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

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?…

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…

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…

“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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

Question: Dear Acharya Ji Pranaam! After watching a few videos on conditioning, I understood a few methods to work on conditioning. I still have one doubt. Why must one work on conditioning in the first place? Is it not natural to have conditioning, including social conditioning? Does it not serve…

Question: Acharya Ji, Pranaam! I came to know you through your videos on YouTube. I am very grateful that I came to know about the Ribhu Gita from your session organised on Mahashivratri day.

Since then I have read the full document more than five times, and it is difficult…

Na ghato, no ghatakashono jivo jiva-vigrahahkevalam brahma samviddhivedya-vedaka-varjitam

Translation:

There is no pot; there is no pot’s interior space.Neither is there an individual soul nor the form of an individual soul.

Question: Acharya Ji, you have said in one of your videos, “In matters of Truth, thought is not useful. It is even a handicap.” But thought is all I know, and have ever known. If I close my eyes, everything is a thought. My family is a thought, my children…

Questioner: Acharya Ji, all my thoughts are unable to come to expression because of fear of judgement or social restraints. Should I free them only by deeds? Kindly throw light on this.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, Parmeshwari (Questioner), of course. There is no more a final arbiter than action, deeds, life.…

Acharya Prashant: Positive thought is never fully positive, negative thought is never fully negative; that is the meaning of the uncertainty that always tags any thought.

What is uncertainty? Uncertainty means that when you are positive, you cannot be certainly positive. The doubt that positivity is flanked by negativity always…

*Questioner: Most of the thoughts are coming from society and family. So, how can I judge that which thought is mine or not?*

Acharya Prashant: No thought is yours; no thought is ever your own. You have very rightly said that all thoughts come from this place or…

It is a strange thing, and paradoxical. Must be understood with care.

Is there a need to tell the free one that he is already free? It would be absurd and useless to do do.

When I say, “You are already free”, to whom do I say that? To the

Acharya Prashant: We rarely understand. We only keep thinking. And we think that we are understanding.Naresh, there is a humongous difference between ‘thinking’ and ‘understanding’.

We ‘think’, but we rarely ‘understand’.When you look at that mobile phone, you are ‘thinking’, you are not ‘understanding’. ‘Understanding’ is a totally different thing.

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, is wisdom a thought?

Acharya Prashant (AP):

Wisdom is not a thought. Wisdom is to see the limit of thought. Wisdom is not to place needless trust upon thought.

Question: Sir, there are thoughts which distract us and make us restless and there are thoughts, which do not distract us and calm us down. Something is on the sideline of mind and then those thoughts get us distracted and we are distracted. So, how to have control over those…

Questioner: Sir, you always say to live with the thoughts. But at any second there are so many thoughts in mind so how to control it, sir? How to control the mind?

Acharya Prashant: Who will control them? If one is in a dream and the dream is a very…

Acharya Prashant: Azaz is saying, “I think a lot in relationship, no matter whom I am related to. Even when I am sitting here, I am thinking a lot about how to frame a question. How to know the right response while being related? How do I know my right…

Listener 1: Sir, I find myself falling again and again and then again I hold on, and then again I manage to fall somehow.

AP: So after this moment, do not fall. Now that is too much, right? After this moment, do not fall! That scares!

Acharya Prashant: Want to begin this morning by talking of living in facts versus living in thoughts.

Is not, the whole system, the being, personality, even the face, very different when you are there connected to the fact? You visit a shopping mall. Have you observed our behavior when we…

Questioner (Q): Sir, I heard a talk of yours on ‘thinking’. The talk of yours made me go back to thinking all that happened in life, and really, is it the right endeavor even?

Acharya Prashant (AP): It cannot be an endeavour. The keyword is ‘fully’, when I say that…

AP: You have said without thoughts and thinking there would be no world. It is well said but one could do better by saying that- without thoughts there would be no world and neither no no-world.

To say that the world does not exist is as much of a myth…