
THE SHORT STAFF
Shuzan held out his short staff and said,
“If you call this short staff, you oppose its reality.”
“If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact.”
“Now what do you wish to call this?”
Questioner: Acharya Ji, Pranaam! Please help me understand…

Acharya Prashant: Joshu went to Hermit and asked, “What’s up? What’s up?” The Hermit lifted up his fist and Joshu said, “Water is too shallow to enter here and went away”. Joshu visited the Hermit once again, a few days later and said, “What’s up? What’s up?” The Hermit raised

Joshu asked Nansen, “What is the way?”
Nansen answered: ‘Ordinary mind is the way.’
‘Then should we direct ourselves towards it or not? asked Joshu.

A monk asked Joshu, “Has the dog Buddha nature?”
Joshu replied, “Moo”
Acharya Prashant: Moo stands for nothing. Everything about the dog and the Buddha is different. As long as you compare a thing about the dog and the Buddha, you’ll only find differences. As long as the dog is

Whenever anyone asked him about Zen, the great master Gutei would quietly raise one finger into the air. A boy in the village began to imitate this behaviour. Whenever he heard people talking about Gutei’s teachings, he would interrupt the discussion and raise his finger. Gutei heard about boy’s mischief.…

A monk asked Seijo, “Daitsu Chisho Buddha did zazen (meditated) for ten kalpas in a Meditation Hall, could not realize the highest truth, and so could not become fully emancipated. Why was this?”
Seijo said, “Your question is a very appropriate one!”

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you to teach me.”
Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”
The monk replied, “I have.”

Acharya Prashant: Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell…

Suiwo, the disciple of Hakuin, was a good teacher. During one summer seclusion period, a pupil came to him from a southern island of Japan. Suiwo gave him the problem: ‘Hear the sound of one hand.’ The pupil remained three years but couldn’t pass this test. One night he came…

Questioner (Q): Spiritual way tends to be more direct and I feel Zen-Buddhism actually misleads from the direct path.
Acharya Prashant (AP): Zen never imposes any rule. Or does it? Is that your question that Zen imposes rule?

The emperor asked Master Gudo, “What happens to a man of enlightenment after death?”
“How should I know?” replied Gudo.
“Because you are a Master”, answered the emperor.

Questioner (Q): Sir, ‘The sound of one hand clapping’. Please explain the Koan.
Acharya Prashant (AP): All our life, only that has happened to us, which has a cause and an effect. All our life, only that has happened to us, which is dualistic. When the Zen Master is saying…

Questioning pseudo-science and superstition is the first step toward genuine freedom. Beliefs such as *Vastu, Kundli,* and *Muhurat* should not be accepted merely because they have been followed traditionally. Fear and attachment to privileges often prevent people from questioning authority. A truth-seeker must be willing to challenge age, status, and authority. Human progress has come through curiosity, inquiry, experimentation, and reason—not through blind obedience.


‘Joshu then continued: ‘If we do not try how can…
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
AP: Nothing except this is needed.…
AP: What kind of rules?
Q: Rules of the way…
~ Zen Koan ~
Acharya Prashant: The man of Zen, lives in the…

Short description for the E2E smoke test article.

Questioner: Greetings, Acharya Ji. My question is that wherever I look on social media platforms, whether it is YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter, when I read the comment sections under the content posted there, I repeatedly see an allegation being made against the Foundation and against you, that you too are…



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

हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।

How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren, and calves give milk three times a day, where mice are the boatmen, and tomcats row the boats, where frogs keep snakes as watchdogs,…

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…


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…

“I will beat him!”
“I will destroy her!”
“Did you just insult me? Did you?”
Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!
“Did she? Did she not?”
Have some mercy upon yourself. Learn to ignore, please. Bypass the small issues. Learn to ignore the small for the big, would…

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…

The evil can consume you in two ways. One is, you look at evil and you find it beautiful. Some people do; they are captivated by the sheer charm of evil. Aren’t the dons in the movies sometimes very charming? In fact, the most charming characters in the movies in…

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…

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…

Hold on. There will be temptations; old habits, old environments will beckon you, but stand still and strong. Don’t give up. It’s a battle worth fighting and worth winning. Don’t lose this one.
If you can win this one, then in all the forthcoming battles of life victory is guaranteed.…

There was this king of the demons; his name was Hiranyakashyupa. The king worked really hard. He kept austerities, he forced even God to come down and bless him. So, it would have required a very special effort. But then, what did he want from God? Nothing but the extension…

Love is when you start seeing the deep desire beneath all your superficial desires. Love is when you start seeing what you are really really thirsty for. Superficially, the desires of different people are different. Deeply, we all share one desire.
So, what is it that happens in love? In…

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,…

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…

If a woman is good and fine, then her lover or husband would spoil her. Women must be honored for her intelligence, her qualities, for her inner strength. But when you start giving her importance for reasons like, her body is attractive and she is very sexually appealing, then you…

You are so powerful actually that you are scared of yourself.
There are three ‘you’s in that statement. The first two refer to the small self or the ego. The third one refers to the best that you can be, the Great Self, the Truth—classically, the Ātman. And classically…

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…

Women like burly guys—and why do they like burly, big, and muscular guys? Because they are likely to have higher levels of testosterone. Unless you have testosterone, you cannot build muscles; you know that, right? And that is why you cannot build muscles, let’s say, after fifty or sixty. It’s…

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…

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.…

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…

What is the nature of a gymnasium? The gymnasium only gives you obstacles. Have you ever noticed? You want to raise something—what is the gymnasium giving you? Weights, and weights are obstacles against the rise. The gymnasium really does not support you, it actually obstructs you.
The world is anyway…