Many of you reacted to my recent videos on action, goals and karma. Here are my answers to a few questions I found in the comments.
Video summaries
Future and freedom: The only valid reason to do something – study, plan, practice – is that you enjoy the activity itself. Not for the career, not for the outcome. Sacrificing the present for the future ruins both: the present you endure, and the future you spend comparing what happens with what you expected.
The cause of suffering: Acting to control the future creates a chain reaction that Hinduism calls karma: success builds an identity to maintain, failure an identity to repair, and the oscillation between the two spreads into every subsequent action. The Bhagavad Gita proposes "work without fruit": acting without attachment to the outcome. As long as there is no attachment, there is no karma.
Action and intention: It's not the action that makes you unhappy, it's the intention behind it. The same action can elevate or sink you depending on whether you act from presence or from a need for security. No refuge is permanent – money, health, relationships, everything disappears. What's exhausting is spending your life looking for one. First step: see the loop and want out.
Questions / answers
So we just let go and do whatever we want?
But... the kid who spends all their time on social media and "wastes" their time... would they be right?
Well then I'm going to eat whatever I want whenever I want, that's what I got from this.
When you're crushed by external obligations to the point of losing touch with yourself, you have to compensate somewhere.
You go out, you drink, you eat, you smoke, you dive into social media, TV, video games. Sometimes worse.
Anything that brings back a little joy, a little dopamine, a little control.
Addiction is not the source of the problem. It's the symptom.
Trying to quit the behaviors that have become escape routes without changing the lifestyle that caused them is setting yourself up for another failure.
A life built on presence and joy wouldn't need any escape route.
So the question shouldn't be:
"How do I stop the small pleasures that help me get through the day?"
But:
"How do I start building my life on alignment and joy so I no longer need these substitutes?"
That's the question spirituality asks.
So we stop working? No more effort?
So we might as well do nothing, by your logic? Isn't the point to progress and move forward in life, even if you have to suffer sometimes to get somewhere?
All the slackers preaching "the present moment" will jump on your advice, which in my opinion can't apply to everyone, especially with today's mindset.
And what do you do when you want to become a doctor??? Or when you want to pursue higher education??
You don't need a goal in the future to be active.
Quite the opposite.
It's a conditioning of today's culture to imagine that every action should aim for a result. And that an action without a "purpose" would be meaningless.
In reality, this is neither inevitable nor mandatory.
You can be very active, wake up early and work hard not for money, career or security, but because you want to. Because it brings you joy.
But for that, you have to find the desire again – as Johnny used to say.
Of course, when you ask people whose days are filled with activities they hate what they'd do if they had the choice, they answer "nothing" – and that's perfectly normal. They're crushed by obligations and only crave relief.
To find the desire again, you have to reconnect with joy.
Not the fleeting pleasure of addictions, no: finding deep within yourself the joy that emanates from the present and is not conditioned by external events.
So: if you're passionate about medicine, do medicine. From morning to night. You'll be unstoppable. But don't do medicine because "you want to become a doctor."
That's the difference between "writing every day because you love it" and "wanting to become a writer."
To succeed, you need discipline!
That would work great if everyone thought this way, but with competition between humans, doing nothing to progress and stay on top is a good way to get eaten alive by others and die.
The greatest achievements require sacrifices. The greatest athletes suffered tremendously to reach the podium. The greatest discoveries demanded hours of work and dedication before seeing the light of day.
All these comments share a common assumption: the goal is to win the race.
Success! Victory! Progress! Wealth!
Nothing else exists, and the only way to get there is discipline.
Both points are wrong.
First, yes: you can run the race if you want to. You can chase performance and push your limits. Why not. Have a blast.
However, it's neither an obligation nor the only way to think about life. It's a choice, often cultural, that has no business being imposed on others.
Second, the only way to win is not discipline – in the sense of forcing yourself when you don't feel like it.
Some people run, climb, perform, push themselves... because they love it. That doesn't mean it's easy every day, but the primary goal is not to suffer in order to win.
And they often win, by the way. Precisely because they're not forcing themselves.
And when they win, they don't look down on others. They don't judge those who do less.
Unlike those who've been forcing themselves since day one and who, unconsciously, want others to suffer too.
What about money?
For people in extreme precarity, whether financial, social or otherwise, you're not able to think like that. In my case, of course I'm waiting to earn a better salary, not because I think it'll make me happy, but because I know it'll lift the mental load of not being sure I can eat every night.
That's a nice speech you can give when you have money and a job. But when you no longer have any of that, nothing else exists except the survival instinct or the death instinct.
I don't want to control the future, I just want to pay my bills.
This is the crux of the matter.
Are spirituality and alignment sports for the wealthy? Can you really avoid "planning for the future" when you're desperate?
First, let's clarify one thing:
Nobody is saying you shouldn't provide for your needs. Nobody claims you should live on love and fresh water.
You need to eat, drink, find shelter, and all of that, today, requires money. You need to earn some.
Worse: sometimes, you find yourself in an emergency where for a (very) long time, you're in "survival" mode. You do things you don't want to do at all in order to... survive, precisely. Keep your head above water.
Is that wrong? How do you follow your joy then?
Once again, it doesn't depend on the action itself but on the intention behind it:
If you work so you won't go hungry today, that's an action rooted in the present.
If you work so you'll never go hungry again in your life, that's a desire for control.
But is it wrong to want to be safe? To want to build your future?
No, it's not wrong. It's perfectly natural. It's simply a mistake.
You will never be safe.
Whatever your situation, everything will one day be taken from you. Your comfort, your health, your status, your independence, your family. Everything.
So any action founded on a desire for security is, in the long run, a losing game – and the consequences of that action will make you suffer sooner or later.
Just as you may be suffering today from a desire for control enacted in the past.
That's what I call karma.
Especially since suffering sometimes becomes an excuse to avoid the deeper work.
People living in greater comfort than 90% of the world's population are still waiting to reach the next level of comfort before they start "working on themselves." (Spoiler: they never will.)
Conversely, people in unimaginable precarity live in communion with themselves and the world.
It's not a question of means.
"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."
– Jim Carrey