How to conquer emotions and base feelings?
Real beauty of the Self!
Anger and lust, the twin enemies!
How strong are the emotions and feelings arising in the mind? Every one of you might have experienced this in day to day life. Emotions force us to commit some mistakes. During emotion, our normal thinking power is hidden and we are tending to act on impulse. Anger is one such vice which often is associated with emotion. But how to control emotions? Yes, it is a difficult task.
1. How to control anger: When anger wells up within oneself, we will be having premonition. First, drink a cup of cool water. Move away from the place which provokes anger. Do not recapulate past events which trigger more of your anger. Take a brisk walk outside for half a mile. Otherwise, lie down in your bed. If possible repeat some chants. Do not retaliate to others accusations. Everybody is prone to mistakes. Hence do not give much importance to criticism. If somebody is really hurt due to your behavior, there is nothing wrong in saying ‘sorry’.
2. Feelings come due to attractions of the senses. It is the mind which always craves to possess some thing or enjoy something. But here comes the clutch. We think that feelings are not that much bad. Feelings arise due to illusory imaginations that something is dear and it will make us happy! Nothing which is external to us can give us real happiness. All happiness arises from the self only. For instance, a dog grabs a piece of bone and bites the piece with great gusto. The bone being strong hurts the gum of the dog and blood oozes. The dog licks the blood, foolishly thinking that the blood comes from the bone. Likewise we too imagine that external things give us happiness but it is only a myth. Hence the stimuli of pleasure from the senses are the pure imagination of every one of us.
3. Regarding the attraction towards the fair sex, there is a fine story told by Saibaba once. Once a young man happened to see a beautiful princess and he was so enamored by her bewitching beauty, he wanted to marry her. He sought her audience. The princess is a highly evolved soul. She could not understand why the young man wants to meet her. Any way she gave permission to the young man to chat with her. When the young man came to the palace, she asked him the reason for his presence there. He bluntly told her that he is so much attached to her beautiful form and hence he wants to marry her. She contemplated for a few seconds and told him to come after a week time. He went away promising to come back after a week. Meanwhile she consumed potent laxatives and started purging. Within two days she became a scarecrow. But she asked the attending maids to carefully preserve the purging in big jar duly covered by air tight covers. After a week, the young man returned with much anticipation. He was summoned in. But he could not reconcile to the fact that a scarecrow was the beautiful princess. He was in utter disgust. The princess told him, “Oh young man! What you perceived as ‘beauty’ is only dirt collected in the jar. Understand that the beauty of physical form is ephemeral. One should turn his vision inward to perceive the Self instead of the decaying body. No doubt, the young man gained profound wisdom and thanked her for the invaluable lesson.
Hence we should never become angry nor should we chase fleeting pleasures of the flesh. Both will lead us to abysmal depth and we won’t be able to retrieve our noble character.
