All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
You know that you are. Don't burden yourself with names, just be. Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of self-awareness beyond labels and identities.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj encourages individuals to recognize their true essence by stepping away from societal labels and identities. He suggests that attaching names or forms to oneself can obscure the deeper, authentic self, urging a mindset of simply 'being' without the confines of definitions.
Themes
Self-AwarenessIdentityBeingEssencePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on self-discovery, this quote can inspire participants to reflect on their identities beyond societal labels.
More from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
All quotes βEven faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
Forgetting your Self is the greatest injury; all the calamities flow from it. Take care of the most important, the lesser will take care of itself. You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait with improving others until we see ourselves as we are/ and have changed. There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic. People come and go; you register without response. It may not be easy in the beginning, but with some practice you will find that your mind can function on many levels at the same time and you can be aware of them all.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
Learn to live without self concern. _x000D_ _x000D_ For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless and ever victorious. _x000D_ _x000D_ Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, _x000D_ _x000D_ you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
Do not neglect this body. This is the house of God; take care of it, only in this body can God be realized.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
Similar quotes
I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.
Jamaica KincaidRead
We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night β every night, every night β the moment I feigned sleep.
Vladimir NabokovRead
It is an undoubted truth that every doctrine that comes from God, leads to God; and that which doth not tend to promote holiness is not of God.
George WhitefieldRead
All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
Francois FenelonRead
Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
James A. BaldwinRead
In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
John Le CarreRead