Questioner: A few days ago, during my usual morning work commute, I was watching your video on Mansahaar – flesh consumption, you called that the biggest sin, and although I am a vegetarian, my heart cried. My eyes got filled with tears in the middle of the World Trade Center.
My question is, how heart can be the Pradhan , the prime one always?
Because tears definitely bring peace or Sukh (Happiness). There is no difference between heart and peace. And tears are just one kind of expression of the heart.
Acharya Prashant: When one discovers the joy of living by the heart, then the heartfulness reveals itself, expresses itself, in tears as well as laughter. Tears are beautiful, tears are important. Laughter too is not bad. If you can laugh, especially upon yourself, then witnessing has taken over. And if your mind can cry without reason, and inexpressible melancholy can possess you, even in the middle of all your possessions, achievements, if in the moment of your worldly glory, you can still sense that something extremely important is amiss and your eyes well up in tears, then tears too are beautiful.
It’s not about tears or laughter. It’s about where they are coming from. There have been saints, who have laughed profusely and they would teach through laughter. And there have been devotees, who have cried a lot. This entire system, the whole mind-body apparatus, must be a servant. It must be available as a vehicle, it must be available as a conduit, must be available as a servant. The task must be to express the heart, and the body and the mind have their limitations.
The hands can write or paint, the legs can move about, the eyes can see, the eyes can get flooded, the ears can listen. In all ways, in all possible ways, the entire system must serve the Truth. The tongue must talk of the one, who cannot be talked of. The legs must keep carrying you to the right places. The eyes must look at the right objects. The ears must listen attentively. The memory must remember rightly. The intellect must think and analyze rightly. The internal organs, all of them, must perform their internal functions as assigned to them by their Prakratik (natural) constitution.
And then, the Jeev , the individual, is living rightly.
Eyes must really, really see, they must continuously be longing for the Truth and when they look at the false, they must see through it. And that is the function of the eyes. The head must be prepared to bow down, and the spine must be determined to stay erect and the spine must tell the head – you must bow down, only when you meet the right one. Till then, we both stand firm and erect.
Tears are beautiful, but beauty must not remain limited only to tears. Let your entire life be a dance in beauty. Every bit, every moment, every step, every organ, every thought, every word, every touch, every sight, every dream, all must arise from there. The Sukh (Happiness) that you have talked of is not ordinary Sukh . It is the ultimate Sukh , it is Anand (Joy). Ordinary Sukh is accompanied by Dukh (Sadness). The Sukh you have talked of is the Sukh that sometimes Ashtavakra, refers to ‘ sukhi bhavo ’. He means Anand , the eternal Truth, eternal happiness.
If happiness can be eternal, then it is joy.
