LAHIRI MAHASAYA QUOTES

Through delusion you are perceiving yourself as a bundle of flesh and bones, which at best is a nest of troubles. Meditate unceasingly, that you may quickly behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery. Cease being a prisoner of the body; using the secret key of Kriya, learn to escape into Spirit.

Divine union is possible through self-effort, and is not dependent on theological beliefs or on the arbitrary will of a Cosmic Dictator.

"If the breath is constantly shuffled then it attains a cessation or is stilled. This stillness is termed yoga. A living being is kinetic by disposition thus has no respite barring still state - kineticism is stilled through Pranayama. When the mind is stilled unnecessary desires are eliminated, the non-function of unnecessay action is termed as desire cessation or the desireless state."

Settlement is the advaita (non-duality) state removes the difference between God and the devotee.
The state in which the knower, known, knowledge becomes one that only is the state of science. This is the true devotion or true knowledge.

Seek divine wealth, not the paltry tinsel of earth. After acquiring inward treasure, you will find that outward supply is always forthcoming.

"I am ever with those who practice Kriya. I will guide you to the Cosmic Home through your enlarging perceptions."

"Attune yourself to the active inner Guidance; the Divine Voice has the answer to every dilemma of life. Though man’s ingenuity for getting himself into trouble appears to be endless, the Infinite Succor is no less resourceful."

Buddhist Cheatsheet

Celebrating Devotion

Gurupurnima is called the day of the Master, but it is actually the day of the devotee.

There are three types of people who come to the Master - the student, the disciple and the devotee. 

Student: A student goes to a teacher and learns something, gets some information and walks out of the school. The student is the one, who collects information, but the information is not knowledge, it is not wisdom. 

Disciple: Then, there is the disciple; the disciple follows the example of the Master. But a disciple is with the Master for the sake of learning wisdom, for the sake of improving his life, for attaining enlightenment. He is trying to bring a transformation in his life.

Devotee: And then there is a devotee. A devotee is not there even for wisdom. He is simply rejoicing in love. He has fallen in deep love with the Master, with Infinity, with God. Students are in abundance, disciples are a few, but the devotees are rare. 

One of Buddha’s disciples named Sariputra achieved enlightenment. Soon thereafter, Buddha told him, “Now you go ahead, go into the world and preach, teach, and do the same work I do. Carry on my work.” As instructed, Sariputra left Buddha, but he was crying. People asked him, “Why are you crying when you are enlightened?” He replied, “Who cares about this enlightenment? It could have waited. I would have waited. I didn’t even bother about it or ask for it because the joy of being at the feet of Buddha was so great. Being a devotee was so great. I cry now because I miss it. I would have preferred that to this enlightenment.” He said.


Who is a Guru? 
A Guru is just like a window. Guru simply means one who brings more joy, more alertness, and more awareness into your life. A Guru is not one who holds any authority over you. A Guru is not one who dictates terms to you. Rather, a Guru encourages you to be in touch with yourself. A Guru reminds you to live in the present moment, and a Guru takes away the guilt, agitation, sorrow, and anguish, which allows you to be yourself. That in the true sense is the meaning of Guru. A Guru does not simply fill you with knowledge, but he kindles the life force in you. In the presence of the Guru, you become more alive. The Guru invokes not only intelligence but also the intellect in you. Knowledge may not invoke intelligence, but in a state of intelligence, knowledge is inherent.

In the Upanishads, five signs of sadguru are mentioned. In the presence of a sadguru knowledge flourishes (Gyana raksha), sorrow diminishes (dukha kshaya), joy wells up without any reason (sukha aavirbhava), abundance dawns (samriddhi) and all talent manifest (sarva samvardhan).

Once you have found a sadguru, remember that he or she is always there with you, watching and giving you wisdom.  Spiritual path is not only a path of learning more; it is also a path of unlearning. Learning has no end; unlearning has an end.  The true path is one that takes you home and kindles that deep love in you. 

Love is not just an act. It is our very nature.  It is what we are made up of.  Love is something that even the Divine rejoices in. The infinity longs for you as much as you long for it. It is waiting to receive you. It is as anxious as you are to be near. So when a devotee flowers in this planet, infinity is very happy. 

Understand that you are the number one devotee, and feel grateful for the great knowledge you have received from your Master.  Turn back and see how they changed and developed in the last one year. Assess what you have learnt and how have you grown in knowledge. This Guru Purnima rise in devotion.

- His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/83804/celebrating-devotion.html

Spiritual Knowledge

Brahmo: “Is spiritual knowledge impossible without a guru?”

RamaKrishna Paramahansa: “Satchidananda alone is the Guru. If a man in the form of a guru awakens spiritual consciousness in you, then know for certain that it is God the Absolute who has assumed that human form for your sake. The guru is like a companion who leads you by the hand. After the realization of God, one loses the distinction between the guru and the disciple. ‘That creates a very difficult situation; there the guru and the disciple do not see each other.’ It was for this reason that Janaka said to Sukadeva, ‘Give me first my teacher’s fee if you want me to initiate you into the Knowledge of Brahman.’ For the distinction between the teacher and the disciple ceases to exist after the disciple attains to Brahman. The relationship between them remains as long as the disciple does not see God.”

http://www.ramakrishnamath.in/gospel/archives/category/gospel_sri_ramakrishna/page/8

Different groups of devotees

M: "Sir, what is the meaning of the realization of God? What do you mean by God-vision? How does one attain it?"

Ramakrishna Paramahansa: "According to the Vaishnavas the aspirants and the seers of God may be divided into different groups.  These are the pravartaka, the sadhaka, the siddha, and the siddha of the siddha.  

He who has just set foot on the path may be called a pravartaka.

He may be called a sadhaka who has for some time been practising spiritual disciplines, such as worship, japa, meditation, and the chanting of God's name and glories.  

He may be called a siddha who has known from his inner experience that God exists.  An analogy is given in the Vedanta to explain this.  The master of the house is asleep in a dark room.  Someone is groping in the darkness to find him.  He touches the couch and says, 'No, it is not he.' He touches the window and says, 'No, it is not he.' He touches the door and says, 'No, it is not he.' This is known in the Vedanta as the process of 'Neti, neti', 'Not this, not this'.  At last his hand touches the master's body and he exclaims, 'Here he is!' In other words, he is now conscious of the 'existence' of the master.  He has found him, but he doesn't yet know him intimately. 

"There is another type, known as the siddha of the siddha, the 'supremely perfect'.  It is quite a different thing when one talks to the master intimately, when one knows God very intimately through love and devotion.  A siddha has undoubtedly attained God, but the 'supremely perfect' has known God very intimately. 

http://www.belurmath.org/gospel/chapter04.htm

Control Everything ?

Q: How to get rid of my tendency to control everything everywhere and every time? 

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You can control small things, that is why you have this illusion (that you are in control). Just try to control the big things: stop the war in Iraq, or stop the war in Syria.

A couple came to meet me and they were talking. The husband said, 'My wife decides all the small things and I decide all the big things. Like my wife decides what car to buy, what color the house must be painted, where we should go for holiday, how we should spend our money and all these small things. I don’t interfere in her work and I do the big things. I think about how to stop the war in Iraq, who should be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and how the nations should interact with each other, etc, and she never interferes in these matters, so we have peace at home'.

Like that if you want to have control, think about the bigger things. How you can control the weather or bring rain. If you are a control freak, you should control those things. Think about something like that.

http://www.artofliving.org/lu-en/wisdom-q-a-23-july-2014-qa-2

Technique:Watching the Mind

“I am willing to be a witness to my mind, without judgment”

“This is the only distinction between the dream and the real: reality allows you to doubt, and the dream does not allow you to doubt…. To me, the capacity to doubt is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. ” ~Osho

The essence of all meditation is to watch, observe, witness, be mindful.  What stops us from being able to access that natural state of being, which is why we need methods, is our complete and automatic immersion in the process of our thoughts and feelings, collectively called the mind.  We seem to have lost the “Off” switch for our mind and so the process of thinking is a relentless companion.  Even when our body is tired, our thoughts will keep us sleepless.  interestingly, Osho includes the emotions along with the thoughts in what is collectively called the mind.  We will probably all agree that this thinking and feeling machine can drive us crazy and that it would be just great if we knew how to turn it off at will and have some peace and quiet when thinking isn’t actually needed. 

Can the mind commit suicide?  No because whatever the mind does, strengthens it.   Any doing that mind does, makes it stronger.  So suicide is impossible.  Mind doing something means mind continuing itself so the mind cannot do it.  Mind cannot commit suicide but suicide can happen.  it happens by watching the mind.  The watcher is separate, deeper, higher than the mind.  The watcher is always hidden behind the mind.  A thought passes, a feeling arises.  Who is watching this?  Not the mind itself because the mind is nothing but the process of thought and feeling.  The mind is just the traffic of thinking.

Who is watching when you see an angry thought has arisen?  Who are you?

The mind is like a printed book on white clean paper, words appear.  The empty paper is the container and the printed words are the content.  Consciousness is like empty paper..  Mind is like printed paper.  What exists as an object inside you, whatever you can see and observe, is the mind.  The observer is not the mind.   So if you can observe without condemning, creating conflict with the mind, without following it, without going against it, if you can simply be there, indifferent to it, suicide happens.  When the watcher arrives, the witness is there and the mind simply disappears.

Mind with cooperation or conflict – both are ways of cooperating.  When you fight with the mind, you are giving energy to it.  In your fight, you have accepted the power of the mind on your being.  So whether you are in conflict or cooperate, the mind becomes stronger and stronger.  Just watch, be a witness, and by and eventually you will see gaps arise.  A thought passes and there is an interval before another thought arises.  In that interval is peace, love, all that you have been seeking, and never finding.   In that gap, you are no more an ego.  In that gap, you are not defined, confined, imprisoned. you are one with existence.  Your boundaries are no more there, you melt into existence and it melts into you – you start overlapping.  If you keep watching and don’t bet attached to the gaps, they are tremendously beautiful, they are immensely blissful, and it is natural to get attached to them.  If desire arises to have more and more, then your watcher has disappeared.  The gaps will again disappear and the mind traffic will again be there.

The first thing is to become  an indifferent watcher and the second is to remember that when beautiful gaps arise, don’t get attached to them, asking for them, hoping they happen more often.  Watch them and keep your indifference alive and eventually the traffic simply disappears with the road.  They both disappear and there is tremendous emptiness – the mind has ceased.  This is suicide but mind has not committed it – it can’t.  You can help it happen.  You can hinder it or help it, it depends on you – not your mind.  So meditation is allowing the mind to have it’s own way and not interfering in any way, just remaining watchful, witnessing it.  It silences, becomes still.  One day, it is gone and you are left alone.  That aloneness is your reality.  And in that aloneness, nothing is excluded, everything is included.

Meditation: “Creating a Gap from the Mind”

The first technique is a “STOP Exercise” – it is effective because you do it with the body, not with the mind. And it hardly takes any time.

Do this at least 6 times a day, more is fine but not less. The most important thing is: it has to be done suddenly.

While walking on a quiet street, or doing anything in your home, in your garden, or out in nature, or in whatever activity this can work for you, suddenly remember yourself, and STOP – stop completely, no movement – and just be present to whatever is happening. Then start moving again.

“If you just become present suddenly, the whole energy changes. The continuity that was going on in the mind stops, and it is so sudden that the mind cannot create a new thought so immediately. It takes time; and the mind cannot work without time, so when you do it suddenly – in that stopping suddenly the mind stops, and for a single moment there is a clearing. All thoughts disappear; there is emptiness, and in that emptiness there is an opening.”

You may have had that experience when there is a sudden, unexpected, loud thunder-clap in the sky. Start watching those gaps, those clearings, openings.

And when you stop, don’t prolong it – because after half a minute the mind will come back and destroy it. So when you do your STOPs, do them for less than 30 seconds. This is one way to create a distance, a gap, from the mind.

Meditation: "Enjoy the Mind"

This is another way of strengthening that “watcher” that is separate from and beyond the mind, the thoughts and feelings.

Enjoy the Mind. Don’t try to stop your thinking. It is a very natural part of you; you will go crazy if you try to stop it. It will be like a tree trying to stop its leaves; the tree will go mad.

And just not stopping it will not be enough; the second step is to enjoy it, to play with it! Playing with it, enjoying it, welcoming it, you will start becoming more alert about it, more aware of it, without any effort, very indirectly. When you are trying to become aware, then the mind distracts you and you become angry with it – and again the conflict and friction start that strengthen the mind.

So this second method is to start enjoying the thought process. Just see the nuances of thoughts, the turns they take, how one thing leads to another, how they get hooked into each other. It is really a miracle to watch! Just a small thought can take you to the farthest end.

Enjoy it, let it be a game; play it deliberately and you will be surprised: sometimes just enjoying it, you will find beautiful pauses. Suddenly you will find that, for instance, a dog is barking and nothing is arising in your mind, no chain of thinking starts. The dog goes on barking and you go on listening and no thought arises. Small gaps will arise… they come on their own, and when they come, they are beautiful. In those small gaps
you will start watching the watcher – and it will be natural. Again thoughts will start and you will enjoy that. Go on easily, take it easy.

And now, for a moment: if you are not already standing, stand up… and STOP! Stop completely, no movement – and just be present to whatever is happening.

http://myoprahlessons.com/tag/day-17-osho-a-course-in-meditation/

Silence

Silence is the goal of all answers. Space and silence are synonymous. Desire brings noise. Look at the noise in your mind. What is it about? More money, more fame, more recognition, fulfillment, relationships- the noise is about something. Silence is about nothing. Silence is the basis; the source of life, and is the cure for diseases. A thousand hours of speech cannot equal one glance of fullness and a hundred glances cannot equal a minute of silence. Prayer within breath is silence. Love within infinity is silence. Wisdom without words is silence. Compassion without aim is silence. Action without doer is silence. Smiling with all Existence is silence. And God is nothing but solidified silence.

http://www.artofliving.org/serenity-silence

Love & Meditation Go Hand in Hand

Now is the time to meditate. If love and meditation go together, you will have both wings, you will have a balance. Love and meditate, meditate and love, and slowly, slowly you will see a new harmony arising in you. Only that harmony will make you contented.

Thought for the day: “I ground my love through daily meditation.”

The problem with Love is that many people spend so much time looking for it outside of themselves. They don’t meditate. They don’t look within. And when you put two non-meditative people together? All there is is confusion.

Osho said, “Unless meditation is achieved, love will remain a misery.”

We must learn to enjoy our simple existence. If we do not, if we do not learn to meditate, we will continue to look for the problems of our relationship in the other. Our partner, who is a mirror, will only reflect the ugliness we see in ourselves. And instead of blaming ourselves, we blame the one holding the mirror. This is not the way. Meditation is the way. Looking within is the way. Not blaming the other, and not blaming anything at all is the way. Facing the problem, and learning the problem, with awareness, the two of you, is the solution.

“No one is making you look ugly. You are ugly. Sorry, but that’s how it is.”

We cannot blame the other for showing this to us. It is what it is. We mustn’t be angry. We must be grateful for the other, because he/she helps us look and go deeply into your selves. Love shows you who you are, where you are. But we mustn’t forget meditation when we are in love.

Without love, you will become unconscious of your problems because it shows us where we need to work. It shows us what traumas, what triggers, what things need to be healed. What things about ourselves need nurturance. What things about ourselves need to be let go. But this is scary.

This is why people don’t like love. They don’t like the work, rather, the ego doesn’t like to do the work. If you decide to turn your back on love, like Osho says, “Just because the mirror is no longer there, doesn’t mean you don’t have a face.” You will still be ugly. And with each new mirror you find love in, the problem will continue to be reflected back at you, until you decide to finally  settle in and DEAL.

With meditation, with love; meditating with love, and loving with meditation, we can find the necessary harmony to find our beauty again. With both wings attached, we can fly. With both, we find balance and can move past the past, and regain a sense of hope.

“Sometimes the heart full of love is there … but it is like a bud, not like a flower, the petals are closed. This bud can become a flower.” Osho

Meditation: “Allowing the Heart to Open Like a Flower”

Sit in a relaxed position while keeping your spine straight. Take a moment and become aware of your breathing … not to change it, but to become more aware it, of HOW it is happening.

Exhale deeply, pull in your stomach, and throw ALL the air out of your lungs.
When you feel all the air is out, keep it out as long as you can… let it remain out as long as possible. …
And when the air comes rushing back in, feel it opening the petals of the heart.

This simple technique can also be used whenever you want to change your mood – maybe you’re feeling jealous, or annoyed with something at work, or upset by something someone has said to you. Just take a few moments and do this simple technique of throwing all the air out of your lungs … and with it, all the negativity you are feeling. Throw it out. And when the air comes rushing back in, allow the petals of your heart to open.
http://completehealthcircle.com/2014/07/31/osho-day-5-love-meditation-go-hand-in-hand/

The Great Pleasure of Rest

There is a pleasure in rest and there is a pleasure in activity. The pleasure in activity is momentary and causes fatigue. The pleasure in rest is magnanimous and energizing. So, to the one who has tasted pleasure in rest (Samadhi), the pleasure in activity is insignificant. All activities that you do, you do so that you can have deep rest. Activity is part of the system. However, the real pleasure is in Samadhi. In order to have deep rest, one must be active. The proper balance of both is essential. Many seek pleasure in this or that but the wise man just smiles. The real rest is only in knowledge.

http://www.artofliving.org/great-pleasure-rest