Career Crossroads: Finding the Right Path Forward || Acharya Prashant (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00A lot of students that I talk to, it is the fear of the society, it is the fear of the

00:07unknown, it is the fear of the expectations that they are carrying that pushes them to

00:13probably become an engineer.

00:14And then they figure out that probably this is not something that I wanted to be.

00:20And that is a reality for a lot of individuals and not just in engineers.

00:26Fear is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself.

00:32Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for 10 years to take

00:36that step to get married.

00:40Where does this fear come from?

00:42Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge.

00:48You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity to something that is unreliable,

01:06I will have to be afraid.

01:13It's like putting my heart on this table.

01:19Now how can I live in security?

01:22The heart is out there on the table.

01:25Anybody can take it away.

01:26Anything can happen to it.

01:27Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own.

01:33My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control.

01:41Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear.

01:47My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account.

01:53I will be afraid.

01:56That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen.

02:02My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance.

02:09I very well know time will take it away.

02:12I will be afraid.

02:14Who am I?

02:15I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society.

02:20Oh, I will be so afraid, so afraid.

02:23You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life.

02:31Because their heart is out there in the hands of strangers.

02:37Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people.

02:44So the image can get distorted or can disappear any moment.

02:51Just imagine how afraid they would be all the time.

02:55That's with the ego.

02:56Because the ego, I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness.

03:01The ego doesn't know how to compete itself.

03:03It just associates itself to anything possible.

03:10And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable.

03:15They belong to the world and the world can take them away.

03:19They belong to time.

03:21They came with time and with time those things will disappear.

03:24And you have tied your identity to those things.

03:27Now how can you rest in peace?

03:30Just fear.

03:32If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid.

03:36My identity is linked to my husband's identity.

03:40Now the husband has two legs and the husband has a mind, a brain of his own.

03:48If your identity comes from your husband's name, as happens in India at least, you would

03:55always be afraid as a wife.

03:58The husband can change his mind any day.

04:01You'd always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary and the other eye on his

04:10email and mobile phone.

04:13What's he getting into?

04:15Who's texting him?

04:17Why is he on the phone so late in the night?

04:22Because you are afraid.

04:23If the husband goes away, what happens to you?

04:25Your very existence depends on the husband.

04:29That's fear.

04:30When you operate from the ego center and make something very, very important for yourself

04:36and that something belongs to the world, it can go away any time.

04:41You are afraid.

04:43And in that fear, there can never be love.

04:48Never be love.

04:49If you are afraid of losing something, you'll be very violent towards it.

04:55Somebody lets his money go and have a walk down the road.

05:04What do you do?

05:05You lock up your money.

05:07That's violence.

05:08When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up.

05:15You don't want it to have freedom.

05:16And that's violence.

05:19So love and fear just cannot go together.

05:22If you are dependent on something or somebody, you would be afraid.

05:27And that dependence cannot be called as love.

05:31And that's a confusion we often get into.

05:34Just because you depend on somebody or somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it

05:38is love.

05:39It is not.

05:40Probably the way the political parties think that people love them, but it actually is

05:48fear.

05:50Love is a very rare quantity and rarer in politics.

06:00So if I'm interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly?

06:10Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can be either 0 or 1?

06:16The question has to go into the very nature of interest.

06:22Aren't we interested in cricket?

06:27Aren't we interested in seeing songs in movies?

06:38Practically everybody in India is interested in cricket.

06:41Nobody in Brazil is.

06:43And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey.

06:46So that's how flimsy the whole thing about interest is.

06:52In India, if you do not get a movie with songs, you say I am disinterested, the movie would

06:57bomb.

07:00In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what's going on?

07:05Occasionally you do have an old song, some, some, but typically there is no song.

07:10So that's the nature of interest.

07:13It is never something of the heart.

07:17Love and interest are not the same thing.

07:19Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random

07:24chance, by circumstances and all these.

07:28So that's how your interests come to you.

07:31So if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, just two

07:39years back, I was interested in something else.

07:43And two years before that, I was interested in that.

07:45And when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot.

07:51What happened to all those interests?

07:53Today I smile at those things and just shrug them off and I don't want to be a fighter

07:57pilot.

07:58I want to be, what do you want to be today?

07:59Oh, I want to be an investment banker.

08:01What happened to the fighter pilot?

08:03You were so interested in that.

08:08But how do you know that tomorrow you will not be looking at this eye banker just the

08:16way today you are looking at the fighter pilot?

08:21The self of five years old appears so naive and immature when you are 25.

08:32How do you know that at 35, you will not look back at this 25 year old self and say, what

08:37the hell?

08:38How was I taking this fellow so seriously?

08:42So interest is something that you must always look at with healthy contempt.

08:50Interest mind you, can even be induced in you.

08:55Interest can be aroused in you.

08:56That's what the entire advertising industry is about.

08:59They can make you feel interested in stuff that is intrinsically worthless to you.

09:04So of what value is this thing called interest?

09:08But then in today's world, we place so much premium upon this word interest, do what interests

09:14you this that, whereas it's wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should

09:20ever go after.

09:22Then people come up and say, no, then should we do things that we are not interested in?

09:27No.

09:28Figure out what you can love.

09:31Figure out what you can love.

09:33And you will never be able to transcend into love if you remain stuck with interests.

09:40Wow.

09:42Again, it might sound repetitive.

09:51How do I find love?

09:53You can never find love.

09:55You can only rid yourself all that which blocks love.

10:03All that which is just needlessly and coincidentally present in your mental space.

10:11Love is like an honored guest.

10:15They say love arrives only when the right space has been prepared and maintained for

10:22it.

10:23Right and clean and honored space.

10:27You prepare that space and you leave that space empty.

10:31And they say, then love arrives.

10:34You cannot predict in what way, in what form love would arrive.

10:40But you can do your homework and your homework is to clear the clutter.

10:45You cannot have garbage all over your place and yet wish for that esteemed guest to honor

10:56your insides with his presence.

10:59He won't come.

11:02So we keep looking for love all our lives and then we complain, no, there is no love,

11:07there is no love.

11:08There is no love because you haven't prepared the right space for it.

11:12Love is not something reclusive.

11:16Love is not something exceptional either.

11:20And love is not something that is meant for just a holy few.

11:26If you are human, love is a possibility.

11:32But if you are stuck with your interests, as we said, interests and greed and your ignorance

11:42and your delusions and all your nonsense, where is the space for love?

11:48And love is obviously not something about the man-woman relationship.

11:52Obviously we are not talking in that context.

11:55Love is something you can give your life to.

11:58The work that I do, that's my love.

12:02I'm not there to consume it.

12:04I can finish myself off for that.

12:10You spoke about clutter and that probably is the worst thing possible for the generation

12:15of today.

12:17And I remember we started this conversation with your journey and how it was an assorted

12:25set of knowledge that was present in front of you.

12:29Right now what we are dealing with is a scattered set of knowledge that we are trying really

12:35hard to make sense of.

12:37And that probably is resulting in a lot of clutter because we are seeing certain people,

12:42we are tracking their lives, we are feeling that this is what I can be or I want to be

12:49or I will be.

12:52Seeing people and following their lives is not always something harmful.

12:59It's just that you need to have the right people to look up to.

13:02Again, just like the right books.

13:05The right books, obviously.

13:07All these people masquerading as influencers and biggies today, most of them are intrinsically

13:14very worthless.

13:16It's a very hopeless lot that our youngsters are looking up to.

13:20So that's the problem.

13:21Somebody has lots of money.

13:23Somebody is heading a tech firm.

13:26Somebody is all over the social media.

13:30Somebody is politically very dominant and he becomes a role model.

13:34That fellow is garbage.

13:38And you have so much in human history to be inspired from.

13:42Why not go and read about the really worthy people?

13:46Why must you be limited to all these flash in the pans?

13:51They are today, they'll disappear tomorrow.

13:54They don't mean a thing.

13:56It's just that when that spectacle is in front of you, it captivates your senses.

14:07And you fall for it.

14:10That has to be avoided.

14:11And we cannot entirely blame the youngsters for it.

14:16The guidance, the protection has to come from those who pose as guardians and teachers

14:27in the society.

14:30Otherwise, extremely unworthy people will become role models.

14:35They have become.

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