JAI SAI RAM!!!
Its a bit lengthy but read it...May be it is of some use to someone who is in search and so dear to MY BABA SAI...searching for the trust in self....
... PATIENCE IS THE GOLDSMITH; INTELLECT IS THE ANVIL; KNOWLEDGE IS THE HAMMER;
We can use our intellect in two ways. We have already made use of it as a knapsack, but not as an anvil. We fill it with information, just as a ragman fills his bag. We hear scriptures and listen to sadgurus. Whatever we get, no matter what its source, we dump into this bag, this beggar's sack. It contains everything: scriptures, masters' teachings, newspapers, Vedas, radio advertisements, movie songs. If someone abuses you, you tuck away the abuse in the sack. If someone gives you a mantra to recite, you store it there. Your mind is a sack in which the mantra mingles with foul words. Vedas are lost in everyday news. And such a bag we constantly drag behind us.
This we call memory. It is not knowledge, just rubbish. Genuine knowledge is that which is attained from our own experience. The intellect is filled with borrowed knowledge; everything is stale. Nanak says, however, that intellect is the anvil and knowledge is the hammer.
Nanak says knowledge is the blow of the hammer. Whenever you attain knowledge, howsoever infinitesimal, every hair of your body trembles with its impact.
This is why we avoid knowledge, because we don't want to bear the shock of it. Instead we merely gather information, because this gives no shock. You read in the shastras, "God is the ultimate truth." What shock is there in that? You read, "Meditation is the way." You have learned it by heart; you even tell it to others. What impact does it have?
A little girl was playing in her courtyard when her mother called her from the top of the stairs for her bath. The little girl didn't want to leave her game. Her grandmother, who was herself sunning in the courtyard, told her daughter many times, "Let her play. You can give her a bath later on." But the mother was adamant. At last the child left her playing and began to climb the stairs. When she saw her mother she said to her, "How strange that you always tell me to 'listen to your mother' but you don't listen to your mother at all."
Do you ever heed the advice you give others? No, it's just stale stuff that you pass on to others. Once you give it away you are free of it. There's no more to it. It never did anything for you; nor will it for others.
Advice is given so freely, and taken so rarely. People feel so free to distibute knowledge, but who takes it? On the contrary, you avoid such people because they bore you. They fill your sack of intellect with all the trash that lies in their sack. The joke is they have never put it to any other use.
Real knowledge carries an impact; it is born out of life's experience, the friction of life. When you take a jump into existence, knowledge is born -- not through scriptures and words. Experience is a blow, so we try to avoid it to save ourselves.
Gurdjieff used to compare our knowledge with the buffers of a train or the springs of a car. Both are shock absorbers. When there is an impact they absorb the shock, whereas authentic knowledge is a shock in itself.
When someone close to you dies, you say, "The soul is eternal." This knowledge has never shaken you in your life. You use it merely as a shock absorber. The sages who have declared this truth of the immortality of the soul, have practiced self-restraint. They have passed through many furnaces and fires. This knowledge has been like a hammer of the anvil for them. This knowledge has completely crushed them; it has broken their skulls open, so to speak. Their ego has been reduced to dust. It has severed all their connection with the body. This knowledge has caused their whole world to reel and fall to pieces. This is the knowledge that initiated them into sannyas. This knowledge has made them as good as nobodies in the mundane world. It has uprooted them completely from samsara. It came as a hurricane and swept them away completely.
What has your knowledge done for you? It is like a lullaby.
When you do not fall asleep you hum your knowledge, and so fall asleep. When someone dies, you use it to absorb the shock, because you are afraid of death. It could also have been possible for a death in your family to become a full-fledged experience for you, by which you attained knowledge. In that case, the event of death becomes the hammer and you are the anvil; and when the hammer fell on you, the blow would have awakened you.
No one ever awakens in this world without a blow; you have placed shock absorbers all around you so you are safe inside. Nothing can affect you.
Someone dies, and you say, "The soul is immortal." You see a beggar on the road and say, "Poor man. He is paying for his past actions." You are loathe to give him a paltry two paise! You really have to believe he is suffering from past actions or you would consider yourself partly responsible, which would be a blow to you, so you create a shock absorber. You say, "Poor man, he suffers because of his own actions." And you go on your way. His plight creates no anxiety in you, no worry, no food for thought.
You are very efficient. Your cunningness knows no bounds. The sages attain knowledge by the impact of events, and you use that very impact as a shock absorber. Whatever happens you save yourself. You take great care to protect your ego, the very thing that needs to break.
INTELLECT IS THE ANVIL; KNOWLEDGE IS THE HAMMER;
But where is the hammer to descend -- on whose head? Only if you place your own self between the anvil and the hammer can knowledge be created in you.
Only when you break into fragments -- only then! But you save yourself in a thousand ways.
Nanak says that knowledge is the hammer. Don't use your intellect as a sack or else the sack will grow and grow, while you get smaller and smaller, until one day you'll get lost in your own sack. You will die beneath its weight; that's how pundits and scholars die, crushed under their own knowledge.
Make your intellect into an anvil and its shine will improve with every experience of life.
Each blow will cleanse and polish it. If you ask a goldsmith or blacksmith they will tell you that hammers often break as they strike, but the anvil remains intact. The anvil even begins to shine more and more as the hammers break.
Lao Tzu asked why the anvil does not break. He answered that it is because it bears the blow, and the hammer breaks because it attacks. Aggression always breaks by itself. You need not worry about it, just develop the ability to endure; then every situation that is aggressive, that shakes you up, will make you all the stronger. Ask the goldsmith and he will tell you how many hammers he has broken on his anvil, while the anvil remains intact. Though you would think that the anvil should break after so many blows, what hits breaks itself, while what bears the impact is saved. The secret lies hidden in the anvil.
Nanak says the intellect is the anvil, so the intellect will not break. Don't be afraid, but make it vulnerable to the blows of experience. Let the blows fall -- as many as life lets fall on your consciousness, so shall you be purified. Make life an adventure. Don't run away from where you think the blows will fall. He who flees is defeated already; he has not accepted the challenge. His anvil will get rusted even if he sits in the Himalayas. Don't be a coward or a deserter but stand up to the challenges of life!
OM SAI RAM!!!
Topic: Some Random Thoughts--- At Baba's Lotus Feet! (Read 91447 times)