What is Satsang?

Satsang is a Sanskrit word that means "gathering together for the truth" or, more simply, "being with the truth." 

Truth is what is real, what exists. So all there is, is Truth. 

Whenever something increases your experience of the Truth, it opens your Heart and quiets your mind. 

Conversely, whenever something, such as a thought, fear, or judgment, limits or narrows your experience of the Truth, the Heart contracts and the mind gets busier. 

We are all equally endowed with this capacity to discriminate the Truth. Thus, the true teacher, or satguru, is within you, and satsang, or being with the Truth, is endless. 

The first step to complete peace and liberation is listen to the Satsang carefully and ask inquiring questions of yourself with a guileless heart.

These discourses on the nature and Knowledge of God in the company of Saints vanishes sorrow and brings us joy.

Buddha and the Three Questions

As Gautam Buddha and his disciples visited a village, a man approached Buddha and asked, "Does God exist?"

Buddha replied, "No, Absolutely not." 

In the afternoon, another man came to him and asked, "Does God exist?"

Buddha replied, "Yes, of course." 

Later in the evening, yet another person asked him, "Does God exist?"

Buddha did not answer; he just kept silent and closed his eyes. 

On seeing this, the man did the same. 

Then something transpired in the silence: the man suddenly smiled and looked at Buddha with tears in his eyes, then touched Buddha's feet and said, "You are the first and only person who actually answered my question." The man left with a heart full of gratitude.  

One of Buddha's disciples was flabbergasted. "Master, I have been with you the whole day, and I heard you give completely different answers to those three people who asked the exact same question. It's left me very troubled!"

Buddha said, "Why are you troubled, those answers were not for you, they were for them! My answer had nothing to do with God, and everything to do with the questioner. 

"The first man who came was a theist, a believer, the second man who came was an atheist, and the third was an agnostic."

"To the person who believes in God and asks if God exists, I will say no because I want him to drop his idea of God, I want him to be free of his idea of God -- which is borrowed. He has not yet experienced God. If he had experienced he would not have asked me; there would have been no need.

"And if he was trying to find confirmation for his belief, I had to deny just to destroy his belief, because all beliefs are barriers to knowing the truth. Theist or atheist, all beliefs, Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan, all beliefs are barriers.

"As for the atheist? The person who does not believe in God also had a belief that needed to be broken. Else he would never start to search the truth, and will only accept his belief as truth. So I said yes in challenge to that, which gave him somewhere to go. 

"And the person with whom I remained silent was the right inquirer. He had no belief, hence there was no question of destroying anything. I kept silent, which was my message to him: Be silent and know. Don't ask, there is no need to ask. It is not a question which can be answered or that the intellect can address - intellectual answers are available very cheap. It is not an inquiry but a quest, a thirst. Be silent and know.

As you witnessed, he looked within and knew. He needed something existential -- he needed a taste. I gave him a taste."

How Spirituality Affected My Writing

As someone who has written numerous staged plays and other writing projects, I sometimes get asked why I no longer seem to do much writing.

Have I given up? Do I no longer enjoy expressing myself through writing?

It turns out I am just fine. Better than fine.

Here's what I discovered:

For one, I no longer identify myself as a writer. I am someone who writes.

Writers frequently write stories that mirror the issues they are working out in their lives.

Consciously or unconsciously, that "issue" is no less than the ultimate search for Self.

Sure, there's another goal involved, like the search for a lost Ark, or to win a boxing match, or even a lost princess (romantic comedies even pursue another to help "complete" them).

The hero pursues when she wants, but in the end she gets what he needs. 

And what is the ultimate need? To need nothing at all. To know that everything you need is already inside of you (which then prompts one to want to give, but that's another story). 

Now that I’ve found myself - or my Self - I no longer feel the desire to explore stories of seeking.

Being relieved of that desire is... a relief! And it's given me more control over my monkey mind, and I have more peace as a result. 

I don't have to DO anything. Just be.

I still enjoy being creative, and I even get to do it for good causes (fundraising brochures, blogging, and creating newsletters for the ashram, for instance). Seva.

Now this is my experience. I am glad there are many great writers who write what they do - I love to read! - and they have their reasons and purpose, and we all need them at many points on our journey. This is my road. 

And as evidenced by this post, I still love to write, so stay tuned.* You never know what a person might might write when they don't need to write about people who don't need anything. I still like to have some fun, after all...

*I'm currently working on a children's play for a family program at the ashram where a character is comically chased around by his ego, represented by another actor.

Let the Satsang Go Through You/Learning How to Think

From a recent Satsang by Gautum Baiji:

"How can we tell if a person is good or bad: when we see their actions, not doing things the right way.

The behavior is not good. Then we can see this person needs some change if they want to do good.

Sometimes we change through circumstances over time, but Satsang has the power to change us now. Only by Satsang and meditation can a person create change.

Because we don’t need to change the body. We don’t need to change the color, the caste, or the creed. 

The only thing we need to change is our thoughts. 

Because whatever thoughts we have inside… those thoughts will become our actions. And we will be good or bad people because of our actions.

How can we change the thoughts? 

Because when parents raise their kids, they tell them this is good, or this is bad, you should do this or that. They taught us everything. How we should eat, how we should talk. How we should work.

But nobody taught us how to think.

Thousands of thoughts come into our mind all the time. Each and every second the thoughts are coming and going. How do we control them?

One way is to keep good company. Then good thoughts come automatically.

That’s why we have a need, a necessity for saints.

Saints are like clouds. When the cloud comes in the heat, it brings rain and cools everything down.

The same thing happens when the saints come into our life. They teach us techniques, they give us knowledge. Then we practice meditation, and we change our thoughts. And when our thoughts get changed, our perspective changes, and we can see the positive changes in our life.

Sometimes we think merely reading scripture is enough. Some people say, “I’ve gone through the Gita, I’ve gone through Ramayana, I’ve gone through all the scriptures…”

But have the scriptures gone through us?

If we are only reading, we become like a parrot. If we ask the meaning of Ram, the parrot can repeat the word but it doesn't know the meaning of Ram.

We chant so many mantras, we sing so many bhajans, but as long as we don’t know who we are, as long as we don’t experience meditation, how can we change our self and our thoughts?

If we’re sitting in the satsang, and our mind is wandering everywhere, what happens? We didn’t get any benefit from the satsang. 

But if we let the satsang go through us, we can change our life..."