Inspiring quotes from hinduism and other sources

I don't understand why,
While all the worlds live within Him

And He lives within them
By birthright

Our Lord of Kaikarai
Of gardens blowing with fragrance

Should assault and devour
This poor little soul of mine

With His grace.

Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Vishnu by Nammalvar
Translated by A. K. Ramanujan


Point honed in flame
and hurled across a thousand years

Your lance
has found my breast

(My reply to Nammalvar's ancient bhakti poems.)

 

So much pain, a mine of pain
You'll save yourself when you know Ram

The Ram-knowing trick is the only trick
That doesn't land you in a trap
The world sticks to its own tricks
It certainly doesn't listen to me

Gold, silk, horses, women
A lot of wealth
Last a little time
From a little money
A man goes crazy
He doesn't hear news of the King of Death

When the terror comes
his face shrivels
Cheated, he learns
his nectar was poison

I make, I kill, I burn
I eat, I fill
the land and water
Spotless is My name.

(The Bijak of Kabir #21)

 

Vastness of the Soul

It does not require a large eye to see a large mountain. The reason is that, though the eye is small, the soul which sees through it is greater and vaster than the things which it perceives. In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself. For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.

(Meher Baba - Life At Its Best)



Knowledge Through Experience

The knowledge of Truth as gained through the established creeds is like the knowledge of a town which one gets by studying it on a map. To see and know the town one has to take the trouble of actually going there.

It is one thing merely to see the picture of a cow; quite a different thing to have a real cow and to drink its milk.

In the same way all religious creeds, though useful for the time being, ultimately must be replaced by actual experience and the inner spiritual path must be traversed before one can realize the infinite Truth.

(Meher Baba - Life At Its Best)

 

More often than not, I think I am in the presence of God.

Satguru Siva Yogaswami (1872-1964), Sri Lanka's most renowned contemporary spiritual master

 

That probably needs qualifying - what he means probably is more often than not he's conscious - the 'presence of god' is always there, or never there at all.

 

"Who cares for these tinsel puffs of name? I
never keep watch of what the newspapers are
saying. Have you love? You are omnipotent.
Are you perfectly unselfish? If so, you are
irresistible. It is character that pays
everywhere. It is the Lord who protects his
children in the depths of the sea. Your
country requires heroes; be heroes! God bless
you." - Swami Vivekananda

 

"Start with a clean slate, forget the mind and forget all recipes. Just pray - Lord I have come tired and weary from my self-created worries. I have come to you for rest. I will not leave you. Let me rest In you, for this half hour, so that I may walk beside you, work for you and live for you."- Ma Indira Devi

 

Know you are one,
Pure awareness.

With the fire of this conviction
Burn down the forest of ignorance.

Free yourself from sorrow,
And be happy.

-Ashtavakra Gita 1:9

 

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

- Bertrand Russell.

 

"The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt. "


Sir Walter Scott.

 

A devotee who can call on God while living a householder's life is a hero indeed. God thinks: "He who has renounced the world for My sake will surely pray to Me; he must serve Me. Is there anything very remarkable about it? People will cry shame on him if he fails to do so. But he is blessed indeed who prays to Me in the midst of his worldly duties. He is trying to find Me, overcoming a great obstacleÐpushing away, as it were, a huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a man is a real hero."

-Sri Ramakrishna

 

"Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses."

Confucius.

 

'The most sublime act is to set another before yourself'


William Blake.

 

'The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman.....

Sri Aurobindo.

 

"The mind can be your worst enemy or your greatest friend"

Bhagavad -Gita

 

Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean.
Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta's love, the water
is frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then
assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a
Person. But with the rising of the Sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice
melt. Then one doesn't feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see
God's forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who
would do so disappears. He cannot find his I any more.

~Sri Ramakrishna

 

"There are people who love adventure. It is these I call, and I tell them this: 'I invite you to the great adventure'.

It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails - a real adventure, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step bt step in the unexplored. Something that has never been in the present universe and that will never be again in the same way. If that interests you...well, let us embark. What will happen tomorrow I have no idea!
One must put aside all that has been forseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed, and then...set off walking into the unknown. And - come what may! There."

Sweet Mother in 'The Sunlit Path'

 

...But those who worship me with love live in me, and I come to life in them. He who knows me as his own divine Self breaks through the belief that he is the body and is not reborn as a separate creature. Such a one is united with me. Delivered from selfish attachment, fear, and anger, filled with me, surrendering themselves to me, purified in the fire of my being, many have reached the state of unity in me. (Bhagavad Gita 4:9-10)

 

My soul cries out, snared by the beauty of the formless one. As I cry by myself, night and day, beauty amassed before my eyes surpasses numberless moons and suns. If I look at the clouds in the sky, I see his beauty afloat; and I see him walk on the stars blazing my heart.

-Fikirchand

 

'They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom'

Confucius.