SABN and Anonymous have made some pretty serious points that drive me to recollect and reproduce something very, very poignant while in Russia. What comes to mind is Arthur Ashe's (the first black man to win the Wimbledon) response when he was diagnosed with AIDS (due to a botched blood transfusion):
The world over, 50 million children start playing tennis, 5 million learn to play tennis, 500,000 learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach the grand slam, 50 reach Wimbledon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals, when I was holding a cup I never asked GOD ‘Why me?’. And today in pain I should not be asking GOD ‘Why me?'
His courage is definitely worth more than his Wimbledon cup.
There is a Chinese story which is supposed to be a very, very ancient story often narrated by Ramesh Balsekar, the enlightened Indian philosopher.
ReplyDeleteThere was a wise farmer who had a son and a small plot of land, and they had a horse. The son worked the horse on the field – made some money that was enough for their living. One day the horse ran away so the neighbours came and said what terrible bad luck. So the farmer said maybe. The next day the horse came back and brought four wild horses. The neighbours came and said what good luck. Because first you had one horse, now you have five horses. The farmer said maybe. The third day the son tried to ride one of the wild horses and he fell and broke his leg. The neighbours came again and said what bad luck. The farmer said maybe. The next day the government servants came to take hold of strong farmers for the army. But this boy had a broken leg so they left him. Again the neighbours said this was good luck. The farmer said- maybe!
So, Ramesh says, we can take this story and extrapolate on for rest of the 365 days....
One take away from the story is to understand that life is based on the pair of opposites of pleasure and pain and of Happiness and Unhappiness. What is pleasurable is reality painful and what is unhappiness later turns out to be Happiness and vice versa.
Sri Sri Ravishankar has therefore said- "Pleasure is only an interval between two pains. Pain is inevitable in life- It is Suffering that is optional!"
Ramesh has in his various sessions addressed the issue of Enlightened living- What does enlightenment do to a human that has not done for him before? He says nothing. If one has chronic migrane before, he will have chronic migrane after enlightenment as well. The only difference is that there will be total acceptance of the situation or the pain that one is in and that there will be no suffering.
Many Masters have said this-"True peace of mind is total acceptance of every situation that one experiences and absence of any suffering".