Quotes About Identity

The heart hoped that India would survive, but the head worried that it wouldn't. The place was too complicated, too confusing – a nation, one might say, that was unnatural. In truth, ever since the country

If he is a bastard, at least he is our bastard'

Is it any great wonder', asked the writer, 'that an Indian Muslim no longer feels secure in secular India? He feels discriminated against. He feels a second-class citizen.

The blood of many a brave Tamilian, Andhra, Malayalee and Coorgi', it said, 'has soaked into the fertile soil of Kashmir and mixed with the blood of the Kashmiri patriots, cementing for ever the unity of the North and the South.

Ramachandra Guha

India' was merely a label of convenience, 'a name which we give to a great region including a multitude of different countries'.

Naturally, national unity and linguistic diversity have not always been seen to be compatible. Indians speaking one tongue have fought with Indians who speak another.

Rabindranath Tagore used the phrase in a letter to a friend in 1921, writing that '…the idea of India is against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one's own people from others, which inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts.

The Madras journal, for its part, responded by printing a lyrical paean to the union of Kashmir with India. 'The blood of many a brave Tamilian, Andhra, Malayalee and Coorgi', it said, 'has soaked into the fertile soil of Kashmir and mixed with the blood of the Kashmiri patriots, cementing for ever the unity of the North and the South.

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?

Does a man who is acting on the stage in a female part forget that he is a man? Similarly, we too must play our parts on the stage of life, but we must not identify ourselves with those parts.

The enquiry 'Who am I?' is the principal means to the removal of all misery and the attainment of the supreme bliss.

The question 'Who am I?' is not really meant to get an answer, the question 'Who am I?' is meant to dissolve the questioner.

The body is the temple; the jiva is God (Siva). If one worships him with the 'I am He' thought, one will gain release.

Thoughts of bondage and of freedom last only as long as one feels, 'I am bound'. When one enquires of oneself, 'Who am I, the bound one?' the Self, Eternal, ever free, remains. The thought of bondage goes; and with it goes the thought of freedom too.

One can know oneself only with one's own eye of knowledge, and not with somebody else's. Does he who is Rama require the help of a mirror to know that he is Rama?

Be as you are. (p. 118)

Ramana Maharshi's advice on depression) This depression must be traced to its origin. The origin is the wrong identification of the body with the Self. The disease is not of the Self. It is of the body. But the body does not come and tell you that it is possessed by the disease. It is you who say so. Why? Because you have wrongly identified yourself with the body. The body itself is a thought. Be as you really are. There is no reason to be depressed. (p. 360)

When the I is divested of the I, only the I remains.

If the idea 'I am the body' is accepted, the selves are multiple. The state in which this idea vanishes is the Self since in that state there are no other objects.

You are That, here and now. (p. 77)

Self is only Being – not this or that. It is Simple Being. BE, and that is the end of ignorance. Your duty is not to be this or that. I am that I am sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words Be still. Be as you really are. Be yourself and nothing more. Remain aware of yourself and all else will be known

Always remember the hankering for the 'other' is never for them, but to use them as a means of your EGO, you turn them into a commodity and thats why every relationship gets ruined. Mind YOU!

ART is the medium through which you express the inexpressible, convey the unconveyable, transporting the audience in different realms of existence erasing their mental identities. Any effort by the artist to make an personal identity is detrimental in an artistic sense. Be Wiser, leave no residue dissolve in ART!