He who turns inward with untroubled mind to search where the consciousness of ‘I’ arises, realizes the Self, and dissolves in Thee O Arunachala! Like a river when it joins the ocean.

~ Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, Five Stanzas to Sri Arunachala, verse 3

Question: We have to live in the world and deal with people, many of whom will try to take advantage of us. Being quiet and detached is one thing, but should we be so quiet and uninterested that we allow other people to take advantage of our passivity?

Annamalai Swami: You can be quiet within and be tough on the outside, if that is the role you have to play in the world.

There is a story about a snake that lived under a bush by the side of the street. Whenever people passed by the bush, the snake made a lot of noise and tried to bite them. It gave lots of trouble to anyone who came near.

One day a wandering sadhu passed the bush and the snake, as usual, put on an aggressive show of behavior.

The sadhu, who could communicate with animals, said, 'Keep quiet and don't bite people. You don't have to trouble the people who walk past.'

The snake heeded the advice and from that day on its behavior completely changed. It sat quietly under its bush and never troubled any of the people who walked past.

Within a few days the local people realised that the snake was no longer a threat to them, but instead of being relieved, they would throw stones at the snake, or try to chase it away. People have this instinctive response to snakes. Whenever they see one, they feel compelled to commit some act of violence against it. The snake ignored the provocation for a while but it soon realised that this new state of affairs was not an improvement on the previous one.

A few days later the sadhu came by and asked how the snake's new lifestyle was going.

'Not so good,' responded the snake. 'I am suffering a lot on account of your advice. I am being very calm and I am not giving any trouble to anyone, but because of my calmness and sadhu-like behavior, people are taking advantage of me by throwing stones at me and harassing me. They would never do this before because they knew I might retaliate and bite them.

The sadhu thought about this for some time and then spoke.

'I advised you to be calm and not trouble anyone, but that doesn't mean that you have to sit here passively while people come along and hurt you. When people come to cause you trouble in the future, just pretend that you are going to bite them. You can be angry on the outside, but on the inside you can still be calm.'

From then on the snake adopted the new tactic of hissing at everyone who came past his bush, just to let them know that he was still a potential threat. This was enough to make people give him a wide berth.

We can all be like this if circumstances demand it. There are occasions when a show of anger is needed. We can play the role of being angry, but at the same time we can know that we are just acting out a role that is needed at a particular moment. Internally we can be peaceful while all this is going on.

~ Annamalai Swami, Final Talks, Edited by David Godman

is samsara within or without?

During the early days of my arrival here, on one day at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a middle-aged Andhra, who had come recently, asked Bhagavan, "Swami, as I repeat Rama Namam (the name of Rama) regularly every morning and every evening for an hour, other thoughts come in, one by one, increase from time to time and ultimately find that I have forgotten my japam. What shall I do?"

"At that time catch hold of that name (Rama Namam)," said Bhagavan.

We all laughed. Poor man! He felt grieved and said, "The reasons for these interruption is the samsara (family), is not it? I am therefore thinking of abandoning the samsara."

Bhagavan said, "Oh! Is that so? What really is meant by samsara? Is it within or without? Wife, children and others," he said. "Is that all the samsara? What have they done? Please find out first what really is meant by samsara. Afterwards we shall consider the question of abandoning them," said Bhagavan.

He could not reply and so kept quiet.

Bhagavan's heart was full of compassion. With a look full of tender kindness he said, "Supposing you leave your wife and children. If you are here this will become another kind of samsara. Supposing you take to sannyasa. Another kind of samsara comes into existence in the shape of a karra (walking stick), kamandalu (water bowl) and the like. Why all that? Samsara means samsara of the mind. If you leave that samsara, it will be the same thing wherever you are. Nothing troubles you."

Poor man! He mustered up some courage and said, "Yes, that is it, Swami. How to give up that samsara of the mind?"

Bhagavan said, "That is just it; you said you were doing the japam of Rama Namam. During the train of thoughts, you said you were sometimes reminded of the fact that you had forgotten the japam of Rama Namam. Try to remind yourself of that fact as often as possible and catch hold of the name of Rama frequently. Other thoughts will then slowly decrease."

~ Suri Nagamma, Letters from Sri Ramanasramam,1 December, 1945

WE approach the Guru in the restlessness of our
mind and find no satisfaction in anything done
or achieved. He gives us His benign look of Grace; in
that one look is the real touch of Grace. His proximity is
the harbour of Peace, in Him you find your haven of
safety. He is the healer of all sores in you. You seem to be
melted and lost in Him. You are now still. The Guru says,
"Be still, and Know that I am God." This knowing is the
understanding of the absolute and relative values of Life.

Understanding what? It is the distinctive knowledge
(the vijnana) of the eternal unchanging Truth of your self.
In the background of this eternal and unchanging Truth,
the changeful and varying states of your doership move
about and cloud your understanding of the Real Truth of
your Being.

To put this more clearly, in the words of Sri Bhagavan,
"You are the Self (atman)." Now no one will deny he is
the Self, the eternal changeless basis of himself. This Self
is Pure Being, conscious of Itself. It is Pure Bliss, in the
sense that in Itself it is not touched or affected by the
pleasures and pains of your varying states. Know to fix
yourself as this Self, and to abide as such, unmoved by the
fluctuating feelings of pain and pleasure, which pass and
re-pass before you, the unaffected Self.

~ At The Feet of Bhagavan

right action

All that is done in an Ashram, all that that is done for the Master, must be done with love, no matter what it is. He who does some task, such as sweeping the floor, watering the plants, or helping in a ritual, must execute it remaining free from anxieties, with a pure heart and full devotion. Only in this way will the action be right without interference of the profane ego, and there will be no attachments to the fruits of actions.

~ Maha Krishna Swami, Years in the Presence of Ramana My Master, edited by A. R. Natarajan

think of me and you will be alright

I had also at this time a more serious trouble. I had been practising breath control (pranayama) as taught by Swami Ramtirtha in his works. There came a stage when I felt a terrible sensation as though my head would crack and break into pieces. Then I stopped doing it, but every day the sensation was recurring at the time of practice and the fear was growing that disaster was imminent. So, at dead of night, when Bhagavan was alone, I approached him with my tale. He said laughing, "What! Again you are seized with fear! These are the usual experiences of people who do yogic exercises without the immediate guidance of a Guru, but having come to me, why should you fear?"

Then Sri Bhagavan added in an undertone: "Next time you get that sensation, you think of me and you will be all right." From that moment to this I have never felt it again.

~ G. V. Subbaramayya, Sri Ramana Reminiscences (As I Saw Him, from The Maharshi)

Those who have a stony heart,

who are great sinners,

who every day in this world

commit uncountable sins,

if they would only once utter the name ‘Annamalai’,

the name of birth itself,

which comes like a flood,

will depart.

~ Guhai Namasivaya

To read an interesting account of how this (and other verses) came to light please see this.

Bhagavan:
The way to reform the world is to reform oneself in such a way that reality shines in the Heart.
Before attempting to enquire into and know the way to reform the world, subjugate and destroy your insurgent mind.

Without first filling your own heart [with Self-knowledge], what aid can you give, and to whom?

Those who do not have the power to redeem themselves cannot render genuine service to the beings of the world.

~ from Padamalai

To look for God ignoring Thee who art Being and Consciousness is like going with a lamp to look for darkness. Only to make Thyself known as Being and Consciousness, Thou dwellest in different religions under different (names and) forms. If (yet) they do not come to know Thee, they are indeed the blind who do not know the sun. O Arunachala the great! Thou peerless Gem, abide and shine Thou as my Self, One without a second!

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, verse 4, Sri Arunachala Ashtakam

The gaze of the Lord

54

Subduing me and bringing me under his control, he drew my consciousness to himself with the irresistible magnet of his grace. From the profound depths of his mauna, his gracious glance cleaved the knot of my ego’s ruinous cravings in an instant. How great is the power of his piercing gaze!

55

Lost in the fruitless round of birth and death, I surrendered before my Master and my heart became clear and serene through his gracious gaze. Then, through the luminous spiritual practice in which I embraced his holy feet as the true path, I merged with the nature of the Real, so that the disastrous error [of forgetting my true nature] was no more.

56

Through the forgetfulness [pramada] that arose through the error of failing to enquire what was truly real, I revelled in the illusory existence of the physical body. But the Lord, through his glance of grace, united with my consciousness, and brought me into harmony with true existence, the fullness of the open sky [of the Self].

~ Sri Muruganar, from the forthcoming Sri Ramana Guru Prasadadam, translated by Robert Butler and Dr T. V. Venkatasubramanian

Please see David Godman's new blog to read more of this work.

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Delve down into That which only is

My dear friend Duraiswami, who knew [Bhagavan] for years as one of his inmates, told me this: once he was expressing his admiration for the sage's power of concentrating day and night on his sadhana, when the other cut in smiling, "Sadhana? Who did sadhana? What did I know of sadhana? I simply came and sat down in the temple or elsewhere in Arunachala and then lost all count of time."

To me he said the same thing in a slightly different way with his characteristic irony. "People call Him by different names, but He came to me with no name or introduction so I know not how to define Him. What happened was that my desires and ego left me, how and why I cannot tell, and that I lived thenceforward in the vastness of timeless peace. Sometimes," he added with a smile, "I stayed with closed eyes and then, when I opened them, people said that I had come out of my blessed meditation. But I never knew the difference between no-meditation and meditation, blessed or otherwise. I simply lived a tranquil witness to whatever happened around me, but was never called upon to interfere. I could never feel any urge to do anything except to be, just be. I see that all is done by him and him alone, though we, poor puppets of maya, feel ourselves important as the doers, authors and reformers of everything! It is the ineradicable ego, the I-ness in each of us, which is responsible for the perpetuation of this maya with all its attendant sufferings and disenchantments."

"What then is the remedy?" I asked.

"Just be" he answered. "Delve down into That which only is, for when you achieve this you find: 'That am I'; there is and can be nothing but That. When you see this, all the trappings of maya and make-believe fall off, even as the worn-out slough of the snake. So all that you have to do is get to this I, the real I behind your seeming I, for then you are rid forever of the illusive I-ness and all is attained, since you stay thenceforward at one with That which is you; that's all."

~ Forever is in the Now, edited and complied by A. R. Natarajan (account by Dilip Kumar Roy)

Bhagavan Ramana's Grace

I do not usually post any personal stories on this blog, but here goes ...

Yesterday, I took my children to a park beside the bay, and a few minutes after we arrived I saw a biggish sturdy boy using his greater size and strength to dominate a smaller tear-streaked boy. Their mothers did not seem to be around, so I felt I needed to help them resolve their struggle over a lightsaber.

To my great surprise, the bigger one suddenly let go of the saber and drove his fist into my mouth, hard. Twice. An almost overpowering urge arose to drop him to the ground very fast and pin him, and as I was struggling to resist this urge, he kicked me 3 or 4 times. At first there was a kind of bodily shock reaction and I had to fight back tears.

A few people witnessed this, and there was lots of consternation, and someone called the police because the child would not admit to having any parent or guardian at the park and though many people were asked, no one knew who he was. It did not seem right to just leave him running amok amidst lots of younger kids.

A polarization began to happen, in which I was cast in the role (in my own mind too) as the nice peaceful person, and the boy was cast in the role as the out of control bad one.

But then Bhagavan, whom I had temporarily lost awareness of, showed me the child's heart. At first it was just a glimmer, but enough of a glimmer that it became obvious that the child was not the ordinary looking, sturdy, red-haired body he was "in", nor the very confused and suffering mind through which our conventional reality was being filtered (he turned out to be autistic, though he had none of the usual traits).

Then Bhagavan turned up the dial and showed me the boy's heart so blazingly that I could no longer feel any difference between the child and Bhagavan himself.

An overwhelming sense of gratitude keeps flooding me, that the boy touched me in the way he did. It took exactly those two punches (and Bhagavan) to wake me up out of the trance I had been in, of imagining the child was just a troublesome individual on the loose and nothing to do with Bhagavan.

Bhagavan showed me so tangibly that what appeared to be the boy was not the boy at all ... and what WAS real about the boy was none other than our Beloved ... I cannot really put this into words, but I have tried.