:: Article 13

One of the greatest lessons I have learnt in my life is that it pays to remain quiet. Preoccupation has become a disease with most of us. I travel by bus everyday. Many people climb in and out of the bus as I travel to my workplace. It is amazing to see that early in the morning, fresh from their homes, men and women physically present in the bus but mentally so far away. There is a blank look on their faces. They don’t smile, they lack energy. They are outwardly quiet, but you can see it on their faces that they are chattering away internally. It happens to us all the time, doesn’t it?. There is not a single second in a day when we are not thinking. Our bodies are busy with work but our minds are somewhere else. That is why at the end of the day, we are worn out completely. A farmer puts it a thousand times more physical effort than we do, yet at the end of the day he is relaxed. The human brain is never wholly quiet. Frankly, have we had a single moment when we can confidently say that we have been thoughtless. We seem to apparently suffer from a thought tortured brain. No activity can be accomplished efficiently if there is constant interference of thoughts. Swami Chinmayananda used to say “Let your mind remain where your hands are”. In other words, focus on the task at hand and ward of any unnecceasry intrusions. This is obviously easier said than done. But if begin to apply this principle diligently in our lives, we will definitely find that it becomes easier to do this. To learn anything new, we must empty the thought bucket. Now read this beautiful story:

A earnest student kept knocking persistently at the door of a Zen master to learn about enlightenment. The master never allowed him to enter his cottage. The student came again and again. One day, the Master opened the door with a beaming smile on his face and welcomed the student . He made him sit on the chair and started preparing some tea in a vessel. Then he a picked up a cup and started pouring tea into it. The student was watching the master very intently. The cup was full, but the master kept pouring more tea into it. The liquid started overflowing. The student was perturbed. The master showed no signs of stopping. The student couldn’t contain himself any longer and blurted out ” Sir, The cup is full. It cannot contain any more”. At this point, the master halted; and looked benignly at the young boy and said ” Yes, my dear boy, an overflowing cup cannot be filled; so too an overflowing mind cannot absorb enlightenment. Empty your mind first and then come to me”. The student understood the message and payed obeisance to the Guru.

So learn to empty the mind….