Is life pre-destined? || Acharya Prashant, with IIT Bombay (2021)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 24.10.2021, IIT-Bombay session (Online), Rishikesh  Context: ~ Are you afraid about your future? ~ How to overcome the fear of the future? ~ What is fear? ~ What is fear of failure? ~ Is there any scriptures who says everything is predestined?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00The question is, there are some scriptures in the Hindu text which suggest that everything

00:07we do is predestined and we are actually controlled by Brahman.

00:11So if that is the case, what are the incentives for me to put my hard work in my life?

00:16No, no, there is no such scripture, please, or if there is, I do not know, kindly come

00:24and quote.

00:27At least over the last one decade, in fact, more than that, I have been absorbed in scriptures

00:37and never have I come across anything that suggests that Brahman controls the strings

00:44of this universe.

00:45No, no way.

00:47All that is just popular iconography.

00:52Those things are figments of popular culture and imagination.

00:57This is not spirituality.

01:00This is some kind of fatalism that Vedanta has nothing to do with.

01:11You as you are, are the ego, right?

01:17First thing, you as you are, are the ego.

01:21And the ego is characterized by choice.

01:25If there is no choice, the ego is gone.

01:29So you have choice.

01:33Nobody is operating you through a remote control from some other look.

01:40You have choice.

01:41Now that choice can be a boon or a bane.

01:45It depends on you.

01:47Choose rightly and life is heavenly.

01:54Choose wrongly and you will live as commoners do, right?

02:02So you are aham, aham.

02:06And aham is aham precisely because it at least thinks it has choice.

02:14And you are choiceless in having a choice.

02:18Even if you tell yourself you don't have a choice, it is a choice you have made, right?

02:26You are condemned to be a choosing agency.

02:31So choose rightly and do not play the dirty game of attributing your wrong choices to

02:39some God.

02:42If you suffer today, it is because somewhere you have been making wrong choices.

02:46Now do not say this is what God has had in store for you.

02:49No, no, no, no, no.

02:51It's not about your horoscope or God or something, something, no.

02:55Don't even call it a random event.

02:58Random events can inflict pain on you.

03:01Suffering is always a choice.

03:04You chose wrongly, therefore you suffered.

03:08I am getting it.

03:11Advaita Vedanta is a thing of immense power, immense power.

03:19It takes away everything that is feeble within you.

03:26It won't allow you to continue feeling a victim of circumstances.

03:36It will take away everything from you that makes you lifeless, dull, insipid, fragile,

03:48fearful.

03:51None of that will be allowed to remain.

03:53That's Vedanta for you and that's why Vedanta is the mother of all Indian philosophies and

04:00religious streams.

04:02Irrespective of where you are coming from in India, directly or obliquely, you are a

04:10Vedanti.

04:11In fact, I dare say that everything in the world that is beautiful today has actually

04:18its philosophical roots in Vedanta.

04:24If there is something that can be called as the core of Indian religion, rather all religiosity,

04:33it is Vedanta.

04:36You can't be religious if you do not have anything to do with Vedanta.

04:44And if you are religious, then you are a Vedanti even if you haven't ever studied Vedanta.

04:56Vedanta is the very essence of religion.

05:01Vedanta is spirituality itself.

05:08I didn't say one particular religion.

05:10I said religion, dharma.

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