Acharya Prashant: Being in the right environment itself is Satsang. Satsang does not necessarily mean a gathering. Satsang means realizing what affects the mind and acting accordingly. Give the mind the right food, give the mind the right companions. The right companions of all kinds: right books, right food in the physical form, right sleep, right activities, right exercise, right internet, right people, the right city, right locality, right house, right husband, right lover; that is Satsang.
Questioner: How we can define right?
AP: That which does not unsettle the mind. That which does not load the mind with more and more ideologies, thoughts, opinions.
What did the question begin with? Is boredom contagious? So, what is then the definition of the right environment?
An environment that is not eager to load you with stiff. That is the only definition of the right companion.
That is also the definition of the right friend, or the right husband or wife, or the right acquaintance. Someone who is not very eager to wash his dirty linen upon you. Someone whose presence in your life does not make you unsettled, because our nature is to remain settled. Then comes someone piles up his garbage upon you and you start shaking under the impact. Now, that shaking you don’t call as shaking, sometimes you just call it pleasantries, sometimes you call it responsibility, sometimes you call it excitement, sometimes you even call it love.
Q: Discipline.
AP: Or discipline. But that is one benchmark that you must always use to assess the environment you are in. is your environment bringing you to peace? Is your friend, or teacher, or lover bringing you to peace, or is he a cause of more perturbance, more annoyance? Does he provoke ambition inside you? Does he repeatedly take you to the past and memories? Does he keep loading you with responsibilities? In a nutshell, would you be better off without him? Why stretch a simple thing so far?
Okay, let me put it otherwise, on a clean slate given no obligations, no slavery of any kind, no compulsion; would you still want to be with that person? No weight of the past, no greed of the future; would you still want to be with that person? That is the test of Satsang, that is the test of the right relationship.
There are other things that you’ve been also used to test; is the other all right with differences? Or, is he too eager to convert you to his ideology? Someone who is too eager to convert you to his opinions or ideology, just can not be good for you. He wants to load his thoughts upon your thoughts. He wants to rather align your thoughts with his. He would call it harmony; it's not harmony, it is slavery. “You will toe my line”, this is not harmony at all.
Harmony celebrates differences. This is enforced uniformity. Uniformity is not the same as oneness. There is a very critical difference, oneness and uniformity are not to be confused. Fundamentalists often do that. They believe that if we all are one, then we should also think and act alike. Oneness is not about that; oneness is rather a festival of diversity. And if your companion is not prepared to accept diversities, then he would be a very violent person. Because then he would want to impose himself upon you. That cannot be Satsang.
Q: Sir, Is there a scope of being not right always.
AP: Of course.
Q: So, how do I tackle that? Because for example, I am in a relationship with someone; I cannot expect this person to be right always.
AP: Yes, of course.
Q: So, then will I say that he is not ready to accept the diversity and he is not good for me?
AP: Anuradha, do you drive?
Q: No.
AP: Okay. Do you ride a bicycle?
Q: Yeah.
AP: Of course, you do. Now you are riding a bicycle; the best-case scenario is that you are sane and the rest of the traffic is also sane. So, everybody is driving in his lane, in the speed limits, in the right positions, correct? Now, suppose you come across a particular stretch of road where the traffic is really unruly. What do you do then? How do you know how to respond? Now, there is a truck coming in front of you on the wrong side and that too at a high speed; what do you do? And to matter even interesting the driver is weaving his way through the road; how do you respond?
Q: So, there can be many many responses: I might try to change my way, I might not be able to even see that and there can be an accident.
AP: Which responses would you prefer?
Q: Obviously if I could see this man coming in zigzag and change his way; I will obviously prefer changing my way and ride my cycle on a safe path.
AP: Now, there can be many ways to safety, many ways to safety. What is one common thing between all these ways? You could even stop your bicycle and get down, or you could you know move down into the rough. You may say that the rough is preferable than being in front of the mad man, Of course. But what is one common underlying thing behind all the right responses?
Q: You have to be alert.
AP: Your own sanity. When you know what is right, then it not at all a difficult matter to tackle both the right and the wrong. First of all, you have to be right. Remember that when you move to ICU with 38 fractures in your body. It does not matter who was at fault, does it matter? Will the medication be different? Will the recovery time be different? Of course, psychologically you can draw some solace by saying that he went to jail, not I. But, materially does it make any difference? Your life, a critical period of it, probably the entire life has now been affected. Should we talk about how the truck driver is driving or should we talk about whether we are in a position to deliver the right response? Come on tell us, and we are always driving. I am talking about the street called life, you are always driving. It's very dangerous to be cursing truck drivers on a high-speed road, very dangerous.
You are not there to curse them, you are there to make your way through them. To make your way through them you just have to be yourself alert. Ask, am I alert? Do I know what is the right response to a situation? Maybe the truck driver is meandering because he too is cursing somebody; it's quite possible. You may feel that is the only possibility otherwise why would one zigzag.
Q: Maybe he was drunk.
AP: He too probably has somebody in his life. (everyone in the audience laughing) who does not listen to him or is too dominant. We all have our excuses for insanity. But can it ever be justified? And remember that right now I am not talking to the truck driver here, I am talking to ‘Anuradha’ the victim. Or, should I rather talk to the truck driver? Will that make a difference in your life? Remember that it’s a busy lane, one truck after the other. If I know where I am if I know who I am. Will I not be in a position to tackle all the rights and wrongs, all ups and lows? If drunken drivers bother me, then besides other things; does it also not mean that I am not a very good driver? Please answer this. Of course, we can all complain about law enforcement, about inculcating the right kind of habits in drivers, we can even go to the so-called root cause and figure out whether the process of distributing licenses is fair. We can go into an entire tirade of road safety and all that would be all right and fair. but shouldn’t we first start with ourselves?
Q: Yes.
AP: In spite of the best road safety practices, you will keep on meeting enlightened drivers (everyone in the audience laughing) what would you do? Keep on cursing them, please? That would give you the consolation of feeling like a victim. That will give you psychological uprightness. Does that help?
Please be in the right center, then you will be able to reply to everything.
