Nisargadatta Maharaj quotes

Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher of Advaita (nondualism). His teachings continue to inspire seekers around the world to realize their true nature. He is regarded as one of the most influential modern sages from India. Here are 146 of his quotes:

Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. (...)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don't pretend to be what you are not. Don't refuse to be what you are.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

(...) To see myself in everybody and everybody in myself most certainly is love.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

(...) Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such or so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

(...) Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

(...) Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be lazy to think.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Do what you believe in and believe in what you do. The rest is a waste of time and energy.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Steady faith is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope will overcome it easily.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

(...) Work on, and the universe will work with you. After all the very idea of doing the right thing comes to you from the unknown. Leave it to the unknown as far as the results go, just go through the necessary movements. You are merely one of the links in the long chain of causation. Fundamentally, all happens in the mind only. When you work for something whole-heartedly and steadily, it happens, for it is the function of the mind to make things happen. (...).

Nisargadatta Maharaj

...) All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define yourself. All definitions apply to your body only and its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly. (...

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sri Maharaj Nisargadatta. (2005). I am That. Durham, NC: The Acorn Press..

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don't try to understand! It's enough if you do not misunderstand.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

Nisargadatta Maharaj