Superficial peace or real welfare?

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

Question: Whenever you’re looking for spirituality, you tend to leave some things and you tend to walk towards some things. And in doing that, you are obviously creating some disturbance in the ecosphere that you are leaving behind. So, how do you justify this?

Acharya Prashant: You see, what is it that you want — a superficial peace, or real welfare?

If I really am in love with myself and hence, in love with you, would I want you to live in a superficial peace or would I want your real welfare?

What you are calling as a disturbance in that which you leave behind, is just a superficial disturbance, yes? And that disturbance, is not of your creation. Unstable systems are prone to be disturbed. They have no equilibrium. What have you done? Why do you hold yourself responsible for all that?

And this question that you are asking is behind so much of human misery.

“I know what the right thing is, but if I do this, my wife will feel bad, so I am not doing this.”

That’s what this question amounts to, right?

“I know that I am not in the right job, but if I leave my job, then my project will suffer, or my boss will feel bad. So I am not leaving it.”

“I know what the right thing is, but if I do the right thing, then my society will not approve and will be disturbed, so I am not doing it.”

“I am in all sorts of filthy relationships, but if I drop those relationships, if I change the quality of those relationships, then the other will not be happy. So, I am not changing anything.”

Why don’t you see that if you are really in love, then it is not the other’s happiness that you want; it is the other’s welfare that you want? And these are two extremely different things.

Sometimes, Ah! Most of the times rather, what is really helpful to the other, would not make the other happy.

Why even use the word ‘other’? Look at your own case — what is really helpful to you, does it make you happy? No, it rather makes you shiver.

Watch the full video here.

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