A Collection Of Quotes Of Hindu Gurus And Saints

A random collection of quotes of Hindu Gurus and Saints.

No one succeeds without effort…Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.

A disciple should have an intense and incessant longing to get free from the miseries of life and to attain supreme spiritual Bliss. He should not have the least desire for anything else.

The final stage on the path of knowledge consists of the utter annihilation of the egoistic notion –  “I am the actor” – By realizing that one has no existence apart from the Supreme Lord – that the real “I” and the Absolute are one and identical.

The Self, which is Pure consciousness, has no ego sense about it. (Sri Ramana Maharshi)

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)

Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one's true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. (The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words, Sri Ramanasramam edition.)

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)

It is only because of ignorance that the Self appears to be finite. When ignorance is destroyed the Self which does not admit of any multiplicity whatsoever, truly reveals Itself by Itself, like the sun when the cloud is removed. (Adi Shankaracharya)

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)

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)

Self-Realization does not depend on any kind of consciousness; its very nature is Awareness or Consciousness. — Adi Shankaracharya, Introduction to Commentary on Kena Vakya.

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)

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)

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 creates integrity. (Swami Sukhabodhananda)

All scriptures without exception proclaim that for attaining salvation the mind should be subdued. And once one knows that control of the mind is their final aim, it is futile to make an interminable study of them. What is required for such control is actual enquiry into oneself by self-interrogation: 'Who am I?' How can this enquiry in quest of the Self be made by means of a study of the scriptures? (The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words, p. 15, Rider's edition, p. 10, Sri Ramanasramam edition.)

The purpose of Atma Jnana (spiritual knowledge) is to remove the illusory self created by Avidya (ignorance). The attainment of Self by Divine Knowledge means only the removal of the illusory self created by ignorance through the superimposition of the body as the self. — Shankara, Commentary on the Taittiriya Upanishad

The Vedantic texts teach that although Brahman is One he is regarded both as possessing attributes and as free from them. In the former sense He is the object of meditation, in the latter of Knowledge. — Shankara, Commentary on the Brahma Sutra, 1-1-12.

Liberation is not my idea; it is the fundamental longing in every form of life.

Spirituality is not something you do. If you stop all of your nonsense, you are spiritual. Spirituality is ultimate sense.

The significance of human nature is that you have the discretion to decide how God should function within you.

There is no such thing as ego; it is empty talk.

The spiritual path has become a struggle only because of this – you have a strong sense of like and dislike, but you are trying to be all inclusive. It is a self defeating process.  (Sadhguru)