A monk, accompanied by his students was on his morning walk. Suddenly, a person hit him with a stick and ran away after dropping the stick. The monk took the stick, ran after the person and gave the stick back to him. The passersby who were witnessing the entire scene said to the monk, “You should have punished the person and should not have returned the stick.” The monk answered, “He hit me, and that is it. If the branch of a tree had fallen on me, I am not going to hit the tree.”
The villagers were confused and asked, “Branch is a branch, and it has no mind of its own.”
The monk replied, “The man hit me. If he had a mind he would not have hit me. The fact, he has hit me, shows that he has not got a mind. A fact is a fact, why worry”.
The master turned to his students and explained, “How the man can have a mind? To have a mind involves thinking. Thinking is the intelligent use of the mind. If a person does not use the mind intelligently, it is equal to not having a mind.”
Then, master went on to ask, “Can one look into one’s “Being?” How can one live differently? Don’t bother to give me an answer, but be in the domain of the question and look deeply. See how one’s ignorance is operating in one’s life and how it covers truth and projects untruth.”
Why is it difficult to grasp?
We are wired wrongly by our logic. Duryodhana had logic of his own; so too Shakuni. For most, to be logically right is more important than peace or well-being. Ravana had logic of his own. Ravana desired to move Mount Kailash to his palace and worship Shiva there. We think from our wiring, our logic, our conditioning. But to think from the angle of scriptures is to put aside our conditioning and then be in reflective consciousness.
In life, everyone functions according to one’s wiring and one’s logic and that programming or logic prevents seeing. Let Shruti (Scriptures), Yuki (Logic), and finally Anubhav (Experience) become our pathway.
Man should think in a new way. Man is asleep, and hence man’s thinking is from a deep sleep. When one is awake the state of being changes and by that the meaning one gives to incidents also changes.
Hence, learning to study one’s “Being” particularly with reference to one’s actions plays an important role. Is our Being impacting the action or is our action impacting Being. Worldly ideas drain you, and spiritual ideas protect you from a miserable life.
Do not be lost in “My book”, “My thinking”, “My grievances”, “My advantage”, etc. The attachment for “My” kills one’s way of looking at life in totality, and that is equal to sleep in a spiritual domain.
To be spiritual involves looking at life from totality. Hence, service is a part and parcel of life. If there is no service there, is no spirituality. Let prayer and service lift your life.
Please visit www.swamisukhabodhananda.org
Swami Sukhbodhanand
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