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Cultured people who consider extending good hospitality to the guests as a virtuous duty, would welcome guests. But if they are not too happy with the guests, they would opt for another route, i.e. ignoring them.
When in pain, by remaining engrossed in reading spiritual books, chanting the mantras (jaap) or listening to devotional songs and prayers, the mind can be given a new food for thought and a new direction.
In one of the suburbs of Mumbai, the alertness and solidarity shown by one family in helping a child maintain his composure, has provided an ideal in this direction. This child who was merely 12 years old, was suffering from cancer. For the past two years he was suffering from this terrible disease. As it is, cancer evokes pity and that too when a child was affected by this deadly disease, the entire family was grief-stricken. The child was experiencing a lot of discomfort amidst the unbearable pain that he was suffering from. Everybody in the family was convinced that death was now inevitable.
But, due to the child's good fortune, there was one person in this house, who even in these moments of crisis, wanted to handle this problem with a determination that was salutary. That person was the child's mother. She assembled all the family members one night and said "we accept that we cannot stop death, but the opportunity to let him have a peaceful death is still alive. Let us do something whereby we can make the human birth worth-while for this child who is born in our family".
From the next day, as if everyone had made it a goal of their
ODOS
MIND YOUR mind : 55
