The Wine and the Cup

The wine of divine grace is limitless.

All limitations come from the faults of the cup. Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon. How much it can fill our room depends on its windows. 

Grant a dignity, my friend, to the cup of your life; 

Love has designed it to hold His eternal grace. 

Measuring out the Sugar

Wisdom is like the rain. Its source is limitless, but it comes down according to the season. Grocers put sugar in a bag; their supply of sugar, however, is not limited to what’s in the bag. But he sees how much money we have brought with us and measures out the sugar accordingly.

 
Our money on the spiritual path is faith, courage, subtle understanding or intuitive intellect and patience, and we will be taught according to our faith, subtle understanding, etc. When we come looking for sugar, our bag will be examined to see how much it can hold; it will be filled accordingly. 

Keep Your Dragon in the Snow

A self-styled “dragon hunter” went into the mountains to trap a dragon. He searched all over the mountains and at last discovered the frozen body of an enormous dragon in a cave high up on one of the tallest peaks. The hunter brought the body to Baghdad. He claimed that he had slaughtered it single-handedly and exhibited it on the bank of the Euphrates. 

Thousands of people turned out to see the dragon. The heat of the Baghdad sun started to warm up the dragon’s frozen body, and it began to stir, slowly awakening from its winter hibernation. People screamed and stampeded, and many were killed. The hunter stood frozen in terror and the dragon devoured him in a single gulp.

Our lower self, the negative vaasanaa-s (negative tendencies and impressions brought from our past lives), which lies dormant in the subconscious mind, is like that dragon, a savage tyrant. Never believe it’s dead; it’s only frozen. We should always keep our dragon in the snow of self-discipline and never carry it into the heat of the restless and fickle conscious mind. 

Let that dragon of vaasanaa-s stay always dormant in the subconscious mind without allowing it to manifest at the conscious level. If it’s freed, it’ll devour us in one gulp. The best thing is to destroy these vaasanaa-s by techniques such as nishkaama karma yoga (selfless service), pratipaksha bhaavanaa (focussing on the negative aspects of the objects of desire), chidaakaasha dharana, (practice of awareness of inner space of consciousness), etc., so that it can never trouble us.    

“We have to simply throw out all the age-old samskara-s [innate tendencies / impressions] which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self alone will Shine.” — Ramana Maharishi

“Carry on the sadhana (spiritual practices) until pleasure and fear are both transcended, till all duality ceases and till the Reality alone remains.” — Ramana Maharishi