What is difference between love and devotion?

What you call as love, if you are not devoted to the person whom you love, there is really no love; it is only a mutual benefit scheme. When you truly love somebody, you will naturally be devoted; how can you not? One, who does not know devotion to the one he loves, does not know love at all. Then it is just a socially picked up word – because everybody is saying, “I love you,” you are also saying it.

Love has conditions attached to it. Only if your expectations are fulfilled, your love affair will continue, otherwise it will end. Devotion is not like that. It is unconditional. Love also genuinely becomes a fulfilling and life-nurturing process for any one only when it is unconditional. The moment it is conditional, it becomes a transaction. Human transactions at the physical, emotional and intellectual levels are often referred to as love. “You fulfill my need; I will fulfill your need.” It is just useful; it is utilitarian. People do not like to see it that way because it makes their lives ugly. So they want to give it a beautiful name, so they call it `love.’

Observe this at places of worship: What people think is devotion to God might not in fact be so. Here, too, there is a transaction. You do whatever you think God expects you to do, and then God is supposed to do many other things for you. This is deal making, and an unfair one.

Love and devotion, however, are not two different things, but people still do tend to see them as being separate because one is meant for a higher purpose and another is expected to fulfill a daily need. But there is no need to separate the two. Love is devotion and devotion is love. Without love, how can anybody be devout? Just because you have ascribed to yourself a certain religion or faith, you don’t instantly become a devotee – a devotee is just drawn.

A devotee is never thinking in terms of his own well being. Only one who can look beyond his own wellbeing can be a devotee. You cannot cultivate devotion. Cultivated devotion is deception. When you are overwhelmed by something, you will naturally be devoted to it. It takes experience for devotion to be natural. When you plant a rose plant, you don’t try to get a flower out of it immediately. You just nurture it. When it is sufficiently nurtured, it will blossom forth.

So devotion is like a flower. It is not something that you try to do. If you dig into the earth, you will not find a flower or fruit, but it all comes from there; the plant is only a passage from earth to flower. The fragrant flower does not display any trace of soil, manure or water – it is devoid of all that. Devotion is devoid of you. When you become just a conduit for life, you become an outpouring of devotion. No one has ever achieved anything of significance in any sphere of life without being devoted to what he is doing. Devotion is not only the sweetest way to be, but also the most intelligent way to be, as a devotee effortlessly perceives what one of intellect will struggle with for a lifetime.



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Ocean Of Knowledge In A Pot Of Water

Ocean Of Knowledge In A Pot Of Water


A seeker went to a master one day and begged him to enlighten him. “I am obsessed with seeking out God. I can neither rest, work nor be at peace. Can you help me find God?” The master gazed far away with half-closed eyes for a while, and said slowly, “Go with a pot to the ocean in the mornings, gather some water in it and, sitting on the sands, meditate for some time before beginning your day’s chores”.

Thanking the master, the seeker immediately bought a pot and eagerly went to the ocean near his house. He filled the pot with seawater and sat down on the beach. On what should he meditate, he wondered. He had tried many supposedly potent verses and powerful mantras earlier, to no effect.

The master had, however, not given any special mantra. Just relax, he had said. Meditate and relax! The two seemed to him a little contradictory. Meditating, to him, meant concentration and action, and relaxing meant idling and letting go. He thought over this dichotomy for some time but suddenly remembered an important chore. He poured the water back on the sand as he had been told to do, and hurried home.

Contradiction notwithstanding, he somehow felt a little soothed and relaxed. He even felt a tad energised. So he went again the next morning, and every morning thereafter. Now this became his routine. Every day, he felt a little better and even learnt to relax fairly well. Repeatedly, the contradiction between relaxation and concentration presented itself to him and each time he slipped a little deeper in its grips. He was not aware that, unknown to him, the cogitation itself had become a mantra.Effortless, unwavering, natural, a relaxed concentration.

The seeker looked meditatively at the ocean that stretched far to the horizon, almost endless. Now it surrounded him too and encompassed him. He looked at the water in the pot. That water too came from the ocean, and although a minuscule part of it, it was the very same. One was vast and infinite, and the other, a tiny part of it. One was called the ocean, and the other, a pot of water. But the contents were the same. The difference was in the measure. The infinite sustained a multitude of life, even untold filth, all turbulence, and yet, a deep silence and calm beneath. The ocean itself was not affected by any of this. It remained pure and clear within itself, full of energy and dancing with joy.

Suddenly it hit him, This is God! Vast, endless, pure and knowledgeable, engulfing everything, including himself. Only, instead of water, now it was Consciousness. Immaculate and crystal clear, despite all the festering scum of anger, violence, hatred, prejudice generated by the murky mind.

The seeker poured the water back into the sea. It disappeared in the lapping waves and became one with the sea again. The seeker saw that he, too, was part of that vast ocean of Consciousness, had merged in it and become Consciousness itself, infinite, eternal, pure, sheer joy, and knowledge.

He was in every atom, every cell, in every individual. His persona was micro and macro, the Entirety. He was here and he was everywhere. He was the past, the present and the future. He was the elements of the universe. He was time and he was space. He was knowledge incarnate.




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Enlightenment Can Make You Beautiful

Enlightenment Can Make You Beautiful


While beauty might well lie in the eye of the beholder, there are certain aspects which do mandate conventional assessment by those engaged in the business of judging who is beautiful. There was a time when beauty was actually graded in terms of millihelens — 1,000 millihelens making one helen, measuring beauty in units of Helen of Troy, believed to be the most beautiful woman ever to have existed. Quite in contrast is the glow and brilliance emanating from deep within and rather than being in the eye of the beholder is a more universally accepted trait more felt than seen.

One such legendary figure whose beauty captivated all is Lord Mahavira. A “samavasarana” traditionally is the palace where every tirthankara delivers his first sermon. Lord Mahavira had his at Pavapuri. A samavasarana is basically a circular structure constructed by gods that consists of linked tiers with surrounding balustrades, in which the audience listens to the tirthankara who is seated in the middle. Incidentally at that very time, Saumil was organising a big yagna nearby, where 11 elite Vedic scholars of the time were to participate. Indrabhuti was the senior most and most erudite amongst them.

Seeing the gods moving their chariots ahead, towards the place of Mahavira’s sermon, peeved Indrabhuti. Being deeply immersed in self-pride and fully confident that his knowledge was infinite and that there was no branch of knowledge or scripture that he hadn’t studied, he wondered if the gods had lost their balance and become bankrupt in their “avadhi gyana” — knowledge of clairvoyance — to drift past the holy place without bowing to him and listening to his discourse.

This little dialogue between two gods: “We have got to hurry to the samavasarana, so as not to miss even a little part of the discourse of the tirthankara” incensed him still further. Unable to resist the temptation to see for himself who the greater omniscient could be, he, too, made his way to the place of the sermon.

Seeing the exuberant personality before his eyes, Indrabhuti’s ego got the first major blow. There, seated under the Ashoka tree, on a golden throne embedded with jewels and covered with three celestial umbrellas he saw Lord Mahavira. Verses describe him to be in a state of serene calmness, with the glow of a full moon and simultaneously of an intellectual dazzling brilliance like that of the midday sun.


Pages are then devoted as to how Indrabhuti started wondering if the personality before him was Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva. Indrabhuti then thought of other gods —Kamadeva, Indra, Kuber, Vidyadhara — but failed to recognise the beautiful person’s identity. The comparison then went on with elements of nature where again it turned out that each had some or the other minor defect — the sea was too salty, the Moon has blemishes, the Sun gets too hot, the Sky is invisible, the clouds are empty at times, but the one before his eyes was devoid of any shortcoming. Though there was not a single ornament on his body he seemed most attractive and handsome. His speech was so powerful and effective that even wild animals had abandoned violence.

Beauty nurtured with diet, cosmetics and exercise pale in comparison with the pristine quietude and sublime equanimity one could experience through contemplating unremittingly on the soul, the ultimate truth of being


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Pride of Performance

Pride of Performance

In today's world, pride in performance has fallen by the wayside because it requires effort and hard work. However, nothing happens unless it is made to happen. When one is discouraged, it is easy to look for shortcuts. However these should be avoided no matter how great the temptation. Pride comes from within, which is what gives the winning edge.

Pride of performance does not represent ego. It represents pleasure with humility. The quality of the work and the quality of the worker are inseparable. Half-hearted effort does not produce half results; it produces no results.

Three people were laying bricks and a passerby asked them what they were doing. The first one replied, "Don't you see I am making a living?" The second one said, "Don't you see I am laying bricks?" The third one said, "I am building a beautiful monument." Three people doing the same thing gave totally different replies. The question is : did they have different attitudes? And would their attitude affect their performance? The answer is a clear yes.

Excellence comes when the performer takes pride in doing his best. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it, regardless of what the job is, whether washing cars, sweeping the floor or painting a house.

Do it right the first time, every time. The best insurance for tomorrow is a job well done today.
Michelangelo was working on a statue for several days and he was taking a long time to retouch every small detail which seemed rather insignificant to a bystander. When asked why he did it, Michelangelo replied, "Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle."
Most people forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well it was done.

If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets
even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music,
or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well
that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here
lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

--Martin Luger King, Jr.

One cannot compromise on quality and service. It is said that Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's, found a fly during one of his visits at a franchise. Two weeks later the franchisee lost his franchise. Ray Kroc said, "You should work for pride and accomplishment. I was brought up to understand that reward will come later."

The feeling of a job well done is a reward in itself. It is better to do small things well than do many things poorly.


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Nothing belongs to me

Who is responsible for action that takes place? If you think that you are, you will need to reflect on the question. Never consider yourself as the doer of actions.

God himself is the doer and the one undergoing action. You have not made this world and the weight of this world is not over you. If you surrender to the One who has made this world and who is taking care of this world, then whatever you do will be noble and good for everybody.

Krishna said to Arjuna in the Bhagvad Geeta: “Give up your pride, beliefs and attachment to body and then come to my rescue. I am all-knowing and am the supreme soul. By doing so, you will experience divine peace and reach the supreme blissful state.”

By believing God to be the doer, the karta and the one undergoing action (Bharata), one surrenders to God completely. If you feed a beggar and then think that you were the one who fed the poor beggar, then this reflects petty behavior, it’s tamas. A believer in rajas or action will think that he was fortunate to feed the beggar and thanks God for giving him this opportunity to offer his service.

While a believer of satva or truth will think that he was just a mediator, it was God who gave strength to his hands to feed the God who is in the beggar. Your heart will become pure if you believe that by serving your mother or a guest or anybody else you are actually serving God in another form. Don't think that you served the helpless mother or guest. Those people appear to be helpless in their physical form but in reality the all-knowing God is present in them. God is the doer and the one undergoing action.

You will be successful every time you believe in the presence of God behind every action. One enjoys meditation, japa, worship or service when there is the belief that, "My dear Lord is doing and He only is getting that done!"

Whenever you come in submission to God knowingly or unknowingly, your work becomes divine, you are able to complete work without being worried and after completion also you feel the sweetness of that work. The result of selfish and evil work is unhappiness, depression and loss of peace of mind.

People may praise an officer using attractive words even if he is not praiseworthy, in order to get their work done. The officer then starts thinking that he is indispensable to the work being done. But when that officer retires, nobody recognises him.

God is the only true officer of all. If somebody praises you that you are a big person, then you should understand that you are not big, He is big who is making your heart beat and brain work.

If you sit down for meditation for two hours and spend the rest of 22 hours in inflating your pride, there will be no spiritual growth. It is good to devote time to prayer and meditation, but the rest of the time one should think: “There is the hand of God in whatever work is being done, that very God is the doer and is the one undergoing action.” If you start contemplating on this thought, then you will soon realise the true self of God.

There is nothing mine in me, whatever is there is yours.



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15 Laws of Life - What You Need to Keep in Mind - Swami Vivekananda

15 Laws of Life

Laws
1. Love Is The Law Of Life: All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love's sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.

2. It's Your Outlook That Matters: It is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.

3. Life is Beautiful: First, believe in this world - that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

4. It's The Way You Feel: Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

5. Set Yourself Free: The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

6. Don't Play The Blame Game: Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

7. Help Others: If money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

8. Uphold Your Ideals: Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

9. Listen To Your Soul: You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

10. Be Yourself: The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!


11. Nothing Is Impossible: Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin - to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

12. You Have The Power: All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

13. Learn Everyday: The goal of mankind is knowledge... now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

14. Be Truthful: Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

15. Think Different: All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.



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Friendshipl..... OsHO

Q: Beloved Master,

I have many friends, but the question: who is a real friend? This always arises in my mind. Will you say something about it?

Satyam, you are asking from the wrong end. Never ask, "Who is my real friend?" Ask, "Am I a real friend to somebody?" That is the right question. Why are you worried about others - whether they are friends to you or not?


The proverb is: A friend in need is a friend indeed.But deep down that is greed! That is not friendship, that is not love. You want to use the other as a means, and no man is a means, every man is an end unto himself. Why are you so worried about who is a real friend?

A young honeymoon couple were touring Southern Florida. They stopped at a rattlesnake farm along the road. After seeing the sights they engaged in small talk with the man that handled the snakes.

"Gosh!" exclaimed the young bride, "You certainly have a dangerous job! Don't you ever get bitten by the snakes?"

"Yes, I do," answered the handler.


"Well", she insisted, "just what do you do when you are bitten by a snake?


"I always carry a razor-sharp knife in my pocket, and as soon as I am bitten I make a deep, criss-cross mark across the fang wound and then suck the poison from the wound."


"What? Ah! what would happen if you were to accidentally sit on a rattler?" persisted the bride.


"Ma'am," answered the snake handler, "that will be the day I learn who my real friends are!"

Why are you worried?


The real question has to be: Am I friendly to people? Do yo know what friendship is? It is the highest form of love. In love, some lust is bound to be there; in friendship, all lust disappears. In friendship nothing gross remains, it becomes absolutely subtle.


It is not the question of using the other, it is not even a question of needing the other, it is a question of sharing. You have too much, and you would like to share. And whosoever is ready to share your joy with you, your dance, your song, you will be grateful to him, you will feel obliged. Not that he'/she is obliged to you, not that he should be thankful to you because you have given so much to him. A friend never thinks in that way. A friend always feels grateful to those people who allow him to love them, to give them whatsoever he has got.


Love is greed. You will be surprised to know that the English word 'love' comes from a Sanskrit word Lobh; lobh means greed. How lobh became love is a strange story. In Sanskrit it is greed; the original root means greed. And love as we know it is really nothing but greed masquerading as love - it is hidden greed.

Satyam, making friendship with the idea of using people is a wrong step from the very beginning.
Friendship has to be a sharing. If you have something, share it - and whosoever is ready to share with you, is a friend. It is not a question of need. It is not a question that when you are in danger the friend has to come to your aid. That is irrelevant - he may come, he may not come, but if he doesn't come, you don't have any complaint. If he comes, you are grateful, but if he doesn't come, it's perfectly okay. It is his decision to come or not to come. You don't want to manipulate him, you don't want to make him feel guilty. You will not have any grudge. You will not say to him that, "When I was in need you didn't turn up - what kind of friend are you?"


Friendship is not something of the marketplace.Friendship is one of those rare things which belong to the temple and not to the shop. But if you are not aware of that kind of friendship, you will have to learn it.

.......

We have seen wars happening in the recent past, in the twentieth century; it doesn't seem to be very grown-up in that way. Adolph Hitler repeated for twenty years that "Jews are the cause of all misery," and a very intelligent nation like Germany started believing in him. What to say about ordinary people? - Even people like Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest philosopher Germany has produced in this century, believed that Adolph Hitler was right. He supported Adolph Hitler.

A man of the intelligence of Martin Heidegger, supporting a stupid, mad person like Adolph Hitler! What must the secret be? The secret is: repeat, go on repeating. Even Jews started believing that it must be true: "We must be the cause; otherwise how could so many intelligent people believe it? If so many people believe it, there must be something in it!"

You should have been brought up with such beliefs, such ideas, which have no foundation in reality. And if you go on living according to them, you will live in vain. You have to go through a radical change.

Ask question about yourself, don't ask about others. It is impossible to be certain of the other, and there is no need either. How can you be certain of the other? The other is a flux. This moment the other person may be loving, and the next moment he may not be loving. There can be no promise. You can only be certain about yourself and that too only for the moment. There is no need to think of the whole future. Think in terms of the moment and the present. Live in the present.

If this moment is full of friendship and the fragrance of friendship, why be worried about the next moment? The next moment will be born out of this moment. It is bound to be of a higher, deeper quality. It will bring the same fragrance to a higher altitude. There is no need to think about it - just live the moment in deep friendship.

Friendship need not be addressed to anyone in particular; that is also a rotten idea, that you have to be friends with a certain person - just be friendly. Rather than creating friendship, create friendliness. Let it be a quality of your being, a climate that surrounds you, so you are friendly with whomsoever you come in contact.

This whole existence has to be befriended! And if you can befriend existence, existence will befriend you a thousand fold. It returns you in the same coin, but multiplied. It echoes you. If you throw a stone at existence, you will get back many more stones. If you throw flowers, flowers will come back.

Life is a mirror, it reflects your face. Be friendly, and all of life will reflect friendliness. People know perfectly well that if you are friendly to a dog even the dog becomes friendly to you, so friendly. And there are people who have known that if you become friendly to a tree, the tree becomes friendly to you.

Try great experiments in friendship, Try with a rosebush, and see the miracle: slowly slowly, it will happen, because man has not been behaving with trees in a friendly way; hence, they have become very afraid.

But now scientist say that, when you come with an axe to cut down a tree, even before you have started cutting it, the trees goes into a shiver, a cold shiver. It goes into a great fear panic. You have not even started, but just the intention - it is as if the tree becomes aware of your intention! Now they have sophisticated instruments just like cardiographs, which can make graphs on paper showing what the tree is feeling. When the tree is feeling joyous, there is a rhythm in the graph; when the tree is feeling afraid, the fear is shown on the graph. When the tree sees a friend coming it rejoices, it jumps, it dances; the graph immediately shows a dance. When the tree sees the Gardner coming.........

Have you ever said hello to a tree? Try it, and one day you will be surprised: the tree also says hello in its tongue, in its own language. Hug a tree, and one day will come soon when you will feel that it was notonly you who were hugging the tree - the tree was responding, you were also hugged by the tree, although the tree has no hands. But it has its own way of expressing its joy, its sadness, its anger, its fear.

The whole existence is sensitive. That's what I mean, when I say that existence is God.

Be friendly , Satyam, and don't be worried whether anybody is friendly towards you or not - that is a businesslike question. Why be worried? Why not transform the whole existence into a friend towards you? Why miss such a great kingdom?



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