Know your real intention

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

Questioner (Q): What are you working for and where are you working from? These two have the same answer, so how to understand this in the context of Truth seekers who are indulging in their worldly activities, how should they approach their worldly lives?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, often we either ignorantly or deliberately remain in dark about our intentions. We do not really know, where we are coming from. We profess intentions that are not at all authentic.

We might keep saying for example “I am your well-wisher! I am your well-wisher!” whereas it is evident that we are harming the other person. Yet somehow we manage to remain confident about our intentions, we keep professing the piousness of our intention, you say no, “I am your well-wisher!”, “I am your father” or “I am your husband or wife or friend.”

In such cases it serves to find out the result of your action, very impartially you must find that out. What is the overall impact of your action or presence on the other person or on yourself? And that will quite accurately tell you where are you really coming from? For example; you say that you are getting quite health conscious these days, “I am a very health-conscious person these days, I have been putting on weight and it must be shed.” So, I must go for a walk or jog or a bit of a run, so that’s what you do.

It’s evening and you put on your shoes and you stroll out and there are many directions you could have taken. You could have gone to the park, you could have been to the jogging track, you could have been this way, that way but you choose one particular road, and that one particular road takes you to the market. And in the market specifically to a sweet shop.

And what have you told yourself? I am out on the road because I want to shed weight, that’s my intention and you have convinced yourself that your intention is to gain more health and now that you have reached the “Halwai” shop. What it is that you tell yourself, well I have come so far, run so hard, don’t I deserve a bit of energy? After all half of the distance still to be covered. How will I manage to return? So I must refuel myself, “Bhaiya, 250 grams of Jalebi please!”