Spiritual Teacher- Acharya Prashant
Acharya Prashant is a teacher of Vedanta, who espouses a spiritual way of life as an antidote for the stress and anxiety-filled existence that we have all come to accept as the ‘usual’ life. His foundation is playing an instrumental role in today’s pandemic-struck world by creating social awareness on the importance of psychological well-being and providing insights regarding life’s various challenges using spirituality as the principal basis.
What does spirituality mean to you in simple terms? Why is it more important now than ever before for people to look inward?
To put it simply, spirituality is honesty. One who is honest in identifying and acknowledging their true inner condition is spiritual. Contrary to popular perception, spirituality is not any particular practice or set of practices that can help in achievement of desirable goals, such as exceptional physical or mental acumen, or elusive ideas of eternal peace and happiness. Rather it is an effort-based exercise into the inquiry of the Self, which seeks to bring an intelligent change in the way things are perceived by an individual. If one truly sees the Self and the World as they are, then the right action emerges automatically. This is the spiritual way of life.
In order to know what’s wrong outside, one needs to look at what is going on inside. Man is a mass of continuous incompleteness. From the moment of birth, there is a restlessness within all of us which drives us into action so that we could satisfy our various desires. Essentially this is what has driven technological and scientific progress and has established achievement of material wealth as the ultimate objective of our existence. Sadly, these achievements do not provide ever-lasting satisfaction. All our desires elementally spring from the notion of incompleteness that we all carry, hence they keep growing continuously.
In spiritual jargon, this incomplete nature is described as the ego. Ego, in its lust for everlasting happiness, has led to the creation of various monsters that can be outrightly witnessed in the external world such as overpopulation, consumerism, climate change, destruction of eco-systems, food crisis, and the list goes on.
It is more important now than ever before to pay attention to our inner processes and proclivity to satisfy desires. At no other time in history did we have this level of scientific and technological capabilities coupled with an utter lack of spiritual wealth. The two leading reasons behind depression and suicides are forced consumerism and gradual decline of wisdom. The massive presence of social media influencers and constant exposure to the lives of the others have created a culture of greed being falsely branded as success, fame and happiness. Unless one understands the basic principal that the very basis of man-made disasters is the constitution of man himself, there is no hope for mitigation.
Take us through your journey.
Acharya Prashant setup the Advait life-education foundation in 2006 with a vision to transform humanity through spiritual education. Based on Vedantic philosophy, his teachings offer an insight into the inner workings of a human mind and the elementary question of existence and its purpose.
Prashant Tripathi, known as Acharya Prashant, was an exceptional student and from a young age acquired an interest in reading and writing. He began to read the Upanishads as a child and found his curiosities growing by the day. Prashant went on to study at the two premier institutions of the country; Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi and later Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad, with a perfect score in the management entrance. Along with excelling in academics, Prashant wrote poetry, participated in theatre, and also taught in an NGO that worked for children’s education. He also cleared the Indian civil services examination but chose to work for the corporate sector. After spending some time there, he realized he could no longer work in a place where he felt limited. Soon after, he developed an education program which addressed the absence of spiritual knowledge in the usual academic curriculums and established the life-education foundation.
What began with education of teenage students, today has flourished into a massive social media movement with more than a million followers of Acharya’s illuminating interaction discussion sessions, and videos on the various online platforms. The foundation runs public sessions, educational camps and many different types of courses based on Vedantic scriptures, to help people on their spiritual journey. The foundation also holds the largest and one-of a kind repository of original books and articles that deal with topics of everyday life using Vedantic wisdom.
How has meditation helped? How does one begin and how does one persist despite the mental block?
We need to first understand what meditation really is. The popular forms of meditation prescribed often involve sitting in seclusion, probably with some calming background music and incense, for a given amount of time in order to get rid of our anxieties and achieve peace. Note here, however, the mental peace thus achieved tends to be flimsy and vanishes in the hustle-bustle of the day. Real meditation, on the other hand, is a constant activity that requires deep rumination to be able to see things as they are. It is about showing yourself the mirror, using your own daily activities as a case study. True meditation will actually not bring immediate peace, rather it will bring upheaval and discomfort as one begins to see the reality behind the human actions.
Real meditation is a helpful process in elimination of all the burdens that one lays upon oneself unnecessarily. Especially with our lifestyle today, there are numerous external influences that constantly impinge on our mental space leading to overwhelming feelings regarding issues that in reality are not that big a deal. Meditation improves our ability to judge these influences in the light of reality. In this age of misinformation and consumerism, it is important to adopt meditativeness to live a life free from external pressures.
The COVID-19 outbreak has actually given us an opportunity to observe our thoughts and actions that have led us to where we are today. Not only has the pandemic exposed the heinous consequences of the uninhibited material growth, it has also created a sudden halt in our daily activities by altering the economic processes that were guiding our lives up-til now. The current times are not about lamenting the fact that our weekends do not feel like weekends anymore, rather to consciously explore the problem behind the idea of weekday-weekend distinction. What does that say about the nature of our work, why did we treat the two end days as relief packets to begin with? If used wisely, this time of crisis can turn into an opportunity for self-exploration and adoption of a healthier lifestyle.
Mental blocks are nothing but distractions, which can actually be exploited to advance on the path of meditation. The awareness of mental blocks paves the way for its dissolution. The moment we begin to feel a resistance towards taking the right action, is the moment we discover what is stopping us from being peaceful. This observation is meditation. True devotion to peace will dissolve all blocks in the path of meditation.
How does one find happiness even when the reality looks grim, uncertain?
What most of us call as happiness is a temporary phenomenon characterized by a temporary absence of suffering or sadness. Suppose you gave an important exam and you did not do well on it; you are afraid you might fail. Your mind is filled with anxiety and sadness. Finally, when the results come out, you find that you have managed to pass, and you are suddenly filled with great happiness and elation. What happened here is an example of the commonplace happiness. You felt happy because the thing that you were afraid of did not happen. The greater the fear, bigger the happiness.
This happiness is not only temporary but also cause dependent. Mostly, our happiness depends on a particular result, an event, or a person. Almost all of us suffer from problems arising in personal relationships, especially the ones with our partners and parents. The recent lockdown may have even brought these issues to the fore, with everyone being forced to pause and take time off. The evident flaws in our relationships and their inability to stand up to our expectations has become the cause of our suffering. If, however, our expectations are met by some chance, we say that the people in our lives are amazing and that we are very happy with them. Suffering and happiness are the two sides of the same coin and are essentially guided by our expectations and fears.
True happiness cannot be found, it is simply waiting to be acknowledged. This happiness arises from the feeling of self-sufficiency; when one realizes that one does not need external stimulus to be happy. This kind of happiness is described as the pursuit of ‘Anand’. Till the time we keep thinking that the objective of man’s life is to be happy (in an external way), we will create more and more problems like climate change, outbreaks of deadly virus, and even mass extinction. We have to go to the core problem. See where everything is coming from and see where it leads us. Again, a grim or an uncertain situation is a perfect opportunity to evaluate the root of the problem. Hence, the best way out of the problem is to go in!
What's the right way to affirm, and develop a positive outlook during times like these?
During times like these, there is a need to connect the dots between the problems in our external world and the root of these problems which resides inside us. It requires honest observation and sensitivity to look beyond our conditioning and into the processes that have led us to the point where we are today.
We need to understand the basic tendency towards greed and exploitation for satiating the unending desires. Look at the state of our planet, for instance. In a bid to fulfill our desires, we have heavily encroached upon the rights of the other species living on Earth. The root of the issue is not merely industrial development and progress, rather it is our inner tendency to consume everything for personal gratification. Till the man keeps calling himself an entity distinct from the world, he is bound to have a hostile and exploitative relationship with the world. Hence, in nowadays world, causes of climate change, and veganism are truly resonant of spirituality.
We need to acknowledge that things that we really want is beyond the limitation and mechanization of the physical world. What one needs is an honest outlook, to be able to see that the more subtle aspects of our existence; love, contentment, peace, and joy, are not material. They also cannot be realized through any material means. To be able to rise above the physical nature with all its physical demands and pleasures is to realize the true purpose and desire of our consciousness; the purpose to live in freedom. Any action that springs from this purpose is the right way!
For videos you can visit:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2ietN6yeS0
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