Nonduality Presents
ASMI
Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT
compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco
Numbers after quotations refer to pages of the edition by Chetana (P) Ltd, Bombay, 1992.
The Way to Self-Realization: Part Four
See that happiness is not pleasure.
See that desires and fears create bondage.
And be free and happy through detachment.
See that happiness is not pleasure.
Pain and pleasure are the crests and valleys in the ocean of
bliss (ananda). Deep down there is utter fulness. (165)
Pain and pleasure go always together. Freedom from one means
freedom from the both. If you do not care for pleasure, you will
not be afraid of pain. But there is happiness, which is neither,
which is completely beyond. (145)
My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for
bliss creates pain. Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain. The
entire universe of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for
pleasure and you will not even know what is pain. (82)
The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely
pleasant. It is the search for pleasure that is wrong. (468)
When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost.
To regain it, it seeks pleasure. The urge to be happy is right,
but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and
destructive of true happiness. (468)
Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very
search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you
want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are
not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain
and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other
pleasure, without pain, which you call divine. In reality,
pleasure is but a respite from pain. (468)
The very desire to live is the messanger of death, as the longing
to be happy is the outline of sorrow. The world is an ocean of
pain and fear, of anxiety and despair. Pleasures are like the
fishes, few and swift, rarely come, quickly gone. A man of low
intelligence believes, against all evidence, that he is an
exception and that the world owes him happiness. But the world
cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is of
no use for real happiness. It cannot be otherwise. We seek the
real because we are unhappy with the unreal. Happiness is our
real nature and we shall never rest until we find it. (485-6)
Momentary relief from pain we call pleasure - and we build
castles in the air hoping for endless pleasure which we call
happiness. It is all misunderstanding. (145)
You are like a child with a lollypop in its mouth. You may feel
happy for a moment by being totally self-centered, but it is
enough to have a good look at human faces to perceive the
universality of suffering. Even your own happiness is so
vulnerable and short-lived, at the mercy of a bank-crash, or a
stomach ulcer. It is just a moment of respite, a mere gap between
two sorrows. Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does
not depend on circumstances. (472-3)
Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not. As long as we
believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall also
believe that in their absence we must be miserable. Mind always
shapes itself according to its beliefs. Hence the importance of
convincing oneself that one need not be prodded into happiness;
that, on the contrary, pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance,
for it merely increases the false conviction that one needs to
have and do things to be happy, when in reality it is just the
opposite. But why talk of happiness at all? You do not think of
happiness except when you are unhappy. A man who says "Now I
am happy" is between two sorrows, past and future. This
happiness is mere excitement caused by relief from pain. Real
happiness is utterly unselfconscious. It is best expressed
negatively as: "there is nothing wrong with me, I have
nothing to worry about". (486-7)
Once you have grasped the truth that the world is full of
suffering, that to be born is a calamity, you will find the urge
and the energy to go beyond. Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain
wakes you up. If you do not want to suffer, don't go to sleep.
You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your
very nature. You must face the opposite, what you are not, to
find enlightenment. (306)
See that desires and fears create bondage.
As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you
imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will
appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and
fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is
nothing for me to desire or fear. (123)
Selfishness is the cause of suffering. There is no other cause.
It is only with separateness and self-seeking that real suffering
appears in the world. (474)
Self-identification with the body creates ever fresh desires, and
there is no end to them, unless this mecha-nism of bondage is
clearly seen. It is clarity that is liberating, for you cannot
abandon desire unless its causes and effects are clearly seen.
(381)
When desire and fear end, bondage also ends. It is the emotional
involvement, the pattern of likes and dislikes which we call
character and temperament, that create the bondage. Don't be
afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a
life so different from all you know, so much more intense and
interesting, that truly by losing all you gain all. (505)
To act from desire and fear is bondage, to act from love is
freedom. (489)
In Hinduism, the very idea of free will is non-existent, so there
is no word for it. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage. (356)
All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any
desire, it will always give you trouble. Why desire at all?
Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free.
Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See yourself with
desireless clarity, that is all. (69)
Freedom from all desire is eternity. All attachment implies fear,
for all things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This
freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is
natural, when one knows one's true being. Self-knowledge is
detachment. All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. When
you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and
yours, desire ceases. (259)
The obstacles to clear perception of one's true being are desire
for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation
that stands in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the
state in which no desire arises, is the natural state. (144)
All desires must be given up, because by desiring you take the
shape of your desires. When no desires remain, you revert to your
natural state. (336)
[One reaches the Supreme state] by renouncing all lesser desires.
As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the
highest. Whatever pleases you keeps you back. Until you realize
the unsatisfactoriness of everything, its transiency and
limitation, and collect your energies in one great longing, ever
the first step is not made. On the other hand, the integrity of
the desire for the Supreme is by itself a call from the Supreme.
Nothing, physical or mental, can give you freedom. You are free
once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and
cease forging the chains that bind you. (304)
Be free and happy through detachment.
Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed,
vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to
and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction
that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called
spiritual. (494)
Self-interest and self-concern are the focal points of the false.
Your daily life vibrates between desire and fear. Watch it
intently and you will see how the mind assumes innumerable names
and shapes, like a river foaming between the boulders. Trace
every action to its selfish motive and look at the motive
intently till it dissolves. Discard every self-seeking motive as
soon as it is seen and you need not look for truth; thuth will
find you. (315)
Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation, but
strong, deep-rooted ones must be fulfilled and their fruits,
sweet or bitter, tasted. (97)
Karma is only a store of unspent energies, of unfulfilled
desires, and fears not understood. The store is being constantly
replenished by new desires and fears. It need not be so for ever.
Understand the root cause of your fears -estrangement from
yourself; and of desires -the longing for the self, and your
karma will dissolve like a dream. (411)
Desirelessness comes on its own when desire is recognized as
false. You need not struggle with desire. Ultimately, it is an
urge to happiness, which is natural as long as there is sorrow.
Only see that there is no happiness in what you desire. Each
pleasure is wrapped in pain. You soon discover that you cannot
have one without the other. (455)
Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen
here and now but for your being more interested in other things.
And you cannot fight with your interests. You must go with them,
see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors
of judgement and appreciation. (456)
Fearlessness comes by itself, when you see that there is nothing
to be afraid of. When you walk in a crowded street, you just
bypass people. Some you see, some you just glance at, but you do
not stop. It is the stopping that creates the bottleneck. Keep
moving! Disregard names and shapes, don't be attached to them;
your attachment is your bondage. (351)
Break the bonds of memory and self-identification and the shell
[of the person] will break by itself. There is a centre that
imparts reality to whatever it perceives. All you need is to
understand that you are the source of reality, that you give
reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no
confirmation. Things are as they are because you accept them as
they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve. Whatever
you think about with desire or fear appears before you as real.
Look at it without desire or fear and it does lose substance.
Pleasure and pain are momentary. It is simpler and easier to
disregard them than to act on them. (344)
Giving up desire after desire is a lengthy process with the end
never in sight. Leave alone your desires and fears, give your
entire attention to the subject, to him who is behind the
experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire
bring you back to yourself. (144)
Freedom comes through renunciation. All possession is bondage. If
you do not have the wisdom and the strength to give up, just look
at your possessions. Your mere looking will burn them up. If you
can stand outside your mind, you will soon find that total
renunciation of possessions and desires is the most obviously
reasonable thing to do. You create the world and then worry about
it. Becoming selfish makes you weak. If you think you have the
strength and courage to desire, it is because you are young and
inexperienced. Invariably the object of desire destroys the means
of acquiring it and then itself withers away. It is all for the
best, because it teaches you to shun desire like poison. No need
of any acts of renunciation. Just turn your mind away, that is
all. Desire is merely the fixation of the mind on an idea. Get it
out of its grove by denying it attention. Whatever may be the
desire or fear, don't dwell upon it. Here and there you may
forget, it does not matter. Go back to your attempts till the
brushing away of every desire and fear, of every reaction,
becomes automatic. (338)
Whenever a thought or emotion of desire or fear comes to your
mind, just turn away from it. I'm not talking of suppression.
Just refuse attention. (349)
Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can
fulfil them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness
and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the
real , the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Your longing to
be happy is there. Why? Because you love yourself. By all means,
love yourself -wisely. What is wrong is to love yourself
stupidly, so as to make yourself suffer. Love yourself wisely.
Both indulgence and austerity have the same purpose in view - to
make you happy. Indulgence is the stupid way, austerity is the
wise way. Once you have gone through an experience, not to go
through it again is austerity. To eschew the unnecessary is
austerity. Not to anticipate pleasure or pain is austerity.
Having things under control at all times is austerity. Desire by
itself is not wrong. It is the choices that you make that are
wrong. To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame
- will make you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as
vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly
happy. (211-2)
Your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content.
You face it most cheerfully when you go to sleep! Find out for
yourself the state of wakeful sleep and you will find it quite in
harmony with your real nature. Words can only give you the idea,
and the idea is not the experience. All I can say is that true
happiness has no cause, and what has no cause is immovable. Which
does not mean it is perceivable, as pleasure. What is perceivable
is pain and pleasure; the state of freedom from sorrow can be
described only negatively. (487-8)
Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for
happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness
worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being. (317)
All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect.
Deny yourself nothing - give your self infinity and eternity, and
discover that you do not need them; you are beyond. (414)
The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided
you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and
really want nothing else. If, in the meantime, you want many
other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose
may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between
contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever
looking outward. (145)
You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you
that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is
where the "I" is not. I do not say it is beyond your
reach; you have only to reach out beyond yourself, and you will
find it. (439)
When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want
nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State
will come to you uninvited and unexpected. (195)
The Supreme is the easiest to reach, for it is your very being.
It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything but the
Supreme. (66)
The cause of suffering is dependence, and independence is the
remedy. Yoga is the science and the art of self-liberation
through self-understanding. (473)
Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be
done, it happens when you realize your true nature. (478)
As long as you identify yourself with them [body and mind], you
are bound to suffer; realize your independence and remain happy.
I tell you, this is the secret of happiness. To believe that you
depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of
your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy,
except self-kowledge, is wisdom. (504)
A man who is given a stone and assured that it is a priceless
diamond will be mightily pleased until he realizes his mistake;
in the same way, pleasures lose their tang and pains their barb
when the self is known. Both are seen as they are - conditional
responses, mere reactions. (144-5)
Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through
you; that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you
perceive and you will not be afraid. Unafraid, you will not be
unhappy, nor will you seek happiness. (468)
You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you
are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to
earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university
can teach you to be yourself. (318)
You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not
even your body. Your needs are unreal and your efforts are
meaningless. You imagine that your possessions protect you. In
reality they make you vulnerable. Realize yourself as away from
all that can be pointed at as "this" or
"that". You are un-reachable by any sensory experience
or verbal construction. (339)
Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness that
makes you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain
and pleasure, neither asking nor refusing, give all your
attention to the level on which "I am" is timelessly
present. Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in
your very nature and it is only seeking them through some
particular channels that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is
all. (240)
Just turn away from all that occupies the mind; do whatever work
you have to complete, but avoid new obligations; keep empty, keep
available, resist not what comes uninvited. In the end, you reach
a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-attachment, of inner ease
and freedom indescribable, yet wonderfully real. (375)
There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you hold
on to nothing, no trouble arises. The relinquishing of the lesser
is the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all. Then
life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an
inexhaustible source. In that light the world appears dimly like
a dream. (257)
Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is
no suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but
none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging
or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to
flow with life. As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly
life free from suffering. A saint does not want things to be
different from what they are; he knows that, considering all
factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable
and, therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does
not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the
lost balance, or he lets things take their course. (270)
You need not be attached to the non-essentials. Only the
necessary is good. There is peace only in the essential. (481)
As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you
will not abandon it. Discovery cannot come as long as you cling
to the familiar. It is only when you realize fully the immense
sorrow of your life and revolt against it that a way out can be
found. (509)
Whatever may be the situation, if it is acceptable, it is
pleasant. If it it not acceptable, it is painful. What makes it
acceptable is not important; the cause may be physical, or
psychological, or untraceable; acceptance is the decisive factor.
Obversely, suffering is due to non-acceptance. Why [shouldn't
pain be acceptable]? Did you ever try? Do try and you will find
in pain a joy which pleasure cannot yield, for the simple reason
that acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does.
The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy. Acceptance of
pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and
perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss. (277-8)
The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory and
throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient and
disorded state of your brain, what you perceive is distorted and
coloured by feelings of like and dislike. Make your thinking
orderly and free from emotional overtones, and you will see
people and things as they are, with clarity and charity. (416)
To see reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror.
Only the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted
by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all
the levels, is needed to reflect the reality. Be clear and quiet,
alert and detached, all else will happen by iteself. (397)
[Your world] is true in essence but not in appearance. Be free of
desires and fears and at once your vision will clear and you
shall see all things as they are. (533)
Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence
and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. Change your scale
of values and all will change. Pleasure and pain are mere
disturbances of the senses; treat them equally and there will be
only bliss. And the world is what you make it; by all means, make
it happy. Only contentment can make you happy, desires fulfilled
breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and contentment
in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state, a precondition
to the state of fullness. Don't distrust its apparent sterility
and emptiness. Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that
breeds misery. Freedom from desires is bliss. (249)
You must not indulge in forecasts and plans, born of memory and
anticipation. It is one of the pecularities of a gnani that he is
not concerned with future. Your concern with future is due to
fear of pain and desire for pleasure; to the gnani all is bliss:
he is happy with whatever comes. (285)