JAIN SUTRAS DISCOURSE 5🔗

POWER OF DISCRIMINATION

From a Discourse by SPH JGM Bhagavān Nithyananda Paramashivam Buena Park, CA, USA

March 10, 2007

I welcome you all with my love and respects.

Today's subject is 'Power of Discrimination.' Yesterday it was 'Power of Wisdom,' today it is 'Power of Discrimination,' viveka. First I will read the sutras, then we will enter into the subject.

It is a long, beautiful sutra. I will read the whole translation and then enter into those ideas, those Truths.

That is the main thing. If you analyze these words intellectually before starting the practice, you will think, ‘What is going on? What is Mahāvīra telling? He is telling us to become swamis. He is telling us to give up the life.’ And you will naturally give up Mahāvīra, not life!

Understand, only when you try to put these few words into practice, you will realize he is not telling you to give up life, he is telling you to give up the negativities or blockages which you carry in the life.

Here he is telling to go beyond the five senses. He is not telling you to suppress your five senses. No. The other day, we were having a conversation. Somebody asked me, ‘Swamiji, you don’t feel your body, right?’ I said, no, who said I don’t feel I am body? I feel I am body also. There is a big difference between the two. People try to say, ‘I am not body, I am not mind.’ No. Be very clear, you can constantly repeat and try to believe it but you will never have that as an experience.

There is a funny story:

There was a great Guru called Paramartha Guru and he had four foolish disciples. In South India there are lots of funny stories about this Guru and His foolish disciples. In South India he is very popular. Of course he is an imaginary figure, but very popular.

Once all his four disciples went to a devotee’s house for a feast. During the feast when the people serve them, they are supposed to chant some mantras. So one disciple started chanting, ‘Brahma satyam jagat mithya.’ It means, only Brahman is reality, the world is maya. The next disciple said, ‘Deham naham’ - I am not the body. He was sitting in front of the food and saying, ‘I am not the body.’ The other disciple said, ‘I am beyond taste.’

When they started telling all these Sanskrit slokas, the person who was serving, the owner of the house, stopped serving. He said, ‘One is telling the whole world is maya, then why does he need food? The other one is telling he is not the body, then why does he need food?’ So he stopped serving.

At the end, the Guru was sitting. He understood, now these fellows had completely disturbed the whole feast by their chanting. He added one word, ‘Kao purey’ - after eating all these things will become true, not till we eat. When is Brahma satyam jagat mithya? After eating. And when ‘I am not the body and I am not the mind? After eating. When ‘I am not the senses, I am only atman’? Shivoham, shivoham, everything when? After eating, not before that.

See people who try to constantly remember, ‘I am not the body, I am not the mind,’ please understand, are trying to imitate the experience of the Master. They themselves never had the experience. One big danger in trying to imitate the expressions of an enlightened being is it will not lead to enlightenment.

There are few things which will lead to enlightenment, those things are called sadhanas, techniques. There are few things which will not lead to enlightenment.

See, for example, imitating the master’s blissful mood, constantly trying to be in that same mood, will lead you to enlightenment. Those things are called sadhanas. But trying to live like him is dangerous because there are so many things which you can’t even imagine about imitating.

People come and ask me, 'Vivekananda smoked, why not me?' I tell them, do everything that Vivekananda did, if you do all those things then you also can smoke. These people don't want all the things which Vivekananda did, they want to pick up. That is a big difficulty.

But with Mahāvīra you don't have even that difficulty. You can never imitate Mahāvīra. His body language is so pure, you can never imitate. If you imitate you have to be in that space. Otherwise it is impossible. Mahāvīra is a Master who has not left any loopholes. He is a foolproof Guru, foolproof Master.

You can imitate anything of Mahāvīra, and you will only grow. There is no such thing that you will come down or you will fall down. Saying or thinking constantly, 'I am not the body,' is not the right technique or right method. Actually when you have experience you will go beyond the body. You will not have an idea 'I am not the body.'

See, all of you feel the life that you are living inside your skin. What life and intensity and energy you feel inside your body, inside your skin, the same thing you will feel with the Whole, with the whole cosmos, with the whole Existence. That is what I call going beyond the body and going beyond the senses.

Understand these simple one or two techniques that may give you the real liberation - freedom from the known. Whatever you know, or whatever you think as boundaries for your senses, is the only difficulty. That is the real problem. The ideas which you are already carrying about what you can and what you can't do is the main problem.

As of now you have a program, 'If I do all these things, by then my senses should become tired or I should have excitement,' 'If I eat all these things I will feel excited in my senses,' or 'If I do all these things I will become tired.' These boundaries which you are carrying for yourself is the most dangerous thing. You do not allow the natural process to happen through you, you do not allow the automatic updating system.

See, each of your senses is so powerful, it can update itself if you allow its intelligence to express itself.

Patanjali says beautifully, 'With more and more experience, your senses are supposed to become sharper and stronger.' But as age grows, you actually become weaker and duller. Why? Because you hypnotize yourself.

See, the more you enjoy you always think and also expect that your senses will become dull. You are hypnotized. You are taught again and again, the more you use your senses, there is every possibility your senses will become duller and duller.

One important Truth you don't understand: living inside the senses even when they are not directly used for enjoyment is the main reason for dulling the senses.

Understand, it is a very important secret. Living inside your senses even when they are not being used for pleasure or joy is the main reason why you make your senses dull and dead.

Let me give you an example, then you will be able to relate with the idea which I am saying: having unnecessary anger, unnecessary lust, unnecessary taste, which is not directly useful to your life. For example, your anger towards Saddam Hussein is not going to do anything. Can you do anything about him? No.

But when you see some news, some people who are not directly related to your life, or some incident which you don't have direct contribution or direct part in, you cherish it, you enjoy it. For example, if you belong to a particular religion, and some other religious leader is assassinated, you just cherish that information. You enjoy it, you want to listen to that once more.

Many times if you are conditioned for some religion or society or country, if the opposite side or the enemy is killed, you just cherish and enjoy even though you have no direct relationship with that. In the same way lust - enjoying the fantasies with persons with whom you can never connect with in the physical level, in the personal level, you can't even imagine seeing them, but you enjoy those fantasies. Living with the fantasies which are not directly related to your life, which are not going to enrich your life, which are not going to add anything to your life, is what I call living inside the senses even while you are not deriving pleasure directly from them.

Understand, it is very important to understand this, how we waste our life, how we waste our energy. Living inside the senses while you are really deriving excitement or pleasure, you do not lose energy, because your senses are created to sense or to experience. For example, when you are seeing something which gives you pleasure, it is not even eyes which are seeing. Through the eyes you are seeing. Chakshu is the energy which sees through the eyes. Whenever the chakshu comes in contact with a beautiful scene and derives pleasure in the two points of the eyes, it does not make your senses dull.

When your eyes are closed, you are not directly seeing those scenes. But those scenes are going inside your eyes, the fantasy about that place is there in front of your eyes. For example, whenever you see a beach or a hill or a snow mountain in television, you always have a fantasy that you should be there, that you should see those scenes and enjoy.

But the big difficulty is, when you go there you don't have the joy. Actually when you go there, when you are on the spot, you are only thinking when to get out of that place and what to do next.

The real reason why you want to go there is, deep down every person has got a thirst to just disappear somewhere where you will not be recognized, where you don't have to hold your identity to protect you, where you don't need your identity for survival.

Anyhow, understand this one important Truth when actually the pleasure is happening through your senses, when actually you are deriving pleasure through the senses.

Sense means the eye or the nose or the tongue or the ear or the touch. These are called senses. Your consciousness when it touches all the five senses, takes different names. When it touches your eyes it is called chakshu, when it touches your ears it is called ghrana, when it touches your tongue it is called vak?. It takes different names.

Actually when these senses meet the object, pleasure happens in you. In the exact moments in which the pleasure itself is happening, your senses do not become dull or tired. But when you try to fantasize and keep yourself in that same excitement, that is the moment your senses become dull.

Understand, this secret will help you how to go beyond the senses without missing the pleasures. Let me be very honest, people come and tell me, 'In this young age you have become a swami,' they feel very sympathetic. But I tell you honestly, I feel sympathetic towards them, these people are still suffering with the body, still caught in the world, and do not know the intense pleasure or bliss which you achieve when you don't live inside the senses, when you don't receive the pleasure.

Understand, in your case you may receive that pleasure through the eyes, few minutes per day. Few minutes in your day you may see some good scenes which you really enjoy, which you want to see again and again. But you spend the whole day sitting inside your eyes. What I mean by the words 'sitting inside your eyes and spending the whole day' is, you can see even while you are not enjoying the pleasures or beautiful things through your eyes a lot of things will be crossing inside your eyes. When your eyes are closed, you can see constantly the scenes which you want to see or which you see will be crossing unnecessarily. That is what tires your senses.

In the same way, the person who is constantly fantasizing about food will only fill himself, he will never feel fulfilled. You see, filling yourself is totally different from feeling fulfilled. A person who feels fulfilled will never fill himself.

You should cook and eat. Especially the seekers are requested by all the traditions including Mahāvīra, to cook and eat. The monks in Jaina tradition or the Vedic tradition are not supposed to accept food specially cooked for them. They are supposed to cook and eat. Do you know the reason?

If you cook yourself, you will feel a little tired and eat only once or twice a day. If it is readymade and directly available everywhere, you will think, 'Why not one more?' Understand, you are not enjoying the food, that is the Truth.

See, muscles are the place where you store the memory. Understand, you can't think by forgetting your body. Try to imagine, try to visualize your body is burnt, and you don't have a body, and try to think. You will not be able to think even one thought.

To burn the samskaras, there is a beautiful technique in Jainism and Buddhism. Both religions use the technique: sitting and visualizing as if your body is burnt and you don't have a body. You may think how that can remove the samskaras or the engrams. It is because your muscles are the places where you store your memories and from where you retrieve the memories.

Now understand these few things, then you will be able to correlate and see. You start storing many memories inside your senses even while you are not using them, while you are not deriving pleasure from them. For example, your memories about food, even while you are not eating, are getting stored inside your senses. And when really the food comes in front of you, you think you should finish at least this much and you try to grab and fill with the idea you will have more pleasure if you eat more.

In fantasies, if you fantasize for more time, you will have that excitement. But in reality it is not true. It is not based on quantity, it is based on the quality. In fantasy it is based on quantity, in reality it is based on quality.

In fantasy with your pleasure about eating or sex or listening, you always think, 'Oh, I received pleasure by listening to one song for five minutes. If I listen for three hours then I will have three hours pleasure.' No. In the five minutes you receive pleasure because in those five minutes you are intense. Try to do that same thing for three hours, and the pleasure never continues.

But in fantasy you always calculate based on your logic. In fantasy you are not in reality. You conveniently forget important data. You conveniently forget many important data for pleasure. In reality, you will see that you are not experiencing pleasure anymore. But you do not want to say to yourself that you are not deriving pleasure because you created too much of hope on that sense. So you try to force your sense, 'No, no you are going to have pleasure. Enjoy more, don't leave, don't stop. Maybe now you are not having, maybe tomorrow you will have, don't stop.'

First thing, you create more fantasies. I don't know whether I am exactly expressing or making you understand what I am saying because it is such a subtle Truth, such an important Truth. And when you go deeper and deeper it is very difficult to reproduce the same understanding. And moreover there are some things which you cannot talk openly also. When it comes to senses talking too much openly becomes a taboo. If I give some sharp examples you will understand that in fantasy whether it is seeing or touching or tasting, it gives so much of joy the more time you spend in fantasy. But in reality itself suddenly you feel you are done.

You don’t have any more that drive. Your system is tired. It wants to move away from the food or the sense pleasure or that object. Why? See the sense - eye or tongue or the touch - that sense is there, the object is there.

Your power, your energy, consciousness is there, the object comes and touches the senses, and connects with your consciousness, all three of them are there together as long as you feel excited or new about the object which you are enjoying.

The moment you think ‘Oh I know this object,’ once it becomes known, your consciousness moves away to something else. Then even if the sense objects are touching your senses you don’t derive pleasure.

Once your consciousness moves away, even if the sense objects are touching your senses it is no more pleasure. But now you feel empty because you expected too much from the sense objects. You had too much of expectation from the sense objects, you were thinking they will give you totally different feeling, they will show you a different world. You do not understand the limitations of the senses, and you think we will derive the pleasure eternally. No. But now you do not want to accept the reality that it is not going to be eternal because you believe it. You tell your senses, 'No, no, no, try once more, try little more. Try little more, you will have it. You can have it.' You force, the forcing happens because you have more memories about those sense objects or those pleasures than you can enjoy. You have more memories than your capacity, that is where the difficulty starts.

Living a simple innocent life is, when your senses want to enjoy you come in contact with the sense objects, and your senses enjoy. The moment you feel that you know this joy and you relax the sense objects also relax. It is such a beautiful experience, such an innocent phenomenon. It is so beautiful it will only enrich your senses, you will never feel tired. But our lives are not so simple, we do not let go so easily, so freely, so joyfully.

We catch, we hang on. Even after our senses tell us, 'Enough, we are done, relax,' you say, 'No, who said? Once more, let us have once more.' We just try to be more greedy because of too many memories recorded inside the senses. Here only we create problem and not only that, we stay inside those senses when it is not necessary also.

As of now you are not really enjoying, there are some senses which you are not really enjoying. But it is not that you come away from them. You think, 'Who knows, anytime I may get some object? Why unnecessarily move away from the sense and then again enter? Let us wait.'

You wait inside every sense, that is why you are not full in any sense. Because half of your energy is sitting with your eyes, half of your energy is sitting with your ears, half of your energy is sitting with the tongue, half of your attention is sitting with touch. Then how do you think you will feel fulfilled with one sense? No.

So when Mahāvīra says here, 'Go beyond the five senses of touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing,' he is not telling you to kill the senses. He is telling you to live inside only them when it is required.

Your seeing is covered by a film of thinking, you have always a film in front of you which is called thinking. As long as you have that film, the thinking film in front of your eyes, you will never be able to see. You will never be able to see the reality.

In the same way, sit in your chair and touch something for five minutes, and visualize that you are alive only in that few inches space. Your whole body is dead and you don’t have any other parts except those few square inches. Be alive only on that, suddenly you will see your whole attention and energy is gathering towards one sense. This is what we call pratyahara, moving away from unnecessary senses.

Understand, pratyahara does not mean moving away from all senses. I am not even asking you to move away from all senses. If you move away from all senses you will fall into depression. No. Move away from unnecessary senses, the senses which are not directly useful in that moment.

This moment naturally you don’t need few of your senses, for example taste. Now you don’t need the taste because you are sitting and seeing. You may need eyes and ears, move yourself completely to that and relax from all the other three senses of smell, touch and taste. Just move yourself away from all the three and be only hearing and seeing. Suddenly you will see you become intense and that tiredness or feeling sleepy will disappear.

You feel sleepy if you are distributed to all your senses. You do not have that intensity, that is why you feel tired and sleepy, and you are thinking of something else when you are sitting here. You yawn, yawn, and just if the next person pokes at you, you say, ‘I am listening, I am listening. You listen, why are you disturbing me? I am okay, you do.’ And even that you don’t want to tell in full words because if you utter full words, your sleep may get disturbed! So you just say ‘Hmm’!

You say you are listening in a deep meditative state. I always tell people, ‘Please do not meditate while you are listening!’ Because actually I know that they are not meditating! Sometimes it becomes too much to keep your eyes open. You just feel like, ‘Why not have a small nap? Just a few minutes after all.’

In India for people who have got houses near the railway track, if the train does not cross and create sound they wake up from bed. Understand, they are tuned, if a train does not come on time and if the sound is not clear, if that noise is not created, they wake up from sleep. If there are too many memories inside your eyes and if you are using your eyes even while you are not seeing, your eyes will become tired.

You can understand this example: in the night, you are not seeing anything worthy but you use your eyes and see the dreams. Understand this one example. You use your eyes and see the dreams, memories recorded inside your eyes, fantasies recorded inside your eyes. And you are tired next day morning when you get up.

If your sleep was filled with dreams you will be tired early morning. If you had a dreamless sleep you will feel so fresh, alive. All the memories which are stored in your muscles fight with each other and come out illogically. They give you the experiences in turn and that is what you call a dream.

All the memories which you stored in your muscles come out, fight with each other and give you all illogical experiences. The unconnected, completely broken disturbed experiences is what you call as a dream next day morning. It will not be logical. You will be with your wife but you will be thinking you are studying for your college examinations. It is completely illogical. There is no time, no space. The dreams are completely disconnected and disturbed.

The sage should go beyond the five senses of touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing. In all the worlds including the celestial regions the attachment to the sense pleasures is the root cause of physical as well as mental suffering.

Understand, he says, even celestial regions people are sometimes ready to renounce this world but not heaven. People do tapas, control their senses so that they will achieve heaven in the other world. What are they going to have in heaven? Higher level enjoyments. People don't drink here, and if you ask why, they say, 'No, no, we will go there because we get soma rasa'. Who knows nowadays whether they serve there or not!

Please do not give up these senses for that pleasure, no. Then it is a bargain. Give up out of understanding, that is okay, but not for some other sense enjoyments. Person who follows such a strict brahmacharya goes beyond mental and physical sufferings. You expand, you go beyond mental and physical sufferings. All beings including devas, gandharvas, rakshasas, danavas, yakshas, salute such a being.

One more important thing, when we say all beings including devas, gandharvas, rakshasas, danavas, yakshas salute such a being, not only the so called devatas who are in the metaphysical plane, even your own energies salute, your own energies surrender themselves to that being who has gone beyond the senses.

When you see somebody who has really gone beyond the senses, without even your knowledge all your senses will just sit in front of him like a pet. They will just sit, you will feel completely relaxed, in tune and completely at ease. Such brahmacharya is eternal and ultimate and never ending. By this several have become siddhas in the past or becoming siddhas now and continue to become siddhas in the future. He says this is the technique: going beyond the five senses, not living inside your senses when you are not directly deriving enjoyment from them.

In the same way you are seeing so many things on the television or cinema which create fantasy. Directly you are not even going to see that person, but you just enjoy. You enjoy the fantasy, and waste your lust towards the objects which are not directly going to give you the pleasure.

In the same way, you waste your anger which is not directly going to add to your life. Use the emotions only in the way in which your life is enriched. If emotions are used only to enrich your life you are living a beautiful life. But many times you waste your emotions in a way in which your life is not directly enriched.

You can see vengeance many times. If you hear that some opposite party is suffering, you feel a subtle joy, 'Yes, yes, those fellows, they deserve it!' So do not waste your emotions. That is why Mahāvīra says, 'Do not enjoy even mentally if your enemy is suffering,' that is like wasting your emotions, wasting your energy, tiring yourself unnecessarily. Your mind, your stress, your tension, everything is just because you live inside your senses even while you are not receiving pleasure or excitement directly from them. That is where the whole difficulty is.

With a person who doesn't have memories in His muscles, who is not living inside His senses when he is not receiving pleasure, His body will look so graceful. It won't be ugly. When it becomes so graceful, he won't feel like covering it. That is why Mahāvīra lives a naked life, because he did not have memory. He did not have memory of any outer world. He did not have memory of any sense pleasures. No memory was stored in His muscles. He is so beautiful, so natural, because he has nothing unnatural.

You say you are listening in a deep meditative state. I always tell people, 'Please do not meditate while you are listening!' Because actually I know that they are not meditating! Sometimes it becomes too much to keep your eyes open. You just feel like, 'Why not have a small nap? Just a few minutes after all.'

In India for people who have got houses near the railway track, if the train does not cross and create sound they wake up from bed. Understand, they are tuned, if a train does not come on time and if the sound is not clear, if that noise is not created, they wake up from sleep. If there are too many memories inside your eyes and if you are using your eyes even while you are not seeing, your eyes will become tired.

You can understand this example: in the night, you are not seeing anything worthy but you use your eyes and see the dreams. Understand this one example. You use your eyes and see the dreams, memories recorded inside your eyes, fantasies recorded inside your eyes. And you are tired next day morning when you get up.

If your sleep was filled with dreams you will be tired early morning. If you had a dreamless sleep you will feel so fresh, alive. All the memories which are stored in your muscles fight with each other and come out illogically. They give you the experiences in turn and that is what you call a dream. All the memories which you stored in your muscles come out, fight with each other and give you all illogical experiences. The unconnected, completely broken disturbed experiences is what you call as a dream next day morning. It will not be logical. You will be with your wife but you will be thinking you are studying for your college examinations. It is completely illogical. There is no time, no space. The dreams are completely disconnected and disturbed.

The sage should go beyond the five senses of touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing. In all the worlds including the celestial regions the attachment to the sense pleasures is the root cause of physical as well as mental suffering.

Understand, he says, even celestial regions people are sometimes ready to renounce this world but not heaven. People do tapas, control their senses so that they will achieve heaven in the other world. What are they going to have in heaven? Higher level enjoyments. People don't drink here, and if you ask why, they say, 'No, no, we will go there because we get soma rasa'. Who knows nowadays whether they serve there or not!

Please do not give up these senses for that pleasure, no. Then it is a bargain. Give up out of understanding, that is okay, but not for some other sense enjoyments. Person who follows such a strict brahmacharya goes beyond mental and physical sufferings. You expand, you go beyond mental and physical sufferings. All beings including devas, gandharvas, rakshasas, danavas, yakshas, salute such a being.

One more important thing, when we say all beings including devas, gandharvas, rakshasas, danavas, yakshas salute such a being, not only the so called devatas who are in the metaphysical plane, even your own energies salute, your own energies surrender themselves to that being who has gone beyond the senses.

When you see somebody who has really gone beyond the senses, without even your knowledge all your senses will just sit in front of him like a pet. They will just sit, you will feel completely relaxed, in tune and completely at ease. Such brahmacharya is eternal and ultimate and never ending. By this several have become siddhas in the past or becoming siddhas now and continue to become siddhas in the future. He says this is the technique: going beyond the five senses, not living inside your senses when you are not directly deriving enjoyment from them.

Do not waste your emotions like anger or lust when you are not really enjoying. Use your anger when it is directly needed for your business or your comforts or your luxury. Do not waste it by cherishing the violent information like somebody is killed or somebody is murdered or somebody is kidnapped. See, you affiliate yourself with some religion, some nation, and if the other enemies or the opposite party is suffering, you feel enjoyment.

Usually you affiliate yourself, you have some sympathy towards one party, one political party. Always both parties are going to go through ups and downs, but whenever you see the opposite party is going through some ups and downs, some difficulties, you enjoy it, 'Yes, yes, let these fellows suffer. They need it.' You suffer, you cherish, you enjoy your violence and anger for no reason. Directly you don't receive anything, you are not going to do anything. You have no role to play, but you just cherish.

In the same way you are seeing so many things on the television or cinema which create fantasy. Directly you are not even going to see that person, but you just enjoy. You enjoy the fantasy, and waste your lust towards the objects which are not directly going to give you the pleasure. In the same way, you waste your anger which is not directly going to add to your life. Use the emotions only in the way in which your life is enriched. If emotions are used only to enrich your life you are living a beautiful life. But many times you waste your emotions in a way in which your life is not directly enriched.

You can see vengeance many times. If you hear that some opposite party is suffering, you feel a subtle joy, 'Yes, yes, those fellows, they deserve it!' So do not waste your emotions. That is why Mahāvīra says, 'Do not enjoy even mentally if your enemy is suffering,' that is like wasting your emotions, wasting your energy, tiring yourself unnecessarily. Your mind, your stress, your tension, everything is just because you live inside your senses even while you are not receiving pleasure or excitement directly from them. That is where the whole difficulty is.

With a person who doesn't have memories in His muscles, who is not living inside His senses when he is not receiving pleasure, His body will look so graceful. It won't be ugly. When it becomes so graceful, he won't feel like covering it. That is why Mahāvīra lives a naked life, because he did not have memory. He did not have memory of any outer world. He did not have memory of any sense pleasures. No memory was stored in His muscles. He is so beautiful, so natural, because he has nothing unnatural.

Such brahmacharya is eternal, ultimate and never-ending, by this several have become enlightened in the past, or becoming enlightened now and will continue to become enlightened in the future. He says, this is the ultimate technique for all three generations, past, present and future. So try to live inside your senses really when you are deriving pleasure and joy directly, otherwise do not live in them.

Maybe I will answer these few questions, then enter into the next sutra, mokshamarga sutra. I have selected beautiful sutras from Jain sutras, Akaranga sutras and Mahāvīra's words, Mahāvīra vaani. This is mokshamarga sutra.

Q: How to hold on to the darshan feeling after going home and away from the enlightened Master?

This is a nice question. Don't have the fear that it will go away, don't be greedy that it should stay with you. If it stays let it stay, if it goes away let it go. Just be relaxed, feel it is like a breeze. Do not be greedy of the breeze. If you are greedy of the breeze you will create only air conditioners, which is a poor substitute for the breeze. So don't be greedy of that. You will see beyond your mind it starts staying with you. You can't do anything about holding on to it.

Q: How do you live a perfect life? Should you stay in India or USA?

Perfect life has nothing to do with India or USA.

Q: How to find the right Guru?

First become a right disciple, simply the right Guru will find you. You don’t have to find the right Guru, see just become a right disciple. Let your seeking be without hypocrisy. Let you be a real seeker, you will see the right Guru finds you.

I always tell people, if you are a seeker, I will be running behind you. You don’t have to run behind me. I will be calling you again and again, and I will be trying to spend time with you. If you are not a seeker, even if you try, you will never be able to get even few minutes with the Master.

Q: How to make young children spiritual? How to introduce spirituality?

First you become spiritual honestly, because young kids are not going to learn from your verbal language, they will learn only from your body language. First you become spiritual honestly, simply they will learn. And if you are just telling them and you are not practicing, never think you can escape from them, they are very intelligent. If you think you can escape from them, only you are wasting your time.

Q: When is the case when you use no sense at all? No, I am not asking you to not use any sense. At any given time you will be using some one sense, so use that intensely, that's all.

Q: Do bigger bodies have more memories? There is a possibility. Maybe they are recorded with more gap. In the smaller bodies, intensely it is recorded. It has too many layers - like two layer DVDs.

Q: If you choose your life before birth then why do some suffer and some are happy? Because you chose that. Many times you feel fulfilled with suffering also.

Q: How did you come in contact with Mahāvīra's teachings? I had the opportunity to study and I myself was inspired by a Jain muni during my wandering. During my parivrajaka yatra there was a Jain muni in Madhya Pradesh. He was alone, wandering, living in the forest. Usually Jain munis live as a group, but I don't know why he was living alone. I think he had decided to live alone and I had really nice experiences being around him. So I felt very inspired and started reading on Mahāvīra.

Q: Can an enlightened being be in the non-enlightened state and come back in enlightened state? No. This is not like your car that you can get in and get out. Once you are enlightened, you are enlightened, that's all. You can't get out of it.

Q: How do people increase their chances of dropping their ego? Only meditation, nothing else. Meditation is the only possibility where the ego can be dropped. There is no other possibility. Alright, now let us work on the mokshamarga sutras. It is a very powerful sutra.

Beautiful words! See, you can't edit even a single word. He is just using like shorthand. Only a person who knows the basic philosophy can connect all these things and see the real meaning.

What does he mean by the word 'knowledge'? Self-healing thoughts - the thoughts which heal the inner conflicts and difficulties. The thoughts which put you at ease again and again is knowledge. For example, if you are sitting depressed for no reason, bringing yourself back and putting yourself at ease with yourself, is knowledge.

We constantly carry a kind of subtle uneasiness. For example, if you are sitting in a car and the person who is driving is a rash driver, you know he is a rash driver and his history says at least few accidents in a year. Will you be able to sleep? Especially you know that he sleeps on the wheel and you are driving late night. You can't sleep, you can't relax. Even if you try to relax, you will just get up at the slightest brake. You will carry a kind of uneasy feeling with you constantly.

In the same way, when you are living life also, you carry that uneasiness. Knowledge means healing yourself, dropping that unease feeling. It is creating more and more self-healing thoughts. The exact Sanskrit word is viveka. It is translated as knowledge, viveka is not even knowledge. It is more like discrimination. Maybe we can say discrimination and knowledge put together is called viveka. In English they translate it as knowledge. It is the nearest word, you don't have any other word.

Constantly have viveka and bring yourself back to a higher level, intense energy, high enthusiasm, creating a mental setup through which constantly you will be reminded that you are beyond this body and mind. Remind yourself about the true state of your being. The seeker should walk with knowledge, stand with knowledge, sit with knowledge, eat with knowledge, speak with knowledge. Mahāvīra says, everything should be done with discrimination, viveka, and knowledge. Constantly remember you are beyond this body.

If you just pen down whatever is going on in your mind you will see eight out of ten thoughts are pulling you down, creating more and more difficulties. You have created a network, you don't feel relaxed unless you create enough suffering for you. Now you can't relax until you become tired. You don't know how to relax with intense energy. So you create tiredness before you relax. You wait for tiredness so that you can relax. You do not want to relax with energy. You do not want to be at peace with rajas. If you are peaceful with excitement it is called bliss. Rajas plus sattva is ananda.

Either you are restless or peaceful. If you are with energy you are not peaceful. If you are peaceful you are not with energy, you are always dull. If you add the energy and peace it is called sattva.

Here Mahāvīra asks you to create intense self-healing thoughts inside you, viveka and knowledge. Knowledge means the awareness that you are unclutched, you are beyond body and mind. Whether you walk, stand, sit or sleep, let you be aware you are not bound by your body and mind. Let you be reminded again and again you are beyond body and mind and your fears do not come true. Just like your fantasies your fears are also not powerful.

Understand, how you feel hopeless by trying to fulfill your fantasies, in the same way your fears are also not powerful. Your fears are negative fantasies, that's all. Whether it is fear or fantasy, you are trying to live with unreal things. So fear and fantasy both are not going to be reality. God saves you by not fulfilling your fantasies. If He tries to fulfill all your fantasies, you would have created a bigger hell for you. By now you would have created the worst hell.

Having this knowledge, this viveka, the one who sees himself in everybody, the one who sees everybody with equal vision, the one who has gone beyond His greed, the one who has pacified His senses, escapes from sinful karma.

First gnana, then compassion. This is one more important uniqueness of the Eastern religions: first enlightenment, then service. People want to do service first before enlightenment but they mess up the whole thing. They create more and more suffering so that they can continue to serve people. They want suffering, only then they can be serving others.

An ignorant man can never understand what compassion is because he won't know the difference between merit and sin. First gnana or enlightenment, then compassion. All seekers are waiting to attain this supreme state. The one who sees himself in everybody, the one who sees everybody with equal vision, the one who has gone beyond this greed, the one who has pacified His senses, escapes from sinful karma.

Understand, you can see yourself in everybody only when you see you are beyond your body and mind. Only when you go little beyond your body and mind, you will be able to see everybody in you, you in everybody. The essence of all these four sutras is knowledge, self-remembrance, constantly reminding you about all these great spiritual Truths.

Whenever you walk, sit, see the best way to achieve this state which Mahāvīra is describing. Dedicate six months. I am not asking you to move away from your job; for six months take a vow that whether you are driving or sitting or whatever, the maximum time in your life should be spent listening to these great teachings.

Use audio CDs or Ipod or something, constantly from morning till night, whenever you can find time, even during work, let the discourses go on in the side. Flood your whole being with these Truths, you will create a mental setup which constantly reminds you about your true nature or your being.

Constantly these words being put inside your being will transform your being, that is the only way to go beyond the ordinary things and achieve enlightenment and the true state of viveka or knowledge which Mahāvīra is telling.

See, two things, one is constantly listening to these Truths. Second, meditating at least once a day. Do some one technique so that whatever you heard will be digested, will go into your system, will become part of your being. Then you will have the energy to express them in your physical life. This is the essence of this whole sutra.

The mokshamarga sutra's essence is creating a mental setup through which constantly you are reminded about your true nature whether you are standing, sitting, sleeping, eating or speaking. How to do that?

The best way is to take a vow: for the next six months I will spend maximum amount of my time with no television, no other entertainment except reading and spiritualizing my being. It should be like a transformation. 'I will only read and listen to these great ideas.' Do not create guilt that you are not able to practice the moment you start listening.

See, the big difficulty is once you listen itself you create a guilt you are not able to practice. That guilt creates so much of difficulty in you, you stop listening also.

Let me describe the technique, it has five steps.

Second step, sit in the same vajrasana, same chin mudra, and do intense humming, 'mmmmm'. Let your whole being become humming, nothing else.

Third step, put your awareness on every chakra. You will be guided through the music and instructions, to put your awareness one by one from muladhara upwards to all the chakras.

Fourth step, just relax, do not encourage your thoughts, do not fulfill them, and do not suppress them. Don't create, maintain or destroy a thought. If it comes let it come, if it doesn't it is okay. Just be unclutched. This is the fourth step.

Fifth step, relax and feel deeply connected to Existence in a prayerful mood. You can pray or connect yourself with any God or Guru, with whoever you feel connected. You can connect with them, with that energy, with that God or with that Master.

If you have heart problem or you have any health problem you can do it very slowly and mildly; do not do it wildly and chaotically.

(Nithya Dhyan Meditation follows)

Om Nithyanandam

Relax, you can open your eyes. Carry this silence with you. That is the essence of all spiritual teachings. So maybe you can carry this one understanding. Flood your whole being with this kind of enlightening words again and again, and do at least one meditation every day. It will transform your being and lead you to enlightenment. Let you all achieve and radiate the eternal bliss, nithyananda. Thank you.