After so many different lives and different bodies we get human body, human birth. It’s so precious! Your hankering for pleasure is causing depression in you. Wake up and see all pleasures are momentary.
~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Forgiveness is from the heart, it is an emotional one. Acceptance is from the mind, from the head. So both are essential, you accept and you forgive. If you don’t forgive you will suffer with all the emotional heavy load of garbage inside you. If you don’t accept your mind gets all agitated.
~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q: Guruji, does anything called luck or bad luck exists? How to overcome bad luck?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: of course! When things happen the way you want everything to happen you say yes its good luck and when everything goes wrong you say it bad luck. How to overcome bad luck is to increase your intuition and how to increase your intuition if you ask me, MEDITATION!
Q: Guruji, scriptures say that the divine is the only security. Insurance companies say that retirement plans are the only security. My wife says that our children will be our only security. I am a little confused. Where should I invest?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: A little bit in all three; and you have enough to invest in all three. I would say first in yourself as you are the source of insecurity if there is any. In spite of having a good family, children, house, money, everything, if your soul is hungry, it will still be insecure. So first fill your spirit with spiritual wisdom, experience and you will see there is no insecurity. Everything will fall in place.
Once, this lady in America was telling that she has been married for 40 years and she has been living with the same husband. The other people present were wonder-struck at how she was living with the same man for 40 years. Then she said if you don’t know how to row one boat, even if you change the boat, you will not know how to row it. I said, ‘This is the story of every family in India and this tradition is there in the villages.’ If you don’t know how to row a boat, changing the boat is no use. That is why, however the people around us are, we have to maintain a good relationship with them and through whatever means and efforts we should nurture the good qualities in others.
~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q: How do you know when you have found your Guru?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I have no idea how you will find that out. It’s the heart that tells you. You can’t think about it. It doesn’t happen by judgment. Just be relaxed.
Q: Guruji, it takes effort to start sun salutation but then I start finding intoxication in it. Will you please describe the phenomenon behind?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes, you should do sun salutation. A little effort is needed for a beginner and a little effort is essential to begin with. What is happening with effort? The 'rajogun' or the restlessness in body is getting channelized. The tendencies to act get fulfilled and then what you are left with is simple harmony and that is sattva. So rajogun (restlessness) gets exhausted by your exercise and sattva brings you into meditation. So it's good to put some effort in the beginning and in the end you let go and relax, there lies the reality.