Friday, August 9, 2019

When life is a challenge, that's when all the skills are needed from within you

Being calm and peaceful when everything is calm, everything is peaceful, has no meaning. Being peaceful when everything is peaceful is dull and boring. You should create some trouble. You should have some fun. You should have some mischief. When everything is absolutely fine and peaceful and quiet, being peaceful has no meaning, but when everything is falling apart, then being quiet and peaceful – that peace has value. A bottle of water has more worth in a desert than when you are surrounded by water. When you are sitting by a spring, then a bottle of water is of no value to you. One handful from the spring is good enough to quench your thirst.

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When there is chaos, there is confusion; when there are problems all around you, then calmness is needed the most; wisdom is most valuable then.
When people blame you, when they don’t understand you, that’s when you need the inner strength to smile. When things don’t go the way you want them to, that’s when you need the endurance, the strength and. courage to remain unperturbed. What brings that courage in you is exactly what Krishna said: samatvam yoga ucate (2.48). That equanimity is the test of your yoga.
There is an incident about Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi’s life companion, Kasturba Gandhi, was on her deathbed. Doctors had given up hope. They said, “Just a few hours or minutes – that’s it, for her to live.” At that time, Mahtma Gandhi came out of his kutir and told Pandit Sudhakar Chaturvedi, “Read that verse from Bhagwad Gita for me.” When he recited the Gita, Gandhi said, “Today is your Bapu’s test. Today is my examination. I will know whether I will be able to handle the loss of Kasturba.” As he was saying this, tears rolled down his eyes. “Whether I am equanimous or not, today is the testing day.” Yoga brings that balance, so that an event doesn’t shatter you.
Just observe, how your mind goes, how it flares up, for nothing! How it creates a mess all around. One moment it’s high, another moment it’s down. Bipolar is an extreme condition, but those who are not doing yoga, they are all, in some manner, in a bipolar state. Yoga is the answer for these psychological troubles. Samatvam yoga ucyate (2.48). Yoga is the equanimity that wells up in you, that comes up in you, stabilizes your consciousness.
Excerpts from Gurudev’s commentary on Bhagavad Gita

Saturday, April 6, 2019

You don’t have to be very rich to feel the abundance

What are you struggling for?

Is it Money? You are struggling for money, then don’t sit and day dream, do hard work. If one business does not work, choose another business and do it.

Don’t sit and day dream and only think about miracles to happen.

Miracles do happen, but if you crave for miracles then they will take a back seat. Nature wants you to be dynamic. There are people who have asked me, ‘Guruji, please give me some numbers for my lottery ticket. I just want to win a lottery so that I don’t have to do anything. Just do sadhana all the time and some seva(service).’ No way! First of all, decide what it is that you want from life. You know money is something that you will always find people short of. Always!
You can see for example, the richest country, the only super power on this planet is USA and it is under heavy debt; trillions of dollars of debt. You take big companies; many of them are in debt. The richer a person gets, the more expenses he has. At the same time, there are poor people who are contributing towards charity, poor people who take time to do service, which is amazing. They feel so much abundance.

Did you know that during our silver jubilee celebration, a beautiful incident happened!
I came down from the steps on the last day and a small boy came running to me with tears in his eyes and gave me an envelope. I took the envelope and it had Rs. 5000 in it. I looked at that boy and I asked, ‘What do you do?’ He said he is a laborer. The money in the envelope that he had given me had two months of his earnings, and he said, ‘Please take this.I can’t tell you how much my life has transformed. Please accept this.’ I took just Rs.100 from that envelope and returned back Rs. 4900. I told him, you know this Rs.100 is so precious for me, this is enough. I will take this. Two months of his salary; someone who is a laborer who does manual work, he comes and offers this. Such a big heart! 

In fact many rich people don’t feel abundance at all, they feel lack. They are not generous. But poor people are very generous. Don’t imagine a situation where you will become super rich one day and then you will start doing some seva(service), no, nothing like that. You can feel abundance at any point of time.

And the moment you start feeling abundance, you will see things will get better!

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

What is heaven and what is enlightenment?

You still have a lot of time left to know about heaven! There is no use in knowing about heaven now otherwise there will not be any excitement left when you actually get there!

But it is important to understand enlightenment now. When you feel content you are enlightened. When everything feels like a dream you are enlightened. Just tell me, whatever has happened so far in your life, does it not seem more like a dream? You went to school, then college, got married, so many events took place in your life, all that is like a dream now. Isn’t it? Now you are sitting here among so many people, does this not seem like a dream? After today, many days and many years are going to come and pass and eventually we are all going to die, then will it not seem like a dream?

If you look into the past or the future or if you decide to wake up to the present everything will still feel like a dream, you will realise you are separate from the events you see and experience. This is enlightenment/ liberation. And when you feel free you feel happiness and where there is happiness that place in nothing short of heaven.

Doesn’t this place feel like heaven! We are not those who go to heaven but those who create heaven where we are! We bring heaven to us!

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Diversity needs to be honored, acknowledged and celebrated.

The world is beautiful because it is diverse and diversity is the beauty of this creation. There is not one type of fish, there is not one type of potato. You know, in Peru, there are three thousand varieties of potatoes! Three thousand type of potato in Peru alone. And in Colombia, I say it is the most bio-diverse country on the planet. So many types of trees, birds are there. We have seven hundred types of rice alone in our country and so many types of wheat. In this ashram, we have eighty types of butterflies.

Whether it is religion or it is food, any species of fish or cows, we have to protect the diversity. Because diversity is the basis of existence. In the Vedas, it is said that the Divine says ‘I am one, but I become many.’ Why? In ‘many’ there is bliss. To express the bliss that I am, I became many. So the diversity is to be celebrated. I think tolerance is a very negative word. You tolerate something which you don’t like. But when you love diversity, it is no longer tolerance, it is a celebration of diversity.

When Devi Puja is done in the Vaidic time, in Vaidic ritual, they say ‘O, Mother Divine, you present yourself in such diverse way. Mother, you are in so many different forms.’  (When things are not of your own form, your own type, you always have a fear about it. Someone who is not like you, someone who doesn’t belong to you, you have some fear about them). Mother Divine remove this fear from my mind and let me recognize you in all the diverse creation. This is the prayer. And it is said, ‘Mother, you have manifested yourself in such diversity, in such variety, how I can sing thy glory!’

One who recognizes this diverse nature of the Shakti, of the consciousness, is the real King. You yourself bestow the Kingship in the person. You (Mother Divine) offer various and different kind of wealth. This planet contains so many minerals, so many types of precious stones, this is all part of this diversity and it is the Mother Divine’s manifestation in this diverse universe, and in abundance.

Even in sesame, there are many different types of sesame, many different types of grains, not one. So the diversity is what is being praised here. And this has been the lifeline of ancient Vaidic Civilisation.

Friday, March 1, 2019

Am I making progress with my spiritual practices?

Do you feel at home everywhere? Do you feel a sense of unshakeable peace, a sense of unknown inner-strength. Do you feel comfortable and natural, at home, with people or without people, then you progressing.


If you feel uncomfortable with people or without people, in both cases you need to work on yourself a lot. Do you see that? 

You should feel at home whether there are people around you or when nobody is around you then also you should feel at home. That is the strength that meditation brings within you and a smile that is undying. If you think it’s little too much then never mind, it will keep happening. It will take it’s time maybe.

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Are we slaves of our mind?

Three things affect our mind
  1. Time
  2. The Company we keep
  3. The Food we eat
Our body changes with time. Time also has an impact on the mind.  The state of mind and the feeling also change multiple times throughout a day!

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Thought patterns also get affected by time. Winter, summer, spring, all affect the mind differently. Ancient people did an in-depth study about it — how the moon affects the mind, how the moon is moving around in different constellations; how different degrees of the moon has a definite impact on the mind. That’s why they use the words ‘Tara-bal’ and ‘Chandra-bal’. The moon is in one constellation for two and a half days, then it moves to the another constellation. So in two and half days there are changes in the mood of the mind.
Then the question comes – “Are we slaves of our mind?”
I say, “No”, because there is something beyond the mind and that is the intellect. When the intellect is strong it overcomes the impact on the mind. When the intellect is weak, then the emotions overtake the mind. Now what if the intellect also gets affected? Then there is something beyond the intellect and that is the Self; that is Shiva Tattva.
Shiva is the master of the time and that is why he is called ‘Maha-kaala’. So when you take refuge in the Shiva Tattva or higher Self, then the impact of time is minimized, both on the mind and on the body.
So time impacts the mind and time has definite measurements. Similarly the company we keep also affects us. What we hear impacts our mind. The people with whom we are affect us. If we are in good company then it has good impact on us. If we are in bad company then negative feelings like anger, jealousy, etc., affects us. 
Then the third thing that affects the mind is food. Food is secondary, food is not that important. If the first two are okay, then it can man over the menace of food.
Those who know time are called Devagya. They know about time. All this is as per the divine will of time. Rule of time is divine and those who know time are called Devagya.

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What is above God is Brahma-gnan (knowledge of the self). A Brahma-gnani is much above a Devagya. A Brahma-Gnani is being centered in the Self. What I am is what you are, and what everything else is too. This firm experience and faith brings Brahma-Gnan and then nothing can shake you. Even if it appears that it is shaking, actually it is not, it is making you strong. Brahma-gnan is bigger than all other gnan (knowledge). 

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

You don’t have to be very rich to feel the abundance

What are you struggling for?
Is it Money? You are struggling for money, then don’t sit and day dream, do hard work. If one business does not work, choose another business and do it. 

Don’t sit and day dream and only think about miracles to happen.

Miracles do happen, but if you crave for miracles then they will take a back seat. Nature wants you to be dynamic. There are people who have asked me, ‘Guruji, please give me some numbers for my lottery ticket. I just want to win a lottery so that I don’t have to do anything. Just do sadhana all the time and some seva(service).’ No way! First of all, decide what it is that you want from life. You know money is something that you will always find people short of. Always!
You can see for example, the richest country, the only super power on this planet is USA and it is under heavy debt; trillions of dollars of debt. You take big companies; many of them are in debt. The richer a person gets, the more expenses he has. At the same time, there are poor people who are contributing towards charity, poor people who take time to do service, which is amazing. They feel so much abundance.

Did you know that during our silver jubilee celebration, a beautiful incident happened!

I came down from the steps on the last day and a small boy came running to me with tears in his eyes and gave me an envelope. I took the envelope and it had Rs. 5000 in it. I looked at that boy and I asked, ‘What do you do?’ He said he is a laborer. The money in the envelope that he had given me had two months of his earnings, and he said, ‘Please take this.I can’t tell you how much my life has transformed. Please accept this.’ I took just Rs.100 from that envelope and returned back Rs. 4900. I told him, you know this Rs.100 is so precious for me, this is enough. I will take this. Two months of his salary; someone who is a laborer who does manual work, he comes and offers this. Such a big heart!  
In fact many rich people don’t feel abundance at all, they lack feel. They are not generous. But poor people are very generous. Don’t imagine a situation where you will become super rich one day and then you will start doing some seva(service), no, nothing like that. You can feel abundance at any point of time.

And the moment you start feeling abundance, you will see things will get better! 

Monday, January 28, 2019

Inner Peace Outer Dynamism (IPOD) - An Interaction with the Youth

Monday, 5. February 2018 Kochi, India

What is the Sign of a Youth?

Not being stuck in one place – that is a sign of youth. Enthusiasm, dynamism, progress, and wanting to do tough things! Isn't it?
A big program was organized in Pune, like this one. After the program, a youth was driving me to the airport, and he told me, "Gurudev, everything went so smooth. There were no challenges at all."
I told him that I thought a young man is driving me, but now I see an old person is driving me.
Young people want to take a challenge. They don't want everything to be smooth. Am I correct? (The audience says "Yes")
There are a lot of things in the world that are challenging, and as young people, you must take on those challenges. Every challenge you take on will bring the best out of you.

Keeping Calm Midst Chaos

When you take on challenges, there is one challenge that you face- How do you keep yourself cool?
You can't handle a challenge when you are disturbed. You cannot handle any tough situation when you feel weak from inside. You need something that makes you solid, and that doesn't let you lose your smile.
If you play a game with someone junior to you, you play with such confidence. But if you play the same game with a senior or a more professional group than you, then there is a little nervousness inside of you. Can you have the same confidence whether you play with a junior or a senior? Can you have the same respect for the juniors as you have for the seniors? This is a very tricky situation. This is the way to train your mind.
Sometimes, when you are overconfident, you lose. You think juniors may not know much, but sometimes, juniors know better than you. And similarly, you think seniors are too big to handle, and you become nervous. If you stop being nervous, you will see that you will be able to handle them much better. So, what you need is that balance – something to log on to. Now, what is that something? That is the inner peace.
Once you have inner peace and inner strength, I tell you, you can do anything. You can handle any situation, you can manage any challenge and you can manage them successfully.

How to Have Inner Peace?

You need to attend 3 things:
  1. Have a healthy diet
    You need to take care of your food and your diet. I suppose you are doing that already. If not, observe your diet.
    Now tell me, how many of you find post-lunch session very boring? (Many in the audience raise their hands) Do you know why? Because you have eaten sumptuous food and you feel like dozing off, especially if it is a history class or a trigonometry or geometry class immediately after lunch. So, we must take care not to have foods that don't cause drowsiness during lunchtime.
     
  2. Practice pranayama and breathing techniques regularly
    Do you have any idea of how much food you consume per day? You consume 1 to 1.5 kilogram every day. Some of you can consume 2 kilogram.
    How much do you drink? Two and a half liters! But do you know how much air we breathe in every day? 10,000 liters.
    Fortunately, Kochi has good air. In Delhi, it is very difficult, even the air is not pure. 90% of the nutrition for our body comes through the air. Oxygen is that which energies every cell in your body and make your cells grow, and that comes from the air. So even without food, you can survive, but without air, you cannot survive.

    So, every day for a short while, do a little pranayama. Deep breathing can change our mind. If you feel low, depressed, or unhappy, just take deep breaths for ten minutes, and you will feel energetic and happy again. You will feel enthusiasm just coming out of you again. So, breathing is a very important factor in keeping your energy high.
     
  3. Intuition and Meditation
    We have come up with an intuition process for kids. Just in two-three days, you can learn how to use the power of your mind to read beyond your eyes. Being blindfolded, you will be able to read, you will be able to write, and you will be able to download information.

    Our brain is like a computer. You can download things which you don't even know. Those of you who want to do research on this, you are welcome. We have already trained nearly 35,000 children all over this country, in China and in Europe.
    We all have intuitive abilities. We only have to enhance them. And meditation is the keyword. Now, meditation is not concentration, it is deep relaxation.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

6 Wise Ways to Deal with Anger

Tuesday, 2. May 2017 Bangalore, India
How to control Anger
If your anger is a tool and it is in your control, then anger is good. But if anger controls you then you are in trouble, and the cause is also gone. There is nothing wrong in using anger as a weapon, but if it is cutting your own peace of mind, then you should use wisdom to safeguard yourself.

Tips to Manage Anger:

Here is some perspective on how to skillfully free your mind from the clutches of anger, and experience a balanced state of mind.

#1 Give room for imperfection

The main cause of anger is that you want perfection. We get angry over imperfections, but the world does have levels of perfection. Give a little space for imperfection. When you give some space for imperfection, patience in you increases.
At home we keep a garbage can, isn't it? You cannot say, 'I won’t keep a garbage can at home'. Then there would be garbage all over the place. Anger is that garbage all over the house. When you give space for imperfection, you will put all the garbage in a can and let it be. Then you will see how you can manage your anger.
So exercise patience towards imperfections. It takes time for imperfection to become perfection. How can you give that time? When you give space for it. Then compassion arises and anger disappears.

#2 Balance between expressing and suppressing your anger

You can’t express anger all the time, you will cause so much damage to yourself and others around you. And you can’t suppress it all the time, sometimes you need to express it otherwise you will explode. So, you have to strike that right balance between expressing and suppressing your anger. Wisdom is knowing when to express it and when to suppress it.

#3 Don’t get angry with yourself for getting angry

It will take quite some time for you to get to that level where anger does not even touch you. It will keep coming in different shades and intensities. When anger comes up, don’t start blaming yourself. One thing that can be very detrimental is you blaming yourself. Keep moving ahead. If you get angry, never mind, just let it come and go. Instead of looking at the cause of anger, look at the effect it is producing in your body and keep relaxing your body.

#4 Keep good company (Sangha)

Whatever you cannot do alone, you can do it with the support of good company. Company has many benefits and a few drawbacks too, as it can also take up a lot of your energy. The positive effect is that Sangha gives you that much needed support to move forward. Whenever your mind goes topsy-turvy, or if your emotions are going up and down, at such times the Sangha will carry you forward. It will help you move through the situations.

#5 Accept people as they are

One of the principles of The Art of Living is: Accept people and situations as they are.Accepting and creating room for others itself makes your personality much wider. If you don’t have that expanded consciousness then you become very rigid in your outlook.
People who irritate you, in some way or the other can bring about the best in you. They can bring out the talents and skills in you. See, when everyone around you is wonderful you don’t need any skill to handle a situation. It will only happen when there are people whom you think are unreasonable. So, take it as an exercise as much as possible. The moment deep acceptance starts coming from within, you will suddenly find the other person also changes. It is strange, but true. When we change, they also change.

#6 Practice meditation

Meditation will definitely provide you that much needed strength to overcome anger. Practice more pranayama and go deeper into meditation. You will feel the serenity and the change in you after meditation. Meditation brings transformation in you. Remember, any meditation that you do never goes waste.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

How to Overcome Feelings of Hurt

uesday, 28. March 2017 Bangalore, India
If you have wisdom, you don’t have to go through pain to learn. We go through pain because we lack wisdom. But remember that you will come out of pain or hurt at some time or the other.
It is important for one to have a larger context to life. When you have a larger context, then trivial things don’t really bother you. They are like waves on the surface of the ocean – they rise and fall. So, if you are in pain, or have been hurt, here are the four ways of looking at the situation that will ease your pain!

#1 The one who has hurt you is pained

Many a times, people cause hurt to others because they have scars, and they are unhappy and miserable. They can only share what they have. They are hurt and they are sharing the hurt with you. You might think that these people are hurting you purposely, but in fact it is because they do not have happiness inside them, they don’t have joy or peace. They have pain inside them, which is why they are causing you hurt.
So, what should the wounded party do? Compassion. You have to be compassionate to those who hurt you, because they are wounded themselves.

#2 The one causing you hurt is just ignorant

There are people who hurt others out of sheer ignorance. They are not sensitive and they are not aware that their actions are hurting others. They don’t know themselves and they don’t know what they are doing. They are ignorant and arrogant. You can only feel sorry for them and hope that someday they will become sensitive and intelligent.

#3 You’re hurting because It is just karma

You had to get this hurt, and if not this person, then someone else would have given it to you. You must have caused some hurt to someone in the past, so nature is bringing it back to you now. When you know that it's just the karma being repaid, you feel very settled.

#4 It is being done to make you strong

 
Nature is bringing this pain to you so that you become strong, so that you discover the strength and power within you. Usually, when a pole is being installed, after the installation, they shake the pole to check whether it is rooted well enough or not. Hurt is just that, to see whether you are well established in yourself, whether you are in wisdom or not. Every hurt is trying to shake you, to see whether you are strong or not. It tests your strength. It is to make you stronger.
If you think a wise person or someone intelligent is hurting you, then you should be thankful because there is some purpose in that. They want you to be strong.
If your mother is scolding you, she is not doing it with bad intentions. If your father is scolding you, you can’t say, “Oh my father hurt me! My mother hurt me!”
Your parents are not hurting you – they are coming from a space of care and concern for you. We must recognize that they are doing things out of their limited understanding and love for you.
There are two major things that you feel when you are hurt – lack of communication and lack of understanding. Another reason to feel hurt, if you want to count it, is being oversensitive to irrelevant or ephemeral things. Events are all ephemeral – they are all moving and impermanent. Everything is changing. You don’t need to become oversensitive, “Oh he said this thing to me, she said this thing to me!”
Now, if someone is trying to physically hurt you, you just be careful and equip yourself. I am not saying if someone comes to hurt you, you fall at their feet. No, you be intelligent and protect yourself.