Your nature is simple being, free from thoughts

M.: The object of creation is to remove the confusion of your individuality. The question shows that you have identified yourself with the body and therefore see yourself and the world around. You think that you are the body. Your mind and intellect are the factors of your wrong identity.

Do you exist in your sleep?

D.: I do.

M.: The same being is now awake and asks these questions. Is it not so?

D.: Yes.

M.: These questions did not arise in your sleep. Did they?

D.: No.

M.: Why not? Because you did not see your body and no thoughts arose. You did not identify yourself with the body then. Therefore these questions did not arise.

They arise now because of your identity with the body. Is it not so?

D.: Yes.

M.: Now see which is your real nature. Is it that which is free from thoughts or that which is full of thoughts?

Being is continuous. The thoughts are discontinuous. So which is permanent?

D.: Being.

M.: That is it. Realize it. That is your true nature. Your nature is simple Being, free from thoughts.

Because you identify yourself with the body, you want to know about creation. The world and the objects, including your body,appear in the waking state but disappear in the state of sleep. You
exist all through these states. What is it then that persists through all these states? Find it out. That is your Self.

– Sri Ramana Maharshi
– Talks 610

Noble Buddha

Buddha is immense and immovable, and pervades all the universes. In comparison, the vast sky is but a tiny grain floating in the middle of a boundless sea.

Buddha is eternal. Buddha existed before the universes and will exist long after the universes. And since Buddha is always everywhere, the past is the future and the future is the present.

Buddha’s powers are immeasurably mysterious, and Buddha appears in unlimited forms according to requirements. Buddha never rests in the quest to benefit all.

Buddha’s light is profound beyond the scope of our imaginations. In comparison, the light from zillions of suns and moons would amount to less than of a single candle in broad daylight.

– Ven. Song Chol (Seong Cheol) (1912~1993), one of the great Zen masters in the last century, was also called the Living Buddha of Korea

Opening the Eye, 141

Loneliness

What is this sense of loneliness? Is it the result of our daily life which is so self-centred, so egocentric, so selfish, which is all the time isolating, building a wall around oneself? That brings about a quality or feeling of utter loneliness, utter despair in that loneliness. If you do not escape from it and you see the absurdity of escaping, the fact that running away from it is part of that loneliness, then you have the energy to face loneliness. We are wasting that energy through verbal or actual escape, so when you realise the absurdity, the silliness of it, then you are facing loneliness.

But to go through that loneliness without escaping, without verbalizing, which is to be with it completely, requires a great deal of energy.
You need energy to live with something ugly and not let it corrupt you, just as you need energy to live with something beautiful and not get used to it. That uncontaminated energy is the aloneness to which you must come; and out of that negation, out of that total emptiness, there is creation.

Surely, all creation takes place in emptiness, not when your mind is full. Death has meaning only when you die to all your vanities, your superficialities, to all your innumerable remembrances.
Then there is something which is beyond time, something to which you cannot come if you have fear, if you cling to beliefs, if you are caught in sorrow.

– Krishnamurti

There are no others to help

There are no others to help.

A rich man, when he hands over his entire fortune to his family, has not a coin left to give a beggar.
So is the wise man (Jnani) stripped of all his powers and possessions?
Nothing, literally nothing can be said about him.
He cannot help anybody, for he is everybody.
He is the poor and also his poverty, the thief and also his thievery. How can he be said to help when he is not apart?
Who thinks of himself as separate from the world, let him help the world.
The only thing that can help is to wake up from the dream.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

The body is a helpful tool

Q: Swami frequently says that we should not identify with the body.
If I reject the idea that this is my body, what other instruments can I use to realize the Self? Don’t I need to identify with the body in some way in order to use it to do sadhana?

AS: You are wearing a shirt. Does this mean that you must take this shirt to be yourself? You wear a shirt to keep warm, but you don’t say,
’I am a shirt’. You can use the body as an instrument to realize the Self without thinking, ’I am the body’. Just regard the body as a helpful tool.

Conversations with Annamalai Swami
– LWB, p. 331

What is the easiest way to God

Question: How to acquire the child like state?
Mataji: Seek the company of the pure and Godlike and obey the Guru and elders. This will lead to the spontaneous unfolding of the childlike state.

Question: How shall we realize God?
Mataji: Weep for Him and you will find Him.

Question: I cannot weep at all. Tears simply won’t come. What shall I do?
Mataji (laughing): Seek the company of those who weep. Keep the company of pure and God minded persons.

Question: What is the easiest way to God?
Mataji: Profuse tears.

Question: And if tears do not come?
Mataji: Then you should seek the company of those who shed tears; namely, seek satsang. This is the easiest way to God through love and devotion.

– Sri Ma Anandamayi

~Question and answers with Ma Anandamayi. Matri Upadeshamrita.2

Outside influence

Try your utmost never to succumb to anyone’s influence. In order to become firm, calm, deeply serious, and full of courage, with one’s personality wholly intact, pure, and holy out of one’s own strength, one has to be centred in God.

Sri Anandamayi Ma