Chitrabhanu Man with Vision

Author(s): Clare Rosenfield
Publisher: Jain Meditation International Centre New York

Page 97

learned to ask not in haste, but out of deep introspection. Each time there would be a pause, a space in which both could ponder, question and answer.
“Now," the Master told him, "take this insight and digest it. Don't rush off to find a counter-answer. See if what I said fits you or not. Answers are tailorings. They must fit your consciousness, your understanding, your quest.”
“What about the Scriptures? Should I study them?” Rup asked.
“No, not yet,” the Master told him. “First you have the experience of your own life.” Rup reflected on the Master's advice.
If I take the Scriptures from thousands of years ago and apply them to the present, it is like putting the clothes of a big muscular man on to a tiny man. I would stumble, because the size would not fit me. So the Scriptures are beautiful utterings. They can give me guidance and inspiration, but they are not coming from my experience. I am on a different dimension. Answer is in living.
Acharya Anand Sagarsuriji told Rup to study his own mind. “Watch its motives, needs, and desires. Find out what you want from your life. This search is always toward the infinite. You have to keep on going further and further, until you realize the ultimate. So take all the temporary answers which come to you and ask yourself, 'Will I be satisfied with these things?' If you are hungry and go on eating snacks, then you won't enjoy the real dinner. So small answers kill your appetite, and you are not in a position to enjoy your reality.”
Rup looked forward eagerly to the day of his initiation or diksha.
Here is a man to whom I can surrender my life and yet he does not ask me to surrender to him, only to be aware of my motives, and to discriminate between my needs and my reality. How loving he is! He does not create distance between himself and others. He has no facade. He lets me see him in all ways, from all directions, in all dimensions. I am convinced through and through, this is a man of love and wisdom. He is able to put his finger on even the small things of everyday
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