Words from the Master

One day a poor man went to Emperor Akbar’s palace.
He wanted to request Akbar to give him some money for his son’s studies.
Akbar was known for not turning away anyone who asked for help.
When the man reached the palace, he saw that Akbar was offering his prayers to God. So he waited with the others outside the prayer hall.
When Akbar came out, everybody made their requests and received help from him.
Only the poor man turned away, without asking for anything.
But Akbar spotted him and called him back.
He asked him, “Why are you leaving without asking for anything?”
The man replied, “Your Majesty, I came to ask you for alms, but saw that you yourself were begging!”

If you observe our prayers, you will realize that all of us are actually beggars. We simply ask, ask and ask. Our prayer is nothing but a begging bowl. We beg for material things, for smooth relationships, for power, for achieving our goals, for physical beauty, and what not.

We are all the time asking for something or the other continuously in our minds. In fact we are so much in tune with asking, that it has become an unconscious process within ourselves and we might not even accept that we are asking. We might argue that we are not asking, because we don’t see it as asking. We see it as a natural way of life! We have become so involved in it and therefore unable to distance ourselves from it and see it with a fresh mind.

Understand: There are only two kinds of religion in the world; religions based on prayer, and religions based on gratitude.

The religion of prayer is all about asking God for something or the other. It can be followed by the masses, because it is very much in tune with our asking attitude. It is in tune with the conditioning that has gone inside us from a young age. Asking is the prayer that we have been taught from when we were children. It seems like the most natural way to approach God or Existence.

On the other hand, the religion of gratitude, is based on just an overwhelming gratitude from within, towards God or Existence. It is quite contrary to what is taught to us from childhood. We have always been taught to thank only for what has been received, that’s all. We have been taught gratitude as social etiquette, nothing more than that!

How then can we be thankful all the time? It becomes too much! That is why, these religions of gratitude are followed by a select few.

Only a few meditative religions, like Buddhism or Sufism, are based on gratitude. These religions have very few followers, but the quality of the followers is high.

You see: There is nothing wrong with prayer, but getting stuck in the act of asking while praying, is where the trouble starts. Prayer should be used as a jumping board to enter into meditation, a meditation where gratitude becomes prayer and your Being becomes bliss!

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Words from the Master

We will now go into the last chakra - the Sahasrara chakra which is located on the crown of the head.

In Sanskrit, Sahasrara means ‘thousand petalled’ - from the mystical experience of a thousand-petalled lotus blooming on the crown, when this chakra is activated.

This chakra is closed by discontentment and the attitude of taking life for granted and it can be made to flower by overflowing gratitude and contentment!
(Meditation Technique: Sahasrara Dhyana - a Sufi meditation technique.)

A small story:

A man prays to God every day, “O God, I don’t have enough money. Please help me win a big lottery worth at least ten million rupees! If I win, I promise you, I will offer 20 percent of my winnings at your shrine. If you don’t believe me, please deduct 2 million for yourself, and give me only the remaining 8 million.”
(Uproarious laughter from the group!)

All our dealings are exactly like this – a mere business! It may not be so obvious in our lives, but if you deeply analyze your attitude of prayer, you will understand that you are all the time having a business deal with everyone, including God.

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Purpose of life is to live enlightenment

EVERY moment, the choices you have in life from Existence are actually infinite. Existence is like the mother who waits expectantly, longingly for her little child just learning to take the first steps in this world. She is waiting for you to learn to live life in the best way — live enlightenment. She is waiting eagerly for you to open her gift of life. She wants to see that joy and surprise on your face when you discover your gift and enjoy it — by living enlightenment.

God designed this world with only one purpose — to make you experience His love. All He wants to see is a smile on your face, a blissful overflowing in your being, as you enjoy these wonderful gifts He has made just for you. There is no other purpose to life. It is a straight and simple universe inviting you to play with it, flirt with it, and experience the joy of pure romance with it.

You are not an accident; you are an incident. You are a conscious miracle of Existence. Life is not a forced happening you have to go through. Life is a living vibrant partner, playing an exciting game, a mysterious adventure that opens out new vistas in front of you every second.

Understand, whenever you think life is throwing surprises at you, life wants to understand you. It is curious to know about you, just like a naughty little kid constantly playing with you and teasing you. It just says, ‘If I talk like this, what will you do? If I do this, what will you do?’ What you call difficult situations or people are just the naughty yet innocent pranks of the little child — sometimes running into your arms, sometimes pinching your cheek and running away, sometimes angry because you did not appreciate its innocent act.

Life is your partner. It is asking you, ‘If I present myself like this in front of you, what will you do?’ Just enjoy this pure romance, delicate as a rose yet strong. This is not the dead strength of a rock, it is the vibrant strength of life — it can express in infinite dimensions this moment yet the very next moment it may not even be alive. Life is just like that — intensely alive and bubbling, unaffected by what can happen the very next moment.

Every moment is a gift from the Divine — the only way to pay your gratitude for the gift is to be intensely alive in this moment, to live enlightenment. The expression of living enlightenment is experiencing complete fulfilment. You are just overflowing within yourself, so you don’t need anything more. This is the natural state in which every single human being is designed to live.

Jealousy has no solid existence

JEALOUSY has no solid existence. Jealousy is like darkness. Darkness does not have an independent, positive existence. Darkness is not the presence of something. Darkness is just the absence of light. In the same way, jealousy has no independent, solid existence by itself and is just the absence of knowledge or awareness.

Emotions such as fear, desire and guilt are subjective emotions. You do not require another person or even an object to create these emotions. Imagine that you are in a soundproof room with your eyes closed and with nothing to touch, taste or smell. You can still experience the emotions of fear or desire. But to compare yourself with another person and to feel jealous of him, you need the presence of another person.

Jealousy needs an object to be activated. There is no end to comparison because comparison exists in the mind, not in reality. Hence, jealousy that arises from comparison indeed has no basis. Jealousy is closely related to many negative emotions — anger, greed, possessiveness, depression, etc. All of these emotions will dissolve when we break this cycle of jealousy.

Suppose there was a huge ladder and everybody in the world was asked to stand on it in ascending order of success in any field, such as beauty, intelligence, etc. You would probably position yourself somewhere in the middle of the ladder. There are many people above you but there are also many people below you. Observing the people above you causes you to feel jealous; so you constantly try to become better than them in order to move further up the ladder. Now, at some point in your life, you may realise the uselessness of this never-ending game. Then you want to jump off the ladder. This is where the fight starts. When you look up, you experience misery, but when you look down, you experience happiness. So even though you now begin to realise the futility of spending your life just climbing the ladder, still you are not able to jump off the ladder because if you jump off, you will be left alone — there will be nobody above you or below you.

This does not mean that the best way out of the problem of comparison and jealousy is to avoid looking at others and their achievements. You can’t escape from your mind just by ignoring your thoughts! If you can look but not be affected by what you see, then you have found the right way. If you can accept and welcome what you see and what happens, then you are centred within yourself and nothing can shake you.

Be Blissful!