I've been vegan for a while now, and the more I sit with it, the less it feels like a "diet choice" and the more it feels like a mirror for how I define myself.

Most vegan discourse online is still stuck at the level of "save the animals" or "save the planet", which is fine, those are real and true, but they're also incomplete. They treat veganism as an ethical add-on to an otherwise unquestioned self. You're still fundamentally living as "me, my body, my tribe", you've just extended some kindness outward.

Acharya Prashant's framing flips the whole premise. His argument (and I'm paraphrasing, not quoting) is roughly this: the root problem was never diet, it's how narrowly you've drawn the boundary of "self." When you identify only with your body, your species, your immediate circle, everything outside that boundary becomes fair game for exploitation.

Animals just happen to be the most obvious, most powerless "outside." So for him, veganism isn't charity extended to animals, it's what naturally falls away once you stop mistaking the body for who you are. You don't "become" vegan through willpower or guilt. It just happens, the way a shadow disappears once you stop standing in the way of the light.

That's a very different engine than the one driving most vegan activism, and honestly a much harder sell on Reddit, because it doesn't give you a clean moral high ground. It just quietly asks: if your compassion depends on remembering the suffering of animals, how deep does it really go?

I don't think one framing replaces the other. The ethical/environmental case is still what gets most people to change their plate. But the Vedantic angle is what actually makes it stick, because it's not asking you to be a better consumer, it's asking you to stop mistaking a body for a self.

Curious if others here came to veganism through ethics/environment first and only later ran into this more "inward" way of looking at it, or if it was the reverse for you.

I came across this beautiful owl photo online and wanted to share it here. Credit to the original creator — here’s the source: https://pin.it/Smaa6EN1q 🦉

Digidi-digidi-digidi-digidi, Hey, are you awake? I’m calling… 📞

No, not to ask what you’re doing. I already know, you’re probably scrolling. 😌

Come, let's talk about life for a bit. Or better yet, let's dance with it.

Let’s get lost in the beats, laugh at our own confusion, and maybe, somewhere between the music and the madness, find a little bit of ourselves.

Digidi-digidi-digidi-digidi, Hey! Are you listening?

Come, sit with us. Let's talk, dance, wander, and listen to whatever these beats are trying to tell us. Maybe, for a little while, there is nowhere to reach and nothing to become, 

just you, being completely you.

And who knows… somewhere between all the noise and the silence, we might catch a little glimpse of who we really are.

Digidi-digidi-digidi-digidi, Hey!

And then the song asks something rather strange:

“In this car, you don't exist.
Don't tell me what to do.”

Perhaps the car is the body, and the question is: who exactly is driving it? 

Sounds dangerous. 😄
But what if the driver we are so busy trying to install was never really there?

We keep saying:
“I know how to fix myself.”
“I know what I need.”
“I know what I should do.”

And then, somehow, we take the keys, grab the steering wheel, and crash into the very things we were trying to fix.

Maybe the problem is that we never stop to ask:

Who is this “I” that is trying to run the whole system?

The body is already breathing. The heart is beating. Life is happening without asking for our instructions.

Before you were born, so much was already happening without you.

The Earth was here. The air was here. Water was flowing. Plants were growing. Seasons were changing. Life was already happening.

You didn't configure any of it. 😄

You arrived, and somehow the whole system was already running.

You didn't tell your mother how to feed you. You didn't instruct your heart to beat. You didn't schedule the sunrise.

And yet, life kept happening.

Almost like a child arriving in its mother's lap and discovering that Mother Nature had already arranged everything.

And then this little “I” walks in like:

“Relax, everyone. I've got this.” 😂

And perhaps that's where self-knowledge begins, not by immediately trying to fix ourselves, but by becoming curious about this “I” that claims to know how to fix everything.

Stop.

Ask.

“You look pretty young for someone with a PhD.”
“Are you really my dad?”
“You're old and sad.”

Who gave you the keys?
Who made you the owner?

And why do you always sound so confident while being so confused? 😭

Maybe the “I” is not as young and wise as it appears. Maybe it's simply old and sad, wearing a new face and pretending to know the way.

And perhaps, for a moment, stop telling yourself what to do. 

Just listen.

Let the “I” go to sleep. Bye-bye! 👋 

Digidi-digidi-digidi-digidi, hey!
Are you still there? 🎶

Part 2, anyone? Or shall we leave the “I” alone for now? 😄

Want to listen to the full song?
Full video: https://youtu.be/6Ldkj-KmQao?si=qn1DmZJqQbcLCle1

I feel freedom should not be something reserved only for human beings. Every living being has its own way of existing, moving, growing, and simply being what it is.

A bird should be free to fly. An animal should be free to live without unnecessary suffering. A river should be allowed to flow. A forest should be allowed to exist without being reduced to just a resource.

Mountains, oceans, air, and water are not merely things for us to own, control, or exploit.

Maybe we have made freedom too human-centered. We talk about political freedom, individual freedom, and national freedom, but sometimes forget that our own existence depends on countless forms of life and on nature around us.

Maybe freedom also means allowing life to remain life.

So perhaps the question is not only “Am I free?”It is also:

“Does my freedom leave enough space for other beings to exist freely?”

Maybe true freedom cannot be separated from how we treat everything around us.

We enter life completely dependent. Think about a newborn. You need someone to feed you, clothe you, protect you, teach you, and slowly help you stand on your own feet. So, in a way, life begins with dependence.

And perhaps the purpose of life is to move towards independence. But then I started wondering, what kind of independence are we talking about?

We usually think of being independent as having a job, earning our own money, living on our own, or not needing anyone for our basic needs. But what about the things happening inside us?

How successful do I feel I am?
How worthy do I feel I am?
How do I look?
What do people think of me?

So often, I end up looking at myself through the eyes of others.

Even my idea of who I am can be borrowed from other people, their opinions, expectations, beliefs and standards. And that feels like a much deeper kind of dependence.

It made me ask myself:
If I constantly need someone else's approval to feel good about myself, am I really independent?

Maybe true independence is not about needing nobody. Maybe it is about not being psychologically dependent on others to know my worth, my identity, or my direction.

And perhaps that is what makes this whole thing called life interesting.

We begin by depending on others for almost everything. But before life ends, are we learning to become truly independent?

What does independence mean to you?

While researching what freedom really means beyond its political definition, I came across a perspective in one of Acharya Prashant’s podcasts that stayed with me. It made me look at Independence Day a little differently.

Freedom was given to us by nature itself.

No creature is born unfree. In the forest, the word “freedom” hardly means anything because the word “slavery” means nothing either. A river is free. A forest is free. A child is born free.
It is only later that we learn to become slaves.

So perhaps the real question on Independence Day should not be:
“How did we gain our freedom?”
but rather:
“How did we become slaves in the first place?”

Freedom is already given. The question is: how did we accept slavery?

India has experienced centuries of foreign rule and subjugation. Arabs, Afghans, Persians, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, and others came, conquered, ruled, and left their mark. Generation after generation, someone kept climbing onto us.

And perhaps the uncomfortable question is: What was it within us that allowed this to happen again and again?

Could some of that weakness still be alive within us today?

If the causes of our bondage remain alive while we celebrate freedom merely as an external event, then there is something missing from that celebration.

Maybe Independence Day should also be a day of self-examination.
A day to look into the mirror.
A day of truthfulness.
A day of introspection.

We should ask: How did we keep losing?

India once possessed immense economic and cultural strength, yet it became politically subjugated. There must have been some inner weakness, something that made us vulnerable.

And perhaps that weakness was not merely political or military. It may also have been spiritual.

We had the Bhagavad Gita, yet perhaps we never gave it the place it deserved in our lives.
Had the Gita truly become a living force within India, Indians might still have been defeated in battles, but perhaps the spirit of accepting subjugation would have been much harder to conquer.

Think about Kalinga. The immense bloodshed of the war is said to have profoundly transformed Ashoka. And behind wars and empires were also ordinary people who suffered, resisted, and fought.

Perhaps somewhere along the way, we confused dharma with surrender.

We learned submission in the name of religion.
We learned to tolerate.
We learned to accept.
We learned hypocrisy.

But perhaps we never truly understood dharma. We learned to surrender but forgot to struggle.
And perhaps that tendency still exists within us.

We say we want to live freely because, deep down, we were born free. But where is the self-examination? Where is the courage to ask what made us accept bondage?

This Independence Day, perhaps we can celebrate a little less outwardly and look a little more inwardly.
Not merely:
“We are free.”
But:
“Are we truly free?”

And if not, what is still making us slaves?

Perhaps that is the question Independence Day should leave us with.

This isn't meant as a definitive answer, just a perspective that made me think. I'm still exploring what freedom actually means, and I'm curious to hear how others understand it.

Source: A podcast by Acharya Prashant on the meaning of freedom on Times Now Navbharat

https://youtu.be/PMGHP-802pk?si=l5uyo_49hLDR5-K2

A piece of wood has no idea

that there is fire hidden within it,

until it comes into the company of flames.

And when it turns into fire,

it is no longer just wood.

A human being is the same,

unaware of the blaze within,

until he comes close to someone

who himself is burning in the fire of love.

There are only two choices in life,

become fire before you turn to dust,

or else turning to dust is certain;

for the wood that does not burn

rots away,

and one day becomes dust.

Approximately 13.8 billion years ago, a rapid and massive expansion took place from a singular dense point and the universe itself emerged. This was not any ordinary event, but this event actually created all the matter, energy, space, and time which we perceive to be as ‘existence’ now. Raw energy rapidly expanded and cooled to create space, time, and fundamental subatomic particles which soon combined to form the universe's first basic atomic nuclei like hydrogen and helium.

And you know what? All these ‘ingredients’ of the universe just got created in “10⁻⁴³ seconds”. The timeline of this event is famously known as to be an ‘epoch’. Spanning up to a few seconds, quarks bounded into protons and neutrons dominated by radiation and high-energy photons until the universe cooled enough for neutral atoms to form. It’s impossible to even imagine how nature is capable of incorporating so much ‘change’ in just a few moments of time.. It’s like a bang in the moment, and this whole timeline with space got created.

Most of the humans live mechanised lives following blind rules and patterns handed over to them by older generations without ever stepping out of those patterns and trying for a change. We never ever test those patterns to know whether or not they are even relevant to be implemented in our lives, and we just keep on following them blindly. Now, the question which arises is: “If the same nature which we are also a part of, is capable of implementing such a huge change to create this vast universe in just ‘few’ moments of seconds, then why aren’t we able to make huge changes in similar parts of the moment?”

Maybe Yes! That is indeed possible.. and that is where the concept of ‘choice’ comes in.. If you read the works of many modern & ancient philosophers, then they have multiple times talked about how your single decision can turn entire events of your life into immensely different directions. Apart from philosophy, if you consider the recent data of modern science, then many experiments done in the fields of quantum physics have also shown how the presence and behaviour of a single ‘observer’ can cause the entire experiment to change its results according to the state of that respective observer.

The Big Bang is not just a vague event of the past which is just an eye candy to our imaginations, but it actually reveals many questions in front of us which we never dared to ask ourselves. It reveals a ‘possibility’.. a possibility of something entirely new to emerge from nowhere!! And this new possibility demands no huge amount of time to be manifested, but just only a few fraction of seconds. But, maybe we have become too lazy to walk on new paths which science is showcasing us to be a possibility here. Or, maybe it entirely depends on the ‘chooser’ as quantum physics suggests us.. ie., the one who will ‘choose’ the change to happen will encounter that result and a different ‘observer/ chooser’ who wouldn’t choose that particular change will miss that opportunity to turn the events of his life forever.

What do you want to choose?

Hey everyone, I am sharing a quick walkthrough of the Acharya Prashant App for anyone who's trying to figure out how to navigate it, join live Zoom sessions, or make the most of the features like Talking Mirror and the session schedules.

You can either explore the wisdom courses, look for a space to share your daily reflections, or try to stay updated on upcoming live interactions, I hope this walktrough makes the app a little easier to explore.

Let me know if you have any questions or how you usually use the platform for your own journey!

Walkthrough Link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.acharyaprashant.apbooks

Snowy peaks, quiet valleys, clear lakes and endless shades of green. Kashmir has a calm beauty that makes you want to slow down and take it all in.

📍 Kashmir, India

🎥 Credit: _ixhuafnan

Imagine standing beside a quiet river. At first, you see nothing unusual. Then, just above the water, two eyes appear. The crocodile is almost completely hidden, yet it is watching everything.

It remains still for hours, blending into the water and mud. Nothing seems to disturb it. But beneath that stillness, it is alert, waiting.

This is its territory. Enter too close, and the calm can suddenly change. Its powerful jaws can turn a small disturbance into a fierce response.

The moment you try to look closely, it disappears beneath the water, as if it was never there. And when you look away, it is there again, quietly waiting. 

Perhaps that is why this ancient creature has survived for so long. The world around it has changed, but its ways remain.

Now pause.

Have you ever been calm on the outside while something was moving intensely within? Have you ever protected something as though it were a part of you? Have you ever reacted far more strongly than the situation seemed to require?

Perhaps the crocodile was never only in the river.

Perhaps it was within us.

Have you noticed the one who is with you all the time, the one you call “me,” your most trusted companion? 

Why can't we simply try to know it, even though it is being created all the time?

Why can't we choose to be silent?

What makes us think that something additional, in the form of knowledge, needs to be added?

Why do I see myself as someone who is so restless about something I do not know?

And then another question arises:

Is knowledge the solution to the restless one, or is the restless one the thing that needs to be understood?

The one who constantly observes:

• Who noticed me?
• Who ignored me?
• Who is ahead of me?
• What did they say about me?
• How do I appear?
• What can I gain?
• What can threaten my position?
• Who is better than me?

 

What is it that is constantly watching all this? 

The one who asks, who feels that more is needed, who feels that the world is incomplete and needs to be strengthened, improved, corrected, or completed, that movement is the crocodile. 

Could the question itself be the crocodile? 

Pause.

Would silence ever ask this question?

When I go deeper into many of the questions that arise from my restlessness, I eventually discover that they are questions about myself. 

If I go to sleep, does the question remain?

Then who is the one asking? 

Spirituality is not merely about finding better answers.

It asks you to look at the questioner.

The questioner is the crocodile.

Can I sit quietly without mentally calculating my position in the world? Did I ever decide what thought would arise next? 

Let's understand this with an analogy of a man who is flying a kite.

Imagine a man flying a kite. He thinks, “I chose to fly this kite. It was my decision. I could have watched television instead.”

Fair enough.

But did he choose the desire to fly the kite? Did he choose the preference that made the kite more attractive than television?

Did he choose the thoughts, memories and impulses from which that choice emerged? 

He chose… 

But did he choose to choose?

The kite cannot see the thread, so it calls its movement freedom. We cannot see what moves our choices, so we call them “mine.”

But before I say “I chose,” where did the desire, preference, thought, and even the options I was choosing between come from?

Whenever an action happens, from where does it arise?

Who is the one claiming:

“I chose.”
“I want.”
“I don't want.”
“I need.”
“I know.”
“I don't know.”
“I must become something.”

Look closely.

The questioner has to be examined.

When the questioner recedes, when that restless movement goes quiet, the crocodile inside seems to go to sleep too. 

The ego is not merely the content of thought, it is the movement of the questioner seeking completion through thought. 

So the crocodile is the ego in action.

The ego sustains itself through both “I know” and “I don't know.” Each time the “I” claims knowledge or claims ignorance, it gives itself another breath of life. 

Self-knowledge is the study of watching the crocodile within. It may retreat when you look at it, but it does not disappear. The moment you look away, it slips beneath the surface and begins its hunt again.

Watching the one who wants.

Watching the one who fears.

Watching the one who compares.

Watching the one who seeks.

Watching the one who keeps asking.

Watch the crocodile, and it retreats. Forget it, and it hunts.  

Don't fight the crocodile.

Don't feed it.

Don't pretend it isn't there.

Watch.

Hey Guys! Made a piano cover of Arz Kira Hai by Anuv Jain while he’s on tour at the moment. 😊
I’ve tagged him on insta, but the chances of him actually seeing it are probably tiny!
Sharing it here in case there are any fellow Anuv Jain fans - would be pretty cool if this somehow reaches him!!

NOTE: The backing tack is also made by me through layering

Greetings to the GITA family!

Raj, from New Zealand, began by greeting everyone in the local Māori language before sharing his journey.

He admitted that, in the beginning, he wasn't very spiritual. Like many of us, he carried many unanswered questions about life. While searching for answers, he came across Acharya Prashant's YouTube videos.

What immediately struck him was how logical, intellectual, and deeply insightful the talks were. For the first time, he felt that someone was addressing the questions he had been carrying within himself for years.

At first, the answers were unsettling, but in a good way. Questions like:

• Who am I?
• What am I doing?
• Why do I do what I do?

started arising within him. One question led to another, but unlike before, they were no longer confusing. They gradually led him towards clarity.

Life no longer felt like an endless collection of unanswered questions. As understanding grew, he began noticing changes in his daily life. He could recognize when he was going wrong and catch himself before repeating the same patterns.

One thing he emphasized that this transformation didn't happen overnight. It wasn't the result of a single video or a single session. It was a gradual process of learning, questioning, and understanding.

Wanting to continue that journey, he joined the GITA community.

According to him, the improvement has been tremendous, especially in the clarity with which he now views life and himself.

He concluded by encouraging others who are sincerely looking for answers to explore the community and experience this journey of self-understanding for themselves.

I thought I was reading about sex work in one community. I ended up questioning the way I look at every human being, including myself.

Unlike in many parts of India where the birth of a daughter is met with disappointment, she is welcomed with joy. Sweets are distributed. Relatives gather. She is fed better than her brothers, given nicer clothes, and encouraged to stay in school.

She grows up believing she is the fortunate child. And in many ways, she is loved. But not in the way she imagines. As she enters adolescence, the truth slowly unfolds.

Every sacrifice her parents made had a purpose. Her childhood had never been just an expression of love. It had been an investment.

One day, her body would become the family's source of income.

While reading about the Banchhada community in Madhya Pradesh, I came across story after story that made this reality impossible to ignore. Girls were often made to leave school after Class 8 or 9 and conditioned from childhood to believe that supporting the family through sex work was their responsibility and tradition. Marriage was discouraged because it meant losing the family's primary source of income.

Some women spoke of hating the profession they had inherited. Some described years of sexual and physical violence at the hands of their clients. Some suffer from cervical cancer.

Then I came across another account while reading about a short film inspired by the community. A young woman, critically ill with AIDS, lay in a hospital bed. Her father arrived drunk, not to comfort her, but to ask her for money. She died later. 

Some escaped, only to discover that freedom did not bring dignity. Society had no place for them outside the profession. Employers refused to hire them. Their children faced discrimination because of their caste. The prison did not disappear after they left. 

It simply changed its walls. 

One account stayed with me.

One woman from the community said that because demand declines with age, she tried to earn as much as possible while she was young, meeting ten to fifteen clients a day, not because she wanted that life, but because she hoped to save enough money to survive when that demand inevitably disappeared.

That was the most disturbing thing I learned. Not simply that girls were pushed into sex work. But that exploitation had become so deeply woven into survival that it could begin to resemble love.

And when survival itself depends upon exploitation, where do we draw the line between tradition, coercion, and choice?

Like most people, my first instinct was to think about laws.

Should prostitution be legal?

Should it be banned?

But after a while I realized I was asking questions that began too late.

I closed the article and sat there for a while. It wasn't the violence that disturbed me the most. It was the realization that an entire childhood had been shaped around a future transaction.

I couldn't stop thinking about one question: How does exploitation become so ordinary that it begins to feel like tradition?

Some countries legalize it. Others criminalize it. Which approach is more humane? But the longer I sat with that question, the more I felt it wasn't taking me very far.

Law can regulate an act. It cannot explain why the act exists. Slowly, another question replaced the first.

What do we actually mean by prostitution or sex work?

Is prostitution merely the selling of one's body for money? Or is that only its most visible form?

If someone spends an entire lifetime working only to preserve the body, without ever questioning the purpose or consequences of that work, what exactly are they selling?

Perhaps the deeper question is not what is being sold. The deeper question would be what has been forgotten.

That question led me even further. If prostitution exists in every society, whether legal or illegal, then the real issue is not one community.

It reveals something about the way we see ourselves. Before asking,

"Why does prostitution exist?"

we must first ask,

"What is a human being?"

Because until that question is answered, every other answer seems incomplete.

The more I sat with those questions, the more I realized I couldn't answer any of them. Every one of them depended upon a much simpler question, 

What is a human body?

At first, the question seemed almost childish. Of course, I know what a body is: flesh, bones, blood, skin. 

A biological organism.

But if that is all a human body is, then another uncomfortable question immediately follows.

Why can't it be bought and sold?

After all, we buy and sell almost everything else.

Every material object eventually becomes a commodity. If the body is merely another material object, why should it be any different?

For several days, I kept returning to the same question. Every explanation I found described the system. None explained the human being.

That was when I came across something Acharya Prashant said.

He says that the body is not worthy of respect simply because it is flesh. It is worthy of respect because it is the seat of consciousness.

Consciousness, not flesh, is what makes a human being priceless. Without consciousness, the body is no different from any other material object.

Matter can always be bought and sold. It is consciousness that makes the body beyond price. That was the turning point for me.

I stopped asking, "Why does prostitution exist?" 

Instead, I began asking, "What kind of vision allows a conscious human being to be reduced to a body?"

Because prostitution is not the beginning of the problem. It is one of its consequences. The real beginning lies much earlier, the moment consciousness disappears from our understanding of what it means to be human.

That insight left me with another realization. If consciousness is what makes a human being worthy of respect, then the opposite is equally true.

The moment consciousness is forgotten, the body is all that remains. And whatever is merely material eventually becomes a commodity.

We already buy land, labour, time, and knowledge. If the body is merely another collection of flesh, bones, and chemicals, why should it be any different? From a purely material worldview, there is no contradiction in buying and selling it. In such a worldview, prostitution is not an ethical anomaly. It is simply another market. 

From within that worldview, everything appears perfectly rational because the transaction is treated like any other commercial exchange. 

The problem, then, is not the law. The problem is the vision. A society that sees only bodies will inevitably create markets for bodies.

Some markets sell labour, others sell beauty or sexuality. The commodity changes, but the underlying vision does not. This is why Vedanta does not begin by asking whether prostitution should be legal or illegal. It begins with a far more fundamental question:

Who is the one standing before you?

If you see only a body, then consumption becomes natural. If you see consciousness, consumption becomes impossible.

This is why the issue is not confined to brothels. It is about the way we have learned to look at one another.

Long before a body is sold, a human being has already been reduced to an object. The transaction merely makes that reduction visible.

By the time money changes hands, something much deeper has already happened.

A conscious human being has first been reduced to a body. The transaction doesn't create that reduction. It merely makes it visible.

If the problem begins with reducing a conscious being to a body, then the brothel is where the story becomes impossible to ignore.

The same vision quietly appears in places we rarely question.

Once I started looking through that lens, I began noticing the same tendency in places I had never questioned before. 

Families negotiate marriages by weighing beauty, wealth, security, and social standing. The names are different, but the underlying movement is the same: a conscious human being slowly becomes an object to evaluate, compare, possess, and consume. 

The transaction doesn't always involve money. Sometimes it involves status, comfort, approval, power, security, currency changes. The transaction remains. This is why love and bargaining can never coexist.

The moment affection depends upon exchange, "I will give you this if you give me that," the relationship quietly begins to resemble a marketplace.

Love asks,

"How may I understand you?"

The marketplace asks,

"What can I get from you?"

Those are two entirely different ways of meeting another human being.

Then the question turned toward me.

The question became impossible to avoid once it reached me. I realised I had spent years thinking about how I appeared to others without asking who I really was.

How often do I stand before a mirror believing that my worth depends on how I look? Not because I'm trying to sell myself. But because I have quietly begun believing that I am only a body. But even that wasn't the deepest insight.

The more I reflected, the more I realised the real issue wasn't simply how we treated others. It was how we understood goodness itself.

As I kept reflecting, another distinction became impossible to ignore.

Growing up, I thought being a good person simply meant following a few simple rules: don't steal, don't lie, don't exploit.

But this article made me wonder whether goodness is only about behaviour, or also about the way we see another human being.

A person may never enter a brothel and yet still reduce others to objects through greed, lust, comparison, or possession. Social norms can regulate behaviour, but they cannot transform vision. 

That transformation begins only when we honestly confront the darkness within ourselves.

A truly good person is not someone who merely appears virtuous. A truly good person is one who has had the courage to look within and honestly encounter the roots of their own selfishness, insecurity, and desire to consume.

Only then does transformation begin. Until then, we simply become better behaved.

Not necessarily better human beings.

This also made me wonder about the people we are quickest to judge. When someone seeks temporary escape through another person's body, we immediately condemn the act.

Rarely do we ask:

What inner emptiness is this person trying to escape from?

I realized how easy it is to condemn the person standing outside us while never asking what kind of emptiness exists within us. Perhaps the distance between "them" and "us" is much smaller than I had assumed.

A few moments of pleasure may silence the mind. 

But only for a while.

The hunger returns.

The loneliness returns.

The dissatisfaction returns.

Another body is sought. Not because the previous one failed. But because the real problem was never outside.

It remained within.

This is why every attempt to fill an inner void through external consumption eventually fails.

Whether the object is money, power, status, success, or even another human being, external consumption cannot satisfy what is fundamentally a crisis of consciousness. 

Maybe this is why the article stayed with me long after I had finished reading it.

The girls of the Banchhada community are victims of a visible system. But the mindset that makes such a system possible is far less visible.

It lives wherever a conscious being is forgotten and reduced to an object. That object may be purchased, admired, desired, exploited or merely evaluated. 

The form changes. The reduction remains.

And until that reduction is questioned, we may continue changing laws...changing governments...changing policies...while leaving untouched the very way we look at one another.

That is where the real work begins.

Not outside.

Within.

When I finished reading about the Banchhada community, I realized the article was never only about them.

It was about us. It began with a little girl who believed she was deeply loved. It left me wondering whether what we often call love is, at times, closer to attachment, dependence, or survival. 

Her body had become an economic asset long before she understood what was happening.

That is what disturbed me the most. Not because it happened in one community.

But because it forced me to ask a question I had never asked of myself.

How often do I reduce another human being to what they can do for me?

The uncomfortable truth was that I could think of moments when I had done exactly that.

Judging someone by appearance.

By usefulness.

By success.

Not because I intended harm. Simply because I had never noticed how naturally the mind does it. Perhaps not for money but for pleasure, for status, for validation.

Simply because it is easier to see a body than to encounter a consciousness.

The forms change.

The tendency remains.

And that is why merely changing laws can never be enough.

Laws matter.

Policies matter.

Education matters.

But unless something changes in the way we see one another, the marketplace simply finds another form. That is why I no longer think the deepest question is whether prostitution should be legal or illegal.

The deeper question is:

What kind of society sees a human being first?

A society that sees only bodies will eventually create markets for bodies. A society that truly recognizes consciousness would find it far harder to reduce human beings to commodities. 

This is why Vedanta begins not with society, but with oneself. It asks us to discover who we really are before telling us how to live.

Because the way we see ourselves determines the way we see everyone else. If I know myself only as a body, I will inevitably meet the world as bodies.

If I discover consciousness within myself, perhaps for the first time I become capable of seeing it in another.

And that is where every lasting social change begins.

Not merely in courts.

Not merely in governments.

Not merely in laws.

But in the vision with which one human being looks at another. 

I hope one day a girl can be born into a family that celebrates her simply because another conscious human being has entered the world.

And I hope that before asking how to change society, I continue asking how I look at the people who already exist in mine.

Metacognition is a well established term of Neuroscience which has recently gained immense popularity among the youth in social media. According to this concept, the brain is analysed with a special ability to think about its own mental processes. It is a scientific concept coined by developmental psychologist John Flavell in 1979, meaning "thinking about thinking". Metacognition is basically the brain’s ability to understand, monitor, and control its own mental processes, such as learning, memory, and problem-solving. It is a special process where we refer to the brain of having the capability to think about itself. While certain species like rhesus macaques, dolphins, and rats show basic forms of uncertainty monitoring (such as undergoing a difficult memory test); only humans possess deep, symbolic, and abstract self-reflection unlike any other living species. This includes key decisions of analysis like understanding what one knows, what one doesn’t know, and also one’s personal strengths and weak points.

So if we analyse Metacognition from the lens of Science, its the amazing ability of the human brain to monitor its own apparatus (like a car’s apparatus detecting its own data of speed, acceleration, etc.) and then automatically taking critical decisions as per the analysations stored/fed in one’s memory from one’s entire life time. Its like a machine beautifully running accurate data calculations to best suit the recently emerged problems in front of it and then assigning the best possible solutions on its own to the problem. Metacognition proposes that the brain is fully capable of handling all lively phenomenal threats and problems in itself which comes its way in real-time by its own automatic thinking and calculations just like any well programmed advanced physical supercomputer with accurate results by the nature of its very design.

Now if we approach Metacognition via the lens of Philosophy, then philosophy contradicts Metacognition by the point that: Its correct that the brain is capable enough of thinking about its own mental mechanisms and then take decision accordingly, but what about the ‘chooser’ who is choosing which decision to implement or not? Especially if we take eastern philosophies like Vedanta, Buddhism, etc. here its asking us a question much deeper than just describing the function of the brain. Its asking us that if the brain is automatically assigning tasks to itself mechanically, then why does it happen that irrespective of knowing all the data, still the problems of intensive crime or problems like climate crisis exists? In all such cases, the brain knows the data, but still ‘someone’ is behind the brain which is not allowing the brain to take automatic decisions, instead that someone is forcing the brain to choose actions towards climate denialism defying the publicly available data.

So yes definitely the brain is indeed capable enough to implement its own thinking mechanically, but we shouldn’t forget that if it would have been the ideal scenario then no betrayals towards any sensitive data would have ever happened in the history of mankind. History has repeatedly revealed scenarios where humans have betrayed empirical data just to execute their own subjective desires.. which proves that definitely there’s something more than just ‘brain’ which is causing the results to distort.

👉Source Video Speakers: Acharya Prashant (Wisdom Philosopher & Author) in conversation with Prof. Stephen Fleming (Cognitive Neuroscientist) at University College London (UCL). The discussion happened recently on 4th August 2026.

▪️Full Video Link: https://youtu.be/QZ9GNAZphjY?si=eIeWuEQBJCQ48N3T

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