"What is Meditation" - by Sri Ramana Maharshi

POSITIVE LIFE BEAUTIFUL WORLD:
🔔🔔🔔

*What is Meditation?*
_*as explained by Sri Ramana Maharishi_*

*This was a question haunting a small boy. Their parents were at wit's end, as they could not explain it in a simple language the boy could comprehend.*

*Once the family went for a darshan of Sri Ramana Maharishi. The boy put forward his question to Ramana Maharishi.*

*Sri Ramana laughed to himself. Then with smiling face, he asked his devotee to serve the boy dosa from the kitchen.*

*So, on a plantain leaf, a dosa was served. Sri Ramana looked at the boy and said,*
*”Now I will say "hmm" *
*Then only you should start eating.*
*Then again I will say "hmm" After that no piece of dosa should be left on your plate."*
*The boy agreed. He was so excited. Others were watching expectantly.*

*Now the boy was eagerly waiting for the signal by looking at Sri Ramana's face. When he gave the signal "hmm" the boy started eating. Now his attention was on Sri Ramana. He wanted to finish dosa before the next signal. The boy was eating dosa in a hurry, tearing big chunks of dosa,  but, all the time keeping his attention on Sri Ramana. The dosa was reducing in size gradually. There was a small piece left. The boy was looking anxiously  at Sri Ramana for the second signal. The moment he gave the  signal, the boy immediately put the dosa in his mouth.*

*Now Sri Ramana asked him "where was your attention till now? On me or on Dosa?"*

*The boy replied " On both"*

*Shri Ramana said "Yes. You were actively involved in finishing dosa, with your attention on me. You were not distracted at all.*

*Like this when you do your daily activities with your attention or thoughts on God in the background, it is known as meditation."*

*The two signals "hmm" are birth & death. Within these two events, one can engage in meditation, as demonstrated by Sri Ramana Maharishi. But to understand this we all need Divine Grace to mellow & mature. We all differ from each other and hence take different time to comprehend this great truth.*

*May God bless us with His Divine Grace, Love and Blessings! 🙏🏼😊*

*Wishing you most & more.*
_*🌹Jai Shree Krishna 🌹*_

DO NOT LIMIT YOUR GROWTH

"Once upon a time in a faraway land, there lived a Chinese wise man and his disciple. One day in their travels, they saw a hut in the distance. As they approached they realized that it was occupied in spite of its extremely poor appearance.

In that desolate place where there were no crops and no trees,a man lived with his wife, three young children and a thin, tired cow. Since they were hungry and thirsty, the wise man and his disciple stopped for a few hours and were well received. At one point, the wise man asked:
“This is a very poor place, far away from anything. How do you survive?” "You see that cow? That’s what keeps us going,” said the head of the family. “She gives us milk, some of it we drink and some were make into cheese. When there is extra, we go into the city and exchange the milk and cheese for other types of food. That’s how we survive.”

The wise man thanked them for their hospitality and left. When he reached the first bend in the road, he said to his disciple: "Go back, get the cow, take her to the cliff in front of us, and push her off.” The disciple could not believe what he was hearing.
“I cannot do that, master! How can you be so ungrateful? The cow is all they have. If I throw it on the cliff, they’ll have no way to survive. Without the cow, they’ll all die!”

The wise man, an elderly Chinese man, took a deep breath and repeated the order: “Go ahead. Push the cow off the cliff.” Though outraged at what he was being asked to do, the student was resigned to obey his master.

He returned to the hut and quietly led the animal to the edge of the cliff and pushed. The cow fell down the cliff and died.

As the years passed by, remorse for what he had done never left the disciple. One spring day, the guilt became too much to bear and he left the wise man and returned to that little shack. He wanted to find out what had happened to that family, to help them out, apologize, or somehow make amends.
Upon rounding a turn in the road, he could not believe what his eyes were showing him. In place of the poor shack there was a beautiful house with trees all
around, a swimming pool, several cars in the garage, a satellite dish, and on and on. Three good-looking teenagers and their parents were celebrating their first million dollars.

The heart of the disciple froze. What could have happened to the family? Without a doubt, they must have been starving to death and forced to sell their land and leave. At that moment, the student thought they must all be begging on the street corners of some city. He approached the house and asked a man that was passing by about the whereabouts of the family that had lived there several years before. “You’re looking at it,” said the man, pointing to the people gathered around the barbecue.

Unable to believe what he was hearing, the disciple walked through the gate and took a few steps closer to the pool where he recognized the man from several years before, only now he was strong and confident, the woman was happy, and the children were now nice-looking teenagers.
He was dumbfounded, and went over to the man and asked:
“What happened? I was here with my teacher a few years ago and this was a miserable place.
There was nothing. What did you do to improve your lives in such a short time?”
The man looked at the disciple, and replied with a smile:
“We had a cow that kept us alive. She was all we had. But one
day she fell down the cliff and died. To survive, we had to start doing other things, develop skills we didn’t even know we had.
And so, because we were forced to come up with new ways of
doing things, we are now much better off than before.”

Moral :
Sometimes our dependency
something small and limited is the biggest obstacle to our growth. Perhaps the best thing that could happen to us is to push our “cow” down the cliff...the biggest successes  people have achieved are mostly outside their comfort zones but purely with their effort zone !!

INNER PURIFICATION

🔆🔱. Few disciples went to the master and told the master that they are all going for a pilgrimage trip. The Master asked them the purpose of this trip and the disciples said it is for “ Inner Purification”. The master immediately took out a Karela ( Bitter gourd) and handed over this to them . The disciples asked the master what is that they are supposed to do with the Karela.  The master said carry this Karela with you , where ever you go and do Pooja , keep this Karela also in the pooja and do the pooja.  The disciples took the karela with them and where ever they went kept the Karela in the pooja and brought it back.

After returning back from the trip , they met the master and offered back the Karela to the master.  The master asked them to cook that karela and serve the same to him . They cooked the Karela and served the food the master .  Master tasted the food and the karela and said it is still bitter.  You took this to every temple and came back and it is still bitter. Disciples said it is the nature of the bitter gourd.
The Master smiled and the disciples understood the meaning.
The significance of this story to all of us is that basically if we have to change, our nature has to change . Simply going there , going here is not going to help. It is important that the bottle has to be cleaned from inside.  Outside everything can be adjusted or created. The inner nature has to change. The inner shift has to come and that is inner spiritualism and our Attitudes towards life, people , family, friends, community etc🙏🏽