Spiritual Reflections On Apparently Mundane Incidents

[leyh 0]

I think that many apparently mundane incidents that we encounter everyday can serve as spiritual lessons to us if only we reflect thoughtfully on them.How about a thread where we can share and discuss reflections on these incidents in our lives?

 

Today,I saw a young woman who appeared to be totally pissed off with her young daughter and son (they seemed to be only three or four years old),and the expression on the mother's face was so wrathful as she glared at her children.In the face of such anger,the daughter displayed an innocent,angelic smile that sort of captured my heart.

 

If we could all learn to meet the anger of others with a smile,then I think the world would not be that perverted a reflection of the spiritual world after all.Of course anger has its place,especially when we encounter blasphemous atheists who heap abuse on the Lord and His devotees,but many times in my daily life, I constantly succumb to the urge to return anger with more anger when tension between myself and others arises.

 

I hope that the next time tension occurs between myself and someone else,and an explosion is imminent,I can recall the wonderful smile of that little girl as she looked at her angry mother and emulate her example.

 

"Akrodha means to check anger. Even if there is provocation one should be tolerant, for once one becomes angry his whole body becomes polluted. Anger is a product of the modes of passion and lust, so one who is transcendentally situated should check himself from anger.(From Purport to Bhagavad-gita 16.1-3 By His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada)

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by leyh (edited 02-17-2002).]

[Gauracandra 1]

One idea that has come into my mind a number of times is that we are all just one giant 'ant farm'. There is a toy they sell in the U.S. where kids put ants into a small casing and watch as the ants just cut through and build their villages.

 

I've had this occur to me a few times. Once sitting in my car at an intersection, I just sat there and watched as people walked in front of me. By the look and expressions on their faces you'd think they were all ants. People all over the place, but just marching step 1, step 2, step 3. No expression on their faces at all.

 

Then I remember landing from a flight, and looking down at all the cars, highways, houses, roads etc... and how they cut through the hills, trees, etc... Just seeing everything from above, you realize there are 6 billion people on this planet, each doing their own thing, leaving their own mark. And in 70 years there will be 6 billion people dead. On a certain level its amazing what we can do in terms of manipulating the material environment, but then you pull back and realize we are all ants. Tiny, insignificant. And just think 6 billion people will be dead in 70 years - thats huge.

[leyh 0]

Originally posted by Gauracandra:

One idea that has come into my mind a number of times is that we are all just one giant 'ant farm'. There is a toy they sell in the U.S. where kids put ants into a small casing and watch as the ants just cut through and build their villages.

 

I've had this occur to me a few times. Once sitting in my car at an intersection, I just sat there and watched as people walked in front of me. By the look and expressions on their faces you'd think they were all ants. People all over the place, but just marching step 1, step 2, step 3. No expression on their faces at all.

 

Then I remember landing from a flight, and looking down at all the cars, highways, houses, roads etc... and how they cut through the hills, trees, etc... Just seeing everything from above, you realize there are 6 billion people on this planet, each doing their own thing, leaving their own mark. And in 70 years there will be 6 billion people dead. On a certain level its amazing what we can do in terms of manipulating the material environment, but then you pull back and realize we are all ants. Tiny, insignificant. And just think 6 billion people will be dead in 70 years - thats huge.

There's a line from a Bob Dylan song I Shall Be Released:"Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,Is a man who swears he's not to blame."

 

A crowd,especially during peak hours in the city,is usually lonely and impersonal ---Everyone minding their own business and lost in their own anxities and dreams as they rush to wait and wait to rush.I'm sure that lonely crowds are a perverted reflection of the spiritual world where probably everyone knows everyone and everyone is united in love for Krsna.

 

Can't wait to get there...but in the meantime,I'd just have to make as many friends as possible in those lonely crowds...

 

 

 

[leyh 0]

Recently,I watched a play that was written and directed by a friend's friend (who incidentially was the lead actor).The plot was trite although the acting was quite decent.During the play,there was a scene where a man with a gun pointed it at the lead actor who taunted him to squeeze the trigger and one of his lines went:"I big man, you little man!" The little man with the gun squeezed the trigger and pumped a few bullets into the body of the big man (without killing him) and the play went on.

 

"I big man,you little man." Isn't that the message that many of us men sometimes blatantly or subtly convey to other men or women ("I big man,you little woman") to exert our "manliness"? The desire to lord it over others can be said to be a symptom of trying to imitating Krsna's position as Lord and this imitation is what got us here in the first place.

 

Srila Prabhupada once remarked:"Everyone should remember that we are serving Krsna, and everyone should remember, "The other person is serving Krsna. And because he is serving Krsna, he is not my servant; he is my master." That should be always in view. Therefore we address, prabhu: "You are my master." We never address, "You are my servant." We are trained up to say my brother, that "prabhu,such and such prabhu." Prabhu means master. Nobody think himself that he is master. He should always think that everyone is his master because he's serving the master. This is our philosophy." (Room Conversation, Vrindaban, November 24, 1976)

 

The values of the material world are reversed in the spiritual world where the devotee thinks of others:"I am a small,you are big and Krsna is the greatest."

[leyh 0]

Yesterday,I saw a rather plump male at one of the bus-stops at my University wearing a T-shirt which proclaimed;I AM NOT OVERWEIGHT

 

The owner of the T-shirt,whetehr kowingly or unknowingly was proclaiming a spiritual truth.The "I" the spirit soul is neither overweight nor underweight.

 

"The person in false ego takes all credit for doing everything independently, and that is the symptom of his nescience. He does not know that this gross and subtle body is the creation of material nature, under the order of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and as such his bodily and mental activities should be engaged in the service of Krsna, in Krsna consciousness. The ignorant man forgets that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is known as Hrsikesa, or the master of the senses of the material body, for due to his long misuse of the senses in sense gratification, he is factually bewildered by the false ego, which makes him forget his eternal relationship with Krsna." (From Purport to Bhagavad-gita 3.27 By His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada)

[leyh 0]

Yesterday evening,I was at my local bus interchange waiting for the bus when I saw a man holding his child and smoking a cigarette at the same time and I mentally derided the man for exposing his child to the poisonous nicotine.

 

But almost instantly it dawned upon me that I was not much better then the man.So many times have I,out of weakness, knowingly taken posion for my soul and body.

 

In Chinese,there is this saying:"wu shi bu xiao bai bu",which means "Fifty steps laugh at the hundred steps." If I'm not wrong,the "fifty steps" and "hundred steps" refers to an anecdote of a soldier who fled fifty steps from the battlefield and laughed at another soldier who fled a hundred steps.

 

We shouldn't be proud and deride others as fallen souls when we ourselves are fallen.Let us never forget that.

 

 

 

[beemasane 0]

dear leyh, i am laughing good right now at a NON-mundane occurance...everytime i dial up Audarya your 2/17/02 thread pops up as the first image of Audarya, beginning with "i think that many apparently mundane incidents..." and ends in a discussion of KRODHA. i am not mellow. my motto used to be: "beemasane is the enemy of the karmi dog." i must admit there were many times my services have been needed, but these, days when i am reading a drop of the ocean of nectar of the Goswamis and see just how little siddhanta i know, i am just more inclined to give the old karmi dogs a sweetball, a kind pat on the head and a corner of my sleeping mat because, much to my amazement it seems that they too are servants of Krishna, and i also have done a little whoop-dee-doo and they have it over on me in the long run anyway, how doggie loyal am i to Guru and Gauranga? i feel that this is a VERY valuable thread because all too often we miss these little lessons that are far more important than they sometimes apparantly seem. i love hearing tales of fellow devotees life lessons..."i,ll be back"...in the meantime lets let sleeping karmi dogs lie for now and get real busy glorifying all those wonderful Vaisnavas..yep...mmm-hmmm!

[leyh 0]

Originally posted by beemasane:

dear leyh, i am laughing good right now at a NON-mundane occurance...everytime i dial up Audarya your 2/17/02 thread pops up as the first image of Audarya, beginning with "i think that many apparently mundane incidents..." and ends in a discussion of KRODHA. i am not mellow. my motto used to be: "beemasane is the enemy of the karmi dog." i must admit there were many times my services have been needed, but these, days when i am reading a drop of the ocean of nectar of the Goswamis and see just how little siddhanta i know, i am just more inclined to give the old karmi dogs a sweetball, a kind pat on the head and a corner of my sleeping mat because, much to my amazement it seems that they too are servants of Krishna, and i also have done a little whoop-dee-doo and they have it over on me in the long run anyway, how doggie loyal am i to Guru and Gauranga? i feel that this is a VERY valuable thread because all too often we miss these little lessons that are far more important than they sometimes apparantly seem. i love hearing tales of fellow devotees life lessons..."i,ll be back"...in the meantime lets let sleeping karmi dogs lie for now and get real busy glorifying all those wonderful Vaisnavas..yep...mmm-hmmm!

hi beemasane:

 

I am a karmi dog outside the camp of Lord Caitanya's army,waiting for merciful leftovers from the Vaisnavas...Please be merciful to me!

 

 

 

[beemasane 0]

oh i do not think you are a karmi dog, oh no, you can't fool an old ksatriya like me. even tho' i am at times fiercely loyal to my Guru(s)(i now will run almost every time i see imminent controversy boiling) i am very drawn to soft hearted devotees of any nice qualified lord because they are so unlike me and can help me even if outside my sampradaya. you will never know how good you made me feel when you responded about my father wearing tulasi...so i would feel embarrassed if i did not offer you full course of thank you, not leftover you do or don't do this or that or else. i will probably always be not so mellow but sometimes this can be very handy..so anyway this is the aspiring softie saying all glories to all Vaisnavas and all friends of the Vaisnavas too! beemaSANE.

[beemasane 0]

i've got a nice little morsel here from the Bhajan Rahasya by Bhaktivinode Thakur. Krishna nama svarupesu - tadiya cit kanesu ca - jneya budha ganair nityam - aparadhas catur vidham : offenses to the name, offences to the Lord, offenses to the devotees, offenses to the other living enteties, are the four kinds of offenses. so beemasane is is thinking if you MUST insist that you are outside the camp of Chaitanya's army of Vaisnavas (while i must wholly protest this self appointed whimsey of yours{tee-hee}) surely you must qualify as an "other living entity",as mentioned in the prayer above, thus providing you with a kind of a transcendental "get out of jail free card" you can present to me with great fanfare if i am ever offensive to you by not giving you my mercy(tee-hee)!

 

 

 

[Gauracandra 1]

I don't know, does this count as a spiritual reflection on a mundane occurence: I received in the mail someone else's catalog. The catalog was titled "Solutions: Products that make life easier". The funny thing is, the entire catalog is made up of useless baubles and gimmicks. For instance, they sell 'bird clips' which are basically clothespins that are colored and shaped like birds. Ok, why not just stick with the simple clothespin? They have a "one handed salt and pepper grinder" which looks quite big and bulky (made of steel and plastic). Certainly the old fashioned ones made of wood where you turn the handle are just as good. They had a head 'tingler' which is some wires you are to run though your scalp to give it a massage. I could be wrong, but I just didn't see the usefulness of so much of this stuff. So it got me to thinking, how much of what we buy is useless stuff. We need clothing, shelter, food. Now no one is going to live on such a purely strict lifestyle. But I wonder how much of our GDP goes to purchasing things we really, REALLY don't need. I guess its consumerism, materialism. Something to distract us from the mundane nature of life.

[Jahnava Nitai Das 2]

Srila Rupa Goswami explains in his Upadeshamrita that over accumulating unnecessary things destroys our devotion to the Lord. It is one of the six activities he advises devotees to avoid, the other five being:

 

Over endeavouring for mundane accomplishments (prayasa); engaging in mundane talk, discussion or gossip (prajalpa); neglecting the scriptural injunctions or following the scriptural injunctions without understanding the essence of those instructions (niyamagraha); associating with worldly minded people (jana-sanga); and greed for material things (laulyam).

 

But the first of the six he mentions is atyahara, or over-accumulating unnecessary things. It is interesting that we have catalogs which seem to be exactly directed to this activity.

 

Rupa Goswami concludes by saying shadbhir bhakti vinashyati, "These six activities destroy one's devotion to the Lord."

 

Even from a non-religious angle, I think it is easy to see how these six activities contribute to the sufferings of other living entities. By engaging in these activities one will naturally bring harm and hardship to others, and as a result it destroys one's humanity as well. How can one maintain devotion while causing harm to other living entities? The devotee is one who acts for the welfare of all.

 

 

[This message has been edited by jndas (edited 04-23-2002).]

[Gauracandra 1]

Over the weekend I saw a sale for "doggie furniture". These were small sized sofas, chairs, tables etc... for your pets to recline on etc.... It was funny. Then you realize that someone is actually making furniture for animals. Kind of surreal.

[Shashi 0]

Originally posted by jndas:

engaging in mundane talk, discussion or gossip (prajalpa)

 

 

 

Jn DasJi, I am sometimes making little comments to be making devotee peoples laugh a little. Is this being prajalpa in your mind?

 

What about this one

 

QUOTE]Originally posted by Gauracandra:

Over the weekend I saw a sale for "doggie furniture". These were small sized sofas, chairs, tables etc... for your pets to recline on etc.... It was funny. Then you realize that someone is actually making furniture for animals. Kind of surreal.

 

[theist 1]

Gauracandra,

 

It's very odd but no surprise.We know there are now dog pyschologists.

 

Once I was looking for a Christmas card.Amongst the selections was a group that was worded as if one pet was sending the card to another pet.Honest.

 

One was from the house cat to the house dog etc.Like these animals are sending the cards to each other.

 

Just picture Christmas morning and someone is reading these cards to one pet from the other one.A real looney tune holiday.

 

One of those very funny and very sad things.