From the Scriptures and Wise Ones
·
Manu Smriti says:
One-fourth of one’s knowledge comes from the Teacher, one-fourth from study,
one-fourth from co-students and one-fourth by experience in the passage of
time.
·
“He who is humbler than a
blade of grass and more patient than a tree; who respects others but wants not
any respect for oneself, is fit to take the Name of the Almighty Lord.” This
was the famous instruction of Sri Gauranga Mahaprabhu.
·
Samsara or world-existence comes to an end only when the jiva
recognises its true identity with the Absolute. The condition of the jiva-consciousness
is just the condition of the sheath with which it identifies itself at any
given time. When the Atman is discovered to be different form the sheaths, it
is at once realised as Brahman. - Panchadasi
·
“He is called a ‘man’
who, when anger rises forcibly within, is able to subdue and cast it out as a
snake casts away its slough with ease,” said Hanuman to himself when he
suspected that the fire he set through the whole of Lanka might perhaps have burnt
Sita, too.
·
“Poison is not real
poison. Sense-objects are the real poison. Poison kills one life, but
sense-objects can devastate a series of lives.”
·
These persons do not get
sleep, says Vidura to Dhritarashtra: Those who are sick, those who have been overthrown
by others and are deprived of power and assistance from any side, those who are
afflicted with lust, and those who are scheming to deprive others of their
possessions.
·
The Mahabharata says that
the Vedas are afraid of him who tries to approach them without a knowledge of
the correct import of the Epics and Puranas. Here is a covert suggestion that
the Absolute of philosophy should also include the variety and conflict of
practical life, in order to be real and not merely an object of speculation.
·
The four noble truths of
the Buddha that there is suffering, that there is a cause for suffering, that
there is a way out of suffering and that there is a state beyond suffering, are
proof enough to show that he was not a nihilist in the sense in which the word
is used today, but a practical man who had an eye to doing something than
merely conjecturing about Truth and its realisation.
·
The teaching of the
Yoga-Vasishta emphasises that when there is perception of an object by the
seer or observer, there has to be pre-supposed the existence of a consciousness
between the subject and the object. If this conscious connecting link were not
to be, there would be no perception of existence. There cannot be a
consciousness of relation between two things unless there is a consciousness
relating the two terms and yet standing above them. The study of the
perceptional situation discloses the fact that the subject and the object are
phases of a universal consciousness.
·
“By excess of passion
Ravana was destroyed; by excess of greed Duryodhana was killed; by excessive
charity Kama came to ruin; excess is always to be avoided,” says a hitopadesa.
·
“By pranayama one
should burn all dross; by pratyahara sever all attachments;
by dharana all distraction; and by dhyana all
undivine qualities.” - Manu Smritis
·
Krishna and Arjuna should
be seated in one chariot. Isvara and jiva should partake of a
single objective in all action. This mutual transfusion of the universal and
the individual is Krishna-Arjuna-Samvada, the eternal Gita of the cosmos which
is Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra.
·
Tena tyaktena bhunjithah, is the exhortation of the Isopanishad. It means that our
enjoyment in the real sense is possible of achievement only when we renounce
everything. But what is this renunciation? It is implied in the earlier
sentence of the verse, which states - isavasyam idam sarvam. All
this universe is indwelt by the Lord. As such, desire for objects is an
impossibility. This is true renunciation; which is also the true freedom and
joy.
·
Sarvam paravasam duhkham,
sarvam atmavasam sukham - ‘All dependence on
persons and things is pain; all self-dependence is joy.’ This has to be
practised gradually, by rise from the grosser to the subtler, from the external
to the internal.
·
Each and every contact which
the desireful nature establishes with the outer world is a piercing dart thrust
into the heart of the person cherishing such nature.” - Vishnu Purana
·
“Our prosperity, our
friends, our bondage and even our destruction are all in the end rooted in our tongue,”
says a famous adage.
·
Draupadi exclaims in the
court of the Kauravas: “That is not an assembly where there are no elders; they
are not elders who do not know dharma; that is not dharma which
is not in consonance with truth; that is not truth which has crookedness behind
it.”
·
“He who knows, knows not;
he who knows not, knows.” This is a statement in the Upanishad, meaning that
one who has realised the Truth has no personality-consciousness, and one who
has it knows not the Truth.
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