Questioner: The question is, how to reach the stage of ‘vulnerability’. Because if I become vulnerable, people’s behavior towards me does not bother me. There is no ego, no expectation left. Even if there is something that hits me, then also I remain normal so easily as if nothing has happened. This is the meaning of vulnerability that I get from the readings, but even after knowing I get hurt by others' behavior. My ego gets hurt. So how to reach that stage where nothing can bother me?
Acharya Prashant: Nothing bothers you calling itself a ‘botheration.’ If something comes to you and declares in advance, ‘ I am a botheration’, would you let that thing have space in your Life? Would you?
‘Botherations’ never come as botherations. So,
If you start searching for botherations, you will return empty-handed. There is no botheration that is labeled as, flagged as botheration in your mind.
Had it been flagged as a botheration, you would have disposed of it away long back, right? So, let's search with other keywords.
We are looking for ‘botherations’ because your question is ‘how do you I reach a stage, where the world does not bother me anymore’, the questioner is asking. Let us search with other keywords and let us search with ‘pleasures.’ Oh, you will find many there. Let's search with ‘Love,’ you will find much there. Let's search with ‘hopes’, you will find a lot of them there.
When you search with these keywords, you will find that there is a lot in your mind that corresponds. Also, those who have known have told us that the very definition of ‘botheration’ is that which sits upon your mind. That which is continuously making itself felt in your mind is a ‘botheration.’ Jo mann se na utre, maya kahiye soye (The one that wraps the mind should be identified as delusion).
See how you are thinking of your future all the time. See how you are thinking of your well-wishers all the time. See how you are thinking of good and bad, right and wrong, God and evil. See, what all you have been thinking of. You would be surprised; you are not thinking of things very unrelated to you. You are thinking of stuff that is present in your daily life. And it is present in your daily life because you find it useful. It is present in your daily life because that has become a part of your identity.
That is where the botheration is.
That which you cannot get rid of is a botheration.
If there is stuff with you that you can drop immediately, then it is not botheration. Just the presence of something in your mind does not mean that the thing is a botheration, it is the sticky presence of that something in the mind that makes it a botheration.
That which won’t go away even if you want it to is a botheration.
If you can summon your thoughts at will, and if you can get rid of them at will then you are the master of your thoughts, no botheration. However, that doesn’t happen.
Thoughts come to you uninvited, and once they have come, they have a way of proliferating, mutating and remaining and slowly sinking into your ‘sense of the self.’ Like an immigrant who slowly makes himself a part of the household, that’s the botheration.
If you can look at your life free of names, free of the irony of definitions, relationships, commandments, and norms, you will see how it is possible to live a life free of hurt. Hurt is a double whammy. First of all, you unnecessarily collected something, and secondly, when that thing got taken away, you felt as if a part of you had been taken away. So you felt bad.
It is arrogant, stupid, needless.
