Timeless Wisdom From Hindu Scriptures

Knowledge is the (real) wealth of a man while staying in foreign lands. His intelligence is his only wealth in adversities. His righteous behavior is his wealth in other world (after the death). Good conduct (however) is the wealth everywhere.

Daylight and darkness, dusk and dawn, winter and springtime come and go. Time plays and life ebbs away. But the storm of desire, one never leaves. (Hence) Worship the Lord, Worship the Lord.

Just as the farmer reaps the fruit according to the seed that he plants in the field, a man reaps spiritual merit or sin according to the acts he performed.

Endless are the scriptures and endless are the things to be known, and obstacles in life. But life is short. Therefore like a swan separates milk from water, in the same way one should separate and know the essentials, and leave the non-essentials.

Lakshmi, or the goddess of Fortune, comes only to the industrious lion among men; it is only weaklings that say that we have to take what fate brings unto us; forsake this dependence on fate and express your manliness through the strength of self-reliance; what harm is there if no results come after you put forth your endeavor?

It is, verily, only through industriousness that we accomplish what are to be achieved, not through vain daydreaming; no deer is going to (oblige a lion and) enter into its mouth while (it is lazily) asleep! 

You are not the body. You are not the mind, nor the buddhi, nor the will. You are the atma. The atma is eternal. This is the conclusion which great souls have arrived at from their experience. Let this truth become well impressed on your mind. But there is one thing to which you must give attention. Never swerve from the path of dharma. Let it be your practice to regard every life as the holy presence of God. He is both within and without. I remain, I am He.

Silence is Truth. Silence is Bliss. Silence is Peace. And hence Silence is Atman. To live this Silence as such is the Goal. It is Moksha. It is the end of the endless cycle of births and deaths.

If by wandering as a mendicant one can become a sannyasin, all beggars should be sannyasins. If by studying the scriptures one can become a sannyasin, then by counting the King's money, one must become a millionaire.

Here is a real avadhuta. Though surrounded by relatives and devotees, he is completely alone and at one with the Self. Though people offer him fruits and sweets, he sits unmoved, letting the monkeys take them away. This is surely the Peace and the Silence that are the pinnacle of advaita: Brahma jnana.

The musk deer does not know that it bears the precious musk because it is a brute. But you are a man, endowed with common sense. God is within you. Still you wander here and there in search of Him. Why? 

He who sees the Self in all, and has no desires of his own whatsoever, is the friend of all, at all times, and in all circumstances — in adversity as well as prosperity.

Accept sorrows yourself and rain down happiness on others. That is what ought to be done. That is why Siva swallowed the poison and bears the moon on his head. Similarly, good people everywhere bear good qualities on the head and suppress evil at the throat.