In Sri Quotes & Sayings

I am not a religious person myself, but I did look for nature. I had spent my first sabbatical in New York City. Looked for something different for the second one. Europe and the U.S. didn't really feel enticing because I knew them too well. So Asia it was. The most beautiful landscapes I had seen in Asia were Sri Lanka and Bali. — Stefan Sagmeister

International awareness of his deceptive practices is the reflection of the frustration that is prevailing in Sri Lanka which the President is trying to undermine by the traditional emotive and hate mongering politics. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Sri Chinmoy was a once in a lifetime spiritual leader who touched the lives of millions of people through his teachings, art, athletics, and music. He was a student of peace and he embodied peace. Sri Chinmoy was a great man and his life's work significantly helped to build world harmony and will continue to do so. — Al Gore

When every action of yours is preceded by witnessing, then every move you make in this world becomes perfect and significant. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

People feel they are not participating in the decision-making process. Decisions are exclusive to those at the very top. You have grown up with crony capitalism and it creates ever more resentment. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ , the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity. — Sri Aurobindo

The criteria for success: you are free, you live in the present moment, you are useful to the people around you, and you feel love for all humanity. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Whatever you put attention on will start manifesting in your life. Intention, attention, manifestation; that is how the universe works. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

After surviving the tsunami in Sri Lanka and facing that moment where I was not sure if I would live to see the next, I learned all that matters is now. — Rosie Fellner

You must be a Lotus, unfolding its petals when the Sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it. — Sri Sathya Sai Baba

There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. — Sri Chinmoy

Conflicting legislation and regulations, overlapping mandates, unwillingness to enforce land use, elite capture, entrenched attitudes, and lack of incentives to influence behavior are rife in many resource-rich countries. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

If you are bombarded by so many thoughts in solitude, you are in ignorance. If you are calm even amidst a crowd then you are in knowledge. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes. — Michael Ondaatje

In true love there is no heart break. A broken heat means broken demands, broken expectations and broken hopes. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A sincere seeker knows what his goal is: the highest Truth. He will not delay his journey. In spiritual life, we aspire for the highest Truth, for God, nothing else. — Sri Chinmoy

All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. — Sri Aurobindo

Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin. — Sri Aurobindo

Every person I've known has had an effect on me, as have people whom I've not met in the physical in this life, but whom I've met inwardly, teachers from other eras - Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna and Lao Tse. — Frederick Lenz

The meditation that gives you immediate joy or continuous joy is the best meditation for you. Everyone will not have the same meditation. Your meditation will not suit me, my meditation will not suit you. You like a certain food, I don't like it. You are right in your own way I am right in my own way. But once you know what your best meditation is, please stick to it. — Sri Chinmoy

1. the Hindole Raga is heard only at dawn in the spring, to evoke the mood of universal love; 2. Deepaka Raga is played during the evening in summer, to arouse compassion; 3. Megha Raga is a melody for midday in the rainy season, to summon courage; 4. Bhairava Raga is played in the mornings of August, September, October, to achieve tranquillity; 5. Sri Raga is reserved for autumn twilights, to attain pure love; 6. Malkounsa Raga is heard at midnights in winter, for valor. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate. — Sri Aurobindo

Remember that you are at an exceptional hour in a unique epoch, that you have this great happiness, this invaluable privilege, of being present at the birth of a new world. — Sri Aurobindo

You have a strong active nature. And this in you is a point of strength. If you can mould it rightly this will become a very great strength. On the other hand, this too is your weak point - a hindrance in sadhana. — Sri Aurobindo

Space is about 100 kilometers away. That's far away - I wouldn't want to climb a ladder to get there - but it isn't that far away. If you're in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. — Randall Munroe

A hidden Bliss is at the root of things.
A mute Delight regards Time's countless works:
To house God's joy in things Space gave wide room,
To house God's joy in self our souls were born. — Sri Aurobindo

I almost always do things that I like, in some form or fashion. Every once in awhile that means that I don't think the script is any good and I don't have any trust in the people, but the film is shooting in Sri Lanka, or somewhere like that, so I'm going. — Billy Campbell

And in self-giving we become really happy. Real humility is the expansion of our consciousness and our service. — Sri Chinmoy

The ultimate point of view is that there is nothing to understand, so when we try to understand, we are only indulging in acrobatics of the mind. Whatever you have understood, you are not. Why are you getting lost in concepts? You are not what you know, you are the knower. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Peace is the whole truth that wishes to enrapture humanity. War is the whole falsehood that wants to capture humanity. Peace begins in the soul and ends in the heart. War begins in the mind and ends in the body. — Sri Chinmoy

My writing has been shaped by the three countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines and England - I have lived in. — Romesh Gunesekera

In the inner life, if there is no sincerity, nothing can be achieved. And to whom are you being sincere? You are being sincere to yourself. You have a higher reality and you have a lower reality. When you become sincere, immediately you pull your lower reality up to your higher reality. Just like a magnet, your higher reality pulls up your lower reality so that it can take shelter in the higher reality. — Sri Chinmoy

There is no such thing as unconsciousness for it is not experienceable. We infer unconsciousness when there is a lapse in memory or communication. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Gratitude is the sweetest thing in a seeker's life- in all human life. If there is gratitude in your heart, then there will be tremendous sweetness in your eyes. — Sri Chinmoy

Even stupid people have a role to play
in your life. They make you wiser and
more patient. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life , given to search for truthand to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas . — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In reality there are no others, and -helping yourself you help everybody else. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Know that humiliation does not weaken you, it strengthens you. The more egoistic you are, the more humiliation you feel. When you are childlike and have a greater sense of kinship, you do not feel humiliated. When you are steeped in love with the Existence, with the Divine, nothing whatsoever can humiliate you. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

An incense floated in the quivering air, A mystic happiness trembled in the breast As if the invisible Beloved had come Assuming the sudden loveliness of a face And close glad hands could seize his fugitive feet And the world change with the beauty of a smile. — Sri Aurobindo

In the middle of an ocean on board a ship, one can get a sense of vastness. — Sri Aurobindo

If women had better access to the financial system - even so much as a basic deposit account at a bank - it would be a major step in the direction of greater wealth and greater economic empowerment. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface of the sea there may be a multitude of waves but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach our own inner existence, our true existence- that is to say, the bottom of the sea. Then when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils just wash away, because inside us is solid peace. Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. When we are in our highest meditation, we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea. This is meditation. — Sri Chinmoy

The Hindu religion appears ... as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit. — Sri Aurobindo

Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. — Sri Aurobindo

Faith is the soul's witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. — Sri Aurobindo

You will get to your maturity quickly if you stay in the nothingness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way. — Sri Aurobindo

If we sit deep in meditation, the glow within the body will brighten, and will expand and spread outside. That is Devi Puja — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do
I love them
but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at. — Daniel Handler

In always wanting to be comfortable, you become lazy.
In always wanting perfection, you become angry.
In always wanting to be rich, you become greedy. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

How fair is it to judge a person based on his sexual preferences, or their 'otherness'? As long as a person is not 'harmful' for others or not violating the rights of others, I think we need not be bothered about their personal lives, whom they love or whom they marry. It is a personal choice. I think the most important thing about a person is his or her 'humanity', kindness, selflessness not their 'sex life' (only as long as he or she is not violating the rights of others or causing harm to others).
It is entirely a disgrace on humanity to 'discriminate' a person solely based on their 'otherness'.
I am surprised to see how the society stands against or make fun out of 'gay' people, who are totally harmless, ignoring the 'human' in them, but feel 'OK' with 'rapists', 'sex maniacs', 'prostitution' and 'sexual violence against women and children' occurring in Sri Lanka every day. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind right and all will be right. When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly. But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In science knowledge comes first and then faith follows. In spirituality faith comes first and then knowledge follows. The knowledge that pesticides and chemical fertilizers are good for plants came through science. Based on this knowledge, people had faith in pesticides and fertilizers and they were used all over the world. Then a different knowledge came and faith shifted to organic farming. Knowledge brought faith, the knowledge changed, and then faith changed. The knowledge and faith of science is of "happening." In spirituality, faith is first and knowledge comes later. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

A Presence is in control of the whole Universe. You just do your part and relax! — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Let us serve the world soulfully. The pay we will receive for our service will be in the currency of gratitude, God's gratitude, God the only gratitude. — Sri Chinmoy

Paternalistic regulations often prohibit women from holding jobs in certain industries: In the Russian Federation, women cannot drive trucks in the agriculture sector; in Belarus, they cannot be carpenters; in Kazakhstan, they cannot be welders. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

I love to travel with my family or my two best friends because I completely trust them. I forced my two best friends into learning to scuba dive with me in Sri Lanka - it was amazing but also hideous because we were learning in very difficult seas. — Julia Sawalha

Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to happen to, a conscious separate center. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose yourself in it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The first and the most important thing is to know that life is one and immortal. Only the forms, countless in number, are transient and brittle. The life everlasting is independent of any form but manifests itself in all forms. Life then does not die ... but the forms are dissolved. — Sri Aurobindo

When people lose faith in the natural goodness of the human character, the lack of trust in spiritual goodness, that is one reason why corruption has become so widespread today. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

I'm just so grateful for the 10 years that I had in Sri Lanka when it was in the middle of a war and I was getting shot at, because now and again I remember glimpses of those times, and I just go, 'Wow, I'll never, ever see that again in my life. And I'm never gonna feel that, and I'm never gonna feel for a human being like that.' — M.I.A.

How beautiful to look at When my prayer Lights a candle of hope In my heart. — Sri Chinmoy

I've noticed that the more flooding there is, the more bullshit gets talked. I mean it was very noticeable in the Asian tsumai. It happened around Christmas-New Year. The Muslims of Sri Lanka said 'We knew this would happen because the Christians were using alcohol for their Christmas celebrations.' The Buddhists said 'We knew this would happen because of the horrible Muslim slaughter practices.' It's amazing to see how apocalypse or catastrophe makes people behave primitively. — Christopher Hitchens

I make a distinction between Buddhism with a Capital 'B' and buddhism with a small 'b'. Sri Lanka has the former, in which the state uses Buddhism as an instrument of power, so there are even Buddhists monks who say the Tamils should be eliminated. Thai Buddhists are not perfect either. Some Thai Buddhist monks have compromised with the kind and possess cars and other luxuries. In many Buddhist countries, the emphasis is on being goody-goody, which is not good enough. I am for buddhism with a small 'b' which is non-violent, practical and aims to eliminate the cause of suffering.. — Sulak Sivaraksa

It is only through meditation that we can get lasting peace, divine peace. If we meditate soulfully in the morning and receive peace for only one minute, that one minute of peace will permeate our whole day. And when we have a meditation of the highest order, then we really get abiding peace, light and delight. We need meditation because we want to grow in light and fulfill ourselves in light. If this is our aspiration, if this is our thirst, then meditation is the only way. — Sri Chinmoy

For those who do not have faith in God, fear is a way to protect them. But if faith is strong, there is no anxiety about something in danger. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo , even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous ... — Sri Aurobindo

Be universal in your love. You will see the universe to be the picture of your own being. — Sri Chinmoy

There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and dificult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers. — Sri Aurobindo

The mind exists in two states: as water and as honey. The water vibrates at the least disturbance, while the honey, however disturbed, returns quickly to immobility. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

What comes from outside, one mistakes it as coming from inside. So many thoughts etc. move about outside in the universal - these manifest inside you. All these you must push away as foreign to you and the inside must be made peaceful, calm and quiet; then it will start descending from above. — Sri Aurobindo

He is the wise man who has by perfect living gained the instinct of rightness by which he guides himself, whether in thought or action, who has found that centre of balance which is always over his point of contact with circumstances. He is the man whom Nature pours the riches of all her instincts. — Nilakanta Sri Ram

Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Peace is something spontaneous; it is something that unites us. Peace is something that we have to spread. But unless and until we have peace deep within us, we can never hope to have peace in the outer world. — Sri Chinmoy

Arjuna asked Sri Krishna, "In this chaotic condition of my mind, what is my duty? I surrender myself to you, great Master. Please tell me."
The answer of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is, "You understand nothing. You draw conclusions without proper understanding of the structure of life and your relationship to people or things in general. It is a very sorry state. How can you draw conclusions without proper premises? If you draw a conclusion based on a wrong premise, the conclusion is also wrong. Therefore, all that you have been told up to this time is without any foundation because you do not know either yourself or the world. — Swami Krishnananda

Patience, increasing patience,
Is all we need
To be victorious
In the battlefield of life. — Sri Chinmoy

Our breath plays a very important role in our life. The breath is the connecting link between the inner world of the mind and the outer world of the body and environment. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Playing with various approaches may be due to resistance to going within, to the fear of having to abandon the illusion of being something or somebody in particular.Of all the affections the love of oneself comes first. Light and love are impersonal.When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from desire. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. — Sri Aurobindo

To inspire others
Is to be immediately rich
In the inner world. — Sri Chinmoy

The consciousness of the supreme Purusha remains above, but in the mind there may be a Purusha consciousness which they call the cosmic consciousness - it is wide, all-pervading, one. Outside this goes on the play of Prakriti. — Sri Aurobindo

All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. — Sri Aurobindo

While prosperity and longevity arrive together, they cannot be treated the same. With greater wealth, people in Asia may not have to work as many hours as they do now. But living longer means they will have to work more years, not fewer. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

What you call the psychic being is the mind of the vital. The heart is the seat of this mind. And this mind is the essence of the senses. It receives things from outside, acts upon things that are outside - knows, gives consent, takes interest in them. But this mind cannot be the Ishwara, but it is the knower, the giver of the consent. — Sri Aurobindo

To find reality you must be real in the smallest daily action; there can be no deceit in the search for truth. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness. When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence. — Sri Aurobindo

A child does not try to know the mother, it simply has faith in her. In the same way, having faith in the Divine is the source of the greatest strength. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Silence is the nest and music is the bird. The bird leaves the nest early in the morning and returns to the nest in the evening. Similarly, in the spiritual world, divine music comes from the inmost soul of Silence. — Sri Chinmoy

Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is therefore no reason to put a limit to evolutionary possibility by taking our present organization or status of existence as final. The animal is a laboratory in which Nature has worked out man; man may very well be a laboratory in which she wills to work out superman, to disclose the soul as a divine being, to evolve a divine nature. — Sri Aurobindo

What do we mean by the word 'wisdom'? Usually we mean something superior to knowledge, something deeper. In the spiritual world, the word 'wisdom' is not used in that way. Here wisdom means Light, illumining Light, transforming Light. That which illumines our unlit consciousness is wisdom. That which transforms the finite consciousness into the infinite Consciousness is called wisdom. — Sri Chinmoy

The desire of your vital being is towards work. And the vital being won't find any interest in yoga so long as you do not have any experience of the higher and fuller life that is in yoga. As long as this experience is not there, the vital being will not find any interest. — Sri Aurobindo

A mind in the present moment is meditation. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated. — Sri Aurobindo

If you have true gratitude, it will express itself automatically. It will be visible in your eyes, around your being, in your aura. It is like the fragrance of a flower. In most cases if there is a beautiful flower, the fragrance will be there naturally. The flower and its fragrance cannot be separated. — Sri Chinmoy

I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries. — Michael Ondaatje