Sand & Stone

Two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument and one friend slapped the other one in the face.The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:'Today my best friend slapped me in the face.'They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:'Today my best friend saved my life.'The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, 'After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?'The friend replied, 'When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand, where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.'Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits in stone.They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them. Do not value the things you have in your life, but value who you have in your life!

GENEROSITY

Mahatma Gandhi went from city to city, village to village collecting funds for the Charkha Sangh. During one of his tours he addressed a meeting in Orissa. After his speech a poor old woman got up. She was bent with age, her hair was grey and her clothes were in tatters. The volunteers tried to stop her, but she fought her way to the place where Gandhiji was sitting. "I must see him," she insisted and going up to Gandhiji touched his feet. Then from the folds of her sari she brought out a copper coin and placed it at his feet. Gandhiji picked up the copper coin and put it away carefully. The Charkha Sangh funds were under the charge of Jamnalal Bajaj. He asked Gandhiji for the coin but Gandhiji refused. "I keep cheques worth thousands of rupees for the Charkha Sangh," Jamnalal Bajaj said laughingly "yet you won't trust me with a copper coin." "This copper coin is worth much more than those thousands," Gandhiji said. "If a man has several lakhs and he gives away a thousand or two, it doesn't mean much. But this coin was perhaps all that the poor woman possessed. She gave me all she had. That was very generous of her. What a great sacrifice she made. That is why I value this copper coin more than a crore of rupees."

The Mystery of Silence

Silence cannot really be described. It is not the absence of sound. It makes it possible to notice sound. It is still, but its stillness is constantly moving. It is nothing, but a nothing filled with everything. It is aware, but may move unaware. It is love, but a love that lets hatred be. It is wise, but its wisdom only fools can know. It has a shape, the shape of this moment. It has its own sound, but can only be heard when the mind is still. Unceasingly, it speaks Truth without uttering a single word.
This Silent Mystery is prior to mind. It also moves as mind, but the mind cannot imagine what it is to disappear into Silence. That is why it is so often afraid of deep silence. Yet it is in silence that we can discover the truth of what is always here, always undivided, and always in peace, even if the moment does not seem peaceful. The Silence of our true nature is deeply, profoundly, and unceasingly present. It cannot be lost by the mind’s confusions nor gained by its clarity, for this awake and eternal Silence does not come and go.
We do not need long years on a meditation cushion to ask ourselves: What is here when we are not trying to arrive there? What is here, so close we do not notice? Who am I when I don’t go to my mind for an answer? What knows cannot be known except to Itself. It is a Mystery prior to any and all concepts. We might say it is what silences every thought and every concept—even those called truth, God, Buddha, world, or the concept of a “me;” yet it is simultaneously their source.
In This that dreams the world and the play of existence each moment, everything continually appears and disappears into an ever-present Silence that knows no separation between background and foreground, divine and human, teacher and student, enlightened and unenlightened, God and flea. It is undivided Silence, empty of nothing, continually moving, continually still. It is what we are. It is where the mind cannot go, where mind must remain in unknowing.