly one can actually come and ask this.
05:41
An elderly one from, let's say, the extended family and can come and ask you.
05:45
So how are you doing in your married life?
05:48
When are you getting your daughter married?
05:55
Somebody may even ask you how much are you earning?
05:59
You are just standing somewhere and somebody can come so close to you, you can smell his
06:04
mouth.
06:06
And if you step back, that's rude.
06:14
So these are all corrupted flavors of love.
06:23
They come from the tradition of love.
06:25
India has a very strong thing about love.
06:29
An Indian may not know anything else.
06:31
There is this popular movie song from the movie Pura Bandh Pashyam, East and West.
06:39
So this popular thespian Manoj Kumar, he was the actor singing this one.
06:47
So the line says, "Kuch aur na aata ho humko, humein pyaar nivhana aata hai."
06:57
We as Indians may know nothing at all, but we know what is love.
07:06
We remain loyal, we remain steadfast.
07:14
That obviously cannot be the case.
07:16
If you know nothing at all, you will not know love either.
07:22
But somehow this thing has gone into the Indian psyche that lovers we all are.
07:33
And love means having some kind of a right over the other's life.
07:49
Yes of course, in love you do have a right over the other's life, but in what sense?
07:53
That's a question lost to India.
07:56
We don't address that question.
08:02
West knows love of the personal kind and no other love.
08:13
India was fortunate it came to know of a higher love, but it reduced that higher love to one
08:22
of personal kind.
08:24
No, I do not know which one is the worst tragedy, to not to know love at all or to reduce higher
08:36
love to a personal point.
08:42
I would think the latter is worse.
08:57
[Music]
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