Narada Bhakti Sutra - The Aphorisms of Love Quotes

“Whether one’s nature is serving the Lord, either as servant or as wife, such a devotion with no sense of distinction between Lord and yourself that alone is to be achieved.

To move towards this experience of our oneness with the Lord, wherein the Lord and His devotee are not two, is to cultivate the path of a servant to the master or a wife to the husband. Such love is expressed in the glory of sages who have realised this fulfilment of devotion. This alone is to be achieved – prema eva kāryam.”
― Chinmayananda Saraswati, Narada Bhakti Sutra

“How can the bhakta stand apart from his sorrows?

To a devotee this is much easier than for anyone else. He is one who has already offered all of himself. He has laid at the altar of his Lord his entire being. So totally surrendered becomes his worldly and sacred personality, that not only his physical being but his ideas, his ideals, his worldly duties, even his spiritual duties come to be entirely offered at His feet. His joy is only in going on striving for Him. All worries and anxieties thereafter are His. Then on what account should he ever weep?”
― Chinmayananda Saraswati, Narada Bhakti Sutra

“Otherwise, whatever you are resisting, you promise yourself one hundred times, "I will not do this, I will not get angry, I'll not be rough to people," and you will see when the time comes, your emotion comes like a storm and all your affirmations are just washed away. All your promises get blown”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, The Path of Love, Narada's Bhakti Sutras

“Surrender is the venture of the bold man. A fearful person cannot surrender.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, The Path of Love, Narada's Bhakti Sutras

“Since we have started cultivating devotion for the Lord, whose expression is this entire world around us, we will, with extra joy, continue to go to our fields of activity. But of course with a difference; our attitude to our work is now totally transformed. Now that we are constantly thinking of Him and habitually surrendering to our beloved Divine, it becomes easy for us to renounce the anxiety for the enjoyment of the fruits of our actions. We must do our best in whatever field He places us to fulfil our duties. For, as we act we are now recognising the field – nay, the whole world – as the Lord Himself in but another form. All our work becomes our worship of Him, who is the Self in us.”
― Chinmayananda Saraswati, Narada Bhakti Sutra

“There is a story about one emperor, King Akbar. He was doing the mass, praying, on the open ground. And there was a fakir who passed by. The king was asking for, "Give me more wealth, more prosperity," and this and that. And as he finished, he was about to finish it, this fakir who was moving around, this saint who was moving, who passed that way, he just stood and watched him for a couple of minutes and he moved away. And Akbar got up and said, "Oh, wait, wait, what is it that you want? Because I will give you whatever you want. You ask me." You know, this used to be the tradition in those days. Kings allowed people to ask them whatever desire they had. So this fakir, this saint said, "I don't take anything from a beggar." He said, "You yourself were begging, five minutes ago. I saw. You were asking, 'Allah, You give me this, give me that.' You are still a beggar being an emperor. I don't need to take anything from you. I'll take it from whomever you are asking.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, The Path of Love, Narada's Bhakti Sutras