Medicine for Anger
I am angry. I am angry with him. But I don’t want to be angry. He has always been a nice well behaved youngster. I gave him money because I had absolute trust in him and because I had some spare cash at the moment. I did not even expect it back. Let it go if it becomes useful to him, I thought. But he had said that he wanted it only for fifteen or twenty days to tide over a delay in collection of his own dues. It is now one month and he has neither turned up nor contacted over phone. May be he is in some difficulty, I don’t know. His mobile phone is dead. And, after he shifted his room the land line is not yet in place. I am getting angry with him more for not contacting me, more for not behaving as I expected him to do, than for not returning the loan. After all, had I not written it off even while I gave it? Yet I am getting more and more angrier. I don’t want to be angry.
Streams of thought about him and the loan persist in my mind and reinforce the anger more and more as I try to ward off the anger. And the anger, nagging and exerting itself, generates more thoughts about him and about the incident. Why can’t the anger subside, writing off the loan from my mind? How can I make another behave as I expected? That would be impossible. I can’t change others. I must change myself. I should not have the anger bothering me. I can not always nurture a resentment or ill will in me if he does not at all repay the loan. Why should feelings of goodwill that got built up in the course of a few years be lost in one incident? Again thoughts persist. It is because once the angry mood is triggered in the mind, it remains for quite some time. It does not go away. Out of control thoughts arising from the mood takes it up making it stronger and stronger.
Suppressing the thoughts does not help so long as the source, the problem, is not resolved.
How to get rid of the mood itself? And thereby, the anger?
The entire thing got abruptly solved and dissolved when he rang up to say that he is coming to see me right now, coolly apologizing for the delay.
All the thoughts, the anger, the resentment, the speculations and anxiety were unnecessary! And they disappeared in a jiffy! Feelings of goodwill reappeared instantly!
But the question still remains, how to get rid of anger?
Will some medicine help?
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
restful mind
Restful mind:
Sometimes the mind seems to be incapable of being calm and quiet – still. There is always a lurking apprehension, restlessness, as if waiting for something, or something is impending to happen. There is a curiosity to probe what it is. Is it a fear of something unpalatable happening, or just the result of physical irritation, discomfort, uneasiness?
Can the mind be still and quiet in spite of the disturbances, irritation or apprehension arising from the body? There seems no point in waiting for these things to subside or to be subdued and eliminated.
Through all of them the mind has to be at rest.
Sometimes the mind seems to be incapable of being calm and quiet – still. There is always a lurking apprehension, restlessness, as if waiting for something, or something is impending to happen. There is a curiosity to probe what it is. Is it a fear of something unpalatable happening, or just the result of physical irritation, discomfort, uneasiness?
Can the mind be still and quiet in spite of the disturbances, irritation or apprehension arising from the body? There seems no point in waiting for these things to subside or to be subdued and eliminated.
Through all of them the mind has to be at rest.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Mind
When I read about the mind in any book or magazine the meaning of the word mind confuses me? Is it the running thoughts, the storehouse of sense impressions, the memory, the vacuumized brain, or merely the space meant for thought? Or is it all these put together? If there are no thoughts can it be still called the mind? The word is loosely used with no precise meaning conveyed, I feel.
The mind is perhaps the storehouse of memory from which no single item or piece of memory has yet arisen to become a thought. Thoughts are therefore different from mind, but part of the mind
The mind is perhaps the storehouse of memory from which no single item or piece of memory has yet arisen to become a thought. Thoughts are therefore different from mind, but part of the mind
Thursday, July 3, 2008
looking at myself
Looking at myself:
“In the smile of the flower that blooms there dwells God; in the cool breeze that caresses there dwells God; In the river that flows quietly, in the grandeur of the mountain, in the trees and the sky, there is God; We pray to thee, Oh, Lord!”
This is a rough translation of the prayer I heard coming through the mike in the voice of a child at the start of to-day’s morning function at our club. It was just part of a silly ritual. On arrival there I had been feeling that the whole atmosphere there of the anniversary festivity was silly, sham, superficial. How sad for an organization in which I am a member!
At that moment of sadness and self-pity it suddenly dawned on me that Man invariably prays stupidly not knowing, not apprehending, what is God or even knowing whether there is actually a god as presumed. Poor Man! He can never understand the secret of Life! And he does not know that he cannot know. And yet he prays, - just because he does not know.
Next day, I saw myself in the video recording of the Anniversary. I felt sad seeing that old man struggling to reach the mike to say a few words (was he lisping!) and chant a few lines of Bhagavad Geetha. That was me! And is that the real me, the physical me now? But I never felt that bad while at it on the stage! Seeing yourself in reality is a strange experience! Naturally on the mental and spiritual side also the image of myself would need revision!
In fact I had not actually looked at myself, seen myself, or perceived myself or felt myself in its real sense. So far, my impression of myself was a built up imagination. I have started only now to look, to see, and to feel myself.
This looking is not the type of meditation in which at the beginning you see or feel thoughts entering your mind and disappearing, slowly making the mind calm, quiet, and finally emptying it. This is different. It is the opposite. I see or feel the thoughts, understand them, understand their relationships, how they are part of me, how they constitute me, how they behave, wherefrom they emerge, study their unique character in relation to what is ‘me’ and what is not ‘me’, and what is their common peculiarity, if any.
My thoughts are unique. My body is unique. Its genes are differently constituted from those of all other human beings. Therefore its functioning has its own peculiarities.
My body and mind are what they are to-day because of certain qualities and defects inherent from birth, and on which the present system of the life of mine has been built up brick by brick.
I have been breathing for nearly all through eighty-one years. But how many times have I actually noticed or paid attention to the peculiarities of my breathing, or was really conscious of the rhythm of my breathing? Only for a small fraction of the long time. Perhaps when I had difficulties with it. That was just for avoiding discomforts. Similarly for the beating of my heart. They do their work, whether I am conscious of them or not. I digest my food whether I am aware of it or not. I am not conscious of umpteen other functions of the organs of my body, most of which are highly complicated. I am in fact aware of only an incredibly small number of the infinite actions that my body performs every moment. But now I understand that I could have been aware of very many more functions of the body and mind had I been more attentive to them.
Understanding one’s instinctive and spontaneous behavior with the outside world, or noticing the pains, irritations, and discomforts of the body, is not what is meant by knowing oneself. Neither is it identifying and recognizing a self or ‘I’ within one’s mind, eliminating or subduing the thought processes.
It could be only the complete acceptance of all of one’s thoughts, all of one’s emotions, all of one’s irritations and discomforts of the body and mind, so that one is free of them, and free to use them or discard them. Use for what? Just to pull on with this life as long as it lasts with minimum discomfort. Greater things, if any, could be bye-products.
“In the smile of the flower that blooms there dwells God; in the cool breeze that caresses there dwells God; In the river that flows quietly, in the grandeur of the mountain, in the trees and the sky, there is God; We pray to thee, Oh, Lord!”
This is a rough translation of the prayer I heard coming through the mike in the voice of a child at the start of to-day’s morning function at our club. It was just part of a silly ritual. On arrival there I had been feeling that the whole atmosphere there of the anniversary festivity was silly, sham, superficial. How sad for an organization in which I am a member!
At that moment of sadness and self-pity it suddenly dawned on me that Man invariably prays stupidly not knowing, not apprehending, what is God or even knowing whether there is actually a god as presumed. Poor Man! He can never understand the secret of Life! And he does not know that he cannot know. And yet he prays, - just because he does not know.
Next day, I saw myself in the video recording of the Anniversary. I felt sad seeing that old man struggling to reach the mike to say a few words (was he lisping!) and chant a few lines of Bhagavad Geetha. That was me! And is that the real me, the physical me now? But I never felt that bad while at it on the stage! Seeing yourself in reality is a strange experience! Naturally on the mental and spiritual side also the image of myself would need revision!
In fact I had not actually looked at myself, seen myself, or perceived myself or felt myself in its real sense. So far, my impression of myself was a built up imagination. I have started only now to look, to see, and to feel myself.
This looking is not the type of meditation in which at the beginning you see or feel thoughts entering your mind and disappearing, slowly making the mind calm, quiet, and finally emptying it. This is different. It is the opposite. I see or feel the thoughts, understand them, understand their relationships, how they are part of me, how they constitute me, how they behave, wherefrom they emerge, study their unique character in relation to what is ‘me’ and what is not ‘me’, and what is their common peculiarity, if any.
My thoughts are unique. My body is unique. Its genes are differently constituted from those of all other human beings. Therefore its functioning has its own peculiarities.
My body and mind are what they are to-day because of certain qualities and defects inherent from birth, and on which the present system of the life of mine has been built up brick by brick.
I have been breathing for nearly all through eighty-one years. But how many times have I actually noticed or paid attention to the peculiarities of my breathing, or was really conscious of the rhythm of my breathing? Only for a small fraction of the long time. Perhaps when I had difficulties with it. That was just for avoiding discomforts. Similarly for the beating of my heart. They do their work, whether I am conscious of them or not. I digest my food whether I am aware of it or not. I am not conscious of umpteen other functions of the organs of my body, most of which are highly complicated. I am in fact aware of only an incredibly small number of the infinite actions that my body performs every moment. But now I understand that I could have been aware of very many more functions of the body and mind had I been more attentive to them.
Understanding one’s instinctive and spontaneous behavior with the outside world, or noticing the pains, irritations, and discomforts of the body, is not what is meant by knowing oneself. Neither is it identifying and recognizing a self or ‘I’ within one’s mind, eliminating or subduing the thought processes.
It could be only the complete acceptance of all of one’s thoughts, all of one’s emotions, all of one’s irritations and discomforts of the body and mind, so that one is free of them, and free to use them or discard them. Use for what? Just to pull on with this life as long as it lasts with minimum discomfort. Greater things, if any, could be bye-products.
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