Showing posts with label Nisargadatta Maharaj. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nisargadatta Maharaj. Show all posts

Sunday, March 27, 2022

life as it comes

 
 
 

 
 
Just live your life as it comes.
Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself.
Perception is based on memory and is only imagination.
The world can be said to appear but not to be.
Only that which makes perception possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within
 and life becomes a journey into the unknown. 
Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you.


Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond.
Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness.
It is utterly beyond both.
It gives birth to consciousness.
All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. Go beyond the personal and see.
 Stop imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all existence
 and non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind conceives.


Question yourself: Who am I?
What is behind and beyond all this?
Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person
 is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.

Just be aware of your being here and now.
There is nothing more to it.

In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
Because you are, all can be.
The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. 
You are neither consciousness nor its content.
You are the timeless Source.


Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness.
Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.




—Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am That
art by Duncan Nagonigwane Pheasant (Ojibwe)
with thanks to Love is a Place
 
 
 

Sunday, July 11, 2021

unfulfilled desires







The memory of the pasts unfulfilled desires traps energy,
 which manifests itself as a person. 
When its charge gets exhausted, 
the person dies.

 Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the birth. 
Self-identification with body creates ever-fresh desires 
and there is no end to them unless 
this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen.

 It is clarity that is liberating,
 for you cannot abandon desire unless 
its causes and effects are clearly seen.

I do not say that the same person is reborn.
 It dies, 
and dies for good. 

But its memories remain 
and their desires and fears. 
They supply the energy for a new person.




~  Nisargadatta Maharaj




Tuesday, April 13, 2021

search for?








Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness
 that makes you feel miserable? 
 
Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, 
neither seeking, nor refusing, 
give all your attention to the level on which
 ‘I am’ is timelessly present. 

Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature 
and it is only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs. 

Avoid the disturbance, that is all. 
 
To seek there is no need;
 you would not seek what you already have. 
You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. 
To begin with, trust me, trust the teacher. 
It enables you to make the first step - 
and then your trust is justified by your own experience.



~ Nisargadatta Maharaj



Wednesday, March 3, 2021

find your real being





There will be marriage, there will be children, 
there will be earning money to maintain a family; 
all this will happen in the natural course of events, 
for destiny must fulfill itself; you will go through it without resistance, 
facing tasks as they come, attentive and thorough, 
both in small things and big. 

But the general attitude will be of affectionate detachment, 
enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, 
constant giving without asking. 

In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; 
you are the love between the two. 

You are the clarity and kindness that makes everything orderly and happy. 
It may seem vague to you, but if you think a little, 
you will find that the mystical is most practical, 
for it makes your life creatively happy. 

Your consciousness is raised to a higher dimension, 
from which you see everything much clearer and with greater intensity. 

You realize that the person you became at birth 
and will cease to be at death is temporary and false. 

You are not the sensual, emotional and intellectual person, 
gripped by desires and fears. Find out your real being. 

What am I? 
is the fundamental question of all philosophy and psychology. 
Go into it deeply.





~ Nisargadatta





Monday, June 15, 2020

at home everywhere






In reality there is only the source, dark in itself,
making everything shine. 
Unperceived, it causes perception. 
Unfelt, it causes feeling. 
Unthinkable, it causes thought. 
Non-being, it gives birth to being. 

It is the immovable background of motion. 

Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.




–Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am That
translated by Maurice Frydman



Monday, June 8, 2020

naturally and spontaneously






.

When you know beyond all doubting that you are that life that flows through all, 
you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth
 and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being 
and the entire universe are included in your affection.

 But when you look
 at anything as separate from you, 
you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.
 Alienation causes fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. 
Only self - realization can break it. Go for it resolutely. 

In dream you love some and not others.
 On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all.
 Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds;
 love in freedom is love of all....When you are love itself, 
you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one you love all,
 in loving all, you love each.
 One and all are not exclusive. 

All the universe will be your concern;
 every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely.



Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am that 



Monday, May 18, 2020

find out








When I met my Guru, he told me: 
"You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. 
Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self."
 I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me.
 All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. 
And what a difference it made, and how soon! 

My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously
 and not to swerve from it even for a moment. 
I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time 
I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. 
All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly.
 This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind 
I saw myself as I am -- unbound. 

I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind 
on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, 
with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy
 and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.
 In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived,
 the world around me. Only peace remained 
and unfathomable silence.



~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
art by Deloros DiCamillo





Wednesday, April 29, 2020

you need no change



.



Words indicate, but do not explain.
What I teach is the ancient and simple way of liberation through understanding. 
 
 Understand your own mind and its hold on you will snap. 
 The mind misunderstands, misunderstanding is its very nature. 
 Right understanding is the only remedy, whatever name you give it.
 It is the earliest and also the latest, for it deals with the mind as it is.

Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. 
 You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external
 to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change?
 
 Realize once and for all that neither your body nor your mind, 
nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature
 beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there,
 only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them,
 that is all.
 
 There is nothing to seek and find,
 for there is nothing lost.
 Relax and watch the 'I am'. 
 Reality is just behind it.
 Keep quiet, keep silent; 
it will emerge,
 or, rather,
 it will take you in.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
.
 
 

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

progress?






• Questioner:

How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search?
How am I to know if I am progressing?


 
• Maharaj: 


You don't really listen. If you did, such a question should not arise.
 And, if at all it did, you could have easily dealt with it yourself,
 in case if you had listened to me attentively and understood 
what I had been saying. Instead, I find that this question does disturb
 many of you. The problem apparently is about 'progress'. 

Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what?

 I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence,
 the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; 
that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance
 in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' 
make any 'progress' towards any objective? 

Now, instead of letting this basic perception impregnate your very being, 
what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. 
How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any 
conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation? 

Perception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself 
instantaneously, there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. 
There is no 'one' to make any progress.

 Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress',
 if one cannot give up the concept, is a total lack of concern about 'progress'
 and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', 
a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, 
an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen? 



 ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
with thanks to No Mind's Land


Thursday, February 6, 2020

just be aware - here and now




.

Just live your life as it comes. 
Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself. 
Perception is based on memory and is only imagination. 
The world can be said to appear but not to be. 
Only that which makes perception possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown. 
Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you. 
Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond. 
Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness. 
It is utterly beyond both. 
It gives birth to consciousness. 
All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. 
Go beyond the personal and see. 
Stop imagining that you were born. 
You are utterly beyond all existence and non-existence, 
utterly beyond all that the mind conceives. 
Question yourself: Who am I? 
What is behind and beyond all this? 
Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person is mere habit built on memory. 
Inquire ceaselessly.

 Just be aware of your being here and now. 
There is nothing more to it. 
In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility. 
Because you are, all can be. 
The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. 
You are neither consciousness nor its content. 
You are the timeless Source. 
Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness. 
Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am That







Thursday, October 31, 2019

watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic






Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic,  
People come and go:  you register without response. 
 It may not be easy in the beginning,  but with some practice
 you will find that your mind can function on many levels 
at the same time and you can be aware of the all. 
 It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level, 
that your attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels. 
 Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, 
outside the field of consciousness.

Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts; 
 try only to include in your field of attention the other, 
 more important questions like, "Who am I?"
 "How did I happen to be born?" "Whence this universe around me?",
 What is real and what is momentary?"
 No memory will persist, if you lose interest in it; 
 always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, 
always after happiness and peace. 

 Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness
 that makes you feel miserable?  Try the other way:
 indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking,
 nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which 
"I am" is timeless and present.  Soon you will realize that peace
 and happiness are in your very nature
 and it is only seeking them through 
some particular channels, that disturbs.



~Nisargaddatta Maharaj



Wednesday, August 28, 2019

somehow




I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, 
I become the very thing I look at, 
and experience the kind of consciousness it has; 

I become the inner witness of the thing. 
I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness,

love; 

you may give it any name you like. 

Love says "I am everything". 
Wisdom says "I am nothing". 
Between the two, my life flows. 

Since at any point of time and space 
I can be both the subject and the object of experience, 
I express it by saying that 
I am both, and neither, and beyond both.



~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sunday, August 25, 2019

the dying now to the now


.





When effort is needed, effort will appear. 
When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. 
You need not push life about. 
Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, 
which is the dying now to the now. For living is dying. 
Without death life cannot be.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj


Thursday, March 14, 2019

only the Self









~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sunday, May 20, 2018

separation is painful






When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful,
and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being,
you have gone beyond all need of help.
You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being.
You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not.
You can only give what you are - and of that you can give limitlessly.



- Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

Monday, March 26, 2018

give up all questions except one






.

Give up all questions except one: 
'Who am I?' 
After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. 
The 'I am' is certain. 
The 'I am this' is not. 
Struggle to find out what you are in reality. 

To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. 
Discover all that you are not--
body, 
feelings, 
thoughts, 
time, space, 
this or that
--nothing, 
concrete or abstract, 
which you perceive can be you. 

The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. 
The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, 
the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj


Sunday, October 16, 2016

no such thing










There is no such thing as a person.
There are only restrictions and limitations.
The sum total of these defines the person.

You think you know yourself when you know what you are.
But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.
Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable.

You are not.

Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that.
There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation.

Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation.
Don’t be too lazy to think.





~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
with thanks to Love is a Place
 

Friday, December 14, 2012

by looking tirelessly





By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty 
and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind. 
I find I have lost the mind irretrievably. 
I am neither conscious nor unconscious, 
I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions.
Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only. 
I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is. 
I am in a more real state than yours. 
I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person. 

As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, 
but my mental process has come to an end. 
My thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful. 
I am not a person in your sense of the word, 
though I may appear a person to you. 

I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. 
I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. 
There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. 
No thing is me, so I am nothing. 

Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least. 
Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.





~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
with thanks to http://ashramof1.tumblr.com/
photo by Bea Garth



Tuesday, October 23, 2012

a colorful show






The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet it is not.
 It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. 
When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. 
It just happens when we are absent-minded. 
It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. 
Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atma. 
To the Self, the world is but a colorful show, 
which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. 
Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, 
yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. 
Without desire or fear, he enjoys it, as it happens.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj




Sunday, January 22, 2012

awareness






Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. 

Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. 

There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something.

 Consciousness is partial and changeful, 
awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. 
And it is the common matrix of every experience.





Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I AM THAT