Ambition

When does one finish being a student? When the resistance to being a student is finished.

Who is the teacher? The teacher is the most obedient and voluntary of all students. The teacher is not a non-student; the teacher is the first student, the best student, the most voluntary student.…

Man has the capacity to choose, and man must take responsibility of how he is living his life, what he has turned the Earth into.

Man wants progress, and progress means an ascension, an elevation. It is as if man wants to be elevated to some high sky. That’s what you say, right? “I am rising up, I am progressing.” What is the intention of this tendency to keep progressing? The intention is to progress…

There is a kind of entrepreneurship that says, start the company, see which sectors are hot and booming, and when you reach a certain stage after n rounds of funding, sell it off and add a few more zeroes to your personal bank balance. That’s one kind of entrepreneurship. It…

Remember, it is not situations that defeat you. Situations are just situations. A situation by definition is something outside of you, whereas defeat is something inside of you.

Situations can at worst be adverse, correct? And a situation is always external. The sense of defeat is an internal thing; that…

One thing I have always advised those who are on the verge of choosing a career, or even those who are deep into their careers: Let there be no dissonance between who you are and what you do.

Your work is who you are. Do not say that you work…

Unfortunately, this is the way most people look at the future: not with an intent to become better or improve, but with the intent to remain exactly as they are. That’s why future is such a big issue.

Then there is the other kind of mind. It says, “Obviously, I…

Is poverty something that existence gave you, or is poverty something that the society has given you? If existence were to be blamed, then ask yourself, why is nothing else poor?

The rose is shining so majestically without earning anything. The animals are leaping and playing so beautifully without going…

Waiting for that fabulous holiday, we do not allow the mind to experience a certain inner vacation at all. The entire year, we remain tense in expectation of the year-end vacation. Why can’t you have your little vacations everyday? What prevents you? Why can’t you have half an hour of…

The good news is that at any level, the maximum you do is sufficient. You are not demanded to do something beyond yourself. Just do the maximum that is within your capacity.

Good news is, you don’t have to exceed your capacity. The challenge is, you have to do the…

We just say, “I am successful” or “I am a failure”. The more important question is, what are you failing at? Equally, the more important question is what are you succeeding at? Or is it so that we didn’t bother to go deeply into that, and we just went by…

Man is the only animal that is always sexually active. Why? Because man is the only animal who is always ambitious. Because you are constantly a seeker, because you are constantly feeling that hollow, because you are constantly feeling inferior, so you are always seeking something from the world. Always.…

Man is the only animal that is always sexually active. Why? Because man is the only animal who is always ambitious. Because you are constantly a seeker, because you are constantly feeling that hollow, because you are constantly feeling inferior, so you are always seeking something from the world. Always.…

Walking down the same lane, how will you come to a new destination?

Look at the lifecycle of the normal human being: Be born, get educated, get a job, get married, get a house, get a few luxuries, get a car, deal with your kids, deal with your wife or…

Questioner (Q): I have heard you say that life should be purposeless and aimless. But if we do not aim for anything, then how will we crack our exams? When you were our age, you too prepared for exams like MBA, IIT-JEE, civil services, etc. But now you say having…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, you often talk about the importance of time, and that is something that bothers me in the context of my career. I don’t know if I should continue in my current job or not. I took the job for very ordinary reasons: money and position in…

Questioner: Sir, I worked as a software developer for three and a half years, and later moved to soft-skills training due to job dissatisfaction. Left that as well, and worked in sales for three-four years. At every point, the career transition happened because of my interest in those fields. But…

Questioner: Talking about the theme that we have today – The Profit beyond profits. In management, we learn about how to maximize profit. And, you talk about going beyond profits. So what does going beyond profits mean?

Acharya Prashant: See, when we talk of material profits, profits in the commercial,…

Questioner(Q): Sir, nowadays it is said that it is not the hard work that can lead you to achieve whatever you want it is actually the smart work. What is this smart work actually?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Jugaad! (everybody laughs) Nothing else!

That’s what the world means by smart work.…

Acharya Prashant (AP): Rajiv, is asking about hard work and luck.

Hard luck, Rajiv, that none of that will suffice.

Luck indicates the randomness of life. Luck indicates that you have no control over where you are born, which country, which place, what type of economic background, which gender. All

Acharya Prashant (AP): Ashish wants to understand failure and success, and the relation between them. When do you call something a ‘success’? You call yourself to be successful when you have a goal, and you reach it. And the attainment of that goal, you name as ‘success’. Right?

Now, we…

Questioner (Q): Sir, I wanted to know how do you find direction in your life? How do you find the mission that you want to pursue and how do you find excellence in every second? That's my question.

Acharya Prashant (AP): You have to know what you are doing. You…

Questioner: Sir, you always emphasize on total involvement in any task one takes up. But in our lives, we experience a constant state of flux. So, my question is, how to remain centered amidst all ups and downs, and remain involved in my task?

Acharya Prashant: The task has to…

Question: Acharya Ji, conceptually I agree with everything you say. But my situation is that I have left a lot of my material stuff behind, and I seek that life that you speak about, but every step that I take I am always thinking about the next step.

I am…

Questioner: Acharya Ji, I am not able to continue any resolution in my life and not able to give my best efforts in any area of life. What to do?

Acharya Prashant:

You will be able to put yourself fully only into the full.

Questioner: Why did Acharya Prashant Ji leave his Corporate and Bureaucratic career?

Acharya Prashant: We are a flux. We are changing constantly and that is life. Heraclitus, the great Greek philosopher said, “You don’t step into the same river twice.”

*Questioner: Why are we running when we don’t have anything to achieve in life?*

Acharya Prashant: Ofcourse, when you don’t have to achieve anything in life then you don’t run; but are you that person who doesn’t have to achieve anything? The one who doesn’t have to achieve anything,…

Acharya Prashant: What is your name?

Listener: Kshitij Aggarwal.

AP: The question asked by Kshitij is why do needs often dominate ambition?

Acharya Prashant: What is this thing called Ambition?

Its simple, really simple. The brain only has past, correct? And the future that the brain projects is nothing but a reflection of the past. You can dream of no future except that which is already present in your past in some…

Question: Acharya Ji, the results of class 10th and 12th are out. And the parents of children who have scored high marks are shouting over the roof top. Entire social media is filled with such declarations.

My first question is: What does it do to their children and other parents…

Acharya Prashant: We want to look at ‘ambition’. So, as I enter, I see that we have been singing Kabir; Kabir talking about achievement, about ambition, about greed and desire and he seems to be taking a clear position, it’s unmistakable. Let us not leave it ambiguous, there is a…

Question: If one is living without purpose, how does one act?

Acharya Prashant: Let’s see, from where the question is coming. It only shows that so far we have acted only with?

Listener: Purpose.

Question: Sir, what made you to leave your corporate job, and start this whole different line of work?

Speaker: There was a lot that was asking to be changed. Leaving the corporate was not really an objective. I wanted to do something, and if it could have been nicely done…

Question: Sir, in the market place, everywhere, are they not selling just the ‘Identities’? For example, if we talk about a newspaper, one kind newspaper is read by one kind of intellectual people. They relate to it, they have an identity through which they relate to the newspaper.

Similarly if…

Question: Sir, I understand that the work we are doing these days will help us. But, mostly I get the feeling that everyone in Advait has become too ambitious. They say do this, get that done. The office seems so much like a corporate.

Speaker: You do not know ambition;…

Question: Dear Sir,

All desires, all wants are motivated by the ego and hence desire too is an extension of the self. Now my question is that if we are our thoughts only, then how does one move from what one does not like, let us say his present occupation,…

Questioner (Q): Sir, how to stay motivated and ambitious even after repeated failures in life?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Our friend is asking that how to stay motivated and ambitious even after repeated failures.

Question: In the present day college scenario, there is one thing which is the academics, which I focus on, or there is this equivalent pool of activities which will help me develop my personality, in a sense that if I get better in a specific activity, it might help me…

Speaker: The question can be broadly put as, ‘What is place of new ideas when the external is never really going to accept them?’

What do you mean by a new idea? Can an idea ever be really new? An idea is a thought and thought will necessary come from…

Question: Sir, in the beginning you said that when we have plans for future, we get stressed. Don’t you think that in life one should have at least one ambition to follow so that at any time in future if one is going on the wrong path or out of…

Speaker: The question can be broadly put as, ‘why is it so that our happiness comes at the cost of others?’ Why is it always a zero-sum game: if I win, you lose, if I am happy then you are sad? Why is it always like this?

This is the…

Before we start venerating entrepreneurship on this forum today, let me present to you the life-sketch of a typical entrepreneur.

When the fellow is in class sixth, he is continuously told by his mom and dad that he ought to do well in his exams. He is bound to be…

What is the root cause of unhappiness? Why strength is necessary for liberation? Why ego can not reflect on itself?

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

“You know what, I lost money in stocks and I still didn’t get a heart attack!” Why must you get a heart attack? It is a small matter. Let it happen. It’s okay. Every day more people lose money in the stock market than what is the number of those…

Even when you are identified with being the winner or the loser, still there is something within you which can neither be a winner nor a loser. It is your fundamental nature. It is your fundamental nature that gets hidden when you are obsessed with winning or losing.

The fact…

What is the ultimate purpose of life? Earning money or happiness? How can this stupid thing be the purpose of life?

The common happiness that we know, I have said, has two characteristics: one, it is an acquired conditioning, and second, it depends on the presence of sadness. So, if…

Fight for the right cause and let it consume you fully. That is the only way of living life. Fight for the right one and devote yourself totally to him. That is the only way of living and fighting. Give yourself up so totally that you cannot now be blamed…