Why don't Indians respect personal space? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2022)

Acharya Prashant

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

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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