Spirituality is the ability to live without escaping

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

Questioner (Q): We have just read about the Saints or people who are meditative and who stay in meditation for years or days. In what kind of state they are? Like, they are neither in joy or sorrow or…

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, anybody, who quits life to stay in one particular state for years is simply not worth talking about.

Q: Like Shiva, who is said to be in meditation only.

AP: Did Shiva come and say that?

Q: We have read about it.

AP: Somebody may have said that; people keep on saying ten things. There is no Shiva meditating anywhere. There is no Kailash, on top of which, Shiva sits. Shiva and Kailash are symbols. They are symbols pertaining to your own inner reality. Shiva does not meditate for years or centuries. There is nothing called entering meditation or practicing meditation. There is only life — life and its situations, and that’s all that there is.

You may be a great meditator — if you do not know what to do when your house is on fire — then what is the point in living? Yesterday, we were at Nainital, and we were looking at the photo of a great Saint. And I asked Kundan (one of the volunteers)…