They were very close friends. After sitting quietly for some time, one asked the other, “What are you thinking? I am planning to buy five acres of land, a garden.” The other friend immediately said, “Don´t buy the garden!”
The first one was surprised. He asked “why”? The second one replied, “I am planning to buy a buffalo. Then, my buffalo will enter your garden and we will fight, have misunderstandings and lose our friendship. I do not want to lose our friendship.”
The first one said, “Then, you cancel your plan of buying a buffalo. I am going to buy my garden.” The second one said, “No, no, no. I have already decided to buy a buffalo.” The first one said, “How will your buffalo enter my garden? I will fence it thoroughly.”
The second one said, “No, you see, it can just enter; a buffalo is a buffalo. Who can stop it? It can do anything.”
Then the fight went to such an extent that they broke their limbs!
Neither had bought a buffalo or any land. Nothing had happened. Just the mind´s race and both of them broke their limbs over it! Our fears are also like that.
The future has not yet come. But you just sit there and think, “Oh! What will happen?” So much anxiety about the future! In this run, the mind gets into such a mess. It is unable to see the present moment as it unfolds.
The mind totally forgets the divine. “Me, mine, what about tomorrow, the day after and the day after that, next year, ten years later?” You people plan in this way even up to the next birth! When people are newly married they say, "We will be husband and wife for many life-times to come! This one birth is not enough. We will be man and wife for the next seven births!” In reality, they may be fed up of each other in this birth itself, but they talk of the next seven births!
We should experience the divine´s presence, the divine´s light around us.
You should have a desire in your mind to experience this. Have we ever desired the divine light? Has such a desire ever risen in you, that you want the highest peace? Has it arisen from deep inside you? The divine light is something by which the whole world is running. Have you ever really wanted it? When you sing or pray there should be total involvement. You don´t involve yourself totally. If the mind is preoccupied elsewhere then that is no prayer at all. There should be total involvement. When there is pain there is more involvement.
If you consider yourself as bonded, you will remain bound. Become free right now. Sit down and become contented.
You are afraid of opening your fists. What is there with you that you have to hold in your fists? You have nothing with you. Open your fists. The whole sky will be in your hands.
Be natural. Be with love. Do service. Celebrate life.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
