Sukha is pleasure and dukha, sorrow or the fear of sorrow. What is the sorrow that you are afraid of? What is going to happen to you? You have gone through many problems. As a child, you cried so many times when a toy broke. But what happened? You passed through that. You have passed through many stumbling blocks in life, which you thought were impossible. Yet you remained untouched by any of them. Nothing could ever shake you. It appeared to have shaken you at that moment, but later on you found that you are as complete as were before.
And then there is desire for more, wanting more and more. We burn with desire; and this burning in desire does not allow you to relax into the peace of your being. Unless you let go of the desires, you can never find peace, you can never rest in the divine love. Love is the process of dissolving, of giving, of offering, of serving. If you do service to gain some merit, it is not service.
Let go of these desires. When you are able to let go, then you blossom. Wait for the blossoming. Wait for the time; don’t be in a hurry. Every bud takes its own time to bloom; don’t force a bud to become a flower. You will have to follow a certain code of conduct. This is the manure by which the rose of love will blossom. Be non-violent, not just in your action, but also in your heart, in your speech, in your thoughts. You may be non-violent in action due to fear of the law. But in the mind when you said, “I am going to kill them! I am going to choke them!” you have already choked them.
Follow the truth. Be with the truth. Be with the existence. It means live in the moment. Existence is truth. Often we mistake ‘being truthful’ to mean just speaking the truth. It’s not just speaking truth; but expressing truth your whole life. Keep the purity of your mind, speech, and body. Purity is not mixing up things. So when you become witness to the body, mind, intellect, memory and all your different faculties, and don’t get mixed up with them, that is purity. Observing the observer, being very pure; this is a deeper meaning of purity.
The greatest joy is in compassion or daya. Just stand in a corner and see the whole world. If you can just feel compassion for the whole world, a shift has already happened in your consciousness. Look at all the people who are indulging in all that you don’t like. Just for a moment, have compassion for them all, for the way they are. Then a shift happens; you become big; your Self expands.
Faith of astikya transcends logic and reasoning. You live in a very logical world. Every step in your life is measured. You reason for everything that you do and for all your experiences. You try to capture your experiences through logic, through reasoning. When the reasoning or logic breaks down, you tremble. Sooner or later you again find some logic, some reason, and feel comfortable with it. But reality is beyond logic; truth is beyond logic; you cannot capture truth by logic. If you could reason out all your life and all its experiences, then you have not lived life fully, you have not known life fully.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
