Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q:
How to know you have given 100 percent?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
100 percent - you will feel! You know! I will ask 10 people to feed you in kitchen. Will run away! You will know.Q:
How far can a violent person go until we decide to defend ourselves? How do we draw the line between tolerance or love or acceptance or understanding and self-defiance?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Tolerance doesn’t mean allowing anybody to do any violent act, but violence can’t quell violence. Through wisdom, without getting upset, tensed, the way a doctor treats patients you must shut the violence. You know what we do is to react to violence. Reaction to violence is no good but action to violence is essential.Q:
The state of society nowadays is very bad. There is suppression due to casteism and a large economic divide, and for a number of reasons, one feels lonely. How does one gather strength and gain self confidence during these times?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Do you feel lonely here? (Audience says "No!")That's it! We have satsangs here and everywhere, so you should feel like a member of a "sangha" (group).
You are not alone in your fight for justice and pursuit of peace or happiness.
Truth will always triumph.
Q:
What is the difference between a dream and an aim?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
When you talk about an aim you think it is practical, but when you say I have a dream, you think it may be or may not be practical. When you say, ‘I have a dream’ there is a little doubt about it but you feel stronger about having an aim.Q:
Can we aspire for something higher like enlightenment at the age of twenty one?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Definitely. You should aspire for enlightenment and enlightenment is unconditional happiness, unconditional love and a life in which you are in the driver’s seat. You must aspire for enlightenment. Right from when you recognize to aspire anything in life. Go to the highest first and all the good things will come along, you don’t have to make an effort for it.When I say you don’t have to make an effort, I mean you don’t have to sit and worry about it. When you aspire for the highest, your action will be spontaneous and in the spontaneity you will see things have started falling into place.
Q:
How to choose career?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Choice is yours, blessing is mine! It is tough time, and it is confusing to chose among engineering, medical, architecture, charted accountancy etc. especially when you are equally good in more than one subject. It is good to bake a little bit in that confusion. But it is important that you put in your 100 percent in anything you chose.Many times it happens that you choose medical and later on you feel you should have opted for engineering, or you choose engineering and you feel you should have gone for charted accountancy. This is all illusion. Every profession is the same.
Q:
What is thought, Why it comes and from where it comes?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Is this a thought? It came in you? Why did it come? Now find out. As soon as you realize this, the question is, itself, a thought and it has come in you, you have answers for the first two questions. And why does it come? Because of a lack of any other questions.Now I want you find its source. When you start finding source of thought, you have started on a journey for which you are here. Our journey is to find the source, from where this thought has arisen. I want all of you to be scientists. Scientist goes on experimenting, asking questions. It’s a very goodopportunity to find out where it comes from? What is its origin? Since it comes in you, you find its answer. If it doesn’t come in you and somebody else, then I’llanswer.Q:
Guruji you say that there is no difference between you and me, then how come you have such radiance but I don’t?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You blossom and you will find light is anyway there. Every bud has all that it needs to be a flower. There is no much difference between a bud and flower. The bud hasn’t yet fully blossomed but it will be. If you will continue attending such satsangs, you will find you have no less radiance. It will start coming to you very easily.Q:
I have insomnia for many years. I am unable to do the things that I want to do.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
This is the difficulty. Too much dreaming, too much wanting to do, this has all caused the insomnia. I want nothing, I do nothing. – keep these two things in mind. You will fall asleep like a baby.Someone from the audience: Thank you for the course! I feel so good with it.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I belong to you, you belong to me!
Q:
Dear Guruji, I feel that my coming to you now has become an ego issue. I come to you to see what you will say to me or to get attention from you and not because I feel deep love and gratitude. I would like to feel the true deep love and gratitude like I have been before. I want to serve out of love and not out of feeling that this is what I am expected to do.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You know, feelings are like clouds. They are like the waves on the surface of the ocean. They arise, they come and they go. They change. We shouldn’t be bent too much by our feelings.Do you see what I am saying? Life moves with commitment, not just feelings. And love is a gift. You can't force anyone to feel love. Your wanting to feel love becomes a hindrance to feel love. Just relax. I have spoken about this in the Bhakti sutras. When you want love, that want itself is turning or delayinglove from manifesting.So all that you need to do is to let go and relax. You will see your nature is love. Love is always there. It will manifest when it should. Like the sun is always there but it comes at its own time. Yes?The sun doesn’t come up all the time though it is there twenty four hours. But it is in different places. In the same way, all the beautiful feelings in yourlife are there with you all the time. You can’t forcefully manifest them. They will manifest at different times in life. And that’s why be more relaxed and take them as they come. Yes?