When a parent is handling an errant, adamant and obstinate youth who refuses to fall in line and also have peace of mind, it is indeed a tall order.
If we have to meditate for half an hour a day, it is important how we live our life for the rest of the hours.
If throughout the day we indulge in fighting, shouting, cribbing, complaining, desiring, going after elusive pursuits or anything that takes away our mind from its natural state of calmness, then meditation cannot help. It is not just situations that we need to face.
There are some real time problems to handle too. A problem manifests as a thought in our mind. When we encounter any tough situation, it is actually an imaginary thought in the mind. Even though it is imaginary, we cannot really wish it away, expect it to change or believe it is not there.
When it is right there in our thought, looming so large like an elephant in the bedroom, not allowing us to get a wink of sleep sometimes—how do we handle it?
Patience, faith and love are the words. Patience allows us to be with the thought and give it time to dissolve. “Yes, this situation is there. I am not trying to change it. I accept it and let it be,” is the first step to victory. When something has been accepted, then it has no inspiration to continue to put on a show and exist separately.
Indeed, if change has to be brought in, then it can never happen by force. What we are actually trying to change is not something gross and physical, but a thought or a quality. A thought is a subtle combination of words and meanings in the ocean of consciousness.
It is in fact very tiny and almost non-existent. When we pay attention to it, it grows bigger and bigger and becomes formidable. If a mother has to handle a tough teenager, then fighting is never going to help. Fighting and force will only empower the youngster even more to be very persistent and insistent in his own ways.
Love is the only way. It produces a soft energy which releases a fluid power that engulfs all the adamant thoughts. This power of love flows like water. It surrounds the solid thought. Like the rusk that is porous, this adamant thought too has no real staying power. It can easily be powdered into bits with patience. This love goes and surrounds the person.
It is absorbed into its porous surface. In no time the whole thought comes crashing down like a paste, only to be washed away clean with more and more love. An adamant thought is like a loose knot on a thin rope. You need extreme patience to loosen the knot.
If by any chance you show anger and frustration, then you only pull the knot a little tight and it becomes even more difficult to loosen it. Similarly, a person trying to unknot a tangled relation must shower love on the other person so that the knot is loosened in no time.
When the knots of the mind are removed, then meditation is a possibility.
The author is Acharya, Chinmaya Mission, Tiruchi (www.sharanyachaitanya. blogspot.in)