Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

To reduce a sophisticated science, like yoga, to mere doctrine is just as tragic as turning it into a cardiovascular workout.

I am contemporary, and that is how every guru has always been.

So, the truth is timeless, but the technology and the language are always contemporary. If they weren’t, they would deserve to be discarded. No tradition, however time-honored, deserves to live on as anything more than a museum piece if it has outlived its relevance.

an insight is articulated from a place of inner clarity and when it meets a reader at the right moment of receptivity, an age-old truth turns explosively alchemical.

people coming out of restaurants always had more joyful faces than those coming out of temples.

Human intellect is mere smartness that ensures survival.

longing is not for more; this longing is for all. We are all seeking to become infinite. The only problem is that we are seeking it in installments.

you wanted just one simple thing: joy. But somewhere along the way, life got complicated.

But when you come into this world as a human being, things change. An empty stomach is one problem: hunger. But a full stomach? A hundred problems!

Somehow, for a human being, life doesn’t seem to end with survival; life begins with survival.

If your body feels pleasant, we call this health. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant, we call this peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this joy. If your emotions become pleasant, we call this love. If they become very pleasant, we call this compassion. If your life energies become pleasant, we call this bliss. If they become very pleasant, we call this ecstasy.

When your surroundings become pleasant, it gets branded success.

When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others.

It is amazing how human beings struggle just to do what every worm, insect, bird, and animal does quite effortlessly.

And even if it does not collapse, living in anticipation that it might is bad enough!

Peace and joy are not things you attain at the end of life. They are the basis of your life.

It is because most people are so deprived of peace that they consider it to be the ultimate aspiration.

When most people say “life,” they mean the accessories of life

Enlightenment is not an attainment or an achievement. It is a homecoming.

“destiny.” It is a consoling word, but disempowering.

What you consider to be your body is what you have gathered through ingestion. What you consider to be your mind is what you have gathered through the five senses. What is beyond that— which you did not gather—is who you are.

the past exists within each one of us only as memory.

In a state of conscious response, it is possible to use every life situation—however ugly—as an opportunity for growth.

Resentment, anger, jealousy, pain, hurt, and depression are poisons that you drink but expect someone else to die.

Whether you fly or choose to remain in the limitations of the cage—let that be a conscious choice.

There is no “yes” and “no.” There is just “yes” and “yes”! The choice is yours. You can either react to life with “yes” and “no,” which will mean a perpetual division of this existence, which is the basis of repetitive cycles of conflict and misery. Or