"The very first step in understanding what this is all about is giving up the concept of an active, volitional 'I' as a separate entity and accepting the passive role of perceiving and functioning as a process." - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Your Duty: Practice Self-Enquiry

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Q: When I spent an hour or two on the hill yonder, I sometimes found even better peace than here, which suggests that a solitary place is after all more conducive to mind control.

B: True, but if you had stayed there for an hour longer, you would have found that place too not giving you the calm of which you speak. Control the mind and even Hell will be Heaven to you. All other talk of solitude, living in a forest etc. is mere prattle.

Q: If solitude and abandonment of home were not required, where then was the necessity for Sri Bhagavan to come here in his seventeenth year?

B: If the same force that took this (meaning himself) here, should take you also out of your home by all means let it, but there is no use of your deserting your home by an effort of your own. Your duty lies in practice, continuous practice of Self-enquiry.

Q: Is it not necessary to seek the company of the wise (the Saints and Sages)?

B: Yes, but the best satsangam is inhering in your Self. It is also the real guhavasam (living in the cave). Dwelling in the cave is retiring into your Self. Association with the wise will certainly help a great deal.
....
From "Control of Mind", Crumbs From His Table

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सर्वभूताधिवासं यद्भूतेषु च वसत्यपि।
सर्वानुग्राहकत्वेन तद्स्म्यहं वासुदेवः॥

That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings,
who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being:
I AM THAT. -- Amritabindu Upanishad