Breathe ‘God,’ in any tongue — it means the same;
LOVE ABSOLUTE: Think, feel, absorb the thought;
Shut out all else; until a subtle flame
(A spark from God’s creative centre caught)
Shall permeate your being, and shall glow,
Increasing in its splendour, till, YOU KNOW.

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919)

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The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

— Thich Nhat Hanh (born 11 October 1926)

Photo courtesy: Susana Aalto

Students, when you want to say something, think about it three times before you say it. Speak only if your words will benefit yourselves and others. Do not speak if it brings no benefit.

Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the Self.

Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan.

Things you can’t control: the past, the unseen future, and the way others behave.

Things you can control: what you think, what you speak, what you do in the present moment.

In short, you only need to care about what you are, here and now.

Isn’t this self-centeredness? Of course, we are not preaching selfishness here. We don’t say that you should live only for yourself, or that you shouldn’t help others. Take care of how you help others, take full responsibility of your actions in the present and do your best to help others, but you don’t have the right to worry about the outcome or how the helped will respond to you.

Check out this video where Eckhart Tolle says, “Your primary responsibility is to take care of your state of consciousness which determines the kind of world you create.”

If you think about it, you’ll know that this is the only practical way of living. More than anything else, what you are in the present determines your future. When you take complete responsibility over what you are, what you think, speak and do, everything else takes care of itself.

Isn’t this what is meant in this shloka from the Bhagavad Gita?

You have the right to perform action, but not the fruits thereof at any time; let not the fruits of your actions be your motive, and let there not be attachment to inaction.

— Bhagavad Gita 2.47

The Lord is attained without the least effort; he is worshipped by self-realisation alone. … The self is not realised by any other means other than meditation. If one is able to meditate even for thirteen seconds, even if one is ignorant one attains the merit of giving away a cow in charity. If one does so for one hundred and one seconds, the merit is that of performing a sacred rite. If the duration is twelve minutes, the merit is a thousandfold. If the duration is of a day, one dwells in the highest realm. This is the supreme yoga, this is the supreme kriyā.

— Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (tr. by Swami Venkatesananda p. 255)

What is meditation?

Meditation is not a practice; it is not the cultivation of habit; meditation is heightened awareness. Mere practice dulls the mind. heart for habit denotes thoughtlessness and causes insensitivity. Right meditation is a liberative process, a creative self-discover which frees thought-feeling from bondage. In freedom alone is there the Real.

— J. Krishnamurti (source)

Meditation doesn’t imply merely sitting in a posture with eyes closed. Meditation, in essence, means heightened awareness, being intensely aware of the present moment. This heightened awareness comes about only when you are not making any effort. It comes about with the acceptance and awareness of the present moment as it is. If you are in such a state of pure awareness, you are in meditation irrespective of what you are doing. In Yoga Vasishta it is said that, “While doing whatever one is doing — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, or talking — one should realise one’s essential nature as pure consciousness. Thus does one attain liberation.”

Of course, if you think that sitting in a posture with eyes closed helps you get to the state of heightened awareness, you can definitely practice that.

How to meditate?

When you sit down to meditate, tell yourself that at this time “I want nothing”. The second is to tell yourself “I do nothing”. The third sutra (principle) is “I am nothing”. Do not think that you have to meditate, just sit and be hollow and empty. You do not have to make any kind of attempt. These three sutras are very important.

— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (source)

What is the truth?

‘I have nothing to do with sorrow, with actions, with delusion or desire. I am at peace, free from sorrow. I am Brahman’ — such is truth.

‘I am free from all defects, I am the all, I do not seek anything nor do I abandon anything, I am Brahman’ — such is the truth.

‘I am blood, I am flesh, I am bone, I am body, I am consciousness, I am the mind also, I am Brahman’ — such is the truth.

‘I am the firmament, I am space, I am the sun and the entire space, I am all things here, I am Brahman’ — such is the truth.

‘I am a blade of grass, I am the earth, I am a tree-stump, I am the forest, I am the mountain and the oceans, I am the non-dual Brahman’ — such is the truth.

‘I am the consciousness in which all things are strung and through whose power all beings engage themselves in all their activities; I am the essence of all things’ — such is the truth.

This is certain: all things exist in Brahman, all things flow from it, all things are Brahman; it is omnipresent, it is the one self, it is the truth.

(Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (tr. by Swami Venkatesananda, p.233)

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

— Aldous Huxley (born July 26, 1894)

It is an illusion to think that we are all seeking God — we are not. We don’t have to search for light. There will be light when there is no darkness and through darkness we cannot find the light. All that we can do is to remove those barriers that create darkness and the removal depends on the intention. If you are removing them in order to see light, then you are not removing anything, you are only substituting the word ‘light’ for darkness. Even to look beyond the darkness is an escape from darkness.
…
No amount of meditation, discipline, can make the mind still, in the real sense of the word. Only when the breezes stop does the lake become quiet. You cannot make the lake quiet. Our job is not to pursue the unknowable but to understand the confusion, the turmoil, the misery, in ourselves; and then that thing darkly comes into being, in which there is joy.

— J. Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom, p. 235, 236

Whether one is a knower of truth or ignorant of it, powers like flying in the air accrue to one who engages himself in some practices . But the sage of self-knowledge has no desire to acquire these. These practices bestow their fruit on anyone, for such is their nature. Poison kills all, wine intoxicates all, even so these practices bring about the ability to fly, etc., but they who have attained the supreme self knowledge are not intenrested in these, O Rāma. They are gained only by those who are full of desires; but the sage is free from the least desire for anything. Self knowledge is the greatest gain; how does the sage of self-knowledge entertain any desire for anything else?

— Sage Vasiṣṭha (The Supreme Yoga, a translation of Yoga Vasishta by Swami Venkatesananda, p. 216)