Inner peace and Facebook likes

When I was at university 1994-97, none of my friends had a mobile phone or internet access. If you wanted to meet up with a friend, you would walk down to the other end of the corridor and knock on their door. I have to admit it was sometimes a little inconvenient, you could knock on their door, and no-one was there; but I seem to remember we had a good time!

From a spiritual perspective, how does social media and browsing of the internet influence our meditation and spiritual practise? Is it a harmless side-show or does it make it harder to achieve real peace of mind?

Like anything it can depend on how we use it, and also the inclinations of the user. A disciplined use of a work account a few times a week – is very different to those who find themselves spending hours everyday.

The influence of modern technology is definitely an interesting challenge for modern seekers. I now make a living from an economics website and regularly use email. However I constantly find myself (most weeks!) making New Year’s Resolutions to try and limit the time I waste on the internet. I don’t think I’m the only one in this boat either. Read On…

Stories from the life of Turiyananda

“Spirituality tells the seeker not to live in the hoary past, not to live in the remote future, but to live in the immediacy of today, in the eternal Now. This eternal Now embodies man the aspiring seed and God the all-nourishing Fruit.”

~ Sri Chinmoy.(8)

Swami Turiyananda was one of the sixteen direct sannyasin disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. His pre-monastic name was Harinath and people usually called him Hari. He was about eighteen years old when he came to visit Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. When Sri Ramakrishna saw him for the first time, the Great Master immediately recognized the spiritual potential of Harinath and from then on took personal interest in his spiritual development. Hari’s spiritual training under Sri Ramakrishna lasted for six years till the Master passed away. After the passing away of Sri Ramakrishna, under the leadership of Swami Vivekananda, Hari and a small group of young men who were also closely associated with the Master renounced the world and became monks. Hari became Swami Turiyananda. It is said, of all the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, just like St. Francis of Assisi, even from his boyhood Turiyananda treated his body with great indifference.

When he was only three years old his mother died and when he was twelve years old his father passed away. He was looked after by his elder brother and his wife. His sister-in-law in particular treated him like her own son and looked after him with great love and affection. Throughout his life Turiyananda was very grateful to her. At school Hari was a very good student but his real interest was spirituality and sports. Even from that young age, in order to practice spirituality in the real sense of the term, he was leading a life of continence in thought, word and deed. In order to keep his mind pure he reduced his sleep and spent many hours in meditation. Reflecting on this period of his life Turiyananda later said, “I do not think I ever slept longer than three or four hours at night. The first part of the night I passed in meditation. Then I decided that sleep was an obstacle. So I used to sit up and watch the train of my thoughts. As a result my mind began to discriminate continuously between the eternal and the non-eternal. Then I could sleep no more. I thought within myself, “Am I losing my mind?” I began to pray that I might sleep. But within me was a current of joy, as if someone were saying, “But don’t you want to discriminate like this?”…”(1)

After he became a monk Turiyananda wanted to spend his time living in solitude, meditating intensively, studying the scriptures and visiting holy places. Like a true monk he wanted to depend on God for food and shelter. Keeping this in mind he left the monastery in Calcutta and travelling by foot he went to the Himalayas. On the way he visited many holy places. Thus he spent many years as a wandering monk. If he liked a place and its quite surroundings he would settle there for a few months and spend his time in meditation and study of the scriptures. . ‘During that period,’ he later recalled, ‘my mind always stayed on a high level. There was a constant stream of God consciousness, unbroken like the flow of oil from one vessel to another. I used to get up at dawn, finish my ablutions, and sit for meditation. After meditating for some hours, I started reading the scriptures. Then it was time to go out to collect food, which was done very quickly. Next came some rest, after which I meditated until evening. No other thoughts were allowed to enter the mind. During that period I committed to memory eight of the principal Upanishads, all except the two longer ones. Whenever I found an Upanishadic verse which particularly appealed to me, I used to meditate on it. Oh, what a joy this produced! I cannot describe it…Whenever I concentrated on a verse, I used to get new and fresh interpretations.’(2)

Turiyananda was an ascetic to the extreme yet he was very sympathetic to others, he was an intellectual who had mastered many Indian scriptures in Sanskrit and the Bible but his heart was full of tender devotion. Even though he was brought up in an orthodox Hindu culture yet he had a very modern outlook. One winter when he was in New York, he and a student of his were walking on a street covered with snow. They came across a large pond where they saw boys and girls skating on the ice. The kids were calling and shouting and pursuing each other in great fun. Seeing this Turiyananda remarked to his student, “That’s why you people are so healthy and strong. Look at the girls skating with the boys. What freedom! Wish it were so in my country. So innocent and pure! It is a sight for the gods to behold…”(3)

At Swami Vivekananda’s request Turiyananda came to America to assist him in his work. The first western monk of the Sri Ramakrishna order, Swami Atulananda, says of Turiyananda when he saw him for the first time, “The Indian atmosphere still seemed to hover about him, as he was far from being Americanized. He represented India as the old students pictured her – the land of simplicity, meditation, and spirituality. Gentle, cheerful, meditative, little concerned about the things of this world, Swami Turiyananda made a deep impression on the minds of those who took Vedanta most seriously – not merely as a philosophy to satisfy the intellect alone, but also as a practical guidance in their spiritual life.”(4)

Stories from Turiyananda’s life

As a young boy, when Turiyananda was at school he was always reading and practicing Vedanta. He constantly tried to remember that he was the Atman (soul) and not the body. He would wake up early in the morning around 3.30 A.M. and go to take a bath in the Ganges river that flowed near his home. One day when he was taking his morning bath in the river an event occurred which strengthened him in his developing spiritual ideals. Recounting this incident Turiyananda later said, “…One day I was to bathe as usual and I was in the river. I saw an object floating in the water. It was still dark, so that I could not distinguish it. Some people on the shore, however, recognized the object as a crocodile. They shouted, “Come out quickly! That is a crocodile coming towards you!” Instinctively I rushed to the shore. But as soon as I got out, I thought to myself, “What are you doing? You are repeating day and night, Soham! Soham! I am He! I am He! And now all of a sudden you forget your ideal (you are the soul) and think you are the body! Shame on you!” I thought, Shiva, Shiva! That is true.” And immediately I went back. The crocodile never bothered to come near me. I bathed as usual. But I noticed I was hurrying to get through my bath quickly. Then I said to myself: “No I shall not hurry; I shall take my bath as usual.” And so I did.’(5)

Once while in the Himalayan region called Tihiri-Garhwal, Turiyananda was living in a thatched hut that had a broken door. One night he heard the villagers cry, “Tiger! Tigrt!” He immediately put some bricks behind the door to protect himself. Just then he remembered a passage from the Taittiriya Upanishad that declares that even at the command of Brahman the god of death does his duty like a slave. His awareness of the Atman awakened, and defeated the body idea. He kicked the piles of brick away from the entrance, and meditation. Fortunately, the tiger did not show up.(6)

Once when Turiyananda was wondering in the northern part of India he happened to enter a city called Mathura. In this city of Mathura there happened to be a noble minded rich merchant who took upon himself the task of feeding wandering monks who came to his city. Turiyananda came to know of this merchant and being hungry went to his house hoping to get some good food to eat. He was provided with a nice meal. After Turiyananda had his meal the merchant approached him and asked him, “Will you please tell me how I can develop dispassion?” At this Turiyananda smiled and said, “You are asking me this question. Do you think I would have come to eat here if I really had dispassion?”(7)

References:

1) Swami Turiyananda Life and Teachings, Swami Ritajananda, Pg. 5, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1963.
2) Swami Turiyananda Life and Teachings, Swami Ritajananda, Pg. 47, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1963.
3) With the Swamis in America & India, Sw. Atulananda, Pg. 51, Advaita Ashrama, 1988.
4) With the Swamis in America & India, Sw. Atulananda, Pg. 38, Advaita Ashrama, 1988.
5) Swami Turiyananda Life and Teachings, Swami Ritajananda, Pg. 7, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1963.
6) God lived with them, Sw. Chetananda, Pg. 368, Vedanta Society USA, 1997.
7) Swami Turiyananda Life and Teachings, Swami Ritajananda, Pg. 39, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1963.
8) Everest Aspiration, Sri Chinmoy, Pg. 38, Aum Publication, 1987.

Nivedita – Swami Vivekananda’s most rebellious disciple

The first time Nivedita met Swami Vivekananda was in London in 1895. It was an informal gathering at a private house in a west-end drawing room on a cold Sunday afternoon in November. The Swami was seated, facing a half circle of listeners. Nivedita describes the scene thus: “we were but fifteen or sixteen guests, intimate friends, many of us, and he sat amongst us, in his crimson robe and girdle, as one bringing us news from a far land, with a curious habit of saying now and again “Shiva ! Shiva !” and wearing that look of mingled gentleness and loftiness, that one sees on the faces of those who live much in meditation, that look, perhaps, that Raphael has painted for us, on the brow of the Sistine Child.” (1)

After the meeting most of the guests including Nivedita concluded that what they heard was nothing new. All these things had been said before. Later on Nivedita could not help revising her opinion. She said, “For my own part, however, as I went about the tasks of that week, it dawned on me slowly that it was not only ungenerous, it was also unjust, to dismiss in such fashion the message of a new mind and a strange culture. It occurred to me that though each separate dictum might find its echo or its fellow amongst things already heard or already thought, yet it had never before fallen to my lot to meet with a thinker who in one short hour had been able to express all that I had hitherto regarded as highest and best.” (2) From then on she took every opportunity that came her way, to listen to Vivekananda lecture whenever he was in London.

Even after listening to whole seasons lectures, Nivedita was awed and touched by the beauty of Swami Vivekananda’s thought but “could pass no judgment upon it, much less accept it”. Often she found what Vivekananda said was beyond her comprehension. She said, “…his system (of thought) as a whole, I, for one, viewed with suspicion, as forming only another of those theologies which if a man should begin by accepting, he would surely end by transcending and rejecting. And one shrinks from the pain and humiliation of spirit that such experiences involve.”(3) Yet, by the time Swami Vivekananda left England, she addressed him as “master”. She justified this by saying, “I had recognised the heroic fibre of the man, and desired to make myself the servant of his love for his own people. But it was his character to which I had thus done obeisance. As a religious teacher, I saw that although he had a system of thought to offer, nothing in that system would claim him for a moment, if he found that truth led elsewhere. And to the extent that this recognition implies, I became his disciple. For the rest, I studied his teaching sufficiently to become convinced of its coherence, but never, till I had had experiences that authenticated them, did I inwardly cast in my lot with the final justification of the things he came to say.”(4)

Nivedita came to India in January of 1898. A few weeks later a small group of Swami Vivekananda’s disciples from America arrived. Nivedita and this group of western disciples together began “the study of India, and something also of the home aspects and relationships of the Swami’s own life”. Then in the summer of 1898 Swami Vivekananda took them, along with a few of his Indian brother disciples, on a tour of northern India.

Up until this time Nivedita was skeptical of Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy even though she had accepted him as her “master”. She said, “My relation to our Master at this time can only be described as one of clash and conflict. I can see now how much there was to learn, and how short was the time for learning to be, and the first of lessons doubtless is the destroying of self-sufficiency in the mind of the taught.” (5) So, it was on this trip that Swami Vivekananda’s training began of “his most rebellious disciple”. He constantly rebuked her and attacked her thinking and line of reasoning which were her most cherished possessions. She said, “Suffering is often illogical, and I cannot attempt to justify by reason the degree of unhappiness which I experienced at this time, as I saw the dream of a friendly and beloved leader falling away from me, and the picture of one who would be at least indifferent, and possibly, silently hostile, substituting itself instead.” (6) Even though she was not prepared for this kind of treatment yet she did not retract her own proffered service to the master.

The master’s training of the disciple continued and it seemed there was no end to Nivedita’s suffering. Finally one of the older ladies of the party, feeling that “such intensity of pain inflicted might easily go too far”, interceded with the Swami. Vivekananda silently listened and went away. He returned in the evening and told the old lady, it seems with the simplicity of a child, “You were right. There must be a change. I am going away into the forests to be alone, and when I come back I shall bring peace.” Then as he turned and saw the new moon in the sky he said, “See! the Mohammedans think much of the new moon. Let us also with the new moon begin a new life !” By this time Swami Vivekananda’s “most rebellious disciple” – Nivedita was kneeling before him. He lifted his hand and blessed her as she put it “with silent depths of blessing”. Later recollecting this incident Nivedita writes, “It was assuredly a moment of wonderful sweetness of reconciliation. But such a moment may heal a wound. It cannot restore an illusion that has been broken into fragments. And I have told its story, only that I may touch upon its sequel.. Long, long ago, Sri Ramakrishna had told his disciples that the day would come when his beloved “Noren” (Swami Vivekananda’s pre-monastic name) would manifest his own great gift of bestowing knowledge with a touch. That evening at Almora (a city in northern India where they were camping during that time), I proved the truth of his prophecy. For alone, in meditation, I found myself gazing deep into an Infinite Good, to the recognition of which no egoistic reasoning had led me. I learnt, too, on the physical plane, the simple everyday reality of the experience related in the Hindu books on religious psychology. And I understood, for the first time, that the greatest teachers may destroy in us a personal relation only in order to bestow the Impersonal Vision in its place.” (7)

References:

1) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 6, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.
2) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 13, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.
3) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 15, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.
4) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 16, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.
5) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 136, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.
6) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 137, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.
7) The Master as I saw him, Pg. 139, Nivedita, Longman’s, Green and Co., London, 1910.

“Vivekananda came into the world in an age seething with rank materialism. Spiritual values were at a discount. He held the mighty torch of spirituality high. Exceptional was his clarion call to lead the life of the Spirit. The soul-stirring message of Sri Ramakrishna was embodied in him, in this lion amongst men. And as regards the message of India to the world, “Remember,” declares Vivekananda, “not the Soul for Nature, but Nature for the Soul.””~ Sri Chinmoy

Choosing peace over conflict

be-wise-buy-peace

This is a thought-provoking aphorism on peace [Source] . What can we learn from it?

Peace is the most valuable quality

Without peace, all the material objects in the world will not give joy. It is peace which will make us inwardly rich, yet peace is often the thing the world lacks most.

“This world has everything
Save and except one thing,
Peace,
And this peace has to blossom
From within.”

– Sri Chinmoy [2]

Don’t wait for tomorrow

If something is good to do, now is the best time. If we have a bad habit, now is the best time to break it. Sometimes, we can feel ‘maybe when I am an old man and retired, I will then have the time to give up bad habits and meditate on peace.’ But, if we keep delaying, we may surrender completely to the bad habit and wrong way of living. By the time we are old, we are stuck with our bad habits. If we can see a new approach to life which will bring more peace of mind and happiness, we should choose this path straight away – whilst we still have the enthusiasm and aspiration. To meditate on peace requires determination and sincerity, the sooner we start the better.

How to buy peace?

We can’t buy peace with money. We can only buy peace with our own inner attitude. For example, sometimes we have to give up our pride in order to gain peace in return. If pride comes to the fore, it makes us unwilling to change and we can persist in a wrong course of action. But if we lose the desire to be proved right, then we can gain inner peace. If we live in a state of desire and expectation, we will not experience peace because some desires will always remain unfulfilled and we will feel frustration. This is the price for attaining peace – giving up our desire and pride.

Escalation of conflict or choosing peace

In life we come across situations where we have a choice how to respond. One choice is to respond to an initial confrontation with escalating the conflict. If we have hurt feelings, the response of the mind and vital is invariably to retaliate. If we feel hurt, we subconsciously want to project this back onto others. But, this tit for tat attitude will make peace more distant and harder to achieve.

The other response is to invoke the heart and the quality of peace. Rather than retaliating, the heart can be sympathetic to the struggles of others, and we seek to be the one to let go of the unfortunate situation. This magnanimous attitude is often the best way of bringing the good qualities of others to the fore. If someone else is full of anger, we won’t diminish their anger by getting angry in response. But, if we remain calm and peaceful, they will respond in a better way. Through forgiveness and maintaining our inner peace, their conscience will come to the fore and secretly they will be inspired by our calm attitude.

No price is too great to pay for inner peace.

“No price is too great to pay for inner peace. Peace is the harmonious control of life. It is vibrant with life-energy. It is a power that easily transcends all our worldly knowledge.”

– Sri Chinmoy [3]

Choosing inner peace does not mean sacrificing principles and truth. It means we reject the negative emotions of jealousy and pride, but invoke a real and meaningful quality of peace instead. It means whatever happens in the outer world, we hold onto our inner peace.

This inner peace is more than just intellectual understanding. We have to pray, meditate and serve to gain a real sense of peace. The peace that comes from the heart is a powerful reality that will convince the mind.

Related

Quotes on peace

The secret of inner peace by Sri Chinmoy

Sri Aurobindo on Poetry

“Art can never really find what it seeks or succeed in liberating its soul in the highest perfection of speech unless it transfuses the rhythms of its exquisite moods into a sustained spiritual experience.” ~ Sri Aurobindo

After Sri Aurobindo moved to Pondicherry, he entered upon an intense period of practicing Yoga. He communicated only with a few of his students who looked after his physical needs and he generally did not receive any visitors except on very rare occasions. But almost every day he would sit with a few of his students, in an informal gathering, sometime late in the afternoon or evening. At these meetings the students would ask him questions and he would answer them. They asked him questions from a wide range of topics that included spirituality, politics, World War II, art, poetry, culture, history and medicine.

Once while answering a question on poetry, Sri Aurobindo said, great poetry must have power of beauty, power of vision and power of expression. He went on to say that there are different types of poetry and he mentioned psychic poetry. Then one of his students asked him to give them an instance of psychic poetry. In response, Sri Aurobindo quoted the following four beautiful lines from Shelley’s poetry:

“The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

According to Sri Aurobindo, in the above lines of Shelley, the feeling and the expression are both psychic. In contrast to psychic poetry, Vedic poetry, Sri Aurobindo said, ”is poetry on the plane of intuitional vision. There is rhythm, force and other elements of poetry in it, but the psychic element is not so prominent. It is from a plane much higher than the mental. It moves by vision on the plane of intuition, though there are passages in which you may find the psychic element. It is a wide and calm plane, – it also moves you but not in the same way as the poetry which contains the psychic feeling. It has got its own depth-but psychic poetry differs from it in its depth and feeling.”

At another time while discussing the poetry of Blake and Shakespeare, the question came up as to who was a greater poet. Sri Aurobindo said, ”Shakespeare is superior in one way, Blake in another. Shakespeare is greater because he has a greater poetic power and more creative force, while Blake is more expressive.” Then he was asked what is the difference between “Creative” and “Expressive” and he replied, “”Creative” may be something which gives a picture of life creatively, representing the life-situation of the Spirit. “Expressive” is that which is just the expression of feeling, vision or experience. In “The Hound of Heaven” (Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven) you get a true creative picture. There you have such a picture of the life of a man pursued by God.”

When he was asked why a devotional feeling in a devotional poem cannot be considered “creative”, he clarified, “Because you identify yourself with the feeling and not with the character or man as in the case of Hamlet (Shakespeare’s Hamlet). It must come out as a part of the poet’s personality and the reader identifies himself with the world or personality which the poet has created or the experience which he had. Of course, anything is creative in a general way.”

(Source: Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, A.B. Purani, Sri Aurobindo Society, 1959)

Commenting on Sri Aurobindo’s poetry, K. D. Sethna said, “When he wants to bring home to us some eternal verity from its mysterious abode of light, he speaks in a tone which has in it either a sublime simplicity which renders clear a profound truth by a few striking images, or a direct imaginative force which without needing to bring in abundant colour can create for us a self-sufficient mystical symbol or atmosphere, or else a puissant intuitive luminosity which wears form and name only as a concession to the weakness of human mentality but imparts in a subtle unanalysable manner a sense of some beatific vastitude of ultimate creative Idea.”(1)

“In poetry there is an upward evolution of its powers and at its summit the highest function of sound is to instill in the listener the poet’s experience of a Truth that is behind all things, its significances in themselves beyond word and thought finding expression through an inner silence, and to lift him rapt, spellbound, dazzled into sudden awareness of that wondrous supreme Beauty and Delight which elude normal perception, a high-uplifted Beauty and Delight sustaining magically the cosmic process…If, therefore, the possibilities of the poet of the future are to come to their utmost fruition, his art, whether it flowers forth in the lyric cry or the narrative, in the drama or the epic, should not merely be an instrument of forces which work through him by passing inspirations. It must represent the continuous rhythm of an inner life in which the meaning of the universe shall be unfolded in the individual and the Spirit manifested, with constant integrality, even through the prose of daily intercourse with the world.” ~ Sri Aurobindo(2)

References:

1) Sri Aurobindo the poet, Pg. 29 K. D. Sethna, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1970.
2) Sri Aurobindo the poet, Pg. 39 K. D. Sethna, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1970.

Related

Sri Aurobindo

Basic steps for learning meditation

In many of my articles on self improvement, I often suggest meditation can be an invaluable aid to alleviating many of our daily problems. I don’t look upon meditation just as a problem solver, I meditate because I enjoy the consciousness of meditation. But, if we can gain real peace of mind through meditation, there is no problem that cannot be helped in some way. These a few preliminary steps for learning how to meditate.

meditation

1. Location

Firstly, find a suitable quiet place for meditation. If it is very hard to find somewhere quiet, use some meditative music to drown out background sounds. If possible keep a corner of your room reserved just for meditation; this will help build up a meditative vibration in that particular part.

2. The basics

  • It is important to meditate with a straight back. (If you try meditating whilst lying down, you are more likely to fall asleep, than entering into a high state of meditation.)
  • Don’t meditate after eating a heavy meal – you will feel lethargic and sleepy.
  • If possible shower and wear clean clothes before meditating.
  • Try to switch off. If you try to meditate straight after work, you may be still thinking about the day. Try reading some books on meditation to help make the transition from work to meditation.

Read On…

We will prevail

On April 16, 2007, a student at Virginia Tech, had killed 32 of the university’s students and professors besides himself. The tragedy had plunged the academic community at the university into sorrow and grief. The entire nation was deeply moved by this tragedy. Amidst this morning rose a voice that was strong, powerful and defiant with a touch of rebellion. It was Nikki Giovanni. She was addressing the thousands who had gathered the next day at the memorial service for the shooting victims. She was asked by the president of the university to give a speech at the memorial service. As Nikki Giovanni is a professor at Virginia Tech, she was herself deeply affected by the tragedy. She found it very difficult to write a speech. Instead she composed a poem. In fact it was a poem chant. In her very opening lines she takes the tragedy head on and accepts the reality with courage to ‘stand tall tearlessly’ and with humility ‘bend to cry’. She said,

“We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while.
We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly,
we are brave enough to bend to cry, and
we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.
We are Virginia Tech…”

In the lines that follow she conveys the message to her listeners that even as the tragedy is very personal, yet they cannot afford to indulge in the pleasures of self-pity. And so she tries to connect to the tragedies suffered by other innocent people like them. She said,

“We do not understand this tragedy.
We know we did nothing to deserve it,
but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS,
neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army,
neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory,
neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water…”

In these very powerful lines the poet by embracing the sorrow of others, transcends from the personal to the universal. Even as they grieved, by reaching out to the sorrow of others, Giovanni tapped into the fundamental goodness of humanity that resides deep within every human heart. Some of her closing lines are as follows,

“…We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid.
We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be.
We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities.
We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness…
…We will prevail…”

Many speakers spoke before her including the president of United States. But it was the lone voice of Nikki Giovanni that not only raised the spirits of the students and teachers at Virginia Tech, but also the entire nation. It is these rare voices like Nikki Giovanni who help us rise above hatred and intolerance. They help us to accept the reality around us and embrace our fellow travellers, on our life’s journey, with sympathy and goodwill.

“Our philosophy is the acceptance of life for the transformation of life and also for the manifestation of God’s light here on earth, at God’s choice hour in God’s own way.” ~Sri Chinmoy

Be careful in rushing to judgement

It is easy to make snap judgements based on partial information and first impressions, but these quick judgements can be misplaced. These are a few things to bear in mind.
tree

Who is responsible?

When something goes wrong we often look for somebody to blame. The train is late, so we get angry with the train staff; but the problem may be completely out of their control. We shouldn’t blame someone when they have endeavoured to do their best given the circumstances. We have all been on the other side of the coin – where we have been judged and blamed, despite it being due to factors beyond our control. Sometimes it is those under intense pressure, who most deserve our patience and understanding.

Worst case scenario

A tendency of the human mind is to anticipate the worst. By nature the mind is suspicious, and if something happens we put a negative slant on it; however, there is a danger this negativity can become self-fulfilling. If we expect something bad, it is more likely to manifest. Instead, if we suspend this negative judgement, we often find that things turn out better than we expected. This is why it is important to avoid rushing to a negative judgement.

Judgement leads to conflict

If we are quick to judgement it can make other people defensive and confrontational. If we approach an issue with an open mind and open heart, we help to facilitate a better outcome – in which the other person can modify their approach. Read On…