Thoughts

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

test doc type

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…

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…

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…

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 you want to know an atom, you have to go to nuclear physics. There you do not just proudly claim, “Oh, I know atoms. Everything is an atom. I have been with atoms since my birth!” There you want to read a book. There you want to consult somebody…

If a bad thought is persevering in your mind, continuing in your mind, then it means that you are just calling it a bad thought. Deeply you are supporting it; deeply you think that it is a good thought. We call them bad. We actually do not consider them bad.…

Christmas Eve again, Jesus says to his disciples, “I am going to be killed soon.”

One of his disciples, Peter, starts weeping and crying, and he gets a good scolding from Jesus. Jesus says, “Had you had anything to do with God, had you learned anything from me, how could…

When thoughts of your personal success stop mattering to you, when you say, “There is something more important than my personal success,” then you have really succeeded.

It has to be so big that you forget about your failures, your happiness, your sadness.

Somebody comes and tells you, “But you…

It is not anxiety that bothers you. It is your anxiety about anxiety. Just as we are afraid of so many things, we are also fearful of fear. “What if I become afraid?” Similarly, we are anxious about anxiety.

Now, is there anything here, right now, that makes you anxious?…

भई! गर्मी का मौसम हो, तुम शरीर खुला रखो बात समझ में आती है। तुम कहीं नदी में, स्विमिंग पूल (तरणताल) में नहाने जा रहे हो, तुम कपड़े उतार दो, बात समझ में आती है। या तुम सिर्फ़ अपनी सुविधा के लिए कम कपड़े पहनो तो भी बात समझ में…

Were you born thinking of a job? Was that the first thing you said to the nurse? “How and where can I get a job, please?”

Nobody is ever born with fear. Fear has been given to us. Who implanted this fear in your mind? Society, and these movies, and…

ऐसा तो नहीं है कि दस-बारह साल के बच्चे को अगर आप रामकृष्ण की बोध कथाएँ पढ़ाएँगे तो उसे समझ में नहीं आने वाली। आएँगी न। आपके घरों में क्यों नहीं है रामकृष्ण परमहंस की सरल साधारण कथाओं की किताब? कृष्णमूर्ति साहब का साहित्य आता है ‘*कृष्णमूर्ति फॉर द यंग*’।…

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…

तुम्हें बर्बाद करने में एक चीज़ का सबसे बड़ा योगदान रहा है तो वो है – फिल्में और *टीवी*।

तुम्हें पता भी नहीं है जिनको तुम अपने विचार कहते हो वो वास्तव में फ़िल्मी विचार हैं। जिनको तुम अपनी भावनाएँ बोलते हो वो वास्तव में फ़िल्मों ने दी हैं तुमको।…

तुलना तो तुम्हें करनी ही है; इनसे क्या तुलना कर रहे हो, अपने दफ़्तर के लोगों से तुलना करते हो, वो सब तुम्हारे ही जैसे हैं।

ये क्या तुलना कर रहे हो कि, “मेरे पास आल्टो है, दूसरे के पास डिज़ायर है”, कि, “मेरे पास डिज़ायर है और दूसरे के…

Be mindful of what the company of that person is doing to you. Is it a good investment of your time when you are with him, or could you have expended your time in a better way? What kinds of thoughts does that person introduce in your mind? What kinds…

अपने-आपको देखकर यह ना कहा करो, “आह, हा, हा! क्या बात है! मैं ही तो हूँ सरताज, सिकंदर!” और कोई तुम्हारे बारे में धोखे में रह जाए तो रह जाए, तुम अपने बारे में कैसे धोखे में हो? तुम अपनी हरक़तें नहीं जानते? तुम अपने विचार नहीं जानते? तुम नहीं…

“You have said that women and men both have emotionality but they express it differently. I have noticed women tend to be more indirect and coy when they talk. Is that again a same trait that is coming out differently?”

It is biological, very biological.

“Let the man make the…

If you can smilingly tolerate an animal being slaughtered for your diet, then you will equally well tolerate you being psychologically slaughtered for the profit of your profit-minded organization. If you are slaughtering a chicken so that you may eat it and fatten yourself, then you will equally well tolerate…

When the woman is not in front of you, do you keep fantasizing about her all the time? This is mental illness. Only if you are indulging in all kinds of sexual fantasies and inner perversion will you jump upon her at the first sight. Otherwise, there is hardly anything…

If money is the gift that a father leaves behind for the son, then it’s a very petty gift—in fact, a dangerous gift. In fact, only a loveless father would think of primarily money to bequeath to the son. The more would be the money that you leave for him,…

The woman is such a perpetual mother. She is a mother even to the husband! She begins as a girlfriend and ends as the mother. Six months she remains a girlfriend, one year she remains a wife, rest of the life she is a mother to everybody. And she finds…

What do you call as a positive thought? A thought that makes you happy. A thought about your well-being. A thought that you would be alright or better off. A thought of hope.

But hope is not ever certain. Hope is always accompanied by fear. You hope that you might…

Fear comes when they tell you that you must have a life insurance. Aren’t the commercials always telling you that? And so dumbly we continue to look at them.

Fear comes when you are told that you must have a life partner so that you have a nice old age.…

You got into the traps of wrong kinds of work because you were tempted by results. “Let me take up this work. On the 30th day of the month the result will be good. What will be the result? A nice paycheck.”

Now ask yourself, what if it is certain…

Thinking, thinking, continuously thinking, you comfortably let days, months, years, decades slip away, and then you are so thankful that death arrives.

Thought serves a great purpose: it eats away your time. Otherwise, time will become such a burden.

Someone comes to you and demands, “Now is the time to…

The mark of the one living rightly is that he doesn’t have the need to think too much. Thought, in some way, is a compensatory mechanism: what you couldn’t do right you want to think right. But you cannot think right what you have done wrongly, or can you?

In…

Is lust a thought, or is lust more or less instantaneous? Does lust even give you space to think? In fact, if you could think in the moment of great lust or anger, then you would act better.

Thought has its uses. The emotional ones need to be the thoughtful…

Questioner (Q): I want to know the source of thought. I remember Ramana Maharshi’s words: “‘I’ is the root of all the thoughts because in the end, every thought occurs to the ‘I’. So, first try to get hold of who this ‘I’ is, which will lead the enquirer to…

Questioner: Most of our physical activities have come to a halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation has been new to us all. Two years have gone by like this, and while there has been some improvement in handling the situation compared to the initial chaos and confusion, the…

आचार्य प्रशांत: अभी हालत ये है, खासतौर पर जो वर्तमान पीढ़ी है उसकी, कि उसमे ज़्यादातर लड़के लड़कियों को अपने ही नाम का मतलब नहीं पता होता। अगर हमें इस बात से असुविधा हो रही होती कि हम कोई चीज़ नहीं जानते हैं तो हमें सबसे पहले किस चीज़ से…

Questioner: Namaste, I would like to raise the issue of gossiping from an evolutionary psychology perspective. It has basically only benefits, like maintaining community and building like bonding in large groups. Still being engaged in someone’s private and personal life seems somewhat questionable to me. I am raising the…

Questioner: Acharya Ji, I have a question on ‘the mind rehearsing stuff’. Basically, my situation is like – Something happened decades back in the past, where I didn’t give the right response to a situation, and my Ego got hurt. My mind starts recreating the scenario, where I am giving…

Questioner (Q): What exactly is thought? It seems as if it’s not material. But there is also a heaviness to it at times, especially when done in excess. So what is it?

Acharya Prashant (AP): It is material, there is no doubt about it. Because its content is never anything…

Questioner: Recently, you had a talk at IIT-Delhi and now you are here (IIM- A), both of these universities are your Alma-mater. Your batch-mates today would be at multiple corporate senior positions and you are a spiritual leader. So, how do you look at them and whom would you see…

प्रश्नकर्ता: नमस्कार आचार्य जी, थोड़े समय के लिए हम लोग पूरी तत्परता के साथ और ईमानदारी के साथ कुछ कर रहे होते हैं, और साथ-साथ ये भी होता है कि ज्ञान भी कम होता है और क्षमता भी कम होती है, तो प्रक्रिया धीमी होती है और फिर ऐसा भी…

Acharya Prashant (AP): (Reading question) “Acharya Ji, please show me the light, so that I could be at my center. Sometimes, I feel, when I listen to you or when I read the verses, a certain centeredness within me. What is that? And, how can I remain centered? Please explain…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी नमस्कार! पिछले दो दिन से उपनिषद समागम के दौरान जो मन में प्रश्न उठ रहे थे वो एकदम सामान्य प्रश्न थे जो आम ज़िन्दगी से संबंधित होते हैं। एक तरह से वे बनावटी प्रश्न थे। उन प्रश्नों पर गौर से ध्यान देने भर से वे भंग हो…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, जब सत्य/चेतना चुनाव करते हैं तो विवेक क्या है? चेतना और सत्य क्या भिन्न हैं? जब हम अध्यात्म की पहली सीढ़ी चढ़ते हैं, तो क्या विवेक ही नहीं है जो बढ़ता है? कृपया समझाएं?

आचार्य प्रशांत: हमारी चेतना, अशुद्ध चेतना होती है। उसका लक्ष्य होता है- सत्य।…

Questioner: Sir, good afternoon. My name is Rupam Shukla. Sir, I didn’t have a dream to clear CAT and go to MBA in some of the IIMs but whenever I start preparing for it, I get deviated. I cannot focus on two things at one time. And that’s what I…

Acharya Prashant: Being in the right environment itself is Satsang. Satsang does not necessarily mean a gathering. Satsang means realizing what affects the mind and acting accordingly. Give the mind the right food, give the mind the right companions. The right companions of all kinds: right books, right food in…

Question: Today, a lot of questions have come on this particular issue that we have been observing our life daily, our relationships, our relationship with work and the world outside, and we see a lot of agitation over there, disputes over there, discontent over there. So, Vishal Bamba is here…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, आज दोपहर में बुल्लेशाह जी की काफ़ियाँ गा रहे थें, और गाते-गाते हम बहुत रम गए, और मन बहुत शुद्ध होता सा महसूस हुआ; और जब से यहाँ पर हैं तब भी बहुत मन शुद्धता महसूस करता है। तो एक बात, जब अवलोकन लिख रहे थे, तो…

आचार्य प्रशांत: कौन से श्लोक हैं, जिसपर बात करें?

प्रश्नकर्ता: पहला खण्ड, पाँचवा श्लोक, केनोपनिषद।

यन्मनसा न मनुते येनाहुर्मनो मतम्।

तदेव ब्रह्म त्वं विद्धि नेदं यदिदमुपासते॥५॥

(केनोपनिषद, खण्ड १, श्लोक ५)

हिंदी अनुवाद: मन से जिसका मन नहीं किया जा सकता; अपितु मन जिसकी महत्ता से मनन करता है, उसी…

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, मानसिकता (मेंटालिटी) का क्या अर्थ है?

आचार्य प्रशांत: मानसिकता का अर्थ होता है- सोचने का एक बंधा हुआ तरीका। मानसिकता का क्या अर्थ होता है? सोचने का एक बंधा हुआ तरीका। मानसिकता कोई भी हो गलत है क्योंकि मानसिकता का अर्थ है कि मन मुक्त नहीं है।…

प्रश्नकर्ता: जब मेरे दिमाग में कोई भी विचार आता है, थॉट आता है, मुझे खुद भी नहीं पता होता कि मैं क्यों सोच रहा हूँ यह सब। जब भी मैं कोई काम करने जा रहा होता हूँ या पढ़ रहा होता हूँ, वह मेरे को फ़ोकस नहीं करने देता, कंसंट्रेशन…