Inspiring quotes from hinduism and other sources

As a man abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.

-Bhagavad Gita 2: 22

 

Out of My Deeper Heart

Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skyward.
Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow.
At first it was but like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle, then as vast as a spring cloud, and then it filled the starry heavens.
Out of my heart a bird flew skyward.
And it waxed larger as it flew.
Yet it left not my heart.

O my faith, my untamed knowledge, how shall I fly to your height and see you with man’s larger self penciled upon the sky?
How shall I turn the sea within me into mist, and move with you in space immeasureable?
How can a prisoner within the temple behold its golden domes?
How shall the heart of a fruit be stretched to envelop the fruit also?
O my faith, I am in chains behind these bars of silver and ebony, and I cannot fly with you.
Yet out of my heart you rise skyward, and it is my heart that holds you, and I shall be content.

-Kahlil Gibran

 

A long and joyous life rewards those who remain firmly
On the faultless path of Him who controls the five senses.

They alone dispel the mind's distress
Who take refuge at the Feet of the Incomparable One.

They alone can cross life's other oceans who take refuge
At the Feet of the Gracious One, Himself an ocean of virtue.

-Tirukkural 1:6-8

 

As for those who seek the transcendental Reality, without name, without form, contemplating the Unmanifested, beyond the reach of thought and of feeling, with their senses subdued and mind serene and striving for the good of all beings, they too will verily come unto me.

-Bhagavad Gita

 

This hankering after name and fame and all
other humbug--what are they to me? What do I
care about them? I should like to see
hundreds coming to the Lord! Where are they?
I want them, I want to see them. You must
seek them out. You only give me name and
fame. Have done with name and fame; to work,
my brave men, to work!- Swami Vivekanandaji

 

Rik Ved 10 90

The Purusha with a thousand heads, with thousand eyes, thousand feet, covered on all sides the Earth everywhere, and yet overflew ten fingers high above it.

Purusha alone is this whole world, and that which was, and what lasts into the future. He is the lord of immortality - That, which lives on food.

So great is this his majesty, yet more elevated is even Purusha Himself. All creatures are only a quarter of him, his three other quarters are immortal above.

Three quarters of him soared up high. One quarter grew here in this world, to spread out as everything, that which is preserved with food, and that without.

 

Lakshmi Tantra 54-59

All objects of this world invariably conceived in pairs-such as those associated with (the concepts of) cause and effect, with protection and that which is protected, with transparency and opaqueness, with existance and the essence of existance, with good and bad, with productivity and non-productivity, with quality and that which is qualified, with the container and that which is contained, with that which is pervaded by Shakti, and the possessor of Shakti, with that which is enjoyed and the person enjoying, with man and woman, with action and its agent, with means and ends, with the inflectional forms denoting masculine and feminine gender, sound and form - should be envisaged by the yogin as manifestations of Lakshmi and Narayana.

59-65

Oh Puramdara, listen now to this highly secret rule of the tantra. Which in the worship of Lakshmi, a yogin should always follow. When at the very beginning, emanating from the primal God, I manifested myself in this world of systematic creation, I intentionallly chose to assume this feminine form. Therefore a yogin, desirous of pleasing me and expert in the Lakshmi Tantra should never abuse a woman, either in deed, thought, or speech. Wherever I exist, the realities exist too; wherever I exist, the gods exist too; wherever I exist, merits exist too.... Therefore, I should be regarded as the essence of womanhood in all women, that pervades the universe. He who abuses a woman thereby abuses Lakshmi Herself. He who praises Her praises Lakshmi and so praises the three Worlds.

 

We cannot add happiness to the world.
Similarly, we cannot add pain to it either.
The sum total of the energies of pleasure and
pain displayed here on earth will be the same
throughout. We just push it from this side to
the other side, and from that side to this,
but it will remain the same, because to
remain so is its very nature. This ebb and
flow, this rising and falling, is in the
world's very nature; it would be as logical
to hold otherwise as to say that we may have
life without death.

- Swami Vivekanandaji

 

The very idea of life implies death and the
very idea of pleasure implies pain. The lamp
is constantly burning out, and that is its
life. If you want to have life, you have to
die for it every moment. Life and death are
only different expressions of the same thing
looked at from different standpoints. They
are the falling and rising of the same wave,
and the two form one whole. One looks at the
"fall" side and becomes a pessimist, another
looks at the "rise" side and becomes an optimist.
- Swami Vivekanandaji

 

"May all those on whom faith does not shine at last see the light!


St. Thérèse.

 

This amuses me - but there's often more to things than meet the eye....


'You are old Father William the young man said,
And have grown most un-commonly fat
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Pray what is the reason of that?

In my youth, said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
I feared it might injure the brain
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again'.:H

Lewis Caroll.

 

A man and his son are walking by the church one Sunday morning when the young boy, mesmerized by the beautiful stained glass windows, points to the windows and asks, "Daddy, who are they?"

The father takes note of the people immortalized on the windows and answers, "My son, those are saints."

So the boy, not knowing any better, nods and fully accepts his father's answer.

The next day, in catechism class, the teacher asks a question: "Who are the saints?"

And the boy promptly raises his hand and, very confidently, answers:

"Ma'am, saints are people who let light shine through them."

 

Each soul is a star, and all stars are set in that infinite azure, that eternal sky, the Lord. There is the root, the reality, the real individuality of each and all. Religion began with the search after some of these stars that had passed beyond our horizon, and ended in finding them all in God, and ourselves in the same place. The whole secret is, then, that your father has given up the old garment he was wearing and is standing where he was through all eternity.- Swami Vivekanandaji

Letter to Mrs. Ole Bull, on the occasion of the loss of her father. From Brooklyn: January 20, 1895. Complete Works, 5:69.

 

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As long as one has a body, one cannot renounce action altogether. True renunciation is giving up all desire for personal reward. Those who are attached to personal reward will reap the consequences of their actions: some pleasant, some mixed. But those who renounce every desire for personal reward go beyond the reach of karma.

-Bhagavad Gita 18:11-12

 

"Travel in all the four quarters of the earth, yet you will find nothing anywhere. Whatever there is, is only here. "


Sri Ramakrishna.

 

"The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life."​

​

Sri Aurobindo.​

 

O Krishna,
Charmer of hearts,
Lifter of mountains,
I hear your flute calling me—
Shall I come by the secret path
through the tall grass?

-Mirabai

 

"By Me, all this universe has been extended in the ineffable mystery of My being; all existences are situated in Me, not I in them.

And yet all existences are not situated in Me, behold my divine yoga: Myself is that which supports all being and constitutes all existence"

Bhagavad Gita - Ch.9 vs. 4 -5. trans. Sri Aurobindo.

 

yes we can

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --

Yes. We. Can.