A collection of quotes of Hindu Gurus and Saints.
If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. (Swami Vivekananda)
One who partakes of Shiva nature becomes a jnani, and one who partakes of Vishnu nature becomes a bhakta. (Sri Ramakrishna)
The Gita says “that there are three kinds of charity, the Tamasic, the Rajasic, and the Sattvic. Tamasic charity is performed on an impulse. It is always making mistakes. The doer thinks of nothing but his own impulse to be kind. Rajasic charity is what a man does for his own glory. And Sattvic charity is that which is given to the right person, in the right way, and at the proper time.” (Sister Nivedita)
Spirituality need not be confined to forests and caves. As Swami Vivekananda said, it should enter the marketplace, and the field and the factory. When all activities are infused with the leaven of spirituality, a silent revolution will come about. The real satya-yuga will begin. For this, continuous effort in this direction—to focus one’s life on God, and give it a spiritual orientation—is highly necessary. (Swami Smaranananda)
Only those who want nothing are masters of nature. (Swami Vivekananda)
Work done rightly leads to freedom. (Swami Vivekananda)
Unchaste imagination is as bad as unchaste action. (Swami Vivekananda)
Controlled desire leads to the highest result. (Swami Vivekananda)
Through the power of love the senses become finer and higher. The perfect love is very rare in human relation, for human love is almost always interdependent and mutual. (Swami Vivekananda)
When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the time being. … It is the worker who is attached to results that grumbles about the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached worker all duties are equally good, and form efficient instruments with which selfishness and sensuality may be killed, and the freedom of the soul secured. (Swami Vivekananda)
None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, do not deny Him! Too much of inactivity, too much of weakness, too much of hypnotism has been and is upon our race. O ye modern Hindus, dehypnotise yourselves. The way to do that is found in your own sacred books. Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity. (Swami Vivekananda)
Truth is the state beyond concepts. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Whenever there is sense of individuality, personality or separateness, you have so many wants. But when that sense of separateness is not there, when you are one with the totality, there are no wants. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Do whatever you want, but never forget the reality, never forget what you really are. You are not the body, you are not the food, you are not this vital air. Whatever has appeared is a state, and as such it has to go. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
You take the seed of the Banyan tree. It is very small, smaller that the mustard seed. The seed is very subtle, but all the gross matter is already inside it. Do you see the paradox? Similarly, your essential being is the subtlest, yet it contains the whole universe. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Spiritual process is not for the dead or the dying; it is for the living who want to become fully alive in all dimensions of life. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
Whether God or somebody else loves you does not make a difference for you.
If you are loving, it makes your life very, very sweet. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
Anger and resentment are poisons that you drink and you expect somebody else to die. But life does not work that way. If you drink it, only you die. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
Trying to change social, national, or global realities without working on human consciousness means there is no serious intention. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
A wise person is one who is happy, with or without external wealth; one who is not prisoner of hopes and desires. One who has the wisdom to transform pain into power. (Swami Sukhabodhananda)
First we need to know that the basis of our misery is that we have established ourselves in untruth. We are deeply identified with that which we are not. Somewhere along the way we have gotten identified with things around us. We have got identified with our body and mind. That is the source of suffering. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
The whole experience of transcending your limitations must happen within you. If you want to transcend, only if you are truly willing, it can happen. Otherwise no power on earth or in heaven can move you. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
Spirituality is simply the process of not identifying with what we are not, to shed the layers of conditioning so that we know what we are NOT. When that is completed, we arrive at something that cannot be discounted. This discovery will be the recognition of divinity, and we will see that there is no reason for misery in the world. (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev)
Our weakness results in disappointment. Disappointment should be cremated and not garlanded. People derive a sadistic pleasure from disappointment. This is a primitive pleasure. To cremate disappointment, one should strengthen one’s strengths. The greatest strength comes from the energy of commitment and brings in excellence in all walks of life. Few people traverse the road to success without a puncture or two, but it is commitment to excellence that takes them through. Commitment createsintegrity.
