Always help the poor and those suffering and in distress. Once upon a time, in Tamil Nadu, lived a poet saint who squatted on the small veranda of his hut and chanted beautiful songs to the Lord. One day, it was raining heavily. Another man came and asked him if he could also take shelter there. The devotee said, “There was place just enough for me to stretch out, but now that you are here we will both sit erect.” Later, another man stopped by and asked for shelter. The devotee again agreed saying, “There was place for the two of us to sit. Now that you also have joined, let us all stand.”
He thus taught the principle of helping everyone and not sending anyone away who needed help, even when the means are limited. Cultivate this attitude of sharing with others any good thing you have. Thus you can practice daily, the great principle of finding God in every being.
Baba (thought for the day)
In our center we always have problems to put that in practice, because we do not find the poor on the streets like in other places and it seems rather they are hidden and alone and like abandoned mostly in the cities and to find them seems nearly impossible and we cannot impose ourselves on them if they do not ask for it.
There are always people trying to do more and they don’t know how to put it into practice.
But thinking it over we find another meaning in the thought for the day. In whatever situation we are and we have to share our shelter with another one, even if there is no room and it gets uncomfortable, but we still do it and accept it as a gift of the Lord.
It can be that we are in a crisis and life is not at all as we thought it should be and we begin to doubt and ask, ‘why Lord you are giving me that plight and it is that uncomfortable how you can do that do me?’
We can share with others the good things we have instead of sharing the bad and even if the means are limited. It means even if we have nothing to give we still can give something, but it doesn’t mean that we expect others to do good to us, what seems often the case, it seems they take it literally what Baba uses as example here to show how we can keep a good way of seeing things, even if we have limited means.
I know a lady in the center for many years already and in the ashram she began to say things, it was not clear what happened in her mind, but it was not possible to agree.
As I didn’t know why and what it was exactly, I didn’t say anything; but I went into distance and tried to avoid her, what was also not possible, as we live in the same city.
Not long ago after a meeting she said that I do not care about driving with her home and I know that is an issue all along since she has no car anymore and she doesn’t work also since years and she has therefore, lots of time to take the bus. But she added that it should be understood and self-evident, that I should drive around with her.
I went home and I noticed in what upset feeling I was, because of her unconsidered attitude of expressing her thoughts expecting me to take care of her, but she was not caring at all about our life and all the things like job and daughter and no time, that is why she sounded that carless really, it was only about herself and not about others.
It felt all upside down.
Since I know her she never cared really about us and after coming back from the US she even told me in the face, that she would never have helped us to start here again, whatever the reason, she said something like people can work, like she would have been the only person in life who ever worked, but as she got sick and nobody knew what her sickness was, she had to go to the hospital and I was good enough to drive her there, what I did a few times, but it somehow never felt right.
I seized the opportunity this time and wrote her that I am not in any way obliged to her and that I have to drive around with her non-stop just because we have been at the same place in India once years ago. The way she phrased it I would not even have the possibility to say no to it, because she said it was self-evident.
It wrote her because she was after all those years not aware of how offending it sounded what she said and how annoying it was to me and not at all devotee like and that I felt offended by it and that therefore, it was not only not self-evident, but out of question I would do it, because her presence after a center meeting is such an unpleasant experience to just have her near in my car, it would spoil the positive feeling after such a gathering and I would rather not attend the meeting at all than driving home with her to just please her expectation.
That is not what Baba is talking about here, but it is rather about keeping a positive attitude and that we can learn from everything, whatever it is and it doesn’t depend on our limited means.
Cultivate this attitude of sharing with others any good thing you have. Thus you can practice daily, the great principle of finding God in every being.
That attitude of sharing we have to cultivate and share the good things we have.
Therefore, if I know that her attitude of mind is wrong and not sharing, but expectation and based on selfishness and ego she turned it in her mind upside down if I don’t share my feeling with her and how it feels to me, she cannot get aware of it.
The right sharing is not to fulfill her wrong expectation, but to share how it feels to me and she has to accept that she is offending and that it is wrong understood.
Discrimination means to get aware of the difference between Sathva and Tamas and it is impossible to do that, if we do not know how to set limitations and how to see it right.
It means it took years to tell her how it feels, because I didn’t see her standpoint yet, but that has changed. Now I am sure it is upside down and it feels like a load is gone, because I could tell her off and tell her to stop it to bother me with her expectations and that it doesn’t feel right to me and why. That is the sharing; not just driving with her around if it doesn’t feel okay.
And if I look at the same issue with my younger brother who went into ridicule making fun of the spiritual path and every effort to do good and it had been in the dream already years ago, that he does the worst he can do.
First I worried about it and I didn't see it as a warning, but in the mean time it is clearly a warning, because he went into ridicule and abuse, it means sharing the bad things with others and they do not have the discrimination to set it right.
It is seeing evil in the good and that is bad and that can ruin our life as it was mentioned by Baba in the difference between the good and the bad and why we have to avoid bad company,
That is how we learn to listen to the inner master. We have to be able to discriminate and to see it in our own life and go on no matter what obstacles are there.
If we do not face the obstacles, we cannot learn the lesson, it is about the difference between Sathva, Rajas and Tamas.
Getting aware of it in our own life and our own consciousness is Tapas, spiritual work.
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