Self-inquiry is a radically simple means whereby we can rid ourselves of misery and suffering in our lives. Not pain and hardship, but misery and suffering in our lives. I have found that the most difficult task that I have in speaking about self-inquiry is trying to distinguish self-inquiry from all the other spiritual stuff that goes on in the world.
The idea of investigating to find out the reality of what I am is very old. Maybe 2,500 years, maybe even longer. It may have been a practice of the Aryan tribes before they even got into India. But until very recently, before the advent of Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry was a part of the whole business of spiritual aspiration and attainment. It was one means among many for attaining spiritual fulfillment.
Because Ramana was willing to speak with everybody about everything, it is sometimes difficult to hear even from him the simplicity of the method of self-inquiry. But one thread that ran through all of Ramana's teaching was a radically, fundamentally different view of self-inquiry as a means of ridding ourselves of misery and suffering in our lives.
Complete recording of a Meeting with John Sherman in Ojai, California on September 8, 2007.
We receive many, many beautiful and useful letters. Every month we try to feature one here that seems especially valuable and instructive for one reason or another.
La nouvelle version du livre Meeting Ramana Maharshi, Conversations with John Sherman, révisée en 2008, vous est présentée maintenant en traduction française.
There is no point in making an effort to establish a connection between the spiritual terminology and the reality that you already see. Once you enter the vichara consciously, in time, you simply lose interest in all of that. No matter how true and inspiring the spiritual and religious discourse may have been, it has not done you much good. There are many things that can provide you with some passing comfort and clarity, but none of them works to put an end to the idea that life is suffering, and that you are in danger here. The only thing that works is to look at you -- ordinary, everyday you.
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The only problem anywhere to be found is the false belief that you are at the mercy of your life, and the only solution is the truth, which is everywhere and always present and self-evident. Ridding oneself of the false is as easy as repeatedly tasting the truth of being here, unmovingly, unchangingly here. This repeated looking directly at oneself is the infallible method of the vichara.
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