Zen and the art of filtering junk!

My dear OJ
I must first thank you for keeping me in circulation by reviving a few older threads of mine! I have not indeed written anything new in the last two months for some reason or other, the drying up of my thought process being one of them! I am kept alive here by friends like you and others who keep visiting my earlier threads and furnishing FBs. I am grateful to all of you.

This particular Zen story is my great favourite and I have used it more than any other fable to support my social speeches in Rotary and such drab associations of humans! In fact, I myself used to suffer from this habit of nursing useless thoughts in my already clustered mind. This affected my career a lot and I once attended a lecture of Jiddu Krishnamurthy of whom I was a great admirer. But ironically, I did not learn this lesson from him but from a member of the audience who discussed this with me over a drink in the Club. This was one rare instance in my life when a club became my Bodhi Tree!

I firmly believe that Nemesis is God’s job. We have to just get going unmindful of who does what to us. Why punish ourselves by letting our minds get cluttered with thoughts of worthless people all the time? It can make matters only worse for us and thereby we reward our ill-wishers! Zen stories teach us some simple but great truths of life. Another one of my favorites is this:

A Zen teacher saw five of his students returning from the market, riding their bicycles. When they arrived at the monastery and had dismounted, the teacher asked the students, "Why are you riding your bicycles?"
The first student replied, "The bicycle is carrying the sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!" The teacher praised the first student, "You are a smart boy! When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over like I do."
The second student replied, "I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path!" The teacher commended the second student, "Your eyes are open, and you see the world."
The third student replied, "When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant nam myoho renge kyo." The teacher gave praise to the third student, "Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel."
The fourth student replied, "Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all sentient beings." The teacher was pleased, and said to the fourth student, "You are riding on the golden path of non-harming."
The fifth student replied, "I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle." The teacher sat at the feet of the fifth student and said, "I am your student!"

Sri

 

Dear Viji
What do you find more difficult, to forgive or to forget? If it is to forget, do not worry about it. As we advance in our years, forgetting will become easier and easier. I know a lot of my peers who keep forgetting why they phoned me. If I don't provide a clue to why they may have phoned me, they get very upset and brand me as non-cooperative!

But if your difficulty is in forgiving, please always remember that the best choice available to us is to forgive if some wrong is done to us. In any case, the other chap would least bother if you forgive him or not but by forgiving, we feel better and there will be no need for popping an extra BP tablet into our waiting mouth. If someone makes fun of your forgiving nature, you can always say things like 'To err is human but to forgive is divine'! They may hear it as bovine instead of divine but who cares.
Sri

 

Dear Shail
But, yes, in a way, we are forced to remember some things to learn valuable lessons from them.

Well said my girl! You remind me of George Santayana's oft-repeated quote that 'Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it'! This is extremely true. If we do not remember our actions of the past that might have landed us in great difficulty, it is possible that we might repeat them and face graver consequences. Keep these thoughts in the archives of our mind so that when we are about to commit the same mistake, a warning bell would be rung. But remember to keep only the incidents in memory but not the people who were connected with it.

Sri

 

Dear Kelly
When I was young, we used to carry a lot of junk in our houses in the name of sentiment. Table fan that grandpa always used but not in working condition, the pictures of gods that generations used, boxes, cupboards, useless furniture et al. As floor space became increasingly expensive and we were forced to move into smaller portions, we had no option but to jettison the junk one by one. As every item was given to someone who had some use for them, my mother would be moved to tears.

Today sentiment plays no role at all in decision making. Our minds are too obsessed with affordability and rightly so. Who would pay an extra rent of a thousand rupees just to accommodate some useless junk merely because his grandpa used it?

The same thing goes for the mental junk as well. The kind of demands that are made on our mental resources, it makes no sense to clutter it with useless junk. Even if forgiving and forgetting are not our cup of tea, we still do it reluctantly due to circumstances beyond our control!
Sri