Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Being in touch with your very center. When you worry there is a tendency to lose that focus or centredness. It is the same when you are tired or too busy. Self referral means coming back to yourself, to your center again and again. The core value within you.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Satsang increases awareness and a sense of belongingness. So many of us are here together but we are not asking each other about our caste or religion, are we? We are sitting here together as one family!Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You can come and serve in the Ashram anytime.(The person then tells Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I’m very happy to have food with many people, with no differences between people and so much togetherness.)
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You cannot increase your faith. Either you have it or you don’t. The more you try to increase your faith, it will only be a struggle. It doesn’t ‘get increased’. So whenever you feel you have less faith that itself indicates you have faith.And when you realize that, it means it is returned back. The doubt has ended.
In the Samaveda (an ancient Indian scripture), a hymn says. “I am building the bridge from not having faith to having the faith.”
‘I didn’t have the faith’, this idea comes when faith has started coming back, from lack of faith to faith. These two banks can’t come together, they can’t be one and the bridge is what you are.
When the prana (life energy) is high, then faith is more. When the prana is low, the faith is less.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
No no. You do your 100 percent and when you can’t do any more instead of saying, ‘I give up’ in frustration, you say, ‘I give up’ with a smile and that is surrender. When you say it with anger it is frustration and when you say it with a smile; that is surrender.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Christianity says a judgment day will come. At that time all those below the earth, the dead bodies will rise and be asked about their right and wrong deeds. According to which they will be sent to either heaven or hell.The understanding changed from the original meaning due to time and various interpretations.
Today what is believed and discussed as 'Judgment Day' is not what it was originally. The place where Christianity and Islam were born had a scarcity of wood.
The land there had only stones and mountains. At that place burying was a better alternative. It was not expensive.
In India there was a lot of wood, so the tradition of burning the dead bodies began. Whereas in the land of Islam and Christianity, burning the dead was not possible. So according to the country and time people would do certain practices.
The interpretation people have maintained is that on the Judgment Day the dead would get up from their samadhi, but it is not that. In the Bible, it is said "Judge not and ye shall not be judged". Christ asks not to judge (criticize) and leave the judgment only on God and one day He will look into the judgment.
In India we have faith in Karma, which means you will have to reap the result of all your acts. Good deeds will bring joy and bad will bring misery. Similarly in Christianity they say not to judge and that everyone will have to bear their cross.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Feel the pinch of your wrong action – it will keep pinching you and one day, you will stop.When you feel sadness over your weaknesses, then you will be able to overcome them.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You have a lot of blessings. I shower blessings in abundance.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Fear, anxiety and insecurity are same shades of the same color. One is slightly brown, another is dark and the third one is the darkest brown. Grey is a better color, light, medium and dark gray. Meditation, pranayama and the faith that you are not alone, faith in the Divine will definitely help. Divine faith is very abstract, at least faith in the Guru, teacher is there, Master is there, faith in yourself, faith in the universal spirit, faith in the goodness of people around. There are good people in the world. When you thinkeverybody is wrong, everybody is bad then insecurity dawns. Suppose this is not your experience and you have found wrong people, who had deceived you all the time then at least look for good, enlightened people. Ok, now if you understand all this intellectual stuff and still anxiety comes, then what to do? Sudarshan Kriya,pranayama and meditation.After the Tsunami (in South-east Asia, 2004), so many people could not sleep, they couldn’t even see the ocean. A lady witnessed her three to four children being washed away, she had a child in her arms and she couldn’t do anything for she had to look for her own self. Such incidents happened in front of so many people. So many families, somebody’s children, somebody’s wife, somebody’s parents were flooded away. All people were saying, ‘Take us anywhere but not the ocean’. And all those were fishermen. What would a fisherman do on mid land? After the earthquake, people couldn’t get into their homes. For days, people slept outside their houses on roads till our workers, our volunteers went there and taught them Pranayama, bhastrika and meditation, and then they went to their homes. That is where trauma relief, meditation, pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya helps tremendously. We have hundreds and thousands of such experiences and you should go through their experiences. In a matter of two days fishermen said, ‘Give us boats and we want to go out into the ocean’. They had come out of fear, anxiety. This hashappened with thousands of people.I am telling you we have such beautiful knowledge, practices that can take us out of misery, worries, anxiety, conflicts and suicidal tendencies. Just in the recent past, 20 students in Bombay alone committed suicide. In Bombay, Maharashtra, suicidal tendency among youngsters is so high that we have announced that anybody having the slightest tendency to commit suicide, call us at the Art of Living helpline. Our volunteers and teachers are working 24x7 to help them out.The YES!+ program (Youth empowerment seminar) has helped 1000s of youth to come out of suicidal tendencies. All this happens because we don’t see life from a bigger, broader perspective; A girl got 92 percent and committed suicide for she could not get admission in the college of her choice. Because you don’t give them spiritual education, a bigger vision and ask them to only perform and perform that the pressure of performing better, pressure of marks becomes bigger than life itself. Don’t pressurize children too much, we have to give them a broader vision. Never mind you lose one year. Life is more precious than your profession, your success, your so-called success, your finance, and your prestige in society. Finance is for life and not life for finance. These all are only periphery, accessories for life and not the core of life, existence. This vision has to be brought to children.
Wake up and see everybody is caught up in their own things. Whether your financial status goes up or down, whether your relation is going good or bad, who cares insociety? I tell you, nobody cares. Don’t worry about what others may think, what will my status in society be? If you are doing well they are jealous of you, if you are not doing well they don’t even count you. In either case, you don’t have to worry about others’ opinion about you, to show yourself up. And these inter cast marriages; parents are worried what others will think of their children. Who has got time to think to whom your son or daughter got married to?Whether it is in outcast or same, let it be, let it be outcast, you be more free, happy. (laughter and applause) These are silly, insignificant things that people have put in their minds and worry. Wake up and see, there is so much love in life, there is so much wisdom in life.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
The mind is full of sankalpa and vikalpa (imagination, fancy). Each work gets done through sankalpa. Even the act of moving our arm is preceded by the sankalpa in the mind. If twenty sankalpas arise in the mind then nothing gets done. When the mind is peaceful and restful then our sankalpa is powerful.