Video Information: 26.08.2023, Sant Sarita, Goa
Context:
~ Why do people commit suicide?
~ What is the end of suffering?
~ Are we actually living?
~ What is the worst that happens when I die?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Context:
~ Why do people commit suicide?
~ What is the end of suffering?
~ Are we actually living?
~ What is the worst that happens when I die?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Pranam Acharya ji. You said that we should only pick bigger and important battles and
00:08 ignore the small battles. But I know somebody who is kind of nihilistic and we can say suicidal
00:13 as well. So he says, I don't want to pick even the bigger battles because even if I
00:19 pick bigger battles, I'll have to go through a very difficult path, the path of truth,
00:24 as we say, it is difficult. And even though I walk on that, there is still a possibility
00:27 that I might not win. And even if I win, there is a lot of trouble. So why not I just commit
00:33 a suicide and my life because in the end, nothing matters. After life, there is no afterlife,
00:38 there is no concept of paappunya. So why can't I just end my life right now? And why should
00:44 I choose to walk the path of truth and knowledge?
00:48 No, this simply means that one does not know the bigger battle. The bigger battle is either
01:01 not known or if it is known, it does not leave you with a choice to not to fight it. If you
01:13 are not fighting the bigger battle, that does not mean that you understand what the bigger
01:19 battle is and are yet choosing not to fight it. If you are not fighting the bigger battle,
01:28 that simply means that you are too obsessed with all the small things in life, so obsessed
01:34 that the big, the great, the immense has remained unknown to you and how can you choose to not
01:44 accept something that is unknown to you? You can accept or reject only the known. The thing,
01:59 the condition with the big is that once it is known, it overpowers you and that's called
02:08 love. So you cannot say I know the great and yet I choose not to move towards it, not to
02:19 be enchanted by it, not to be dedicated to it, that's not possible. If the immense, if
02:31 greatness do not call you, do not appeal to you, appear disinteresting to you, it simply
02:53 means you do not know them, full stop. Truth and love go together. To know the truth is
03:04 to fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love with it. You cannot know the truth and say
03:13 oh I know it but I reject it and you will feel a lot of such people, you will meet a
03:18 lot of such people. Because it pleases the ego to say that I know and it pleases the
03:26 ego to say that it has the power to reject even the truth. Both of these things are quite
03:32 pleasurable. I know the truth, you know, I know the truth and then I am such an authority
03:39 that I can even reject the truth. This is the statement of ego deeply steeped in ignorance.
03:49 Neither do you know the truth nor can you ever reject the truth. Rejection of truth
03:56 is simply an ignorance towards the truth. Truth leaves you choiceless. Truth leaves
04:06 you choiceless and that's the reason the ego is so afraid of the truth. It knows that
04:11 once it has seen, it cannot be unseen. So let me choose never to see it at all. Now
04:18 that's something the ego can possibly do. Wear blinders, wear blinders so that you never
04:30 see the truth. The truth is immense, it cannot be avoided. But to the ego the avoidance is
04:40 possible. How? Wear blinders. Even the thought of suicide, if you will see, with great sympathy
04:58 and compassion towards those who are in that kind of misery, I am saying even the thought
05:06 of suicide is something of the ego. The ego says I am prepared to let the body die then
05:26 be disidentified with the body. Even that is a kind of stubbornness. A greater death
05:43 is when you let the body be and attain your own true self. Let the body be for what it
05:55 is. The body has its own mechanisms, its own dynamic nature, works in a certain way, came
06:08 about and will fall. I will do my own thing. I cannot stop the body and the body cannot
06:21 stop me. I cannot stop the body, can I? I can't. But I find that the body is stopping
06:32 me. So what do I do? I say if I can't stop you, I will kill you. That's not the way to
06:42 stop interference. That's interference doubled, redoubled. Instead of saying I will stop the
06:57 tendency of the ego to be identified with the body, I say I will stop the body itself.
07:06 Why stop the body? That's why the knowers have repeatedly talked of dying before death.
07:15 They call it the great death. They say the death of the body is a very small thing. Happens
07:20 to everybody, to all insects. There is no being here that does not die. So death is
07:29 such an ordinary and very common thing. What is the great thing about dying today? You
07:35 will anyway die tomorrow. You will anyway die tomorrow. So what's the great thing about
07:42 preponing your death in the way of suicide, let's say? The great thing is about dying
07:50 before death. The great death. And if you go into philosophy, yes, over the last century
08:02 that's been one of the more important questions. Why to live at all? Why not commit suicide?
08:09 They don't like when we use the word commit anymore. So they say why not die by suicide?
08:14 So why not die by suicide? And wisdom has the answer. Because if you choose suicide,
08:30 you are giving up on something much higher. You are closing the possibility. What is the
08:44 possibility of living as a Jeevan Mukt? Of living joyfully as the dead one? Who is the
08:52 Jeevan Mukt? Who is the dead one? And in death there is great joy. So when you choose suicide,
09:04 you are closing on yourself the tremendous possibility of that joy. Jeevan Mukt implies
09:15 you are still alive and blissful. Alive and blissful. And if you are no more alive, where
09:23 is the bliss? Where is the bliss? So that potentiality has been forsaken. If you die,
09:37 you probably can claim that you have avoided the misery now. But now you have also closed
09:46 the possibility of joy. What joy is there after death? And those who have known have
09:56 said that it's not a bad deal if you choose the torment of life for the sake of that joy.
10:10 That joy is so immense because it comes from the immense. It comes from that greatness.
10:16 That joy is so immense that it makes all the torment worth it. Know that your problem
10:37 is not life. Had your problem been life, suicide might have been helpful. Your problem is your
10:44 notions about life. Don't drop life, drop the notions. Animals typically don't choose
10:59 suicide. There might have been one odd case and when those cases are there, then they
11:06 make headlines precisely because they are rare, exceptional. So the general rule is
11:11 that animals do not take that option. Why don't they? Because they don't have notions.
11:25 They are creatures of Prakriti. They don't have a future, they don't have expectations.
11:32 They don't say my life should be my way. To them life is as it comes to them. Life is
11:42 as it comes to them. Man lives in his notions and expectations and then a great betrayal
11:52 is experienced. You feel you have been let down by life. You wanted something and life
12:02 has not been up to that. The problem is that which you want is not so big that it will
12:12 enable you to bear all the pain that is caused in the process of attaining it. This is that
12:28 which we usually all of us want. What is it? Name it.
12:35 Liberation. Who wants liberation? Come on. What is it? This is your next black shirt.
12:49 This is your next car, next girlfriend, next race. What else? Whatever. Promotion, foreign
13:02 visit, whatever you want. Yes? Desires. So all the desires. This is that. The thing with
13:12 the world is nothing is served to you on a platter. Nothing comes for free. So if you
13:19 want to have it, what do you need to put in? Effort. If you want pleasure, you will have
13:28 to go through pain. So there is pain involved in coming to this. I am here. There is pain
13:37 involved in coming to this. So I come to this bearing a lot of pain. That pain is on the
13:44 debit side in my ledger. Correct? Debit. Nukshan. This is the cost that I have incurred in trying
13:54 to come to this. And now I come to this. And having come to this, what do I discover? This
14:02 appeared quite lucrative. What do I discover? But what is the nature of this one? It didn't
14:17 deliver what it promised. So let's say the cost that I incurred in coming up to this
14:23 is 100 units. And what do I get from this? Let's say only 10, 20, 50 units, whatever.
14:32 Whereas it had promised 500 units. Now the promise of 500 made me spend the 100. But
14:41 I come to this and how much do I find? The worth is just 20 units. So I have lost out
14:47 on something. But having come here, something else appears here. And this one says 1000.
14:55 So you will recoup all your losses. Now I am already in debt. My debit side is already
15:02 high. And it is saying come to me. Plus 1000. So I expend another 200 in going to this.
15:12 And how much I find on reaching here? Let's say 50 or 80. So my losses accumulate and
15:22 a point comes when it becomes clear that if I pursue the next desire, I will only gather
15:31 more pain. Also I do not see any option except pursuing my desires. So what do I say? I am
15:39 giving up. I am giving up. That's like declaring bankruptcy. Now if you declare bankruptcy,
15:46 obviously all your accumulated losses are offset. Nobody is now going to come to you
15:56 to collect his dues. Equally having declared bankruptcy, where is the possibility of any
16:02 future profits? If you have declared bankruptcy, where is the possibility of future profits?
16:11 Please tell me. No possibility. Right? Because the concern itself is now gone. Just as in
16:18 suicide the body is gone. So this is the corporate body. Declared bankrupt, it's gone. So fine.
16:25 One great thing about this is that now you don't have to pay those you owed some money.
16:32 But also the great potential of profits is now gone. On the other hand there is this.
16:45 This is that which we are actually meant to pursue. The immense that we are talking of.
16:55 The wonderful thing with this is that it delivers many times more than what it promises. Many
17:10 many times more. Equally the cost it extracts is also many times more. So you remember in
17:20 going to this, it promised 500 and the cost you incurred was 100 and it turned out to
17:30 be 20. That was the equation. Here this will promise, let's say, you know, this is another
17:41 goal. It promises, let's say, as much as this one or a little more. It promises 1000. It
17:45 promises 1000. You want to go to this. The cost that you took here was 100. The cost
17:53 that you bear here is 500. Therefore people will not take this path because the cost is
18:04 much higher here. But then if it had promised 1000 or it had remained ambiguous, just silent
18:11 about what it will give you, once you reach here you find this delivers you 10000. Just
18:17 that reaching here is difficult. The cost that it asks for is higher. But then what
18:24 it gives you is many times more than what you can expect. So this is what makes the
18:36 cost bearable. That cost is the daily process of life. All the trials and tribulations in
18:46 our daily living. Unless you are pursuing this, the costs will build up to such an extent
18:57 that you will have no option but to declare bankruptcy or to keep piling up the costs
19:03 by going after hopping from one target to the other. This is where the real deal is.
19:15 But also this is where the real costs are. Now you can, there is this one in Hindi. Sasta
19:23 rohe? Bar bar. Mehnga rohe? Yeh mehnga sauda hai. But here what you get is assured. It
19:41 says that you are needed to surrender everything that you have. The investment is yourself.
19:50 Invest it. It requires a heart. You do not build a company to declare bankruptcy, do
20:09 you? Somebody is starting up, you go to them and ask them why you are starting up and they
20:15 say to get bankrupt. How does that sound? Similarly you do not live to die by suicide.
20:25 It is as absurd as that.
20:26 Thank you.