Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: I must select my guru rightly.
M: Be the right man and the right Guru will surely find you.
Q: You are not answering my question: how to find the right Guru?
M: But I did answer your question. Do not look for a Guru, do not even think of one. Make your goal your Guru. After all, the Guru is but a means to an end, not the end in itself. He is not important, it is what you expect of him that matters to you. Now, what do you expect?
Q: By his grace I shall be made happy, powerful and peaceful.
M: What ambitions! How can a person limited in time and space, a mere body-mind, a gasp of pain between birth and death, be happy? The very conditions of its arising make happiness impossible. Peace, power, happiness, these are never personal states, nobody can say 'my peace', 'mu power' - because 'mine' implies exclusivity, which is fragile and insecure.
Q: I know only my conditioned existence; there is nothing else.
M: Surely you cannot say so. In deep sleep you are not conditioned. How ready and willing you are to go to sleep, how peaceful, free and happy you are when asleep!
Q: I know nothing of it.
M: Put it negatively. When you sleep, you are not in pain, nor bound, nor restless.
Q: I see your point. While awake, I know that I am, but am not happy; in sleep I am, I am happy but I don't know it. All I need is to know that I am free and happy.
M: Quite so. Now, go within, into a state which you may compare to a state of waking sleep, in which you are aware of yourself, but not of the world. In that state you will know, without the least trace of doubt, that at the root of your being you are free and happy. The only trouble is that you are addicted to experience and you cherish your memories. In reality it is the other way round; what is remembered is never real; the real is now.
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