Advait in Everyday Life

by Acharya Prashant

You can just understand that intense thought is called emotion.

emotions are just an expression of your conditioning.

Just as thoughts arise from conditioning, so do emotions. Emotions too are an expression of your conditioning.

Emotion is thought. And all thought is conditioning.

Thought comes from outside. You have acquired it. Similarly, emotions are acquired.

“How do I look at my conditioning?”, because your emotions are just an expression of your conditioning.

And how do I look at my conditioning? From morning till evening whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever you think, if you pay attention to it that is the only way to discover your conditioning.

When conditioning comes down, when the mind becomes light, free and clean, then you become progressively less emotional; less emotional but more sensitive.

Emotions are stale. You already know what will make you angry. Don’t we all have our pain points? You already know that if I say this kind of a statement to you, you will become angry. So emotions are conditioned, emotions are stale.

Sensitivity means to be open to new and fresh. Like looking at a sunrise for the first time, like splashing fresh, cool water on your face in the morning, that is sensitivity, that fresh experience. And that is not being emotional, that is not a sentiment.

You need to then ask yourself, “What does my mind find attractive?” What does your mind do most of the time? There are twenty-four hours in the day for everybody. Ask yourself that where do these twenty-four hours go. Where does my mind spend these twenty-four hours in?

Be convinced, time does not slip away. Time strictly follows your values. So, if you say that, “I don’t know, time just flies away”, then you are deceiving yourself. No, time never flies away. Every second of it is controlled by your mind.

When one is not attentive, then the mind surely becomes a prison; a prison of the past, a prison in which others have enslaved

When is it your best friend? - When the same mind is operating intelligently. And when is it your worst enemy? - When intelligence is switched off.

Intelligence operates only in an environment of Attention. Alternately, you could say intelligence only operates in Love. When there is no attention, when there is no care or love, then intelligence does not function.

The jail that we are talking of actually has two entries. Only two policemen who are guarding the gates- one is ‘Past’ and the second is ‘Others’. One is a slave either to the past or to the others.

Those who want to break out of the prison must learn to be attentive, must be very careful to their own life, must see what is happening and see very clearly. And in the moment of seeing, you are no more a prisoner. In the moment of really seeing, you are no more a prisoner.

You can never know ‘this much’. Either you know everything or you do not know anything.

Solve your mind, all other problems will be solved. Without solving the fundamental problem, no problem can be solved.

out of that alertness comes a spontaneous response. This is attention.

What else is there to observe? My own words, my own thoughts, my being.

And if you do not know this, it is as good as sleepwalking.

We are saying that the root of all problems, whether major or minor, is one.

What is the major problem? That we need problems. That is the mother problem; that is the primary problem, and we do not look at that.

Till date I have not met even one person who himself is not responsible for his problems. If you claim that you are suffering deeply, it only means that you deeply want to suffer.

There is no need to solve the problem. One only needs to ask, “Does it need to be here?”

You don’t need to solve it, you need to un-invite it. You don’t need to solve the problem, you need to solve the mind that attracts the problem.

Problems come to you because you need problems to maintain your identity.

Life is not a problem. Will you remember this? Will you remember this? Life is not a problem. In fact, there is nothing in life which is a problem. Situations are there, circumstances are there, problems are never there.

we don’t know what to do because there is something that we want to get.

How to get it is what we don’t know!

I know that there is something valuable that I already have with me and it can’t be taken away.

Whenever you are having an objective, you want to meet the objective, don’t you? And when you want to meet it, there is always a parallel thought that you might miss it. This thought itself is fear. Now you know why you panic? Because of these objectives.

To have an objective, and yet to remain centered, is a different thing altogether. That happens when the objective is not an external stuff.

that happen only when your objective is not arising from an internal sense of incompleteness.

The more inferior you feel, the more speedily you run towards your goal. That is what happens with most people, in most cases.

So much so that most of us, unfortunately, come to a point where we feel that unless there is fear, no work is possible, no movement is possible.

if I am alright, first of all, my goals do not remain the same. My goals are now worthy goals. Secondly, I cannot panic, because whether or not those goals are achieved, I am alright.

Do you see that two things change? One, I do not chase the same goals

Secondly, those goals are not the goals, in the same sense as they used to be. And I am not chasing them in the same sense that I used to chase.

I work hard, and yet I do not bother if I fail.

When the engine is greed and fear, how can you be joyful while going to work?

Now, who gave you the right to expect? Why must you expect? And what is this business of expectation? Why do you think you have a right to expect something? Your expectation is nothing but a desire that the other person should behave according to your image of him. You have an image of your friend. And because of that image you believe that he will behave in a particular way. When

You are stupid because you made a false image. Now you make a false image, and that image is broken on coming in contact with reality. And then you get angry. Don’t you think it is stupid?

The intelligent man lives in the moment. He does not live in images. Hence, there is no reason for him to get angry.

Whatever comes from outside, can go back. Ego comes from the outside. So it is always afraid that something can be taken away from it.

The basic source, the seed from where all these things sprout is ignorance.

Ignorance means lack of attention.

Lack of awareness, not understanding, living in beliefs, living in acceptance, that is ignorance. Once you get rid of that, you get rid of so many diseases.

Fear, anger, expectations, insecurity, ambition, all these diseases they go away once ignorance goes awa...