What is the difference between a prophet and a rishi?
From Pancha Pandava Prabhu
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so yesterday in your class you were mentioning what is the difference between prophet and rishi so i did not understand properly actually what is prophet and what is rishi in a general sense both terms refer to somebody who is connected with god but if we look at the specific connotations of that word in the Vedic tradition the rishi is one who focuses himself on trying to attain god consciousness by the practice of regular systematic sadhana so that means chanting the holy name that means austerities cultivating systematic spiritual knowledge so in that sense he is a person who is striving towards god consciousness by systematic processes and that is the path that others can also follow so in that sense rishi is a seeker who has been striving to achieve god and has now become a seer whereas prophets generally speaking live very ordinary lives they may be pious but they are not extraordinarily devoted for example if we look at muhammad’s life before he got the revelation by which he became a prophet in the year 14 his life was relatively quite normal he in fact was quite poor and then he married a woman who was almost 15 years older to him and then after marrying to her she was a wealthy businessman and he looked after her business and that’s how he also became wealthy and he was a little reclusive sometimes he would go into caves to do some sort of meditation but certainly he was not a spiritual seeker but one time he had gone to the caves for meditation suddenly he got revelation so that means the purpose is in the case of prophets a person is chosen and he is used by god as his voice so he becomes spokesperson for god so when somebody becomes spokesperson for god we can hear his instructions following but the idea striving to achieve a similar level of god consciousness is not so much there it is just that you follow him and you will be delivered you will be saved eventually but the whole focus on individual purification and transformation through a systematic process of sadhana that is the emphasis of his mission as prophet is somehow chosen by god irrespective of what person’s earlier background was and he becomes a spokesperson for god that is the difference