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Visitor: Is sorrow a thought? 

Sri Ramana  Maharishi: All thoughts are sorrowful.

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adishankarachary and gautam budh

Budhism is an off-shoot of Hinduism. Adi Shankara's Advaitham is the examination of Hindu philosophical thought from one point.Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaitham and Madhwacharya's Dwaitham are other points of view. These three schools of thought are the manifestations of the multifaceted philosophical thought of Hinduism. The basics of all these three are one and the same. Pranava, Vedas and Bhagavadgeetha are accepted as supreme by all these three. Coming to Budha, he is regarded as one of the 'Avataras' of the Divine Power(Vishnu) and if we go by Veda Vyasa, all those that regard the fellow human beings as Gods is a God himself! The Goals of Budha, Adi Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhwacharya were the same, to free the suffering humanbeings from the shackles of innocense, ignorance, greed, lust, worldly pleasures and to purify the 'Soul' to be fit to be called the 'Image' of the Supreme Being, that is the God. Budha resented the outstretched and ill practised ways of the Vedic Brahmins, he was not against the message of the 'Vedas', for that matter, for after all, what Budha preached were the same from the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavadgeetha! Principles are the same but only practices differ! That is why these many schools of thought within the same religion. What Budha preached all the way can be found in any one shloka from Shankaracharya! I request my brothers to go through 'Maneesha Panchakam' of Adi Shankaracharya, commentary along with original text also was posted by me in this very community, for those interested, this is not show my talent, but to know Adishankara! Adi Shankara was the culmination of Budha,Ramanuja, Madhwacharya, Sri Rama and Sri Krishna and he was the very Avtara of Veda Vyasa. Sakara, Nirakara, Saguna, Nirguna, Gnana, Bhakthi, Vyragya,all these are found in the preachings of Adi Shankara!He gave every body the things they wanted, because he knew! Budha started midway and finished midway, sorry to say. He was neither a continuity from the previous nor for the future! Idolatry he condemned, but his idols everywhere!Idols are only representations of the thoughts in some shape, even the sound, the word and the thought of anything are the representations of that particular thing!Without seeing or imagining any thing either in shape or in sound, or in word, or in picture, how can you meditate on that? You search for what you know and miss!Without knowing what you are searching for how can you call it a search? Budha was a Great Thinker but he did not finish his mission!He called upon every body to stop violence and what came of it? weakening of the Kshatra of the hitherto ferocious valour of the Sons of the Great Mother India! If a surgeon makes an incision on a patient's body, it is not violence, it is his duty in saving that patient! Sword, valour and violence are necessary for a prince to be a prince, in saving his subjects! After the severest of violence in history, suddenly Ashoka becomes a budhist and preaches the same, prevails upon the others for the same, budhism spreads, valient become volatile, the fighter becomes a refugee and in few generations time, the courage and will to oppose vanishes along with other long lost good qualities and when invaders come galloping, lo! Indian princes ready meat! This is the way one after the another plundered, massacred and looted us! For any society to survive, each and every part of it has to know what its role is and should strive to fulfill that need, suppose in an office every body renunciating who is to run the office? No body is great in the office, office itself is the supreme one, it will be so only if every body does his entrusted duty sincerely each and every time! Great thinkers and leaders are measured on the results after their exit, Budha sacrifised his every thing for the common man and after his exit, his very disciples fell into two! All are not fortunate enough to sacrifice. A fallen woman can sacrifice her physical desire to become pious, a thief his thefts to become an honest man, but a royal prince can not sacrifice his sword to become a sadhu, because it is not his privilege but it his responsibility. One can sacrifice his rights, not his responsibilities, this is karma sidhanta, this is what Sri Krishna preached to Arjuna, sacrifice does not and should not mean escaping from the questioning realities of duties, you have to perform your duty and sacrifice the urge to influence or manipulate the result, that is real sacrifice. Budha should have 'sacrificed' the intimate and intense relationship as a husband and father, not a wife and a son! Friends, kindly do not misunderstand me, if you have not gone through 'Yoga Vashishtam' or 'Vashista Ramayanam' or ''Vashishta Geetha'(it has got these many names)already, go through it now, to find that Sree Rama was just like Gowthama Budha, frustrated and disillusioned with the sufferings, sorrows and miseries of this worldly life and its bondages and temptations and he also decided to relinquish this world and to become a monk! Then followed and flowed the Divine Ganga of Vashishta, that answered and consoled Sri Rama and he accepted his duties as a Son, Prince, Student , Husband and as a  

 Ruler! Is it not amazing and hard to understand that Budha did not care to dress the sufferings of his wife and child on way to redressal of the sufferings of human beings at large?Why did he not try to educate, preach and guide his wife and son about the temporal and ephimeral nature of this world and worldly bondages, instead of leaving them for ever in a dark night? This is where Rama Krishna Parama Hamsa was great, he did not think Sharadamba his wife and hence she was not an obstacle on the way to solvation and did not need to leave her! This is what Adi Shankara meant when he said 'Jagath Midhya", this world is a reality because it is visible presently, but not permanent and hence it is midhya! here was nothing new that Gowtama Budha gave to the World. It already existed there. He gave new dimension to it, he once again brought the fact to light that every body has got a right to be uplifted, that all are equally good and equally bad.Advised us to try to inculcate the good qualities and increase them and try to kill the evil ones. He rejuvenated and gave new life to 'Hinduism'only. His was not a new religion, but only a new application of the same!It is not necessary to discuss who was great. The Religion ,the philosophy they tried to impress upon were real great ones.Even then one persists with the discussion, He(Budha) was Great ,no doubt, but, Adi Shankara was the Greatest! as far as the meditation or concentration that is adivised by Budha and other moderns also. The basics of Hindusim and, the amazingly the highest knowledge also, lie in vedas and upanishads are the ends or epitome of vedas and upanishads or vedas advocate the formless,shapeless, rootless,endless,soundless Divine Entity, that is called the Parabrahmam, Maha Prakrithi so on and so forth, it sees everything but can not be seen be seen by any thing,it listens every thing but not heard by anything, it touches every thing but not touched by anything, it is not smelt or perceived by anything but smells or perceives everything, it is present everywhere not found anywhere. The final Goal is definitely this one, but it takes form when it wishes, and any form can be seen by some form only! We are physical entities and can see only physical forms, our naked eyes can see and perceive physical matter only, hence we are to know the Divine Thing with a form and then have to realise that it is formless, in the sense that it is not limited to one form!Imagine the Electrical Power, that is always present there. We can not see it with our naked eyes, but when turned into an electrical bulb or a motor or some other electrical appliance, we can perceive its power or presence! Absolute power can be perceived by absolutely powerful apparatus only and as our physical bodies can not with stand that absolute power, we are advised to visualise that slowly, steadily but surely, step by step, first in some form and then to know that it is of all forms and without any form too. It is like driving a bike blind fold, for which you have to first learn how to ride a bike with eyes open and then you can ride it closing your eyes! Imagine what happens when 25000kw power passes through a 60 volts bulb! It can not withstand such great power and blasts off! It is why the physical bodies of even Great people like Rama Krishna Paramahamsa decayed! Here lies the greatness of Hindu way of worship or philosophical thought. It is a science in itself and advises to proceed step by step, through idol worship first and then when you are at home with it, when you are so immersed with its presence everywhere and anywhere, you can approach it as not having any form also! It is why for the Final Stage in Hindu way of living, that is the Sanyasa Ashrama, all rituals and worships are ruled out and it implies that only that stage can make you a real 'Sanyasi' or a 'Saint', when we realise it we can not but laugh at the Modern Sanyasis! It is just like needing a book to know what is written in it, and, when you get the content by heart, you do not need the book in its physical form, for the content is with you even without that book! So meditating about the 'Shunya' is possible only when you become shunya, not until and unless you loose your physical entities or the boundaries that are created by physical and and geographical differences and diversions! The very Vedas that advocate the formless Divine Entity advocate the rituals like Yagna, Worship, sadhana and Thapas for this very reason, I believe! So nirakara sadhana is a final stage not the first one. It is the final step of the ladder, to approach which, there are many steps before and The Best explanation for this is found with Adi Shankara only, outside the Vedas, in Adi Shankara's philosophical treatise ' Atmanathma Viveka'(The Wisdom of Athma and Non-Athma, for a rough translation of the same). Even Islam which advocates the worship of the Absolutely Formless Divine Entity has Masjids, which are visibly physical structures! They also required some'place' to worship that power which has no particular place!They also required some 'sound'( The Namaz) to worship that power that is not perceptible to and through any sound!No religion is mean, but, only Hinduism has got an answer for every question!That answer is the final one which does not give scope for any further questions, that answer is called 'Hinduism'!

14

Suffering is how 

Life tells you that you are resisting 

or misperceiving what is real and true.

It is the way 

Life suggests that you are 

not in harmony with what Is.

- Adyashanti

13

The Lord is in me, and the Lord is in you,

As life is hidden in every seed.

So rubble your pride, my friend,

And look for Him within you.

When I sit in the heart of His world

A million suns blaze with light,

A burning blue sea spreads across the sky,

Life’s turmoil falls quiet,

All the stains of suffering wash away.

Listen to the unstruck bells and drums!

Love is here; plunge into its rapture!

Rains pour down without water;

Rivers are streams of light.

How could I ever express

How blessed I feel

To revel in such vast ecstasy

In my own body?

This is the music

Of soul and soul meeting,

Of the forgetting of all grief.

This is the music

That transcends all coming and going.

- Kabir

12

The World of Enlightenment

When finally we awaken, after having cultivated the mind in

order to become free from the sufferings of birth and death, the

sea of suffering of the six regions will vanish. Sentient beings

conceive that the sea of suffering of the six regions exists in

reality, but this is wrong. While dreaming we perceive the

dream world as existing in reality too, but at the moment of

awakening from sleep we recognize it to be illusion. So, in the

same way, when the mind is deluded we wrongly perceive that

the sea of illusion exists, but if we awaken to the Mind, we

clearly understand it to be illusory.

The eyes of the enlightened man who has awakened to the true

nature which is absolutely unchanging, have direct insight into

the great Truth of the universe. He has transcended the three

time - periods of past, present and future; and by transcending

both time and space he is not obstructed by being or non-being:

this is called liberation.

 He sees all phenomena in the universe through the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom, in the same manner as a mirror reflects everything in creation. 

He is without contamination or attachments; he is like white clouds over green mountains or falling rain on the blue sea. By staying

within the mind of non-action (wu-wei), he has followed the

stream and reached the marvel; he is vast and boundless. This is

the man who is without any obstructions. All relativity is ended

here; birth doesn’t matter and death doesn’t matter. Everyone is

Vairocana Buddha and all is a store of flowers. There is nothing

which is not sacred. One name for such a man is ‘a person who

is beyond all things’.

- Zen Master Kusan Sunim

11

Another aspect of openness is intimacy. The quickest access to Truth, and also to beauty, is when you are totally intimate with all of experience, the inner and the outer, even if the experience isn't "good." 

When you are being intimate with the whole of experience, the divided mind has to let go of whatever its project is at the moment. In this intimacy, one becomes very open and discovers a vastness. Whether the qualities of the experience are unpleasant or beautiful, as soon as you are intimate with the whole of experience, there is openness.

When there is intimacy with all of the experience of the moment, awareness is not limited to what's happening in your emotional body, your physical body, your perceptions, or your thoughts. There is just one whole perceiving itself, feeling itself, or thinking itself, and whatever is happening tends to resolve itself. When the whole perceives itself, it is very different than when the I is having an experience. 

- Adyashanti, 'Emptiness Dancing'

10

The birth of the ego is called the 

birth of the person....   

There is no other kind of birth....   

Whatever is born,  

is bound to die.....

Sri Ramana Maharshi....

9

From the book The Garland of Guru's Sayings

638. If, instead of seeing anything in front [of you] by the mind, you see by the mind the one who sees, all will be found to be oneself, the seer; then all objective knowledges will be found to be foolish.

8

REALITY

Bhagavan: "What is the standard of reality? That alone is real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging." 

                                      -Maharshi’s Gospel, p. 61

Because the nature of Reality is Whole, Self-radiant Existence, transcending time and space, Jnanis will never deem as real this world, which is destroyed by Time’s Wheel.

                                          - Guru Vachaka Kovai v. 65.

To the ignorant, who believe it to be real and revel in it, the world that appears before them is God’s creation, but to the steadfast jnanis, who have known the bondage-free Self by direct experience, it is merely a deluding and binding concept that is wholly mental.

                                             - Guru Vachaka Kovai v. 21

Understand [well] that the world-scene of empty names and forms, comprising the objects of the five senses perceived in the perfectly pure swarupa, the Supreme Self, is merely the divine sport of the mind-maya that arises as an imaginary idea in that swarupa, being-consciousness.

                                             - Guru Vachaka Kovai v. 22

Question: Are names and forms real?

Bhagavan: You won’t find them separate from adhistana [the substratum]. When you try to get at name and form, you will find reality only. Therefore attain the knowledge of that which is real in all three states [waking, dreaming and sleeping]. 

              -The Power of the Presence, part one, pp. 251-2

Do not get confused by abandoning the state of clarity, the swarupa perspective, and then pursue appearances, taking them to be real. That which appears will disappear, and hence it is not real, but the true nature of the one who sees never ceases to exist. Know that it alone is real.

                                              - Guru Vachaka Kovai v. 25

7

The Guru cannot give you anything new,  

which you have not already....  

Removal of the notion that  

we have not realized the Self is 

all that is required...

Sri Ramana Maharshi....

6

5

6

Through the knowledge granted to me by the Lord

I came to realize that the reality that lies beyond the mind

is my own true nature.

In that state the objective knowledge

which dominated my fevered mind

dissolved and fell away,

and in holy silence the fire of a pure realization,

transcending duality,

was kindled within me.

(Muruganar -Sri Ramana Anubhuti)

5

"Consciousness alone is, 

and nothing ever exists beyond this consciousness. 

Once having known it, 

you become one with consciousness. 

There is not subject and no object. 

There is no experience, and none experienced. 

This is called freedom from everything."

~ Papaji

4

Because we think we are the body we imagine that Heaven exists somewhere, afar. The pure, bright world of Siva is not a place to go to.

Nowhere but in your heart alone it is.

(Guru Vachaka Kovai)

3

When you meditate, the ego rises and you become the meditator. 

In this process, you objectify Reality, which is actually who you truly are. So the best meditation is to simply keep quiet here. 

Don't follow any thought and don't activate the mind. This is true meditation. 

Knowing that you are meditating is not true meditation. When you keep quiet here, there is no meditator. There is nothing to achieve in the future, because everything is already here. The meditator rises from here. When you keep quiet that is no meditator, no meditation and no object of meditation. 

This is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Itself. It is in this instant, in this space, It is who you are, desireless, Perfect Self. In the twinkling of an eye you are free! 

🪔 Papaji

2

Life always flows in search of joy and the highest joy is in the Divine. We must always aim to attain the Divine.

~ Beloved Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar ji

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