Monday, January 14, 2008

Sri Maharshi's Way / Upadesa Saram

http://www.maharshiramana.com/ramana_maharshi_library/maharshis_way.pdf

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

By the will of the Creator, action bears fruit. Is
action, then, supreme? No, it is inert, unconscious.

The fruits of action are not everlasting and they
cause one to fall into the great ocean of karma,
blocking spiritual progress.

That action which is done without personal desire
and whose fruits are surrendered to the Lord,
purifies the mind and leads to Liberation.

Ritual worship, repetition of sacred names, and
meditation are done with the body, the speech,
and the mind, and they progress in excellence
in that order.

To serve the world, looked upon as the
manifestation of the Lord, is to offer worship to
the Lord of the Eight Forms.

Silent meditation, in the mind, is higher than the
best devotional praise, or the uttering of sacred
names, loudly or softly.

Like an unbroken flow of oil or a stream of water,
continuous meditation is better than that which is
interrupted.

Meditation on the identity of the individual and
the Lord, “I am He”, is more purifying than meditation
which assumes a difference between them.

By the power of meditation, devoid of thoughts,
one is established in true Being, and this is supreme
devotion.

The practice of fixing the mind in its own source
in the Heart is, without doubt, true bhakti, yoga,
and understanding.

The mind may be subdued by regulating the
breath, just as a bird is restrained when caught
in a net. This practice controls the mind.

Mind and breath, manifesting in thought and
action, branch out from a common source, the
Sakti.

Absorption, or laya, and destruction, or nasa,
are the two kinds of mind control. When merely
absorbed, it emerges again, but not when it is
destroyed.

When the mind has been suspended by breath
restraint, it may then be annihilated by singleminded
attention to the Self.

What action remains to be done by that great yogi
whose mind has been extinguished, and who rests
in his own true and transcendent state of Being?

If one’s attention is turned away from external
objects of sense and focused on the light of the
Self, that is the true vision of Reality.

Again, if one persists in asking, “What is this mind
of mine?” it will be found that there is really no
such thing as ‘mind’. This is the Direct Path.

What one has thought of as his mind is merely a
bundle of thoughts. All these thoughts depend
upon the one thought of “I”, the ego. Therefore,
the so-called mind is the “I” thought.

If one asks himself, “Where does this I come
from?” it will vanish. This is Self-enquiry, or
atma-vichara.

Where this ‘I’ vanished and merged in its Source
there appears spontaneously and continuously
an “I-I”. This is the Heart, the infinite Supreme
Being.

And this uninterrupted “I-I” is the true meaning
of the term “I” because when the waking ‘ego I’
daily disappears in deep sleep, the real ‘I’ remains.

This true ‘I’, the one Reality, is not the body, or
the senses, or mind, or breath, or ignorance. These
are all inert and insentient.

There is only one Being that can know Reality.
That one-only Being is itself Reality and is itself
Consciousness.

Both Creator and creature are essentially one and
the same Reality. Their apparent differences are due
only to differences in form and levels of knowledge.

When the creature abandons its illusory individual
form and recognises itself as without attributes, it
sees the Creator as its own true Self.

Being the Self is knowing the Self, because there
is only one Self, and not two. This Being and
knowing the Self is abiding in the Reality.

True knowledge is beyond what we think of as
‘knowledge’ or ‘ignorance’ because in the State
of Non-differentiation what other thing is to
be known?

If one’s true Self is known, then there is neither
birth nor death, but eternal Being, Consciousness,
Bliss.

The jiva who attains the state of Supreme Bliss,
beyond any thoughts of bondage or freedom is
truly devoted to the Lord.

When the individual ‘I’ has disappeared and the
real “I-I” has been found, that is excellent tapas.
Ramana says this.

http://www.maharshiramana.com/ramana_maharshi_library/maharshis_way.pdf

Anonymous said...

This is one of the best commentary on upadesa sara i ever read.