Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in Satsang today Today (Makar Sankranti) is like Thanksgiving in America and Europe.. Today is the festival of harvest here in India. The tradition is that you share the first harvest. The harvest when it comes home, people make a small kit of all that like sugarcane, pulses, sesame seeds, all this and they go door to door and exchange gifts and give this to everybody. There is a proverb that says eat the sesame and the jaggery and speak and behave sweetly with everyone around you. So that’s the tradition people have been following since centuries, we don’t know when it started. I gave a different message for Sankranti - when you realize that you are like a sesame seed in this huge Universe, magnificent Universe, your life becomes sweet like the jaggery. The joy that is there in being egoless, is not there in being egotistic. The one without ego lives in bliss. An egotist lives in fear, doubt, this is what ego is made up of – fear, doubt, separateness and judgments, criticizing others, all this is part of ego. When you are natural, when you are at home with everything around you, then there is more sweetness in life. The egotistic attitude constrains you, because there is doubt, there is fear, there is separateness, saying I am different, I am separate, all judgments come in about other people, all these things come as a by-product of an egotistic personality. If the personality is child-like, innocent, blossomed, then you feel at home with everything. You don’t sit and keep judging right wrong, he is this way she is that way.. this sort of judgmental attitude constrains your happiness, your joy. So that’s the message. Innocence has got more sweetness and beauty in life than crookedness. Ques: Every age sees a wave of Dharma followed by Adharma. Is this part of God’s plan? #SriSri: Looks like that! In nature everything has a place and has a time, it will come and go and everything has something to do with it. You can’t say it just it is just Karma, Dharma is also there. Dharma is our duty and Karma is what is happening. Life cannot be taken fatalistically. Life is combination of free will and destiny. Make your will strong and smile at the destiny and take it as an opportunity. Destiny poses opportunity and self effort brings you success. Ques: Artists are often atheists. How can someone who is so creative not appreciate the Divine? #SriSri: You can’t say that. Everyone in some way or another, in some manner, in some style or another, appreciates. Only the expressions are different. Ques: Buddha said becomes answerless. How to become answerless? #SriSri: When a question mark becomes straight it becomes an exclamation mark! Wow! You see whenever you question anything, the question in it is connected with misery. People always ask, ‘Why do I have this misery?’. Nobody asks, ‘Why do I have this happiness?’ I think in our cerebral cortex, a question somewhere is close to where the sadness, sorrow is also there. Not the same, but somewhere close to that. Looks like that! And wonder is to be associated with happiness. When you are happy, you wonder! ‘Oh! I wonder what this is!’. That is also a question. Wonder is also a question but not expecting an answer. That seems to be somewhere associated with joy. Is not wonder associated with joy most of the time? There may be exceptions for this also. In the Universe u can never say ‘Definitely, it is like this!’. There is always a chance for something different. Usually sun rises in the east and sets in the west but if you go to the North pole it is not the case. It doesn’t rise, it just goes round the corner. Ques: You say that I am eternal. There is no way to verify it.. how can I really experience it? #SriSri: Ok let’s see it this way. Do you know you are the same person who has been here on this planet ten, fifteen, twenty years ago? Take your album and look at all your pictures. How your appearance has changed! Just take your mind back and see your thought process. What were you thinking then and now. It’s changed. How your emotions have undergone a big change. Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever felt that you have not changed but everybody else has changed? You ask any aged person, he feels that he has not aged but everybody else has aged. Especially people between fifty and sixty, they feel that their kids have grown up but they have not changed! If you are not yet fifty, wait for that (laughter). Suddenly you will feel that you have not changed. Especially if you are a lady and someone asks you what is your age and you have crossed fifty, they get mad at you! They don’t feel that they have aged!.. So there is something in you that says that I have not aged, or that I am not going to die. That is good enough to understand. And then when you go deep in meditation or do Eternity Process, you see the past, that you have been here many times. And the last option also to know that you are eternal is to let go of all cravings and all aversions, all wants. Then you have nothing more that you want, then this awareness comes that ‘I am eternal’. It’s Catch 22 – if this awareness comes then you want nothing anyway! You don’t want anything because you know that you are eternal. Ques: We have heard in the Puranas, that Gods also curse people. But how come the Divine curse people when you say that God is love? #SriSri: You know it’s not Gods, it’s Angels. There is one level below Gods - It is Angels. The Angels do have their wants and preferences. So they sometimes can curse, though I don’t give it so much importance to it. Even if the Angels it is only a blessing, they say. In the Puranas you may have heard even the Sages have cursed somebody. But even the curse of a Sage or an enlightened person, even though it doesn’t happen, but they put it as a clause, that even if that possibility is there, even a mistake by a Rishi, is only beneficial for the universe. A benevolent act of an ignorant can also be harmful. The anger of the enlightened can also be beneficial. I think I have said somewhere in the past also. There are ample examples. A mistake that Vyasa did, Suka came into existence. Like that what you see is that what was considered in the localized perspective as wrong, on a larger perspective became beneficial. So don’t worry, no God is going to curse you. And even if they curse something good will come out of it, it is like a boon. Ques: What impels people to be violent in the name of religion? #SriSri: Wrong understanding, lack of spiritual experience, concept that by being violent you can achieve something in heaven. It’s so unfortunate. That’s why an empty lectures and philosophies without the depth of spirituality, without the juice of spirituality is causing damage to the world. It is a fact. Ques: Can contentment be a conscious practice? If yes, then how? #SriSri: Yes, because discontentment is an unconscious act. Discontentment is an unconscious impact.. There needs to be a cause for discontentment. And the cause for discontentment can be overcome when you become conscious. That’s what knowledge is all about. Knowledge takes away the darkness of discontentment. Ques: It is said that even Avatars go through chaos. Is it the case of opposite values being complementary? #SriSri: Yes opposite values are complementary. But it is not necessary that they have to go through chaos. There was no chaos in Vamana Avatar. There was chaos in the lives of Parashuram, Sri Rama, Sri Krishna caused chaos in other’s lives! Buddha went through chaos in his personal life, not otherwise. Understand that you are not any less than an Avatar. That is how I see it. I can show you faults in any Avatar! Don’t keep focusing on their faults. Learn from them. Learn playfulness from Krishna, dignity from Rama and silence from Buddha. Then go inside yourself and relax. There is nothing that is not inside us, that they had. What they had in them is what we have inside us too! God is in every atom of our existence. Sun does not shine more through one window than another. Wherever a window is opened, it shines equally there. But you have to open the window, draw aside the curtains. If it’s a glass window, you have to clean it and if it’s a wooden window you have to open it. But you have to open it! That is what the purpose of all this Sadhana and Satsang.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 21:57:13 +0000
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