Bhagavan's Promises and Declarations
Sri Ramana Maharshi's Life Sri Ramana Maharshi's Teaching Devotees of Sri Ramana Maharshi Books by and about Sri Ramana Maharshi Home	(from Padamalai, Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Recorded in Tamil verse by Muruganar, translated by Dr Venkatasubramanian, Robert Butler and David Godman, Edited and annotated by David Godman) Knowing and experiencing me 1. Padam [Bhagavan] tells and reveals: 'Instead of knowing with certainty by enquiry that I myself am present as your "I", why do you despair? 2. To become established as the Self within the Heart is to experience my real nature, which is pure bliss. 3. Know me as the true essence of jnana that shines uninterruptedly in your Heart. Destroy the objectifying awareness of the ego-mind that arrogantly cavorts as 'I'. 4. When I am shining in your Heart as 'I-I', your own real nature, your attempt to 'attain' me is indeed a great marvel! 5. To meditate on my swarupa [true nature], which possesses the light that is the source of life, all that is needed is your one-pointedness of mind. 6. Whether you retire to the forest or remain in the midst of everyday life, attain swarupa in the home that is the Heart. 7. Your search to attain me is like searching all over the world, ceaselessly straining to find the necklace around your own neck. 8. Just as you know that the necklace is there by feeling your neck, seek the treasure of the Self, your real nature, within the Heart, and know it. 9. Those who have come to my feet with love, and without delaying, are those whose birth has been graced by God. [Theirs is] an eminent and true life. 10. Through the thought of the feet of the Guru who has reigned over devotees, the intense darkness of ignorance [present in the] hearts of devotees will perish and ultimate liberation will be attained here and now. note: the word Padam literally means 'the foot', and is used as a synonym for the Self. Sri Muruganar uses the word Padam to mean Sri Bhagavan himself. Give me your burdens 11. Padam lovingly said: "It will be a duty well done if you place all your duties upon me.' 12. For the cruel disease of burning samsara to end, the prescribed diet is to entrust all your burdens on me. 13. In order that your needless anxieties cease, make sure that all your burdens are placed on me through the brave act of depending totally on grace. 14. If you completely surrender all your responsibilities to me, I will accept them as mine and manage them. 15. When bearing the entire burden remains my responsibility, why do you have any worries? 16. Why do you still retain this attachment to the mental concepts of 'I' and 'mine' when, on that day, you had offered up all those things to me, avowing them to be mine? 17. If you inquire and know me, the Self within, in that state there will be no reason for you to worry about the world. 18. Abandon the drama [of the world] and seek the Self within. Remaining within, I will protect you, [ensuring] that no harm befalls you. 19. Seek my grace within the Heart. I will drive away your darkness and show you the light. This is my responsibility. 20. Like the children of an emperor, my devotees are heirs to abundant rejoicing. Meditating on me 21. Splendorous Padam declares: 'Meditating on me with no sense of difference [between us] is accepting my grace and offering yourself to me. This in itself is enough.' 22. If you worship me by meditating well on the excellence of my true nature, the greatness of your own true nature will well up in your Heart. 23. Knowing that what abides in your Heart is the Self, my true and real nature, you should search for it there. Only this can be regarded as meditating on me with devotion. 24. Padam advises: 'Keeping one's attention on the subtle consciousness that is experienced by the extremely subtle mind is personal service to me.' 25. The compassionate heart that flows from me to you will never fail except when you cease to have remembrance of 'me', who command and conduct everything 26. You can know and experience my grace, which is my nature, if you remember me with no forgetfulness in your heart. Union with me 27. Seeking my true nature in your Heart, discovering it and rejoicing in it by bathing in the bliss of my jnana-swarupa -- this is union. 28. Only bhakti sadhana performed continuously with love will fascilitate easily, in a gradual way, this union. 29. Enter with love the temple that is your own Heart and experience the bliss of being absorbed in my swarupa, becoming one with it. 30. I myself will command and control a mind that has died by the sacrifice of the ego. Give me your mind 31. 'You should offer up to me the bright ruby of your mind. That is the gift that will bring me delight.' 32. 'The sweet love I have for such a mind I do not have for anything else.' Padam desires this. 33. Padam receives the minds of loving devotees as an offering, swallowing them through a ruby-red light. 34. Padam accepts only the mind as a fitting offering, rejecting everything else as being incompatible. Bhagavan's darshan 35. Why do you pointlessly find fault with me, saying that I no longer look at you? 36. If you would only fix your gaze upon me, you would know that, established in the Heart, my gaze is ever fixed on you. 37. Looking at you from within the Self, I never leave you. How can this fact be known to your externalized vision?
	Sri Ramanarpanamastu