Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Well, during the course of time impressions started piling up on the consciousness. Consciousness never become totally impure, its only impressions which are on top of it and that goes away with meditation, seva, sadhana and satsang.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Never mind! Who keeps a count of how much you drink. There are better things to do. Every day you drink eight litres of water. The figure goes to 1,200 litres of water for a year. This is a conservative figure. If you’re forty years old – imagine how many gallons and gallons of water. And how many truckloads of food?This lifetime itself is a lot to count. Why bother about other lifetimes?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You can’t do meditation? Okay, so first see why you are not able to meditate. The part of you that is entangled in money and mind, detangling it from there, entangle it in me! Then meditation will also happen, mind will also be happy and money will also come on its own.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes, of course.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Never mind, doubt as much as you can. I don’t mind you doubting, go on. Know that what we doubt is always positive. We doubt the love of someone, not the anger of someone. We doubt our capabilities, we never doubt our weaknesses. We doubt our happiness. So understand the nature of our doubt.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes, he was a great orator and he spoke really well. He had a deep intellectual insight which is fine but one thing that was missing there was the knowledge of the mantras; knowledge of the tradition of the mantras. Buddha said it is all nothing, everything is nothing and he also said I searched for the ultimate, I searched for the Self but I found there is no Self, there is no atma. I searched and searched and finally found there is not atma. But in the Sanatana Dharma, Adi Shankara said, ‘Who searched? Who is it that did not find? That is atma.’ So, it is like two sides of the same coin. He talks about the emptiness and on the other side the Vedanta speaks about the fullness. So it is one step, from somebody to nobody is one step. Buddha stops at that, from somebody to nobody, and Vedanta takes you from nobody to everybody.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
The day you feel good, that is the Golden Age for you.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Listen, our job is to empty and you want to put a concept in it! Explanation is a concept, isn’t it? Scientifically know that everything is hollow and empty, your throat is hollow. That’s how you could swallow, and that’s how you could drink. Isn’t it? If the stomach is not hollow, how could you stuff so many truck loads of food in it? Isn’t it? And it gets empty very soon. See per day, just imagine, per day you consume 2 KG of food easily, isn’t it? In one year you consume 750 kilos of food. That is almost a truckload in one year, and if you’re 40 years, 40 truckloads of food have gone through your whole body. How can it happen if it’s not hollow and empty? How can you breathe in so much air every day and breathe out if it is not hollow? Do one thing. Take a small piece of your skin and go to a lab and put it under a microscope and you will see it is like a mosquito net. Your skin is all hollow and empty. So what we are saying in hollow and empty mediation is a fact. To be with the fact, to bring to awareness the fact that you are breathing; you are there, your body is here and the body is different from the floor, floor is different from body, and the skin is different from the clothes. So when we go on analyzing, seeing like this, meditation happens. Does it happen or not? How many had a good meditation today? Three dimensions are with us: body, breath and mind. You never pay attention. Body is one dimension, breath is another dimension, then what is watching and knowing this is the mind. This is another dimension. So the three dimensions, once you see are all separate,then boom, something happens.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Soul is the one who is asking, the one who is understanding, sleeping, the one who is doing everything. See, there are different aspects: the individual self, small self and the big self. The small self has five aspects - ignorance, existence, ego, craving, aversion. Turn back and see your life: How ignorant you were and how much aversion you had. How are you now? It’s reducing.Once these things are reduced, you become one with the universe.
I have many brilliant ideas for doing seva, but I don’t know how to go about implementing them. Also because I am not good at team work, I don’t know how to ask for help from other people.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Listen, don’t label yourself as,' I am not good at team work'. If you are not good at team work, then they will make you here. This is the opportunity for you. Accept people as they are and get into a team. Get into somebody’s team, whatever they may say, 'oh it is so sunny', when it is so cloudy, you say, 'yes okay!' It doesn’t matter what they think but what they do matters. You say,' okay, if it is sunny for you let it be sunny, come let’s sweep the floor, let’s take care of the plant, let’s keep the place clean. Let’s wash the dishes in the kitchen. How does it matter if it is rainy or it is sunny, you have to go and wash the dishes', you go and wash. So don’t sit and argue with people to see what you see, that they should also agree with you. We should agree to disagree - simple formula. You think God is blue, fine, for you he is blue, for me he is white. It is okay. He can be white, for another he is red, never mind, come, let’s all be together, dance together, eat together, do something together. This is very important. Team work is absolutely essential; we should go into such a team.