No Hurt, No Pride
We gain pleasant or unpleasant experiences as events take place in daily life. We brand external factors as good or bad and fail to see that internally, our outlook contributes significantly to the quality of our experiences. When we seek personal gratification, that seeking colors our perception. Also, we are elated if things go our way and are hurt if otherwise.
What happens when we do not seek anything for ourselves? Can the seeker – of pleasure, position or praise – go out of the scene, and can we meet life with an open mind?
The open mind is certainly not a dull mind. It is very sensitive to beauty, to pain and to genuine needs of life. It is free from cravings born of residues from past experiences. Mechanical repetition of “I want such and such response from so and so” is absent. The mind is ready to welcome the new, the unknown.
Such a mind does not stand in the way of truth. Like a tender blade of grass, it swings to the breeze of real life. The rigidity of pre-conceived notions about how things should be is absent here.
When we work with such a mind, success and failure lose their grip over us. A graceful silence and a light, cheerful bosom mark our journey through life even as myriad events of many hues continue to appear on its canvas.
No agitations come to her, who performs all her actions abandoning personal attachments. She offers her work to truth and lets truth have its way. She is like the lotus leaf, which does not get wet even when water is upon it. Geeta 5:10
Swami Chidananda
Monday, October 20, 2003