Ramana Maharshi Quotes - Page 3

If you approach the ocean with a cup, you can only take away a cupful; if you approach it with a bucket you can take away a bucketful.

The experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge.

The entire Universe is condensed in the body, and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the whole Universe.

Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart, or the Seat of Consciousness, it is all the same.

Beyond the belief that something can be lost, there is nothing to lose.

As you are, so is the world.

This perception of division between the seer and the object that is seen, is situated in the mind. For those remaining in the heart, the seer becomes one with the sight.

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.

Silence is never-ending speech. Vocal speech obstructs the other speech of silence. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one's thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.

To ask the mind to kill itself is like making the thief the policeman. He will go with you and pretend to catch the thief, but nothing will be gained. So you must turn inward and see where the mind rises from, and then it will cease to exist.

The self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself, within yourself.

The fact is that you are not the body. The Self does not move but the world moves in it. You are only what you are.

The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.

Whatever is done lovingly, with righteous purity and with peace of mind, is a good action. Everything which is done with the stain of desire and with agitation filling the mind is classified as a bad action.

If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you.

If a man considers that he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

The master is within; meditation is meant to remove the ignorant idea that he is only outside. If he is a stranger whom you await, he is bound to disappear also. What is the use of a transient being like that? But so long as you think you are separate or that you are the body, an external master is also necessary and he will appear to have a body. When the wrong identification of oneself with the body ceases, the master will be found to be none other than the Self.

The fact is that the mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The mind is fattened by new thoughts rising up. Therefore it is foolish to attempt to kill the mind by means of the mind. The only way of doing it is to find its source and hold on to it. The mind will then fade away of its own accord.

We are in our Self. We are not in the world.

By whatever path you go, you will have to lose yourself in the one. Surrender is complete only when you reach the stage `Thou art all' and `Thy will be done'.

All that one gives to others one gives to one's self. If this truth is understood, who will not give to others?

...Bliss is not something to be got. On the other hand you are always Bliss. This desire [for Bliss] is born of the sense of incompleteness. To whom is this sense of incompleteness? Enquire. In deep sleep you were blissful. Now you are not so. What has interposed between that Bliss and this non-bliss? It is the ego. Seek its source and find you are Bliss.

The state of self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.

There is no seeing. Seeing is only being.

Once the current of awareness of the self is set afoot, it becomes everlasting and continuous by intensification.