Blog

January 2010

The situation can hurt us only when the mind is weak. – Chinmaya

If there is an art to be mastered in this world, then that is to keep the mind quiet and peaceful. One who has learnt this art has mastered all situations in life.

For a doubting mind, this may appear to be an exaggeration, but the fact remains that it is we who allow the situation to rule over us. To make the point clear, we will discuss a typical scenario which quite often happens in all our homes in more or less the same fashion:

You are having breakfast with your family. Your daughter knocks over a cup of coffee onto your business shirt … (you have no control over what has just happened, but what happens next will be determined by how you react)

You curse. You harshly scold your daughter for knocking the cup over. She breaks down in tears….After scolding her you turn to your wife and criticize her for placing the cup too close to the edge of the table. A short verbal battle follows… You storm upstairs and change your shirt. Back downstairs, you find your daughter too busy trying to finish her breakfast and getting ready to go to school. She misses the bus. As your spouse must leave immediately for work, you rush to the car and drive your daughter to school.

Because you are late, you drive 80kmph in a 60kmph speed limit zone. After a fifteen minutes delay and throwing away a handsome amount as traffic fine, you arrive at school. Your daughter runs into the building without even saying goodbye… After arriving at office 20minutes late you realize that you have forgotten your briefcase…

Your day started with trouble. As it continues it seems to get worse and worse… You look forward to coming home. And at last, when you arrive home, you find a small wedge in your relationship with your wife and daughter …

One wrong step in the morning and the price turned out to be so heavy!

This entire catastrophe could have been averted if only you had shown a little balance of mind. Instead of scolding your daughter for spilling the coffee, if you had responded thus: “It’s OK honey, just need to be more careful next time”, the day would have been totally different!

It is our own mind which acts as our enemy creating problems for ourselves and for all others around. As Pujya Gurudev puts it well, “The cultured give happiness wherever they go, and the uncultured, whenever they go”!

If we train our mind to see something positive even in the worst of all situations, then we can remain cheerful under all circumstances.

Roberto De Vincenzo, the great Argentine golfer, was just about to drive back home in his car after receiving a handsome cheque as the prize money for winning a major tournament when a woman dressed in shabby clothes approached him saying that her little daughter is seriously ill and the doctors have given up all hopes and that there are lots of bills pending.

Touched by her story, Vincenzo took out the cheque he had just received, endorsed it in the name of the women and handed it over to her praying for the child’s quick recovery. But after a few days, an official in the golf club informed him that the woman was a fraud and that she had no sick baby as she was unmarried.

Hearing this Vincenzo replied, “You mean to say there is no dying child? Thank God for that! This is the best news I have had this week!”

How we interpret the situation for ourselves alone determines our state of mind. There is not even a single situation in the world which can take away the peace and happiness of a person who has mastered this art of inner quietude.

Just as a cyclone derives its entire power from a calm centre, so too when the mind is rendered quiet after having tuned to the Divine, it comes out with all the creative and innovative thoughts, thus blessing the whole world.

Whereas a restless mind generates only heat, a quiet mind alone comes up with the much-needed light!

According to Swami Vivekananda, the greatest sin in this world is to consider ourselves weak. All the powers of this universe are already ours, but it is we who close our eyes and cry that it is dark!

When we look within with a mind hushed to silence, we come to realize that never were we away from Him at any point of time. Hence silence this deceptive mind and reclaim the Infinite Glory of our true Self is the urgent demand from all wise sages and saints of all times.

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