Our senses are designed to receive sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touch from the outside. All we need to do is open our eyes and the world of color and form fills our being. Similar is the case with the other senses. The process is effortless and it feels natural. What is not natural is to turn our attention to the inside. Looking inside requires enormous effort and doesn’t feel natural at all.

This essay is a small tribute to the unknown spiritual seekers, who—like the legendary squirrel in the Rāmāyaṇa who contributed a few grains of sand in the construction of the bridge to Lanka—have done their part and moved on, leaving behind a subtle influence that is easy to miss by those in a hurry.

Which mother can keep away for long when her child begins to cry? We cry for so many things. Why not learn to cry for the Divine Mother? Let every one of us be a child whose cry cannot be silenced by any worldly toy, for it is only to such a child that the Mother comes.

Caring for the body, caring for the mind, and caring for the spirit are all important. Wisdom consists in doing them in such a way that they become not a hotchpotch of random practices but a harmonious, unified practice that brings together the dispersed parts of our life and personality.

The more we do our duty because we want to do it—not because somebody is compelling us to do it—the more freedom we experience. A slave’s work gives no joy. The work we do must be out of freedom. The slave is bound. It is the master’s work that the slave does. The work must become ours, not someone else’s.

The older I grow, the more I am drawn to peace, even more than to happiness. When I am at peace with myself, I see clearly what makes me happy and what doesn’t—and this teaches me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. When I am at peace with the world around me, I see clearly why there is suffering—and this teaches me what I can do to minimize the suffering.

When we speak about interfaith harmony, it is good to remember that the different faiths are always in harmony—it’s the people practicing those faiths that sometimes fail. Religions don’t fight with each other, but people do. The fights and quarrels, the violence and the wars—all of these happen due to lack of understanding as well as lack of practice.

Most of us have faced situations in life when we are confused and unsure about how to proceed. We have wondered: “What is my duty in these circumstances?” Often we just muddle through the confusion and use whatever justifications the mind can think up to determine the best course of action. What if we yearned for scriptural guidance in this matter? Do our ancient books have any useful insights that may help us figure out what our duty is?

No one knows what happens after death. We know what happens to the body, but hardly anything about what happens to the person. People who are curious about what happens after death are in no hurry to die in order to get that knowledge. When we are still living, we have the freedom to hope, to speculate, to imagine, to dream about what might happen after death.

No one is going to hold it against us if we are disappointed with the world. Life was messy even before the pandemic, but now it’s gotten messier still. While we try to figure out the best way to deal with our disappointments, it is helpful to remember that disappointments have the potential to kickstart a serious pursuit of spiritual life.

We have gone to sleep and, naturally, we have forgotten where we are and who we are. That forgetfulness has produced the dream of this universe. It’s all “in here” in my mind but I don’t know it. The dream world does seem “out there” to the dreamer.

Every one of us is a walking, breathing miracle of life. Our misfortune is that we don’t feel ourselves to be fortunate when we are living. We understand the blessing of being alive only when we are faced with the imminent prospect of death. It is only then that most of us begin to question the value of our life’s achievements.

If someone tells me, “You are stupid,” I hear the sound, I understand what those words mean, and I hear this person tell me, “You are stupid.” That’s the ordinary type of hearing. But then, almost immediately, I also hear this inside me: “How dare you?” Or “Me, stupid? You moron, you are stupid.” Or, “Why do people think I am stupid? I am not stupid.” …

We must know exactly the why of everything we think, the why of everything we say, and the why of everything we do. A why-question is a beeper to awaken us every time we fall asleep and begin drifting.

Every case of sickness or hospitalization or death is affecting a family, often devastatingly. Every job that is lost and every business that is shuttered is changing lives, often unalterably. It is essential to remind ourselves of this whenever we get lost in the web of statistical data. How can we retain our sensitivity even when no one personally known to us has been affected adversely?

Who was Jesus? It is difficult to know, not because the question cannot be answered but because the question can be answered in many different ways—and every way may point to the truth which is beyond words. Here is one possible way to understand Jesus and his life-giving words.

What is a community really? How important should it be to me? Why have I become so dependent on it? What does my community do for me and what am I expected do for my community? Is a community even necessary?

Is there anything more that can be done? Those amongst us who take spiritual life seriously may want to ask themselves: besides the obvious and essential response to the threat of infection, is there also a spiritual response? What are the kind of thoughts a Vedanta student may have in preparation for a likely face-off with the virus—and what can a person do in addition to the necessary precautions already in place?

Have you ever thought of yourself as a river? It is a useful exercise. I sometimes think I am a river. I feel that is what we all are—millions of rivers, all flowing towards one destination, the ocean. As rivers we are all different from each other. When we reach the ocean, however, we lose our river-identity. …

No one knows how or when “religion”—as we understand it—was born. But it seems reasonable to assume that it began with questions and, almost certainly, those questions were related to this world. The world, after all, is what we experience from the moment we are born. …

How much of our life is circumscribed by who we are and where we are! Who we are--more accurately, who we think we are--and where we are determine our relationships, our attitudes, and our behavior patterns. ,,,

We don’t have just one dream every night. Most of us have more than one dream. We effortlessly pass from one dream to the next. When we wake up, we remember only the “last” dream, the one we had just before we woke up. …

The kalpataru grace is not limited to the few devotees that had gathered at Kashipur on January 1, 1886. It is as valid and true today as it was then. And it is to recapture that mood of participation in the inspiring event at Kashipur that the 1st of January holds a special meaning to a Ramakrishna devotee.

It may be helpful to think of our consciousness as a car and the different parts of our personality as parking lots. The body is one parking lot, the mind another, the ego yet another, and so on. …

No particular way to think of God is intrinsically better than any other way. It’s just a way of thinking. God remains who God is. The chances are that we’ll know God as God really is if we are allowed the freedom to pursue our quest without anyone setting any limits to how our mind goes about its job.

Through charming stories, songs, and anecdotes, the baby Krishna is depicted as a stealer of butter. His personality is so endearingly lovable and it is so easy to fall in love with him that he is also often called a stealer of hearts. …

Loneliness is not merely a social problem. It is also an individual problem—primarily a problem affecting the individual’s psyche. Seen through the lens of psychology, loneliness results from at least two kinds of alienation ….