Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta (liberated being). He was born Venkataraman Iyer but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India. In 1895, an attraction to the sacred hill Arunachala and the 63 Nayanmars was aroused in him, and in 1896, at the age of 16, he had a “death experience” where he became aware of a “current” or “force” (avesam) which he recognized as his true “I” or “self”, and which he later identified with “the personal God, or Iswara”, that is, Shiva. This resulted in a state that he later described as “the state of mind of Iswara or the jnani”. Six weeks later he left his uncle’s home in Madurai, and journeyed to the holy mountain Arunachala, in Tiruvannamalai, where he took on the role of a sannyasin (though not formally initiated), and remained for the rest of his life. These Ramana Maharshi quotes will motivate you in life.
Best Ramana Maharshi Quotes
- “Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Thoughts come and go. Feelings come and go. Find out what it is that remains.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The Sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘Who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Silence is truth. Silence is bliss. Silence is peace. And hence Silence is the Self.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Your true nature is that of infinite spirit. The feeling of limitation is the work of the mind.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “There is neither past nor future. There is only the present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you experience it. Therefore, experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Peace is the inner nature of humankind. If you find it within yourself, you will then find it everywhere.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “No one succeeds without effort… Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Your duty is to Be, and not to be this or that.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “One should remain as a witness to whatever happens, adopting the attitude, ‘Let whatever strange things that happens happen, let us see!’ This should be one’s practice. Nothing happens by accident in the divine scheme of things.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “…the Lord of the Universe carries the entire burden of this world. You imagine you do. You can hand all your burdens over to His care. Whatever you have to do, you will be made an instrument for doing it at the right time. Do not think you cannot do it unless you have the desire to do it. Desire does not give you the strength for doing. The entire strength is the Lord’s.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner ‘I’, you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well-founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought center and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Engage yourself in the living present. The future will take care of itself.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The greatest obstacle to enlightenment is getting past your delusion that you are not already enlightened.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “You are the Supreme Being, and yet thinking yourself to be separate from it, you strive to become united with it. What is stranger than this?” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “A higher power is leading you; be led by the same. It knows what to do and how to do it.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Actions themselves form no bondage. Bondage is only the false belief,”I am the do-er.”” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“You are already That which you seek.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the universe who is ever victorious and accomplishes everything. Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in the Transcendental Absolute. God knows the past, present and future. He will determine the future for you and accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don’t worry. Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the Divine.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “You have to ask yourself the question ‘Who am I?’ This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“As you are, so is the world.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Have faith in God and in yourself; that will cure-all. Hope for the best, expect the best, toil for the best and everything will come right for you in the end.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “By the inquiry ‘Who am I?’.
The thought ‘who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts,
and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself, in the end, get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.” ~ Ramana Maharshi - “Grace is always present. You imagine it as something high in the sky, far away, something that has to descend. It is really inside you, in your heart. When the mind rests in its source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The ultimate truth is so simple; it is nothing more than being in one’s natural, original state.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“The end of all wisdom is love, love, love.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “By whatever path you go, you will have to lose yourself in the one. Surrender is complete only when you reach the stage `Thou art all’ and `Thy will be done.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep
seeking reality though in fact, we are reality. We
think that there is something hiding reality and that
this must be destroyed before reality is gained.
How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh
… at all your past efforts. That which will be the day
you laugh is also here and now.” ~ Ramana Maharshi -
“When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The solution to your problem is to see who has it.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The master is within; meditation is meant to remove the ignorant idea that he is only outside. If he is a stranger whom you await, he is bound to disappear also. What is the use of a transient being like that? But so long as you think you are separate or that you are the body, an external master is also necessary and he will appear to have a body. When the wrong identification of oneself with the body ceases, the master will be found to be none other than the Self.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Silence is never-ending speech. Vocal speech obstructs the other speech of silence. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one’s thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.” ~ Ramana Maharshi , Ramana Maharshi quotes on silence
- “The entire Universe is condensed in the body and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the whole Universe.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“If you go the way of your thoughts you will be carried away by them and you will find yourself in an endless maze.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “All unhappiness is due to the ego. With it comes all your trouble. If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it you would be free.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “We are so engrossed with the objects,
or appearances revealed by the light,
that we pay no attention to the light.” ~ Ramana Maharshi - “There is no other kind of birth. Whatever is born is bound to die. Kill the ego: there is no fear of recurring death for what is once dead. The Self remains even after the death of the ego.” ~ Ramana Maharshi , Ramana Maharshi quotes on death
- “The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“‘I Am’ is the name of God, God is none other than the Self.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “All are seeing God always. But they do not know it.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “You impose limits on your true nature of infinite being. Then you get displeased to be only a limited creature. Then you begin spiritual practices to transcend these non-existing limits. But if your practice itself implies the existence of these limits, how could they allow you to transcend them.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one’s true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them, and preventing them from straying outwards is called detachment (vairagya). Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice (sadhana). Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable.
One must fight one’s way through before regaining one’s original primal state.
If one succeeds in the fight and reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts,
will all subside in the Self and disappear entirely.” ~ Ramana Maharshi - “God dwells in you, as you, and you don’t have to ‘do’ anything to be God-realized or Self-realized,
it is already your true and natural state.
Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward,
and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being.
For this to be your own presently lived experience,
Self-Inquiry Meditation is a direct and immediate way.” ~ Ramana Maharshi - “Nobody doubts that he exists, though he may doubt the existence of God. If he finds out the truth about himself and discovers his own source, this is all that is required.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“There is nothing wrong with God’s creation. Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away – the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “If you observe awareness steadily, this awareness itself becomes the Guru that will reveal the Truth.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “There is no Truth. There is only the truth within each moment.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart, or the Seat of Consciousness, it is all the same.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “That which rises and sinks is made up of what it rises from. The finality of the universe is the God Arunachala. Meditating on Him or on the seer, the Self, there is a mental vibration ‘I’ to which all are reduced. Tracing the source of ‘I’, the primal ‘I-I’ alone remains over, and it is inexpressible. The seat of Realisation is within and the seeker cannot find it as an object outside him. That seat is bliss and is the core of all beings. Hence it is called the Heart. The only useful purpose of the present birth is to turn within and realize it. There is nothing else to do.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Whatever is done lovingly, with righteous purity and with peace of mind, is a good action. Everything which is done with the stain of desire and with agitation filling the mind is classified as a bad action.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
-
“Unless one is happy, one cannot bestow happiness on others.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “If one’s mind has peace, the whole world will appear peaceful.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Apart from thoughts, there is no independent entity called the world. In deep sleep there are no thoughts, and there is no world. In the states of waking and dream, there are thoughts, and there is a world also. Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “The body is the temple; the jiva is God (Siva). If one worships him with the ‘I am He’ thought, one will gain release.” ~ Ramana Maharshi, Ramana Maharshi quotes on Shiva
- “When you truly feel this equal love for all, when your heart has expanded so much that it embraces the whole of creation, you will certainly not feel like giving up this or that. You will simply drop off from secular life as a ripe fruit drops from the branch of a tree. You will feel that the whole world is your home.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
- “Suffering is the way for Realization of God.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
