Our thinking and reactions to situations are influenced by our levels of consciousness. Consciousness is awareness. Much depends on with at what levels of awareness we live, think, speak and act in our lives. Most of us live our lives in a mechanical manner. Our responses are habitual or influenced by the pains and experiences of the past. Our responses to most of the situations are automatic and we do not think and respond. We just give knee jerk response. Generally speaking, we return good for good and bad for bad. Many a times we give a bad response for good things spoken or done to us. And it is very rare that we rise above our automated thinking and return good for a wrong done to us.
How can we change or alter our responses? We know that our responses are habitual and conditioned by past experiences. So we must learn to live with awareness and watch how we react in any given situation. When we watch ourselves and our thoughts, we gain a level of control over our responses. A time tested method of changing our responses is doing mantra japa and meditation. Mantra japa releases vibrations which changes our patterns of thinking and empowers our will to overcome past conditionings. Regular meditation brings us in touch with our higher consciousness or super consciousness and we develop intuition and heightened mental clarity. At such levels of thinking, the problem and solution are not seen as two different things. Solution is a natural outflow of the problem. We pick and chose our responses from a different plane of thinking and understanding. Spiritual leaders, Gurus, Avatars teach us by example how to think and react differently. Every religion in the world teaches the same: Do not return one wrong with another. This is the story of Buddha – of how he reacted when wrong was done unto him:
Buddha had many devout followers. One of them was the wife of a brahmin. Initially, the husband was very happy that the wife was following the teachings of Buddha so well. As her faith and devotion in Buddha increased, the brahmin began to feel jealous. He decided to meet Buddha and ask Buddha a tricky question that Buddha would not be able to answer. This would diminish the value of Buddha in the eyes of his wife and she would leave Buddha. So when Buddha was sitting in a public place, he asked him: What is it that must be killed so that we may be able to live in peace and happiness? Buddha replied: In order to live in this way, we have to kill anger. Anger destroys peace and happiness. The reply of Buddha inspired the brahmin so much that his anger melted away. He joined Buddha’s group and became a monk. Eventually he became enlightened.
The younger brother of the brahmin was furious when he heard of the transformation of his brother. As Buddha was finishing a public discourse, he went to him and rained abuses on Buddha. Buddha sat quietly until he had finished. Then he asked the angry man: When you serve food to a guest and the guest goes away without eating anything, to whom would the food belong? The man was caught unawares and replied: To me, I guess. Then Buddha said: Like the guest, I also do not accept your insults. So the insults belong to you. The brahmin was speechless and he realised his folly. Like his brother, he too became a monk in Buddha’s group.
The other monks who had witnessed this meeting were full of admiration for Buddha’s ability to teach Dharma to even those who heaped abuse on him. When questioned, Buddha replied: I do not return one wrong with another!
Buddha answered his opponents and abusers from a higher level of consciousness. The problem has its own inbuilt solution and Buddha was able to access the solution due to his enlightened state of being. We too can access the higher states of consciousness by regular japa and meditation. The reply to a wrong is never by another wrong!
