Art of Positive Thinking

SR No.: 006586
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Health Harmoney
Publication Year: 2010
Total Pages: 246
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 11 MB

Page 221

206
THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING
cannot rescue a conditioned entity. When a man hankers after a thing or a person, he stands imprisoned. Until he acquires the thing he longs for, he cannot be at rest. He dreams of it night and day, he would not even shirk from stealing it to satisfy his longing. Likewise he becomes a blind follower of the person he is fascinated by. Or a particular idea might absorb him quite, to the exclusion of everything else.
One of the aims in the practice of dhyana (meditation) is to directly experience the unconditioned state - never to be influenced by any person or thing, but maintain one's independence, not to become a victim of circumstance. Preksha (perception) can take us there. He who practises preksha reaches out to the core of the matter, and his mind is cleansed of all impressions. On the other hand, to be caught in superficies is to be swept by the flow of circumstance. And a man often goes by appearance. He does not probe any deeper than the surface. And this often results in his committing a grievous wrong.
A man told the villagers, "I saw some Jain munis drinking water in the canal." The villagers were shocked. A Jain muni drinking unrefined water of the canal! It was against the Jain traditions. On reaching the village, the munis found no welcome: instead strange looks met them. Nobody came near them. The munis wondered as to what had happened. There stood the devotees, but no one bade them welcome, nobody greeted them. The villagers were behaving
if they no longer recognised the munis as their preceptors. Nobody came to the place where the Jain munis stayed, to hear the discourses. On being questioned, an old devotee explained, "Sirs, you have been guilty of gross misconduct! The village was not far. And yet you could not contain your thirst even for a little while and instead drank the impure water from the canal. Now in the face of such intemperate conduct, do you really expect people to flock to you?" The monks said, "We never took water from the canal!" Further enquiry revealed that the man who had spread the rumour about the Jain munis drinking water from the canal, had heard about it from someone else and that someone else had heard of it from still another person, and so on and so forth. Ultimately they reached the man who had originally witnessed the fact. On being confronted, he said, "With my own eyes I saw the Jain monks sitting in the canal and drinking water." A senior monk immediately got to the root of the matter and said, "O devotees, you ought to have enquired out as to whether there was any water in the canal or not The canal was absolutely dry. We had a supply of drinking water with us. We only sat on the canal bed and drank water there. There is a world of difference between drinking water in the canal and drinking water from the canal."