How to reclaim your happiness? || Acharya Prashant (2020)

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?...  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Video Information: 28.11.2020, Mulakat Samaroh, Greater Noida, U.P.  Context: ~ How to reclaim your happiness? ~What is meant by egolessness?  ~ How to get rid of ego?  ~ If there is no desire for fruit, for whom does one perform that action?  Music Credits: Milind Date ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00Sir, I fail to understand how can I reclaim happiness?

00:11How can I be happy when I can clearly see how my tendencies over which I have little

00:17control have taken over the better of me?

00:20How can I be happy when I can see that the time is running out and I haven't lived gracefully?

00:27How can I be happy when I know that if this continues, then my life?

00:32You ask this question while remaining unhappy.

00:35That's why you're asking how can I be happy?

00:38How will you reclaim the higher happiness if you continue to clutch the lower one?

00:45If I'm asking how do I be happy, what's my current state?

00:49I'm unhappy.

00:51So you are clutching unhappiness and then asking how do I be happy?

00:57Otherwise, why would you ask how do I be happy?

01:01For sure you are unhappy and if you are unhappy, what are you doing?

01:06If you are unhappy, what does that mean?

01:09So this is your state.

01:11This is your state.

01:13Four fingers and one thumb fiercely clutching unhappiness.

01:20And with an innocent face asking the teacher, how do I be happy?

01:28So can you please relax firstly?

01:30Now let's talk.

01:33But now there is no need to talk because the unhappiness itself is gone.

01:39How will you ever embrace higher happiness if you have already embraced four kinds of

01:47lower happiness?

01:50You imagine a person, he's already in embrace with four lowly people and he's asking how

02:00do I embrace the higher one he's standing out there?

02:04Well, he's available.

02:07Are you available?

02:10What are you in embrace with?

02:13How many of them?

02:15Four of them.

02:19These four don't come to you uninvited or unsolicited.

02:27You cooperate, withdraw that cooperation, withdraw your consent.

02:34These four will retreat out of shame.

02:43The energy their embrace has is actually just a reciprocal of the energy you put in embracing

02:58them.

02:59Have you experienced that?

03:03Somebody comes to embrace you, right?

03:07And initially it's just a formal embrace.

03:12He puts his arms around your shoulders and probably wants to be done with it.

03:23But you are in some mood, you decide to hug him tightly and if you're hugging him tightly

03:31for a while, what does he do?

03:37He reciprocates by hugging you almost equally tightly.

03:41Do not say that all these lowly ones are embracing me so tightly, how do I get rid of them?

03:48First of all, you relax your embrace.

03:52They are just reciprocating.

03:54They are in a sense your mirror images.

03:59You leave them, they'll leave you.

04:01We don't want to leave them, right?

04:03Additionally, you want to enjoy the righteous pleasure that comes with saying, oh, but I'm

04:09a victim.

04:10They are the ones who are surrounding me and dominating me.

04:14They aren't.

04:15They are just responding to the warmth in your feeling.

04:23You are so warm towards them.

04:26They are nice civilized people.

04:29How can they remain cold?

04:34Getting it?

04:35Higher happiness is not difficult to get.

04:41Probably it's more available than you can imagine.

04:45It's waiting.

04:50Don't look out for it when you are in passionate embrace with falseness.

05:00You won't find it in the way you imagine it to be.

05:07It's available but not in the shape, form, name you want it to have.

05:20It's there in a disguised way.

05:32Am I being clear?

05:35Do not ask for assurances.

05:37Do not ask for advanced guarantees.

05:39Do not say, first of all, you show me where higher happiness is.

05:44Only then will I drop the lower happiness.

05:49This kind of assurance you cannot get.

05:54Grace says you first have the faith and the guts to drop the lowly things and then see

06:04whether or not the higher comes to you.

06:07In fact, the moment you have dropped the lowly, the higher has already come to you.

06:15You don't even have to wait.

06:24Have some guts to live through uncertainty.

06:29When we see only one end of duality, we see differences.

06:36How can we practice in our daily lives to see both ends of duality at the same?

06:41Pause.

06:42The mind has a tendency to immediately conclude.

06:45Pause and ask yourself, is the thing complete as it appears to me?

06:53Is the thing complete as it appears to me right now, instantaneously?

06:59Mostly you will realize it is not.

07:02The thing is not complete.

07:03The appearance is deceptive.

07:05There is much more to the thing than appears to you.

07:17And this practice is most useful with the things that are the most appealing.

07:30Use this as often as possible in your moments of passion, attraction, revulsion, in moments

07:42of mental activity.

07:49Ask this that I am seeing, this that is coming to me, this that I am experiencing.

07:58Is this all that there is to it, or are there hidden aspects?

08:06Am I seeing everything, or you are not?

08:19Angry?

08:20Ask.

08:21Do I know everything?

08:25One appears too attractive.

08:33Do I know everything?

08:44Mind has a tendency to be lazy, and when you are lazy, you don't want to question, you

08:50just want to conclude.

09:03You are honest to the extent you want a solution.

09:06You admit that you have a problem and you want a solution.

09:10But you are unwise and arrogant when you use your problemed faculty to seek a solution

09:16for your problemed faculty.

09:20If I am unwise and can't rely on my faculty, how will I ever find a solution?

09:26First of all, stop relying on your faculty.

09:30This is the same demand for assurance that keeps bogging you down.

09:43Do not proceed by asking, how do I do this?

09:50The right way is how to not do this.

09:56But the ego loves action, right?

09:58It does not want to stop.

10:05The moment somebody is told, what you are doing is not right, what does he come up with?

10:14Then please tell me what is right.

10:17Tell me an alternative.

10:20No, you don't need an alternative, you need to stop.

10:28Just stop, that's the alternative.

10:32But won't a person act?

10:37You stop, action will come from there.

10:40An action that comes from non-action is the greatest action.

10:56Remember movie, action coming from inaction.

11:06You stop and then see how fears and energetic action sprouts from a point of relaxation.

11:26But we are scared, we don't want to stop.

11:31We feel if we'll stop, it might be too difficult to restart or if we stop, then we'll be left

11:39behind in the race.

11:45Like a cyclist, if I stop, I might fall down.

11:51Just a small, I don't know, a lot of times this question comes that the person who is

12:01telling someone, trying to help someone and telling him to stop, the question comes which

12:08means I am trusting you.

12:11So in trusting you also, you know, there is a problem.

12:20The word is try, experiment.

12:25Nothing stops you from resuming your activity if stopping fails to benefit you.

12:34Nobody is asking you to unconditionally and eternally subscribe to a viewpoint or advice.

12:50You are just being encouraged to experiment.

12:53Is that too much?

12:55And you are being encouraged to experiment because you confess that your existing ways

13:01are not working for you.

13:04What else is then left to be advised?

13:08This is the only sane advice that can be given.

13:10Try something else.

13:13You come up to me and say, I keep on moving in various directions and things don't work

13:19out for me.

13:22What is the only sane advice I can render you?

13:27Why don't you try stopping?

13:28Give it a try.

13:30Because all else you have anyway already tried.

13:34This probably is the only thing that remains.

13:36So try this as well.

13:38I think the question which comes from people is out of fear of following someone who might

13:49be a false person.

13:51You have anyway followed so many of them, right?

13:56All the directions that you have tried so far were actually tried under the influence

14:03of this or that person or force or book or something, right?

14:11So fine, even if I'm influencing you, let me influence you for a while.

14:18It's not as if you are particularly allergic to influences.

14:21Look at your life.

14:24You anyway have accepted to be influenced by all kinds of trivial and unworthy people.

14:37Give me a chance for a while.

14:46You don't have to take a lifelong subscription or something.

14:54It doesn't work for you.

14:57Try something else.

15:06And that's where the fear comes.

15:08A lot of times people think that once you have surrendered, then you don't have the

15:13choice again.

15:14See, you cannot surrender.

15:17When it comes to the word surrender, my advice is to firstly rebel.

15:26You are not available to surrender.

15:32It's like I ask you kindly surrender all your property when all your property is already

15:37mortgaged to this and that bank.

15:40What do you have to surrender?

15:42The normal, common, usual man cannot surrender because he's already mortgaged at 5000 places.

15:50You do not exist.

15:51How will you surrender?

15:54There is no you.

15:55What will you surrender?

15:56You don't have anything.

15:57What will you surrender?

15:58So I'm not asking you to surrender.

16:01I'm asking you to first of all unsurrender.

16:04Go and reclaim yourself from all the places where you have mortgaged your identity, yourself,

16:13your life.

16:17Surrender is a word applicable only to those who are first of all free to surrender.

16:23You come to me as a slave and you say, I'm surrendering to you, sir.

16:26How will you surrender to me?

16:27You are already a slave to somebody else.

16:30Can a slave surrender?

16:33First of all, you have to be free enough to surrender.

16:35Are you free enough?

16:36You will be free enough only if you firstly rebel against your false masters.

16:41So surrender first of all needs rebellion as a prerequisite.

16:53We have already surrendered to all the wrong people and places.

17:01Don't you see?

17:04Can you surrender the same thing five times?

17:10Can you mortgage the same property to five banks?

17:13Some people do that, but can you really?

17:23So again, I reiterate.

17:26I'm not at all asking you to surrender to this or that or someone and least of all to

17:35me.

17:40To us as we are, my message is of rebellion, not surrender.

17:48Only when rebellion reaches a certain maturity, do you become eligible to surrender.

17:57As we are, we are not even eligible to surrender.

18:00Gain that eligibility first of all.

18:03Acharya ji, when you say achieved fullness, what does that mean?

18:15Dropped incompleteness.

18:19Is that an absolute state?

18:22Of whom?

18:26All states belong to the incomplete one.

18:31All states are of the incomplete one.

18:38Now this incomplete one is to drop incompleteness.

18:41Now, whose will be the state?

18:47There is no state because there is no one to have that state.

18:51Therefore, truth or liberation or realization are not states at all, but that is constant.

19:06You know, you reach there and it is there.

19:09All constancy is with respect to something else that is changing.

19:16For example, we say the level of water in this tumbler is more or less constant.

19:25It is constant with respect to changing time.

19:29Otherwise, how do you ascertain constancy?

19:33Something else has to change with respect to this.

19:40So, constancy requires the existence of something else.

19:45To establish constancy of water level here, you need to have the clock up there, which

19:53means constancy is a word valid only in a dualistic paradigm.

19:59Something else has to exist.

20:00Therefore, the truth is not constant or fullness is not constant.

20:16Nothing else exists except the truth.

20:21To us, many things exist because we live in incompleteness.

20:26Therefore, constant is a word that is applicable to us, not to the truth.

20:33How will you measure the constancy of truth?

20:36From where will you bring the measuring tape?

20:40Nothing apart from the truth exists.

20:43From where will the measuring tape come?

20:45Sir, won't there be a stage, if you go by the process of elimination, won't there be

20:52a stage where there is nothing left to eliminate?

20:57Once you have crossed it.

20:58Who has crossed it?

21:01When there is nothing left.

21:07So there is nothing left, but I am still left to watch that there is nothing left.

21:12There is no coming back as well.

21:15Whose?

21:16Who will come back?

21:19Sir, will this process of elimination, can this process of elimination ever stop?

21:29You better assume no, otherwise you will have hopes.

21:38You must take upon yourself the responsibility to continue eternally on the path of elimination.

21:48It is to your benefit.

21:50The more you eliminate, the more you benefit.

21:53So why seek an end point?

21:57And if the end has to come, it will come.

22:03Acharyaji, when you say no one, it sounds like based on the previous conversation, it's

22:15just a subtler, it's not as if there is no personality or no one, it's just a subtle

22:26realization that there is still…

22:28Not even realization.

22:29Because when we say realization again, we protect somebody so that he may realize.

22:40We allow at least the realized one to continue.

22:44Therefore I am saying no one, not even the realized one.

22:48So it sounds like this as well as everything else in the Upanishad is not so much affirmative

22:56but a process of inversion.

22:58So it's, we want to get here but we don't know how, if that even exists, but we know

23:04what will not get you there.

23:07And that's the falseness, that's the conditioning, and that's something that's apparent.

23:12So by inverting it, you will eventually get…

23:16Without any insistence that you must know the truth or the end point or the reality.

23:22Yes, keep hacking down what is unreal.

23:25Without putting the condition that you must first have some idea of the truth.

23:31So it's very analytical and very logical that you're inverting what it is.

23:36Obviously, except that the courage to do this cannot come from logic.

23:42It's quite logical that this thing has to be hacked down.

23:45But the courage to proceed with the hacking comes from grace.

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