Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
![](/sites/all/themes/aol-zen/images/Q_A.jpg)
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Why struggle to forgive? Hold onto it for this lifetime and the next lifetime. You do not need to do anything which is difficult. Forgiveness is easy. Inside every criminal there is someone crying for forgiveness. Someone who does injustice never had the opportunity to grow spiritually. Spiritual education is so essential to bring about the human qualities.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Be well rested and have your heart in the right place. You need both mental and physical rest. Thinking “Oh I have done so much!” will only bore you down. Just know that you will have enough time and energy to do what you were born to do in this life.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Which gives you short term pleasure and long term misery is wrong and vice-versa.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Very few steps for enlightenment. What is enlightenment? Being unconditionally happy. Everyone wants love that doesn’t get distorted. Love gets distorted as hatred, fear, jealousy and other imperfections. Enlightenment is having such a love.There are two steps to enlightenment:
- From being somebody to being nobody.
- From being nobody to being everybody.
And how to be nobody? Just wake up and realize that this is a vast universe. What are you in this? Who are you in this? You may be a great businessman or scientist or doctor but how long will you be there on this planet? In 70 – 100 years you will go and the earth will continue to exist. It has been there from billions of years and it will continue to be there. Who are you? Where are you with respect to this magnanimous universe?
From being nobody to be a part of everybody.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
A secret for women: Always pump the ego of the man. Praise him. He always has to prove himself in society. Don’t burden him further to prove his love for you. With her words, a woman can enhance or decrease the self-esteem of a man.And a secret for men, don’t step on the emotions of a woman. She may complain about her father or family, but you don’t join her. She will switch the part. Don’t complain about her family. Don’t say no to anything spiritual she wants to do.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Om is the life force. Sound is energy. When the sound is made with all your heart, it has a very positive effect. Namah Shivaya includes the 5 elements – na – mah – shi – va – ya: Earth, Fire, Air, Water and Space. Chanting and silent meditation also have an impact.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
When you are centered, established in the knowledge, when you meditate, this situation does not arise. When your attachment shifts from the work at hand to name and fame, it is time to go within.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
If you think it is so simple to be complicated, it is so complicated to be simple then! Then you can easily accept that life is a mixture of both complication and simplicity. And if you don’t want to do only simple things in your life all the time and want to do something complicated as well then, you do something which is so complicated it makes you so simple.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You tell me the answer. If you really want an answer then sit and think about it. If in your mind this question has arisen, the answer will also come. You have some notion of acceptance in your mind and some other notion of labeling. That’s why you are using two different words. You won’t ask the difference between ‘Kela’ (banana in Hindi) and ‘Banana’. When we ask the difference we already know what that difference is. You already know in your mind and a little introspection will give you the answer.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Just like a rainbow, where all the colors merge to form a single white light, the Paramatma (Supreme Consciousness) is white and all the forms of Gods are the various colors.![](/sites/www.artofliving.org/files/styles/original_image/public/images/logo/artofliving_logo_1_0_0.png?itok=LWFCU_3l)