How to judge rightly?

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

Question: Acharya Ji, what is the meaning of non-duality? Does it mean that we have to drop our judgements?

Acharya Prashant: Non-duality does not mean that you have to drop judgments. Non-duality means that — the ego is always judging, and that is inevitable.

Ego is always acting as a judge. And as long as the ego is there, it would continue to judge. You cannot tell the Ego, “Kindly don’t judge.” That is so idealistic, that it is stupid. You are telling the lion to not to eat meat, that won’t happen. You are telling the Ego to not to judge, that won’t happen. The ego would keep judging. That’s it’s Prakriti (nature), it’s constitution.

Now that the Ego is known to judge,

there is only one hope left for the Ego.

And that is — that the Ego judges rightly.

Judge rightly. If I tell you, “Don’t judge,” then you will end up either disappointed or a hypocrite. If you are honest, you will find that in spite of your efforts to not to judge, you are anyway, always judging. So you will be disappointed. And if you are not very honest, then you will falsely declare that you do not judge. And therefore, you will be a hypocrite. It’s better then to know, that given how we are, we are…