The one thing women (especially) should avoid || Acharya Prashant, at St. Xavier's, Mumbai (2022)

Acharya Prashant

🧔🏻‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquiry-gita-course?cmId=m00056  📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00056  ~~~~~  Video Information: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai   Context: ~ What is real feminism? ~ When should we express our emotions? ~ What is the worst enemy of women? ~ When should one talk back to their parents? ~ How should one respond to an enraged parent?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~  #acharyaprashant #feminism #womenempowerment

Transcript

00:00Hi sir, my name is Vaishnavi Gaikwad and I'm an FYBSA student. I would like to ask, when

00:11sometimes I do something and my parents don't like it, of course they will scold me. So

00:17sometimes the matter goes too far and they hurt me. And then I don't talk back to them.

00:27I have never done that till yet. So I feel like if I talk back now, it will hurt them.

00:33So what should I do? Like, if I talk back and if I don't talk back, it's like bottling

00:38up my feelings.

00:44You must talk back, but not from an emotional centre. Right? You must be 18, 20, 22 something

00:55an adult now. You have all the rights to engage anybody in a conversation. But engaging in

01:05a conversation is not the same as reacting emotionally. The chances are that because

01:15they hurt you, so you will react. Now don't do that. It's very difficult to say which

01:24of these is worse. The two options that we usually exercise are, one, we suppress our

01:34feelings, we block our expression. That's the option very frequently chosen and that's

01:41also the one you seem to be choosing. And following this particular option, there is

01:47the other one in which there is an explosion due to continued suppression. When you suppress

01:55your feelings and your instincts for too long, one day they will explode. And when that explosion

02:05comes, you know how the sight of an explosion looks. You only have debris all around. Things

02:15shattered and scattered. Sometimes not all the scattered things are visible to the eyes.

02:23They are all within the mind. And there is so much toot-toot. What has happened? Look

02:31at the faces and you can know just by looking at the faces of the members of the family.

02:38It has been a civil war just an hour back. So, you know, we all must, you all must rather,

02:51as young people, learn to engage your parents and your seniors and your teachers. In India

02:59somehow the culture has been of authority and silence. Authority from the senior side

03:10and silence from the junior side. And the direct blowback has been that a lot of the

03:18current generation is now becoming extremely disrespectful and disregardful, precisely

03:26because they have not been engaged, instead being asked to just shut up. And you cannot

03:34have a person shut up till eternity. So, now you have people look at the kind of manners

03:44and etiquette that they display. And then the parents are horrified. So are the teachers.

03:50The kids of this generation, they just know no respect. Look at how they misbehave with

03:57their elders. But then it was the responsibility of the elders to teach their kids or their

04:06students where behavior must come from. Not how they should behave, but from where they

04:15should behave. So, I started my response by saying that you should not behave from

04:21your reactive emotional center. If you feel strongly like bursting out in a particular

04:32moment, that is just not the moment to open your mouth, withdraw. Equally, you cannot

04:39stay withdrawn forever. So, when you know that it's the right time, then speak up. At

04:52a time and place of your choice, respond. That's what they say in the military. When

05:01somebody attacks you, obviously he would be attacking you at a time and at a place where

05:07you are weak. That is not the time to engage the enemy. Of course, I am not saying that

05:11parents or teachers are enemies. Just raising a very broad and loose analogy. So, you do

05:22not just react then and there. Though you will be feeling very angry. An army truck

05:28was going and it has been ambushed. But hey, this is not the point to engage them. Engage

05:34them as little as possible and just save your response for a better time. Because at

05:43that moment you will be afraid, you will be angry, you will be hurt from your feeling

05:49of being offended. Very hurtful words will arise. And the mind is a strange thing. It

05:58remembers all the nonsense. Two hours of a hurtful conversation will be remembered

06:09over two decades of a relationship. That's how the ego operates. Two decades of mother-daughter

06:19relationship, the ego will choose to just keep aside. And it will repeat, repeat, repeat

06:27to itself those two hours, not even two hours, it does not last that long usually, 20 minutes.

06:35Those 20 minutes of bombardment and every single word hurt, abuse will be not only remembered

06:47but magnified. Your mother said something in two words, the memory will remember it

06:54as two sentences. Even casual glances will be remembered as weapons in sarcasm. You know,

07:05she was not just looking at me. She was using her eyes as weapons. There was so much sarcasm

07:13and taunt in the way she glanced at me. And that's all the work of the ego, right? So

07:21do engage your parents. Figure out what is really happening and then talk to them. It's

07:29an art. It's an art. You know, when you read the old wisdom stories belonging to the sages

07:39or the gurus or the Buddha, often you come across something very curious. The student

07:47comes up and asks a question and the teacher does not respond at all. Sometimes the teacher

07:57responds after an entire year. He waits for the right conditions to develop. He knows

08:04that any explanation at this moment will be futile. And then after one year he says, now

08:10this is the answer to the question you had then asked. The teacher is hardly ever seen

08:18in a hurry to provide explanations because if you are a real teacher, a teacher of life,

08:26it is not your job merely to give explanations. You want to take the student to a solution.

08:33Not merely explain it but actually solve it. And that requires the right time and the right

08:40conditions. The student must be ready to listen. If the listening is closed, what's the point in

08:48speaking so much? And when two people are engaged in heated arguments, a de facto quarrelling,

08:55believe me, neither of them is listening. And if that fellow is not listening, why are you speaking

09:02so much to him? You are speaking so much. You are speaking beyond what is needed to be spoken. And

09:08not a word is reaching that fellow. And even if something is reaching that fellow,

09:14his receptors are totally distorting it. Because he is receiving it through his internal filters.

09:23And the memory is selectively magnifying and selectively deleting the chosen parts. Some

09:32part is blown up and some part is chosen not to be remembered at all. I'll give you an example.

09:39I would have spoken here like for 15-20 minutes now. If all of us are asked to pull out a sheet

09:47of paper and write down what I have just spoken, just the salient points, let's say. Sum up what

09:55has been said in 10 points, 10 points each, everyone. You'll find quite a lot of divergence.

10:04Your 10 points will be at a significant variance from what she writes or from what he writes. How

10:13is it possible? The speaker is one. He has not said 10 different things to 10 different people.

10:20And yet we have heard the speaker differently, all of us. There would be obviously some overlap,

10:26but also a lot of variance. That's how we are. So wait for the other person to be in the right

10:37frame of mind before you can say something. These two things if you can get rid of,

10:50and that applies to everybody. Not just to you as a person. It's a general answer.

10:57Reactiveness and emotionality. And I'm stressing more on that seeing that I'm speaking to a girl,

11:09to a woman. The way Prakriti, physical nature has made the two genders and then later on the

11:20way we are conditioned by the society and education and the various influences,

11:25girls turn out to be more emotional and more reactive. And that's a serious handicap they

11:36face in life. The problem that I face when I address this issue is that many women take

11:45their emotionality as their strength. Whereas it is not. It is something very untamed that

11:54arises from the body, the physicality, the chemicals, the hormones. And one ought to

12:01understand it and stay at a safe distance from it. I'm not saying you must suppress your emotions.

12:07I'm saying you must understand your emotions. And to understand your emotions there has to

12:11be a certain detachment. You must be able to see where your thoughts, your emotions and your

12:16reactions are coming from. If you'll not be able to see that, in spite of all the liberalism and

12:23all feminism, life can still be very hard on one particular gender. Unfortunately, we have come

12:38far from days of open and socially accepted oppression. But still, the scales are not even.

12:53They are tilted in favor of one gender and against one particular gender. I do not want

13:04girls to suffer. And the one who causes them to suffer is both outside of them and inside them.

13:16Outside of them are the blind forces of patriarchy and body identification and materialism and all

13:25that. And inside of the woman, the forces of her physicality, they are the ones that cause her to

13:36suffer. Those forces are present within men as well. When I'll speak to men, I address that.

13:43But right now, since I'm speaking to a woman, it becomes very important. Do not locate your enemy

13:51just outside of yourself. Probably a bigger enemy is lurking within. And that enemy is your own

14:02emotions, your own tendency to quickly react. And a lot of that has to do with insecurity as well.

14:11Because we do not educate and raise our girls well and wisely enough. So they are left feeling

14:21helpless, powerless and therefore insecure. And when you are insecure, then you will be even more

14:29emotional and even aggressive. When you are afraid within, then you become violent in many ways,

14:38explicit and implicit. Do not let all that happen to you. Life is too valuable to be wasted away

14:47in periods of emotional trauma and neurosis and fragmented mind. Something is saying,

14:59this is right. One part is saying, I love my parents. One part is saying, no,

15:04they offend me. I have to do something about it. One part is saying family is important.

15:08The other one says career is important. And all that is quite a lot of torture to handle.

15:15Do not let that happen. That's the reason why wisdom literature is essential and more important

15:22for women than for men. Because they are the ones who stand to lose more,

15:32who are more often than not the targets of aggression.

15:39Therefore, they are the ones who must have more centered minds. Make sure you do not get lost

15:48in the material and consumerist forces and that you pay adequate attention to

15:57setting your mind right. Sort it out and keep it centered.

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