10:12

Quality Of Life: A Choice From Within

by Sadhguru Jaggi

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talks
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Meditation
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Quality of life is your choice of peace and joy from within. An indecisive mindset with a focus on materialism is a destructive impression from society. Ease pain and turmoil in life by applying this basic principle of controlling your inner dimension. The physical world does not determine your quality of life and is only the peel of the fruit. The fruit of life comes from within.

Quality Of LifeWithinPeaceJoyMaterialismPainTurmoilInner DimensionsPhysical WorldFruit Of LifeMasteryInteriorityInternal FocusYogaFreedomBlissSensesInner FocusInner FreedomBlissful LivingSensory LimitationBody And MindBody And Mind AccumulationsChoicesMental ChoicesYoga Explorations

Transcript

So one level of yoga means to upgrade your technologies in such a way,

What happens within you is decided only by you,

Nobody else but you.

What happens outside of you,

Hundred different people decide,

You never decide hundred percent,

Isn't it?

Yes or no?

Nobody gets to decide the outside hundred percent.

We manage it,

We manipulate it the way we want it to some extent,

But that's all.

Nobody has hundred percent control.

But here there is only one ingredient,

That's you.

At least here you should decide what should happen within you,

Isn't it so?

If you are deciding what should happen within you,

What would you choose misery or joy?

See,

Not much intelligence,

Everybody has,

There's no problem at all.

So right now the only problem is you are not deciding what should happen within you,

Somebody else is deciding what should happen within you.

See right now if somebody decides what kind of clothes you should wear,

How you should sit,

How you should stand,

What you should eat,

When you should sleep,

When you should get up,

Everything,

You call this slavery,

Isn't it?

Yes or no?

Now somebody is deciding what should happen within you.

Is it not a more horrible slavery than anything else?

Yes?

The worst kind of slavery is people are even deciding what should happen within you.

This is a horrible form of slavery and a vast majority of humanity is in this slavery,

Unfortunately.

Because you are blissful by your own nature,

Now you can stride through your life effortlessly.

Otherwise all the time the fear is what will happen to me?

What will happen to me?

What will happen to me means what?

Maybe I will get some kind of suffering,

That's the whole thing,

Isn't it?

Maybe my happiness will go away,

Maybe my peace will go away.

Now once nothing can happen to you,

This is the way you are,

It doesn't matter what it is,

Next moment if you have to die,

This is the way you are.

Now you can stride through your life effortlessly.

Otherwise your whole life is always half steps,

Never full steps,

Because the concern is always there what will happen to me?

This yoga means,

This Isha Yoga is just an effort.

I am trying to add numbers to my bliss party.

Are you interested?

Every human being is capable of being like this.

Simply this has not happened because he has not paid attention in the right direction.

He's too busy fixing the outside.

Fixing the outside does not change the experience of your life.

Fixing the outside only makes our lives convenient and comfortable and that's all.

Things cannot do anything more.

Right now the quality of your life is not dependent upon what kind of clothes you wear,

What kind of car you parked outside,

What kind of home you live in.

No,

This moment how peaceful and joyful you are,

That is the quality of your life,

Isn't it so?

And nothing has been done to take care of that.

Too much has been done to fix the clothes,

The car,

The house and this and that and that,

But nothing really has been done to fix the interiority.

When I say internal,

I am not talking about the body or the mind,

Because both this body and mind are external to you.

As we already looked at this,

Body is something that you slowly accumulated,

Isn't it so?

This is just a piece of earth right now prancing around like this,

Isn't it so?

So body is an accumulation.

What you call as mind is a heap of impressions that you have gathered,

Isn't it?

What kind of mind you have is just what kind of societies you've been raised in,

Isn't it?

The very way you think,

Feel and understand life is just the impressions that you have taken in.

So this is a huge heap of impressions,

This is a huge heap of food.

If you have to gather these two heaps,

There must be something more fundamental or foundational within you,

But that dimension has remained out of your experience.

These two accumulations of body and mind are constantly subject to external realities,

Because they belong to the external.

You gathered them from outside,

You can drop them part by part,

Isn't it?

Hmm?

You're hundred kgs,

You could become eighty kgs,

Fifty kgs,

You drop them.

Similarly,

Mind also could be unloaded.

Many things you forget and disappear,

Isn't it?

So you can pick it up,

You can drop it.

If you have to pick up and drop things,

There must be somebody here,

Isn't it?

There must be somebody else here who is picking up things and dropping things,

Isn't it so?

That somebody,

That somethingness,

That inner dimension has not come into experience.

All the turmoil,

All the struggle is rooted in this.

All the disharmony you see within yourself and outside of yourself is coming from this basic dysfunction,

That is the innermost core has not come into experience,

Just the surface.

The surface has no purpose of its own,

It's just like,

For example,

The physical.

The physical really has no purpose of its own.

Just look at this.

Physical is just like the peel of the fruit.

A peel has no purpose of its own.

Only as a protective layer to the fruit,

It means something.

The moment you eat the fruit,

The peel goes straight to the trash can,

Isn't it?

Now this body is right now very important.

We have to feed it,

We have to clothe it,

We have to decorate it,

We have to pamper it in so many different ways.

But tomorrow morning,

The fruit inside,

If it goes away,

Something that you never tasted,

If it goes away,

Nobody wants to have anything to do with this peel,

Isn't it?

Because the fruit is inside,

This is so valuable.

Once the fruit is gone,

It doesn't mean anything.

But right now,

When we say your experience of life is limited to sense perception,

What it means is,

You are experiencing only that which is physical.

Because sense organs cannot experience anything other than the physical.

No,

No,

I have a mind.

Your mind is also physical,

In the sense,

Right now you can see the light bulb is physical.

It's very easy to see that.

And the electricity behind it is also physical,

Subtle,

But still physical,

Isn't it so?

The light that it is animating is also physical,

Isn't it?

Similarly,

Everything that you experience through the five senses is all physical.

And physical has no purpose of its own,

It's the peel of the fruit.

If you're eating just the peel of the fruit,

How life should be?

It should have been bitter,

But the problem is,

This peel,

Because of its association with the fruit,

Has imbibed as few spots of sweetness.

Now,

What you call as life is just trying to extract juice out of those few spots of sweetness,

Not realizing that this sweetness has entered the peel only because of its association with the fruit.

Somewhere nature trusted your intelligence.

If you put a drop of honey here and keep the honey jar up there,

If the ants come and taste this,

They go straight for the jar,

Isn't it?

So nature trusted your intelligence.

Nature thought if it puts a little bit the essence of the fruit in the peel,

The moment you taste it,

Nature thought you will go straight for the fruit,

But you're doing everything to disprove that.

If this peel was hundred percent bitter,

By now all of you would be enlightened,

That's for sure.

If just existing here physically was always bitterness,

You would have naturally turned inward,

But the problem is there are few spots of sweetness.

You're entertaining yourself with that all the time.

You're unwilling to see that these spots of sweetness have come only because the fruit is within.

The moment the fruit is gone,

There are no spots of sweetness in the peel,

Isn't it?

So yoga means not eating just the peel,

Tasting the fruit.

Now if you want to taste the fruit,

It does not come to you because you reject the peel.

If you reject the peel,

You'll reject the fruit also.

If you want to taste the fruit,

You must go beyond the peel,

Only then fruit is possible,

Isn't it?

So what we're doing in these seven days in the form of Isha Yoga is to give you a possibility of tasting the fruit.

Once you taste the fruit,

There is such sweetness in your mouth that whatever is happening outside,

You can handle it very effortlessly.

Meet your Teacher

Sadhguru JaggiMcMinnville, TN, USA

4.8 (158)

Recent Reviews

Cate

June 26, 2025

I feel like I understand

Tracey

July 11, 2020

πŸ€” Was it coincidence i was eating an avocado πŸ₯‘ out of the shell while listening? Nope! Might not be a juicy fruit but still that's too cool. πŸ™πŸΌ I heard you Sadhguru .πŸ’š to all.

Stephanie

December 13, 2019

Nailed it!! This really resonated with me. I will listen again. Namaste πŸ™

Chintz

December 7, 2019

Excellent.... really best...

Tosha

December 6, 2019

Deep! Thank U πŸ§˜πŸ½β€β™€οΈπŸ˜Œ

Dianne

December 6, 2019

Am gaining much insight from your talks Sadhguru. Thank you for sharing.

Yvonne

December 6, 2019

Beautiful,deepest gratitude sweet soul siblings! πŸ’›πŸ’šπŸ’™πŸ’œβ€ Humbly,let the peel of the fruit compost the soil to enrich the paradise unfolding✌🏳 Namaste πŸ™β­•πŸ™

Herpreet

December 6, 2019

So eloquently described-taste the essence of the fruit not just its peel!

Imola

December 6, 2019

What a great insight again! Namaste πŸ™πŸŒ±πŸŒΈ

Vaibhav

December 6, 2019

Great insights... Enjoyed!

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