KARMA

WHY EVERYTHING YOU

WRONG
KNOW ABOUT IT IS

ACHARYA
PRASHANT

PENGUIN BOOKS
An
imprint of PPenguin Random House
 Acharya Prashant

The Vedas are the oldest religious documents known

And Vedanta is the crown jewel, the absolute peak, of
Vedicessence.
The world today finds itself grappling with problems
unseen in history. The problems of the past were mostly
related topoverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy, lack of knowledge,
and lack of technology. In short, the challenge was external,
the enenmy-whether in the form of a microbe or lack of
resources-was outside. It was about man struggling against
the tyranny of his external circumstances.
The last hundred years have been, however, different. And
thecurrent century has raised the spectre of man's conflicts to
the atom
a very different and difficult theatre. The secrets of
relentless
and the universe have more or less yielded to man's
investigation. Poverty, illiteracy and disease are no more the
invincible monsters they used to be. 'Today, matter is at man's
universe,
beck and call, and there is ambition to colonise the
and even beat death.
The current
It should then sound like the best of times.
period should be the best one in the history of our species.
said, a very
Far from that, we find ourselves staring at, as we
Having
different dimension of challenge in the inner theatre.
world, man fìnds
Conquered almost everything in the external
he ever was. And it's
he is today a bigger slave to himself than
xiii
 Acharya Prashant

A
Briet Biography
Prashant Tripathi was born in 1978, in Agra, India. Eldest
of three siblings, his father was abureaucrat 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 hisclass and received the highest commendations and
prizes possible to a student. His mother fondly remembers
how she was honoured several timnes 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
Governorof the state felicitated him in a publicfunction for
setting a new benchmark in the Board examinations, and for
being an NTSE scholar.
The prodigal student was a voracious reader since he
was five years of age. His father's extensive home library
consisted of some of the world's best literature, including
spiritual texts like the Upanishads. For long hours, the child
would be tucked away in the most silent corners of the
house, immersed in stuff that was meant to be understood
only by men of advanced age and maturity. He wouldskip
meals and sleep, lost in reading. Before he had turned ten,
Prashant had read almost everything that was there in the
Tather's collection and was asking for more. The first signs
Xiy Aharya 'rashant

an ignominiousslavery to rule all, onlytoffind i

one is ahuge sBave of anunknown oppressor
Man has immense power over his
but man is himself controlled by his inner environment
deestructive
he has very little knowledge about. Together, these(entte
mean that man's tendency and ability to wreak havor
his ecosystemis unlimited and unquestioned. Man has
one inner ruler-desire, the ever-sprawling desiretto
onty
and experience more and more happiness. Happines, that is
consume
experienced only to find that it evades allexperience.
In this context, Vedanta-as the pure essence of
spirituality--becomes more imnportant today than it probably
ever was. Vedanta asks the questions-Who is the inner one?
What is his nature? What does he desire? Will fulfilment of
hisdesires give him contentment?
mankind today finds itself
Asa response to thesituations
in, Acharya Prashant has taken upon the solemn project of
His calling
bringing the essence of Vedanta to today's world.
spirituality to all, and
is to bring thepure essence of Vedantic today are
problems of
apply it tosolve today's problems. The therefore
himself,and
borne out of man'signorance towards
they can be solved only by sincere self-knowledge.
of bringng
Acharya Prashant has approached the matterOne, he has
Vedanta to the public in a two-pronged way.
the Gita and nsof
spoken upon scores of Upanishads and the form
comprehensive commentaries are available in
video courses and books (at
solutions.acharyaprashant.org.
and
Two, he addresses the daily mundane problems of
people:
the light of Vedanta. His
demonstrates howto solve them in such
tens ofthousands of
Social media is dedicated to hosting
open QnA sessions.
 Acharya Prashant

of the mystical appeared when he started

questions that
composi
at the age of eleven. His poems were imbued in ng
shades poet
of t
r
h
ye
mysterious and were asking most
couldnot grasp. groOWn-ups
At the age of fifteen, after being in the city of LucknoM
for many years, he found himself in Ghaziabad near Delhi,
owing to his father's transferable job. The particular age and
the change of city accelerated the process that had
taken deep roots. He took to staying up at night and, albesides
ready
studying, would often be staring silently at the night sk,
His poems grew in depth, a lot of them devoted to the nicht
and the moon. Rather than academics, his attention started
flowing nmore and more towardsthe mystical.
He nevertheless continued to do well academically
and gained admission to the prestigious Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi. His years at IIT were full of exploration
of the world, deep involvement in student politics, and
shining as a debater and an actor in nationwide events and
competitions. He was a most vibrant figure on the ampus,
adependable student leader, and a soulful performer on the
stage. He would consistently win debate and extempore speech
competitions in which participants from across the country
would compete and would also win prizes for directing and
acting in meaningful plays. In one of the plays, he got the 'Best
Actor Award for a performance in which he did not
utter a
word and moved not a single step.
He had been sensing since long that
there is somethins
fundamentally amiss in the way most people
world, the way our minds are perceive and
hence something distorted in conditioned
the way
to operate
between people are, the way the worldlytheinstitutions
relationsniyare
 Acharya Prahant

designed,the way out society functions haically the very

way we live He had started seeing that incomplete perceptinn
was at the root of human suffering He was deeply disturbed
man's ignorance and cultivated inferiority, the evils of
poverty. the evils of consumption, violence towards
animals, and environment, and exploitation based on narrow
ideology and self-interest. His entire being was raring to
challenge the all-pervasive suffering, and as a young man,
he guessed that the Indian Civil Services or the Management
route might be an apt one to take.
the
He gained admission to the Indian Civil Services and
the
Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad in
allotted to him based
same year. However, because the service
that he had wanted,
on his rank was not IAS - the service
government is not
and because he was already seeing that the
can be brought, he
the best place where revolutionary changes
opted to go to IIM.
rich in the academic
The two years at IIM were obviously
the one who would
content he absorbed. But he was not
placements, as is
confine himself to slogging for grades and
He would regularly
the norm in these coveted institutions.
time in teaching kids at an NGO that operated in a slum
spend
to Gandhi Ashram, and would also teach Mathematics
close
earn to spend at the NGO. Besides, his angst
to graduates to through theatre. He took
expressed itself
at human ignorance hai', 'Rhinoceros', Pagla
jaari
up plays like'Khamosh, adalat 16th' and directed them,
Ghoda', and "The Night of January
acting in them. At one point, he was directing two
besides the lIM auditorium
performed in
Parallel plays. The plays were and outside the city. In the
within
to packed audiences from atmosphere of the
profit-centered and self-interest driven