manamenum kurangu

[Guest guest]

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's stories have a quiet way of communicating

ideas

 

In one he talks about the difficulty a man has with his pet monkey The man

complains to a "sadhu" that the monkey doesn't seem to rest anywhere for a

minute It leaps from here to there to there and back again with no

predictability and no logical path It doesn't seem to stop for a minute

All this wild careering about is driving the man crazy The sadhu recommends

that the man buy the monkey a ladder to play on Then the monkey would have

a fixed domain and path This plan works because the monkey is happy simply

climbing up and down the ladder "Similarly", ends the story, "Ramanama is a

useful ladder on which to peg our thoughts and control the mind" This can

be practised anywhere at any time

 

Until we sit down for the first time to "practise meditation", we never

realise what foolish and "outta control" beings we really are There we

were, such "sensible, logical minds", and then we sit down saying "oh, you

want me not to have any thoughts? Sure, I'd like a rest myself", and then

the more we try to focus, the more the most unconnected and idiotic thoughts

chase after each other with astonishing pace Then comes the second phase

where we have more patience with the uninvited thoughts and let them come

and go "as if there are windows in the mind and thoughts can float in and

float away without disturbing us" Then we start being able to focus at

last The moments of quiet are so peacful that we get better and better at

focusing and channeling our thoughts During a series of talks on the

"Amrith Bindu Upanishad", Swami Chidananda of the Chinmaya Mission

recommended asking the question "who am I?" again and again into the

darkness and the space I find that it has the same effect as the person who

mentioned experiencing "seeing Lord Krishna as the entire universe as Arjuna

did and oneself as one speck if it"it makes one very quiet after some

time

 

Good Thoughts vs Bad Thoughts:

(Another story by Sri Ramakrishna)

 

A priest and a vaishya lived across the road from each other Every morning

the priest would come out to pluck tulasi from the plant in his courtyard

for his puja He would watch the goings-on outside the door of the vaishya

and sneer to himself, "h'm, such a bad woman, oh look at how she lives, what

she does, while I on the other hand," etc The vaishya would see the

priest and think "what a holy man, look at how he spends his time in prayer,

I wish I was spending all my time thinking of the Lord" At the end of=

 

their lives, the priest found himself in hell while the woman went to

heaven When the priest asked the Lord for an explanation, he was told their

individual merit was based on what they were thinking about all that

time

 

While the above story seems an extreme, recognizing that actions are empty

if thoughts are elsewhere is useful In this age of (mostly

useless)information and "empty noise" overload, switching off the TV is

another easy escape routeI like to think about Dhruva, and "seeing" a=

 

five-year-old going into the forest and being able to do "dhyanam" is a

powerful and inspiring image

 

"Mun seidha thavappayane, engaL, mukti tharum Madhavanai,

Bhakti seiyya kidaithadhu, mun seidha thavappayane

Ninaithaalum oru sugame, ninaindhu ninaindhu, manam kasindhu,

Kanneer uruga nanaindhaalum oru sugame"

 

Viji Raghunathan