Want more pleasure? || Acharya Prashant, with IIT Kharagpur (2022)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information:  IIT Kharagpur, 04.02.2022, Greater Noida, India  Context: ~ What are humiliation and insult? ~ How does suffering help the one? ~ How to realize one's true strength? ~ What is the meaning of real pleasure? ~ How should one can get real pleasure?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~  #emotions  #acharyaprashant

Transcript

00:00I am a first-year undergraduate student from the Electrical Engineering Department at IIT

00:17Kharagpur.

00:18So, my question is that the greed of getting more and more pleasure is getting increased

00:24with the time.

00:25And finally, I am finding myself got stuck into a vicious circle of the getting more

00:34and more pleasure.

00:35So, sir, what are the ways that you will suggest me to get out of it?

00:45Get some real pleasure.

00:49Get some real pleasure.

00:51Real pleasure has quality to it.

00:58And when you have that quality, then your hunger for quantity diminishes.

01:08If you keep looking for more and more pleasure, chances are you are not getting pleasure anywhere.

01:17Had you been getting it somewhere, you would have stopped at that point, right?

01:22Because you don't get it anywhere, that's why you want it everywhere.

01:30So look for the right place where real pleasure can be had.

01:40For that you will have to first of all test whether all these places that promise pleasure

01:46to you are of any avail.

01:53They promise, they attract, they also extract a lot, but do they really deliver?

02:11And maintain the faith that the real thing is not inaccessible.

02:24You are born to achieve the real thing and you can get it, but not if you remain attracted

02:32to, engaged with all the little and false stuff.

02:39Then the little things will keep you forever away from the real deal.

02:49Yes, sir, actually my perspective of asking this question is that in the society, like

03:01a mentality has been induced that just crack this exam and you will get the pleasure after

03:07that.

03:08You will live a life in pleasure after that.

03:13Like if anyone is aspiring to crack UPSC, then he is taught that just crack this exam

03:20after that, you will have this kind of caste, this kind of workers around you and you will

03:26get pleasure by that.

03:29So, sir, in the meanwhile, we actually do not focus on that, after that we will also

03:38have to work hard, means that we do not develop the mentality that what after that we have

03:45to do, actually.

03:46So, sir, what you will suggest?

03:49Mostly people who write the JEE thinking that after the JEE there would only be unmitigated

04:02pleasure or who write the UPSC thinking that once you get your rank and are allotted a

04:09cadre, all you will have is power, wealth, privilege and servants and all the things

04:18that you talked of.

04:20Mostly these people anyway do not get to enter the IITs or the civil services, with

04:32this kind of motivation anyway success is hard to come by.

04:40Even if you do get success, hoping for these things, very soon you discover that these

04:46things are nowhere on offer.

04:50You are just being made a fool of by making to salivate after them.

05:00Just clearing the JEE is no guarantee even of material success.

05:08The last time I checked, a fair number of students, in fact a fair proportion of students

05:15were remaining unplaced even from the IITs.

05:22The scenario might have changed now, I have not been keeping an eye since the last few

05:27years but over a long period of time this was the story.

05:35From every IIT a fair number of students were not able to secure even in the basic

05:41placements and the bulk of the jobs that you get from the IITs are pretty ordinary, except

05:50for maybe 2% or 5% or 8% of the students, the job applicants, others get fairly ordinary

06:06kind of jobs, translating into fairly ordinary pleasures.

06:13Same is the case with civil services as well.

06:18You can dream of the huge Kothi and such things only if you have had no peek, not even a sneak

06:30peek into the insides of how the bureaucracy works and how the bureaucrat lives.

06:41One way to just get rid of these imaginary pleasures is by checking their reality.

06:53Why not speak to your seniors?

06:55Why not speak to the alumni, let's say who passed out 10 years back?

07:05Why not do a reality check?

07:08Actually at that time we had not any seniors around us, so that's why we were used to just

07:18think about what people used to tell us about the places.

07:25How is it so difficult, son?

07:28You are living in the information age, even social media is good enough to tell you the reality.

07:36Sir, actually our coaching teachers also used to tell these kind of things.

07:42They will tell what they have to, they have their own self-interest to cater, but what

07:50prevents you from doing a basic search on the web or approaching a few people and straight

07:56away talking to them?

07:58You want to get into something for the rest of your life without even concretely knowing

08:07what lies in store for you.

08:11Sir, finally one thing that sir, this was just with the perspective of students, let's

08:22take example of a person who has a car that is enough to provide him the required safety,

08:32but he wants more and more cars for him to just show off or to get some pleasure out

08:40of it because he is used to getting good brands of cars to just show off.

08:50So, what are your views about that?

08:54About what?

08:55Cars?

08:56No sir, that what should be done so that person should be taken out of that type of mentality.

09:08There has to be a purpose in life, nothing else.

09:11I too have loved cars since my childhood, but then there is something I have loved…

09:18to an extent I agree that it is good.

09:20There is something else that I have loved more than cars, that's all.

09:25We all have these bodily, social, mental and likes and dislikes, that's the way our bodies

09:38are, that's the way the personality is, it will have certain leanings, it will have certain

09:45likes and dislikes, so all these are there, but they fade in the light of something far

09:56more important.

10:00I have a mission to run.

10:09I may have personal preferences in this and that, but there has to be a pecking order,

10:17a hierarchy.

10:20You know that something else is more important, so the first right over all resources, your

10:26time, your life belongs to that really important thing.

10:33Cars can wait.

10:34Yes sir.

10:35Sir, one more thing sir, in my JEE times I used to study more and more like 12-14 hours,

10:45but now the situation is totally different sir, even in 8 hours of study I feel that

10:55it is too much and then after I used to get into my comfort zone sir, but I don't want

11:01it sir, but there is a condition, there is a situation that I am unable to change it

11:07sir.

11:08Can you please suggest some ways on it?

11:11You see I cannot tell you how to study for 10 hours or 12 hours, if that's what, because

11:19frankly I didn't do that ever to slogging for 10 hours or something, so I cannot tell

11:28you how to do that, but what I can tell you is that if you have the right reason for a

11:36thing, then you do not count hours you put into that thing, have the right reason, have

11:48the right reason and then you will stop counting hours, whether it's towards your studies

11:59or something else and as a young man it is incumbent on you, it is necessary for you

12:08to have the right reasons in life, to have the right purpose in life and it's something

12:15very very personal, it's not a crowd thing, you cannot say nobody is doing such a thing

12:21so why should I do it, you have your own life to live, figure out something worth giving

12:27your time to right and then time will meet its right utilization and if something is

12:35getting utilized rightly, why do you want to limit the utilization, then any number

12:41of hours can go into it. Sir, what are the changes that you want today's youth to bring

12:52about in the society for the betterment of it, like sir our country is a developing country

13:00and we have the most youths all over the world but still our country is lagging so much behind

13:09sir, so what are the changes that you would suggest the youths that they can bring about,

13:16like sir what do you think that is the main root cause of it that our country is lagging behind?

13:29I would want that they remember that they are young human beings, the youth should remember

13:46that they are young, young human beings not young animals, that's all. Yes sir, that is fine but

13:58what are the changes that you would suggest to bring about in the society, in our today's

14:05society, what are the things that you think that are affecting most to our society, that

14:12are affecting most negatively towards our society? I am requesting wannabe animals to

14:20remember that they are human beings, that's the change I want to see and there is a lot

14:29that goes with being called a human being, it's a huge responsibility and a huge privilege.

14:39Yes sir. So you are not just young, any species can be young, you can have a young monkey,

14:51you can have a young donkey, you are not just young, you are a young human being, see what that means.

15:03That means that we have the responsibilities towards the society, we will have to…

15:09First of all figure out whose society, a society of monkeys?

15:14No sir, the society of human beings.

15:18So, first of all comes the human being, the society comes much later and the society will

15:25be taken care of. First of all, you discover what it means to be human as against being an animal.

15:35Okay sir.

15:48What okay? Fine, I will see you again, these talks will continue, so over the next months

15:59I am sure I will see you again. My blessings, do well in life.

16:10Thank you sir.

Category

Transcript

Recommended