The drummers beat large drums, play the Naadaswaram, shehnai, bells, and conch. All these sounds are made so that your mind becomes quieter.
Your mind is like a kid. When a kid is crying, you cry louder than the kid and the kid becomes quiet. Have you noticed that? In the same way, when there is so much noise in your mind and too many thoughts, they blow the conch, ring the bell and with all the sounds, the mind comes to the present moment.
With so much noise around, the mind cannot think. It cannot wander. So it is used as a technique.
All outside sounds suppress the sound of the mind for a little while. This short-term suppression should lead the mind to silence. Once it goes into the depths of meditation, all words feel burdensome. But when the mind is full of words, and you are troubled by too many thoughts, these sounds bring relief. Have you seen in the Buddhist monastery, there is a big gong? They ring the gong and that vibration will keep you silent. So, from sound to silence, the journey is very important.
You think somebody is bad-looking? Ask their mother or their grandmother. They never think their children are bad. And, what do you mean by good-looking and bad-looking? How long can you stay? The most good-looking, after sometime don’t look so nice.
It is not in the outer appearance, it is the spirit, the inner soul. Look at the spirit inside, there is inner beauty. That beauty of the spirit is undying. It increases day by day. It increases with age also.
Wisdom and maturity bring so much beauty. Beauty is not just some appearance.
Similarly, ugliness is not out of appearance. Somebody may look very good with good makeup, but if their heart is very ugly and the mind is all twisted and full of negativity, however nice they may appear, their vibrations will tell you that they are not beautiful. Yes?
So, it is the mind that makes one beautiful.
There is some effect of planetary positions also.
Oh, you want to know the essence of life? Very good! Just keep coming and sitting here. It will reveal itself one day.
Do more of advance courses. Don’t you see you have already improved?
How much have you improved? 50% you have improved? So you already know how you can improve another 50%. More advance courses.
Also repeat the basic courses. Don't think I have already done the basic course once, no!
If you repeat it, it brings you to a higher plane every time.
In agriculture also, after doing so much farming, there is no profit, isn’t it? A little bit of difficulty will be there.
If those who have come as guests, we think and treat them as guests, then they will come and go as guests. But if we see them as responsible people, then the interest will dawn in them too.
Go home happily. I am always with you - all the Sri Lankan and Tamil Nadu people.
In the Upanishads, there is a saying that all the questions disappear when the heart opens up.
I think I said it about four days ago. That happens here, isn't it? Your questions disappear, right? Yes! Here we are making an effort to bring out some question so that we can have some conversation, unlike yesterday.
Otherwise, I have nothing to say and you have nothing to hear and you are happy and I am happy. We are in a happy-happy world. So we do not speak through words, we speak through energy, isn't it!
But the ritual that someone became a sati, (a ritual where the widow immolates herself on her husband’s funeral pyre) – is nowhere. Had this tradition been there, in the Mahabharata, Kunti would have become sati, but Kunti never became sati. Similarly, there were many other maternal figures whose life existed even after their husbands (died). They did not become sati.
It was somewhere in the middle-ages that this trend started. It should not be done. It is not right.
In the shastras, in our Vedas, nowhere is it written that man is superior and woman is inferior, or woman is superior and man is less – that is not the case. All are equal. Women, men, all are the same.
Do not discriminate based on caste, do not discriminate based on religion, do not discriminate based on gender – this person is man or woman – do not discriminate based on that. Look for the One in all. Everyone has the same radiance (noor), the same soul. This is all I will say.