A CURIOUS
MIND
Often, conventional thinking
results in clambering the ladder. A person leading an ordinary existence is
invariably complacent with the prosaic lifestyle. Those blessed with a curious
mind try to refashion their personalities by re-engineering themselves.
Tale of an
old man
Once lived an elderly
gentleman, in the winter of his life, who decided to embark on a spiritual
journey to rediscover his personality.
The pater enrolled himself
in a monastery. Upon completing his training, armed with various nuances of Zen
teachings, he departed for his town.
Miraculous
escape or metamorphosis
He stepped out the portals
of the Temple of Knowledge and involuntarily slipped into a rivulet.
“Oh, the old monk falls in
the river!” chortled some young tutees.
However, the senior
gentleman emerged from an up-surging stream. He was to declare that the
re-engineering processes he acquired enabled him to accommodate water into
himself and not the other way round.
“We are shaped by
our thoughts, we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like
a shadow that never leaves,” said Gautama Buddha.
Thought process, thinking
patterns, building blocks of thought, organized thinking and goal direction are
five keys to re-engineer the mind to refashion our lives.
The
Strategy
The human mind which becomes
brim-full of ideas after re-engineering evaluates the outcome and once again
rethinks and redefines problems to arrive at fresh solutions.
Once during the time
of Gautama Buddha an animated group of citizens were involved in an argument
about the concept of divinity and various religions but none could zero in on a
suitable answer.
In sheer exasperation they fell
at the feet of Lord Buddha. The compassionate one merely smiled. Buddha then
asked his disciples to arrange for an elephant and for four persons to be
blind-folded.
And so, it happened that the
first of the blind-folded persons felt the elephant’s leg and exclaimed that
God appeared as a pillar. The second person touched the elephant’s tummy and
opined that Almighty God was a wall. The third gentleman stroked the elephant’s
ear and made an observation that God was a piece of cloth. The fourth man
grazed the tail and described that God was as a piece of rope. Once again, the
group of four were engaged in a raging debate on the form of Almighty God.
The four blindfolded
individuals felt the same elephant, but provided varying answers, so what could
be the correct answer? The episode just proved that no one individual or
thought process is complete.
Pearls of
wisdom
Human mind views the
vastness of the universe from the corner of the mind through one’s own
perception, delineated as it is by limited thinking and understanding. The four
blindfolded individuals and those bestowed with vision appreciated the point
made by Lord Buddha that they carry much baggage of past impressions and
limited thinking that they ended up wrangling about the form of divinity when
they were unable to even comprehend the form of an elephant.
Techniques
for training
Those spiritually inclined
can re-engineer their lives by undertaking the bouquet of courses offered by
the Art of Living, pursue Vipassana or Zazen to transform their minds by the
practice of yoga, pranayama and meditation.
There are some who have a logical bent of mind
and charter a different path. Such individuals need to develop a passion, or
take up a sport, read inspirational literature among other things. But it is
elemental to reengineer the mind and thought processes at regular intervals to
live life with gusto.
Thus, the requirement for a
curious mind.
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