Don’t let them touch you

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

Acharya Prashant (AP): The words our friend is referring to read “Remain untouched. Remain unshakeable. Remain untouched and remain firm centered undisplaced.” Those words make sense only in the context of our present condition.

What is our condition? Everything touches us. It touches us and puts its imprints upon us. So much so, that we are actually nothing but a collection of, a compendium of the various imprints that life, time, and experiences have given us.

This touches us and molds us. That touches us and dirties us, then something else comes over to touch us and touches us and breaks us, and that’s how our inner content, our consciousness, is formed through the touch of others — not through any innate principle or organic sprouting and not through which is original or of the heart.

We merely are layer upon layers of imprints, and therefore there is very little true individuality.

Similarly, we have very little rootedness. We are like pale leaves dissociated from a tree. Even a feeble wave carries it away.

We are at the mercy of the winds, with very little connection with the root. That is the condition of the mind and mankind. And that condition is suffering, lifelessness. So that poster…