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A Path of Right Living For Peace of Mind
A Path of Right Living For Peace of Mind
Swami Sivananda
(Translated from Tamil)
Swami Sivananda
Since your struggles are predominantly self-created, they could also be avoided.
We will see the how of it – do you often interfere in others’ matter? They may be wrong.
But, why would you be distracted about it? Do not talk low of others or anything. God
has not given you the authority to judge others. Each one behaves according to one’s own
wish. It is because the God who works in them alone initiated them to do as such. To
safeguard your peace, focusing upon your own work alone is enough and such is an ideal
rule.
Lowly talking?
I repeat saying that you do your own work. Do not speak low of anybody or
anything. Speaking lowly is equivalent to chiding. Whatever happens it happens by the
will of God. Nothing happens without the blessing of God. If anything did happen, it
could be good or bad in your perception. It is meant that it is given permission by God as
such. If you criticize that, it means you are critical of God’s wish, God’s great wisdom
and God’s judges. Avoid doing it. Peace will reach you.
Do not hold any feelings of enmity in your heart toward those who chide or
distress you. If you do so, it is far worse than a frank expression of anger. It is a mental
form of cancer. Do not encourage enmity. Forget and forgive. Such is not just a
proverbial goal. It is the only path for safeguarding your peace. Encouraging enmity
internally means producing evil within oneself. You will lose sleep. You are poisoning
your blood. Your blood pressure and heart rate will increase. You were blamed,
humiliated at a period in the past. It was a happening that concluded in the past. It is spilt
milk. Why do you expand on that shame or blame of the past by thinking it over again
and again? Why do you punch and punch to injure again the healing wounds of enmity
and hatred? Is this not foolishness? It is inappropriate to waste time and life in such
hardly significant matters. Give up this bad habit. Focusing heartily on one work that you
like, is the best thing to do.
If you engage with vigor in a work that you like or in a hobby, you will gain
immense peace. You will then gain such satisfaction as through achieving one thing and
performing one thing. Think about the proverb that man cannot just live on food alone.
If you think that peaceful heart is important than money, you would voluntarily take up a
work that that pays less and provides peace rather than a work that pays more but that
you like to do little.
Why should we sweat for respect from others? Instead of such expectations,
develop the desire for blessings from God and the well wishes of great people of wisdom.
Such doings are worthy and worth the effort.
How valuable is public opinion?
Do not give much importance for public opinion. By and large the opinions of the
public are fault. Give importance for those such as codes of conduct, ethics, maxims of
the holy texts and, opinions of thinkers and wise men. You will never fall from life.
Relying upon others even for basic needs is the main reason for one’s loss of
peace. paradeenam pranasangadam (Sanskrit for: Depending on others only begets
suffering). Freedom gives happiness. So try to be self-reliant. Attempt it as much as
possible.
If you attempt it whole-heartedly, you will discover that you can be self-reliant in
various fields. Wash your own clothes. Clean your own room. Cook your own meals.
Type your own letters. It is not that you have to do all these everyday. When you are in a
helpless situation, these modest skills will be of great help to you.
Follow proper timings for meditation. Meditation calms the mind. It creates
emptiness in the state of the mind. Even if you meditate for one hour the impression that
has been created in the mind through the meditation will sustain for the remaining
twenty-three hours. The mind will not be distracted as before. Increase the period of your
meditation step by step. Because in doing meditation it increases the various talents in
you and gives you the ability to accomplish work in less time.
Useful work
Be ever engaged in some work that are useful and yields virtue. Do not waste time
hurrying between wondering whether to do this or that. For the useless mental struggle
will lead you to waste days, weeks, months, perhaps even years of doing nothing. Do not
engage in too much of planning. It is God alone who plans. Engage continuously in doing
something that is good. Let there be no pause when engaged in your work of creating
purposefully. Even a few careless seconds in life can take you down. Time is life.
Safeguard your time preciously and spend it in a very useful way.
Even if you rest physically, do not keep your mind void. Engage yourself in japa
(repeating God’s name), mental prayer and reading useful books. All troubles originate in
the mind. Harsh words and bad deeds arise in the mind alone. Hence keep clear this state
of origin. The river that is your life will flow purely, like a stone as transparent and pure.
Obstructions come as a trial on the person’s confidence, strength and purity of the
mind. Whenever your determination, to do something increase so do the opposing forces
that increases in its strength. Do not lose heart toward facing it. Do not give in to it.
Trust in God and you to overcome those challenges for without facing trials and
tribulations one cannot succeed, in any field of work. Such it is, like the ridiculousness of
wishing for acquiring a Degree without taking up entrance test.
It was a big city. It was evening. Darkness was setting in. I had left for a walk in
the evening. There was a quiet place and a lady came by my side and she said: brother, I
am terrified. I realized her situation instantaneously. A rickshaw man had followed her
into that isolated place. Becoming terrified, she did not know where to go and lost her
way home. I encouraged her giving her courage. Within a while, we both searched for the
way to her home. We discovered that her house was just one furlong far from where we
stood.
I accompanied for her to reach her house and left on my way. It was only a small
help that I did. I did not have to lose anything for it. But how fulfilled and happy I was
for that! When I think about it even now, it gives me peace of mind. One can help another
in many ways without any expense or with as little expense. Required: a pure heart only.
You have to do this again and again whenever your mind tempts you to follow the
ways of worldly people.
Keep away from all kind of temptations. Do not go to places that give rise to
temptations. For then you will have to struggle to avoid the temptation. It would exhaust
your will power unnecessarily. Even if you succeed in withstanding the temptation, it
would leave an impression of desire in you. It is a desire or a wish, that tempts the mind
to distract itself.
Lesser needs – fulfilled living
Do not wander like a beggar would from having added upon your needs. Instead
reduce upon your needs and thereafter live like a king would. For an instance, it is
needless to go shopping and to look for variety of clothes when the required clothing is
available at home. In the same way, if you can afford you would buy unnecessary goods.
Or even if you cannot afford, you would worry thinking that you are unable to afford
something about you do not possess.
Peace of mind and attachment to objects are contradictory to each other. They do
not go together. So choose the objects that you only need. Reduce your needs as much as
you can, depending upon your general outer purposes. For when your desires and needs
become as less as possible, inner peace becomes more. Possession of objects begets
sorrow. If you think about this truth, it becomes clear. It does not require any explanation.
As such instead of owning a car, use a taxi. It is not below one’s dignity to live in a rented
house than to live in a house of your own. If one contemplates one can understand that
one cannot permanently own even a single ground in this earth. So when one buys a
home it means that one pays off the rent for an entire period as fifty or sixty years.
Realize that without the grace of God one cannot buy even a piece of bread nor can one
sell it off.
It is required to live through trust, toward others. Be kind to the humble also.
Follow selflessness. Donate money, things or even a smile. Follow dispassion. Develop
devotion. Such are those qualities that one cannot gain within a single day. If you wish
for those qualities to become a natural, inseparable and important part of your life, it has
to be practiced a little after a little everyday.
Is sowing seeds of misery good?
If you hate another, if you torture another, if you chide your servants, if you
trouble your children, if you treat disrespectfully your wife at home and your subordinate
at office, if you cheat people through business – if you engage in more such actions as
these and at the same time expect peace of mind, it becomes an impossible expectation.
Moreover you become unworthy of attaining any peace. For one who destroys the peace
of mind of another is not worthy of desiring inner peace for one’s own self. So how
would you act from now on?
Genuine spiritual growth alone can bring about inner peace. Spiritual growth is
the path of the internal world. Living spiritually means turning the mind inward so as to
know the secret of relationship between us, and the universe. Internal growth as such is
greatly encouraged by external life. In the same manner, internal growth is disrupted by
the drawbacks in the external life.
When you are completely exhausted mentally and given up hope, turn your
attention toward our holy texts, which are many. Or read the excellent books of the saints.
Or perhaps take a leave of month for undertaking a pilgrimage. Or visit a holy place and
spend a fortnight or stay there for a month. Spend your time in prayer, japa, singing
God’s songs, meditation and long walks. These are the excellent ways, to set right your
scattered mind and body and to bring renewed strength and happiness.
Some miscalculate that through drinking alcohol and other ways of being misled
will enable them to forgo their worries. Such is that is not possible at all. Their choices
are bad medicine that is worse than the sickness itself. Taking pills do not solve problems.
On the contrary it creates in you weakness of the mind, so much that you cannot face the
reality of the situation.
In the same manner, the act of suicide is an act of extreme foolishness. If you
choose that, you will turn to the state of the devil – a state of greater torture than
remaining in the state of human being.
If you have set up a proper goal yourself, begin by being true to yourself. Bring
about more and more of the integration between your thought, word and deed.
Do what you say. Abandon all pretences. Wipe out all pretences from your life.
Pretence is the most significant enemy to inner peace.
Whose friendship?
Accustom yourself to only one or two friends who are trustworthy. Do not
increase your habit of friendships. Do not become too close to anyone. Getting too close
creates contempt, damage feelings and spoil inner peace.
Speak only for a reason. Avoid speaking unnecessarily. Measure your speech.
Even words that are pure and directed to good are misunderstood at certain times creating
breakups. Except when asked, do not advice anyone about anything and let us be engaged
in doing our own work.
Do not argue
Do not engage in arguing. Do not ever engage in reasoning. Do you wish to win
arguments? If so, it will not give you any kind of useful results. It will increase your
pride. It will hurt others. It will destroy friendships.
Let someone else stand for his rights. There are incorrigible big fools and extreme
idiots upon this world who cannot be made to see justice. Do not waste away your time
and energy in their matters. It is only exhaustion that will be left for you and growing of
enmity. Do we need this?
If fooled by expectations…
Do not expect anything. Because expectations creates tension and the sense of
being cheated. For instance, you wait for your postman everyday. Finally however, he
does not bring the letter, which you expected from your friend and your sadness is then
unbounded. What is the purpose of such an anxiety of the mind? When there are no
expectations, there are also no experiences of feeling fooled. According to your destiny of
whether to experience joy or undergo suffering, one has to live through them as such.
None can increase nor decrease the measure either of your happiness or your
miseries.
Knowing this fully well, what is the purpose of spending your time and energy in
worrying? Forget your past. You do not have to think about your future. Live in the
present. Fulfill your responsibilities, using your talent fully well and according to how
they appear to you. There is a God to take care of the results. And we do not have to
worry.
What is the use of worrying?
“I am not worried about what is happening to me. But I am only worried for
others”, so do some say. People who say this fool themselves for saying so is another
form of ignorance. Do not worry about your son’s foolishness or your daughter eloping
with some man.
Do your best to reduce sorrow in your life in every way. But do not engage in
worrying even a bit. Each individual is ruled by his own past life deeds [let the intellects
of the world say whatever they may contrary to this]. No one can change the destiny of
another. When a person ‘A’ either helps or troubles a person ‘K’, it is God who is the doer
through ‘A’ – it is not ‘A’ who engages in the doing [it is the past life deed of the person
‘K’ to be in a such a situation]. If you understand this for a second, you will not worry
about others or yourself. The act of worrying only exhausts energy and wastes time. One
who worries is one who shows his ignorance about spiritual principles.
See God in everything. Realize the spiritual oneness of all and everything. You are
not different from others in creation. God is the other name for the surprising philosophy
of life within you. Call it either Life, or call it Realization, or call it the state of Being,
this surprising philosophy is filled everywhere and exists always. It has no cause of
action. Be happy. Think, speak and act as if to make the God in you proud. Avoid the
ideals of lowbred man of vulgarity, abusiveness, cheating and selfishness. Realize the
spiritual nature of oneness in all. You will make quick progress spiritually. All of your
desire for inner peace will happen within you.
Prayer is important!
Pray for two minutes every morning when you wake up from bed. You may spend
this time for the One who created you, can you not? “God, however that You may wish to
fulfill your desire for today, may You use me so. Making myself into nothing, I surrender
myself totally in your hands.”
Several years back I heard a song (in the Hindi language) in ‘All India Radio’.
There is a line that has stayed with me ever since. Such it is that everyone can repeat
upon waking up from bed. “Let my life today be an offering of worship for you”. If you
repeat this and remember your prayer deeply throughout the day, you will then think
twice before your engaging in a mistaken act or falling off from your path. At the end of
the day, as you fill in more flowers in your garland [good deeds] of offering so will you
fill for that day more good deeds.
If you laugh now, you will have to cry later. If you are happy for something
through adverse thinking, it means you are buying trouble. If you wish to create a sand
mount in a ground evenly surfaced, you will have to dig the earth in some other place for
the sand! There is no mount without a hole, no laughter without tears. Hence remain
always in a state of evenness. Be humble always. Avoid vain happiness and loud laughter.
Moreover, humility is better than the happiness that hides worries temporarily.
Learn to accept every event in your life as God’s wish. ‘God! It is your wish alone
that happens to me’. Let this be the responsive act for every life event that happens. Your
true friend is God alone. He alone is our greatest Well-wisher. In order for you to be
created, reformed, purify, to be a good instrument in acting out His wish – for these alone
He gives you the good and bad experiences.
Allow yourself to be transformed through His divine hands. Leave yourself under
His care.
Do we have to fight?
Do not battle. Do not oppose. Leave yourself to be formed through God’s will.
Become a particle in the great winds of destruction. Do not require individual pride. God
exists. Only by realizing that it His will that is functioning, and by realizing that all of the
human effort is operated through God’s will alone, can you become as such.
Humility is not weakness. On the contrary it is strength. As one grows in
humbleness, inner strength too increases. Because you do not oppose God’s will, your life
too is spent peacefully. There will no problems of any kind. Because there are no personal
wishes or efforts to achieve anything, there cannot also happen failure of any kind.
Just like air rushes to a place of void, so do God’s grace and peace increase in you
where the arrogance of the ego has been removed and hence, your life will change to one
of being greatly victorious. Such it is for sure!
Study your holy text, whether it is the Gita or the Bible with devotion. Always
remember its teachings. Live according to it. There is no other way to inner peace other
than this.
You have read this small book, have you not! Read this again and again.
Whenever problems arise in your life and disrupts your inner peace, read this patiently
during those times.
Having read it, practice acting according to it as much as possible. Your inner
peace will surely come about.
If possible you can yourself print this book and distribute it in thousands.
- Swami Sivananda
(Backcover)
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