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with his work. At last his wife herself entered his office to say, "The food is getting cold, please come at once! He lifted his face a little and nodded his head and said, "No. Not yet." The lifting and nodding of the head made him lose his balance and the pitcher of oil fell down to the ground, and was broken into smithereens. All the oil was spilled. The businessman started scolding him, “You fool! How you walk! You have laid waste oil worth 10 rupees:" At this, the coolie weepingly said, "Sir, you have only suffered a loss of ten rupees, but my whole career is destroyed!" The businessman started in wonder, "What's that? How is your future destroyed?" And the coolie told him of his plan even as he wept bitterly.
The above story makes it abundantly clear how the network of thought creates sorrow. To the extent that a man is free from thoughts, he may experience joy and peace.
Q. You say that both want and excess make for unrest,
and that equanimity alone leads to tranquillity. What is the nature of this equanimity?
Ans. Equanimity may be defined in different ways.
However in the present context, by equanimity is meant control over memory and restrained imagination'. Useless memories and wild imagination can only be productive of sorrow. Since they are not related to his needs, they cause a lot of trouble to man. Memory and imagination are caused by conflict in the mind, because man is caught in conflicting desires. As long as man abides wholly in himself, he is not tormented by any memory or imagination. Profit and loss, joy and sorrow, life and death, praise and blame, flattery and insult-in the context of these opposites, the doctrine of imagination control assumes great significance. Whether
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