Category Archives: Spirituality

Sri Aurobindo on peace, calm, quiet, silence

The words “peace, calm, quiet, silence” have each their own shade of meaning, but it is not easy to define them.
Peace – śānti.
Calm – sthiratā.
Quiet – acañcalatā.
Silence – niścala-nīravatā.
Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance.
Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect – it is a less negative condition than quiet.
Peace is a still more positive condition; it carries with it a sense of settled and harmonious rest and deliverance.
Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter.

Excerpted from this website

I Am That: From Osho Library online…

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood! Man has not even yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to it forever. When the child is a grown-up person your parenthood is finished. The child needed it – he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection; but when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child they remain a constant anxiety to themselves and to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don’t help beyond a certain limit.

And there are foolish people who renounce the world in search of silence. The world does not disturb you; what disturbs is your mind – and they don’t renounce the mind. When a Hindu becomes a monk he still remains a Hindu. Do you see the absurdity? He has renounced the Hindu society, but he still carries the idea of being a Hindu! If you have renounced the Hindu society…then this idea of being a Hindu was given by the same society, how can you carry it?

Somebody becomes a Christian monk, but he still remains a Christian – a Catholic, a Protestant…The mind is so stupid; if you look at its stupidities you will be surprised, amazed! How can you be a Catholic if you have renounced the world? But people renounce the world, they don’t renounce the mind – and the mind is a byproduct of the world! The child is raised by the Hindus, then he becomes a Hindu, because the parents are cultivating Hindu ideology – or Christian, or Mohammedan, or Jain.

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