divine happiness

"But divine happiness, even the tiniest particle of a grain of it, never leaves one again; and when one attains to the Essence of Things and finds one's Self - this is Supreme Happiness. When it is found, nothing else remains to be found; the sense of want will not awaken anymore, and the heart's torment be stilled forever. Do not be satisfied with fragmentary happiness, which is invariably interrupted by shocks and blows of fate; but become complete, and having attained to perfection be YOURSELF."

 ~ Anandamayi Ma

real sadhna aware of self

ANNAMALAI SWAMI – FINAL TALKS

THE REAL SADHANA

Annamalai Swami: Bhagavan watched me very closely in the years that I served him in the ashram. One time I went to the Mother's temple where many people were talking about worldly matters. 

Bhagavan called me back, saying, 'Why should you go to that crowd? Don't go to crowded places. If you move with the crowd, their vasanas will infect you.' 

Bhagavan always encouraged me to live a solitary life and not mix with other people. That was the path he picked for me. Other people got different advice that was equally good for them. 

But while he actively discouraged me from socializing, he also discouraged me from sitting quietly and meditating during the years that I was working in the ashram. In this period of my life, if Bhagavan saw me sitting with my eyes closed he would call out to me and give me some work to do. 

On one of these occasions, he told me, 

'Don't sit and meditate. It will be enough if you don't forget that you are the Self. Keep this in your mind all the time while you are working. This sadhana will be enough for you. 

The real sadhana is not to forget the Self. It is not sitting quietly with one's eyes closed. You are always the Self. Just don't forget it.' 

Bhagavan's way does not create a war between the mind and the body. He does not make people sit down and fight the mind with closed eyes. Usually, when you sit in meditation, you are struggling to achieve something, fighting to gain control over the mind. Bhagavan did not advise us to engage in this kind of fight. He told us that there is no need to engage in a war against the mind because mind does not have any real, fundamental existence. This mind, he said, is nothing but a shadow. He advised me to be continuously aware of the Self while I did the ordinary things of everyday life, and in my case, this was enough.

p. 67

Do nothing

THE POWER THAT BUDDHA IS TALKING ABOUT is the power when you don't do anything with your energy and you simply delight in its presence... A SHEER DELIGHT IN BEING FULL OF ENERGY... the sheer delight of a young, green tree... the sheer delight of a cloud, a white cloud wandering in the sky... the sheer delight of a lotus flower... the sheer delight of the sun coming out of the clouds... the sheer delight of being so full of energy... vibrant, alive, throbbing. 

WHEN YOU DON'T PUT YOUR ENERGY TO ANY PURPOSE WHATSOEVER, then energy itself starts moving in a vertical line. IF YOU PUT IT TO WORK, TO SOME ACTION, IT MOVES IN A HORIZONTAL LINE. Then you can make a big house, you can have more money, you can have more prestige, this and that. 

When you put energy to work, it moves in the horizontal line. WHEN YOU DON'T PUT ENERGY TO WORK, you simply delight in its presence, you are happy that it is there, THEN IT MOVES IN A VERTICAL LINE. I am not saying stop all work. I am saying find a few moments for vertical movement also. Horizontal movement is okay, but not enough. It is necessary for life -- but man cannot live by bread alone. 

You can get bread through horizontal work, but love, meditation, God, nirvana -- they exist on the vertical line. 

So sometimes just sit, do nothing. SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING, AND SOMETHING GOES ON GROWING WITHIN YOU. You become a RESERVOIR, and you start throbbing with an unknown delight. When you are full of energy, you are in contact with the whole. And when you are in contact with the whole, you are full of energy. 

—Ôshð—

The Discipline of Transcendence

Vol 2, Ch #5: A light unto yourself 

am in Buddha Hall

(_via Bodhisattva Shree Amithaba Subhuti _❤️)

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Shiva is a space of deep silence and stillness where all the activities of the mind dissolve. This space is available wherever you are. The moment you are established, centred, you see that there is Divinity present everywhere. This is what happens in meditation.

- Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar

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23 November 1963

STUDENTS:

What are we on this earth for? 

KRISHNAMURTI: 

You are on this earth to live fully, happily, with your whole being, free of ambition, greed and fear. If you are greedy or ambitious, you cannot live fully, because greed and ambition dissipate your energy. To live fully is to live without fear, without sorrow, without asking a thing of the gods, because you would be a light unto yourself. When you live fully—a light unto yourself—you will not follow anybody, you will have no nationality, or belong to any religious or political group. As you would be a free human being it would, therefore, be possible to live in this world richly, whether you had little or much and, in that very act of living, you would beautify the earth. 

Look at all the horrors that are going on everywhere! It is because you do not know how to live that you give an artificial significance to life. If you asked ten different people what the purpose of life was, they would give you ten different answers; and then what could you do but choose an answer from among those ten and try to live according to it? You have to find out for yourself what it means to live fully. Obviously you cannot live fully if you are afraid of death, or of public opinion, or of making a mistake. If you are ambitious, seeking power, or clinging to a position, which in one form or another is what most people are doing, you cannot live fully, because you would be everlastingly in conflict, both with others and with yourself. It is most difficult to live without ambition in a world which is corrupt, a world where there are so many vested interests, so many gods who are always threatening, or offering rewards. It requires astonishing intelligence to live in such a world. And you can have intelligence only by seeing everything, and by listening to everything. Then your eyes will become alive and your ears sharp. From seeing and listening there comes self-knowledge and, in knowing yourself, you will have astounding vision. What better reason do you want for 

being on this earth than that? 

J Krishnamurti, A Timeless Spring

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The nature of jnanis and vijnanis

MASTER: "The vijnāni always sees God. That is why he is so indifferent about the world. He sees God even with his eyes open. Sometimes he comes down to the Lila from the Nitya, and sometimes he goes up to the Nitya from the Lila."

PUNDIT: "I don't understand that."

MASTER: "The Jnāni reasons about the world through the process of 'Neti, neti', and at last reaches the Eternal and Indivisible Satchidananda. He reasons in this manner: 'Brahman is not the living beings; It is neither the universe nor the twenty-four cosmic principles.' As a result of such reasoning he attains the Absolute. Then he

realizes that it is the Absolute that has become all this-the universe, its living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles.

"Milk sets into curd, and the curd is churned into butter. After extracting the butter one realizes that butter is not essentially different from buttermilk and buttermilk not essentially different from butter. The bark of a tree goes with the pith and the pith goes with the bark."

PUNDIT (smiling, to Bhudar): "Did you understand that? It is very difficult."

MASTER: "If there is butter, there must be buttermilk also. If you think of butter, you must also think of buttermilk along with it; for there cannot be any butter without buttermilk. Just so, if you accept the Nitya,

you must also accept the Lila. It is the process of negation and affirmation. You realize the Nitya by negating the Lila. 

Then you affirm the Lila, seeing in it the manifestation of the Nitya. One attains this state after realizing Reality in both aspects: Personal and Impersonal. 

The Personal is the embodiment of Chit,

Consciousness; and the Impersonal is the Indivisible Satchidananda.

"Brahman alone has become everything. Therefore to the vijnāni this world is a 'mansion of myrth'. But to the

Jnāni it is a 'framework of illusion'.

- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

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"Name and form are neither in you nor in me." 

"Neither unity nor separation exist in you nor in me. 

All is Self alone. 

"I" and "you" and the "world" have no real being."

"Good and evil are in the mind, and not in you. 

Beloved, why do you cry?"

- Avadhut Gita.  Chapter 1. The Self.

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What exists in truth is the Self alone. 

The world, the individual soul, and God are appearances in it, like silver in mother-of-pearl, these three appear at the same time, and disappear at the same time. 

The Self is that where there is absolutely no “I” thought. 

That is called “Silence”. 

The Self itself is the world; 

the Self itself is “I”; 

the Self itself is God; 

all is Siva, the Self.

What actually exists is only ātma-svarūpa [our own essential self]. 

The world, soul and God are kalpanaigal [imaginations, fabrications, mental creations or illusory superimpositions] in it, like [the imaginary] silver [seen] in a shell. These three appear simultaneously and disappear simultaneously. 

Svarūpa [our ‘own form’ or actual self] alone is the world; 

svarūpa alone is ‘I’ [our ego, soul or individual self]; 

svarūpa alone is God; 

everything is śiva-svarūpa[our actual self, which is śiva, the absolute and only truly existing reality] 

- Translation by  Michael James

~ Who Am I?

The teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.