Sadhguru

incredible possibilities of the imagination

whitewashing or sugarcoating your reality

make joy your constant companion.

One afternoon, I had nothing to do, and I had recently fallen out of love, so I went up Chamundi Hill.

realized they were only making sounds, and I was making up the meanings.

Gautama the Buddha went to the extent of saying, “When you are badly in need of food, if you give away your food to somebody else, you will become stronger.” I am not going that far with you; I am only saying, just wait a few minutes! It will definitely leave you stronger.

It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. So, it is your inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out. On some level, you do not know how to handle your body, mind, and emotions; that is the problem.

There are only two forms of suffering in this world: physical and mental. Once this distance becomes a constant factor in your experience, you have reached the end of suffering.

Yoga is simply chitta vritti nirodha. That means, if the activity of your mind ceases and you are still alert, you are in yoga.

It is only because you exist that you can generate a thought. But your thought process has become so compulsive that your focus has shifted from the existential to the psychological. This has happened to such an extent that you have begun to believe that you exist because you think! The foundations of Western philosophy actually rest on the famous axiom by the seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”

It is time to restate a fundamental fact: you are, therefore you may think. This has nothing to do with any philosophy, Eastern or Western. It is a simple existential reality.

You can “be,” and still choose to think or not think. The most beautiful moments in your life—what you might consider moments of bliss, joy, ecstasy, or utter peace—were moments when you were not thinking about anything at all. You were just being. Even without your thoughts, existence is.