By: Dinesh Chikkaballapur
Once I was listening to a lecture on the Gita. Suddenly a person sitting next to me pricked me with a needle. I thought it was an unintentional prick. Then I realized he was doing some mischief! So when he leaned towards me to prick again, I leaned away.
‘Aha!’ said this stranger. ‘You don’t like pain. You’re not really enlightened of the Gita. As a devotee of Sai Baba, you should maintain equanimity no matter what. He wouldn’t have any likes or dislikes.’
I told him, ‘Don’t be stupid. There are things that are going to cause problems for my body. It’s going to hurt it and make it unhealthy and do not bring in Sai Baba here as he doesn’t permit mischief’.
Often blinded by our experiences and conditioning, though, that’s exactly what we do: we step on snakes, run into the fire, and allow needles to poke us. Snakes of attachments, the fire of desires, and needles of jealousy and covetousness. They bite, burn, and hurt. We call it suffering and we think that this is the way of life. We mistake our pain for our suffering. We have little control over the former, but the latter is almost entirely in our hands. We can take things in our stride or be tossed into the tide. This choice is in our hands and that is the guiding principle from Lord Sainath.
A man went to a pizzeria and ordered a large whole-wheat pizza with a diet coke.
‘Should I cut it into six slices or ten?’ the owner asked. ‘Ten?’ the man winced. ‘Someone’s trying to lose weight here! Cut it into six!’
It’s the same life; if you want it all to yourself, then, whether you divide it in six or ten, it doesn’t matter. The sooner you realize this, the quicker conflicts will stop bothering you.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Loss is unavoidable, grief isn’t. Death is certain. Life’s uncertainty, unpredictability, even irrationality, make it what it is: worthwhile, a blessing. You can see its attributes as appalling, boring, and cunning or as adventurous, beautiful, and captivating. Your choice. That’s the ABC of life.
As in a game of Scrabble, what letters end up on your rack are not in your hands, but what words you coin and where you place them are a matter of skill and knowledge.
The less ignorant you are in vocabulary, the more chance you have of scoring. The faster you empty your rack, the higher the odds of getting better letters and more options. If you don’t let go of the existing letters or crib about how unfortunate you are, you lose your chance of scoring. Life is no different.
The alphabet is the same, it’s just what words you construct with the letters available to you that make all the difference to what you feel about everything.
With constant remembrance of Sai Maharaj, fill your heart with loving-kindness, your time with noble actions, your mind with good thoughts, and suffering will disappear from your life, like sadness from a content heart. “Acchedyo yam adāhyo yam akledyo śoya eva ca…,” says the Bhagwad Gita. (2.24) Needles can’t prick your soul nor can fire burn it. Water can’t rot it and heat can’t dry it.
And snakes you ask, what about the snakes of attachment? Well, those, a yogi wraps around his neck and yet remains unharmed. Recollect Sri Narasimha Swamiji addressing devotees at Coimbatore in 1943 when a cobra crawled over him or when his right leg was caught by a crocodile at Pushkar Thirth in Ajmer in 1935.
This is the path to lasting peace.
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