Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Do you represent religion?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
I represent spirituality which is the essence of all religions. I represent humanism which is the essence of all religions. I represent love and wisdom which is the goal of all religions, and I represent multi-religious dialogue and multi-cultural festivals.
I feel at home wherever I go. Not once I have felt homesick or I felt I belong to only this place or this culture. I always feel the whole world is my family and everyone is part of me.
What is the way of life of Art of Living?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Art of Living is to live life with wisdom and with a broad vision. The Art of living is to create a violence-free society, disease-free body, confusion-free mind, inhibition-free intellect, trauma-free memory and sorrow-free soul.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
When you sleep, you go beyond the body and beyond pain. But if you meditate, you can consciously go beyond pain.
Love or reason?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Both are part of life. You should not choose between them. It is like asking someone ‘Should I watch or listen to television?’ You have to do both.
When you do business, do it with reason. When you relate to people don’t do it as business, do it with love. If you do business with your heart and live your life with your head, it will be a disaster.
Gurudev, what is fear and what is fantasy? Many of my fears in day to day life are baseless; things that will never happen. Why do I picture the worst scenario?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Fear is love upside down. If you have fear, then know that you have the ability to love. So, when you fall in love or raise in love, your fear will simply dissipate. Fear is nothing but another way of love.
Gurudev, is there an intelligent life outside the planet earth?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You can’t say no, there isn’t. To say no, you have to explore everything. If you can’t say no, it means yes.
When everything is changing then how can it still be meaningful.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Everything is changing and that change is meaningful. Everything is changing, and there is something which is not changing. And the changing and non-changing are two sides of the same coin. The non-changing has become the changing, that is the meaning of it. If you are confused, that means you got it (laughter). If you feel you have understood it, then you have not got it.
Keep the aspiration for higher knowledge. Be content, happy and yet have aspiration for higher knowledge. These are two opposite things – one side is contentment and on the other side is longing for higher knowledge.
If you are simply longing for higher knowledge without any contentment, then you will go all over the place, you will go spiritual shopping and hear and do so many things and get thoroughly confused.
If you have only contentment and you feel ‘I have learnt it all’, then you will allow the passion for knowledge to die out. The skill that you need to develop is to keep the passion for knowledge, and at the same time maintain the contentment; a balance – this is the bicycle that you have to ride!
Longing or craving with frustration will do you no good. The scriptures very clearly say this. If you are longing, craving and running with frustration, you will get more frustrated. You won’t get anywhere. At the same time, if you are contented, inert and laid back, and you think, ‘Anyways whatever has to happen will happen. Anyways it is all karma’, then too, you will not get anywhere.
In India this is what has happened. When it comes to doing something good, people say, “God willing, it will happen”. To do anything wrong, we don’t say, “If God is willing let it happen”.
When I was in Israel, they showed me two groups of people – one group of society are working hard. The other side of the society keeps saying,” If God willing it will happen”, and they haven’t ploughed the field at all. Nothing is growing on the field.
On the other side, the people are finding innovative ways of farming through drip irrigation, and other things, and they are growing.
In India also, it is like this. People say, “If God calls me to do meditation, then I will come.” You think God is going to call you, “Come, do meditation.”
So this is a sense of contentment with no passion. And there are some who have passion with no contentment. Both are two extremes. But the one who succeeds will have passion and contentment, together.
If you look at Mahatma Gandhi’s life, this was there – he was content at every step and he had passion as well. He would do satsang every day, meditate, listen to the Bhagavad Gita. Contentment and passion was both part of his routine. You will also see this in all those who are successful.
(To the crowd attending the satsang): Keep in mind, that you already have both contentment and passion. I see the contentment in all your faces, and it is because you have passion that you are all here. So, don’t doubt yourself. If you have no passion, you wouldn’t come here. You have all the virtues. You don’t have to cultivate any of these. Go with this confidence!
Gurudev, why there is pain in longingness?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
The pain is good will make you very creative. It will bring out the poet from within you, or it will make you an artist. It can also bring out the sevak in you. It can bring out the warrior in you. You have so many good qualities, and longing will bring them all out.
There was one generation of Masters who were very tough. Tough in the sense, if you desire something, that will not happen. They would nip desire in the bud.
If the you would say. “I want to go to California”, then forget about it, you will never go to California. To come to a state of no-mind, they would use this tactic of crushing every desire that would arise. At some point of time you would have to give-up, and then you go to the no-mind state when you are unconditionally happy.
If you would go to them and say, “Oh, I have this problem”, they would say, ”It’s your karma, bear it. You must have done something terrible, so experience it and finish it off”. That was the attitude – no compassion. Just imagine if there is no compassion, then what do you need to do? You have to stand up.
A creeper needs a tree to stand up, but a tree doesn’t need another tree to stand up. So, they would completely destroy all that is delicate in you. If you are emotional, they would take a hammer. If you complain, they would say, ‘Let it be’. If you say, “Some people are blaming me”. They would say, “Yes, more people should blame you”. They would push all your buttons and make you so numb to everything in the world, till you realize that everything is nothing. It was a very tough journey. I don’t think anyone of you can survive for even one day, it was such a tough atmosphere.
All that you identify yourself as would be simply ripped off. It was a long and tough journey. which very few could survive. And there would be a millions chances to doubt and run away, only the very strong could survive such conditions.
In The Art of Living, we have taken a complete 180 degree turn and adopted a completely different route. Here we say, “What is your desire? Okay, let it be fulfilled”. Sometimes I wonder, “Am I making everyone weak?” But there is no option. At least this has put you on the path of knowledge.
I see you all are growing. Everyone is growing but I tell you, don’t get stuck in small little things. This world is Maya. There are always some issues that will prop up in life. You will have some excuse or some incidences to worry about. When such things come, you have to remember that this is all Maya, this is all ephemeral, this is all impermanent and stand up.
Your wants and desires are getting fulfilled. For some people it takes longer time, for some people it happens in a shorter time, and for some people it happens immediately. Many times, we only have put thought-constraints in our own mind. We put the sankalpa and we put the vikalpa as well. And to come out of this mess I don’t see any other path which is as effective as ours right now. If I find something better, I will myself ask you to do it. But the other generations of masters were very different.
Gurudev, how do we handle a situation where one family member wants to convert to another religion?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
First of all, honor all religions. The real problem is that they don’t know their own religion completely. Tell them to first understand their own religion, study and go deep into it and then decide.
When you are converting religions, you are implying that this religion is not good, which is why I am taking another one. If you go into the root of any religion, you realize that all religions are one. And so you honor, learn from everybody and grow spiritually.
Conversion should be from the head to the heart, from badness to goodness and not from one religion to another.
In India, there are so many temples but unfortunately there is ill maintenance of our temples. The people who visit these temples behave badly and mess up the temples. As a result, a lot of our children do not want to go to temples anymore. What is the way forward?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes, this is true especially in Tamil Nadu, but not in Karnataka. If you see the temples in Karnataka, they are kept very neat and clean. We need to teach the people in Tamil Nadu to maintain cleanliness.
Often people come to the temple, break a coconut and spill the water all over and then leave in a hurry. This is because the people are too caught up in rituals in Tamil Nadu. In North India that is not the case. In the North, they sit and sing bhajans, and the temples are kept fairly clean. Of course, there are some temples there also which are dirty. We need to educate the priests of the temples to keep temples clean.
The thevarams (hymns) that are sung in the temples are so beautiful. They address God saying ‘You are my wealth, you are my honey, my eyes, my everything’. This is a very unique way of addressing God as my beloved. When these songs are sung, the meanings should also be explained to people; otherwise, they chant in some language that nobody understands, and people don’t connect. They just go to the temple, do some rituals and leave the temple.
Actually, when you go to a temple, you should sit there for some time and then come. But what do people do? They do an act of sitting down and getting up in 10 seconds or less, they pretend as though they sat. Why? Because it is part of the rules that if people don’t sit in the temple, then they won’t get any benefits. This is written in the temple’s rules and regulations. That won’t help; sitting means what? They should sit in meditation. There are a thousand pillars in many of the temples in Tamil Nadu. These pillars are meant for people to sit and meditate, and go deep inwards, but nobody does it.
Even the aarti that is done, nobody understands why they do it! In aarti, you light a camphor and say to God ‘Let my life keep going around you only, and not away from you. Let your thoughts linger on in my mind all day and night’. This is the prayer. Our life is like a flame. If you light a candle and turn it upside down, the flame still goes up. Like that, you pray, ‘Let my enthusiasm, my life and values always go up, and let it always be around you’. This is the feeling behind the aarti, but we don’t understand it.
Why do you break a coconut in the temple? Our body is compared to a coconut. Body should be strong like the shell. The mind should be like the white kernel inside, and your heart or feelings should be like the sweet water. So by breaking the coconut, you say, ‘I keep my emotions and feelings, like the sweet water, in front of you.’
You need some rituals to express your feelings, e.g., when someone dear to you comes, you greet them with flowers. In the ancient days, they did these rituals. Whatever God is doing to you, you say, ‘I am going to replicate, do the same to you.’ Like when children play, they say, ‘I have become a doctor, and I am going to test you or I am making coffee and you should drink!’
There is a joy in playing like that; puja is the same (concept). God has given you rain, so you offer him water. He has given you rice, fruits so you also offer rice and fruits. Such practices are also there in Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and Sikhism. This has been developed in the East and is also done in Islam and Christianity; you offer candles and flowers in Christianity. In Islam, you go to the Darga, spread a sheet, offer prayer beads and flowers. If these rituals are not done with feelings, then there is no purpose in doing them, and it is not compulsory that you have to do it.
In the olden days, temples were not just places of worship; they were centers of culture where dance, music and poetry would flourish. It was a meeting place for community people to get together, there were no separate community halls those days. Weddings happened in temples, there was art and architecture. You see the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, see the amount of paintings and carvings there, it is unbelievable.
When I was in Hyderabad, they took me to this 1,000 pillars temple, which was dilapidated. The beauty was that you could pass a fine thread through those stone carvings. It is a wonder as to how they carved such needles without breaking the stones, where only a thread could pass through; we had some amazing workmanship then. Temples were the kind of places where all this was exhibited, so we definitely need to keep them clean. We need to educate people; knowledge of all this is necessary.