Ramana Maharshi's Forty Verses on Reality

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Now we continue with Sri Ramana's Forty Verses on Reality. Each Verse is

pregnant with meaning, method, and suffused with direct insight.

 

35. To seek and abide in the Reality that is always attained, is the only

Attainment. All other

attainments (siddhis) are such as are acquired in dreams. Can they appear real

to someone who has

woken up from sleep? Can they that are established in the Reality and are free

from maya, be

deluded by them?

 

36. Only if the thought 'I am the body' occurs will the meditation 'I am not

this, I am That', help

one to abide as That. Why should we for ever be thinking, 'I am That'? Is it

necessary for man to

go on thinking 'I am a man'? Are we not always That?

 

37. The contention, 'Dualism during practice, non-dualism on Attainment', is

also false. While one

is anxiously searching, as well as when one has found one's Self, who else is

one but the tenth

man?

 

 

Note: The last verse makes reference to a well known story in the Indian

literature where each of the 10 people thought there were only 9 people in the

group left and that one had been lost. This caused them great sorrow. The error

in counting was that the person counting others forgot to count himself!

 

Harsha

 

 

 

 

 

"Harsha (Dr. Harsh K. Luthar)" wrote:

"Harsha (Dr. Harsh K. Luthar)" <hluthar

 

Hello everyone. Just got back into town today. Hope you are all well. I

will be catching up on some of the e-mail over the next few days. As the year

1999 comes to a close, many people are anticipating major events and changes in

their life. Same old stuff every 1000 years. Life is happening now. Always now.

Twenty five hundred years ago, Buddha carefully analyzed the human condition and

said that life inherently involves suffering of some type or another. Suffering

indeed appears to be universal. One need not look far to see examples of

horrific suffering due to poverty, neglect,

ignorance, war, injustice, greed, and abuse. Joys come intertwined with

sorrow. Pleasures and pain often follow each other in a natural cycle. We are

all born wearing the garland of suffering. A sage once said that all fruits that

fall from the tree of life are bitter sweet-- but two fruits are sweet only. One

is meditation on the nature of the Truth of Self. Second is Satsanga or keeping

company of people who walk the path of Truth. The pathless path truly goes

nowhere. Truth cannot be found elsewhere or at another time. It exists always in

the Present--As Presence of the Heart.

The

Heart is the both the ultimate mystery and the ultimate simplicity. It

cannot be known in the sense of objective knowledge. It Eternally Knows It Self.

Once I heard that Aristotle reasoned that God being perfect must always be

meditating on perfection. But since there is no perfection other than God, it

follows that God must be in constant meditation on His/Her Own Self. So the

Sages declare that God sits in the Heart as one's own Self. That is the Truth we

must drink deeply of. That is the nectar of immortality. That Thou Are!