Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q:
Which is better: satvic guna (calmness, meditation) or triguna ateet (beyond the three gunas {roughly translated as energies})?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
If you do not have satvic guna, you cannot be triguna ateet.You have to move from tamogun (inertia), to rajogun (that energy which is not used productively in activity and which becomes restlessness) and from rajogun to satogun.
From satogun, you will know mukti (freedom).
However, don’t get attached to satogun. You use soap to wash the dirt off your body. Do you allow the soap to remain on your body?
There’s a saying which says, drown your good deeds in a well. Otherwise, you become attached to them, and doing good deeds will make you arrogant.
When you are not attached to even mukti, then you will be triguna ateet.
There is a quote in Sanskrit:
‘Samam pashyanti sarvatra
up mam pashyati sarvatah’
Krishna says, ‘See equality in everything. The one who sees me in everything and sees everything in me, I won't be apart from him and he won't be different from me.’
* a type of breathing technique
Q:
What can you say about 2012?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Don't worry. Nothing is going to happen. Things will be as usual. In fact more and more people will become spiritual.Q:
How can one see Shiva in everything and everyone?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
‘Shiva is everywhere’ is spiritual truth, and another is practical knowledge. Both have to be considered together. One who is too much stuck in social behavior, does not get anything. So is true for one who is too much stuck with the concept of meditation and spirituality.If a thief comes to your house, you cannot let him do whatever he wants considering him to be a form of Shiv .(Jokingly) Then let the Shiva in the form of police handle this form of Shiva.
You cannot justify intake of drugs or alcohol, saying Shiva is present in these also. Our body is such made that if you increase awareness and prana(life force), you experience divinity. And if you decrease these, you experience inertia.
Where prana is there, that is true beauty or Shiva.
.
Q:
I have finished my final year engineering exam. I want to study, I want to pursue higher studies, but I cannot concentrate when I sit to study. I want to study, what should I do?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
If you are not getting concentration in your studies, watch for these three things(i) Your diet, watch what you are eating. Diet makes a big difference.
(ii) Do you do any physical exercises? If you just keep sitting on a couch watching TV, or keep sitting on computer with internet etc. then the circulation is less in your body. Then you tend to become lazy and will not feel like studying. So, it is necessary to do a little bit of physical exercise, yoga, pranayama, meditation and also participate a little in singing etc. Doing all these, whatever is the need for your system will be furnished, and then you can grasp more in studies. Also your learning and retaining capacity will increase, and you will be able to study as well as gain much more in shorter time.
Go for higher studies if you want to. Choice is yours, blessings are mine!
Q:
Please talk about karma and karamfal (fruit of action).
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You have asked this question – this is a karma. You are listening to my answer is also Karma. Life is karamfal only.Q:
What is the difference between idea and thought?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
First you tell me their meanings and I will tell you the difference. We attach meaning to words. You got it?Q:
You are amazing. Just a few minutes with you and all my worries are gone. Thank you for everything. How do you fit with Jesus and his message?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
His message was love. The ’Art of Living’ is also about the same. Jesus said to serve people, and the’Art of Living’ is about service. It fits in 100 percent. It may not fit with the methodology of the church, but it definitely fits with the ideals of Jesus. Jesus never said, ”you are a sinner”. In the old times, when people were crude, the church used guilt and fear in its methodology, which is perhaps not suitable for this age. For today’s age we are sophisticated and friendly, we do not have to carry guilt and sadness. We fit 100 percent with Jesus’ philosophy. The first priority is not to blame others or yourself. If you do, you will never be able to settle your mind, you will want to run away from people, and you’ll run away from yourself as well. Stop blaming yourself and others too.Q:
Which Veda has medical knowledge?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It is called the Ayurveda. It is the subordinate Veda of the main four Vedas. So both, the Atharvaveda and Rigveda - the first and last Vedas have aconnection to Ayurveda. So all the Ayurveda stories are so very, very beautiful. It’s said that one thousand Rishis were sitting and meditating. And a Rishi named Bharadwaja told them, ‘You keep awake. We are going into deep trance, meditation and we are going to say just what we see. But there should be somebody to note down, write everything down’. They told once person, ‘You don't meditate. You sit, watch and note down everything’.And that is how Maharshi Bharadwaja noted down, wrote down in a forest when thousands of the Rishis meditated together and they were downloading it and thenthey were saying it. Bharadwaja went from one to another, to each person and started noting them down and that is how the Ayurveda books were written. So even today, after so many thousands of years, it holds good. It is a Materia Medica - which herb is for which part of the body and what functions, what arethe combinations, what one should do and what oneshould not. Everything about health is written.When the British ruled India and the man who was in charge of India, the British gentleman, wrote to Queen Victoria of England saying, ‘You know, people should come and learn plastic surgery over here. How people can fix your nose, your skin, your legs,’ he said. It’s amazing that when knowledge was zero or nothing in England, it was so advanced in India. Lord Macaulay said in the parliament, that if you want to rule this country (India), first you must destroy the spirituality. Much has been written about Lord Macaulay's statement. He said, ‘I traveled the length and breadth of India and I did not see one beggar,one poor man. And people know science and medical things so well. 88000 medical institutions were there only in the south of India.’He said, if you want to rule this country, you must stop this. So they systematically closed down the medical institutions, Sanskrit colleges so that people could no longer read the books. You know, when all your books are in Sanskrit and they shut down all the Sanskrit schools by rule, your next generation getsno access to the knowledge and that is what exactly happened in India. There is a whole presentation about Lord Macaulay's vision that they could rule India only by doing this. Anyway, that is all history.What I am saying is that Ayurveda is still very potent knowledge- it’s a science even today. Hmmm? But many books are missing. Many were burnt down. India had a very crazy king at one point of time, he was called Aurangzeb. He came to power by putting his own father in jail who was the king then. And then he burnt big libraries in India like Nalanda. History says that the books in Nalanda library burned for six months. He called all the scholars and he told them, ‘What is in your library?’ They said, ‘A lot of knowledge.’ He was very fanatic. He took the Quran and asked, ‘Do you agree that this book has all the knowledge that is there in the library?’ They said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Then what is the use of having a library and so many books? Burn them down.Then one of them said, ‘No. There is other knowledge that is not in this book.’ Then Aurangzeb said, ‘Then they shouldn't exist. Anything which is not in this book shouldn't exist anywhere, it is not correct. It is not God’s! Burn them down. Thousands of years ago, philosophy of the Buddhists, Hindus, Jains,Sikh were available; medical, archeology, astronomy, metallurgy, engineering, science - all these books - were available. They were all burnt down. So whatever people could take overnight and memorize it, those things remained and it continued. So these are all past histories.Q:
How can I feel your presence in my everyday life?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You already feel it, no?Q:
How does the world look from your eyes?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It looks like my own. However it is, it belongs to me.In the Bhagvad Geeta, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna, “This creation is permeated by the Divine consciousness. It belongs to Me. Crossing-over this cycle (of birth and death) is not so easy. It can be done only through Me.”
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Founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,The Art of Living is an educational and humanitarian movement engaged in stress-management and service initiatives.
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