Mrityunjayanand

In the ancient Vedic text, the word “go” (cow) was used to refer to the senses. So protection of “cows” means care of the senses. The senses are protected by discernment, non-attachment, restraint, and steadfastness. They are, on the other hand, driven and rendered feeble by lust, wrath, avarice, and attachment. Spiritual acquisition is the only true wealth.

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

  

If you strive to find the Self by using your mind, you will strive and strive in vain, because the mind cannot give you Truth; a lie cannot give you the truth. A lie can only entangle you in a web of deceit. But if you sensitize yourself, awaken your true, fine, beautiful qualities that all of you have, then you become a channel, a chalice in which your Effulgent Being will begin to shine.

 You will first think that a light is shining within you. You will seek to find that light. You will seek to hold it, like you cherish and hold a beautiful gem. You will later find that the light that you found within you is in every pore, every cell of your being.

 You will later find that that light permeates every atom of the universe. And you will later find that you are that light and what it permeates is the unreal illusion created by the mind.

Sivananda

 

The sun does not shine there nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings, much less this fire. After Him, when He shines, everything shines, by His light all this is illumined.

Sri Ramakrishna

  As long as you live inside the house of maya, as long as there exists the cloud of maya, you do not see the effect of the Sun of Knowledge. Come outside the house of maya, give up 'woman and gold', and then the Sun of Knowledge will destroy ignorance. A lens cannot burn paper inside the house. If you stand outside, then the rays of the sun fall on the lens and the paper burns. Again, the lens cannot burn the paper if there is a cloud. The paper burns when the cloud disappears.

Assorted

"The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man's real nature is happiness."

  ~ Ramana 

Maharshi "You must choose between your attachments and happiness.

 ~ Adyashanti "Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not."

Sri Aurobindo

 

The Shastras use the same word for man and the one divine and universal Being — Purusha — as if to lay stress upon the oneness of humanity with God. Nara and Narayana are the eternal couple, who, though they are two, are one, eternally different, eternally the same. 

Sivananda

 

“Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance.”

the light of lights

 

the light of lights That is beyond darkness; It is knowledge, the object of knowledge and that which is to be attained through knowledge.

It is seated in the hearts of all... For I am the foundation of Brahman, Of the Immortal and the Imperishable, And of everlasting virtue, And of absolute bliss.

Guru Nanak

 

No one can comprehend the Creator, who is beyond human grasp, immeasurable. The soul is deluded by maya, drugged by untruth. Ruined by the demands of greed (such a person) repents eternally, but he who serves the One knows Him, and his cycle of birth and death comes to an end....

For Nanak

"all gladness and emancipation is in hearing the divine melody within." The guru thus "intoxicated" with the divine sounds "relinquishes all other music." When one attains to God, then "within one rings the blissful unstruck melody."