Caste, Identities and Spirituality

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Man loves identities. Castes are just another identity. If you take away castes, man will just stick to some other identity.

Listener 1 (L1): Man just wants to belong.

AP: We want to have some name to address ourselves with, so it doesn’t matter. I mean, if you have money, officially, money is not a caste, but why is it not? It is actually, if you ask communists, they will say, “Of course, if not caste then class.”

L2: So, the addiction of mankind to cling to something, makes him a slave of whatever.

AP: And whatever you are clinging to, you are just clinging to it searching for the infinite. The proof of that is, you have never been able to satisfactorily cling to any one thing. You cling to one thing, and then you cling to the next, hoping that the next thing would be better. You don’t stop till you find the infinite — which you never do. So, all clinging is because you are searching for yourself. All clinging exists because you are searching for that which you anyway are.

L2: And that’s not the divine playing with himself?

AP: The divine might be playing with himself, but why are you suffering?