Population

A fellow reproducing blindly is a threat to the entire humanity. How is his family his personal matter? Somebody sets a bomb inside his home, and the bomb is powerful enough to bring down the entire building, not merely his apartment. Will you say, “It is his private matter. How…

The Earth doesn’t have resources to support eight billion or eleven billion vegans. Veganism doesn’t help the cause of climate change beyond a point. We need two things: less people and less consumption, and both of them together.

You need a situation where there are not more than two or…

You must be wondering why I am speaking about this thing regarding procreation, regarding having kids. It is because this is the single most important issue facing you and me and the planet and the millions of species today. This is the one thing that man immediately, today, this moment,…

We don’t need to do anything fancy to check climate change. Limit the number of human beings, and the Earth’s health will be restored very quickly. Nothing else is needed.

The biggest contributor to climate change, rather the only contributor to climate change is human beings and their consumption, quantity…

Teach the kids that this planet cannot tolerate even one more human being now. We are already eight billion. At the current rate, we are projected to be eleven billion by 2050. We cannot even tolerate eight point one billion.

You do not merely want to have kids; you also…

If there is one thing that we must not talk of as something very beautiful, it is the coming of the next generation. It is not beautiful. It is not auspicious. It is not something to be talked of with a smile. It is something to be talked off with…

This entire planet is suffering because of man’s obsession with kids. You produce kids as if the kid would forever remain a kid. You totally forget that the kid would soon, very, very soon be a fully grownup individual.

But for three years of kuchikoo, you burdened the planet with…

We need two things: less people and less consumption, and both of them together. Even if one of them is missing, you are gone.

The US has not too many people, just 32 crores are there, and yet they are the biggest carbon emitters in the world because they consume.…

Bringing one child into the world is the equivalent of cutting down a lakh trees, maybe more. Just do the maths.

You show so much of sentiment when a tree is hacked down, but you show no sentiment when you see family after family procreating. You, in fact, send them…

If the hero in the popular consciousness himself is a debauched criminal, what do you expect the general populace to be? If your role-model is a lout and a scoundrel, what do you expect is going to happen to the population?

The final consumer of all kinds of nonsense is…

Australia is one of the last continents that man colonized. Of all the animals that weighed more than 50 kg, and were therefore very useful in terms of meat, 90% are extinct. How many? 90%! Such is the devastating and deadly touch of this new god. Those animal species were…

Every bit of that which you call as the ‘good life’ is carbon emitting. A fellow comes from a small town to live in Bangalore. His carbon footprint probably increases five times, but you call it progress, you call it urbanization. A fellow gets a higher paying job and gets…

Questioner (Q): How can we encourage factories and companies in poor areas to prioritize the health of the local environment over having the greatest profit margins and the lowest costs? How can we motivate them for this kind of a change, when the natural tendency of human nature is to…

Questioner: While COVID-19 has severely affected many world economies, many things have come into the limelight in the wake of the pandemic. People have realized that life is precious and that nature has limited resources.. How do you see the future of the economy? Will we move towards a resource-based…

Questioner (Q): What kind of change our education system needs to have so that our coming generations live together in peace and fulfilment?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Why? Why must you think about the coming generations? Is this not the language of the old matriarch, who first of all ensures that…

Question: Acharya Ji, what will happen to us in old age? Will we be able to manage ourselves then? My mother fell sick a few days back. Had we not been with her, she wouldn’t have been able to manage herself. Will the same happen to us in old age?…

The world is your playground. So don’t be so particular about moving only within your pre-existing circle. If your cause is worth it, show some courage and move out.

If you have a tender and precious sapling in your palm, would you plant it in a desert? No. You will…

The Upanishads were not composed to give you the normal kind of comfort and happiness. The Upanishads are there to give you an exalted happiness, a transcendental happiness, an eternal happiness. A happiness so rare and exquisite that it is not called as harṣa or moda or prasannatā; a…

The temperature of this city is already higher than what it should be. It won’t be higher in the next twenty years; it is already higher today. Read how many people are dying and by how many years has the average life expectancy already reduced—already reduced.

What do you mean…

The shopkeeper’s business is to sell his goods, and that’s what most gurus of today are: they have to sell their goods. When that is what you want to do, how can you afford to antagonize a big chunk of the population? And you would never, never do that if…

Man’s hunger is not so much in the stomach; it resides in his mind. And no fruit is enough when it comes to the mind.

So, man has been destroying everything he can touch, and climate change is the most recent, the most devastating, and probably the most final symptom…

This is the age of mass production. The fellow who is owning and running the machine, the corporation, the empire, out of his greed wants you to consume.

“I am producing so much, but people are not buying it. Why? Because they do not need it. So, what do I…

It is very well known that one tree over the course of forty years would absorb just one ton of carbon dioxide, and that is if that tree lives to get forty years old. How effective is that? Please. One tree over forty years absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide.…

When you eat meat, when you eat chicken, you are actually not paying for the environmental damage that your plate of meat has cost. You are not paying for the climate change. You are not paying for the biodiversity depletion. You are not paying for the loss of tropical jungles,…

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfillment of life lies, and teach them that it is not in birthing or breastfeeding.

Teach them creativity, teach…

Very, very vulgar demonstration of consumption of thousands of litres of milk… So, they will take the milk and put it in a pond and say, “This pond is all full of milk!” or they will even encourage their followers to bring lakhs of litres of milk on some holy…

If God has given you anything, it is just the freedom, the power, and the responsibility to create yourself. You are your own father. God is just the background. God is just the canvas on which you paint yourself. God is the brush, God is the color, God is the…

Relationships are great when they help elevate your consciousness, and that’s the only purpose of relationships in life. If relationships are not fulfilling that purpose, then relationships are just a big waste, a great drag.

There is no better way, more effective way to waste life than to make a…

You got into the traps of wrong kinds of work because you were tempted by results. “Let me take up this work. On the 30th day of the month the result will be good. What will be the result? A nice paycheck.”

Now ask yourself, what if it is certain…

It is not so much about courage; it is about clarity. There are mental conditions in which one seems to become very fearless. Nothing great about those conditions. Some drugs, some weed, a bit of alcohol, and there are so many people who lose all fear. Tremendously intrepid they become.…

At some point the chick has to discover that the shell of the egg is just too small to spend a life in. How do you think the shell cracks? The baby grows big enough to crack the shell. It’s just that the chick has just one shell to break.…

Self-improvement cannot happen along with self-deception. If you don’t even admit to yourself that you are in the dumps, how would any improvement happen? You don’t really need to announce it to the world. To yourself, you must know where you really stand. And that silent realization, I assure you,…

“To do as I want to do”—is that not what freedom means to us? The ones who have better sense, they say this is nothing but the freedom to remain a slave. “So, I will be a slave of my choice.” Everybody is free. In the country of slaves, everybody…

Passion is as much an external thing as, let’s say, peer pressure. Somebody chooses his work or occupation going by market forces or peer pressure or family pressure, and then there is someone who says, “I am choosing my passion for my livelihood”; these two are hardly different. Even if…

The mind must be the seat of the Absolute. You must belong to the real One. And then you may be with five persons, ten persons, or no person at all.

The problem is not that the person hurts you, or dominates you, or creates problems for you. The flaw…

The car manufacturer wants me to be a buyer, so I look at his car and turn into a prospective buyer.

The woman wants me to be an attending man, and I turn into an attending man as per her dictate.

I become what the other wants me to become.…

There is no great virtue in courage. Courage is momentary, and after that it subsides. Are you always equally courageous? The jails of the world are full of very, very courageous people. At least in their moment of madness, you could say they were not short of courage.

When you…

We worship the cow, and we torture it no end. When people talk about desi gai ka doodh (milk from the Indian cow), desi gai ka ghee (clarified butter from the Indian cow), they do not even know what they are doing to the creature they call as ‘mother’.

Is…

First and foremost, understand that others are seeing weakness in you, and that’s why they are trying to overpower you. If they don’t find you weak, they will not try to control you.

It’s not that whatever they said is right or wrong. The point is, how could they dare…

There will be people who will be prepared to lay down their lives if they are asked to eat meat. They will say, “We are prepared to get killed, but we will not take meat!” I respect that sentiment. But these are the very same people who have no scruples,…

Questioner (Q): In one of your videos, you mentioned that we don’t need to awaken fifty percent or more of the population to institutionalize change, we just need a small percentage. I don’t really understand this logic. Could you elaborate?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, the majority is anyway never very…

Questioner (Q): Why should I care about global warming or such worldly issues? If the world is unreal, then why do all these things matter?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You don’t care about global warming, do you?

Q: Still, why should anyone care about global warming?

AP: Forget about others, because…

Questioner (Q): What solution does the Gita offer for contemporary sociopolitical issues like global warming? Could Shri Krishna have anticipated back then that the planet would be facing a crisis like this at some point?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, the crisis that you are talking of is man-made. You…

Questioner (Q): One of the most important lessons I have learned from spirituality is Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam, that the whole world is one family. But the current trend is that all the countries are involved in unilateralism and self-absorption, and phenomena like power absorption, racism, terrorism, and intolerance. These things…

Questioner: Do you think that capitalism is at the root of the problems we face today? If yes, what can the individual do? For example, at societal level, income inequality has kept on increasing; at the economical level, greed drives many business decisions; at the individual level, we are put…

Questioner (Q): The right action dictated by spirituality is what the world requires, but if the world economy was to be structured around it, then wouldn’t that make most of the prevalent jobs and business models obsolete? If everybody becomes spiritual, won’t the world’s economic system collapse? If the economy…

Questioner (Q): The richest of our society are the ones responsible for the most consumption and they take all the resources to themselves. Though they might be ethically and legally justified in doing so, at the end of the day, the large heaps of wealth make no sense to me,…

Questioner (Q): As a researcher in public policy, I spend a lot of my time trying to understand the marginalized sections of the society. By marginalized, I mean slum dwellers, tribal populations, and the rural sectors in India. They are marginalized in many ways, because although our government’s policies have…

Questioner: What we are taught in conflict management is that when you are dealing with conflict, the best way is to take the other person’s perspective and then come to a resolution through a compromise. The current state of affairs doesn’t seem to encourage this though; in fact, there are…

Questioner (Q): Spiritual wisdom has traditionally talked of sacrificing material desires and living a life of an ascetic, but most people are habituated towards excessive consumption, which is almost like a pandemic these days. Most people do not connect with concepts like sacrifice and renunciation, and hence avoid spirituality altogether.…