19 January 2015 - QA 5

Gurudev, why do I have to take on so many responsibilities. I have the responsibility of my happiness, my husband’s happiness, family’s happiness, etc. Why all this when ultimately I have to die?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Well, that is because you are born! When you are born you have to take care of all this.
There are two ways of looking at life:
1. Either you take it as a burden and a drag and make your whole life a long drawn misery, or 2. You take it with enthusiasm, thinking, 'I have all these responsibilities and challenges, and I can do it'. And you move on with celebration.

When you are tired that is when you feel that all this is too much for you to handle. When this happens, I would say, sit back and relax. Think that you have no responsibility whatsoever. Find the deepest of the rest within you, and then you will get the strength you need to move on.
Just say one thing to yourself, 'I want nothing!' This wanting nothing gives you the deepest of the rests.

Rest is not just physically lying in bed, it is the mode of the mind which says, 'I am satisfied, I am content'. Its only contentment which can give you rest and this contentment is not going to come to you by doing something or by engaging in any activity. It will come to you only through knowledge. And the knowledge is:
1. Everything is impermanent
2. I am satisfied
3. I want nothing
This is the essence of the knowledge.

Often when you ask children what do they want, they will say, 'Nothing'.
The seed of wanting nothing is there in every child. They only don’t know that everything is impermanent because they have not fully caught on to anything around them.
Even for a few moments every day, if you say, 'Everything is impermanent, I want nothing', and you sit and take that deep rest, then you come up with the energy and enthusiasm with which you can take up a million jobs in the world, and you can make a million people happy. Then no work appears to be significant or insignificant.
This is the language of the Upanishad: it is neither significant nor insignificant.
You can’t call even small things as insignificant, nor do you have to give so much importance to something very significant. Instead, you can keep doing any work, any action, anywhere, and each and every one of them will be beneficial to the world.