
युवावस्था बहुत ही नाज़ुक समय होता है। यही समय निर्धारित कर देता है कि जीवन किस दिशा जाएगा।

प्रश्नकर्ता: आचार्य जी, सत्य को पाने के लिए एक तरफ तो गुरु की अपरिहार्यता बताई जाती है, मतलब उसके बिना संभव ही नहीं है। एक तरफ तो ये बात की जाती है दूसरी तरफ महात्मा बुद्ध कहते हैं कि ‘अप्प दीपो भव' अपने दीपक स्वयं बनो!
आचार्य प्रशांत: तो ये…


Short description for the E2E smoke test article.

The Truth cannot be objectified as a thing, place, person, or book. So, don't be too quick to accept your own assessments, judgments, likes, dislikes, and experiences. Whatever you're seeing is seen by "you" — the Ego — and you are no absolute. Everything must be available to enquiry, investigation, and questioning — and questioning cannot happen if you declare that you’ve already come to the Truth. Never believe that the journey has ended or that the ego itself is the Truth.

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…

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…

Overview Fighting Duryodhana is Dharma . Fight Duryodhana in the way you can, that is swadharma . Dharma is the same for everybody, but swadharma varies according to your physical, social, temporal conditions. But remember that swadharma can never be in contradiction of Dharma ; swadharma will always be something…

Now, mind is movement, right? Why does the mind move at all? The mind wants to reach somewhere. Where does the mind want to reach? Is that place within the mind? The mind wants to reach somewhere. Every thought, every action, every motivation, every emotion rides on a desire, is…

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.

प्रश्नकर्ता: मेरा सवाल फिर से मृत्यु के ऊपर ही है। आम ज़िन्दगी में जीवन के बारे में बोला जाता है कि जीवन आनन्द है या जीवन यह है, पर इसमें मृत्यु की कोई बात नहीं आती। जैसे आध्यात्मिकता में भी आप देखें तो लोगों ने मृत्यु पर ज़्यादा चर्चा नहीं…

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,…

हम कहते हैं कि अब कुछ नया करते हैं, फ़ूड योगा , मूड योगा * । कोई ऐसा शब्द नहीं है जो अब * योगा के साथ नहीं जोड़ दिया गया है। नई-नई क्रियाएँ निकल रही हैं, नई-नई प्रक्रियाएँ निकल रही हैं। ये मुद्रा, ये आसान, ये करते हैं, वो…

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…


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…

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…

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…

If you have seriously something worthwhile to do in life, then time is a friend. But if you are just loafing around and you fully well know that you are just killing time, then obviously time is an enemy. Every passing moment reminds you that you are committing a crime…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Let nobody say that he or she is making the right choices in life because she does not know. We all know. We prefer to suppress the inner knowledge. It’s an inner conspiracy against ourselves, just because we want to continue enjoying certain privileges in life—certain physical privileges, material privileges,…

Where are the pleasures? I do not see any pleasures! I do not see anybody being pleased. You are talking of renunciation of pleasures as if pleasures do exist. Where are the pleasures? Go to a weekend party and show me who is happy. And if people were indeed happy,…

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…

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…

The Upanishads were not composed to give you the normal kind of comfort and happiness. The Upanishads are there to give you an exalted happiness, a transcendental happiness, an eternal happiness. A happiness so rare and exquisite that it is not called as harṣa or moda or prasannatā; a…

Emotions, they can do whatever they want to do. It doesn’t matter how I am feeling. What matters is what I must do.
Ask yourself: Had you not been feeling this way or that way, what would have you done? And you will get a very good answer.
When you…

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…

The approach of self-help is: “I am sad because my desires have not met fulfillment. So, the way to help myself is: fulfill desires.” It’s a dimensional difference. Therefore, self-help pleases but helps not. It is not then ‘self-help’; the genre should be more correctly called ‘self-gratification’.
And if you…

I’ll tell you what the rape of the mind is. When the mind has nonsensical purposes, that is rape of the mind. When things like stuff that happened in the childhood or teenage attracts you and dominates you, then the mind is being raped. Forgive me the clichéd expression, but…

Money is nothing on its own. Money cannot bring you peace. But established in peace, money and material and the world can be perfectly dealt with. Now you neither need to renounce money nor do you get attached to money, because your real need is peace not money. Now you…

Even if you want a deeper pleasure, you will have to go deeper into the mind, and going deeper into the mind is what the spiritual process is all about.
If the fellow is a lover of the good things of life, let’s say a complete hedonist, then encourage him…

Know your duty and give yourself totally to it. Will there be pleasure? No sir, not at all. There would be some higher than pleasure, more fulfilling, more satisfying than pleasure. Pleasure is a turncoat: today one thing, tomorrow another thing.
The one who lives by his duty, his dharma…

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.…


There is someone you say you love dearly. You tell that person, “You are my life!” That person passes away; within a few hours, you are found having your meals. You are in grief—the body is not in grief, the brain is not in grief. The brain is telling the…

If it was possible for one man to move towards greatness, it was possible for everybody. Nothing hurts the small man more than seeing a great man in his vicinity, or a small man trying to move towards greatness. It’s an utter insult.
The moment even one person defies smallness…

Several people dislike their few glimpses of joy. They hold themselves accountable, they hold themselves guilty for having tasted even a few drops of joy, because joy is not a socially sanctioned kind of happiness. Joy is deep, disruptive, rebellious. It takes you far away from everything into yourself. It…

It is a very common and a very harmful misconception to take dhyāna as something. Dhyāna is nothing. Dhyāna is not an object. Dhyāna is not a thing. Dhyāna is not a routine, not a practice, not an exercise. Dhyāna, rather, is on all these things. Dhyāna is what…

Facebook spirituality says, “The greatest religion is not to hurt others.” Just Google it, you’ll find a million responses. What is the greatest religion? To not hurt others.
If there is one fellow who is a bigger culprit than the fellow who gets easily hurt, it is the one who…

For us, life means reactivity. Life is not peace to us. Life is not meditativeness to us. We feel alive when we are tense, reactive, and agitated. Then you say that now you have come alive.
The fellow is sitting silently and peacefully, unnoticeable. You will say he is a…

Man’s hunger is not so much in the stomach; it resides in his mind. And no fruit is enough when it comes to the mind.
So, man has been destroying everything he can touch, and climate change is the most recent, the most devastating, and probably the most final symptom…

What is the wrong choice? Anything that involves helplessness is the wrong choice. That’s the definition. Whenever you say, “I got angry”; whenever you say, “I am depressed,” it is a wrong choice because you are not admitting that you have chosen to be depressed. You are not admitting that…