Taiwan Retreat 2018 Q&A 7 (32:00-32:35)

Why meditation is a life-long practice

Yogi: Is aversion deep in the subconscious level?

SUT: Yes, craving and aversion are very strong; they are already deeply rooted in your mind.

You need to practice a very long time so that the defilements in the subconscious level can
slowly decrease.

A yogi’s notes

Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past

nor fears for the future;
to let life take its course without attempting to interfere
with its movement and change,
neither trying to prolong the stay of things pleasant
nor to hasten the departure of things unpleasant.

To do this is to move in time with life,

to be in perfect accord with its changing music,
and this is called Enlightenment.

In short, it is to be detached from both past and future

and to live in the eternal Now.

-Alan watts , - Become What you are .

So
Why expect
Something in return
for loving?
does the moon
ask something
for shining?
isn’t love your
true essence?
doesn’t it flow
freely?
it is not even right
to say ‘I love you’
to someone. You are
not exactly doing it.
love is simply happening.
to be exact, love is
bursting into your life
and then moving
Into everything you touch.
Sometimes, it is possible your
love can overwhelm someone
who is not ready
or who is resisting or who
who doesn’t feel safe.
please leave alone whoever
needs to be left alone.
bother nobody.
those who want to stay
unmoved and sober
please let them be.
love can be dangerous-
whoever is penetrated
by such love cannot be
the same anymore.
but remember this -
don’t ever expect anything
in return for loving.
love for no reason
and without expectation.
then you are free.

Thinking is always about the past and the future, never on the present. If you centre yourself on
the present, there's no time for the past or the future and you cannot possibly have any problems.
You only have a problem when you centre yourself on the past and the future.

Robert Adams, 28h October, 1990

Don’t put on your awareness jacket only when trouble comes. Awareness is not a technique. It is
not medicine. It is Freedom. Be free all the time.

Mooji

"...Or again, take the instance of the cinema. Scenes are projected on the screen in the cinema-
show. But the moving pictures do not affect or alter the screen. The spectator pays attention to
them, not to the screen. They cannot exist apart from the screen, yet the screen is ignored. So
also, the Self is the screen where the pictures, activities etc. are seen going on. The man is aware
of the latter but not aware of the essential former. All the same, the world of pictures is not apart
from the Self. Whether he is aware of the screen or unaware, the actions will continue."
-Ramana Maharshi

Maharaj : "I do not ask you to trust me. Trust my words and remember them, I
want your happiness, not mine. Distrust those who put a distance between you and
your true being and offer themselves as a go-between. I do nothing of the kind. I do
not even make any promises. I merely say: if you trust my words and put them to
test, you will for yourself discover how absolutely true they are. If you ask for a
proof before you venture, I can only say: I am the proof. I did trust my teacher's
words and kept them in my mind and I did find that he was right, that I was, am and
shall be the Infinite Reality, embracing all, transcending all.
As you say, you have neither the time nor the energy for lengthy practices. I
offer you an alternative. Accept my words on trust and live anew, or live and die in
sorrow.
Q: It seems too good to be true.
M: Don't be misled by the simplicity of the advice. '\very few are those who
have the courage to trust the innocent and the simple. To know that you are a
prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is
the dawn of wisdom. To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is
earnestness. Only such earnestness, born of true despair, will make you trust me" . -- I Am That -
Chapter 83

Q. Is it better for reaching salvation to be married or to be a celibate?

Bhagavan: Whatever you think better. There is no difference.

- Conscious Immortality, p. 44

Live as " tongue-less " spirituality.

Don't be one of these people who is always pointing and commenting, even on the internet.
Just keep quiet.
Vanish inside your own Self.
Be at peace.
Live as tongue-less spirituality.
Let your silence speak.
Go about in life.
Forget about knowledge, forget about yourself.
Do this world a favour.
Then something, if it needs to be said, it will have a new or deep vibration.
Don't be so quick to point out and talk.
And then when you forget about keeping quiet or not quiet...maybe then maybe a voice will
speak through you.

~ Mooji 🧡

BHAGAVANS'Promises and Declarations

Give me your burdens

17 If you enquire and know me, the Self within,in that state there will be no reason for you to
worry about the world.

18 Abandon the drama (of the world) and seek the Self within. Remaining within, I will protect
you, (ensuring) that no harm befalls you.

19 Seek my grace within the Heart. I will drive away your darkness and show you the light. This
is my responsibility.

20 Like the children of an emperor, my devotees are heirs to abundant rejoicing.

PADAMALAI

You do not train your mind, you untrain your mind. You untrain your mind by just observing
your own thoughts, by watching yourself think, by not reacting to your thoughts, not reacting to
what happens in your world. As you do this you begin to dissolve. You find peace. You find
peace. You become free. You become love. You no longer talk too much. You no longer try to
evaluate the world or your position. You no longer find fault anywhere. You become your own
experience. You have expanded. You used to be concerned with yourself as a body, with your
health, concerned with your affairs. But now even though you are involved in the world, you are
not of the world. The world has no pull on you. The world cannot show you anything. It cannot
do anything to you. The world is the same as your body. You are not the body, you are not the
world, you are not your mind. You are something completely different. That something different
is ineffable.

Robert Adams

R: I know it's difficult to understand, but I don't make a decision, I just do what has to be done.
There's no thought, there's no thought process. If somebody says, "You want to go to a movie?"
I'll say, "No I'm going to a meeting," and I forget about it.

- Robert Adams, Ts 4

Being one with the great Self of all, no doership remains.

Seeker of Truth,
Whatever is born out of time,
you need not be concerned about.
Let life take care of that. Let life take care of life.
Keep quiet and let your mind rest inside your heart.
Don't worry. Right now belongs only to now.
Just be now.
There are no demands, requirements or conditions.
You are simply here.
As you confirm this,
and pay attention to this simple fact,
the whole world becomes a harmony
right in front of you.

Mooji

There is nothing to gain. Abandon all imaginings and know yourself as you are. Self-knowledge
is detachment. All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. When you know that you lack
nothing, that all there is is you and yours, desire ceases.

Nisargadatta, I am That, Chapter 55

The sense 'I am a person

in time and space' is a poison.
In a way, time itself is a poison.
In time, all things come to an
end and new ones are born
to be devoured in their
turn. Do not identify
yourself with time ❤️

Nisargadatta Maharaj

From Iljas Baker:

Most of us complain and if truth be told enjoy it. However, it achieves nothing, sours
relationships and ultimately blocks receiving. Bapak was adamant about this. In his talk to men
and women in Melbourne on 5 February 1978 he said:

"We also have God's guidance and we have all these things which permit us to live in this world.
So truly, there is no room for complaint. This is the thing that Bapak warns us about - never,
never complain. The moment you complain, you are actually criticizing yourself. And if you are
able to criticize yourself, you can also correct yourself and put yourself right. But if you keep
complaining, then it means that you are putting a curse on yourself, so that you cannot make
progress. It is like putting smoke in your eyes. The more you complain, the less you will be able
to see your way forward or to find your right way. So the way to find your right way is to act."

The beginning of wisdom is when you realize that all the teachings in the world, all the spiritual
practices in the world, all the yoga practices, all the disciplines that you've been doing, are not
going to awaken you one iota. You've been wasting your time. There is nothing that can awaken
you. You're waiting for me to tell you what will awaken you. There is no thing that can ever
awaken you. If a thing awakened you, it would not be awakening. If you relied on something to
wake you up, it would not be a real awakening. What happens is, you simply begin to see. You
become pure being. But nothing made it happen. Do not think that all the hard work you've been
doing will make you awaken faster.
I'm telling you these great truths tonight for your own benefit, because most of you have been
here for a long time. All of the things in this world will not awaken you. There is nothing that
can awaken you, for you’re relying on some thing, and all the things simply pull you deeper and
deeper into maya (illusion). You and I know many people who have been practicing spiritual
disciplines for many years. They can recite the bible backwards and frontwards. They memorize
beautiful stanzas in spiritual books. They're good debaters on points of Advaita Vedanta, or other
teachings. They've been around the world to many teachers, to many places. They're still the
same as they always were. All they've done is add on to their ignorance. They keep adding, and
adding, and adding all of the different teachings. They're filling themselves up with teachings.
This will never awaken you. It's when you dispose of the teachings, when you get rid of the
teachings, when you empty yourself out totally and completely, when there's nobody left to learn
anything, that's when you simply see yourself as no body. You look at yourself and you realize
what you are. But no thing can make this happen to you.

Therefore what is the attitude to take? No attitude. What should you do? Nothing. What should
you study? What should you learn? Nothing. Where should you go? Nowhere. With whom
should you associate? No one.

When you can get to this place, you are already awakened, for there was never anyone who had
to be awakened, there was never anyone who had to practice spiritual teachings, there was never
anyone who had a body, there was never anyone who existed. I know to some of you this sounds
very strange, yet it is the truth. It is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The only way
you're ever going to learn this is by not learning anything, by keeping silent.

— Robert Adams, from Transcript 176: Great Truths, 25 June, 1992

There is no such thing as peace of mind.

Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind.

Nisargadatta, I Am That, Chapter 34

Freedom means the ending of me..J. K.

WAVES OF THE OCEAN

When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down. A
wave may like to seek its own true nature. The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes. A
wave may say, “I am not as big as the other waves,” “I am oppressed,” “I am not as beautiful as
the other waves,” “I have been born and I have to die.”

The wave may suffer from these things, these ideas. But if the wave bends down and touches her
true nature she will realise that she is water. Then her fear and complexes will disappear.
Water is free from the birth and death of a wave. Water is free from high and low, more beautiful
and less beautiful. You can talk in terms of more beautiful and less beautiful, high or low, only in
terms of waves. As far as water is concerned, all these concepts are invalid.

Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. We do not have to go anywhere in order to
touch our true nature. The wave does not have to look for water because she is water. You are
what you are looking for.

You can say to the wave, “My dearest wave, you are water. You don’t have to go and seek water.
Your nature is the nature of nondiscrimination, of no birth, of no death, of no being and of no
nonbeing.” Practice like a wave. Take the time to look deeply into yourself and recognise that
your nature is the nature of no-birth and no-death.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

CONVERSATIONS WITH ANNAMALAI SWAMI

Q: Are there no breaks at all in the jnani’s awareness of the Self? For example, if he is engrossed
in reading a good book, will his full attention 'be always on the book? Will he simultaneously be
aware that he is the Self?

AS: If there are breaks in his Self-awareness this means that he is not yet a jnani. Before one
becomes established in this state without any breaks, without changes, one has to contact and
enjoy this state many times. By steady meditation it finally becomes permanent.

It is very difficult to attain Self-abidance, but once it is attained

it is retained effortlessly and never lost. It is a little like putting a rocket into space. A great effort
and great energy are required to escape the earth's gravitational field. If the rocket is not going
fast enough, gravity will pull it back to earth. But once it has escaped the pull of gravity it can
stay out in space quite effortlessly without falling back to earth…

CONVERSATIONS WITH ANNAMALAI SWAMI

Loving others

Q: You sometimes say that we should love all people equally; that we should give love to the
whole world. For me, love is something that just happens. I cannot manufacture it and give it
away. If I feel love for someone, the love flows towards them. If I don't, it doesn't happen and I
can’t make it happen. How do I learn to love people I hardly know? And when I have learned
that, how do I learn to love all the millions of strangers I have never met and will never meet?

AS: You can start with the people you know. Bhagavan taught by example that we should only
see good in other people. Virtually all people are a mixture of good and bad. It is very rare to
find someone who is wholly good or wholly bad. If you have to come into contact with a lot of
people try to make yourself aware of their good points and don'-t dwell on their bad points. If
you see good in people you radiate a harmonious, loving energy which uplifts those who are
around you. If you can maintain this habit, this energy will soon turn into a steady flow of love.

Try to be aware at all times that everything you see and perceive is the Self. If you see the Self in
other people, your love automatically flows towards them.

You gain nothing by thinking that someone is a bad person. If negative thoughts arise each time
you see or think of a particular person, these thoughts will draw you away from the Self. Try to
radiate your love equally to all people instead of just a few. Try to feel that the whole world is
your Self, your God. Try to see the Self in all people. Spread your love in all directions as an act
of worship and surrender, because everything in the world is a manifestation of God.