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Lord Krishna Quotes

Browse 24 quotes about Lord Krishna.

Lord Krishna Quotes

“...unless you realize the inner light, you will not know that which is beyond death. In a sense it is beyond death and beyond life also. Only then does it become immortal. That which is born will have to die; that which is alive will be dead. So only that can be beyond death which is beyond life itself. Light is beyond life and beyond death. Whenever mystics have been talking about light, they always talk about deathlessness, because the moment you enter the inner light, the source of life, you enter deathlessness. So unless you are bathed in your own inner light, and in the nectar, in the immortality which belongs to that light, you are not ready to enter the Divine temple. When Krishna showed his infiniteness to Arjuna, Arjuna said, "I don't see you, Krishna, I see only light. Where have you gone? I see only thousands and thousands of suns - and I am scared. You come back!" When one enters into the inner light... it is there, because without it you cannot be. Nothing can be. You are, so you have a deep realm of light. The moment you enter it, you are bathed. and this bath means many things. Ordinarily, when you enter a temple, outwardly you take a bath. You take a bath because dirt can be washed from the body, and you can enter into the temple with a purer body - fresh, undirty, clean. But when you are really entering into the Divine temple. your body is not entering: your consciousness is entering. And you cannot bathe your consciousness with water. But consciousness can have a deep cleansing in inner light, and that deep cleansing means cleansing the dirt of all karma - all actions. Whatsoever you have done, whatsoever you have been, whatsoever your past has been. it dings to you - just like dirt, just like dust, it clings to you. When you enter inner light, it disappears. Why? Because the moment you enter that inner light, everything takes the velocity of light and nothing can remain. The dirt, the dirt of karmas, dissolves - all that you have done in all your lives. When you enter that realm, everything becomes light, because with light, in that velocity, nothing can remain anything else. So it is not simply a bath. All the karmas, just disappear, they become light, and the consciousness is cleaned. It becomes fresh and young as it should be, as it is meant to be.”

“Meditation has also been proven scientifically to untangle and rewire the neurological pathways in the brain that make up the conditioned personality. Buddhist monks, for example, have had their brains scanned by scientists as they sat still in deep altered states of consciousness invoked by transcendental meditation and the scientists were amazed at what they beheld. The frontal lobes of the monks lit up as bright as the sun! They were in states of peace and happiness the scientists had never seen before. Meditation invokes that which is known in neuroscience as neuroplasticity; which is the loosening of the old nerve cells or hardwiring in the brain, to make space for the new to emerge. Meditation, in this sense, is a fire that burns away the old or conditioned self, in the Bhagavad Gita, this is known as the Yajna; “All karma or effects of actions are completely burned away from the liberated being who, free from attachment, with his physical mind enveloped in wisdom (the higher self), performs the true spiritual fire rite.”

“A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without any comparison with the other.. A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatsoever you are doing, not for the result but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…. You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping- stone. You are on an ego trip. And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you. Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born. It is never BY you but only THROUGH you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's all; you don't hinder, that's all. But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result - that you have to become famous, that you have to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto - then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary. Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. And so is the case with everybody. In the Gita, Krishna says: Don't think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don't think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost into it. Lose the doer in the doing. Don't be - let your creative energies flow unhindered. That's why he said to Arjuna, "Don't escape from the war... because I can see this is just an ego trip, this escape. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating: that you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great mahatma. Rather than surrendering to God, to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously: as if, if you are not there, there will be no war." Krishna says to Arjuna, "Listen to me. Just be in a state of let-go. Say to God, 'Use me in whatsoever way you want to use me. Use me! I am available, unconditionally available.' Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it. It will be signed by God, not by you. And you will rejoice because God has chosen you to be a vehicle.”

“I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster - the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous of God.”

“I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living.”

“First birth is from your parents, but real birth, real life, begins when one accepts a bona fide spiritual master and renders service unto him. Then the path is open for going back to home, back to Godhead, to live eternally in full knowledge and full bliss and in association with the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself, Lord Krishna.”

“Only an empowered personality can distribute the holy name of the Lord and enjoin all fallen souls to worship Krishna. By distributing the holy name of the Lord, he cleanses the hearts of the most fallen people. Therefore he extinguishes the blazing fire of the material world. Not only that, he broadcasts the shining brightness of Krishna's effulgence throughout the world. Such an acarya, or spiritual master, should be considered nondifferent from Krishna that is, he should be considered the incarnation of Lord Krishna's potency.”

“One who loves Krishna will give Him whatever He wants, and he avoids offering anything which is undesirable or unasked for. Thus, meat, fish and eggs should not be offered to Krishna...Vegetables, grains, fruits, milk and water are the proper foods for human beings and are prescribed by Lord Krishna Himself. Whatever else you eat, can not be offered to Him, since He will not accept it.”

“Lord Krishna... proclaims Self-realization, true wisdom, as the highest branch of all human knowledge-the king of all sciences, the very essence of dharma ("religion")-for it alone permanently uproots the cause of man's threefold suffering and reveals to him his true nature of Bliss. Self-realization is yoga or "oneness" with truth-the direct perception or experience of truth by the all-knowing intuitive faculty of the soul.”