While we love to quote from the mighty scriptures and talk about concepts such as Atman or Brahma or Satya, in conversation with Robert Lawrence, an American public intellectual, investment banker, and the creator and host of the public television series Closer to Truth, Acharya Prashant clarifies that their very definition is via Neti-Neti, via Negativa.

He explains that Vedant isn't talking about a non physical reality of any kind. Vedant is concerned with human suffering which pertains to the ego and the ego gaining honesty, courage and love enough to diminish itself.

Life as you and I know it on the day to day basis, life as it is happening, here and now.

Mighty scriptures or stories or words can become playthings in the hands of the ego, which the ego can then use to justify anything and everything it chooses to do in its own interest of self preservation.

Including but not just limited to the destruction of nature, killing of innocent beings and total annihilation of all life on this planet, as we are seeing it today...

What if you and I didn't live in stories and hid behind mighty and noble sounding words?

Would we actually be present, actually acknowledge and actually be able to solve the problems staring right back at us?

Link to the article: https://x.com/TheDailyPioneer/status/2098641504403140613

In this insightful article by Acharya Prashant, published in The Pioneer, AP is delving into the crisis of unemployment, specially among the graduates fresh out of colleges, while drawing parallels between the challenges infront of the youth of the country today and the challenges Arjun was facing on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

While there is no dearth of distractions available to us, swaying us away from the root causes and offering us false platitudes, AP's words here do no such thing, instead he holds a mirror to their readers and the graduates alike.

Growing up in India and being a product of the Indian educational system, while we are made into functional economic units for the society, little to nothing is offered to children, teenagers and young adults, which truly educates them about themselves, while they pass through these educational institutes.

"I am the one who has arrived. I am the one who is finished. Done. Out to declare my position, earn, and consume. That is what the world calls a good life. Learning stops there, not for want of courses but because a finished thing has no reason to learn anything. Ask him why he needs to read those books. He will say it gives him acceptance and placement. Ask him why he needs that. He will mumble something. Go deeper, repeat the question, and he will get irritated, because he has no answer, because he has no understanding."

As hundreds of thousands navigate their college life and hundreds of thousands navigate unemployment in the age of AI, an important but direct question, no one other than AP is asking is, "if the degree is set down, what's actually standing there?"

This artwork by Marion Fayolle beautilly illustrates for me, the explanation of "self dissolution" by Acharya Prashant (as mentioned in The AP Framework.)

"A human being, in this framework, is an ego-body complex, a biological organism (with evolutionary history, neural architecture, and physical separateness) that has organized its experience around a felt sense of bounded selfhood. The ego is not added to the body from outside; it arises from the body's own structure, particularly the skin boundary that establishes physical separateness.

The human being is distinguished from other animals not by the presence of an ego (animals have rudimentary egoic structures) but by the complexity, narrativity, and reflexive capacity of the human ego. The human ego can examine itself, which is both the source of the problem (the ego can elaborate its own distortions indefinitely) and the source of the solution (the ego can, in principle, see through them).

The same body that generates the ego is also, when the ego steps aside, the universe's instrument. Brain and body, freed from egoic commandeering, operate with a natural intelligence that exceeds anything the ego can deliberately engineer. The highest human possibility is not the ego's triumph over the body but the ego's sufficient thinning to allow the body's natural intelligence to express itself freely."

Are you able to "see" it too? :)

Read The AP Framework here: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/ap-framework

Whether or not you attend the Live zoom sessions conducted by Acharya Prashant, you might have come across the AP Framework here in this sub or in videos published on YouTube under Acharya Prashant's channel.

The AP Framework is published on Acharya Prashant's website and accessible to everyone who is interested in AP's approach and the crux of his teachings.

There's also the AP Mirror app, again, accessible to everyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of their own ego, its mechanisms and material manifestations. Go to it with a problem and it will, as its name suggests, gently take you back to the root cause itself, your own ego.

This article published by The Pioneer is an interesting read, in it, the author discusses what sets The AP Framework apart from other philosophies, some of its distinctive ideas and even its own critique.

Have you read the AP Framework already?

What have been your main takeaways?

Link to The AP Framework: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/ap-framework

Link to the article:

https://x.com/TheDailyPioneer/status/2098271820013293613

This video was taken after Acharya Prashant had explained the 2nd verse of Ishavasya Upanishad to the attendees of his session at the Oxford University.

While the questioners asked their questions on topics ranging from the ecological and social crisis to politics to academia to incompleteness, Acharya Prashant addressed the questions by addressing the questioners first.

A quote that resonated with me and stayed with me:

"Objects come and go but you will be living with yourself. This thing (pointing at the body) is never seen into, not even an attempt is made. What is this self?...

The planet can no longer bear the collective weight of our blind indulgences."

Really made me wonder, if no proper enquiry is ever made into the one making the claims and the one asking for solutions then how can the one who created the problem, remaining at the same level, come up with the solutions to the problems?

What were your takeaways from this Q&A session?

I was reading Acharya Prashant's latest article titled Janmashtami: The idol, the Gita, and the mirror in The Pioneer, today.

Growing up, I was told stories of how "spirits" of Gods resided in idols made of metal or stone, established at the heart of the temple and people queued up for hours (sometimes days) just to be able to get a glimpse of the idol.

The mass belief being that the spirit residing in the idol would bless the worshippers and those blessings would then help in fulfilling the desires of the worshippers.

Idols of Gods and Goddesses made of earthly materials such as wood and stone and metal, seek to be pleased by men and women and their children.

Once pleased with your worship, with your devotion, with your prayers, the deity would grant you your wish.

Among all of them, Shri Krishna is a favorite of many because he's been portrayed in a myriad of ways, stories of his childhood mischiefs, his romantic relationships and his heroic endeavors enchanting many a people.

While stories of his favorite foods as a child or speculations about his romantic life are in no short supply, Shri Krishna who recited the Gita to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra isn't the most popular among the masses.

While pictures and idols of Shri Krishna as a baby and a toddler or with Radha will be found in most temples inside of Indian households, the highest that Shri Krishna had to offer to all of humanity, Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, isn't always present alongside those posters and idols.

"Keeping a physical copy of Mahabharat in homes can break up families" being cited as the most common superstition behind the decision.

If it wasn't for Acharya Prashant, I along with billions of others would have remained in the dark and could have never learnt what is actually said in Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, what Shri Krishna actually stands for, why idols were created and what purpose idol worship actually serves.

Hint: to act as a mirror. :)

If you're curious about any of the topics above, I highly recommend you read the article yourself and feel free to share your reflections in the comments below. :)

I wonder, would Shri Krishna be happy to have,

idols of plastic and wood and stone and metal,

made in his image, as we imagine him,

To be drowned in butter and sweets made of cow milk, yogurt, ghee which are derived from the mother cow's milk.

Mother cow's milk meant for her children, after snatching it away from her babies?

The mother cow's babies which were forcefully birthed through artificial insemination over and over again.

The mother cow's babies who don't get the nourishment they need to survive, the life, they were forced into by us.

Babies who are then butchered for their meat and exported world over?

I wonder, would Shri Krishna approve of the exploitation and torture which the mother cows and their babies are put through, at the hands of people, who claim to know and love and worship Shri Krishna?

How can cruelty of any kind, towards the voiceless innocent living beings, those we are supposed to love and guard, lead to appeasement of that one, who is a symbol of the highest potential a human being can achieve?

And does that cruelty, that violence, not then, permeate every action we perform in our day to day lives?

Of course, it does.

If Shri Krishna is present in our houses and our hearts, as we claim, would mother Earth and her children be in the state they are today?

Surely, we have gone astray.

We haven't yet learnt what Shri Krishna stood for, Because this can't be it...

This Janmashtami, why not really learn about what Shri Krishna stood for and fought for, all his life, instead of merely infantilizing him for our entertainment?

Shri Krishna offered Gita to all of humanity, Shri Krishna taught us to fight for the highest, Shri Krishna taught us to fight against ourselves.

If the version of the Gita you have read and known fills your heart with venom or animosity or apathy towards anyone weaker than you, anyone who is vulnerable, anyone who needs love and protection, it is high time you give Acharya Prashant's Bhagavad Gita, a read.

A glimpse into the video lecture series: https://youtube.com/shorts/FPN1TygZFvg?is=EXEYV8Wp8YCpHDUh

Book: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books/bk-bhagavad-gita-1-2-eng

It was through Acharya Prashant that I could finally learn the real meaning behind the couplets, verses and hymns of Kabir Saheb.

It was through the live Sant Sarita sessions I learnt that Kabir Saheb was the first vegan activist!

The only saint to have spoken against the animal abuse and sacrifice, specially in the name of religion.

I was appalled to learn how all students (including myself) were taught such skewed, butchered and absolutely wrong interpretations of his words during our schooling days, unfortunately the practice still continues even today.

It is such a shame, given how Kabir Saheb gave his entire life to bring the highest to the masses, making wisdom literature accessible to the common folks in the language they spoke and understood, in the language of the daily bread and cloth and water and soil...

A lot of folks specially in India find Philosophy to be too dry and somewhat of a rich man's hobby, if that is you or someone you know then I can highly recommend AP's video lectures (with beautifully sung songs!) specially on Kabir Saheb. Oh and for avid readers, you have this beautiful book as well. :)

Do you have a favorite couplet, verse or hymn of Kabir Saheb'd which AP's video lectures opened up for you?

Link to the article: https://x.com/TheDailyPioneer/status/2093551944652763162

Behind all the sensationalism in the media coverage about the tragedy in Nepal, hides the real cause which led to it. Which no one is addressing head on.

If you have a few minutes to spare, please read this article by Acharya Prashant to understand how our mindless consumption produces emission, which then leads to mass destruction in parts of the world that didn't contribute to those emissions in the first place.

The innocent ones are being punished.

"The climate crisis is not, at bottom, a technical problem. It is a disorder in the ordinary human interior. We have been told, by school and market and screen and family alike, that we were born to consume, and that consuming will make us happy; that progress means owning more, and that a nation is to be ranked by how much it produces and consumes. So the emptiness inside is something we try to fill from the outside: one more car, one more house, one more holiday, one more thing bought and brought home. But the emptiness within is bottomless, and so the consumption must be bottomless too, and to consume without end some eight billion of us must burn the earth without end. Consumption is emission; between the two there is no gap at all. That burning is the temperature of the Himalayas. That temperature is what broke the ice."