How about reading the Gita? || Acharya Prashant (2019)

Acharya Prashant

Full Video: How to identify the real master? || Acharya Prashant, on Ashtavakra Gita (2019) Link: https://youtu.be/-vx1ilLcDC4?si=18V-8dtMqjVKEkOn   Video Information: Shabdyog session, 15.05.2019, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India   Context:  ~How to identify the real master? ~Are all saints saying same thing? ~What is the objective of spirituality?  ~ Why should one read scripture, if one can learn from life itself? ~ Are reading scriptures just an acknowledgment of knowledge? ~ What is scripture? ~ Can one attain enlightenment without reading scriptures?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00How can I identify a master with my limited knowledge?

00:11How can I judge his words to be true or false?

00:14How does a patient know the doctor basics?

00:16Where are you?

00:17What are you doing?

00:26Which doctor do you thank?

00:28The most reputed one in the town or the one who is curing you?

00:37After delivering the baby, to whom does the mother go?

00:44To the great hospital in the town or to the one doctor who helped her?

00:59The great hospital is so very reputed and imposing.

01:04It's a multi-specialty hospital and it's also quite expensive.

01:08It's just that it didn't take you in.

01:10It was of no use to you.

01:12What's that great brand, the great hospital of any use to you?

01:15Have they been of use to you so far?

01:17And I ask that to everybody who is listening to me right now.

01:22Have the big ones been of use to you?

01:25If they have not been of use to you, why do you even call them big ones?

01:29How are they big if they are not useful?

01:41Now you will say, oh, instead of being spiritual, you are being polemical.

01:52Instead of being supportive, you are being disruptive.

01:58Yes, I am being disruptive.

02:07The doctor's task is to disrupt the pattern of the disease.

02:18Have some love towards yourself.

02:21How can somebody be great if he has not been able to help you?

02:39And if you'll go deeply into it, it is not even about that person.

02:48It is about your own world and the images that you have of your person, of that person.

02:53And it is against that image that I talk of.

03:03When you do not even know me well, in spite of me being with you since probably a year

03:12or more now, you obviously do not know the greats of the past.

03:17You were never with them, but still you claim that you know them.

03:23What do you know, in fact?

03:27An image.

03:28I am disrupting, therefore, not that person, but his image.

03:37The image that you carry of him is false.

03:42But you worship that image.

03:43Not only do you worship that image, you also call the image as the person.

03:51I have no intention of attacking any person because the person is anyway gone.

03:57And the person might have really done a lot of good.

04:03The person is gone, what is it that remains with you?

04:07An image, because most of us are lousy.

04:11We do not even work hard enough to know what or how the person really was.

04:18What do we carry?

04:19We carry juvenile images, moth-eaten images.

04:27And then we live by those images.

04:35We have definite images about who Shri Krishna was, about who Shri Ram was, about who Jesus

04:39was, about who this particular teacher was, about how that particular teacher was and

04:45we have ideas and stories.

04:51There are so many people who have never even touched the Gita, but they still carry images

04:57about Shri Krishna and they want to live by those images.

05:01I want to attack that image.

05:05That image is false.

05:06Go close to the Gita and then you will discover who Shri Krishna really was.

05:11The image that you are carrying is a false and useless image.

05:17It will not help you.

05:19That image is just an extension of your own ego.

05:21How will it help you?

05:36But that's how the ego is.

05:41It does not want to go to the Gita.

05:48But it wants to maintain that it loves Krishna.

05:52What kind of love is this?

05:56How many people bother to really respect the Gita and read it?

06:02Very few.

06:03Very very few.

06:06But so many people claim that they love and respect Shri Krishna.

06:11Now this is hypocrisy.

06:21I am attacking the image of gods and teachers and prophets that you carry because those

06:30images are false.

06:34Those images are false because first of all you have no originality.

06:39You have no meditativeness and all your knowledge is secondhand.

06:44Secondly, even if you were not meditative, you could have at least gone to the original

06:52scriptures.

06:53There are two ways of knowing.

06:56The best way is to know through one's own meditativeness.

07:02The next best way is to learn from the scriptures.

07:06You neither know through your own meditativeness nor are you hardworking enough to give time

07:16to the scriptures.

07:21But you still have opinions.

07:23How do you have those opinions?

07:26By listening to this and that.

07:37Either be so meditative that all the knowledge contained in the Upanishads starts arising

07:43from your own heart.

07:45That can happen or at least be honest and diligent enough to read the Upanishads.

07:54But neither are we meditative nor are we diligent.

08:02We still claim that the Upanishads are wonderful and we maintain an image of the Upanishads.

08:08How?

08:09By listening to the neighbor.

08:14The neighbor says that Upanishads are great.

08:16So they must be great and the neighbor has told a few other things about the Upanishads

08:21and that's how we carry that pretty picture.

08:24This is how the Upanishads are.

08:25I want to attack that picture.

08:28I want you to really go to the Upanishads.

08:32Either really go to the Upanishads or at least don't say that you know the Upanishads.

08:41At least don't pretend that you respect them.

08:45At least don't start randomly quoting the Upanishads.

08:53So some random story you would bring from an Upanishad and then you will try to make

08:59opinions and conclusions based on that story.

09:04Now how will you be able to derive any meaning from that story?

09:09If you have not read the scripture and no Upanishad is greatly tedious to read.

09:18They are very very precise documents and some of them indeed do contain stories.

09:26So you pick up a story from an Upanishad without knowing what that Upanishad is really about,

09:30without knowing what Vedanta is really about and then from that story you come to some

09:35conclusion.

09:36How are you coming to that conclusion?

09:37Have you worked hard enough?

09:40Is your meditativeness telling you the essence of that story?

09:44No.

09:45Secondly, have you read a few Upanishads?

09:52Have you read even that particular Upanishad from where the story is coming?

09:56No, not even that much.

09:57But you will quote that story and from that story you want to arrive to conclusions.

10:04This is disgusting.

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