Acharya Prashant - Karma

The Vedas are the oldest religious documents known to man. And Vedanta is the crown jewel, the absolute peak, of the Vedic essence.

The world today finds itself grappling with problems unseen in history. The problems of the past were mostly related to poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy, lack of knowledge, and lack of technology. In short, the challenge was external, the enemywhether in the form of a microbe or lack of resourceswas outside. It was about man struggling against the tyranny of his external circumstances.

The last hundred years have been, however, different. And the current century has raised the spectre of mans conflicts to a very different and difficult theatre. The secrets of the atom and the universe have more or less yielded to mans relentless investigation. Poverty, illiteracy and disease are no more the invincible monsters they used to be. Today, matter is at mans beck and call, and there is ambition to colonise the universe, and even beat death.

It should then sound like the best of times. The current period should be the best one in the history of our species. Far from that, we find ourselves staring at, as we said, a very different dimension of challenge in the inner theatre. Having conquered almost everything in the external world, man finds he is today a bigger slave to himself than he ever was. And its an ignominious slaveryto rule all, only to find that inwardly one is a huge slave of an unknown oppressor.

Man has immense power over his environment today, but man is himself controlled by his inner destructive centre he has very little knowledge about. Together, these two mean that mans tendency and ability to wreak havoc over his ecosystem is unlimited and unquestioned. Man has only one inner rulerdesire, the ever-sprawling desire to consume and experience more and more happiness. Happiness, that is experienced only to find that it evades all experience.

In this context, Vedantaas the pure essence of spiritualitybecomes more important today than it probably ever was. Vedanta asks the questionsWho is the inner one? What is his nature? What does he desire? Will fulfilment of his desires give him contentment?

As a response to the situations mankind today finds itself in, Acharya Prashant has taken upon the solemn project of bringing the essence of Vedanta to todays world. His calling is to bring the pure essence of Vedantic spirituality to all, and apply it to solve todays problems. The problems of today are borne out of mans ignorance towards himself, and therefore they can be solved only by sincere self-knowledge.

Acharya Prashant has approached the matter of bringing Vedanta to the public in a two-pronged way. One, he has spoken upon scores of Upanishads and the Gita and his comprehensive commentaries are available in the form of video courses and books (at solutions.acharyaprashant.org). Two, he addresses the daily mundane problems of people and demonstrates how to solve them in the light of Vedanta. His social media is dedicated to hosting tens of thousands of such open QnA sessions.

Prashant Tripathi was born in 1978, in Agra, India. Eldest of three siblings, his father was a bureaucrat and mother a homemaker. His childhood was spent mostly in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Parents and teachers found in him a child who could often be quite mischievous, and then suddenly, deeply contemplative. Friends too recall him as having an unfathomable temperament, often not really sure whether he was joking or serious. A brilliant student, he consistently topped his class and received the highest commendations and prizes possible to a student. His mother fondly remembers how she was honoured several times as Mother Queen for the academic performance of her child. Teachers would say that never before had they seen a student who was as brilliant in Science as in Humanities, as adept in Mathematics as in Languages, and as proficient in English as in Hindi. The then Governor of the state felicitated him in a public function for setting a new benchmark in the Board examinations, and for being an NTSE scholar.