~ compilation of talks by His Holiness Sri Sri Shankar
Celebrate while you are alone and celebrate when you are with people. Celebrate silence and celebrate noise. Celebrate life and celebrate death ~ New Delhi, March 13 1997
SENSES - HABITS - VICES
The senses are like fire. Your life is like fire. Some fires pollute and others purify. The same fire that supports life in winter also destroys. If your senses are engaged in goodness, you will create light and fragrance. It is samyama that transforms the quality of fire in you. ~ Montreal Ashram, July 24, 1995
Life wants to be fre and when a soul does not know how to be free, it wanders through lifetimes desiring freedom. The way to break habits is through vows. Rise above habits through samyama. All those habits that bother you, that bring you pain – bind them in vows, in samyama. A vow should be time bound, and the time and place for making the vow should be considered. ~ Brookfield, Connecticut, July 30, 1995
Your inability to break a habit causes a pinch and when you are deeply pained by something, the pain will rid you of that habit. If you are pained by your shortcomings, then you are a sadhak - a seeker. Pain takes you out of addiction. ~ LA, Jan 30, 1997
If you cannot eliminate vices, magnify them. Give them a bigger dimension and a different direction. Be averse to aversions. Attach yourself to the guru. Get intoxicated with the Divine. ~ Rishikesh, April 3 1997
DESIRES
Desires for sensory pleasures are electric in nature and these desires get neutralized as they move towards the object of your senses. They are nothing but energy and you are the source of it - the pure electricity. Dedication and devotion maintain the purity of your electricity, moving you upward. Once you realize that you are pleasure or electricity, your craving subsides and serenity dawns. ~ Milano, Italy, Jan 7, 1998
Desire kills joy yet the goal of all desires is joy. Yet all that we desire is happiness. The conclusion "My desires have killed my happiness." ~ Bangalore, April 26, 2000
Have you thought about the nature of desire? It simply means tomorrow, and not now. But joy is never tomorrow, it is always now. That is why desire is maya - illusion. ~ Banagalore, March 6, 1996
A desire arises with the memory of a pleasant experience or with past impression. It might also arise through listening. Desire can be triggered through association with people and places. Someone else's desire may manifest in you as your own. When someone is hungry, you might have a desire to feed them. Desnity, may trigger a desire but you will not be aware of the reason for your actions. ~ Dharamshala, April 6, 2000
Desire arise on their own. When they come, if you say that you do not want any desires, then that want becomes another desire. On the journey of life, you have to keep submitting your desires and not hold onto them. As you keep submitting your desires, fewer desires arise. Unfortunate are those who keep on desiring yet their desires are not fulfilled. A little more fortunate are those whose desires get fulfilled over a long period of time. More fortunate are those whose desires get fulfilled as soon as they arise. The most fortunate are those who have no desires because there is fulfillment even before the desire arises. ~ Swargashram, Rishikesh, March 20, 1996
Buddha said that desire is the cause of all misery. If desire does not get fulfilled, it leads to frustration. If it does, it leaves you empty. Vasishta says desire is the cause of pleasure. You get pleasure from an object or a person only when you desire them. Whatever gives you pleasure binds you and bondage is misery. WHEN YOU DESIRE TRUTH, all other desires drop off. Desire for truth removes all other desires; then it dissolves and what remains is bliss. ~ Denpasar, Bali, May 11, 2000
Your desires and sankalpas - or intentions - separate you from God. Offer all your desires and all your sankalpas to the Divine. Then you are divine. You are God. You are free - lacking nothing. ~ Bangalore, Oct 16, 1996
Pleasure and pain are intense sensations in this body. All your misery surrounds the 'I, I, I...'. Just let go. Remember - the sun rises and sets, the moon shines and I am here forever. ~ Bad Antogast, Germany, May 14, 1997
ATTACHMENTS
Often people fail to see the spirit behind the attraction, and merely hold onto the outer shell. And the moment you try to possess the shell, you will be left with an empty shell in your hands and tears in your eyes. Krishna means the most attractive. He is the divinity, the energy that attracts everything to it. The mind moves towards beauty, joy and truth. Krishna tells Arjuna, "I am the beauty in the Beautiful, the strength in the Strong, the wisdom in the Wise." In this way he arrests the mind from moving away from him. ~ Rotterdam, Netherlands, Aug 16,195
Attachments cause feverish breath. Feverish breath takes away your peace of mind. Rid it through surrender and sadhana - spiritual practices. When you are drowning in the ocean of attachments, surrender is a life jacket. Without fighting attachments, observe your feverish breath and go to the cool place of silence within. our first step in this direction is directing your attachment to knowledge, to the Divine. Your non-attachment to the mundane is your charm. Your attachment to the Divine is your beauty. ~ Sydney, April 3, 1996
CONFUSION
Decision comes only when there is confusion. When there is no confusion, there is no decision. If there is a piece of wood and a biscuit on your desk, do you decide which one to eat?
A decision is always about choice and choice is confusing. So, all decision makers are confused. Are you confused, decided or happy? When you are confused there is no freedom.
Action is spontaneous when there is no actor. In you, there is an actor and there is a witness. An actor is either confused or decisive, but the witness smiles and realized that the action is spontenous.
The more decisions you make, the more confused you are, and as a result you swing between pain and pleasure. The more the witness grows in you, the more playful and untouched you are. Trust, faith, love and joy all manifest in and around you. ~ Hamburg, April 29, 1998.
DOUBT
Doubt cannot come when there is a sense of closeness. Doubt needs distance to appear. You never doubt something that is dear to you, close to you. The moment you doubt something, it is no longer dear to you, a distance has come. You may doubt yourself, but you do not doubt that which is yours. Self-doubt is a lack of closeness to oneself. Belonging, closeness and intimacy are all antidotes for doubt.
~ Rishikesh, March 11, 1999
Doubt is a gray area. Gray is neither black or white. Doubt means you want to get rid of something. It is a temporary state. It is neither up nor down and that is where tension arises.
So how do you eliminate doubt? An event, knowledge or conventional wisdom cannot help. What can help"? Accept what you doubt as either black or white. Make it black and accept it or make it white and accept that, regardless of wheter is it black or white or something in between. See the gray as just a shade of black or white. Either way, you accept it. Honest or dishonest - accept it. Then the mind is quiet and you are no longer in the gray area. ~ Montreal, July 20, 1995
