Friday, June 20, 2008

MIND YOUR LENS

Once there was a scientist who was working on the solar system. He was known for his methodical approach and was also hugely popular because of his intelligence and brilliant interpretation of otherwise ordinary things, something that’s a pre-requisite for scientists. On one sunny day, as he was looking at the sun using his telescope, he was very excited about something that he had seen. He had seen some strange patterns on the sun, the ones that his professors acknowledged as something deadly. These patterns indicate that the sun would last for a few hundred years only. Nobody had ever seen such patters on the sun though speculation was rife about the same. He had also studied about the consequences of these patterns that appeared.

He jumped and shrieked in excitement and was secretly telling himself that he would earn global recognition for his discovery. We can imagine how happy this scientist would have been!!

As is commonly believed, identification of the problem is the first step towards the solution, and the scientist knew this too well.

The scientist informed his junior of his finding and the junior congratulated the scientist and told him he also wanted to take a look at the telescope. The scientist consented and the junior had a look. The junior smiled and asked the scientist to have his lunch before he informs anybody about this. So the scientist left for his lunch and returned in ten minutes. Now the junior asked the scientist to take a look at the sun through the telescope. The scientist was shocked to find out that the patterns were missing and enquired about the same with his junior.
The junior told him that a spider had settled on the lens of the telescope last night and it had woven a web on the lens, it was this web that when viewed along with the sun seemed as if the sun had web-like patterns on them. Since the junior cleaned the lens when the scientist had gone out, the web got disappeared when the scientist took a second look.

The sun can be said to be this world in which we exist and the lens can be compared to our mind. We look at this world through our mind, which is like the lens of the telescope. Since our mind (like the web) is not clean (like the lens of the telescope), we tend to look at this world with an impure mind which gives us a different picture as well as a false understanding of this world (Like the scientist’s discovery). We are required to put the mind in order before we look at this world (like cleaning the lens).

Let us take a look at another example.
A lot of eminent speakers had assembled in a huge hall for debating on an issue. The entire city had gathered in that hall for the mega-event. Unfortunately, the hall experienced a power cut. Learning that the event was postponed by a day, everybody left the hall. The organizer of the event called up the administrative official and asked him to place the chairs in order to keep the hall ready for the next day. This guy immediately rushed to work and re-arranged the chairs to keep them in place. After he had finished his work, electricity was back. This guy was shocked to find out that he had made things worse by attempting to arrange the already messed up place.
The arrangement seemed worse than before.
This is precisely what will happen if we try to see the world without putting our mind in order. The already shoddy world would appear more messy.
It’d have been a different picture had the guy waited for the power to be back to go ahead with the re-arrangement. He would have arranged the chairs perfectly in this case.
Similarly we should put our mind in order before we look at this world otherwise it would be a case of looking at a broken mirror wearing broken glasses.


Chant

Hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare
Hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare

and be happy

Visit http://namadwaar.org/

thank you
jai gurunath

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