Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Quotes
A prominent teacher of Advaita Vedanta who is best known for his teachings on non-duality and self-realization. His approach was direct and experiential, encouraging seekers to explore the nature of their own consciousness. His book, "I Am That," is a significant text in the study of Advaita Vedanta, offering profound insights into the nature of the self and reality. His teachings are valued for their simplicity and depth, guiding individuals toward understanding their true essence beyond the mind and ego.
Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you don't want to suffer, don't go to sleep.
Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself.
Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image.
When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.
Your true meaning cannot be grasped or captured by words. You can never be equated with any words, because you are prior to words.
Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking.
There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking.
You are not the mind. If you know you are not the mind, then what difference does it make if it's busy or quiet? You are not the mind.
There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.
Leave greatness to others. Become so small that no one can see you. This conviction results from growing devotion to the supreme reality.
Nobody ever fails in Yoga....It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive.
Whatever comes and goes, is not reality. See the event as event only. Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armoured against it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences.
Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.
You need not know what you are. Enough to know what you are not. What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new dimensions to conquer. The unknown has no limits.
Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action - here and now. It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect - whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage.
Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity.
It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Don't be deceived. All the endless arguments about the mind are produced by the mind itself, for its own protection, continuation and expansion. It is the blank refusal to consider the convolutions and convulsions of the mind that can take you beyond it.
The attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.
There is nothing to do, just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say "be yourself" since you do not know yourself. Just be.
Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?
What is beautiful? Whatever is perceived joyfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.
You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even doubt yourself to be Mr. So-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown?
Knowing that you are nothing is Wisdom, Knowing that you are everything is Love.
