The Quiet Mind

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Swami Chinmayananda

If there is any art to be mastered in this world, then that is to keep the mind quiet and peaceful. One who has learnt this art has mastered all situations in life.

For a doubting mind, this may appear to be an exaggeration, but the fact remains that it is we who allow the situation to rule over us. To make the point clear, we will discuss a typical scenario which quiet often happens in all our homes in more or less the same fashion:

You are having breakfast with your family. Your daughter knocks over a cup of coffee onto your business shirt would have no control over what has just happened, but what happens next will be determined by how you react !

You curse. You harshly scold your daughter for knocking the cup over. She breaks down in tears. After scolding her you turn to your wife and criticize her for placing the cup too close to the edge of the table. A short verbal battle follows. You storm upstairs and change your shirt. Back downstairs, you find your daughter too busy trying to finish her breakfast and getting ready to go to school. She misses the bus. As your spouse must leave immediately for work, you rush to the car and drive your daughter to school. Because you are late, you drive 80 kmph in a 60 kmph speed limit zone.

After a fifteen minutes delay and throwing away a handsome amount as traffic fine, you arrive at school. Your daughter runs into the building without even saying goodbye. After arriving at office 20 minutes late you realize that you have forgotten your briefcase. Your day started with trouble. As it continues it seems to get worse and worse. You look forward to coming home. And at last when you arrive home, you find a small wedge in your relationship with your wife and daughter.

One wrong step in the morning and the price paid turned out to be so heavy! This entire catastrophe could have been averted if only you had shown a little balance of mind. Instead of scolding your daughter for spilling the coffee, if you had responded thus: "Its OK honey, just need to be more careful next time", the day would have been totally different!

It is our own mind which acts as our enemy creating problems for ourselves and for all others around. As Pujya Gurudev, Swami Chinmayananda puts it well, 'The cultured give happiness wherever they go, and the uncultured, whenever they go!' If we train our mind to see something positive even in the worst of all situations, then we can remain cheerful under all circumstances.

About the author

This article is written by an anonymous writer for the magazine, Vedanta Vani, Chinmaya Mission.