Saturday, November 21, 2020

Ramana Maharshi

 


EIGHT POINTS
 
1. Turn the mind inward and rest in your own Self.
2. Mind is the cause of bondage.
3. Give up one thing after another and rest in peace.
4. What we get, we shall lose, so desire not.
5. There are two kinds of meditation. The first is to be practised by advanced aspirants — nirguna dhyana — where one seeks to know the Meditator himself. The second kind is to be practised by those less advanced — a some what round about course — saguna dhyana — where the meditator, meditation and the object of meditation get merged ultimately into one.
6. When I come to know that I was never born, I shall never die. Death is for one who is born. I was never born. I have no body and so I shall never die. I am everywhere; where am I to go and where am I to come?
7. When a man’s mind is dead, he will not die again.
8. Attain the sushupti (state of sleep) in the jagrat (waking) state, and you become a jnani.
 
Recorded in June 1918 By C.V. Subramania Aiyer
 

"Everybody knew that Sri Ramana was very careful with everything, particularly with food, and never wasted anything. This was, of course, especially noticeable in the kitchen. When once some mustard seeds fell on the floor, the cooks took no notice, but Ramana picked them up one by one with his fingernails and placed them in a small bowl.
Raja Iyer reports that Ramana had shown him how to use the ladle in such a way as to avoid a single morsel of food falling on the floor, how to pour without spilling anything and how to make a fire with only a few drops of kerosene.
For each vegetable Ramana knew a special kind of preparation.
Nothing was thrown away. If he cut spinach, he separated the leaves, the stalks and the roots. With the leaves he made the curry,
the stalks were bound together, cooked and put into the sambar and the roots were washed carefully, squeezed and their juice put into the rasam. Any orange peel or apple peel was put into the chutney. The leftovers from the previous day were warmed up and served at the following breakfast, along with the iddlies. If there was any soup or vegetables left, they were put into the sambar. This was against the caste rules of the Brahmins, according to which leftovers may not be used the following day. But Ramana insisted that the avoidance of waste was more important than anything else. To give the leftovers to beggars was also not practicable, as they had to have the same as everyone else and not be given poor quality food.
One evening Ramana had cut spinach and brinjal (aubergines) and laid aside the pieces which he could not use so as to make use of them the following day. The next morning, when he came into the kitchen as usual and asked for the pieces he had put aside, he was told that they had already been thrown away. He therefore went outside, found them, cleaned them, cut them into smaller pieces and used them.
Sampurnamma recounted another story along the same lines,
“Once a feast was being prepared for his birthday. Devotees sent food in large quantities: some sent rice, some sugar, some fruits.
Someone sent a huge load of brinjals and we ate brinjals day after day. The stalks alone made a big heap which was lying in a corner.
Bhagavan asked us to cook them as a curry! I was stunned, for even cattle would refuse to eat such useless stalks. Bhagavan insisted that the stalks were edible, and we put them in a pot to boil along with dry peas. After six hours of boiling they were as hard as ever. We were at a loss what to do, yet we did not dare to disturb Bhagavan. But he always knew when he was needed in the kitchen and he would leave the Hall even in the middle of a discussion. A casual visitor would think that his mind was all on cooking. …
‘How is the curry getting on?’ he asked.
‘Is it a curry we are cooking? We are boiling steel nails!’ I exclaimed, laughing.
He stirred the stalks with the ladle and went away without saying anything.
Soon after we found them quite tender. The dish was simply delicious and everybody was asking for a second helping. Bhagavan challenged the diners to guess what vegetable they were eating.
Everybody praised the curry and the cook, except Bhagavan. He swallowed the little he was served in one mouth-full like a medicine and refused a second helping. I was very disappointed, for I had taken so much trouble to cook his stalks and he would not even taste them properly.
The next day he was telling somebody, ‘Sampurnam was distressed that I did not eat her wonderful curry. Can she not see that every-one who eats is myself? And what does it matter who eats the food?
It is the cooking that matters, not the cook or the eater. A thing done well, with love and devotion, is its own reward. What happens to it later matters little, for it is out of our hands.”
 
- Ramana Maharshi: His Life