Ramesh Balsekar - Peace and Harmony in Daily Living

OTHER RAMESH BALSEKAR TITLES
PUBLISHED BY YOGI IMPRESSIONS

The Ramesh Balsekar Collectors Set (2010)

The End of Duality (2009)

Advaita on Zen and Tao (2008)

90 Steps to Oneness Wisdom Deck (2007)

The Only Way to Live (2006)

Let Life Flow (2005)

The One in the Mirror (2004)

The Seeking (2004)

The Happening of a Guru: A Biography (2003)

Peace and Harmony in Daily Living (2003)

The Ultimate Understanding (2001)

Ramesh S. Balsekar

PEACE and HARMONY

in DAILY LIVING

FACING LIFE MOMENT TO MOMENT,

BEING ANCHORED IN TRANQUILITY

Edited by

Susan Waterman

PEACE AND HARMONY

IN DAILY LIVING

First published in India in 2007 by

Yogi Impressions Books Pvt. Ltd.

1711, Centre 1, World Trade Centre,

Cuffe Parade, Mumbai 400 005, India.

Website: http://www.yogiimpressions.com

Published by Yogi Impressions at Smashwords

First Edition, February 2003

First reprint: March 2012

Copyright 2003 by Ramesh S. Balsekar

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, or transmitted in any form, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Dedicated to

Gran Ekdahl

of Sweden

with whom a talk triggered

the happening of this book.

I had money, I had fame, I had the good health

to enjoy life, and yet I felt incomplete, inadequate.

And, thus, was a seeker born.

September 15, 2001

Dearest Ramesh,

It was so enriching to see and hear you again in Schermau, Germany. For family reasons, I had to leave before the seminar was over but on my way back, the thought and memory came of a very recent event where I could see a big change in my life. The story is the following.

During the last six years, I have bee n acting as neutral Chairman at ordinary shareholders meetings with 300/400 shareholders in a public company with many conflicts between 2/3 groups of shareholders. It used to be a burdensome task sensing a worry of what would come next and for reactions to my ways of leading the discussions and making the propositions for voting.

This year, however, having been with you for a little over a year, a dramatic change showed itself. No matter how stupid or ill-willed the suggestions were, they were handled neutrally without any judging and then taken to various votings which, in themselves, were just flowing in a series of raising hands for yes or no.

Afterwards a lot of appreciation and admiration was r eceived. One comment was that I never lost control or did not even seem affected by the attacks in between the shareholders and sometimes towards the Chairman.

I simply acted or performed wha tever came up in my mind in the moment, using my experience and sometimes quickly consulting the legal secretary of the meeting. I was leaving the scene completely relaxed, surrounded with thanks and congratulations from the President and the Board of Directors of the Company.

With highest regards,

Gran Ekdahl

P.S.

Thank you for your latest book The Ultimate Understanding. It is the best thing I have ever held in my hands. To sense your wording slowly sink in is an adventure. THIS is how it is.

CONTENTS

Peace and Harmony in Daily Living

What does Self-realization really mean in day-to-day l iving?; what brings about peace and harmony in day-to-day living?; consciousness, in which everything happens like a dream, is the dreamer in this living dream of life; true perceiving; the Buddha statement samsara is dukkha; the thinking mind in daily living; advice from a avatar, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

Ego: the Me-doer

The sense of personal doership; convincing the ego-doer-seeker; the peace in life that is sought is not something to be achieved; the basic cause of fear; a distinction between the experience and the experiencer; any form of escape can only lead t isolation and greater resistance; the importance of silence; what is meditation?

The Me and the Other: the Basic Cause of Problems

The essence of life and living would seem to be problems; making a decision; in th quiescence of the mind comes not the answer to the problem but action; the min creates the problem; the inability to accept What-Is; hell is other people; a persona experience in my career.

Thought and Thinking

The concepts of dukkha and anitya; spontaneous functioning; kill the mind; the Supreme Subjectivity cannot be grasped as an object; the no-mind state; a personal experience; how the understanding works in actual daily living; one lives in a dream of the future continually repeated; the will to experience and the process of accumulation of knowledge; today man is habituated to a state of constant fear and anxiety; a great story of maya and lila; the Theory of Probability; the Principle of Uncertainty.

Volition and Free Will

An ancient story of free will; Free Will vs. Determinism; what science is now discovering has been known to mystics for centuries; the human mechanism; the grandest of all thoughts; does the human being have free will?; virtual reality; the All-in-Oneness of the Eastern mystic has been accepted by the modern scientist; the Buddhas statement, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer; intention and action; There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.; identification and volition; surrender; working mind and thinking mind; What will you do if?..; harmony means absence of conflict.

Advaita: the Teaching

Advaita (non-duality); living in a world of continuous judging; duality and dualism; outer perception and inner perception; spontaneous action and virtuality; natural mechanism of polarity between opposites; illusion cannot have an independent existence; the sage in daily living; Ramana Maharshi story; true emptiness does not exist; quantum theory and many worlds; cosmological time; does time exist?; human relationships; collective consciousness knows at some level what is about to happen.

The Spiritual Search

Why should I concern myself with enlightenment or any spiritual search?; the basic cause of human misery; man as subjective center and not the objective center of living; true perception; the sages attitude to life; dont complain; advice from Neem Karoli Baba; bhakta and jnana; Nature or Totality does not restrict the happening of Self-realization to any particular type of human being; a reasonable approach for day-to-day living from Shivdas Balsekar.

The Understanding

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa on non-dualistic awarenes s; Just relax and let go.; two stories of Chinese sages; the vacant mind, the astrolabe of Gods mysteries; the futility of positive effort to grasp Reality; why should I concern myself with God or religion?; self-inquiry who is this me?; non-doership; the phenomenon of death; Advaita.

What-Is

Life is one perspective and day-to-day living quite another the two are out of alignment, resulting in frustration; no individual can alter the f low of life; man has been conditioned over hundreds of years to think in terms of personal activity; is sex a problem?; the fear of death; the sage is not afraid of dying because he is not afraid of living; the totality of the cosmos is infinite dynamism; the entire human body totally changes every 12 years; a story of the poet king; This too shall pass; men and women are different, not better or worse; the new vision of the universe; Einstein the field (not matter) is the only reality; stay anchored in the Self.