Golden Steps To Salvation

Author(s): Padmasagarsuri
Publisher: Arunoday Foundation

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about the way in which his mental peace was often affected by anger and asked him to suggest a method to check his anger. The friend said to the Professor, "You buy one hundred envelopes and give them to your servant. Tell him to place one envelope before you whenever you get angry." "The Professor did so. According to his instruction his servant placed before him an empty envelope whenever he got angry. On seeing the envelope, the chain of his thoughts and feelings would take a different direction. He would begin thinking about anger itself. He would think thus, "I am a short-tempered man. I get angry now and then. Anger is a vice. I am a teacher. I am teaching others to discard vices like anger. Therefore, I must first control my anger." When he thought thus his anger would abate and he would recover his calmness. Formerly, he used to get angry about ten times a day but now the number came down and sometime later he never got angry. His habit of getting angry disappeared and he became an absolutely sweet tempered person by the time about sixty envelopes had been placed before him by his servant.
Was there any magic in the envelope? No. The envelopes merely served to make him thoughtful and reflective. The entire miracle was wrought by thoughtfulness. A thoughtful and reflective man never becomes a prey to passions. Anger appears when there is some provocation but if anger is habitual it appears even without any external provocation. On the contrary, we can understand from the example of saint Ekanath that if a man is tolerant even a thousand provocations cannot make him angry. He remains calm and peaceful but such people are very rare. A poet says:
"Countless are the people that get angry without provocation. Those who get angry on account of provocation are countable (of limited number) but the number of people who do not get angry even if there is any provocation is very small. Such people may be five or six in the whole world."