Inside Yoga 218 (4/12/2017)

I was tidying up my office clutter and I came across a note book in which I had written down some extracts from books I had read several years ago which at the time struck a chord with me; so I thought I would share them with you.

“Why do we hear so little about patience today? There almost seems a conspiracy in our modern world to counsel just the opposite: be impatient, be angry, ‘look out for number one’.
“But what is life without patience? We seldom realise what power there is in patience. All the energy consumed in exploding against others, in retaliating, in unkind words, in the anger that brings grief to others and ulcers to ourselves – all that energy can harnessed as positive, creative power, simply by learning patience.
“Imagine someone who cannot be disturbed even if you are unkind to him. Imagine someone who moves closer to you when you get angry, instead of running away, someone who keeps showing respect even when you try to strike out and hurt him. Simply being around such people is a joy. Their patience rubs off. Gradually we want to be like them. When we have a selfish impulse we reject it, we have seen something higher. Once we have an idea like this to live up to, we try to stretch ourselves a little every day, we see opportunities un every challenge.”
– Eknath Easwaran

“Somebody says something to you that is rude or designed to hurt, Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defence or withdrawal, you let it pass right through you. Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behaviour is unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in your power – not someone else’s, nor are you run by your mind.”
– Eckhart Tolle ‘The Power of Now’

“Who you are is always a more vital teaching and a more powerful transformer of the world than what you say, and more essential even than what you do.”
– Eckhart Tolle ‘The Power of Now’

“Are you a habitual ‘waiter’? How much of your life do you spend waiting? … It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.
“Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your ‘here and now’ where you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.”
– Eckhart Tolle ‘The Power of Now’

“When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving, but don’t forget; the only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you taking at this moment.”
– Eckhart Tolle ‘The Power of Now’

“Every living being longs always to be happy untainted by sorrows, and everyone has the greatest love for himself, which is solely due to the fact that happiness is his real nature. Hence, in order to realise that inherent and untainted happiness, which indeed he daily experiences when the mind is subdued in deep sleep, it is essential that he should know himself. For obtaining such knowledge the enquiry, ‘who am I?’ is quest of the self is the means par excellence.”
– Ramana Maharshi ‘Maharshi: Who am I?’

“The Pancadasi likens the self to the lamp set on a stage. The lamp gives light to the manager of the drama, to the actors and to the audience without any distinction; and it shines even when the theatre is empty. Similarly, the self which is the witness-intelligence (saksi-caitanya) manifests egoity, the intellect and the objects, and continues to shine even when they are non-existent. The sense of egoity may be compared to the stage-manager, the intellect to the actor, and the objects to the audience; and the various sense-organs are the auxiliaries which aid the actor. All these are illuminated without distinction by the witness-self. Just as the lamp on the dramatic stage shines without moving and without being affected by the movements of the actors and the audience, even so the self which is permanent and unchanging manifests all things both within and without.”
– Ramana Maharshi ‘The Philosophy of Advaita’ and also Ramana Maharshi & his Philosophy of Existence’

“Let him always remember that the world is only a projection of the mind, and the mind is in the self. Wherever the body may move the mind must be kept under control. The body moves, but not the self. The world is within that self, that is all.”
– Ramana Maharshi ‘Talks’

“ ‘Can you tell me the secret of your life in three words?’ An American journalist asked Gandhi. ‘Renounce and enjoy!’ responded Gandhi. They mean in order to enjoy life, we cannot be selfishly attached to anything – money, possessions, power or prestige, even family and friends. The moment we are selfishly attached, we become their prisoner.”
– Eknath Easwaran ‘Gandhi the Man’

“ ‘Undivided singleness of the mind,’ is what the Gita means by yoga. It is the complete opposite of the incessant civil warfare among intellect, senses, emotions, and instincts which is our usual state of mind. Yoga is the complete re-integration of all these fragments on every level of the personality. It is the process of becoming whole.”
– – Eknath Easwaran ‘Gandhi the Man’

“Today we are under one global concept and it is not good for mankind. When there is diversity – the diversity is what makes life beautiful. Uniformity in taste is totally useless.”
– Hadrawi, a Somali Poet, in ‘The Future of the Past’ by Alexander Stille

For ideas of books to read, my website has a Reading List: books on my shelf at home, so I have read them! Go to https://www.yogabristol.co.uk/benefits-of-yoga/reading-list/
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