Couldn't help sharing this one
:
Achieving peace of mind is a lovely way of describing
the meaning of life. It is something that everyone aspires to.
However, peace of mind is often like the pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow- it tends to be elusive for most people. I would
like you to reflect on the times when you were the happiest. You would
probably find that your happiest times were when you experienced a
deep sense of contentment or peace of mind. But when you reflect on
these experiences, you realise they didn't occur because everything
around you was perfect. On the contrary you realized that peace
of
mind occurred in spite of your surroundings not being perfect in spite
of difficulties problems and imperfections of life.
That
is my first important point. Don't think peace of mind only comes once
you have fixed up all your problems and finished all your business.
All your worrying, All your striving and struggling, has it ever got
you where you really wanted to be? You can't control the world and
change it the way you would like it. Therefore you can only find peace
of mind and achieve the meaning of life by embracing the imperfections
of life. How do you do that?
By knowing that imperfection is the nature of the world. So
make peace with imperfection. Another thing you can't change is the
past and yet lingering on the past, people worry about and feel guilty
and angry about it but since you can't change it the only wise thing
to do is to make peace with it. But how do you do that when there is
so much unfinished business? You make it finished.
One
of my favorite stories is about the abbot who was building the main
hall for his monastery. It takes a lot of time and effort to make such
a big building, and the building work was still in progress when the
time came for annual rains retreat. The abbot told the builders to go
home and come back in 3 months. A few days later, A visitor came to
the temple and asked when the hall was going to be finished the abbot
replied '' It is finished '' the visitor was quite stunned and said ''
What do you mean it is finished? There is no roof are you going to
leave it like that? There is no glass in the windows there are pieces
of wood and cement bags all over the floor''. To which the abbot
unforgettably replied: "What is done is finished."
What
a beautiful response that was. It is the only way to find peace in
life. If you want all your building work to be finished before you
stop to find peace, All your jobs out of the way, All your letters and
emails replied to, You will never find peace of mind because there is
always more to be done. As i have often said the only place in our
modern societies where you find people resting in peace is in the
cemeteries, but then it's too late to enjoy it. So i say RIP now while
you can still enjoy it. I'm making the observation that you only find
peace when you realize that what's done is finished. The past is gone;
let it go. One of the signs of true spirituality- of whatever
tradition- is forgiveness and letting go. I was once asked how many
times you should forgive, and I replied, ''Always one more time," that
is, forever.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is
one of the most beautiful acts that humans are capable of.
In south
Africa, Just after apartheid had been dismantled and Nelson Mandela
had been made president, instead of seeking revenge, instead of
punishing all those people who people who punished him, Nelson Mandela
and Desmond Tutu established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Anybody who had done a crime was able to go this commission and
confess what they'd done. As long as they were truthful, no matter how
horrendous their crimes they would be given amnesty and forgiveness.
It was a brilliant way of dealing with the past. One of the moving
events of that commission was a policeman recounting, in the presence
of the man's widow, how he had tortured and killed her husband, a
black African activist from the ANC. Can you imagine this scene?
There was a woman whose husband had disappeared, probably in the
middle of the night, and she suspected what had happened, But didn't
know the true story. Now she was facing a man who was confessing in
detail how he had tortured and killed her husband, the father of her
children, the man she loved. Apparently this white police officer was
shaking and trembling as he recounted the details of what had
happened. At the end of her testimony the widow rose from her seat and
went towards him. The guards were supposed to stop her but they froze.
She went up to him put her big black arms around him and said "I
forgive you."
Not just the two of them wept, but apparently the
whole room.
This sort of beautiful act is one of true
spirituality. Both the victim and the perpetrator would move on and
become better people. They would learn real compassion, gain real
wisdom, and find a real way of moving forward. Now if that woman could
forgive the murderer of the man she loved, then each one of us- if we
really put our minds to it - is capable of forgiving
anything.
I was once counselling a woman who was dying
of cancer. I asked her what was the worst thing she'd ever done, an
act she might carry to her grave and feel terrible about. She told me
she had kissed a man who was not her husband. I said " If that's the
worst thing you've done, you lived a pretty good life." When she saw
my reaction she realized for the first time that it wasn't all that
bad. To me it seemed like a small thing, but she had been eaten up
inside. It was such a release for her to tell someone.
When you keep things to yourself even the smallest things can become
huge.
When you acknowledge them, especially if you tell a good
friend, you can see that they're no big deal and you can let them go.
The way to forgiveness is to realize that you're worth forgiving and
so is the other person. That realization is step number one. That
black woman in South Africa saw something in that policeman who had
killed her husband, something she could respect something worth
saving, so she forgave. Remember there's no such thing as a murderer;
no such thing as a thief; only a person who has stolen ; no such thing
as a cheat, only a person who has stolen. If you understand that, you
understand why forgiveness is possible: there's something more to any
person than the bad acts. And that's true of each of one of you. No
matter what you've done, there's always something inside of you that
is worthy of forgiveness.
Worrying about the
future
Another thing which stops inner peace is worrying
about the future. People often think they need to worry about global
warming, the credit crunch, the wars, the natural disasters, AIDS, and
the cancers. But it's only worthwhile thinking about things you can do
something about. IF you can't do anything why worry? In addition,you
can't predict the future; It's totally uncertain. On one
occasion when i was just a school kid my mother told me i was going to
the dentist the following morning. I told my mum " Mummy don't send me
to the dentist; you don't love me; you're sending me to the torturer."
But try as I might, I couldn't get off it. When I went to bed that
night, I was worried and didn't sleep well. The following morning my
mother had to drag me to the dentist, and I was screaming and crying.
But I eventually got to the surgery, my appointment had been
cancelled. All that worry, all that crying for no reason. That was a
very important experience for me. I learnt there's no point worrying
about the future when you don't know what’s going to happen. Life is
completely unpredictable. When you understand that, you can have peace
of mind in the present moment.
You can have peace of
mind even when you're dying. Why not? No more worries about taxes,
global warming or anything else. Because you're soon about to depart,
The problem of the word become irrelevant. When there are no problems,
you become peaceful. And because you never know how much time you've
got left you might as well be peaceful now. This was Ajahn Chah's
great teaching to me when I was sick in hospital. He came to visit me
and gave me the sort of teaching you remember for the rest of your
life. He told me " Brahmavamso you're either going to get better or
you're going to die."
That really didn't hurt at first because it wasn't what I
had expected. It wasn't the usual bedside manner of your best friend.
But when I started to think about it, I realized that it meant the
sickness wasn't going to last. That was such a relief. Sometimes you
meet people who have understood this; They are dying and supposedly in
agony, but they still tell jokes. They're happy and
peaceful.
You must also make peace with whatever you
have to do in life, with your duties and responsibilities. Peace of
mind is not achieved by always trying to do what you like. On the
contrary, you find the peace of mind by making peace with whatever you
are called to do. Whatever your role, whatever your duties you can
always have fun, enjoy it, put happiness into it and make peace with
it. You can make peace and have fun with anything,
anywhere.
Peace of mind is not found by searching for a deep
cave, in a perfect monastery; in a wonderful place high in the
Himalayan Mountains. If you're looking for peace that way, you are
looking for what Ajahn Chah called a tortoise with a moustache. People
look for the impossible and of course they can't find it. There is no
such thing as a tortoise with a moustache.
You find real
peace of mind by accepting your life as you have it now, even in the
midst of great tragedy. What a wonderful thing that is. How do you
find this peace? Let go of all the past and guilt, By forgiving don't
worry about the future, and learn to appreciate the moment. Do your
duty and put the fun into whatever you have to do.
Peace
of mind is as free as the air: Drink it, enjoy it, and take it with
you. It's always there if only look in the right place.
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