Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.
#Rumi
Truth is very simple, don't complicate it.
#Papaji
#ThichNhatHanh
Disconnect of Modern Life ~
"People today do not know how to rest. They fill their free time with countless diversions. People cannot tolerate even a few minutes of unoccupied time. They have to turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper, reading anything at all, even the advertisements. They constantly need something to look at, listen to, or talk about, all to keep the emptiness inside from rearing its terrifying head.
The Heart Sutra says that there is "nothing to attain." We meditate not to attain enlightenment, because enlightenment is already in us... We see that we do not lack anything, that we already are what we want to become, and our striving just comes to a halt. We are at peace in the present moment, just seeing the sunlight streaming through our window or hearing the sound of the rain. We don't have to run after anything. We can enjoy every moment. People talk about entering nirvana, but we are already there."
Samsara hard to overcome
It was time for Papa's bath. Papa went to the building behind the bhajan-hall. S. brought a seat on which Papa sat. S. was fanning him.
Breaking the few minutes silence, Papa said,
"One who is caught in samsara is doomed. What a hard struggle it is to get out it! Ramdas had been in it and he knows how much he had to suffer and struggle to free himself from its coils. Even though one separates oneself physically, it is very difficult to take the mind away from the old rut. It drags you down: Ramdas had to do intense sadhana to free himself from all attachments. He used to consider the world like a passing show."
S: "When did the struggle cease?'
Papa: "The struggle finally ceased only a few years after he came to this ashram."
S (with great surprise) : "What! It took so many years! Did you not feel calm and peaceful when you were repeating Ramnam intensely day and night? Were you not free from those attachments then?"
Papa: "No. There were occasionally some disturbances. Even a slight irregularity in diet used to disturb the mind. While in the Kadri cave, once Ramdas ate some food which was not well cooked. That produced stomach trouble which in turn disturbed the mind. So, whenever there was mental disturbance, he used to go into solitude and observe fast for one or two days. That helped him much."
S: "What was Papa's practice to remain unaffected by the worldly whirlpool?
Was it by detaching your real Self from the body and asserting that your real nature is bliss, or did Papa resort to other means ?'
Papa: "It was by looking at everything as Ram and every incident that happened as brought about by Ram."
#SwamiRamdas
It’s kept in your Palm!
Maharaj:
Worlds are created and destroyed,
how did I survive and observe all this?
Only the One who has transcended everything can employ such discrimination. I have appeared spontaneously without my knowing and everything is happening spontaneously.
Having realized this do what you like, even if you sit in a desert, it will become a place of pilgrimage.
My Guru said ‘The source of the entire world is kept on your palm, here it is, you are not that beingness’.
Out of sheer providence or good luck
someone is inclined to understand all this, in the process his own being gets pleased with him and provides him all the knowledge.
This sickness of beingness is the outcome of the five elemental chaos.
Your own concepts make you suffer,
‘I amness’ makes you suffer.
People call me a Jnani, just observe.
Saint Tukaram said ‘watch with appreciation, admiration and no involvement’.
You entertain concepts and they make you
suffer internally and externally.
Can you by employing any means of yours
limit manifest nature?
The Ramas and Krishnas have come and gone, but nature plays by itself, unconcerned.
When you die, die with totality, you are
everything, die with it.
How do you understand yourself?
It is better to say
‘I have not understood’, rather than saying ‘I understand everything’.
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj.
#SriRamanaMaharshi :
The Living Guru --
The Ramana Way
Perhaps it is easier to say what the Ramana Way is not than to say what it is. It is not based on theoretical speculations. It is not conceptual. For thoughts arise only when the mind's attention is not on oneself but on the core of the mind, the 'I', it would be the death of thought. No thought can arise till attention wavers. This core-attention would push back the mind to its conscious source. The enquiry as to whom the thoughts arise for is only necessary if and when the mind is distracted and therefore incapable of holding on to self-attention. Then, and only then, one has no option except to shift attention back to itself by questioning for whom it arises. By doing this attention reverts back to the thinker, away from the thought which was the distraction.
The second vital point to remember is that Ramana is not against devotion. His path is not an "intellectual path" . In fact intuition and feeling have the primary place in it. Why does one say so? This is because of the importance and the need for Sadgurus Ramanas guidance and support to stay on course, to prevent the straying of the mind in thought forms. Ramana himself emphasizes this when he draws attention to the fact and says " Arunachala , is my guru . Have I not composed many verses in his praise?" Some of his compositions which extol the role of Arunachala as guru par excellence go straight to the heart. Those who have read his 'Five hymns on Arunachala know only too well its power to melt ones heart, to fill one with emotional longing to be united with Ramana, with the Self.
There is no question of practical 'advaita', non dualism with guru Ramana. One has to feel his presence through every possible means of worship, to "offer incense at his holy feet".
The third vital point to be kept in mind is that in the Ramana way one does not still the mind, or lull it into spells of quietness, long or short. For when the mind is troubled, pestered by unending thought streams, one thinks of a quiet mind, a still mind as a tremendous achievement. One regards it as a worthwhile goal. A greater mistake is added on when those who have stilled their minds labour under false belief of having attained the goal itself, when they are convinced that practices have yielded full fruit. So one goes through varied breath control exercises and meditation techniques. All this for the prized still mind hence one finds Ramana cautioning against what he labels "mano laya" or a mind which is lulled into silence. When it happens one has to be alert to awaken the consciousness and ensure uninterrupted self-attention. Having said what the Ramana path is not, one can venture to say what it is. The term 'venture' is used because when an experience is described, the description itself may be taken as reality and not the experience. Subject to this danger one has to indicate what it means . It is sometimes said that the answer to the question 'who am I?" is found in the experience of Self-abidance. How does one experience this? It is experienced by the pure mind. Such a mind which is the reflection of fullness of consciousness, experiences an overflowing bliss. Ramana describes this brimming blissfulness, as an 'I-I' feeling for it is continuous, without any break. It is felt in the region of the spiritual heart, located on the right side of the chest. Why? Because the spiritual heart is the source of the mind which experiences this bliss. This bliss is not disturbed by action or thoughts for they would take place automatically and spontaneously . This is the state of the jnanis, the firm natural state which Ramana in his abundant grace enables one to discover for oneself.
FREEWILL AND DESTINY ARE EVER EXISTENT.
Destiny is the result of past action; it concerns the body. Let the body act as may suit it. Why are you concerned about it? Why do you pay attention to it? Freewill and destiny last as long as the body lasts. But jnana transcends both. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Whatever happens, happens as the result of one's past actions, of divine will and of other factors.
There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to enquire for whom is this destiny, and discover that only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self, and that the ego is non-existent.
The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realising one's helplessness and saying all the time, 'Not I, but Thou Oh Lord' and giving up all sense of 'T and 'mine', and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you. Complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self- enquiry or bhakti marga (path of devotion).
Everything is predetermined. But a man is always free not to identify himself with the body, and not to be affected by the pleasures or pains consequent on the body's activities.
Those alone who have no knowledge of the Source whence fate and freewill arise, will dispute which of them can conquer the other. Those who have realised their Self, which is the Source of both fate and freewill have left such disputes behind, and will have nothing more to do with them.
Success and failure are due to prarabdha karma, and not to willpower or the lack of it. One should try to gain equipoise of mind under all circumstances. That is willpower.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
The day after Sri Bhagavan had told us about the greatness of walking around Arunachala he was suddenly reminded of a short verse he had written many years before. In the early 1930s Sri Somasundara Swami had approached Sri Bhagavan with a new notebook and requested him to write one akshara [letter] in it. Aksharam also means 'the indestructible".
So Sri Bhagavan wrote in Tamil, '0ne aksharam shines always of itself in the Heart. How can it be written?'
This verse found its way into Guru Vachaka Kovai and was later translated into Sanskrit and Telugu by Sri Bhagavan himself.
This somehow reminded Sri Bhagavan of another verse in Guru Vachaka Kovai that discourages aspirants from judging teachers by the powers they manifest.
Sri Bhagavan remarked, commenting and explaining the verse, 'The jnani is ever in ecstasy and fullness, sporting in chidakasa [the space of consciousness]. For the world to attribute to him siddhis is like determining the glory of the sun from the mates in a sunbeam that is projected in a dark chamber.'
Miraculous events did happen in Sri Bhagavan's presence, but not through any act of will on Sri Bhagavan's part. When these so-called miracles occurred, Sri Bhagavan would often be as surprised and wonder-struck as the rest of us. Sri Bhagavan himself told us about one such occurrence.
'Some time ago a paralytic was brought in a conveyance. He was carried into the hall and placed before me. I was looking at him, as usual. After about half an hour the man with some effort got up by himself and prostrated. Rising to his feet he came forward and handed a notebook to me. I found it to be his horoscope. As I glanced through it I read a portion that stated that he would be stricken with paralysis, which would be of short duration because, at around the same time, he would have the darshan of a mahatma, by whose grace he would be miraculously cured. The man, after expressing his fervent gratitude, walked by himself to his conveyance outside the hall. All people present were struck dumb with amazement. I also shared their sense of wonder, because I had not consciously done anything to help him.'
Then #SriRamanaMaharshi again repeated that a jnani could not have any sankalpa of his own.
CEASE TO BE AS YOU SEEM NOW
Q: If what I am, as I am, the person I take myself to be, cannot be happy, then what am I to do?
M: You can only cease to be -- as you seem to be now. There is nothing cruel in what I say. To wake up a man from a nightmare is compassion. You came here because you are in pain, and all I say is: wake up, know yourself, be yourself. The end of pain lies not in pleasure. When you realize that you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too. For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly.
Q: In the ultimate state there can be no happiness?
M: Nor sorrow. Only freedom. Happiness depends on something or other and can be lost; freedom from everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost. Freedom from sorrow has no cause and, therefore, cannot be destroyed. Realize that freedom.
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
Oh conqueror of riches!"
, there is no truth greater than Me. Everything
rests in Me, like pearls on a thread."
"Oh son of Kunti!" "I am the taste of water, the light of the sun and moon, the Om syllable of Vedic mantras; I am the sound of the ether and the ability of man.".
"I am the original fragrance of the earth, and I am the heat of the fire." "! am the life of all that lives, and I am the penitences of all ascetics."
"Oh son of Prtha!" Know that I am the original seed of all that exists, the intelligence of the intelligent and the power of all powerful men."
"I am the strength of the strong, devoid of passion and desire. I am the sex life that does not go against religious principles, oh lord of the Bharatas (Arjuna)! ".
#BhagavadGita
Whenever there is decay of righteousness,
O Bharata,
And there is exaltation of unrighteousness, then I Myself come forth ;
For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers,
For the sake of firmly establishing righteousness, I am born from age to age.
#BhagavadGita
Do what is right at a given moment and leave it behind.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
When you Demand nothing of the World, Nor of God.
When you want
Nothing,
Seek Nothing, Expect Nothing,
Then the Supreme state will come to you
Uninvited and Unexpected!
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
Why should you be tired now?
Because your mind is restless and wanders.
It gets tired, and not you.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
There is neither past nor future. There is only the present and even the present is mere imagination, for the sense of time is purely mental. Space is similarly mental.
Therefore birth and rebirth, which take place in time and space, cannot be other than imagination.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
'Hold to one thought so that others are expelled'
#SriRamanaMaharshi
There is only one meditation.
The rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts.
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
Many say that it is necessary to work for one’s country. This cannot be denied. But there is no greater work for one’s country than to meditate for Self-realization, as the Self is the true ‘native land’.
Reason the truth of the Self by the brain and feel it by the heart. The heart is the place for feeling. The idea of Truth automatically grows in a pure mind. Cordial earnestness is the means. For this purification of the mind is necessary.
Purity in talk, deed, thought, and good company are the means to develop the thirst for Truth.
Habit ensnares a man and habit releases him. By only talking as an advaitin one cannot attain the advaita state. If one wishes to attain the advaita state one must die while alive; unless one dies to the world, one cannot realize Truth.
#SriBrahmajnaMa
"Don't try to change the world.
First, change yourself or rather, your self-perception, and you find the world automatically corresponding to the level of your understanding.
You will find that it has always been you who set the pace and depth of your experience by recognising and honouring your true nature."
#mooji
The mind can create miracles.
Life is not for resting.
Anything done with good intentions creates a positive effect.
The secret is not to own the pain.
Going through pain is also sadhana.
Anything that is not accepted by the mind is the cause of pain.
God is an eternal energy which never takes birth or never dies.
Non-violence in the mind and unconditional love in the heart bring eternal peace.
#BabaHariDass