Quite often Sri Ramana Maharshi tells a disciple or visitor something like the following: “Only see your true nature and that question will not arise.”

While reading Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi with sensitivity, one is frequently struck by the aching anxiety as well as the lurching desire behind the questions. It’s as if the mind, arising in the form of thought, were continuing its agitation in the mode of questioning. The satisfaction that seems unfindable is revealed in the question, here and now. Seeing and experiencing this, one can’t but feel a dull ache and a sense of compassion.

To the questioner caught up in misery, Maharshi’s answers or smiles or silence can seem all too inadequate. “Is that all? Just be silent? Just be as you are.” Or: “just inquire into who is asking the question? What do you mean: find out who that is and all will be well?”

I find myself particularly moved by Maharshi’s brightness, quietness, and compassion. Here is loving awareness seeing that all are already realized and could be other than realized. Here is a penetrating vision of the clarity and purity that is right, always right, beneath the struggle and the strife. Here, in a way, is beauty.