Real Currency in Life - A talk by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

No technique really works . It is you who makes it work. That is called shraddha. Shraddha can be roughly translated as faith. When your intention and attention are there, manifestation happens. If your intention is not there it will not work. Sudarshan Kriya technique works because there is an intention behind it. For anything to work, you must have intention and attention. Then manifestation happens.

Now we will do some pranayama. Let’s begin with alternate nostril breathing. Check your nostrils. You know, when the left nostril is active then the right brain is active. And vice-versa. The right brain is music. The left brain is logic. So those who have the right nostril active would understand me better. If both are active you are in meditation. However if only the right nostril is active, no meditation happens. Your state changes every time you open and close your eyes. After food, the right nostril should dominate. When the right nostril functions the metabolism is 50 percent higher. When the left is functioning, our metabolism is much slower.

Active nostrils change because they live in an ocean of prana(energy). Breath moves from right to left nostril depending on the situation. If you are driving around a church, temple or any place of worship, both nostrils will become active. The prana of both, the body and spirit, is up in those places. When people are in full devotion in a place of worship, this happens. When you meet a spiritual guide both your nostrils will become active. When you meet a spiritual person, your own voice will tell you.

Love is our very nature. You know, I can stand and talk to you for hours about love. It doesn’t mean anything. We can read love through our lives, not through books. You can listen to someone speak on love, but if you have a puppy, the puppy goes mad jumping all over you the moment you come back home. This says much more than reading books all night about love. We can read through our presence and our own lives. Here, I will come to meditation and breath. By doing breathing exercises, we can make our lives so positive. Many of us have had the experience of going to meet somebody and wanting to avoid them. Some people you meet and you just don’t feel like talking to. You feel compelled to avoid them. WIth some Others you feel like conversing. People will have the same experience of you also. Without reason they may avoid you. You want to connect to a person but your stress has created such vibes around, that people are repelled. Here again you must do a bit of pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya and yoga to increase the positive vibes around you.

Read more talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Finding Life's Direction - Talk By Sri Sri

A river needs two bunks to flow. The difference between flood and a flowing river is that water flows regulated in a direction in a river. During floods the water is muddled and has no direction. Similarly, the energy in our life needs some direction to flow. If you don’t give direction, it is all confusion.

Today most people are in confusion because there is no direction in life. When you are happy, there is so much of life energy in you; but when this life energy doesn’t know where to go, how to go, it gets stuck. When it stagnates, it rots! Just like the water has to keep flowing, in the same way, life has to keep moving.

For life energy to move in a direction, commitment is essential. Life runs with commitment. If you observe  the small or big things in life, it moves with certain commitment. A student takes admission in a school or college with a commitment. You go to a doctor with a commitment saying that you are going to take the medication or listen to whatever the doctor says, The banks work on commitment. Government works on commitment. Needless to say, a family runs on commitment: mother is committed to the child, child is committed to the parents, husband is committed to wife, and wife is committed to husband. Whether it is in love or business or friendship or at work or any area of life you take, there is commitment.

What would really irritate you is non-commitment. If you just observe, you expect some commitment from someone and when they don’t do it, you get upset. Or when someone doesn’t keep up his or her commitment, you get upset. Commitment is essential in life. You cannot stand someone who does not commit, but see how much commitment have you taken in your life?

In life, what you always want is more joy, more power and more energy. You want more, anything you are given, you want more - more money, more fame, more beauty, more joy, more pleasure. This “wanting something more” envelopes your mind and then you do not look at your capabilities. More will be given to you only if you utilize properly what you already have! This is a law in nature. Why should the nature give you more when you are stuck with your little mind?

This tendency of wanting more is there in you; you only have to give a twist to it. Instead of “what more I can have”, just turn it around and start asking yourself “what more I can do?” Then you will see that there is joy. Nature of joy is to give because you are the source of joy!

Usually we think we should have resource and then we will commit. The greater the commitment you take, the greater the resources will come to you automatically. You don’t have to sit and worry how you will get resources. When you have the intention to do something, resources simply flow when it is needed and how much it is needed.

In doing what you can do, there is no growth. Stretching a little beyond your capacity will increase your capacity. In whatever capacity you do something for the society, for the environment, for the creation, that much you progress further both materially and spiritually, value wise. The heart opens up with a feeling that you are part of everyone.

The technique to get depressed is to sit and think only about yourself! If you just sit and think, “what about me, what will happen to me?” you will surely get depressed. The way to expand from individual to universal consciousness is to share other’s sorrow and joy. As you grow, your consciousness should also grow. When you expand in knowledge with time, then depression is not possible. Your innermost source is joy.

The way to overcome personal misery is to share universal misery! The way to expand personal joy is to share universal joy. Instead of thinking “what about me?” “What can I gain from this world?” think “what can I do for the world?” When everyone comes from the point of contributing to society, you have a Divine Society. We have to educate and culture our individual consciousness in order to expand in time with the Knowledge from “what about me?” to “what can I contribute?”

A commitment can only be felt when it oversteps convenience. That which is convenient, you do

not call it commitment. If you just go on your convenience, your commitment falls apart causing more inconvenience! If you keep dropping your commitment because it is inconvenient, can you be comfortable? Often, what is convenient does not bring comfort, but gives an illusion of comfort.

Whatever you are committed to brings you strength. If you are committed to your family then your family supports you, if you are committed to your society, you enjoy the support of society. If you are committed to God, God gives you strength. If you are committed to Truth, Truth brings you strength.

Often one is not aware of this idea and that is why one is hesitant to commit to a greater cause. Also there is a fear that commitment would weaken one or take away one’s freedom. To the wise, their commitment is their comfort. Whenever their commitment is shaken, their comfort is also shaken. To the lazy, commitment is torture though it is the best remedy! Your commitment to a cause is bound to bring you comfort in the long run.

Are there any commitments that can be given up? Yes, commitments made with shortsightedness can be given up because when you are committed without a vision, you feel stifled when your vision expands. When your commitment brings misery to many in the long run, it can be given up. Just like you run out of fuel in the car and you have to refill it again and again, in the same way your dedication and commitment runs out in the course of time and it needs constant renewal! Commitment in life grows toward a higher cause. The higher the commitment, the greater is the good for all.

From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Move from one Perfection to another Higher Perfection - Talk by Sri Sri

Q: Guruji, I often see people bow down to you. Is doing all that necessary?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: No, no, not at all. These things are really insignificant. You know, these outer gestures are insignificant. Don’t give too much importance to them. All these gestures don’t matter. We all are connected from a deeper level, level of heart. That’s how we have met and we are all here.
Q: Yesterday you talked about leela(game). One can comprehend it intellectually but how to make it an inner experience?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You don’t have to make it an experience. You simply have to wake up and see life is a game. Wake up this moment when I am speaking. Whatever happened till now, is it not like a dream? You had dinner this evening, meditated in themorning, did yoga in morning and went to bed last night, and if you go to your own memory there were good events, bad events, you had profit, you had loss but right this moment it’s all gone.
Wake up this moment and see from tomorrow to the next 10 years is also like a dream! When you realize this whole phenomenon that has happened in the past and future is all like a play, a game. You don’t have to think this is a concept and I have to experience it. My dear, memory is memory. Your thinking that you have to experience memory is a concept and your thinking that you don’t have it is again a concept. You simply have to realize right away it is a dream. This could be a dream. That very moment you feel a sense of relief. A soothing wave overtakes you. Don’t wait that someday you will experience it’s all a game.
May be after you leave the body you will experience one day. Then also you will realize I could have done that much before.
Q: What is difference between dispassion and indifference?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Well, in indifference there is a sense of apathy, rejection and disappointment. In dispassion there is joy and enthusiasm.
Q: Do we all have a purpose in life or we can all come and go when it is? If there is one purpose what is it?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You know it’s best to take out paper and pen, and list out what is not the purpose of life. By negating it will be easier for you.
Q: Is Guruji the best Guru? Is Art of Living the best spiritual path? People say it is the best. Isn’t it a seed of war, calling my belief to be the best? The symbols of other religions in Vishalakshi Mantap (meditation hall in the ashram) tell us that all other religions are also good.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I leave it up to you. You discuss and decide. Go through all the confusion and come to your own conclusion. I never say it is the best and I also don’t say it is not the best. It is up to you.
It will not be the truth to say it is not the best. And it sounds very funny for whenever someone says, ‘it is the best’, you have a sort of resistance for that. So sometimes some of these questions are best not answered. I am not here to clarify your doubts. I am here to create more doubts.
Doubt is always about something which is positive. When somebody tells you ‘I love you’ and you say ‘really’. But do you say really when somebody says ‘I hate you’? You doubt your capabilities and you never doubt your weaknesses. You are so sure of your weaknesses. You doubt in the honesty of people and never in their dishonesty. Nature of doubt is such that it always clings to something which is positive. So if you have a doubt I will encourage you that this is very positive.
Q: Guruji you said to be a perfectionist is cause of stress. Yet everything about you is so perfect. You are perfect, your actions are perfect, your words are perfect, your understanding of God is so perfect, this Ashram is perfect and so many other things. What is the difference between your perfect thinking or, mine or ours?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Just that you have to look yourself in the mirror. That’s it. You move from perfection to perfection. You move from one perfection to another higher perfection. That’s how you have to look at life. Otherwise you see this is not perfect , everything is imperfect, everything is hopeless. And we tend to get into negative framework. Isn’t it?

From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Being Centered - talk By Sri Sri

Let us understand a little about the Shiva tattva. Only a little can be known. The intellect has to be content and finer feelings awakened. Both scientific understanding and spiritual wisdom are necessary to bring this contentment that is holistic and complete.There is no need to go to on long pilgrimages to find the Divine. If you don’t find God here, where you are, then it is not possible anywhere else. Where the minddissolves, Shiva is there. Be established wherever you are. The moment you areestablished, centered, you see that there is Divinity present everywhere. This is meditation. One of the names of Lord Shiva is Virupaksha - meaning one who is formless yet sees all. We know that there is air all around us and we can feel the air as well. But what if the air also starts feeling you? Space is all around us, we identify space. But what if space also recognizes and feels your presence? This happens. Only we don’t know it. Scientists know this and they call it the theory of relativity. The one who sees and that which is seen are both affected when seen. The Divine is all around you and is seeing you. He doesn’t have a form. He is the formless core of existence and the goal. He is the seer, sight and the scene. This formless Divinity is Shiva.To simply wake-up and experience this Shiva tattva is Shivratri.

Usually when there is celebration, awareness is lost. Deep rest in celebration with awareness is Shivratri. When you face some problem, you become aware and alert. We are at rest when everything is well; on Shivratri we rest with awareness. It is said that a yogi remains awake when everybody else is sleeping. For a yogi, everyday isShivratri. Lord Shiva is beautifully explained in a verse by Adi Shankaracharya (Sri Sri recites a few lines from the verse).

Adyantahinam - One without a beginning or end. Sarvada - He is the Bholenath (innocent ruler of all) who is present everywhere all the time. We think Shiva is somewhere else sitting with a snake around his neck.Shiva is one in whom everything has taken birth, who encompasses everything right this moment, and in whom everything in creation dissolves. Every form you see in thiscreation is all his form.

He permeates the entire creation. He is never born and has no end. He is eternal.

He is the fourth state of consciousness, the turiya avasta, the meditative state, that is beyond the waking, deep sleep and dream states.

He is the non-dual consciousness that is present everywhere. That’s why to do Shiva puja, you have to dissolve in Shiva yourself. Being Shiva, you do Shiva puja.Chidananda rupa - He is the consciousness that is pure bliss.

Tapo yoga gamya - One who can be known through tapa and yoga. The Shiva tattva can be experienced in the knowledge of the Vedas. The state of Shivoham (I am Shiva), Shiva kevaloham (there is only Shiva) is attained. Shivratri is the day to experience a wave of joy and contentment. Without yoga, Shiva can’t be experienced. Yoga doesn’t mean only asanas (physical postures) but that experience of Shiva tattva which happens with meditation, pranayam: when that ‘WOW’ happens from within.

The word Shambo has come from the same source - to realize how beautiful the Divine is, the creation and the Self is! It is a miracle how the same consciousness ispresent in every being in this creation! There is no other miracle greater than this. How did this One become so many? This tradition (of Shivratri) of moving from many to one is so unique. Yoga and meditation is necessary for that. Without meditation, the mind is not calmed. On the occasion of Shivratri meditation, bhajans are all part of the celebration. Everyone participates with a full heart. Everyone should sing.Shiva is the cause of all causes. Because of which everything is there – the tree growing, the sun rising, the wind blowing... The reason for everything happening is Shiva - because of whom everything happens and without whom, nothing happens.Panchmukha, Panchtattva – There are five faces to Shiva - Water, Air, Earth, Fire and Space. Understanding these five elements is tattva gyana (knowledge of the fiveelements). And then Shiva is worshipped as Ashtamurti (eight forms)– Mind, Memory, Ego are also included. This is both the form and formless aspect of Shiva. Worshipping Shiva is dissolving in the Shiv tattva and then wishing for something good. What to wish for? Wish with a liberal heart for the universal good, nobody should be unhappy in the world. ‘Sarve janah sukhino bhavantu .’ And make one sankalpa on this occasion. It is something which comes to you again and again like your breath, like yourheartbeat. And when you surrender such a sankalpa to the Divine, it will definitely come true.

We also worship nature. Divinity permeates everything in this Earth. Puja is not complete without honoring the trees, mountains, rivers, Earth and the people living on the Earth. Honoring everyone is Dakshina. Da means to give and Dakshina means giving something that will cleanse us of all impurities. Offering with which all your sins vanish. No puja is complete without Dakshina. When we act in society with skill and free from the distortions of the mind, all negative tendencies like anger, worries, sorrow are destroyed. I will say give your tensions, worries and sorrows as Dakshina. And how does that happen? With Sadhana (spiritual practices), Seva (service) andSatsang (company of the truth).

From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Leadership: From mob to movement - Talk By Sri Sri

Leadership is a manifestation of strong love and compassion for people. It represents a commitment to principles. In that sense, a certain degree of leadership is dormant in every individual. The challenge comes when one has to nurture it.
A true leader—whether political, religious or social—has many challenges to face. The capacity to express one’s commitment varies from individual to individual. It is often clogged by one’s likes and dislikes. Yet, a leader has to view everyone with the same outlook, appraise everyone with the same yardstick. He has to find discrimination as well as the much-needed wisdom to act at the right time.
The society he lives in and the groups he represents are not homogeneous and one cannot satisfy everybody. Yet, a leader has to carry everyone along and do justice to everybody. A leader has to withstand criticism and not react emotionally to situations. Often leaders are surrounded by sycophants who try to boost their egos for their own personal agenda. A leader does need hands and feet and has to depend on people around him. At the same time, he should not find himself in a position where he gets confined in a fortress of his close aides or becomes a captive of his admirers.
One of the most desired qualities of a true leader is the courage to stretch his hands toward his critics and have the patience to listen to them. A true leader takes failures with as much equanimity as he would successes that come to his doorstep. These days leaders are defensive all the time, explaining their shortcomings or justifying their wrong actions. A true leader will neither complain nor explain, and is open to learning all the time. Admitting a past mistake and creating space for others with completely diverse viewpoints can make a leader more acceptable, universal. A leader does not pass the buck.
A true leader balances ideology and practicality, long-term goals with short-term needs. Those who stick only to idealism cannot become leaders and those who think they are very practical and without any ideology also bite the dust.
A leader cannot be either generic or specific. He has to strike the balance between personal attention to people and the generic vision for the group, community or country he leads.
A leader should have the courage to accept his weak moments. He should understand that people are magnanimous. They would appreciate his straightforwardness and accept his shortcomings rather than him trying to hide them.
Some leaders are too diplomatic while others are too straightforward in their approach. While people do not trust those who are very diplomatic, they do not want anything to do with those who are very blunt and justify their rudeness in the garb of straightforwardness. People who are very straightforward and blunt in their approach often don’t find followers. It is like tuning a guitar. If the strings are stretched too tight you cannot play it, and if the strings are too loose you cannot create music either. A leader has to strike the balance between diplomacy and straightforwardness.
While self-righteous people create distaste in others, those who take credit for every good action are equally distanced. A leader should acknowledge others’ contributions and at the same time see that these contributions don’t get to their heads.
A leader can create a mob but he should know that a mob is short lived. A shortsighted leader creates a mob; a leader with wisdom creates a movement. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr. are examples of inspirational leaders who created movements.
All this may sound utopian, but in reality, if you look keenly into the lives of the most successful leaders, you will find all these qualities naturally manifest at some time or the other. You don’t have to do much to inculcate these qualities; just their awareness is good enough to make a good leader.
Be one. The world needs you.

Source : Srisri.org
From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Love and Forgiveness - Talk by Sri Sri

First of all, love is something that cannot be hidden. You cannot hide love, nor can you express it fully. It shows up in your eyes, in your smile, in your gestures. You can never hide love; at the same time you can never fully express love. This is the predicament that all lovers around the world have felt. How much ever they have expressed, still they felt, ‘I am not able to express it fully the way I want to.' That is the nature of love.

Similarly, truth is something which you cannot avoid. You cannot avoid truth, yet you cannot define truth.
Beauty is something which you cannot possess, and you cannot renounce it either. You can never renounce beauty. And life is Truth, Love and Beauty; all three things together. But our experience is something else.
We don’t experience love all the time in our life. We find hatred, jealousy, greed, arrogance; all these negative emotions.
As children, we were all born with pure love. What happened as we grew older? Where did we lose this innocence? What happened to us?
If we look deep into the mechanics of these negative emotions, then we find that beneath these negative emotions, is also love.
We are angry because we love perfection. All those who love perfection are prone to anger. Because you want things to be perfect, when they are not perfect, you get angry.

Similarly, what is greed? When you think objects are more important than people, then you call it greed. When your love for a person is more than the welfare of the person, you call it jealousy. When you love yourself too much, you call it arrogance.
Love minus wisdom gives rise to all these negative emotions.
Love with wisdom will keep you sane, and on the track of Divinity. And that is the message of all the reverends here; to unite you with wisdom.
We don’t need to learn how to love. Love is our nature. Like our bodies are made up of amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, etc., our spirit is made up of love. We are love.
Love is not just an emotion; some sort of wiggly-wiggly emotional outburst. Love is our very nature. We need wisdom to keep it the way it was bestowed to us by God. And that is what all the scriptures in the world tell us.
In the Hindu scriptures, the nature of God is described as Asti, Bhati, Preeti, i.e., Existence, Effulgence and Love.
God exists; He is self–effulgent and He is Love, and there is only one God. Not many.

Often people think that Hinduism means many Gods. That is not the case. It is one God in many costumes, expressing Himself in many forms. But it is only one God. Let me give you an example. From the same wheat we make calzone, cupcakes, bread and bagels. These are all different expressions of wheat. In the same way, it is one Divinity expressed in many forms. God is love and so are we. Somewhere we lost this wisdom. We lost the innocence. We started building walls between us. That is when all the negative emotions and tendencies started in the world.
To develop ourselves, and to go into the depth of prayer, we need to take five days off and have five experiences.

The first experience is, we must spend one day in a prison. You don’t have to commit a crime to spend a day in prison. Just go spend a day there and talk to the prisoners.

When you talk to these people, who have been condemned by the rest of society and the world, you will realize that there is a beautiful person hiding inside each of them. And you will find that forgiveness comes within you spontaneously.
Inside every culprit, there is a victim crying for help. When you see from a wide-angle lens, you see that a culprit is also a victim. When you see that victim inside the culprit, you don’t need to forgive, forgiveness happens; in fact compassion spontaneously arises in your heart.
Crime happens due to lack of understanding, wrong education, wrong indoctrination, emotional outbursts as we don’t know how to control our rage, anger and frustrations. When uncontrolled emotions springs into action, it becomes a crime. It is wisdom which checks these uncontrolled emotions; wisdom which makes you think before you act. Crime happens when you act first and think about it later. There are those who have committed mistakes intentionally (due to wrong understanding or ideology), and there are those who have committed mistakes unintentionally (due to lack of awareness). These are the two positions from where someone commits a crime, or makes a mistake. People commit mistakes because of lack of wisdom, lack of happiness or lack of the inner connection with the Divine. Someone who is happy, content and in love will not harm anyone. It’s impossible.
If someone harms another, it is because there is a deep wound or scar inside of them which needs to be healed. So spending one day in prison is a very good idea. It will expand our awareness and make us understand those people who need forgiveness. Then forgiveness becomes easier for us.

The second experience is to spend a day in the hospital. When you see sick people who are suffering, then you will thank God for your good health. Compassion and gratefulness arises within you.
The third experience is to spend one day as a school teacher, especially with challenged children. If you have to teach them, and they don’t learn, it gives you patience to accept them and repeat the same thing again and again till they learn. We can learn how to make others understand with patience. It is a big challenge to be a school teacher. I heard of statistics that say, in Germany, 40% of school teachers are depressed. Just imagine what will happen to the little kids who go to school. They have to see a depressed face all day and come back home depressed. You can only give what you have. If you have joy, you give joy. If you have love, you give love. If you are depressed, you can only give depression. This is unfortunate because we don’t know how to handle our mind and emotions.

One day in school as a teacher will give us enormous patience in life to tolerate ignorance and to teach from the space of love. A teacher is one who gives love unconditionally.
Someone asked me once, ‘What do you get by doing all that you are doing? Why are you travelling to so many countries, talking to people day and night, conducting these breathing workshops? What do you get?’
I asked him, ‘Did you watch the movie Life of Pi?’
He said, ‘Yes.’
I asked him, ‘After watching the movie, did you call anyone and tell them its a good movie?’
He replied, ‘Yes, I called several of my friends and told them it’s a great movie and they should watch it.’
I asked him if the producer gave him any incentive or commission to do so.
He replied, ‘No.’
I replied, ‘The nature of joy is to share. If you find some happiness within you, you want to share it with others. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Sharing and caring.’

The fourth experience we must have is to spend a day in a mental hospital. Listen to all the irrelevant talk around you. You will come to realize the whole world is like that. Everybody is talking in tangents. Once you realize this, then your buttons cannot be pushed anymore. You feel so strong from inside. You will not get upset if someone passes a derogatory remark about you. You will stand up to criticism. You will take the criticism if there is any truth in it. You will be able to give constructive criticism wherever it is needed. The courage to take and give criticism comes to you if you can spend one day knowing that people are talking irrelevant things.

The fifth experience is to spend one whole day with a farmer in a farm. You will start caring for this planet; this Earth. You will care for the environment. If we don’t take care of our planet today, we will not be able to pass it on to the next generation. The coming generation deserve better conditions: pure air, water and earth. Diseases are on the rise because we have used so many harmful chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides. The nutrients are drained out from the earth. The American Nutritional Institute talks about how bananas grown today in America have very little nutrition compared to the 30’s and 40’s. Our vegetables may be bigger in size, but have very little nutritional content in them. This is because we have drained and depleted the soil with pesticides and chemicals. We need to take care of Mother Earth. Love for the Earth, love for people is same as the love for God. They are two sides of the same coin. If you say that you love God, but don’t care for his people, then it has no meaning.

Love gets destroyed when we start demanding for it. This is what usually happens in relationships. We fall in love and we fall out of love very soon. It’s like breathing in and breathing out. Why? That is because we start demanding.

I have an advice for couples here. When you find that your spouse’s attention or expression of love for you has decreased, don’t ask them, ‘Do you really love me?’ Instead ask them, ‘Why do you love me so much?’ Even if they don’t love you then, their love for you increases.
To prove that you really love somebody is a big burden. Love cannot be totally expressed.

I have observed a strange thing in the world. In the East, they don’t express love at all. They never verbalize love. And in the West, we verbalize love a lot. We keep saying, ‘Honey, honey’, and then we become diabetic. In the East, the husband never says, ‘I love you’, to his wife in his entire life. We have to find a middle point; a good combination of East and West. I feel love should be expressed, but should be hidden at the same time. When you don’t verbalize love too much it shows in your actions. Just like a seed. If you sow a seed too deep in the soil, it can’t sprout. Neither will it sprout if you keep it on the surface. You need to sow it a little beneath the soil so that it can sprout and become a plant. We need to express love but keep it a little inward, so that it oozes out in our actions.

When I was a young boy, I went to a tailor to get my shirt stitched. Those days they had no machines, they would sew it by hand. The tailor would have the needle on his cap and the scissors beneath his feet. I felt this man had a message. That which cuts, he put beneath his feet, and that which sews and unites, he has honored by putting on his head. The forces in the world that divide people should be put down, and the forces which unite people need to be honored. A tailor could convey this message. The whole world is full of messages of love. We just need the eye to see and take them into our own lives.

Do not demand love from your spouse; let them know that you are there for them.

That is what our learned reverends do when they conduct their mass and prayer sermons. They just channel the love of God. They express the sense of belongingness. That is a supreme act, and attitude.

So love and forgiveness go hand in hand. It is much easier when forgiveness becomes compassion. Do you see how crazy a puppy or dog you have at home gets, how it expresses its love when you go home. It doesn’t verbalize anything, but expresses its love for you. The same love is being expressed in the entire creation, by the trees, by nature.
From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Talk by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for successful Marriage

Marriage, A Commitment; a talk by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar the founder of Art of Living organization on August 2004 at Montreal, Canada. In this talk He has given answers to some of the questions that are related to marriage, devotion, love and commitment in our life. Thanks Guruji for giving such a valuable knowledge and education to us.

Q: Guruji, can you comment on the commitment in marriage?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: life energy meets two banks to flows; those are commitment. Water when they flow between two banks, they have a direction. Similarly life force in you flows is a direction and the banks of those directions are commitment. And wedding is such a commitment. Commitment to share and care. Share one’s life and care for the other. It
helps one to come out of self centeredness. In marriages, you know always think about one self; then now you have to don’t to think about yourself, think about your spouse. For everything, even if you want go on vacation you can’t just wonder alone; you’ve to consult madam. You’ve to consult your better half; and all decisions have to be taken in consultation.


Q: Guruji how can be one devoted in the institution of marriage?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: devotion is nothing but love; it mix maturity. See you love somebody, because you like something in that somebody. Your likes and dislikes always changing. Suppose tomorrow your likes changed, your dislikes changed, and then your love turns into hatred. But when the love matures and doesn’t turn into hatred, that love is called devotion. Some so devoted to wife means, how much she is, whatever she is, I just am committed to her. That’s devotion. The first is attraction; just on the physical level. Attraction dies on very fast. On the physical level there is attraction. The step further on the mental level, there is love. And it is in the mental level - jealousy, possessiveness, hatred all these distortions of love happens. But when you surpass that level, then there comes devotion. It’s at to the love of that mother to her child. Mother doesn’t bother about the child thinks and does. You know, the child kicks the mother or are screams at the mother; she is not perturbed at all. Still she goes and takes the parents feet, sits and dissolves everything. Child is kicking in, screaming in, running in, it refusing to take medicines that she loves conclusion and doesn’t get emotions, cheese after the kid; and she siege that kid has what he does for that kid, she gives it; and that is what devotion is; which is independent of the reaction or response. The love which is independent of response is called devotion.

From Talks by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar