Share the wisdom of Sri Sir Ravishankarji - 18 & 19.

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Dear friends and devotees

 

Bhakti is eternal

 

Share the wisdom of his Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji.

 

18. SORROW

 

The only thing you must remember is how fortunate you are. When you forget

this, you become sad. Sorrow reflects your negative qualities and your

attachment to your positive qualities. When you think you are not good enough,

you blame yourself and you become sad. When you think you are too good, you

blame the world, and then again you become sad. The purpose of sorrow is to

bring you back to the self is possible only through knowledge- through

awareness.

 

Knowledge or awareness leads sorrow towards the Self. Without knowledge, the

same sorrow multiplies and does not get completed. Knowledge completes sorrow.

With the power of knowledge you transcend sorrow.

 

In this path you have everything. You have this beautiful knowledge that has

all flavors- wisdom, laughter, seva, silence, singing, dancing, humor,

celebrating, yagyas, caring, complaints, problems, complications – and chaos to

add color.

 

It is only through merit that you can have faith. When you lack faith, there

can be no happiness in either the inner or the outer world. Happiness springs

from faith and in forgetting the body consciousness. Pain or sorrow is holding

on to body consciousness. When you are happy, you do not feel the body and when

you are miserable, you have aches and pains.

 

Question: “Then why in guided meditation is the attention taken to various

parts of the body?”

 

For an arrow to go forward, it must be pulled back. In the same way when you

take the attention to the various parts of the body, that process frees you from

body consciousness.

 

19. PROBLEMS

 

If you are unhappy, check if any of these are lacking; tapas, or penance;

viragya, or dispassion; sharanagati, or surrender.

 

Tapas are agreeing with the moment, a total acceptance of pleasant or

unpleasant situations. Viragya means “I want nothing” and “I am nothing”

Sharanagati is “I am here for you, for your joy.”

 

If you are grumbling, it is because these are lacking in your life. When you

accept your situation you cannot grumble; when you take it as tapas you will not

grumble. When you come from a state of dispassion – “I do not want anything”

–you do not grumble; and if you are surrendered you will have no complaints.

 

All three of these – penance, dispassion and surrender – purify your mind and

uplift you in joy.

 

If you do not do it willingly, you will do it out of desperation. First you

will say, “Nothing can be done.” Then in anger and desperation you will say, “I

give up, I want nothing, I have no choice, to hell with it!”

 

There is no problem that cannot be solved. When you have a problem that you

think cannot be solved, you have accepted it. Then it is no longer a problem but

a fact.

 

Suppose you think it is a problem that the ocean in Norway is too cold.

Obviously, you cannot heat the ocean so it cannot be changed; you accept it and

it is no longer a problem that cannot be solved. The moment you realize there is

no solution, a problem ceases to be a problem.

 

The solution is the tail of every problem. Solutions come to you are calm and

centered, when you use intelligence, when you are not lethargic but active, and

when you have strong faith in divine law.

 

To be contd. . . . 20.

 

With love and regards,

 

Sastry.

 

 

 

 

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