Weekly Quote and A Story to Brighten Your Week

Quote:

"The most important thing is asking what's the most important thing."

Story:

Learning How To Live Happily, Again
--posted by Neha on Jul 12, 2009

One of my patient's is a successful businessman and he told me that before his cancer he became depressed unless things went a certain way. Happiness was "having the cookie." If he had the cookie, things were good. If he didn't have the cookie, life wasn't worth a damn. Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing. Some of the time it was money, sometimes power, sometimes sex. At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract, the most prestigious address.

A year and a half after his diagnosis of prostate cancer he sat shaking his head ruefully. "It's like I stopped learning how to live after I was a kid. When I give my son a cookie, he is happy. If I take the cookie away or it breaks, he is unhappy. But he is two and a half and I am forty-three. It's taken me this long to understand that the cookie will never make me happy for long. The minute you have the cookie it starts to crumble or you start to worry about it crumbling or about someone trying to take it away from you. You know, you have to give up a lot of things to take care of the cookie, to keep it from crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you. You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so busy just trying not to lose it. Having the cookie is not what life is about."

My patient laughed and said cancer has changed him. For the first time he is happy. No matter if his business is doing well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf. "Two years ago, cancer asked me, 'Okay, what's important? What is really important?' Well, life is important. Life. 

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"Even This Moment Will Change."
"I am not the body. The body is not mine."
"Shivmastu Sarva Jagatah" - May the entire Universe attain Bliss.

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For Every Love There Is A Heart

For Every Love There Is A Heart

For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it.
For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it.
For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.

Author : Ivan Panin

 

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"Even This Moment Will Change."
"I am not the body. The body is not mine."
"Shivmastu Sarva Jagatah" - May the entire Universe attain Bliss.

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બાળગીત

નાની મારી આંખ, એ જોતી કાંક કાંક
.                 એ તો કેવી અજબ જેવી વાત છે!

નાક મારું નાનું એ સુંઘે ફૂલ મઝાનું
.                 એ તો કેવી અજબ જેવી વાત છે!

નાના મારા કાન, એ સાંભળે દઈને ધ્યાન
.               એ તો કેવી અજબ જેવી વાત છે !

નાના મારા હાથ, એ તાળી પાડે સાથ
.               એ તો કેવી અજબ જેવી વાત છે !

આંગળી મારી લપટી, એથી વગાડું ચપટી
.               એ તો કેવી અજબ જેવી વાત છે !

પગ મારા નાના, એ ચાલે છાનામાના,
.              એ તો કેવી અજબ જેવી વાત છે !

- ઉપેન્દ્રાચાર્ય

 

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"Even This Moment Will Change."
"I am not the body. The body is not mine."
"Shivmastu Sarva Jagatah" - May the entire Universe attain Bliss.

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Weekly Quote and A Story to Brighten Your Week

Various quotes on "problems":

"If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake."

"In a day, when you don't come across any problems, you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path."

"Technology never solves a problem without creating ten more."

"The best way to escape your problem is to solve it."

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them."

Story:

Two transformed people sharing Love (Long But Powerful):

Josh Stieber was in middle school when 9/11 was on the news; he vowed to enlist in the army after graduating high school, and sure enough, by 2007, he was deployed to BaghDad. What he saw transformed him:

I had grown up hearing ideas like "love your enemies", "return evil with good", and "judge not lest you be judged". But I treated these sayings that the central figure of my religion taught as if they were just nice sounding lines, but not practical. But slowly, my excuses started to fade away. I learned that the military trains people to hate and dehumanize entire people groups, not showing sadness for the difficult task of "removing evil". I learned that the Iraqis weren't waiting for us with open arms; in our towns, men, women, and children protested our presence. I learned innocent people die. I learned that it doesn't matter what uniform you have on, it's about what's inside. And sadly, the military tries to rob you of what's inside and the result is people treating killing like a joke and showing little care for human life.

It took a few wake up calls and the examples of other historical figures like Gandhi, Tolstoy, and MLK for me to run out of excuses for not living up to the man I claimed I believed in. He said "love as I have loved you". And the things I was doing and contributing to were showing just the opposite. After times of desperation and depression, the answer I found was love; it's stronger than fear, hate, suffering, and death.

By April 2009, he had left the army, and engaged on a bike ride to spread some love:

The other one was Conor. David Albert describes his remarkable story like this:

He was a Marine patrol leader, charged with searching houses in Fallujah and then Ramadi, arresting "suspected terrorists", etc.

He had much to say about military misconduct and was troubled by this for sometime. One day, he was ordered to search an entire block in Ramadi. On his orders, they went house to house, destroying furniture, breaking windows, terrorizing the entire population. (he has many stories about that as well). They found absolutely nothing. They finally came to the last house. Surprising to him, when he opened the door, it entered a small courtyard, with a magnificent lawn, and beautiful flowers (this, in the middle of the desert). Well, he ordered his men into the house, told them to break everything, while he swept the courtyard for weapons. He didn't find any, and took a shovel, and started to dig things up.

In a few minutes, a middle-aged man, wearing a dishdasha, came out of the house that was being wrecked, with a tray, and served them and the rest of the men tea. In perfect English, he asked Conor about his life, where he was from, whether he had any siblings, what he really liked to do, how Iraq was treating him. Not even a hint of bitterness or anger in his voice.

That was the day Conor decided to leave the military.

Both Josh and Connor are sharing their stories on the "Contagious Love Experiment" ... when two Iraq Vets found out that love conquers fear and hate, they began to spread it by journeying across the country.

 

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"Even This Moment Will Change."
"I am not the body. The body is not mine."
"Shivmastu Sarva Jagatah" - May the entire Universe attain Bliss.

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Why Prabhu is waiting to give Samkit and other great gifts to us

Prabhu is Ready.. Are we Ready...

પ્રિય માનવ,

તમને જે આપવામાં આવ્યું છે તે સઘળાંની કદર અને કાળજી કરતાં શીખો. તમારી પાસે જે છે તે

બધું મારી પાસેથી જ આવે છે એવું તમને બરોબર સમજાઇ જાય ત્યારે તમે એમ જ કરશો. તમે

આપનારને ખરેખર ચાહતાં જ હો છો ત્યારે તેણે આપેલા ઉપહારનું પ્રેમથી જતન કરો છો. પણ

તમે જ્યારે મારી ભેટની કાળજી લેવાનું ચુકી જાઓ છો ત્યારે એમાં મારા પ્રત્યેનું, એ બધી ભેટો

આપનાર પ્રત્યેનું વલણ પ્રગટ થાય છે. પ્રેમ એ જ ચાવી છે. તમે પ્રેમનો અર્થ જાણો છો ત્યારે

તમારી સંભાળ હેઠળ જે મૂકવામાં આવ્યું છે તે બધા માટે પ્રેમ અને કાળજી રાખવાનું તમે ચુકતા

નથી. બાળકને તમે કોઇ બહુમૂલ્ય સાધન રમવા માટે આપતાં નથી કારણ કે તમે જાણો છો કે

બાળક એનું ધ્યાન નહિ રાખી શકે. અને કદાચ તોડી ફોડી નાખશે. ઘણી બધી વસ્તુઓ, તમને

આપવા માટે હું રાહ જોઉં છું. પણ તમે એની સંભાલ રાખતાં ન શીખો, પ્રેમ અને કાળજીપૂર્વક

એનો જે રીતે ઉપયોગ કરવો જોઇએ તે કરતાં ન શીખો ત્યાં સુધી તમને એ હું આપી શકું નહિ

એટલે હું તમને મારી વધુ ને વધુ ભેટો આપી શકું તે પહેલાં તમે એને માટે તૈયાર થાઓ તેની

મારે ધીરજથી રાહ જોવાની છે.

હંમેશા તમારી સાથે જ

ઇશ્વર

સાભાર * 'ઓપનિંગ ડોર્સ વિધિન' *  એઇલીન કેડી  * અનુવાદ ઇશા કુન્દનિકા

 

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"Even This Moment Will Change."
"I am not the body. The body is not mine."
"Shivmastu Sarva Jagatah" - May the entire Universe attain Bliss.

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Weekly Quote and A Story to Brighten Your Week

Quote:

"Yesterday was the deadline for all complaints."

Story:

Two Wolves Within Us:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 wolves inside us all."

"One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego."

"The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather Which wolf wins?
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed." 

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"Even This Moment Will Change."
"I am not the body. The body is not mine."
"Shivmastu Sarva Jagatah" - May the entire Universe attain Bliss.

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