Whom to pray? What to say? || Acharya Prashant (2022)

Questioner (Q): My gratitude, Acharya ji.. I’ve been listening to you for more than a year. It was a great pleasure, it was an amazing bliss in Rishikesh. And I just bought a book in IISc the first day and I finished reading it in three days because I thought if I find something interesting, I will ask you a question, but I was not, I could, I was not able to do it.

So, in Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, I’m coming to that. You mentioned Puruṣa as Heart, as the One, as the Truth, maybe Infinite, and Prakṛti is the world or the body. And you also mentioned in the notes that this is not Yin & Yang.

So, coming from a background as a QiGong and Tai Chi practitioner, we believe in this Yin and the Yang. It is this continuous flow. And I just realized when she said that, “If I consider myself as a flux as a wave, then I am not here, so, the rest is also”; in other words hearing your talk, is Mithyā. If I’m a lie, then everything is also an illusion. Considering Puruṣa and Prakṛti, what is the Yin and the Yang?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Actually, the difference is in terminologies between Sāṅkhya and Vedānta. In Sāṅkhya, Puruṣa is a corruptible, vulnerable entity.

Q: The Heart?

AP: No, in Sāṅkhya, Puruṣa is the vulnerable consciousness, the mind. In Vedānta Puruṣa, refers to…