Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
Samskaras, Passions ~ How To Conquer Them
Erasing Age-Old Tencencies ~ Conquering Passions
Day by Day with Bhagavan
Diary of Devaraja Mudaliar
March 31, 1945
How will age-old tendencies (samskaras) go? How to conquer passions?
Bhagavan quoted the last two lines of the following stanza from Yoga Vasishta which state that unless the cloud of the ‘I’ or ‘ego-sense’ which covers the moon of the Divine consciousness (chidakasa) is removed, the lily of the heart which knows nothing of the sense of ‘I’ (ahankara) will not open out in full bloom.
Bhagavan also added, “We have to contend against age-long samskaras (vasanas). They will all go. Only, they go comparatively soon in the case of those who have already made sadhana in the past, and late in the case of the others.”
DM: Do these samskaras go gradually or will they suddenly disappear one day? I ask this, because though I have remained fairly long here I do not perceive any gradual change in me.
Bhagavan asked, “When the sun rises, does the darkness go gradually or all at once?”
Another visitor: “How to conquer passions?”
Bhagavan: If the passions are something external to us we can take arms and ammunition and conquer them. They all come from within us. If, by looking into the source whence they issue, we see that they don’t come out of us, we shall conquer them. It is the world and the objects in it that arouse our passions. But the world and these objects are only created by our mind. They don’t exist during our sleep.
