With youth: An ambitious mind will remain in conflict

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

Acharya Prashant (AP): The question can be broadly put as ‘why is it so that our happiness comes at the cost of others?’ Why is it always a zero-sum game: if I win, you lose, if I am happy then you are sad? Why is it always like this?

This is the basis of the entire system in which you are living. What else is competition? Today all the systems that you have are in some way or another based on competition. The question essentially is, ‘can there be a way of living in which one’s joy is not dependent on the suffering of the other?’ Can there be a way of living harmoniously, such that there is no conflict, and there is no win-lose situation? This is a very important question, because till the time there is this obsession with winning, winning essentially means defeating the other, till the time there is this obsession with winning, with achieving, we and the world will always remain in conflict. Are you getting this? Go into this along with me.

What lies at the basis of this kind of thinking that creates this world wherein some way my happiness is always linked with me being able to take something from others? The reason is simple, very very simple if you look at it. Whenever you link, you connect your happiness to an…