The Greatest Gift

 “Bhagavan was pouring his grace on me. I was suddenly gripped by an overwhelming urge to surrender unreservedly to him to guide me in my spiritual hunger, abandoning all the methods I had previously followed and all the beliefs I had built my hopes on. That very moment, I passed on my fate and all that I was to the sacred hands of my master, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.” S. S. Cohen, devotee.

Lord of the Heart, beloved Master,

 there are no words to describe your perfection, your compassion, your being!

With infinite kindness, you tolerated this fool, accepting all my faults and blemishes,ignoring my sins, pouring your divine grace upon me

 like a waterfall that washes all stains away!

All the blessings of the universe flow to me in the warmth of your gaze.

Tears of bliss fall from these eyes like rain at the very thought of your presence:

Sweet my lord, how can I ever thank you enough?

With loving kindness greater than any mother, you protect and cherish me every day.

With gentle understanding greater than any father, you guide me to the truth.

Your infinite grace takes care of everything in my inner and outer life.

Like a fledgling sheltering beneath his mother’s wing , I surrender at your holy feet.

You give me everything, O lord, with no holding back;

And the greatest gift of all: 

you shine in my Heart eternally with the splendour of a thousand suns!

Jai Bhagawan! Jai Bhagawan! Jai Bhagawan!

Like drop falls into ocean, I fall so gladly into thee.

This Peace

“Fix the mind in the Heart. If you keep your attention on the source from which all thoughts arise, the mind will subside there at the source and Reality will shine forth.”

Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharishi’s instructions to Mastan Swami

When I let go of all that I thought was me

And turn my attention inwards, in loving devotion and surrender,

Diving deep into myself to find where all the thoughts arise,

I find the source of the “I” thought that is the root of Being

And dissolve in ineffable truth-consciousness-bliss.

This is my true home, the beginning and the end, the source and the goal of everything.

Beyond time and space and intellect, this is the perfect flame of the Divine,

The sacred fire of jnana, the eternal, unchanging Self.

Drunk on this ambrosia…now nothing else remains:

Like a babe clings to its mother, 

I hold fast to this subtle, ecstatic peace!

The Valley

There is a secret valley where an infinite stream of joy 

meanders through meadows of flowering awareness 

under a deep and endless sky of peace.

A long time ago, in a rare moment of thought-free stillness, I fell into myself and found this wondrous place.

I tasted its ecstatic essence, its perfect love and harmony.

Alas! It was but a glimpse of paradise!

I was thrown gasping, like a fish out of water, on the shifting shore of Maya.

For aeons, I struggled with all my being, trying to find my way back.

I tried so many different paths – to no avail.

In despair, I let go and surrendered totally at the feet of the Master.

By his compassionate grace, I awoke from the nightmare of samsara:

Lo! I discovered I had never been away!

Now I dwell quietly at His feet in the valley of sat-chit-ananda, 

singing silent songs of gratitude and praise.

Jai Bhagavan! Jai Bhagavan! Jai Bhagavan!

That Which You Always Are

Wild geese flying over the mountain lake are reflected in that perfect, deep stillness.

When they fly away, where has the reflection gone?

If you know that your life is a brief reflection in the lake of the Self,

Would you rather be the reflection or the lake?

The Self is infinite, blissful, peace.

Be still.

Find the source.

Dive deep.

This is the only way.

How can one speak of that which no words can say?

There is a wisdom in your soul that is your guiding star.

Listen inwards!

Stillness and silence 

Will lead you to being

That which you always are.

If your house is on fire....

“When you're in a burning building you do not stop to admire the pictures on the wall. You get out of the building as fast as you can.” Robert Adams

The Buddha described enlightenment simply as “the end of suffering.”

This mystery is not something you can figure out with your mind.

Unless you realise you are in prison, you will not try to escape.

Until it hurts enough, you will not wish to awaken.

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

That which changes arises from that which is unchanging.

All that you perceive with your senses is time, space and energy dancing in patterns.

It’s all a trick, a movie, light and shadow on a screen.

Escape from the mirage, the dream, the illusion!

If you would know the eternal, the real,

Let everything else go!

I have climbed the mountains of pleasure and plumbed the valleys of pain.

I have sunk in the depths of sorrow and soared high on the winds of joy.

I have danced on the grassy plains of happiness and wept in the dark chasms of numbing grief.

I have known the tormenting pangs of bitter loss and the exhilarating satisfaction of successful gain.

In the end, it was all a dream, a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Tiring of all the suffering, of all the highs and lows and I-told-you-so’s, 

I fell in abject and total surrender at the feet of the One.

In that letting go, I disappeared!

All that remained was THAT.

Perfect, blissful peace.

Om Mani Padme Hum

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace.

The ten thousand things rise and fall and then return to the source.

Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of Nature.”

From Tao Te Ching of Lao Tse.

You took this human form to discover your true Self,

To end the suffering of a thousand lifetimes,

To find the jewel in the lotus of your soul.

Be quiet.

Sink deep into yourself.

Let the mind dissolve in stillness in the depths of being.

This is the kingdom of waking sleep.

This is the land beyond thought and feeling, beyond time and space.

This is the unchanging heart of non-duality, the ONE.

Imagine a billion universes contained in a grain of sand.

Utterly empty, but absolutely full, the centre is nowhere and everywhere.

It is the source and the substance of everything: nothing else really exists.

Call it God or Brahman or Tao, it is that shining, eternal perfection beyond all name and form.

Beyond space and time, it is infinite love, impeccable stillness, unshakable peace.

It is the ocean of endless bliss that dissolves everything.

The secret of secrets:  THAT is who you really are.
You cannot know it - you can only BE it.

This perennial treasure is always inside you, at your very core, a pearl beyond all price.

To find it, you must be willing to empty yourself of everything, to die before you die.

You must let go of who you think you are and enter the darkness within the darkness.

You must pass through the gateless gate, drop the known and the unknown and leap into the abyss of the unknowable.

While breath remains in your body, find this treasure!

This is enough.

Death is the Doorway

“It's not how much profound knowledge we know intellectually. It's how much we don't know. We have to transcend the mind that wants to be worthy and profound. We have to go beyond that to wake up. As long as your mind is filled with beautiful poetry and beautiful quotations and profound knowledge you can never become free. The idea is to give it all up. Then in your freedom you know all these things but there is nothing to say. “
Robert Adams, devotee of Sri Ramana Maharishi.

When the pain of samsara became unbearable, I wept and prayed,
I threw myself at the feet of the Lord in my heart and begged for grace.
I surrendered body and mind and spirit and sought rest and refuge.

The silence spoke:

“Stop trying to think, to figure things out, to preach or teach.
Drop all your piety, your saintliness, your spiritual ego-trip.
Truth is beyond the mind, beyond all concepts, all language.
Be still. Be quiet. Just BE! "


There is only one doorway to immortality, to freedom, to infinite, eternal peace.
If I would attain the Self, I must lay my neck on the altar of renunciation and let the sword of Brahman chop off my head!

Like river merging in ocean, I must merge in Him.

I must drop all emotional and intellectual activity.

I must die – before the body dies.
There is no other way.