Prasnottara Ratna Malika

November 05, 2023

Table of Contents

summary

01 - Verses 1-2

src

Necklace is for the neck which stands for the heart. Necklace is the chain of questions and answers.

Q: What should I hold on to? A: guru vachanam (message).

When you hold on to the message, the person of the guru drops. Freedom and psychological dependence don’t go together.
Most bellowed brother of Rama is Bharata, not so much Lakshmana. Lakshmana thinking-less psychological dependence connected with psychical presence. There are sishyas like Bharata, who take the message, go and implement it.
When a wonderful teacher and student come together there is born a great wisdom.
Outer teacher is a milestone. It tells you where to go. The ultimate teacher is the inner self.
Guru is like a milestone. If you go and embrace the milestone you’ll stay with the milestone and never reach the goal.
Your inner teacher is guru vachanam. It is born out of guru vachanam. It is your inner self.
The outer guru will not walk with you. Guru vachanam will.
Atma is that which sees all this (waking state; sakshi) and which sees nothing (sleep state).
Once a wrong thing is put in place, it will spread.
Your hope is your inner guru. Find that inner goal. Take outer’s guru help and go within and cling to the inner guru and you’ll be saved.
When you give importance to the outer guru the inner guru is not even recognised.

Q: What is it, that should be given up? A: akaryam (wrong act)

Talking wrong about another person (gossip). Even if the thing is correct, give it up.
See more good in the other person that the other person herself. The person will be surprised.
Try and it becomes natural too.
Just like rise about attachment rise about aversion also.
Love mahatma, love the other, love yourself also. Don’t be a posture of altruism. The point is, you love all.
You change the guru all the time! In fact everybody is a guru. Even a blade of grass is a guru if you’re in learning mode.
The guru should know. The guru should not be an idealog. He’s got an idea and all the sishya has to subscribe to that idea. Guru is the one who knows the truth and has no ideology. Why should he share? Because he loves people.

02 - Verse 3

src

Most of the time scholarship becomes an obstacle in (family) life. You’ll be impressed with his scholarship, not at personal level.
To understand life, scholarship doesn’t help. In fact it might hinder.
Why children are naturally happy and we have to make enormous effort to be happy? That is samsara.
If you want to understand what’s vitality in life, look at a squirrel.
First stage children, second stage, innocent youth. Third stage samsaris. They have to become something or the other. Compare and compete.
Samsaris are not able to disconnect. Accumulate a lot of stress and become old prematurely. Eat more, accumulate weight, illnesses. All because the mind is sick. Desires, unhappiness, insecurity, fears.
Inspite of having everything around, yet there is a general sense of unsatisfactoriness. Afraid of death, afraid of life. How my life will go? Will my children take care of me or not? Will their waste resources I’ve accumulated or not?
Samsara is very painful so religion should offer an escape.
By the time you come to 30s, 40s you’d become intelligent and plan to break this flow of samsara that haunts us. Not after retirement. In retirement you’ll be left with no energy.
You cannot separate body and mind.
When the mind is sick, body cannot become healthy.
Liberation is of the self from self-imposed false ideas.
People don’t want to know, they generally want to believe. That’s why misinformation spreads from generation to generation.
Each experiences is time-bound, short-lived and at the end you’re back to samsara.

Q: Of the tree of liberation, what is the seed? A: Samyak jnanam (right understanding)

Experience is a mental state.
Samsara is time-bound. Moksha is timeless.
Disease is time-bound. Wellness is timeless.
Understanding is instant and it doesn’t accumulate. If you did not get it you did not get it. Experience however glorious it can be it may be, it cannot contain moksha. It gives a thrill for a short time.
Recollection comes from the mind, memory. Spontaneity comes from the life, activity, inner consciousness.
Understanding doesn’t accumulate. It merges with you, the atma. It comes out spontaneously. You need not pull it out, you need not recollect.
Phala is always sukha dukha.
Profit or loss is not phala.
Enlightenment means understanding well. There is nothing like single enlightenment. It is not one thing. It is always enlightenment of sth.
Learning leads to enlightenment, not accumulation. And it is an endless process.
Till the last breath we learn. You leave the mind open and you have to live it. There is no end, there is no count.
If you understand and don’t implement it in life, it means you’ve not understood.

03 - Verse 4

src

accumulated knowledge, ideas … don’t serve, even become a hindrance when it comes to the inner journey.
understanding is not idea, not concept, not information. It does not accumulate and it helps the inner journey.
Learning is not ideas, learning is about experience.
Learning and getting enlightenment is the same.
Why there are 1000 names for Vishnu? Because Vishnu is infinite. You can make it 1001, 1002, … still it is infinite.
Enlightenment is always in a given context!
Whatever you learn, there is always a lot more to get enlighten about.
Don’t allow the goal to justify the means.
Never ever violate dharma.
Following dharma is the easiest thing. Not following the most difficult.
If you heal the mind you need not even bother about the body. Same for the spiritual.
Psychological wellness is called dharma.
Location of dharma is the consciousness.
Exact meaning of dharma is the swarupa of a thing. Like gold.
When a thing follows dharma it means it is in its natural state. And when it violates dharma, it means has gone from its natural state.
If you eat too much you’ll accumulate fat - go against dharma. Same for smoking.
Dharma is universal. Fasting or ekadashi is sectarian. Applies only to some. We need both.
What is dharma for men is not dharma for women. Feminists by trying to impose uniform dharma are making it wrong.
Dharma is that which keeps you in your natural state and hence keeps you in welfare state. Dharma is no a ritual.
Healthy life - body. Happy life - mind. Not coming back to pleasure and pain cycle - moksha. Whatever secures all three is dharma.
Silence and love is the natural state of mind. What is adharma? Hatred.
Cells have two ways to function. 1. for the organ to function (individual) 2. for the welfare of the entire body (universal).
Cells are living entities and know only one thing. To love.
Atma has only love. Not the opposite. Mind creates the opposite of love which is hatred. Mind cannot impact the atma. Mind can impact the body.
All cancer cells circulating in the blood are hate cells.
What can be more useful, important for you than dharma?
Love is dharma of the cells, mind, atma.

04 - Verse 4

src

Generally the division between outer and inner is less in India, more here (USA).
Real purity is purity of mind. That is absence of impurity.
A mind free of undesirable thought patterns. Like finding bad in others. When you’re looking for something, you’ll find it.
What is there to gain or lose in this world? What mischief can be done to you?
Jealousy, frustration - other impurities.
When you’re psychologically dependant you cannot be at piece.
There is no “how” in self knowledge. You’re the self or not?
You’d learn to watch your mind. Did you ever try to watch your mind when you’re alone? Generally people don’t do that. Grab newspaper, book or cellphone.
Just be aware of what’s happening in the mind. Without condemnation. Without justification. It is not about time, it is about patience. About persistence.
If you persistent a state will come when the mind is mostly quiet. Whatever thought is needed, it is coming. Mind becomes slowly desire- and fearless.
Once you’ll be aware of the inner beauty, you’ll see beauty everywhere. It is always there only you’re not aware of it.
Gap between outer in inner is much less. Inner beauty expresses in the outer more easily. Somehow everything is good. That is harmony.
Sofa will never be 100% comfortable. To whom it will be comfortable? To a healthy person.
If the world is real there is no place religion. Somehow the world is not entirely satisfactory. Therefore there is religion.
All of disharmony is mental impurity. By the time you make mind pure you’re liberated person.

Q: who is a scholar? A: viveki.

Is our life guided by indriyas or by viveka? Easily understood by the example of food. By what are you guided?
Steaming > frying.
Don’t look for the satisfaction of sense organs. Learn to live vivekijivana.
Any desire/fear people have doesn’t survive scrutiny.

05 - Verse 4-6

src

Guru means elder.
Elders always look towards the past, young people towards the future. They have entirely different world views - generation gap.
Youngsters are willing to learn from the societies around. Elders are frozen in their thinking. That’s the definition of tradition.
Youngsters are very selfish. It is possible that they will treat the elders with contempt. Be sensitive to counter that.

Q: Is there anything in the worldly life that is important? A: One thing after careful thinking - put in hard work, avoid motivated effort.

Don’t confuse effort with motivated effort. Motivated effort is for a desire or a due to a fear.
Motivated effort with push you.
Psychological fears - superstitions.
Every day there must be hard work until the last breath. But it should not be motivated.
What is welfare in human life - to live with a smile and die with a smile. To live a simple, orderly and disciplined life and you move in the direction of understanding the inner self. That is welfare.
You welfare lies in dispelling the ignorance about yourself. Becoming realized is the biggest service to the society.
Ramana Maharshi became realized and inspired others. He did not start a vedanta college. That is the greatest help he’s done for society. Without moving one inch from where he lived. Without collecting a cent of donation from anybody. Svahita includes parahita.
Delusion - when the person consumes alcohol and the world-view changes. Person fails to see things clearly.

A: “Me and mine family” syndrome is as intoxicating as when one takes alcohol or drugs.

As long as you look at the truth trough the narrow funnel of me and mine you’ll never know the true.
We sit in the cage prepared by the mind. Body limits us in space, mind limits us in our understanding. The set of ideas of the mind is the limitation.
To know the truth of the self the ideas of “me” and “mine” should go. Then the natural state of consciousness will come.
All ideas of god are only that much. Ideas.
All ideas of myself are only that much. Ideas. Not the truth.
One nightmare of the rich people - what will happen with the riches after my life.
Don’t be attached. Leave it up to the others.
You need a state of consciousness where you don’t call anybody, anything my own. Where “my” is no more.
I embrace the entire music of the world. All religion traditions are our traditions. All dance traditions are our traditions. There is nothing that is ours.
Then only one thing remains - survival (of the body). Upanishads - beg for food, drink water, sleep. Everything else is extra. There is nothing like mine. There is enough for all.