Video Information: 04.09.23, TOI Interview, Greater Noida
Context:
What is Sanatan?
What is it that does not change with time ?
What mind long for ?
What is the responsibility of human beings?
What is Santan Dharma ?
What is the fact about the human inner condition?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
#cm Stalin son
#cm Stalin son remark
#controversial remark on sanatan
#acharya Prashant on sanatan
#sanatan dharm
Context:
What is Sanatan?
What is it that does not change with time ?
What mind long for ?
What is the responsibility of human beings?
What is Santan Dharma ?
What is the fact about the human inner condition?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
#cm Stalin son
#cm Stalin son remark
#controversial remark on sanatan
#acharya Prashant on sanatan
#sanatan dharm
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00See, Sanatan, as many of us might already know, means eternal, broadly timeless.
00:15Meaning Sanatan is something that does not pertain to any specific age, era or period.
00:23It is something that must hold true irrespective of the point of time.
00:32So what is it that does not change with time?
00:35The human being's fundamental condition is something that has been found to remain the
00:45same irrespective of the era or period.
00:51So the human being is born with ignorance and in bondage.
01:03And the mind does not like that, the mind does not like ignorance and bondage.
01:08So the mind longs for understanding and liberation, liberation from bondage.
01:17And the responsibility is on the human being herself to gain that understanding and that
01:28freedom from bondages.
01:30This responsibility is called Sanatan Dharma.
01:36So irrespective of whether you were born 5000 years back or you were born just 500 years
01:46back or you are born today or you would be born 500 years into the future, the fact remains
01:54that the inner human condition is of strife and ignorance and suffering.
02:02And it is not just about the time.
02:05It is also invariable across space.
02:09So it does not matter whether you are born in India or China or Africa or Europe.
02:16The inner condition remains the same.
02:19And whether you are old or young or rich or poor or man or woman, the inner ignorance is
02:27always there.
02:29So Sanatan Dharma is an overarching and a beautiful term to one's own obligation towards oneself, responsibility,
02:44dharma, law and order.
02:48Though the words law and order or religion do not exactly translate any of these into dharma,
02:59but loosely.
03:01So the mind is not at peace.
03:07The mind does not understand what's going on within itself.
03:12And the mind finds itself in various kinds of bondages.
03:16For example, it is tempted towards unworthy stuff.
03:23It is afraid of things it need not be afraid of.
03:28It gets into entanglements and all kinds of needless engagement relationships.
03:35So that's the state of the mind.
03:38And it keeps losing away time, which is the essence of life.
03:45So the mind suffers and the mind wants to know how to get rid of its state of suffering.
03:53And this responsibility to know that and the entire process of gaining liberation from suffering,
04:01that is Sanatan Dharma, that is Sanatan Dharma.
04:06Dharma that applies to all times, all peoples and all places.
04:14That is Sanatan Dharma.
04:21Yes, I have seen the remark made by him and it's a classic case of straw man fallacy.
04:35He is taking Sanatan Dharma as something which it is not.
04:41And then this distorted idea or image of Sanatan Dharma that he has.
04:48He is lambasting it, criticizing it.
04:53To some extent I understand where he is coming from.
04:57But the whole subject merits greater responsibility.
05:02You see, what is it that he is saying?
05:04He is accusing Sanatan Dharma of a few things.
05:08One is that it divides and promotes inequality.
05:13He says it is a divisive principle.
05:16The fact is just the opposite.
05:19The thing is that Sanatan Dharma is founded on the principle that all human beings ultimately
05:33have one core and common true identity and that identity is called as Atma.
05:43If you go through the fundamental scriptures, which is the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutra and the Bhagavad Gita,
05:54Vidant that is, they will clearly tell you that all the differences among all human beings are just superficial.
06:02Caste, colour, creed, language, gender, economic status, age, persuasion, ideology, does not matter.
06:18Wherever you find differences, those differences are unreal.
06:23In fact, Sanatan Dharma goes to the extent of saying that because the world is just differences manifested,
06:33all you see is diversity.
06:35Therefore, the world itself is not strictly real.
06:42What is real is that which is not different from entity to entity.
06:50That invariable, constant and common entity is called Atma.
06:58So, Sanatan Dharma is actually a great unifier.
07:02Rather than saying that it divides, etc., we must understand what the fundamentals are.
07:09Now, how they are practiced today is a different matter altogether and we can take that up separately.
07:16But if you are talking of Sanatan Dharma, then you are talking of the thing as it is meant to be.
07:23You cannot take the distorted practice of something and then use the distorted practice to allege that the thing itself is despicable or worthy of criticism.
07:41For example, there is medicine, the entire scientific field of medicine.
07:46Now, there can be a quack who does not understand medicine, who fraudulently practices some kind of forgery and because of that his patients suffer and there might even be cases of death and all those things.
08:01So, you cannot pick that example up to prove that the field of medicine itself is worth condemnation and should be dropped and you want to eradicate medicine itself from the face of earth as our friend has said that Sanatan Dharma should be wiped out.
08:23So, it's barking up the wrong tree, it's trauma and fallacy.
08:29One has to first understand what Sanatan Dharma is about.
08:32So all differences are superficial, all differences are superficial and the reality in you is exactly
08:41the same as the reality in me.
08:43There are no two truths, there are no two truths, there are no two realities.
08:47Not only is the reality within you the same as the reality within me.
08:52The reality of the entire universe too is exactly the same as my internal reality.
09:01So the reality of the universe is called as Brahma and my internal reality is called as Atma.
09:08And then Sanatan Dharma, which is best expressed in Vedanta, goes on to say that Atma and Brahma
09:16are identical.
09:17So that is the extent of unification.
09:19Where is the question of Sanatan Dharma being divisive or a promoter of inequality?
09:28So that was the first allegation.
09:31The second thing that he insinuated was related to caste.
09:35You see caste is a social evil.
09:39And if you are talking of Sanatan Dharma, there are hundreds and thousands of books.
09:46And they would naturally exist because the whole thing developed over a period of a minimum
09:54of 3,500 years and over a geography spanning from modern-day Afghanistan to Bengal in the east
10:08or even Kamarup and then from Kashmir in the north to deep south, Tamil Nadu, where our friend
10:18comes from.
10:19So there was an entire long period and a vast mass of land where things were happening and
10:31therefore a lot of things were said and that's why so many books exist.
10:36But not all of those books are to be taken as canonical.
10:41Not everything that they say has to be taken as axiomatic.
10:46Only the very core qualifies to be called as the scripture of the Sanatan.
10:54And that core is Upanishad.
10:58If you want to understand what Sanatan Dharma is really about and this goes out to all the
11:04ones who are watching this, listening to me right now, just read the Ashtavakar Gita.
11:12Ashtavakar Gita is one scripture that very correctly and neatly epitomizes the very spirit of Sanatan.
11:28And having read that one, please tell me where is caste, where is division, where is inequality,
11:35where is oppression.
11:37In fact, one complete Upanishad, the Vajra Suchika Upanishad is devoted to denouncing caste.
11:46So, the student comes to the teacher, that's how that scripture, that Upanishad runs and asks,
11:55please tell me what is caste.
11:57And the teacher, the Rishi smiles and says, okay, you tell me where is caste.
12:05Is the caste of the body?
12:09So, the student thinks and says, no, the caste cannot be of the body because all bodies arise
12:16from the five basic elements, Panchabhut, and they are just the same.
12:21So, they cannot be differentiated on the basis of caste.
12:24Then the Rishi says, fine, does caste belong then to the true self, Atma?
12:29The student says, no, even Atma cannot have caste because it's the same.
12:34It's the one thing, one final unified reality.
12:38So, it cannot be differentiated on the basis of caste.
12:41So, the sage then says that the conclusion is obvious.
12:44Caste then belongs neither to the body nor to the truth which is Atma.
12:50It belongs to the domain of the mind.
12:52It is an imagination of the mind.
12:55It is an imagination of the mind.
12:57And specifically, if you go into Advaita Vedanta, it is repeatedly said there, in so many words,
13:04very literally, that caste is unreal and false.
13:09Caste is unreal and false.
13:11So, it is not Sanatana Dharma that promotes caste or brings in even the concept of caste.
13:18Caste is a social evil.
13:20There is the ego inside man which Sanatana Dharma attempts to teach, to heal, to liberate.
13:31But then, the ego has its own ways.
13:35It's called Maya.
13:37The ego finds her way and the social evils remain in spite of the attempts made by the thinkers,
13:46the philosophers, the seers.
13:48So, caste is one of those evils.
13:51It's almost like saying, you know, there is a teacher.
13:55And the teacher tries his best to teach the students.
14:02But the students are as students are.
14:08They don't take to the teaching.
14:10They have their own miscellaneous interests.
14:13And then, there is the examination and the students fail it.
14:17And having failed the examination, the students turn upon the teacher and the books.
14:23They say the teacher was not a proper teacher.
14:26That's why we failed.
14:27And these books, they all need to be burnt.
14:30It is because of these books that we have failed the examination.
14:33My question is, sir, when did you read the books first of all?
14:37And if you have been reading random miscellaneous books, how is that the fault of the teacher?
14:43Are you reading the textbooks correctly?
14:46No, there are, as I said, hundreds of books.
14:48Why are you reading those hundreds of miscellaneous random books?
14:52They do not even qualify to be called as Shastra or scripture.
14:56The definition of Shastra is very clear.
14:58Something that talks about society or this and that does not qualify to be a Shastra.
15:04Shastra is only that which talks strictly about the ego and its liberation.
15:11Who am I? I am the ego.
15:14What do I need? What do I want? I want to be liberated.
15:17A book that deals with this topic alone deserves to be called a scripture.
15:24Now, if you pick up random story books and start calling them scriptures and you quote from them and say,
15:30well, you know, you look at this book here.
15:32Here, the caste principle is mentioned and if you look at those stories, in those stories, you can clearly see a lot of patriarchy and misogyny and a lot of those things, social divisions.
15:44Well, you are right.
15:46But, as I said, you are barking up the wrong tree.
15:49The book that you are reading is a story book.
15:52It is not a fundamental scripture of the Sanatana Dharma.
15:56So, the problem is definitional.
16:00We do not know the right definition of Sanatana Dharma.
16:04So, we pick up something random and we take that as Sanatana Dharma and then we start lambasting it.
16:12No, that is not fair.
16:14That is not fair to Sanatana Dharma.
16:16Sanatana Dharma arises from a very, very rigorous philosophy.
16:22It is a philosophy.
16:23It is not just something that somebody dream and propagated.
16:29It is not somebody's idea.
16:31It is a rigorous philosophy.
16:34And it is a philosophy that even the greatest philosophers take in high esteem.
16:41So, we first of all need to acquaint ourselves with that philosophy before we attempt to criticize it.
16:47If we do not know the philosophy itself, what exactly are we criticizing?
16:52Then comes the thing regarding social evils.
16:55He says Sanatana Dharma is responsible for a lot of social evils.
17:00So, Sanatana Dharma aims to heal the social evils.
17:05In fact, I would venture to say that all the social evils that you see around can all be taken care of if we could live true to the spirit of Sanatana Dharma.
17:17Those social evils exist not because of Sanatana Dharma, but because we do not know what Sanatana Dharma is.
17:24So, in the name of Sanatana Dharma, a lot of mischief is circulated, propagated, practiced.
17:31So, all that is happening.
17:34Now, having said all this, you see, I understand where the speaker is coming from.
17:46You see, it is indeed true that caste and discrimination and misogyny has been the practiced fact of Hinduism.
18:01So, he is looking at all those things and then he is jumping to the conclusion that all the social evils that he has been witnessing or has read about are because of Sanatana Dharma.
18:16No, that is not true.
18:17They exist because of an imperfect understanding of Sanatana Dharma.
18:24In fact, I am being just too lenient, just too generous when I say imperfect understanding.
18:32The fact is that 99.99% of those who call themselves Hindus or Sanatanis have never ever read their core scriptures.
18:45What they dabble with is story books and that does not take them anywhere.
18:50So, they do not know what their Dharma is about.
18:56The tendency of the ego is to divide and exploit.
18:59So, be it India or be it any other place, the ego attempts to exploit.
19:04That is why world wars are fought.
19:07That is why there is caste, there is class, there is exploitation of all kinds.
19:12There is colonialism and there is arms race and all kinds of mischief.
19:20That is why there is the climate change catastrophe looking at us now.
19:26So, it is the ego, it is the basic animal nature of man that makes man exploit man.
19:35And the animal within, when it gains the support of man's intellect, can act in very devious and cunning ways.
19:47The animal provides the intention and the brain provides the intellect.
19:56And when the animal intention gets coupled with a sharp intellect, the result can be devastating.
20:06One of the results can be that you can start masquerading your evil intentions behind the name of religion.
20:20The intention is to exploit, but you can start calling it religiosity.
20:25And that is what we have done. That is what has been happening in the Hindu fold.
20:30All that you want to do is exploit your fellow human beings or exploit women or exploit this or that.
20:38But you cannot morally say that you just want to exploit.
20:41So, what do you do?
20:42You justify your evil deeds in the name of religion.
20:47You say, you know, I am saying this because this has been mentioned in such and such book.
20:51And that book is a core book.
20:54Therefore, I am just being religious when I am oppressing you or exploiting you.
20:59That's what has been happening.
21:00And that was witnessed in Tamil Nadu to a great extent.
21:04And we know how E.V.R. Periyar fought against it.
21:11And Stalin has named Periyar in his comment.
21:17So, we kind of know where he is coming from.
21:21And to that extent, one has to be sympathetic to his position.
21:26Because he has been receiving a lot of criticism and even I feel that he has been irresponsible in making his comments.
21:35But what also needs to be seen is that indeed there has been a lot of discrimination, exploitation and all kinds of mischief and very deadly deeds in the name of religion.
21:51But that does not mean that we throw the baby out along with the bathwater.
21:56If you have to remove, remove social evils. Remove social evils. Do not remove dharma itself.
22:06You do not probably understand the consequences if a society loses its dharmic bedrock.
22:14You do not understand what man would be without dharma.
22:18We think religion is just a nuisance.
22:21We think we could be totally hunky-dory even without religion.
22:27No, that's not the case, sir. Man is not animal. Animals do not need religion.
22:31Because animals are alright as they are.
22:34Man is a special being.
22:36We need religion because we have a perpetual longing for light and liberation.
22:43And if there is no religion, where is light and where is liberation and where is love?
22:48And when I say we need religion, I do not really mean a set of beliefs or dogma.
22:54Religion typically is characterized by a founder, by a set of beliefs and by certain compulsory rituals etc.
23:04No, that's not what I mean by religion.
23:06When I am saying religion, I loosely mean dharma.
23:09Though religion, as we said, does not translate into dharma, but loosely.
23:13So man needs dharma.
23:15Let's not try to create a society that has no dharmic moorings.
23:21The results will be very devastating.
23:23The mind will go insane if it cannot move towards liberation.
23:28Man is not born to live in bondages.
23:31Dharma is the movement from bondages towards liberation.
23:35Though I fully appreciate that that is not how dharma is practiced in the society.
23:42That is probably also not how dharma has been practiced ever in the society.
23:47But we cannot denigrate a concept just because it has not been understood.
23:52That's being very, very unfair to the concept.
23:55So let's please understand and respect the concept.
24:02So that's it.
24:04On the point of whether he should apologize, I suppose as mature people, as adults, we have to leave it to his good discretion.
24:14Whether he apologizes or not, that's something that he has to say.
24:18We are nobody to enforce it on him.
24:21However, if I were in his place, I would definitely express regrets for not being responsible enough to first understand and then articulate.
24:36If I want to speak on a topic, it is my responsibility to first of all, do my homework and the right kind of academic research.
24:46Otherwise, it can lead to further the misunderstandings in the society and the kind of times we are living in already.
24:57The fault lines are very deep.
25:00As responsible public functionaries, we should be aiming to create bridges, not deepen the fault lines.
25:09When you say something stands between two things, you are assuming that all three are in the same plane, right?
25:21Otherwise, one thing cannot stand between two things.
25:37The thing is, these three do not belong to the same plane.
25:41They are dimensionally apart.
25:45Very, very different things.
25:47They are incomparable.
25:49They are not in the same dimension.
25:51Their very units are different.
25:53So, Sanatana Dharma, as we said, is a philosophy of the mind that gives a purpose to life.
26:09It looks at the human being.
26:13It looks at the mind of the human being.
26:16It tries to see why we suffer so much.
26:20And then it tries to find an end to the suffering, a way out, a solution.
26:26That is Sanatana Dharma.
26:28Sanatana Dharma is philosophical.
26:31Then comes Hinduism.
26:33What is Hinduism?
26:34The Supreme Court has very aptly put it.
26:38It's just various streams of beliefs coming together.
26:46So, beliefs.
26:48You can believe the way you want to believe.
26:50Somebody else can believe the way he wants to believe.
26:53And somebody else can say, I do not believe in any kind of God or something.
26:57And yet everybody qualifies to be a Hindu.
27:01So, Hinduism is about beliefs.
27:05Sanatana Dharma is a relentless and ruthless discovery of the truth.
27:11So, these two are poles apart.
27:14Being a Hindu in that sense, very interestingly, is not the same as being a Sanatani.
27:21Now, you are a Hindu if you live in a belief system.
27:26Whereas you can be a Sanatani only if you discard all beliefs.
27:32Because truth and beliefs do not go together.
27:35A Sanatani is someone who has to be free of all beliefs.
27:40Beliefs are bondages.
27:41And the Sanatan Marg is that which leads to liberation.
27:48So, you cannot carry your bondages to your point of liberation, right?
27:55So, unfortunately, much of Hinduism that we see around us is just about this story or that story, this ritual or that ritual.
28:07And beliefs very quickly slip into becoming superstitions.
28:14So, there are these beliefs, superstitions, assumptions and a lot of pseudoscience as well.
28:25So, sadly, that's what most of Hinduism is about.
28:29But Sanatana Dharma, that's something dimensionally different.
28:35That's something of the skies.
28:38You look at yourself, you figure out what is it that ensnares you.
28:44You look at yourself, you ask, where are your beliefs coming from?
28:47Where are your ideas coming from?
28:48Where are your desires, hopes, ambitions, relationships?
28:51Where are all these things coming from?
28:53And then you ask yourself, where am I in all this?
28:58If all my desires are coming from external influences,
29:02if my targets, goals, ideologies, all are borrowed stuff,
29:08where am I in all this?
29:11It's all just a collection of imprints that I have somehow started calling as I.
29:22So, that's Sanatana Dharma.
29:24Sanatana Dharma is beautiful, neat, very rigorous and very unaccommodating in that sense.
29:35Hinduism, we have talked of, we see all around us what Hinduism is.
29:41One good thing, however, about Hinduism is that it is quite liberal.
29:46You can worship the deity of your choice.
29:51You can go your own way and there is no central authority that would declare you a non-Hindu.
30:01Then comes Hindutva.
30:03Hindutva, again, is something totally different.
30:07It is not related in a deep sense even to Hinduism.
30:14If you will go to the academic side and look at the definition of Hindutva,
30:22it's a political ideology.
30:24It's a political ideology that wants to uphold cultural nationalism.
30:32So, these three are very different and there is hardly anything that unifies these three.
30:44However, in common belief and in common parlance, these three somehow have come to mean broadly
30:53the same thing or at least these three terms point in the same direction, in the common imagination.
31:00That is not right.
31:02There is not much in common between Hinduism and Hindutva.
31:06And there is not much in common between Sanatana Dharma and Hinduism.
31:10Sanatana Dharma is a pursuit of truth.
31:14Hinduism, belief system.
31:18Hinduism.
31:19And Hinduism.
31:20It's a political ideology.
31:22Political ideology dealing in culture.
31:25A particular kind of culture must rule.
31:30And culture and nation must be synonymous.
31:35Right.
31:36So, culture, nation and political power.
31:41Put these three together and what you get is Hindutva.
31:44Right.
31:45Right. And what kind of culture? Popular culture. Not culture that is really flowing from, let's say, the Upanishads or Vedanta.
31:54But popular culture of the last 100, 200 years, you assume that is the authentic Hindu culture, whatever that means.
32:02So you take that culture and along with that you take nationalism and you take these two as synonymous.
32:12And then you say, these two deserve to rule politically. That is Hindutva.
32:20So Sanatana dharma, Hinduism, Hindutva, all three very different animals.
32:24We are being far too generous than we need to be.
32:46Even to misunderstand something, you must first of all attempt to understand it.
32:55Here in India, who wants to attempt to understand religion?
33:02Religion is not something that comes to a child by way of understanding.
33:07Religion is something that is handed over to us as a doctrine, as a dogma.
33:15You just take it.
33:17This is something that you must believe in.
33:20Otherwise, you'll be ostracized and ridiculed.
33:24Are you getting it?
33:25So there is no understanding.
33:27Understanding does not mean that you have to go by a story.
33:30Understanding means that you have to apply your mind, your intellect, your attention.
33:37You have to ask questions.
33:38There has to be genuine inquiry for understanding to occur.
33:43But somehow inquiry is hardly encouraged in the field of dharma.
33:50Whereas dharma is all about inquiry.
33:53You see, Sanatana dharma is founded on self-inquiry.
33:57Atma jigyasa, that's what results in atma gyan.
34:01Self-inquiry resulting in self-knowledge and self-knowledge resulting in liberation from the self.
34:08That's what Sanatana dharma is supposed to be.
34:10Instead, all that we have is dogma.
34:13Dogma, beliefs, stories, and stuff that is handed over to us.
34:18Legends, folklore.
34:22And that's what we somehow have come to brand as religion.
34:26Now, that is not religion at all.
34:27In fact, dharma is exactly the opposite of belief.
34:33Now, I'm saying that the third time in these 30 minutes.
34:36But that's something that cannot be reiterated too much.
34:41We need to constantly remember that dharma is not belief.
34:50Dharma is inquiry.
34:51I want to understand.
34:52I want to know.
34:53Dharma is an upliftment of consciousness.
34:56Not the subduing of consciousness under the weight of age-old garbage.
35:06So, it's high time that we go to our scriptures.
35:14It's high time we apply ourselves to life.
35:17Because dharma is not just about reading a book.
35:22It's about learning from life itself as well.
35:25These are the two wings of the dharmic bird.
35:30You have to look at the highest words that your elders, your predecessors have left for you.
35:41And you have to apply your own mind to your own life.
35:45You have to go deep into your experiences.
35:48And I'm not talking about mystical experiences.
35:50You have to go deep into your everyday experiences.
35:53And from there, learn about life.
35:55And when these two things happen together,
35:58learning from a book and learning from life itself,
36:02then there is flight.
36:03The bird then soars into the sky.
36:06And that is liberation.
36:16I'm glad. Thank you so much.
36:20Thank you so much.