Just Pray! || Acharya Prashant (2015)
Question: Whenever I listen to your videos, or read your articles on blog, my mind seems to be free of fear. But this stays only for a small duration of time. If I want to increase the frequency of reading, there is a lot of resistance, and I want to return to the same old pattern. Why does this happen?
Speaker: So there are opposing forces that you can clearly see. There is something that urges you to read. There is something that brings you here (referring to Advait Clarity sessions) and raise this question. And then there is something that doesn’t allow you to read beyond a point.
Patterns are there, and they are a part of your mental makeup. Which of these two sides do you stand? The matter is an open war now. Things are hardly concealed, and the cards have been laid bare. You know what is happening. You know what it means to read, and you know what it means to understand. You know the force that urges you to read, and you also know what prevents you from reading and understanding.
Now the simple and direct question is: What do you want to happen?
In a way, it’s good. Now you cannot complain of lack of clarity.
See, at the core we are free. Understand this: We are free even to suffer. Suffering is a part of our freedom. We give our consent to suffering, that’s why we suffer. We give our consent to darkness, that’s why it prevails.
Unless you give your consent to freedom, even freedom cannot come to you.
(Laughingly) Understand this.
So deep is your freedom that unless you give your consent to freedom, even freedom cannot come to you! You are free to remain bonded. Such is the depth of your freedom! Such is the totality of your freedom. Even God cannot come to you without your consent. Such is your freedom!
Freedom is your essential nature. Nothing can happen to you unless you really participate in it. When you will get fed up with these clever games, when you will get fed up with suffering, then maybe you will choose liberation.
There is a person who is not very familiar with the fact of her suffering, to her one can talk and reveal things. Here (referring to the questioner), there is no more any utility of talking or disclosing, because whatever can be disclosed, has been disclosed. Now it’s a question of when you get really fed up of your own trivias and tantrums.
Because you come from the Absolute, so something of the Absolute always remains in you. Because you come from the Absolute, that is why you are unable to accept anything short of the Absolute, you remain restless.
Because you are the Absolute, hence you have Absolute freedom as well.
It’s just that when the nameless, formless, absolute works in its totality, there is no choice involved. So there is no question of choosing this or that. But you, as you see yourself, are small, limited, just a fragment. And where there is one fragment, there are other fragments as well so there is ‘choice’. So you have complete freedom in your choice.
No Guru, no teacher, no scripture can make your choices for you. They can expose, they can open up things, they can lay things naked and bare in front of you, they can tell you what is what, they can tell you where is light and where is darkness. But even after all their telling and exposition, it is you who finally has to say ‘yes’. You don’t say ‘yes’, things won’t move. And there is no technique involved in saying ‘yes’.
There are a lot of techniques involved in bringing you to a point where everything is clear to you, and you are enabled to say ‘yes’. But whether or not you say ‘yes’, is not a matter of technique. It is a matter of Grace. So Pray!
When it comes to this point, when you know that all the medicines, the best of treatments have been exhausted upon you, and you still find it difficult to say ‘yes’, then pray!
Ask for the strength to make the choice that you obviously know is right. Pray for the strength to give up what you know is your curse and bane. Pray for the strength to have the power to reject comforts and luxuries. Pray for the strength to reject falsehood.
But again, whether or not to pray, that too is part of your absolute freedom!
(Sarcastically) See these things must be there. Someone must act blind, deliberately, so that the game may go on. Have you seen kids playing? They deliberately wear those blindfolds. For the game to go on, some of us kids have to deliberately act blind. We have eyes. We have eyes. And no treatment, no surgery is required for a kid who is just deliberately wearing blindfolds. Would you take that kid and put him on the operating table? You won’t. Right?
And if he wants to play, if he is still in a mood to play, then what can you do? It’s a part of the game. Don’t take it too seriously. (Sarcastically) Your foolishness is within the immense space of wisdom.
Maya needs companions, Leela needs a podium. This is a world of duality. Why do you want things to simply condense into a non-dual nothingness? Let there be tears and happiness. Let there be attachment and repulsion. Let there be pain and pleasure. After all, haven’t we been told that, “The game must go on! The world must continue!”
(Mockingly) If you understand everything and drop out, how will the world continue? So, you are doing a great service to the world. The onus of taking forward the great tradition of human suffering is upon you. The line must not break.
(Laughter)
(Mockingly) Man has been suffering since time infinite. If he grows wise, what will happen to time itself? Poor time! You see, we talk about the compassion of Buddha. You are so compassionate you are helping time itself.
In Buddha’s compassion, he wanted to relieve people from suffering. Your compassion exceeds that of the Buddha. You want to help suffering itself! “How can suffering come to an end? Poor thing! Everybody is saying, “Stop suffering, wipe out suffering,” then where will suffering go?”
We have heard of a sage in the Indian tradition who allowed his body to become a home for termites. And we also know of ‘holy’ men in India, who were there till quiet a recent time, they would not get their wounds operated, even if the wounds get infested with pus, bacteria, and small insects.
(Mockingly) They would say, “Somebody has to take care of these insects. Somebody has to take care of the bacteria. If everybody starts getting free of disease and healthy, what will happen to the poor insects? Poor insects! Let my arms and my intestine and my thighs be a home for them.”
“Let my brain be storage for rubbish. Otherwise, what will happen to rubbish? If the world be a large house, then in every house there has to be space for rubbish as well. Right? A dustbin holds a place of pride in every civilized house. Let my mind be that dustbin!”
(Silence)
