Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
First find inner peace, and then you can handle situations. When you are peaceful, then the solutions come. Do you mean problems in relationships? If your question is about conflict between spouses, then there are three options.Advice for women – Don’t ask your husband to prove himself. Pump his ego. The whole world might say that he is an empty head, but you as a wife must always praise him. You can tell him, “You are brilliant. It is a different thing that you don’t use your bright mind”. Never step on his ego. He has to prove himself in the world, but he wants to relax when he comes home. He shouldn’t have to prove himself at home.
Advice for men - Never step on the emotions of your wife. She will tell you the problems at her home and may complain about her father, brother or relatives. But if you join her bandwagon, she will take a U turn. If she wants to go on a spiritual or religious program, don’t stop her. If she wants to shop, give her your credit card.
Advice for both - Never question someone’s love for you. If someone asks you to prove your love to him or her, how would you feel? It is like a burden. Demand destroys love. Never demand love. Instead of this you say, “Why do you love me so much? I am not worthy of your love”. The moment you say this, the other person will melt and start loving you even more, and will even forgive you for your mistakes.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Vishala means broad, Akshi means vision. That which gives you broad vision is Vishalakshi.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Time is distance between two events or happenings. It appears longer in sad moods and shorter in happy moods, and its speed can be modified by silence.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Satsang, meditation and pranayama is the best gift to you. Chanting mantras, doing pujas has its place. Don’t worry too much about it. Meditate and do a little puja. Don’t leave it out completely nor overdo it.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
I am hearing a new word today. Well, don’t divide life: this is spiritual or this is materialistic. Take a holistic view of life. In a temple there is food. In that sense both material and spiritual aspects are there. Music is both a form of entertainment and spirituality. We even put ornate clothes on our deities. Ancient people never separated the spiritual and material. They enjoyed putting precious jewels in temples.In South India, in Madurai, kings gave away most of their precious jewels to the temples. Everything co-existed. In the same way you can treat work as worship. It is sacred. Spirituality has entered our material life. Action is sacred. Lord Krishna says, “Janma karma samay divya”. All actions are divine.Lord Krishna himself was very much of the material world except for his discourse to Arjuna. All he did was materialistic. He ruled the country, advised as a minister, and so on. Life should not be compartmentalized. Materialism and spirituality are not opposed to each other.
However, money earned through unethical means is never spiritual. It will pinch your heart. The spirit is awake in you. It is your natural instinct. If you have a plate full of food and someone comes to you, you will not be able to eat it alone. It is such a natural part of your life that you cannot renounce one for the other. Every spiritual person has to do charity. You want to be compassionate, but how can you be when you have nothing to give away. Charity cannot happen with an empty bowl.
Narayana is the pinnacle of spiritual life and Laxmi is the symbol of wealth. Both Narayana and Laxmi go together. Saraswati sat on a rock. The knowledge that you have gained will always be with you. Laxmi sits on a lotus which floats on water. You will never believe what happens in the share market. Wealth is unsteady just as a lotus floating on water. These are the eternal symbols that convey truth. Grasp what is needed. This is very important.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes we will have one, in another five years.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
This is a good question - why am I here, what do I do? Keep asking. When you keep asking these questions, either you go crazy or you become wise. I wish you become the latter, become much wiser, ok? Don’t tell me crazy people are very wise. It’s the other way round - wise people are sometime crazy too.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Crisis is the mother of many inventions. A crisis makes us very creative. However the crisis should not go on too long, that is not good.What can help anxiety is breathing techniques like pranayama which channelizes the life force energy in our body. We all float in a sea of prana (life-force energy). There is prana even in a stone.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You do not do anything which is difficult. Easy go lucky. Spirituality makes everything easy. Everything in the ‘Art of Living’ makes life easy. There are certain things which are easy to begin with but later on turns to be difficult. There are certain other things which may appear to be difficult in the beginning but later on makes everything easy. Spirituality is the later one.When you were kid, you were forced to brush your teeth. Suppose you had not undergone that, what would be the scenario of your mouth now? Half your teeth would have dropped. Like this you may find it difficult in the beginning but it makes things easy later on.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It is not true that if you donate eyes in this life, you will be born blind in next life.