BATTLES WITH THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

We are  always at battle with life. We are in incessant conflict. Most people seldom experience smooth flowing life.The past,as we advance in years,keeps mounting on our backs with it’s heaviness.Then there’s the future –loaded with it’s own sinister potential. By itself both are equally neutral.Yet human nature is expert in concealing itself behind frailties .

Where we encounter abrasion with life is when we refuse to accept the past or the future.We resist the dead and buried happenings of the past and we resist the foreboding possibilities of the future.Both come loaded in a rusty wheelbarrow called restlessness .The past is over, yet for most folks it remains alive when they refuse to let go ,refuse to permit the happening to settle down peacefully.This simple act of assimilation becomes Herculean in reality,acceptance just cannot unfold.And the mind is like a runaway freight train,refusing to stop hyper analyzing .The future also is another mammoth to face.Projections of our past experience morph themselves into apprehension.No amount of Bobby McFerrin’s  “Don’t worry…” helps.

Quite rightly, the wise ones say the best route to happiness is detachment and some commonsense equanimity .

Once a spiritual guru was traveling by train and his disciples came to see him off at the station.As the train pulled out of station,they realized ,to their horror,that they had forgotten to hand over the tickets to the revered one.Inside the train ,soon enough,the TC came checking,and asked the guru to produce his ticket.The old man reached within his robe and brought out an empty hand .There was no ticket. Unperturbed, the guru suggested that since there was an apparent problem he would make good the payment alongwith the penalty,as applicable, at his destination.However the TC was a sharp ,impatient man ,he would have none of all this.The guru was to get off at the very next stop, wherever in desolation that might be.The guru calmly reconciled to the new possibility of having to disembark and continue his journey by whatever other means.To cut a long story short a kindly gentleman travelling alongside intervened and after a few phone calls to the station master things were resolved.The guru could finally continue his journey undisturbed.

What do we gather from this, not so uncommon ,episode?

The wise man maintained detached equanimity throughout.He did not blame his disciples for leaving him in the lurch without a ticket. Neither did he recriminate against the TC ,who was just doing  his job, nor did he sit brooding over his fate when he was face with the possibility of being evicted from the train ,stranded in the middle of nowhere. The past ,or the future simply did not collide with his calmness.

Perhaps we too  can alter our responses to life’s ever changing circumstances. Instead of mechanically lashing out at the past or the future in trying (and fleeting) moments we can be a tad more tranquil and accepting of our situation, while taking  whatever other constructive action is required.