Just wanted to share some relevant spiritual wisdom I have read in other sources.

Not to make it too long, I will divide this into different posts. Borrowed Wisdom 1, Borrowed Wisdom 2, etc.

My own sentences are in normal font. Borrowed wisdoms are in italic.

The essence of Karma-Yoga is relinquishing the fruits of action despite being completely dedicated to actions. I try all things; I achieve what I can. True yoga is evenness of mind, unattached to results because there is nobody to enjoy the results or suffer the results. Indifference to results is not a condition for enlightenment; it’s a product of obtaining correct knowledge or discarding wrong knowledge.

In Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab asks “Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I….. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.”  

Just do your work. Nothing else. If you have finished eating,  go wash your bowls. In Bhagwad Gita, Krishna says “I have no duty; nothing that I have not gained; and nothing that I have to gain in the three worlds; yet, I continue in action.” Indeed, say you’re enlightened today. What will you do from tomorrow? You still gotta work. Both wise and unwise should work; the only difference is whether they are working with the knowledge and non-attachment. You are not the doer. There is no doer because nothing has ever happened.

In Moby Dick, there is a passage that portrays the dedication and commitment that is required in this journey. “There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worthwhile disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good- natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.”

Death awareness is life awareness. “All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.”

Wise people say nothing, do nothing. As Walt Whitman says “Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world” Is the sperm whale genius? In Moby-dick, you have the answer, “But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence……. therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!.”

Asthavakra Geeta says “ You are not matter or empty space, but Awareness alone- the witness of all these. Abide in awareness with no illusion of person. You are completely free, the one Awareness. What is there for you to desire? You are pure consciousness, the substance of the universe. The universe exists within you. That which has form is not real. The universe emanating from the Self is not different from the Self. Not seeing Self, the world is materialized. Seeing Self, the world is vanished. In reality, knowledge, the knower and the knowable do not exist. I am the transparent Self. In the limitless ocean of Myself, waves of beings arise, collide, play for a time, then disappear- as their nature! I am a shoreless ocean; the universe makes waves. When there is no “I”, there is only liberation. When “I” appears, bondage appears with it. Knowing this, it is effortless to refrain from accepting and rejecting. The universe is neither aware nor does it exist. Even ignorance is unreal. What is left to know?  Nothing to accept, nothing to reject. No joy, no sorrow. I am here. Doing and not-doing both arise from ignorance. I know this and I am here. Those who desire pleasure and those who desire liberation are both common in the world, rare is the great soul who desires neither enjoyment nor liberation. Rare is the right-minded person who neither covets nor shuns religion, wealth, pleasure, life or death. In the sage, there is neither violence nor mercy, arrogance nor humility, anxiety nor wonder. His worldly life is exhausted. He has transcended his role as a person. The liberated one neither avoids experience nor craves it. He enjoys what comes and what does not. The sage is not conflicted by states of stillness and thought. His mind is empty. His home is the Absolute. Though he may perform actions, the man of Knowledge does not act. Desires extinguished, free of thoughts of “I” and “mine”, he knows with absolute certainty that nothing exists. The sage is free. His empty mind no longer projects delusion, dreaming, dullness. The state is indescribable.”

Just live in this moment as pure awareness.

As Walt Whitman says,

“There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”