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.
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.
Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.
Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid.
When you desire the common good, the whole world desires with you. Make humanity's desire your own and work for it. There you cannot fail.
Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.
Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.
Leave your mind alone, that is all. Do not go along with it. After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them.
Cooperate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself.
To understand suffering, you must go beyond pain and pleasure. Your own desires and fears prevent you from understanding and thereby helping others. In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. If you are serious about the suffering of mankind, you must perfect the only means of help you have, yourself.
Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought 'I am'. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally, without any interference on your part.
The mind exists in two states: as water and as honey. The water vibrates at the least disturbance, while the honey, however disturbed, returns quickly to immobility.
The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it.
With self-awareness you grow more intelligent. In awareness you learn, in self-awareness you learn about yourself. Of course, you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind. Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true.
Do not neglect this body. This is the house of God; take care of it, only in this body can God be realized.
Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.
All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one.
Having never left the house you are looking for the way home.
Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you have never lost.
In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and disappear. Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently come and go. Be alert, but not perturbed. This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.
You merely dream that you roam about. In a few years your stay in India will appear as a dream to you. You will dream some other dream at that time. Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being-that is the absolute truth.
Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'. Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'.
The root of fear is the feeling of not being what you are.
You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.
To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something [the Reality] beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of Pure Awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time.
