Master Swami VIJAYANANDA
The purpose of life: The path to happiness

- "Inner research.
- Serious and absolute commitment.
- Impulse towards the spiritual.
- Listen, perceive.
- Correct faults.
- Simplicity (being close to oneself)
- Pray with emotion, love.
- Philosophy (self-government).
- Yoga isn't easy (mental problems)
- The mind varies, changes. You have to make the effort to go towards the goal to access meditation.
- To awaken something in yourself to find superhuman happiness, a treasure.
- Help yourself, get on the path.
- To realize God is to realize that He is in your heart.
- To see lucidly what we feel, what bothers us around us.
- Being in the right direction to find something.
- To be spiritual, intuitive, human.
- Seeking nuance in things to perceive.
- A well-established faith always involves doubt (doubt is a test)
- Faith is tested.
- Initiation: Master - Disciple
- Disciple - Apprentice Disciple
- Don't dream of being a sage. (The way is more important than anything else.)
- Free yourself.
- Be patient (Don't be afraid of defeat.)
- Endure suffering, depression.
- Perseverance.
- Accept encounters, coincidences, guiding powers.
- Action is through the Divine, seeking the Divine nature within us (the atman)
- Liberation is the erasure of limited self-consciousness.
- We must lose more than we acquire.
- Through practice, we consolidate ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually.
- The disciple must have the determination to conquer himself (a perfect correction to find his spiritual self...)
- A healthy mind. (Liberation, complete awareness, joy)
- Get rid of pathological illness.
- Go beyond fear (Fear of one's own mind, fear of the outside world)
- Overcoming fatigue.
- Silence to God - No duality. Everything is unique.
Silence and solitude slow down the movements of the mind. It allows you to observe, to go beyond fear.
- Question marks are necessary to evolve.
- Suffering is one of the best things. It's an awakening to impermanence: Wake up, you're in a dangerous place!
- Find happiness beyond pain and suffering.
- Make the refusal to suffer disappear. To awaken non-suffering at the very heart of suffering.
- Seek happiness, find what you really want, something other than comfort and wealth (I have everything, but I feel miserable)
- Absence of fear.
- Be convinced that you won't lose your peace.
- Freedom from the future.
- Bathing in love.
- To love those who appear as enemies.

Master Chandra Swami
The art of realization

Self-mastery reveals that capacity of the soul by which the body is consciously mastered and the mind and senses restrained from engaging in acts that would test the conscience. Thus, a self-controlled man is one who is able to turn his senses and mind at will away from any object he chooses, and to fix them wherever it is convenient to do so.
Mastery of the senses and mastery of the mind are interdependent. It is through mastery of the mind that complete mastery of the senses is made possible, and mastery of the senses helps us to ensure mastery of the mind, for it is most often through the senses that the mind escapes mastery and goes astray. Turbulent by nature, even a wise man's senses inevitably hijack his mind.
When the rambling senses hijack the mind, they also hijack the intellect - just as a strong wind drags a boat across the water. The intelect stands above the senses and the mind, and must subdue them to the point of total subjection, through careful reasoning and just discrimination.
Meditating on the true nature of the Atman is a great help in discovering and realizing the relationship between body, mind, senses and soul. Identify with the true "I" and you'll be free.
You are the immortal, eternal soul. Why should you, the infinite spirit, become a slave to nose, eyes and ears? Don't put the cart before the horse. Stand up, take action and turn the tide.
By securing the alliance of the intellect, engage in a crusade against the senses and the tumultuous mind, and win the victory.
It is through self-mastery alone that daily peace as well as the Great Peace that passes all understanding can be found and lived permanently."

"The perfect Way is in no way difficult
As long as you avoid choosing.
When there is no longer love or hate,
It reveals itself in all its clarity.
But if you deviate even by a hair's breadth,
A deep chasm immediately separates heaven and earth.
If you want the way to manifest itself,
Spread out the pros and cons,
That's the disease of the mind.
Until you have reached the source of all things
Your troubled mind will exhaust itself in vain."
"A special transmission beyond the Scriptures
Depend on neither words nor concepts
Point directly at the heart of man
Contemplate his own nature and thus realize the state of the Buddha"
BODHIDHARMA (500 A.D.)