A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

Imagine you are a coach and your student is about to run the 100-meter sprint in Olympics. Just when the shot is fired, you start telling your student the truth about how good she is and how you are certain she’ll win and so on. Those words may be true, factual, beneficial, endearing and agreeable but it’s not the right time. It’ll distract her, and keep her from winning the race. Sometimes, you have to tell the truth even if it’s not endearing and agreeable (which is often the case). Even at that time, one must consider the time and place. Your child accompanies you to a birthday party where you see some other kid who scored really well in his exams. If you start lecturing your child in that moment, asking him to take inspiration from this other person, it would fall on deaf ears and do more damage than good.

In that context, truth is not absolute. The nature of truth changes according to circumstances and time. You draw three lines a, b, and c. The line a is the tallest one, it’s the truth. Someone comes along and draws a fourth line, d, making it even taller than a. A statement that was perfectly correct and true before d was drawn is no longer true or factual. The point I’m arriving at is that it’s pivotal to examine the nature of your truth you are about to state. If it’s just a matter of opinion, you may want to hold on until you are absolutely certain that what you are stating is a fact and not your interpretation of a fact.

When Jesus was asked if he was the king of the Jews, he could have negated and his life would have been spared, but he chose to speak the truth. Next only to compassion, truth is the most potent quality of a true saint, a noble human being. Next time you are tempted to tell a lie, just pause for a moment, reflect on it and choose your words carefully. It’ll go a long way in ensuring that your speech, thoughts and actions are in harmony.

All said and done, truth in speech, thoughts and conduct is the most potent way to flood yourself with immense inner strength. Meditation will become a child’s play then. For a truthful person is always calmer and less distracted. When you lead a life of truth, you have very little to be afraid of. It is also the most expensive virtue because the world does not take too kindly when they are told the truth.

Gratitude

The singular most powerful emotion to set everything right in one’s life, no matter what the circumstances maybe, is gratitude. The practice of gratitude helps you to focus on the light in your life rather than worrying about the darkness.

Some eight years ago, before I renounced, there was a cold wave in North India. Several incidents of homeless people dying from the cold were reported. My father asked and inspired me to do my two cents worth. Consequently, a senior manager in my company, who was also a close friend of mine, and I decided to distribute blankets to the needy. We did not want to just give them away to some organization. Instead, we wanted to ensure that they directly went to the hands of those in need. We bought about fifteen dozen blankets. We had an SUV that could stock more than 70 blankets at a time. My friend, his sister, our driver and I got in the vehicle at midnight. We started driving around the high streets of a major city, an industrial town.

The outside temperature was a chilly three degrees centigrade.

The street lights had a thick foggy halo around them. The roads were deserted, even the stray dogs and the cows were in hiding. It was all painfully quiet and cold. As we drove around, we saw there were homeless people lying on the footpaths at different places. Some had wrapped themselves in jute bags, some in flattened cardboard boxes, quite a few were draped in newspapers. Among these were the aged, the young, men and women, children, toddlers and infants. Not even one person was sleeping with their legs fully stretched, all were lying curled up to conserve body heat. In the car the heating was on, we felt guilty for enjoying this little luxury. I had seen things like that earlier, it was the first time however that I paid close attention.

We stepped out of the car and woke some people up to give them new blankets. Some were ecstatic, some cried, some thought we were the police who came to remove them from sleeping at a public place, some thought it was a joke. A few were drunk and could not get up, some wanted more than one blanket. No one asked us for money or other things. They seemed very contented to get a blanket.