
छोटे आदमी की सज़ा ये कि उसकी ज़िंदगी में सब छोटे-छोटे मुद्दे होंगे। यही मुद्दा होगा कि इतने से इतने बजे तक पानी आता है, पोछा लगाया कि नहीं लगाया, भैंस का दूध लेना है कि गाय का दूध लेना है, नौकरी में फलाने को नीचा कैसे दिखाना है, ऊपर…

Questioner (Q): Man is typically a social animal who seeks to coexist with the society around him. I am a vegan but many people around me are not, and that creates a difficulty for me. I want to speak out my thoughts on animal cruelty and get into animal activism,…

Questioner (Q): Why do people commit suicide?
Acharya Prashant (AP): They still have a lot of hope. They feel that suicide would redeem them. They have not given up everything. They are still carrying a lot of hope. If I do not know what is beyond life, how can I…

Questioner (Q): Life comes with so much chaos and sometimes exposes the order. So when there is chaos, we feel challenging, and we try to overcome them, and then we try to look for orders. But even when there is so much order, we feel like something is not happening…

Question: Why does one suffer in the world?
Acharya Prashant: Even to reach the sanctroum of the temple, one has to pass through the peripheries, the stairs, the doors. The peripheries, the initials are all important as mediums, as methods but they must be given only that much significance. One…

Questioner: How to stop the immediate reaction when we feel hurt?
Acharya Prashant: Why stop it? You don't like that reaction, right? Who is this one who doesn't like that reaction Manish (questioner)? You have said, “The reaction comes when you get hurt.” I am asking you to consider, “Is…

Acharya Prashant (AP): I was asked how to get out of aggressiveness. First of all, you have to totally forget that aggressiveness is the issue. All problems arise from ignorance, all problems including aggressiveness. And it is a part of ignorance to assume that aggression is an important problem or…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, आप कहते हैं कि तनाव गलत जीवन जीने का परिणाम है। पर यदि मेरा जीवन ही गलत है तो मुझे हर समय तनाव क्यों नहीं रहता?
आचार्य प्रशांत: यह हर समय मौजूद होता है नहीं तो कभी-कभार परिलक्षित क्यों होता? आपके घर में कभी-कभार साँप दिखाई देता…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, मेरे जीवन में कोई उपलब्धि नहीं है। बड़ा दुःख है, कैसे बाहर निकलूँ? मेहनत ख़ूब करी है लेकिन नतीजे नहीं मिले। पढ़ाई को भी पूरी ज़िंदगी बहुत महत्व दिया, लेकिन घर वालों ने हमेशा सुनाया ही है। फ़िलहाल मेरी उम्र 32 वर्ष की है।
आचार्य प्रशांत: तुम्हें…

स्वयंसेवक (प्रश्न पढ़ते हुए): आचार्य जी, जिस तरीक़े के परिवेश में मैं पला-बढ़ा हूँ और अभी-भी अपना दिन बिताता हूँ, और जैसा समाज भी है, उसमें छोटे-छोटे क़दमों पर असफलता और छोटे होने का भाव लगातार मेरे सामने आता रहता है। इतनी असफलताएँ दैनिक रूप से देखने के बाद मुझ…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, कल मेरी परीक्षा है, लेकिन मन शांत नहीं है। मैंने प्रथम, द्वितीय एवं तृतीय वर्ष में विश्वविद्यालय में प्रथम स्थान प्राप्त किया। पर इस वर्ष ऐसा हो रहा है कि मन बड़ा अशांत है। कुछ ही घण्टे बचे हैं। आपका आशीर्वाद मिल जाएगा तो कल का दिन…

सभी समस्याओं से एक झटके में मुक्ति रामबाण सूत्र ठंड रख!
आचार्य प्रशांत: एक सीमा से ज़्यादा तनाव सहने की आदत ही नहीं होनी चाहिए।
“थोड़ा बहुत चलेगा, ज़्यादा करोगे तो हम सो जाएँगे।”

Question: Acharya Ji, Pranaam!
I watch video of yours, and I feel that I am getting addicted to your videos. Your videos and your talks have lit a fire in me to search for the Truth. But I carry on with the things which I am doing from the past…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, how to cope with stress? I get disappointed easily. Why is it so?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Is there disappointment without a specific expectation?
Q: No.

वक्ता: प्रश्न है कि कभी-कभी समस्या इतना बड़ा रूप ले लेती है कि बड़ा तनाव हो जाता है, उससे बाहर कैसे निकालें अपने आप को? अश्विनी दो विकल्प दे रहा हूँ, पहला कि समस्या से अपने आप को बाहर कैसे निकालें और दूसरा यह कि समस्या पैदा ही न हो।…

Question: How do I cope with the stress that is likely to come in the next four years?
Acharya Prashant: Let’s understand this situation right now.
(Acharya Ji is talking to the first year students of a premier Engineering institution of India. The duration of the entire course is four

Q: No.
AP: So,…

Short description for the E2E smoke test article.

Questioner(Q): What is the process of clarity? Is it just listening with immersion and no resistance? What is Truth? How we decide it?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Listening without effort, plus if there is Truth in what you hear, there is change and transformation, and that Truth becomes the master. We…

How did the Buddha look then? Who is the Buddha? Let’s try to understand with the story of Gautama Buddha, The ‘Shakya Muni Buddha’ as we call him. So, who was he? Let’s look at his central characteristics. One, someone who is well versed in the knowledge of his time. Buddha had deep scriptural knowledge. He was born in a Hindu Kshatriya family, he was a prince and ever since his childhood he was quite talented. So, one thing about him is that he was quite well-read. Second thing is, he was deeply interested in knowing the depths of life. He did not want to remain merely at the superficial levels, so he would observe a lot, he would think a lot. https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/todays-buddha-1_4d1b6bf

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, एक तरफ़़ तो फ़िल्में हमें मनोरंजन देती हैं, हँसाती हैं, रुलाती हैं और दूसरी ओर उसी इंडस्ट्री से दुःखद और चौका देने वाली खबरें भी आती रहती हैं। कुछ कहिए।
आचार्य प्रशांत: सबसे पहले तो हमें इस धारणा से बाहर आना होगा कि फ़िल्में हमें मात्र मनोरंजन…


I had to unlearn a lot of things, and I am grateful to all the sources—the books, the people and the experiences that helped me unlearn. And I am grateful to that within me that had the courage to unlearn. A lot of unlearning is needed. I often say you need to learn love. By that what I mean is that you need to unlearn false love. And it’s one mighty task to unlearn false love, transactional love, the transactional love that both biology and society teach you.

श्रद्धावान् लभते ज्ञानं तत्पर: संयतेन्द्रिय: | ज्ञानं लब्ध्वा परां शान्तिमचिरेणाधिगच्छति || ४, ३९ || जितेन्द्रिय, साधनापरायण और श्रद्धावान मनुष्य ज्ञान को प्राप्त होता है तथा ज्ञान को प्राप्त होकर वह बिना विलम्ब के तत्काल ही भगवत्प्राप्तिरूप शान्ति को प्राप्त हो जाता है। —श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, अध्याय ४, श्लोक ३९प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी,…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, हम लोग कुछ भी करने बैठें, जैसे पढ़ने बैठें, योग करें, मैडिटेशन करें, यहाँ तक कि जब मैं आपसे ये सवाल भी पूछ रहा हूँ तो ये सवाल पूछते हुए भी मेरे दिमाग में कुछ और चल रहा है। तो प्रश्न ये है कि मन को नियन्त्रित…


भारतीयों को शायद यह लगता है कि हिंदुस्तान से बाहर जहाँ कहीं कोई मिलेगा वह ‘अंग्रेज़ी’ ही बोल रहा होगा। एक तो यह बहुत बड़ी ग़लतफ़हमी है – बाहर जैसे ही हम निकलेंगे वैसे ही जो मिल रहा होगा अंग्रेज़ी ही बोल रहा होगा। हिंदुस्तान बेचारा बस पिछड़ा हुआ है,…

कथं न ज्ञेयमस्माभिः पापादस्मानिवर्तितुम्। कुलक्षयकृतं दोषं प्रपश्यद्भिर्जनार्दन ॥३९॥
"तो कुल क्षय से होने वाले दोष को देख-सुन कर भी हम लोगों को इस पाप से निवृत्त होने का विचार क्यों नहीं करना चाहिए?"
~ श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, अध्याय १, अर्जुन विषाद योग, श्लोक ३९
आचार्य प्रशांत: इसी आशय के तर्क आगे भी…

If you are someone who cannot take care of herself, how will you be sure that your presence, your company is not becoming an influence of sickness on the other person?
Be very, very alert about cohabitation. Just don’t start living with anybody. Be very, very conscious of your personal…

If you take yourself as primarily physical, then beauty too for you would be something just physical. You will look at the woman most capable of successfully reproducing. That’s the prakritik definition of beauty.
The first thing that comes to mind is flowers. What are flowers? Flowers are the reproductive…

The world is your playground. So don’t be so particular about moving only within your pre-existing circle. If your cause is worth it, show some courage and move out.
If you have a tender and precious sapling in your palm, would you plant it in a desert? No. You will…

The meat eater is a self-deluder. You cannot eat meat without firstly lying to yourself. He will not want to know what the reality of meat consumption is. He will not want to know how animals are kept and how they are slaughtered. He will not know what the conditions…

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.
Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

Have you looked at kids playing? If you look at kids playing and if you look at animals playing, you won’t find much difference. In fact, human kids go along very well with animal kids. Later on, when we cover ourselves with a lot of acquired knowledge, with a lot…

Veganism cannot succeed if you just keep talking of animals. You keep saying, “Oh, it is bad to look at animals as a commodity. It is bad to exploit animals.” If man is exploiting man, why will man refrain from exploiting animals?
So, veganism has to be holistic, comprehensive. You…

Welcome pain. You have no option. That’s the way life is meant to be. Life is suffering. Because not only are you designed to have pain, you are also designed to resist pain.
Have pain, and have a lot of depth in your being. So much depth that it can…

One can become an entrepreneur, for example, in the field of killing animals, cutting animal flesh, and supplying freshly cut flesh to people at their doorsteps. And this might be a successful business model.
This kind of an entrepreneurship is idiocy, perversion, profanity. The evil was present right in the…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.
If something good has happened, “I did it!”
If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”
“Good things I do, bad things happen to me”—this is astounding.
Playing the victim is a favorite pastime of…

Happiness and sadness are both wonderful, are both welcome.
But in some deep sense, sadness is a little better than happiness. It teaches us a little more than happiness does. It elevates us a little more than happiness does. It has a certain purifying effect that happiness does not quite…

When you say that you go to your workplace for a purpose, the purpose is never work, or is it? The purpose is the salary cheque. In fact, if work could be bypassed and you could straight away reach the salary cheque, then who would want to work? Now, why…

Swami Vivekananda has said, “First of all, our young men must be strong; religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita.”
Swami Vivekananda was no soccer evangelist. His…

If you are suffering, there is nobody but you who is responsible. Unless you fully accept that responsibility, there is no freedom. If your suffering is just incidental, then how can there be freedom from it?—because incidents can happen any way, any day.
You have to, first of all, clearly…

Both the genders have become even more anchored to their physical identity. The more you do that, the more you are in misery because, really, the body is not who you are.
There are places better and higher than the place of your gender specific hormones. Why do you want…

If an apple and an animal are the same thing, then an animal and a human being are the same thing. Eat the human being as well. And if you do not eat the human being, then extend the same logic to not eat the animal as well.
The best…

Obviously it is inhumane to kill an animal to consume its flesh, and that’s one of the biggest indicators of our inner depravity. But then, who are the Americans really to point fingers at China? You kill pigs, you kill lambs, you kill cows—what to say of chicken and fish?…

When you say sadness is just sadness, then you have gained freedom from sadness. It means being free from the obligation to label sadness as a loss of self-worth. If you let sadness go deeply into you, there is no way it is not going to touch joy.
It is…

Real relaxation is about relaxing even in the middle of activity. You are relaxed even as you exert yourself. You are relaxed even as you are running. You are relaxed even as you are drained out. You are not waiting for a special activity like going to bed or sitting…

How do we justify our anger? We justify our anger by feeling short-changed, cheated, or victimized; by continuing to assert that we are incomplete, while simultaneously bemoaning the incompleteness. If you have grudges within, if you feel a victim of situations, or past, or persons, and if you lend credence…

Pay attention to all your thoughts, emotions, actions. Something unknown is waiting there for you. Most people know nothing about themselves.
If you are angry, it tells you that there is something within you that is resisting the world now. Why is it resisting the world? Go into it. Try…

If the mind is a diseased organ, then why do you trust it so much? If it is a diseased organ, then whatever you see through it, why can’t you just reject it? Why do you trust this unfaithful servant so much? If I have a machine that continuously gives…