Quote 1 – Ramana

Quote 1 – Ramana

In deep sleep the man is devoid of possessions, including his own body. Instead of being unhappy he is quite happy. Everyone desires to sleep soundly. The conclusion is that happiness is inherent in man and is not due to external causes. One must realise his Self in order to open the store of unalloyed happiness.

Momentum through Meditation – Eknath Easwaran

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Momentum through Meditation – Eknath Easwaran

All the great traditions of mystics agree that to take to the spiritual life, it is not necessary to withdraw from society. We do not have to leave our family and community and retire to Mount Athos, or try to discover the harmony of nature in the jungles of a Micronesian island. For some, of course, the cloister is the right place; this is a matter of individual temperament and choice. But spiritual values can be lived anywhere: with our family, at work, wherever we are.

If you ask the person in the street about Saint Teresa of Avila or Saint Francis of Assisi, you will often get some comment like, “Visionary. Impractical. Could not keep their feet on the ground.” Because their inner life is so profound, we think that they have turned their backs on living. But one of the most practical reasons why the mystics turn their attention inward in meditation is to tap the power for solving problems that come up throughout the day.

This is very much like getting momentum in a track event. A few years ago, watching the Olympics on television, I was surprised to see how far back some of these athletes went to get a running start. In the pole vault one guy walked up to the bar, then turned around and strode so far back that I thought he had decided to go home. If you did not know about the pole vault you might think, “What is the matter with this fellow? Instead of competing, he is running away.” He is not running away; he is going back to get the momentum he needs for a really big jump.

That is the purpose of meditation too. Instead of getting out of bed and plunging directly into life’s maelstrom unprepared, you sit down for a half hour or so in meditation to get a good start. When you go out into the world, you have a good reserve of energy and security on which to draw, to be patient instead of angry, sympathetic instead of selfish, and loving instead of resentful.

One of my friends was warned by an acquaintance no to let meditation turn her into a zombie. I hear this from many people who are afraid they might lose their personality if they eliminate the sense of “I, me and mine” from their consciousness. I remind them that the word “personality” is related to the Latin word “persona”, a mask. In Alexander Dumas’ novel, the supposed twin brother of Lous XIV was forced to wear an iron mask for so many years that it became part of him. However hard he tried, he could not take it off to reveal his real face. All of us are like this. Through many years – or many lives – our minds have developed habits of selfishness and separateness through endless effortss to satisfy desires for personal pleasure and profit, power and prestige. If we can throw away this mask of separateness, our real personality, the Atman, shines forth in beauty, wisdom and love.

Down through the ages, mystics from all traditions have been telling us how to get this self-centered, little “I” out of the way to make room for the big “I”, our real Self, which is the source of joy. Unfortunately, most trends in our civilization are in the opposite direction: “Think about yourself always.” What they are really saying is, “Do not ever be happy.”

When my niece was with us in California several years ago, she had her heart set on being a hopscotch champion. It seemed to me that she was making good progress, but the subtleties of the game escaped me. So finally I asked her, “What is the secret of championship hopscotch?”

Her answer was right to the point: “Small feet.”

Even I could appreciate that. If you have constable’s feet, so long and broad that they cut across all the lines, you cannot get anywhere in hopscotch. Life is like that too: If you have a big ego, you cannot go anywhere without fouling on the lines. But there are people who have petite, size five egos, who find it easy to remember the needs of others. They may hot have much money or be highly educated, but they are loved wherever they go.

Sometime on the freeway I see an immense mobile home being pulled along by a truck. Warning flags stick out all over, and a big red sigh at the back warns, “Wide load”. Everybody knows what it means: “Watch out! I am not going to fit in my own lane, so I am going to take up some of yours too.”

The Search for Happiness – Chinmayananda

The Search for Happiness

When a bow is bent and a string is tied, the tension of the string will depend upon the curvature of the bow. But the bow always tries to return to its straight shape, trying to go back to its original nature. In the same way, all living beings—plant, animal, and human—are searching for greater happiness, a larger sense of fulfillment, because that is their true nature.

We are essentially divine, infinitely blissful, extremely content. But by shifting our attention away from the divine in us, we act as limited egos, trying to discover a little happiness by possessing the objects of the world. We all think that our happiness depends upon external objects. Thus, we have become willful and voluntary slaves to the world around us.

Every one of us, rich or poor, is begging for a little more happiness and satisfaction from the world outside. The more intelligent and technologically developed we become the more elaborate the arrangements to reach such happiness.

Every action from birth to death is a silent search for happiness. This is the urge behind the entire evolutionary process, from unicellular organisms to human beings. This seems to be the pattern that Darwin’s evolutionary theory points out.

We marry, divorce, and remarry—all for happiness. We will even sacrifice parts of our bodies, a kidney for example, to share it with a friend—for happiness. We are not looking for sorrow. We all search for happiness.

Presently we assume that happiness is something to be reached, acquired, or manipulated by changing the circumstances of the world outside. This assumption is not just held by individuals. Communal and national activities everywhere are seeking happiness by trying to rearrange the world of things and beings. Some of us think that we will be happy when we own a Cadillac. Others feel that their office is too small and that a larger office will provide happiness. We are never satisfied with what we have. We want to get something more. This is mathematically feasible because the process of addition is always possible. When we get a million, we want another. One car is not enough so we get two or three.

And so it goes, on and on, more of everything. Our entire life is spent searching for happiness but never finding it. Once we get the desired object we struggled so hard for, there is a flash of joy, but the next moment we are again unhappy.

By searching for happiness in the world outside and depending on the objects to provide us with that happiness, we become slaves to the world. Learn to discover happiness inside yourself, by yourself. If we analyze the psychological nature of human beings, we will see that when the mind is agitated, there is unhappiness. The lesser the agitation the greater the happiness.

Mananam Publication Series
Living in Simplicity
The Search for Happiness – By Swami Chinmayananda
Chapter: The Spiritual Quest

Experience of happiness and adventure – Nisargadatta

Experience of happiness and adventure – Nisargadatta

Maharaj: The experience of being empty, uncluttered by memories and expectations; it is like the happiness of open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy for doing things, for discovery, for adventure.

Questioner: What remains to discover?

M: The universe without and the immensity within as they are in reality, in the great mind and heart of God. The meaning and purpose of existence, the secret of suffering, life’s redemption from ignorance.

Q: If being happy is the same as being free from fear and worry, cannot it be said that absence of trouble is the cause of happiness?

M: A state of absence, of non-existence cannot be a cause; the pre-existence of a cause is implied in the notion. Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a cause of becoming; the causes are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory. But your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content.

Q: Emptiness. and nothingness — how dreadful!

M: You face it most cheerfully, when you go to sleep! Find out for yourself the state of wakeful sleep and you will find it quite in harmony with your real nature. Words can only give you the idea and the idea is not the experience. All I can say is that true happiness has no cause and what has no cause is immovable. Which does not mean it is perceivable, as pleasure. What is perceivable is pain and pleasure; the state of freedom from sorrow can be described only negatively. To know it directly you must go beyond the mind addicted to causality and the tyranny of time.

I Am That – Talks with Sri Nisargatta Maharaj
Chapter: You are Beyond Space and Time – Item 94

How can one be Happy among Suffering – Nisargadatta

How can one be Happy among Suffering – Nisargadatta

Questioner: How can one remain happy among so much suffering?

Maharaj: One cannot help it — the inner happiness is overwhelmingly real. Like the sun in the sky, its expressions may be clouded, but it is never absent.

Q: When we are in trouble, we are bound to be unhappy.

M: Fear is the only trouble. Know yourself as independent and you will be free from fear and its shadows.

Q: What is the difference between happiness and pleasure?

M: Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not.

Q: If happiness is independent, why are we not always happy?

M: As long as we believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall also believe that in their absence we must be miserable. Mind always shapes itself according to its beliefs. Hence the importance of convincing oneself that one need not be prodded into happiness; that, on the contrary, pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance, for it merely increases the false conviction that one needs to have and do things to be happy when in reality it is just the opposite.

But why talk of happiness at all? You do not think of happiness except when you are unhappy: A man who says: ‘Now I am happy’, is between two sorrows — past and future. This happiness is mere excitement caused by relief from pain. Real happiness is utterly unselfconscious. It is best expressed negatively as: ‘there is nothing wrong with me. I have nothing to worry about’. After all, the ultimate purpose of all Sadhana is to reach a point, when this conviction, instead of being only verbal, is based on the actual and ever-present experience.

Q: Which experience?

M: The experience of being empty, uncluttered by memories and expectations; it is like the happiness of open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy for doing things, for discovery, for adventure.

Q: What remains to discover?

M: The universe without and the immensity within as they are in reality, in the great mind and heart of God. The meaning and purpose of existence, the secret of suffering, life’s redemption from ignorance.

I Am That – Talks with Sri Nisargatta Maharaj
Chapter: You are Beyond Space and Time – Item 94