Video Information: 15.02.25, Vedanta: Basics to Classics, Greater Noida
Life’s a Joke—But We’re the Punchline! || Acharya Prashant (2025)
Description:
Acharya Prashant discusses the essence of humor, emphasizing that existence itself is a joke because nothing holds absolute seriousness. Humor arises when something is given undue importance, and true maturity lies in the ability to laugh at oneself. Societal hypersensitivity stems from insecurity, as taking offense often reveals personal fragility rather than genuine concern.
There is a distinction between personal hurt and the responsibility to protect a mission. Public ridicule of a teacher can hinder their work, making it necessary to defend their credibility. Seriousness has its place at the Vyavharik (practical) level, even though at the Parmarthik (absolute) level, nothing is inherently serious. Since people already take themselves seriously, scriptures initially encourage seriousness toward truth until transcendence is reached. The contrast between illusion (Pratibhasik), practicality (Vyavharik), and absolute reality (Parmarthik) highlights the journey from conditioned seriousness to ultimate liberation.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Life’s a Joke—But We’re the Punchline! || Acharya Prashant (2025)
Description:
Acharya Prashant discusses the essence of humor, emphasizing that existence itself is a joke because nothing holds absolute seriousness. Humor arises when something is given undue importance, and true maturity lies in the ability to laugh at oneself. Societal hypersensitivity stems from insecurity, as taking offense often reveals personal fragility rather than genuine concern.
There is a distinction between personal hurt and the responsibility to protect a mission. Public ridicule of a teacher can hinder their work, making it necessary to defend their credibility. Seriousness has its place at the Vyavharik (practical) level, even though at the Parmarthik (absolute) level, nothing is inherently serious. Since people already take themselves seriously, scriptures initially encourage seriousness toward truth until transcendence is reached. The contrast between illusion (Pratibhasik), practicality (Vyavharik), and absolute reality (Parmarthik) highlights the journey from conditioned seriousness to ultimate liberation.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Real humor is actually about bringing stuff down.
00:03What does the Bhagavad Gita say?
00:04Guna Gudeshu Vartant
00:05It's all just play of Prakriti.
00:08It's all a Trivunatmak play.
00:09What are you so serious about?
00:12And therefore, whenever you find somebody, anybody, very serious about anything,
00:17you know that the stage is set for a nice, cracking joke.
00:21But we are touchy people, very sensitive people.
00:23And it is the mark of very insecure people that they are scared of laughter.
00:28Such people are so insecure that you do not need weapons to terrorize them.
00:32A few jokes suffice.
00:34If you are someone who cannot tolerate jokes, you need to check your insecurities.
00:39Surely, you are defending something that is fundamentally indefensible.
00:44That's why you are so touchy.
00:46Why are you feeling so vulnerable, sir?
00:48Are others carrying the responsibility of protecting your fragile feelings?
00:53Why are you feeling so fragile in the first place?
00:55I'll drag you to the court for harboring such fragile feelings.
00:58You need to get yourself checked up.
01:00No, jokes are so bad.
01:02Our youngsters will get spoiled.
01:03Why have you raised your youngsters in such a pathetic way that they get spoiled by anything?
01:08If there is a creator, he's actually a comedian.
01:16Pranam Acharyaji.
01:20Recently, media has put a term in front of me that is dark humor.
01:24So, sir, I want to ask you that what is humor?
01:28We see one sort of application of humor in our sessions too, as you have a great sense of humor.
01:35So, what is humor and what purpose it serves to the human consciousness?
01:42And should there be any border to comedy or not?
01:47Ultimately, the one thing absurd about existence is the common, ordinary kind of consciousness.
02:10There is just no meaning, no purpose in existence.
02:15And yet, we all move around with self-appointed sense of seriousness,
02:24and sincerity, and purpose, and target, and achievables.
02:31And that is the mighty joke.
02:34Existence itself, consciousness itself is a joke.
02:38The human being taking himself seriously is the joke.
02:46So, whatsoever it is that is taken seriously by you, is a befitting candidate to be a joke.
02:58And its candidature is befitting to the extent it is taken seriously by you.
03:10Which means the more seriously you take something,
03:15the more worthy a candidate is that thing to become a joke.
03:23Because actually, there is nothing to be taken seriously in life.
03:28There is nothing here that is of any consequence or any importance.
03:35Ultimately, at the parmarthic level,
03:38when it comes to the behavioral, practical level, the vyavaharic level,
03:42then obviously, you have to take things seriously.
03:45But we forget that the seriousness is all just transactional.
03:57That the seriousness must remain just conditional.
04:01Seriousness is not an absolute.
04:06There is no object here, no premise, no value that has an unconditional value.
04:13Seriousness is not an absolute.
04:20There is no object here, no premise, no value that has an unconditional value.
04:29You can laugh at something only when the thing is pure or misplaced.
04:43If a thing is placed where it must be, will you laugh?
04:48But if I place my shoes on my head, you will laugh.
04:52Because the thing is inappropriately placed.
04:56The thing has been given a place, a sense of importance that it does not deserve.
05:04And that is the definition of humor.
05:08To see what is being given importance and bring it down.
05:13Because frankly nothing deserves importance.
05:19Real humor is actually about bringing stuff down.
05:26What does the Bhagavad Gita say?
05:28It's all just play of Prakriti.
05:32It's all a Trivunatmak play.
05:35What is it serious about?
05:38And therefore whenever you find somebody, anybody very serious about anything,
05:44you know that the stage is set for a nice cracking joke.
05:54Are you getting it?
06:00But we are touchy people, very sensitive people.
06:07Since we do not understand that all this is just one,
06:11therefore we pick pieces of it from here and there and start calling few of those pieces as sacred.
06:22And because we have appointed those pieces as sacred,
06:27we do not want those pieces to be addressed irreverentially.
06:33We say you know when you are talking of those things, you better maintain some respect.
06:38But sir, only you have declared that those things are respectable.
06:45Or have the heavens declared such a thing?
06:48So basically you are saying that I must respect your ego.
06:54And it is your ego that turns certain objects of its imagination into something sacred.
07:01And then you say you know you are violating our sacred space.
07:05But is that space absolutely sacred?
07:08Or has that been named as sacred by you?
07:13And if you have the right to call something as sacred,
07:17then equally I have the right to not think of it as sacred.
07:20And if your sentiments are hurt, when I step on your sacred space,
07:27then I can also say that my sentiments are hurt
07:30when you do not allow me to step into something that I do not think of as sacred.
07:35If it is a question of sentiment versus sentiment,
07:39then my sentiment is as good as yours.
07:42Why should I honor your sentiment more than mine?
07:44It is the mark of maturity of a people that they are able to laugh at themselves.
07:50And it is the mark of very insecure people that they are scared of laughter.
07:57Such people are so insecure that you do not need weapons to terrorize them.
08:03A few jokes suffice.
08:06Now having said that,
08:09the biggest joke is the ego itself.
08:13Because what is it that you take the most seriously in the entire universe?
08:18Yourself.
08:20Every living being in its own world is at the center of the universe.
08:25What is it that you take the most seriously in the entire universe?
08:28Yourself.
08:30Every living being in its own world is at the center of the universe.
08:35I am the most important one. Everything else is in relation to me.
08:39So a joke is worth calling a good joke, a good one.
08:49Only when first of all it is targeted inwards.
08:54Do you have the courage to look at yourself and see what an amusing specimen you are?
09:05If you do not have the guts to laugh at yourself and instead you are always found throwing barbs at others,
09:14you are not a good comic.
09:17I don't know what dark humor is, but real humor and sharp humor is when you can destroy your own darkness.
09:30The man who starts taking himself as a joke is for sure a liberated man.
09:40And the mark of bondage is that you will be very sensitive and very vulnerable when it comes to being made the butt of a joke.
09:57But you will be very eager to turn others into jokes.
10:05Before you make fun of something or somebody, ask yourself, have you first of all made fun of yourself?
10:15The one who takes himself as a joke, only he has the right to turn everything else into a joke.
10:31And the great thing about such a person will be that you cannot scare him with consequences.
10:40You cannot say, we will put you in jail if you joke about this and that.
10:45You will say, you will put me in jail? I am already a joke. How can you jail a joke?
10:50And that will be a bigger joke, you know, a jailed joke.
10:54So on one side, the joke is on those who take jokes so seriously that they get offended and wounded.
11:09On the other side, the joke is on those who keep making joke of others without ever succeeding in seeing how big a joke is their own self.
11:28But in general, if you are someone who cannot tolerate jokes, you need to check your insecurities.
11:43Surely, you are defending something that is fundamentally indefensible.
11:52That's why you are so touchy.
12:01If someone makes joke of stuff that I hold as important, or let's say if there is a person, a historical figure that I respect
12:20and someone comes and makes a joke of that figure, I am not going to be offended.
12:27Probably, I am going to be disappointed.
12:35Probably, I would want to educate that person.
12:38If that fellow is making fun of people I respect, then it's not those people who are getting hurt, right?
12:53Are they going to get hurt? No.
12:55This fellow is doing all this so that I get hurt.
12:58And if I get hurt, have I really respected the ones I claim to?
13:08So, I might even get disillusioned.
13:13Maybe I had certain expectations from this person and those expectations have all been betrayed.
13:21Listening to the joke he has come up with, maybe I will be disappointed, disillusioned.
13:28Maybe I will even be saddened.
13:31Maybe I will tell this person, you know, I am disappointed with the quality of your joke.
13:39Not that your joke is offensive, it's just cringe.
13:45I think you ought to have a better sense of humor.
13:53All that is a different thing.
14:00But to say that our feelings and our sensibilities and our emotions have been hurt,
14:14I mean, why are you feeling so vulnerable, sir?
14:18Are others carrying the responsibility of protecting your fragile feelings?
14:26Why are you feeling so fragile in the first place?
14:28I will drag you to the court for harboring such fragile feelings.
14:35You need to get yourself checked up.
14:39Why are you feeling so brittle?
14:47No, jokes are so bad, our youngsters will get spoiled.
14:51Why have you raised your youngsters in such a pathetic way that they get spoiled by anything?
15:00By the way, the youngsters you are trying to protect, listen to kids in class 3 and 4 these days
15:07and see whether they have any of those values left in them anyway that you are trying to protect.
15:23There was this clip a year or two back, not even today.
15:28Kids from class 3 and 4, they were playing this game or having this contest,
15:37whose mama is the hottest?
15:48What are you trying to protect your kids from?
15:52Your kids are totally exposed to everything including your mama's pics in her college days.
16:00Today she is the mama.
16:02Once she was that butterfly in the college.
16:08And her Instagram account is 8 years old.
16:11Everything is available to be seen.
16:13And now the kids' friends are saying, mama is really hot, man.
16:23My kids are getting spoiled.
16:27And raise them in a proper way.
16:34Then the whole issue shifts to right parenting.
16:39Once I had said, when you do not have sacredness in your life,
16:44then you try to compensate for it by turning all kinds of little and miscellaneous things
16:51into sacred.
16:54I don't have real sacredness in my life.
16:57So then I say, oh no, this is sacred for me.
16:59This is also sacred. This is also sacred.
17:0140 different things are then sacred for me.
17:05And then you throw a joke at any of those 40 things and I get offended.
17:12Why are you trespassing on my sacred space?
17:16Sir, sacred spaces are always very internal.
17:23How come your sacred space is a public pathway that anybody can step on?
17:31I have my sacred space here in my heart.
17:35Nobody can touch it.
17:40Why is your sacred space so public?
17:46All that happens when real sacredness is missing from life.
17:52Then all kinds of trivial things are termed as sacred.
17:57This is all sacred.
18:02And humor is humor. I do not know what dark humor is.
18:05I mean, I don't watch much of comedy, so I don't know all that.
18:09To me, existence itself is an uproar of laughter.
18:20What will I do by watching a stand-up or somebody?
18:28Everything about existence is a huge guffaw.
18:36Ha ha ha.
18:39Everything is a joke and nothing is a joke in particular.
18:45You look at the soil in front of these premises.
18:53You look at the floor beneath your feet.
18:57All that was living, walking, talking, not too far back in the past.
19:05You need a bigger joke.
19:08And then you look at your own face.
19:12And very soon you will be the soil on the earth.
19:20And yet we take ourselves very seriously.
19:29I need two extra hours for makeup before the party tonight.
19:33Why? There is a pimple this side.
19:38No Bhaya, don't click from here. Click from here.
19:42Or I will make this kind of a posture to hide the obvious.
19:50And then she is the organic matter that the bacteria are enjoying.
20:04And the pimple was such a big deal once.
20:10Dark soil, maybe that's what is called dark humor.
20:15Jokes can be in bad taste.
20:20Jokes can be very very poor works of art.
20:24But I don't think any joke can have the power to violate that which is really sacred.
20:45If stand-up artists or comics have to be punished,
20:49they should be punished for being distasteful.
20:51They should be punished for being distasteful.
20:57And that's no small crime by the way.
21:01The fellow is standing there, barking, wasting everybody's time,
21:07coming up with fluff that he calls as jokes.
21:16Bankrupt him for that. That's fine.
21:21Because you are a professional.
21:23And your job is to come up with something worth calling as a piece of art.
21:31Instead of that you are coming up with these sorry specimens.
21:35You deserve to be bankrupted. That is fine.
21:38But I don't suppose people deserve to be jailed for violating somebody's feelings.
21:45In fact, those with such, as I said, those with such crippled feelings deserve to be treated.
21:52These people need to be identified and admitted into some psychiatric ward or something.
22:03I have said something, even this can offend them.
22:07You won't even know what is offending what.
22:09Anybody can be offended by anything and say my feelings, I am hurt.
22:16Or am I to take cognizance of everybody's feelings before I open my mouth.
22:22Is that the deal?
22:28Then no sane person will ever open his mouth at all.
22:32Because somebody or the other will always be offended.
22:36And why should it matter more if 20,000 people are offended compared to only 2 people being offended?
22:45The individual has the same rights as the mob.
22:48If even one person is being offended, it's the same as offending 1 lakh persons.
22:56And if you can jail someone offending 1 lakh persons, jailing is the same.
23:00It's the same as offending 1 lakh persons.
23:03And if you can jail someone offending 1 lakh persons, jail him on offending even one person.
23:08And that will mean nobody will say anything at all.
23:13You need to have a shut up.
23:15Society then instead of stand up, whatever.
23:20The fellow who does not examine himself will take himself very seriously.
23:26That's the rule.
23:30The less you know yourself, the more you respect yourself.
23:39The more is the inner hypocrisy, the bigger is the facade of outer respectability.
23:51What respectability?
23:52There is no respectability.
23:54And if I hold something as sacred, it suffices for me that I hold that thing as sacred.
24:01It's a very intimate relationship between me and that.
24:06Why will I demand that you too must respect what I hold sacred?
24:13What kind of demand is this?
24:14You know, what does this demand betray?
24:19That I too don't hold that thing as sacred.
24:24Deep within, I'm not sure whether the thing is really sacred at all.
24:32So I want the power of the crowd behind me.
24:35I say, you know, I hold this thing as sacred and 20,000 of you, you too must say that this thing is worth respecting and bow down.
24:42So that I feel assured that the thing is indeed sacred.
24:49If I'm assured of my faith, why will I seek security in numbers?
24:56I know for myself and that suffices.
25:00Does it not?
25:02I know for myself, it suffices.
25:04Now you may keep joking or you may keep supporting me.
25:07Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
25:08But our love, our respect, our faith, they are all very borrowed concepts.
25:18Borrowed and imposed.
25:22We really have no confidence in them.
25:25Therefore, we are very scared.
25:31Forget the sacred.
25:33What is present is the scared, a minor variation.
25:39From the sacred to the scared.
25:44We are very scared people.
25:46Because we don't have real spirituality in life.
25:50We don't have the wisdom that comes from self-knowledge.
25:57Therefore, our faith is very fragile.
25:59We keep looking towards everybody.
26:01You know, you please honour my faith.
26:03Otherwise, I'll be offended, you see.
26:05Laugh at yourself. That's the best joke.
26:10You can laugh at others too.
26:12But only after you first of all laugh at yourself.
26:18And you don't need any special event or person or thing to laugh at.
26:25Everything here is a cosmic joke.
26:30If there is a creator, he is actually a comedian.
26:39But just this much of caution you must have.
26:42Before you laugh at others, laugh at yourself.
26:48And then, even when you laugh at others, it won't carry a sting.
26:55It will carry compassion.
26:57It will carry compassion.
27:00Sir, you said that the sacred one should be in the heart.
27:06But if someone is cracking jokes or disrespecting the one who teaches me that,
27:12that the whole existence is full of jokes,
27:17if that there should be no boundary, no border on the jokes,
27:21why should not I slap the person who disrespects by cracking jokes, the Gita or you?
27:28The slapping can come from two very different centers.
27:32One is, the joke that you cracked on my teacher,
27:38shook my own faith,
27:45brought tremors within.
27:48Within, my entire belief started shaking.
27:53That is one thing which may make you want to slap that person.
27:58The other thing is,
28:01when you are publicly ridiculing my teacher or casting false kind of aspersions,
28:10then you are making the job of my teacher difficult.
28:15Because you are doing it publicly.
28:18And my teacher's mission is public.
28:23He wants to get to a large number of people.
28:27And by leveling false allegations on him, you are making his job difficult.
28:35Now before my teacher reaches a person,
28:38your false allegations have already reached that person.
28:42So my teacher will have a doubly tough time.
28:48Bringing the truth to that person.
28:52Now this is another center.
28:54This is not about personal hurt.
28:56This is about objectively seeing that the conduct of that person is deleterious to the mission.
29:04These are two very different things.
29:07If you ridicule my teacher in private, I have no issues.
29:12No issues, you can say whatever you want to.
29:15But if you do that in public,
29:18then you are jeopardizing his mission and my mission.
29:22And then I cannot be lenient on you.
29:29Then I will come down very harshly and very heavily on you.
29:33Because my teacher has surrendered his life to his work, his mission.
29:39And by publicly demonizing him,
29:48you are laying his life to waste.
29:52Because his life is his mission.
29:57These are two very different centers.
30:00I am not personally hurt.
30:02But if you will hurt the mission,
30:05then I will do whatever it takes to protect the mission.
30:13Sir, at the starting of the answer, you have mentioned that
30:18at the parmarthic level, there is nothing to be taken seriously.
30:24But when we come down to the vyavaharic level,
30:28there is something to be taken seriously.
30:31But the ego exists only at the pratibhasic level.
30:35So why at the vyavaharic level we have to take something seriously?
30:39Because seriously is the concept.
30:42You see, you already take things seriously.
30:46Don't you take yourself seriously?
30:49Yes, I do.
30:51So you already take things seriously.
30:53Hence the question, why do we need to take things seriously?
30:56That's a very redundant question.
30:58You already do take things seriously.
31:00And because you take the harmful kind of things seriously,
31:06therefore it is advised at the beginning
31:10that you must take another dimension of things seriously.
31:13For example, when you will come to me, I will say,
31:16take the Bhagavad Gita very seriously.
31:18Very seriously.
31:20But a point comes when the scriptures themselves say,
31:25now keep us aside.
31:31We have done what we could.
31:34Go beyond.
31:37We liberated you from everything possible.
31:41Everything possible.
31:44Now we liberate you from ourselves as well.
31:49That's what the scriptures say.
31:53So scriptures are to be taken very very seriously
31:57as long as you take yourself seriously.
32:00And then that final point we need not worry about.
32:05Don't try to imagine about it.
32:07Okay, one day will come when the Upanishads will say,
32:11fine, close the book and keep it aside and fly away.
32:17Don't imagine.
32:19Hence I say, you will need the Upanishads all your life.
32:22Gita is not a thing to be used and discarded.
32:29Gita should be like your breath.
32:32Let it remain always with you.
32:34If at some point the Gita has to say,
32:37that son, now you can go beyond.
32:42Let that be on the Gita.
32:45Why should we try to prophesize that?
32:51Why should we jump the gun?
32:55Our job is to stay true to the Gita.
33:07No, no, it is not as if the ego exists only at the Pratibhasic level.
33:18At the Pratibhasic level, the ego exists for what it is not.
33:26At the Vyavaharic level, the ego exists seeing the facts of its being.
33:33There is a fellow who lives in imaginations.
33:35There is a fellow who lives in facts.
33:38But even the fellow who lives in facts believes that he is a fellow.
33:42So he is still not at the Parmarthic level.
33:45At the Parmarthic level, even the fellow does not exist.
33:48There is total dissolution.
33:50So the ego exists at both levels.
33:54At the Pratibhasic level, you are superman.
33:57At Vyavaharic level, you are man.
33:58But it is better to be a man than a superman or a spiderman.