"Often one confuses spontaneity with impulsiveness. While the former is the secret to success, the latter has only caused disasters. Spontaneity arises out of clarity, intuition & response, impulsiveness is only emotions & reactions.The way to change is meditation."
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Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Righteousness is associated with strong perception. When you believe in your perception, then you feel righteous. What you consider 'right' is only a perception. When you realize this, you see another dimension because the perceptions keep changing.
A particular situation can be considered right from one perception, and wrong from the other perception. This is where the conflict begins because to you something is correct and to the other person, it's not right. So it is very interesting to see that when you have an open mind, you perception changes. When your perception changes, your fixed notions change. Then you have an altogether different scenario.
Every time you are angry, know that it is because of righteousness. People who feel that they are righteous, they have tremendous temper and less patience. In a mature mind, when you have become more wise; of course you are righteous, but you go beyond righteousness. When you go beyond righteousness, you see everything in a different light altogether. Ascertaining righteousness, I would say is a weakness. Being righteous is good, but when you ascertain it, I would say there is a weakness somewhere.
You know life is like a 'Thali'(plate) in which you have something sweet, something salty, something pungent -- all different tastes are present. Like this, in your life you have little sadness (maybe you have lost something, or lost money), yes that pinches but if you just hold on to that pinch only, hold on to that pain only, then life cannot go on. Unless you are so well soaked in wisdom, in spirituality, you will continue to have some little grievances here and there, and if you stop smiling because of that, you will find the world to be a very depressing place. You should keep smiling, having a strong hope that whatever pain and suffering that you have inside will vanish, anyway it doesn't matter. One should have the wisdom to bear discomfort and move forward with a smile.
Skill. This is where your skilfulness comes into play. How skilfully you can manoeuvre the situation.
Education is not just the technical education. When people say that education is the antidote to terrorism, I don't agree with them because when you see, the biggest terrorists on this planet are all highly educated. One of them was an engineer, the other was a doctor and even today all the terrorists that are caught are not illiterates. They are technically educated and qualified in modern standards. But what they lack is spiritual education. Here we need to be very specific. It is the spiritual education, which broadens the mind, enhances one's ability to honour and respect everybody and everyone's religion. Spiritual education gives one a very compassionate heart. That type of spiritual education is needed, and not just education.
You know, you take shower only for ten minutes, but the freshness stays with you the whole day. Meditation is like that. If not the whole day, it stays for at least half a day, till you take the shower again.
Oh yes! On one level, everything is changing -- people's thinking has changed from place to place and from time to time. Change is a constant thing. At another level there is one thing that is running throughout; that has not changed. A lot has changed and a lot has remained unchanged. Both exist in this world.
This keeps happening every year and planets are changing all the time. You don't have to worry about all of this. Yesterday only I told you that, for a 'sadhak' everyday is a good day; every time is a good time.