Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q:
What do you say about the westernization of our culture?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Pick up good things like cleanliness and following the rules from the Western society. Western Civilization has such cleanliness and the sense of following rules. We need to pick up that in the East.I want to tell you a story. Way back in 1978 when many of you were not even born, I was in Switzerland and it was the first time I had been there. I was walking in one of the areas which hardly had any crowd. I took a chocolate and just put the wrapper on the road – like what we do in India. There was hardly any crowd there. An elderly lady, with a stick, saw me from a far distance. She came to me and said,“You have to pick this up and put it in the dustbin.” She showed me the dustbin placed a little farther. You know an elderly lady coming all the way walking with her stick and telling me that I should pick up that chocolate paper. I was so impressed with the amount of responsibility people take to keep the city clean. We must learn this in India that how clean they keep, and how environmental conscious people in the West are. Even if people protest in western countries, they do it as a silent march. We have to learn all this from Western Civilization.
And then what we don’t have to learn from western civilization?
Too much formality, the mother has to take permission to go to her daughter, or the daughter has to take appointment from the mother. This has started to happen somewhere in urban society also. The naturalness, sense of belongingness is disappearing from the society. There is such a sense of belongingness and human values even in a village in the east, and that is to be maintained.
There are some cultural identities like respecting the elders, and we shouldn’t lose this. This is very important aspect of the entire east.
There is a trend of expressing too much love in the west. People end up being diabetic saying honey, honey all the time! And it is opposite in the east. So, we need to have the middle path in the expression of love. Not expressing even once, like the case is with some parents and their kids, or among siblings, is wrong. Also keep on expressing love all the time is also wrong. Expressing love is like sowing a seed. If you keep it just on the surface, it won’t sprout, but also if you bury it very deep underneath the soil, even then it won’t sprout.
There are many things in the east which people in the west search for, like joint family and the sense of belongingness.
Q:
How should be one’s relation with the Master? One is an ordinary person and other is a person with so many powers. Should it be like a friend or a beloved?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Let love be love. Don’t give it a name. Love is above all relations. Being in love with the master is like being in Love with the divine. Master, God and spirit are not different. These all are one. Only one exists – one non dual existence. Everything is divine.Q:
Today is my second day of silence. My mind is a devil’s workshop, it keeps having thoughts endlessly!
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Sing, observe nature, and observe your thoughts. Look at nature as though you are looking at it for the first time – look at the trees, and look at the birds.When you observe these things, your mind becomes calmer. Observe your thoughts. Silence makes you observe. As you observe, your thoughts will reduce.
The thoughts were always there, but only in silence can you observe them!
Q:
Which Veda has medical knowledge?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It is called the Ayurveda. It is the subordinate Veda of the main four Vedas. So both, the Atharvaveda and Rigveda - the first and last Vedas have aconnection to Ayurveda. So all the Ayurveda stories are so very, very beautiful. It’s said that one thousand Rishis were sitting and meditating. And a Rishi named Bharadwaja told them, ‘You keep awake. We are going into deep trance, meditation and we are going to say just what we see. But there should be somebody to note down, write everything down’. They told once person, ‘You don't meditate. You sit, watch and note down everything’.And that is how Maharshi Bharadwaja noted down, wrote down in a forest when thousands of the Rishis meditated together and they were downloading it and thenthey were saying it. Bharadwaja went from one to another, to each person and started noting them down and that is how the Ayurveda books were written. So even today, after so many thousands of years, it holds good. It is a Materia Medica - which herb is for which part of the body and what functions, what arethe combinations, what one should do and what oneshould not. Everything about health is written.When the British ruled India and the man who was in charge of India, the British gentleman, wrote to Queen Victoria of England saying, ‘You know, people should come and learn plastic surgery over here. How people can fix your nose, your skin, your legs,’ he said. It’s amazing that when knowledge was zero or nothing in England, it was so advanced in India. Lord Macaulay said in the parliament, that if you want to rule this country (India), first you must destroy the spirituality. Much has been written about Lord Macaulay's statement. He said, ‘I traveled the length and breadth of India and I did not see one beggar,one poor man. And people know science and medical things so well. 88000 medical institutions were there only in the south of India.’He said, if you want to rule this country, you must stop this. So they systematically closed down the medical institutions, Sanskrit colleges so that people could no longer read the books. You know, when all your books are in Sanskrit and they shut down all the Sanskrit schools by rule, your next generation getsno access to the knowledge and that is what exactly happened in India. There is a whole presentation about Lord Macaulay's vision that they could rule India only by doing this. Anyway, that is all history.What I am saying is that Ayurveda is still very potent knowledge- it’s a science even today. Hmmm? But many books are missing. Many were burnt down. India had a very crazy king at one point of time, he was called Aurangzeb. He came to power by putting his own father in jail who was the king then. And then he burnt big libraries in India like Nalanda. History says that the books in Nalanda library burned for six months. He called all the scholars and he told them, ‘What is in your library?’ They said, ‘A lot of knowledge.’ He was very fanatic. He took the Quran and asked, ‘Do you agree that this book has all the knowledge that is there in the library?’ They said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Then what is the use of having a library and so many books? Burn them down.Then one of them said, ‘No. There is other knowledge that is not in this book.’ Then Aurangzeb said, ‘Then they shouldn't exist. Anything which is not in this book shouldn't exist anywhere, it is not correct. It is not God’s! Burn them down. Thousands of years ago, philosophy of the Buddhists, Hindus, Jains,Sikh were available; medical, archeology, astronomy, metallurgy, engineering, science - all these books - were available. They were all burnt down. So whatever people could take overnight and memorize it, those things remained and it continued. So these are all past histories.Q:
Guruji, when I heard that the world is going to come to an end in 2012, it was a blessing in disguise for me because I was able to stop my racing and really look at myself and do the things I really wanted to. I could bring some rest for my mind.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Pralaya (dissolution) can happen anytime. Thousands of black holes can swallow the solar systems, the sun is carefully moving through them. Whether dissolution happens or not, you still keep your calm and work to uphold justice and the truth without being caught up in craving and aversion. Do what you can.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 said life is simple, yet why does it turn so complex? It is very difficult to make decisions. Why can’t we avoid things which are complicated?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Life is simple while people are complicated. Why can’t we avoid things which are complicated? We have too much time in life so we make things complicated.Life is very simple and life is very complicated! Both exist depending on the circumstances and our perception at that point of time. Life is a combination of both.
Q:
We crave for the pleasure of the senses, personal gain and power. Do cravings drop one at a time or all together?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Sometimes cravings dissolve one at a time, sometimes all together. As soon as anurag(devotion) is born in life, everything else is dropped. When there is love and devotion you will see that all the negativity is removed on its own. When the satva is increased in life, attachments and aversions due to rajoguna, tamguna are themselves removed. For some, it happens slowly and gradually and some undergo misery and then drop it. They drop it because of misery.Q:
I do sadhna every day, but I want to be with you all the time and if I see other people talking to you, I keep hallucinating that you speaking to me only. Sometimes I feel any gesture of yours works and I feel alright, but today while meeting our entire group, you didn’t even see or look at me. So, I don’t know if that is obsession and how do I get over it?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
See, the moment you knew it was obsession, you already got over it. OK? So, it is OK to draw attention for a while but you don’t have to draw attention all the time. You be happy, be centered, keep doing service, sadhna, satsang. Don’t sit and do analysis –“Was it devotion or was it hallucination?”- Analysis makes it even worse. Just be natural, move on, and take it as it comes-OK? Got it? See, we always get what we need. This basic principal we must keep in mind and keep moving.Q:
What is the difference between ego and self-respect?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
In ego you need someone else. In self-respect, others are not needed, and no one can take it away from you.