- Mind - Friend or Enemy?
Mind is our greatest enemy and our greatest friend.
If it is a pure mind - sensible and pure, it can guide us.
It can guide us into the sanctuary and take us to the threshold of intuition.
If it is an evil mind - it can drag us down. In accepting the mind as an enemy, you are accepting fear.
Mind itself is neither good nor bad, but it is what is fed into it that counts.
There is always one part of the mind looking at the other part, whatever you are doing, and therefore, the whole mind cannot be evil.
- Kama
The world has not been tied around our necks, we tie ourselves to the world.
But we can tie ourselves to God.
Two young men were standing on the bank of a river which was in spate.
They saw a black 'bundle of blankets' or something that looked like it, hurtling downstream.
One man wanted to jump into the stream and salvage 'the bundle' - it could fetch them some money!
The other man, however, felt that the risk was not worth the value.
Yet, the impetuous young man rushed headlong into the stream and swam towards 'the bundle'.
He had caught it, but, instead of swimming back towards the bank, he, too, was floating downstream with 'the bundle'.
The friend, standing on the bank of the river, began to shout - "Let it go and come away, if it is too heavy."
But the drowning man replied: "I am prepared to leave 'the bundle', but 'the bundle' of blankets does not let me go".
You know why? It was not a 'bundle' of blankets, but a wild bear which was drowning in the river and, when it saw this man swimming towards it, caught hold of him!
We ourselves seek this 'bundle' on account of Kama - desire, and later cry aloud that it has caught hold of us.
- Adversity
Even though Drupada was wicked and was deservedly heading towards defeat, Sanjaya does not deride him, but glorifies him.
We should not laugh at the adversity of even our adversary, but try to encourage him and lend him a helping hand.
Gita I.2.
- Dharma
Dharma is never defeated.
Even God, out of His own Will submits to His Laws.
Hence even when Ravana was growing powerful, Narayana said: "His Time has not yet come".
He gives the wicked man times and chances to reform himself.
But Dharma relentlessly works to restore balance.
- Enlightenment
It is not as though on enlightenment, we become God!
We realise that we were never other than God!
It is like a millionaire, dreaming that he was a beggar.
On awakening he does not say: "I was a beggar and I have become rich".
He knows "I have never been a beggar" but "I have always been a millionaire."