With youth: Belief is broken, Faith remains firm

Acharya Prashant
8 min readJan 6, 2023

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

Question (Q): Sir, I am Shubham. My question is that why do I find it difficult to trust anybody?

Acharya Prashant (AP): We are examining trust. What is trust? Trust is a statement: ‘It is so’. Trust is when I say, ‘it is so’, ‘it is this way’.

‘Superstition’ is the lowest kind of trust. A little higher than superstition is ‘belief’. The highest kind of trust is ‘faith’. We will see what these three are and how they are different from each other.

(Pointing towards a member of the audience) What is your name?

Listener (L): Sir, Deenbandhu.

AP: Now, this happens, just out of coincidence, that the last three times I was in this room, the fellow who was occupying that chair was called ‘Deenbandhu’. It has somehow been happening that every time I visit this room, the fellow who sits on that chair, is called by the name, ‘Deenbandhu’. So, today when I enter this room, I look at that chair and I say, ‘Oh! you are Deenbandhu’ and I am very sure that this person is ‘Deenbandhu’. What kind of trust is this?

L: Superstition.

AP: Superstition. I know nothing. It is a blind belief. Just because something has…

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