Sri Sri Ravi Shankar talks on Liberation

What is mukti (liberation)?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: When you take the last breath joyfully that is mukti (liberation). Those who experience some lack and are sad while dying, they return. Be satisfied at the time of your death. The one who is immersed in knowledge, even while dying, will be free.

Why do we want to be liberated?

 Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Wanting freedom is a natural phenomenon. What you feel after your exams are over is a little experience of liberation (moksha). In life also you burn in your own hopes and desires. These desires have only brought you misery. When you relax taking a step outside all this, there is liberation (moksha). When you sit for meditation with the feeling, I am nothing, I want nothing, and I do nothing - this feeling is the feeling of freedom. It is fun, it is freedom.

To break the cycle of birth and death we have to attain mukti/liberation, then why do enlightened masters reincarnate?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: With one goal - to help those who are in need and on the other hand just to play.

Can charity grant liberation?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Charity purifies wealth. Ghee/clarified butter purifies food. Knowledge purifies the intellect. Bhajan purifies the mind & Service purifies the action.

It is said that if someone is enlightened, his or her generations are liberated. If it is so then can one choose not to have children and devote his/her entire life to seva?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Good, no problem if you don’t choose to have children that is fine. Yet what is necessary is that you have to feel that you are the parent of the entire world, that everybody on this planet is a child and that they belong to you. At least this you can have, no one can stop you from feeling that or thinking that.

If mukti (liberation) is our nature then why are we in bondage?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar : Who says mukti is our nature? Our nature is bliss. Love and enjoyment can put you in bondage, if it is devoid of knowledge. With knowledge, the same love, the same enjoyment leads you to the experience of liberation.

Liberation and bondage go together. If there is liberation, there will be bondage and vice-versa. Liberation is valued because of bondage. If there is no bondage, what is there to be liberated from?

Similarly we can be liberated, that is why we experience bondage. With the desire for liberation we come to know that we are in bondage. If the desire for liberation has not risen then you will not even come to know of bondage.

From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar