Selfishness is when you feel, “I must have it at any cost.” Use your discriminating faculty. Analyze your motives. “Why am I selfish? What am I gaining out of that?” By being selfish, you aren’t going to be happy at all. Selfishness makes you miserable. Any time you are unhappy, if you look for the…
Question: I believe in the teachings, and try to apply them, but I am not very regular in the formal practices. This causes me pain. Should I make more of an effort to do formal sadhana or should I consider the pain to be a part of my spiritual practice? Answer: Well, it is part…
The first thing a spiritual aspirant has to acquire is mastery over the mind. Like a blind man – look at the objects. Like a deaf man – hear sounds. Do not allow the sense experiences to penetrate within. The mind gets fattened on account of its being fed by sense objects. Restrain the senses…
My purpose is achieved. The entire circle of birth and death is over. I have realised the perfect bliss of the atman. I have known myself to be Brahman. I am free. I am perfect. I am independent. I enjoy bliss. I enjoy the bliss of the immortal soul. I am brimful of perennial joy.…
No action is undesirable as long as it produces a beneficial result to all concerned, including you. You may call that a perfect act. The definition of a perfect act is one that neither hurts you, nor hurts anyone else. At the same time, it should bring at least some benefit to somebody. Sometimes due…
“As you think, so you become.” Think well, you will be well. Think ill, you will be ill. It’s all your thought. Sometimes you might not be thinking ill of yourself, but you are thinking ill of others. That is still thinking ill. Whether it is about you or somebody else, that is what you…
The great saintly poet, Subramuniya Bharati, once said, “Come on, all you people. Let us build a temple. All those who have plenty of money, bring heaps of dollars. Heaps of gold. Those who have little money, bring pennies. And those who do not even have pennies, at least say a nice word.” Not everyone…
You all want to fly high. You want independence, liberty, happiness, but you don’t want to do anything to get it. At least on a day like this you should reaffirm your interest in your practices and know that nobody has ever achieved anything without practice. Selfless service is all right. But even to do…
Our first priority is to serve others. In the process of doing that, if you think that you have to take a little rest so that you can serve more, then go take rest. Still, your taking rest is for the purpose of serving. That’s how you should eat, sleep, rest, bathe, everything. You take…
Question: What is the best way to serve God while living in the world? Answer: Serve one and all. Then you will have served God. Don’t even lose a single opportunity to serve others. Serve, serve, serve, and you will find that you also are served.
The only sara-vastu (thing of value) in this world is prema (or divine love). It is eternal, infinite and undecaying. Physical love is moha (passion or infatuation). Universal love is divine love. Cosmic love (visva prema) and universal love are synonymous terms. God is love. Love is God. Selfishness, greed, egoism, vanity, pride and hatred…
Once a pretty young girl was stung by a scorpion. It happened on a mountain top, at evening time. To go to the clinic down below, you had to descend a thousand steps. There were mostly monks and spiritual aspirants around, and everyone was trying to figure out what to do. The girl was lying…