At the Guru's Feet / Part Three

Didi said then, "The person whose words are troubling you—does he know about it?" I said, "Probably not." "Then does your mental state affect him in any way?" "No, it doesn't." "Alright, suppose he does know—the thing you're carrying in your head. That you're still bearing the weight of his words—doesn't this give him a kind of satisfaction? After all, he wanted to hurt you! Isn't he finding peace in seeing you suffer?" "Yes, he is." "Then the purpose he had when he said those things to you—that's been accomplished, hasn't it?" "Yes, exactly." "If you hadn't kept it in your head, if you'd shaken it off, ignored him and his words without giving them importance, staying busy with your own work—could he have succeeded then?" "No, he couldn't have." "Then who's benefiting? Him, or you?" "Him." "If you hadn't paid attention or given importance to him and his words, wouldn't he be the one suffering or feeling uncomfortable instead? Right?" "Yes Didi, right." "So you actually understand everything. Understanding it all, why are you still keeping yourself upset? Why are you tormenting yourself and letting him win? You're not even in his thoughts! And here you are, keeping someone who doesn't think of you in your thoughts, making yourself suffer! Tell me why?"

When a person like Didi speaks this way, the sadness truly lifts. So I said, "Why would he do such a thing? What's my fault here?" "Look, the way you're thinking—why would he do this?...Why are you thinking this way?" "I'm thinking this because the behavior he showed me, the things he said—I would never speak to anyone like that myself. I don't deserve this from him." "Deserve! What is this again? Listen, there's no such thing as deserving in this world. What you earned or didn't earn, what you were forced to earn or not forced to earn—the accounting is only this much!" "Alright, I'll accept that. But his behavior toward me is unprovoked! I've done nothing that would justify his actions!" "That means you're a better person than him! Now, why wouldn't you say such things to anyone? There must be some kind of pleasure in saying these things, in hurting someone unnecessarily, otherwise he wouldn't do it." "Because I don't have the inclination to say such things, to cause someone unnecessary pain." "Then your nature is better than his. Now come to the point! This person who couldn't become like you—for whatever reason, he couldn't, he couldn't develop your kind of mentality—why are you expecting something better from someone like him?"
Stop expecting from people. Expect nothing from people. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Because every person has their own life. You won't expect anything from them. They're living their life with their own experiences, their own life lessons. Going beyond that isn't possible for them. They don't know how to live beyond that framework. Life hasn't taught them that. You'll see many people who light cigarettes in front of someone who can't tolerate cigarette smoke. Perhaps they know it's wrong, but they won't care. Because they've only learned to live for themselves, not to let others live. They lack that much shame, hesitation, or conscience. To live, you must let others live—you must keep this in mind if you truly want to be human. Now this person's life lesson is to hurt others. But that's not your life lesson. You're already in a mentally better place than him. You should feel very happy thinking about that. Shouldn't you?" "Hmm."
"Look, why does a scorpion sting? Is it any crime on the scorpion's part?" "A scorpion stings because a scorpion can only sting—it hasn't learned to do anything else. This isn't its crime. This is its nature." "That's it! A scorpion can't do anything except sting. But this isn't the scorpion's fault. This is the scorpion's characteristic. There's a difference between a person's fault and their characteristic. If you bite someone now, that would be your fault. The scorpion that's stinging—that's not its fault, that's its characteristic. The person who's speaking hurtfully to you—that's their characteristic, not their fault. If you spoke hurtfully to someone, that would be your fault, not your characteristic. Do you understand?" "Yes, I do." "Then how can you call that person bad for what is their characteristic? Rather, your fault is that you accepted that upsetting thing from them, or that they were able to say those things to you because you gave them that opportunity, or you stayed close to them or let them stay close to you—this is your fault. You went to play with a scorpion, so the scorpion bit your finger. This is your fault. The scorpion has no fault here."
Hearing Didi's words, I was completely stunned! I told Didi, "That's true! Why didn't I ever think about it this way?" "Listen Sush, there are some people in society who are like scorpions. They only know how to bite others. Since their life has taught them nothing else, their God has taught them nothing else, the fault isn't theirs. You have to stay away from them. This is the rule. Then who will stay with them? Others like them—other scorpions. Let them bite each other to death, it doesn't affect you, does it? Because you haven't learned to fight in such a dirty way." "Right, Didi." "When walking on the road, you yourself will walk carefully. If you walk carelessly and get hit by a car, if your body gets injured, then whatever happens afterward, your injury will never be fully healed. Some people walk recklessly on roads—it's easier to walk carefully yourself than to teach them. It's not your responsibility to teach everyone in the world!" "Didi, I agree with you." Later I noticed in my own life too—I don't exactly fear death, but I'm very afraid of getting beaten. Dying doesn't frighten me, but living while constantly getting beaten terrifies me. It's very painful to live while getting beaten. There's so much work to do—should I do that, or should I fight with petty people? They don't have much work anyway; perhaps fighting with me is the greatest achievement of their entire life!
When they get old, they'll need some stories to tell their grandchildren! I know of a good man who was the principal of Patuakhali Government College. He was an extremely honest, religious, and altruistic person. Once, a night guard from a school in his area filed a false land-related case against him. As a result, he had to endure tremendous suffering. Two years later, he naturally won the case. So someone in the area asked that night guard, "Why did you file this false case against Sir?" The guard's answer was worth remembering. "Look, I knew myself that the case was false, that it wouldn't hold. But because I did this, I was able to make Sir go through such harassment. This is where I find my joy. I couldn't study in childhood due to poverty. So I can't tolerate anyone who knows how to read and write. Everyone respects Sir so much—I don't like this. Look, I know very well that I'm not even equal to a bubble of foam from Sir's urine. Yet because I filed the case, he tried to settle with me repeatedly. In these two years, he came to my house several times, and each time I treated him badly and threw him out. Now people in the area know me by name, many respect me, fear me. This is my joy. Filing the case cost me a lot of money, but in return I gained so much. I had to spend a lot of time on the case, and Sir had to spend time too. Think about it—Sir's time is worth much more than mine. This is my victory. I forced Sir to think about me, to treat me with respect. I was able to hurt Sir mentally, and in various ways Sir suffered a lot of damage in these two years. This is my happiness, my satisfaction." Yes, there are some people who only know how to hurt. They themselves grew up getting hurt, and they grow even more by hurting others.
Then there are some people who didn't grow up getting hurt, or even if they did get hurt, they know how painful it is to be hurt. So they don't hurt others. They are people with humanity. In this world, being humane is more important than being talented, successful, or many other things. Being humane, feeling another person like me with the heart, seeing another person through human eyes—these are very important things. Didi used to tell me this almost always. I will never see her, I never did see her, but I sense her presence. I still sense it. Back then I felt it very strongly, when I spoke with her every day. Even now, not a day passes when I don't pray a little for Gayatri Talreja, when I don't wish from my heart—may that person be well, may that person be healthy, may that person be happy. The interesting thing is, when I needed her most in my life, she came into my life, stayed in my life for a long time. When success came to my life, when my days of suffering ended, somehow she disappeared from my life, completely disappeared.
Do you know what our life is like? In life, we don't get what we want, but we do get what we need. She was in my life exactly as long as I needed her. This is nature's own game.
When nature wants to give us something, it creates a path for us to receive it—through some means, some pretext, some excuse. The rest is up to us. Through our own effort, sincerity, and labor, we must claim what is ours. People like Didi are like angels in our lives. When we need someone like that, somehow such a person appears from nowhere and stands beside us. When our work is done, we can no longer find them. Often we don't even get the chance to offer a simple thanks. Such people are far, far above all gratitude and acknowledgment. Another astonishing thing—we often see that when such a person faces trouble, we don't even get the slightest opportunity to stand by them. These are people inspired by the Creator—they cannot be grasped or touched; their existence and work can only be felt. Nothing more than that.
At that time, I had some problems with my mental state. When I felt I had achieved quite a lot in my life—meaning in my own estimation I had gained much—a distance had formed between her and me. Whether due to busyness, or perhaps I had simply forgotten her, or even if she remained in my memory, perhaps not in the same way. For this reason, an invisible distance had grown between us. Then I saw that when she had cancer, I would contact her, but she couldn't contact me because she was unwell. I would send texts that would remain unseen. Then I would send more. With Didi, I had no ego, no resentment. Before this one person, all my ego, pride, and hurt would simply melt away. To put it plainly, even if Didi beat me with her shoes, I would still sit at her feet. I would assume that surely my welfare lay hidden within even that beating.
I tried to contact Didi every single day. This person had brought me back from death. When I spoke with this person, I felt there must surely be some reason for living, that being alive wasn't meaningless. That even this living was a source of joy, or that by living I would surely gain something. I hadn't come to this world to return empty-handed. Or I would feel that in this daily passage, this daily living, there was also joy. That in my thinking, my creating, my trying to do something and even failing—in all this there was joy. That by living, I could someday help at least one person, that one person was learning by watching me, or that the life I was living was something many desired but never received, and what God had given me, many never got—these too were reasons for the joy of living. I learned so much from her.
So as I was saying, I had never seen her; we had spoken only twice on the phone. We chatted every day. She shaped me from such a distance. This person's presence was intensely felt throughout my heart. Even her smallest texts I would read multiple times with great attention. When I became somewhat established, somehow she vanished from my life. Then my old account was deleted through the efforts of some overzealous people, and many from that account were lost. After that account was gone, I sent her countless texts from this new account, but she wouldn't see them, or if she did, wouldn't reply. Perhaps she thought it was a fake account. Perhaps after her illness, she had forgotten the old things. It could be that she had become busy, or for some reason—whether from hurt or indifference—she no longer maintained contact as before.
I express in my own way a philosophy I learned from her. When we pray to God or Allah or the Divine, we repeatedly say, "I have sinned greatly, forgive me." Why do we say this? We say it because the ego within us—what we call in Bengali aham or ahong—doesn't allow us to bow our heads, doesn't let us admit defeat. When I surrender to someone, completely surrender, then...we are human beings with both faults and virtues, and if we focus on our virtues, surrender becomes impossible—that is, complete self-surrender becomes impossible. The primary condition for surrender is that we must acknowledge our faults, admit our mistakes. We must learn to surrender ourselves by sacrificing all our arrogance, achievements, and pride. This is why our act of surrender is actually to our own heart. Because the mirror within us is transparent. We cannot hide anything there even if we try. So before that mirror we surrender ourselves, and in that mirror we bring all our faults before our own eyes.
By doing this, we actually send ourselves a message, send this message to our inner being: that we have nothing to be so egotistical about, nothing to be so proud of. Our lives are full of mistakes, and to make this human life somewhat successful, we must find deliverance from those mistakes. I have nothing to be proud of. My failures, my mistakes, my wrongs—with all of this I keep saying again and again. This is what it means to surrender, to offer oneself completely. People do this before God. There's another aspect to this. When we surrender ourselves to God, saying "I am a sinner, I am guilty, forgive me," this message reaches our brain—through this process we are receiving forgiveness. Consequently, we feel considerably unburdened and find relief from some regret and remorse. Since we must continue living, if we spend our lives keeping guilt alive in our hearts, our future work will also be hindered, and the suffering of existence will increase further. Therefore, by surrendering some of this burden to God, we essentially lighten our own hearts, reduce the burning of past sins from our minds. This is religion's work—constantly preparing one's heart for living—whether through meditation, through prayer, through spending time with nature, or through other means.
In my eyes, Gayatri Talreja is like my God. Why? Just as God awakens our hearts, in exactly the same way she awakened my heart day after day—tirelessly, selflessly. I would always tell her, "I am ungrateful, I couldn't stay in touch with you, couldn't inquire about you, please forgive me, don't stay angry with me. Tell me how Nil is doing. Then tell me how Mahesh jijaji is. Tell me how you are. Are you well?" She would see these messages but not reply. This made me feel even better. Why did it feel good? Because by not maintaining proper contact with her, not inquiring about her, not expressing enough gratitude to her, I had committed certain wrongs, and this was my penance. She was ignoring me, she was seeing my texts but not replying, she was showing a kind of contempt toward me. I would think this way. This was actually a form of penance for me. I felt I deserved to undergo this penance. As a result, this too gave me a kind of satisfaction.
When a person confesses their sins to God, calls themselves a sinner, says they are a person full of mistakes, and without hesitation, in complete honesty, confesses all their crimes, they actually receive a kind of satisfaction. They bring their ego down to dust and think, "Now I have become completely naked. I have become naked before my own mirror. Now there is nothing left on my body to hold onto, nothing to be proud of. There is nothing in my mind either. Today I am destitute, empty, exactly like that first day when I came into this world." At that moment, while simultaneously feeling destitute and helpless, they are pierced by a kind of intense remorse, and right then they assume they are walking toward liberation. They are receiving forgiveness; because the Creator is great, He is forgiving even a sinner like them. Then, actually for all these reasons, people cry from emotion. This crying is truly before the Creator or before oneself. Every religion has provisions for this. What happens when you cry before yourself? The next morning they wake up thinking, "Yesterday I confessed all my sins and stains." Having purified themselves mentally, they then feel light, feel a kind of new vigor within their minds. By thus removing the burden of sin from within themselves, living becomes much easier. Inner strength increases, the desire to do good for humanity also increases, and the discipline never to step onto the path of old sins again forms automatically in the mind.
This exists in Christianity too. In Christianity, people go to the Father and make confession (acknowledging their sins and seeking salvation). There's only one reason for this—then the Father says, "Lord, forgive him. He is asking for your forgiveness, give him shelter."...Think about it: if a person lives constantly in remorse, then at some point they will be destroyed. They will become a living corpse at some point. How is it even possible to live bearing such intense burning! Living with the remorse of sins whose entire responsibility and blame is mine alone is the most painful thing. Religion has freed people from this torment. By confessing sins to the Creator and asking for forgiveness, some heavy stones are lifted from one's heart, and then the person feels better. It's also possible that as penance for the wrong I did to someone, I extend a helping hand to them, their family, or many other people in their path of survival. Merit cancels sin. Therefore, the more merit one can acquire, the more mental strength increases.
Anyway, we were where we were. When the Father tells God before them, "O Supreme Father, forgive this child of yours, give them shelter, make them do good deeds"...and so forth, then they actually receive a kind of strength.
He thinks, yes, all right, I have been forgiven, now I will work again with renewed strength; as long as I live, I will never commit this mistake again; I will live by serving humanity, this will bring welfare to me and my family, I will let others live in peace, and I too will live in peace. Such thoughts have great value. If the memory of his past mistakes remains in his mind, then he will not repeat those mistakes a second time. Since man must live anyway, let him live by doing something good. If remorse and guilt constantly torment a person, then he won't be able to accomplish anything in life. Even if he has one or two good deeds within his capacity, he won't be able to perform them. He will think, I am inherently bad, what good will it do for me to perform good deeds? Notice, in our society some people perform Hajj and then keep themselves on the path of purity, spending the rest of their lives in service to humanity. This has immense significance. Because this person will live beautifully for the rest of his life and help others live beautifully too. Hindus do the same after completing their pilgrimages. Followers of other religions do the same. These philosophies of religion, these precepts, these methods help many people live on wonderful paths.
What man desires most is freedom from the suffering and inner torment of his mind. This is why man surrenders; says, I am a sinner, I am a guilty servant, forgive me...and so on. This is actually what man tells himself, unburdening his heart somewhat. He releases the feelings of regret, anguish, and suppressed pain from within. He expels the tears, the aches, the guilt from within. Then man becomes lighter, a kind of strength develops within him. When such strength is created, he can work again the next day with renewed vigor. This is indeed how it works. So when I would send her messages, she might have seen them but wouldn't reply. Then I would think, I deserve this. This is my penance and this is a kind of salvation for me, and I would knock on her door more and more. I wanted her not to reply to my texts, because the pain I was experiencing was exactly what I deserved. I hadn't properly kept in touch with her, after becoming established I hadn't remembered her properly or if I did remember, I hadn't let her know, she had been ill, but I couldn't get in touch with her. Perhaps I had indeed tried contacting her from my new ID, but due to her busy schedule or whatever reason, she either didn't notice or noticed but didn't reply for some reason. I didn't try hard enough to understand that reason, I couldn't do anything for her in this life, when this new life of mine was largely her gift!
There will be such people in your life—not actually "some people," but just "one or two people"—whom even if you keep knocking on their door day after day and they don't reply, you still won't be able to remove your blind love for that person, call it your boundless faith, call it your reverence. If you are grateful, then your mind will never consent to doing so. A person who lacks gratitude is worse than an animal. Think about it, surely there is such a person in your life too. So Didi is such a person in my life. I think this way, that if I ever had to donate an organ from my body for her, I would be prepared for that too. Love, gratitude, reverence—these are such things. I know that if she hadn't been in my life at that time, I would have been lost completely. I wouldn't have achieved anything in life. I had concluded at that time that if I couldn't accomplish something in life, death would be preferable. She saved me from that. Therefore, throughout my entire life, after my parents, if I remember anyone, it is her. So truly, I have no anger, resentment, hurt pride, or ego toward her. She is such a person in my life that even if I had to spend the rest of my life at the dust of her feet, I would have no objection; rather, I would consider myself fortunate.
A few days ago she told me, "Sush, why would I be angry with you? What are you saying! lol!" See how easily she resolved everything with a flick! She doesn't have the time or mentality to harbor anger or resentment toward anyone! She is the smartest person I have ever met in my entire life. I haven't met anyone smarter than her yet. She can take very serious things, very grave mistakes, very serious matters very lightly. Actually, small things never touch her. You can know a person by seeing what kinds of things disturb or preoccupy them. The greater a person is, the more easily they can ignore small matters, forget them. They keep themselves busy with various tasks or engage themselves in different thoughts. Where is the time to think about such trivial things?
She would always say, there is no greater blessing than being alive. The very fact that you are alive is the greatest solution to all your problems. Compared to this, all problems are secondary. So when any problem comes in life, take it with a smile, take it easily. Don't let it touch you. You have to move forward! If you keep thinking about every thorn on the path, keep getting them stuck to you, then how will you progress? The less one worries about small matters, the farther one can walk in life. Do you know why? If you stay alive, you'll see that the next day you'll face such a problem that this current problem will be nothing compared to it. This is why there's really no such thing as a big problem. You won't be able to avoid them, but it's better to face big problems at a young age. Then all future problems will seem trivial! Remember that the fact that you are alive is the solution to all big problems. Didi used to tell me this. I've never met this person, never really had a proper conversation with her, but this person's existence in my life is the most constant, the most alive, the most vibrant.
I go to her wall and see what pictures she has posted! She has a lot of fun, travels around a lot, and takes life very easily. She helps people, thinks about people. There isn't an atom of narrow-mindedness in her; in her movements and thoughts she is very broad-minded. She has no headache about what others are doing or not doing. I see that she is such a person who can avoid judging anyone on this earth by even one percent! She never judges anyone. How someone is or isn't, what they're doing or not doing—that's their own experience, that's their own lifestyle, that's their own sphere. If someone lives in their own way without harming anyone else, Didi has no concern about it. She helps people as much as possible, truly loves people, looks at people with sympathy. I have never seen her bothering anyone or interfering in anyone's life. When someone is in trouble, when someone needs support, when someone is drowning in despair, when someone is going through various crises in life, Gayatri Didi will be there first with all her will and ability! Yes, another aspect of her—she is a great animal lover. She regularly donates to some organizations that work with animals. She has a big dog who is Nil's playmate, a member of their family.
(To be continued...)