Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, how do I have good relationships with people?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Which people?
Q: Friends, etc.
AP: How are they your friends?
Q: May be my classmates.
AP: Just because somebody is a classmate, does he qualify as a friend?
Q: Maybe any person.
AP: Any person is your friend?
Q: I don’t feel that my relationship is good with anyone.
AP: First of all, I want to understand that why do you want to have relationships with people.
Who do you call as ‘friend’?
Who do you call as ‘someone worth having a relationship with’?
Q: I have never thought about it.
AP: Think about it.
Q: Using the person as a mirror to know oneself is a relationship.
AP:
In general anybody you relate to, the relationship is a mirror. Whatsoever is happening in any relationship will tell you a lot about yourself. That’s what a mirror does – it tells you about yourself.
Whatever you do in any relationship holds a mirror to you.
It tells you how your inner self is, how your tendencies are, how your ego is operating. It does not really refer to any specific person functioning as a mirror.
Relationship itself is a mirror, does not matter with whom. Your relationship with the cow, your relationship with the waiter in the hotel, your relationship with your chauffeur, your relationship with your father, mother, batchmate, classmate. Your relationship with the unknown person, your relationship with the environment, your relationship with your clothes.
If you can see why you are related to the other and in what way, to what end, that will tell you about your inner mechanism.
Why do you choose the particular brand of T-shirts?
Why do you keep your hair the way you do?
All these things are a matter of relationships, right?
You have a relationship with your body, you have a relationship with your hair. You have a relationship with that pair of jeans. Why exactly are you choosing something, and why not? Why do you use certain words more often than others? Why do you prefer certain kind of food?
All that is in the purview of relationships.
There is no self-observation possible without looking into relationships. In fact, the whole thing of self-observation is the thing of relationships. How else will you observe the self? How else will you observe yourself? You do not exist independent of others. So whenever you will have to observe yourself, you will have to look at your connection with others.
Think about these things.
हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।
How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren, and calves give milk three times a day, where mice are the boatmen, and tomcats row the boats,
“I will beat him!”
“I will destroy her!”
“Did you just insult me? Did you?”
Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!
Have some mercy upon yourself. Learn to ignore, please. Bypass the small issues. Learn to ignore the small for the big, would…
