Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Meditation. Meditation will generate your thought power, your intention. So if you do few minutes of meditation, pranayama, your thoughts will become powerful. So with little effort the task will be accomplished.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
What is in the space? Everything is in the space; there is nothing outside the space.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You know you cannot be but do some action, some karma. It’s part of our nature. We have to keep acting. And if you consciously take a decision and act it is different than unconsciously doing something. So you consciously take a decision to go on the treadmill, this is an action. Otherwise you sit and you feel so restless, you keep shaking your hands and your legs the whole day sitting in your office at your table. This only shows restlessness. You are moving you leg so many times. You are compelled to do so because your body wants that circulation. You never gave that circulation time for the body so you feel restless. This is not happening as an exercise, it is not benefitting you but it is an action which you cannot stop. So some actions you consciously choose to do, that also cuts the karma.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Just wait for the elections and choose a more enlightened president. You know, in fact you cannot judge someone as not enlightened or enlightened. Sometimes you occupy a seat; it is not one man’s job. The whole system is such, with all good intention a person goes and sits as president in a chair but he’s unable to do what he wants to do because he already received a huge baggage from the past and he has a million pressures from all corners. So you don’t think that one president can change the face of a nation. He’s dependent on so many aspects for his own judgments, his own action, and his own knowledge. That’s why believe in one divine power which rules the whole world and which brings what is needed when it is needed.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
After meditation you feel headache! Do you have a headache now? Were you trying to shove the thoughts away? You should not suddenly come back, you should slowly come back. See from deep meditation suddenly you come back it is like when you are deep in sleep someone wakes you, suddenly you wake up, what happens? Headache comes, right? Like that, so take little longer time to come back. Take a little deeper breath, relax and drink a lot of water.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
(shaking his hands), you can shake (laughter and applause). Shake up and wake up!Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Karma, karma in the past, yes. They have just come to take service from the parents, like mentally retarded children they come. They have just come to the world to get some seva done by the parents, that’s all. They are not even aware that they are enjoying or suffering. For others it may appear they are suffering but for them they are not suffering. Do you see what I’m saying? They have just come to the world to take seva from the parents and to bring them misery, which was due to them somehow.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Drop the question now. (laughing) You have no option. If I don’t answer, you have no option you have to drop the question.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
‘Swaastika’ symbolizes the cycle. ‘Swaastha’ means established in the Self. ‘Swaastika’ means that which is healthy for humanity; that which contains all the four aspects that puts you into yourself, ‘Dharma (righteousness), Artha (desires), Kaama(means), Moksha(liberation).’ Unfortunately, ‘Swaastika’ symbol was taken by Hitler. He put it upside down. ‘Swaastika’ represents peace actually, but when he put the whole thing upside down, it became war; the reverse. That’s how it is! Time passes very fast when we are happy and it seems to be going very slow when we are unhappy and when we have to wait for somebody, right? So mind and time are connected.Dear Guruji, does the devotion to a person to a guru get carried on to his next life? And does an enlightened soul also have devotion to his guru? If not then I don’t desire enlightenment.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes, devotion is your nature it won’t leave you. Devotion is abiding in your own nature. So like sweetness cannot leave sugar, the coolness cannot leave ice, the nature to flow does not leave water right! You can’t call it water and it does not flow. Similarly devotion is there in your nature; don’t worry about it, okay.