Meditation is such a delicate thing that it takes months to grow but just a day or two to wither away. - Osho

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Even if you have to give up a meal, do it... but do not give up meditation. The more regular you are, the greater depth you will attain.

And meditation is such a delicate thing that it takes months to grow but just a day or two to wither away. A delicate thing needs much regularity, continuity. MEDITATION IS THE HIGHEST; EVERYTHING ELSE IS SECONDARY. You will not miss much by missing a day's sleep. One can do without sleeping for five to seven days. It is okay if you miss a meal; man can survive without food for three months. You can go without drinking water for a day; you will not die.

But usually, people give much more importance to such petty things and think that for a day or two they can do without the things that are really significant. But let it be remembered that nothing will go wrong if you do not fulfill the petty things of your routine. You will not gain anything by doing them, neither will you be a loser by not doing them.

But meditation is of the highest, AND THROUGH IT GOD IS ATTAINED. If you do not meditate, you will not know what you were to gain and what you have missed; you will really not know what you have lost.

The greatest misfortune that can befall people is that they never come to know what they have missed. Apart from missing, people never come to know what they were to gain, they never become aware of it.

So always devote energy to meditation. I lay down no other conditions for my sannyasin; only meditation is enough. IF MEDITATION IS ATTAINED, EVERYTHING IS ATTAINED.

Sadhguru, when I do sadhana, I am finding myself dozing off. I thought this was due to tiredness, but whenever I close my eyes and meditate, I fall asleep. How can I stay awake?

Sadhguru
First, let us understand what sleep is about. If sleep is invading your life anytime of the day, you must first check your basic health and see if there is something wrong with your system. When you are physically unwell, you will tend to sleep much more than normal – the body wants to rest.

The second thing is the food that you eat. Consuming at least a certain amount of vegetarian material, particularly in uncooked condition, is very important for your general wellbeing. When you cook food, a large volume of prana is destroyed. That is one of the reasons why a certain amount of lethargy settles into the body. If you just eat a certain amount of live food, apart from many other benefits, one thing that will immediately happen is your sleep quota will go down dramatically.

Essentially, your alertness depends on how keenly you manage your energies. If you want to meditate, your alertness must be not of the mind alone, but of your very energy. To assist this, generally, for people who are on the yogic path, it is said that you should eat only twenty-four mouthfuls, and you must chew every mouthful at least twenty-four times. Now your food will be pre-digested in your mouth before it goes in, and it will not cause dullness.

If you do this during your evening meal and then sleep in the night, you will easily wake up at three-thirty in the morning, and you can meditate. In the yogic systems, this time is called the Brahma Muhurtam. It is an ideal time to wake up, because at that time, there is an extra support from nature itself for your sadhana. If you take a bath and keep your hair wet, you will easily stay awake and alert through your sadhana until eight o’clock. If you eat just twenty-four morsels in your morning meal, you will definitely not feel sleepy until dinnertime. After one-and-a- half to two hours, you will be hungry, and that is the best way to be. Just because the stomach is empty, you do not have to put food. Just drink water and you will stay alert and energetic throughout the day. Your system will learn to use the food you have eaten well, rather than simply wasting it. Economically and ecologically it is good for the world, and good for your health – you may never fall sick if you eat like this.

This is an excerpt from Isha’s latest book, Body – The Greatest Gadget. The book can be purchased and downloaded at the Isha Download Store.

Bhagavan Ramana in praise of the state of laziness (Stillness)

Verses 773 and 774 of Guru Vachaka Kovai are grouped together under a chapter heading entitled ‘Being Still’ or ‘Remaining Still’. The second of these two verses immediately attracts attention because it states quite clearly that abiding in swarupa, one’s true state, is a state of laziness:

The method of true and supreme tapas that our Lord Ramana declares to be worthwhile and which the mind should firmly hold onto is this, and no more: ‘Being still.’ Other than this there are absolutely no thoughts to think, nor any duties to be contemplated by it.

The lazy state wherein you exist motionlessly and shine is the state of swarupa. In that supreme state you have become That. It cannot be attained except by direct, excellent and rare tapas. You should therefore honour those who are established in that laziness as holy beings.

This state is described, perhaps a little ironically, as ‘lazy’ only because there is no one left there who can do anything. Muruganar wrote in Padamalai that Bhagavan bestowed this state on him:

The golden Padam [Bhagavan] completely abolished my wandering around as a wicked one and made me shine as a perfect idler.

Even the actions I perform, believing them to be my own, are in reality the actions of Padam, the complete and absolute truth.

(Padamalai, pp. 342, 343, vv. 62, 64)

Bhagavan also mentioned this state of laziness in Aksharamanamalai verse 37:

If I sleep consciously as a lazy one, remaining still and consuming bliss, this is the supreme state. Is there any [state] other than this, O Arunachala? If there is, please tell me!

The bee never gathers for tomorrow, the today is enough unto itself.

THE BEE GATHERS NECTAR FROM THE FLOWER
WITHOUT MARRING ITS BEAUTY OR PERFUME......DHAMMAPADA

Buddha has called his monks "begging," MADHUKARI. Madhukari means collecting honey like a bee. The BHIKKHU, the Buddhist sannyasin, goes from house to house; he never asks from just one house because that may be too much of a burden. So he asks from many houses, just a little bit from one house, a little bit from another, so he is not a burden on anybody. And he never goes to the same house again. This is called madhukari -- like a honey bee. The bee goes from one flower to another, and goes on moving from flower to flower -- it is nonpossessive.

THE BEE GATHERS NECTAR FROM THE FLOWER WITHOUT MARRING ITS BEAUTY OR PERFUME. It only takes so little from one flower that the beauty is not marred, the perfume is not destroyed. The flower simply never becomes aware of the bee; it comes so silently and goes so silently.

Buddha says: The man of awareness lives in this world like a bee. He never mars the beauty of this world, he never destroys the perfume of this world. He lives silently, moves silently. He asks only that much which is needed. His life is simple, it is not complex. He does not gather for tomorrow. The bee never gathers for tomorrow, the today is enough unto itself.

UNIVERSAL EQUALITY

In the course of a conversation about Sri Bhagavan’s life in Madurai, Sri Bhagavan recalled, “If my aunt began preparing appalams, or the like, she would call me and ask me to put my hand on it first. She had great faith in me, because I used to do everything according to her wishes and never told lies. I had to tell only one lie and that was when I came here.”
A devotee then said, “It means that for doing a great thing, sometimes a lie has to be told!”

Sri Bhagavan replied, “Yes. When it is for the welfare of the world and when the situation demands it, it has to be done. It cannot be helped. Where is the question of telling a lie? Some force makes one say so. So long as there is purpose there is need of action. When there is no purpose, we can avoid action in the same way as was done by the sage in the story of the sage and the hunter in Yoga Vasishtam.”
Full of curiosity the devotee asked, “What is that story?”

IN A FOREST, a sage sat motionless and in silence. His eyes however were open. A hunter hit a deer and as it was running away, he began pursuing it. When he saw the sage he stopped. The deer had run in front of the sage and hidden itself in a bush nearby. The hunter could not see it and so asked the sage “Swami, my deer has come running this way. Please tell me where exactly it has gone.” The sage said he did not know. The hunter said, “It ran in front of you. Your eyes were open. How could you say you do not know?”, to which the sage replied, “Oh my friend! We are in the forest with universal equality. We do not have ahankara. Unless you have ahankara, you cannot do things in this world. That ahankara is the mind. That mind does all things. It also makes all the sense organs work. We certainly have no mind; it disappeared long ago. We do not have the three states – the states of waking, dream and deep sleep. We are always in the fourth or turiya state. In that state nothing is seen by us. That being so, what can we say about your deer?” Unable to understand what the sage was saying, the hunter went his way thinking they were all the words of a mad man.

From the book " SPIRITUAL STORIES AS TOLD BY RAMANA MAHARSHI"

Bhagavan on Path of Devotion

TRUE SURRENDER KNOWS NO COMPLAINT

D.: We are worldly people and are afflicted by some grief that we cannot get over. We pray to God and are still not satisfied. What should we do?

B.: Trust God.

D.: We surrender but still there is no help.

B.: But if you have surrendered, it means that you must accept the will of God and not make a grievance of what may not happen to please you. Things may turn out differently from what they appear. Distress often leads people to faith in God.

D.: But we are worldly people. We have wife, children, friends and relations. We cannot ignore them and resign ourselves to the Divine will without retaining some trace of individuality.

B.: That means that you have not really surrendered, as you say you have. All you need to do is to trust God.

Following the path of devotion, one should leave everything to God.
The Lord bears the burden of the world. Know that the spurious ego which presumes to bear that burden is like a sculptured figure at the foot of a temple tower which appears to sustain the tower’s weight. Whose fault is it if the traveller, instead of putting his luggage in the cart which bears the load anyway, carries it on his head, to his own inconvenience?

There cannot even be impatience for speedy realisation. To one who was so afflicted, he replied:

Surrender to Him and accept His will whether He appears or vanishes. Await His pleasure. If you want Him to do as you want, it is not surrender but command. You cannot ask Him to obey you and yet think you have surrendered. He knows what is best and when and how to do it. Leave everything entirely to Him. The burden is His and you have no more cares. All your cares are His. That is what is meant by surrender.

From " Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words"

Don't look here and there. Be firm. I will find my Beloved - Papaji.

The story of how Bhagavan's journey started from home to Arunachala, when he was possesed by Divine.

On the map Venkataramana located the station closest to Tiruvannamalai (Arunachalam). He needed three rupees to reach the place. That day his brother gave him five rupees and asked him to go to his college and pay his fees. After leaving home Venkataramana wrote a letter to his brother as follows:


I have left to seek Father. Nobody need worry about me. No money need be spent to search for me; no one should try to find me. I have not paid your college fees. I have taken three rupees out of the college fees, and the balance of two rupees is with this note.

From home Venkataramana went straight to the railway station. He bought a ticket for two rupees and thirteen annas; he still had three annas. Venkataramana boarded the train and early next morning reached Viluppuram station. He decided to walk the rest of the distance to Tiruvannamalai. He was hungry and tired. He entered a hotel on the way. As food was not ready he had to wait for a long time. After taking food he wanted to pay for his meal but the owner refused to take any money as he realized that the boy had very little money left with him. The owner on hearing that he was planning to walk the distance to Tiruvannamalai suggested that he take the train. So Venkataramana walked again to Viluppuram station. He took the train to Mambalapattu and from there he started to walk.

By evening he reached the village of Arayininallur. There was a Shiva temple in the village. He entered the village temple and fell into meditation. He had a vision of an intensely bright light enveloping the entire place. He stayed absorbed in meditation until he was aroused by the temple priests who wanted to lock the place for the night. He followed some worshipers to another temple nearby and there became lost in meditation once again. When the priests had finished their duties food was served to the other worshipers but none was offered to him. However the temple drummer was impressed with his devout appearance and shared some rice with him and directed him to go to a Shastri’s house nearby for water. Tired and thirsty he went to the Shastri’s house and there fainted from exhaustion. He was given water and slept the night at that place.

The next day was Gokulastami, commemorating the birth of the Avatar Krishna. Venkataramana first wanted to eat some food and then proceed to Tiruvannamalai by train. By then he did not have any money. The only possession he had of value were his gold Brahmin ear rings with small inlaid rubies. He stood outside a house and asked the owner for some food. The owner of the house was Krishna Bhagavathar. The mistress of the house was a kind lady. She was more than happy to feed the young Brahmin. Now Venkataramana needed money to complete the rest of the journey. He took off his earrings, gave them to Bhagavathar and asked him for four rupees. Bhagavathar gave the boy four rupees, wrote out his own address on a piece of paper and gave it to him saying, “Come and take back your ear rings any time.” The mistress of the house gave the boy some sweets to take on the journey.




Venkataramana reached Tiruvannamalai the next day. He went straight to the great temple dedicated to Lord Arunachaleshwara. When he reached the temple he not only found the inner temple doors open but also there was no body around. With his heart full of joy he went and stood in front of Lord Arunachaleswar. Later he wandered into the town and someone called out and asked if he wanted to have his head shaved like a sanyasi. He agreed and had his head shaved. He threw away the money that he had. He also threw away the sweets the kind lady gave him the previous day. He removed all his clothes except for a small loincloth he made from the cast off clothes. He returned to the temple. He remembered that the scriptures enjoined a bath after having the head shaved. But he thought, “Why give this body the luxury of a bath?” Just then there was a brief shower so that before he entered the temple he had had his ceremonial bath.

Venkataramana settled down in the temple. He now began his life of complete inner absorption in the great Universal Self. He sat to meditate in various places within the temple complex. Soon some naughty boys began to tease him. As he sat in meditation, they would throw stones at him. To escape from them Venkataramana changed the place of his meditation to the under-ground cellar. This cellar was called Pathalalinga. For days he was there without being troubled by the boys. But the naughty boys found out that place, too. In the temple there was an old sanyasin called Seshadri. He not only saw to it that Venkataramana was not teased by the boys, but also under took to find food for them. For days, and weeks on end Venkataramana was lost in deep meditation unconscious of the world and his body. He was so deeply absorbed within himself that insects and worms would crawl over his legs and chewed his flesh and he would not be aware of it. Later the Maharishi told his devotees,

“I knew nothing, had learned nothing before I came here. Some mysterious power took possession of me and effected a through transformation. I knew nothing and planned nothing. When I left home in my 17th year, I was like a speak swept on by a tremendous flood. I knew not my body or the world, whether it was day or night. It was difficult even to open my eyes. The eyelids seemed to be glued down. My body became a mere skeleton. Visitors pitied my plight, as they were not aware how blissful I was. It was after years that I came across the term Brahman when I happened to look into some books on Vedanta brought to me. Amused, I said to myself, “is this known as Brahman“

His body began to loose weight. Seeing the condition of his body a group of devotees picked him up bodily and took him out of the dark temple recesses to the shrine of Subramaniam nearby. Seeing Venkataramana deep in meditation completely lost to the world, one devotee named Palaniswami decided to look after him. In order to shield him from the many visitors who were coming daily, Palaniswami moved him to a nearby mango orchard whose gates could be locked. It was here that Ramana Maharshi began to come back to a more normal waking consciousness.
 
http://www.writespirit.net/indian-wisdom/saints-sages/ramana-maharshi/journey-to-arunachala/

Meditation means being in the moment, not leaving this moment. Osho

Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”
Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

Twilight Moments - The Hidden Sound of Existence

Question: Sri Bhagavan has written in Supplement to Reality in Forty Verses, the verse 38 which says that one should not show advaita [non-duality] in one's activities. Why so? All are One. Why differentiate?

Ramana: Would you like to sit on the seat I am sitting on?

Question: I don't mind sitting there. But if I came and sat there, the manager of the ashram and the other people here would hit me and chase me away.

Ramana: Yes, nobody would allow you to sit here. If you saw someone molesting a woman would you let him go, thinking, "All is One?" There is a scriptural story about this. Some people once gathered together to test whether it is true, as said in the Bhagavad Gita, that a jnani [enlightened sage] sees everything as One. They took a brahmin, an untouchable, a cow, an elephant and a dog to the court of King Janaka, who was a jnani. When all had arrived, King Janaka sent the brahmin to the place for brahmins, the cow to its shed, the elephant to the place allotted to elephants, the dog to its kennel and the untouchable person to the place where the other untouchables lived. He then ordered his servants to take care of his guests and feed them all appropriate food.

The people asked, "Why did you separate them individually? Is not everything one and the same for you?"

"Yes, all are One," replied Janaka, "but self-satisfaction varies according to the nature of the individual. Will a man eat the straw eaten by the cow? Will the cow enjoy the food that a man eats? One should only give what satisfies each individual person or animal."

Although the same man may play the role of all the characters in a play, his acts will be determined by the role that he is playing at each moment. In the role of a king he will sit on the throne and rule. If the same person takes on the role of a servant, he will carry the sandals of his master while he plays these roles. The jnani never forgets that he himself has played all these roles in the past.

Source: Living by the words of Bhagavan, pp. 216-7.

Can the Mind Be Quiet? - Sadhguru

Twilight Moments - Significance of a Live Guru

Reliving the musical extragavanza of Mahashivarathri 2013

Hey Bhagawan - Raghu Dixit



No man will ever love you, like I do - Raghu Dixit



Mysore se Aayi - Raghu Dixit



Masti ki Basti - Raghu Dixit



Har saans me, har dhadkan me ho tum - Raghu Dixit 

Sadhguru on the food we eat

“Don’t become a food freak – “I will not eat this, I will not eat that. I have to eat like this, I have to eat like that.” No, eating joyously is more important than eating properly. Food has influences on you but it is not the deciding factor. The true joy of eating is that you are conscious of some other life willing to become a part of you, to merge and mingle with your own life and become you. This is the greatest pleasure that a human being knows, that in some way, something that is not him has become willing to become a part of him.” – Sadhguru