questions

   

.

A visitor: Should I give up my business and take to reading books on Vedanta?

Bhagavan: If the objects have an independent existence, i.e., if they exist anywhere apart from you, then it may be possible for you to go away from them. 
But they don’t exist apart from you; they owe their existence to you, your thought. 

So, where can you go, to escape them? 

As for reading books on Vedanta, you may go on reading any number of them. They can only tell you, ‘Realise the Self within you’. The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it out for yourself, in yourself.

.

The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer. 

The question ‘Who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.

Are we not at peace in the interval when one thought ceases and another does not yet arise?

—Sri Ramana Maharshi

.

Whenever you entrust your heart to a thought,

something will be taken from you inwardly 

Whatever you think and acquire, the thief will

enter from that side where you feel safe 

So busy yourself with that which is better, so

that something less may be taken from you.


—Rumi
Mathnawi II:1505-1507 

William Chittick version

.