Excerpt from
Meditation on the Imitation of Christ:
A Vedantic Interpretation
By Swami Chidakarananda and Sister Jayanti
1. There will always be faults in ourselves, faults in
others, which defy correction; there is nothing for it but to put up with them,
till God arranges things differently. After all, it may be the best possible way
of testing your patience; and without patience a man’s good qualities go for
very little. At the same time, you do well to pray about such inconveniences;
ask God in his mercy to help you bear them calmly.
Once we become
conscious of our thoughts, nothing gives us greater pain than our own faults
and imperfections. We should, of course, struggle to remove these; but discipline
and will power alone cannot free us from them altogether. That is why it is
vital to learn to accept ourselves as we are; not with a sense of fatalism, but
with the understanding that there are things in us that take a long time to
change. A cheerful acceptance of our limitations is actually a great virtue. By
that simple mental attitude, their binding power is greatly reduced.
2. If you have spoken to a man once and again without
bringing him to a better mind, it is a mistake to go on nagging at him; leave
it all in God’s hands; let his will be done, his name be glorified, in the
lives of all his servants – he knows how to bring good out of evil.
Yes, you do
well to cultivate patience in putting up with the shortcomings, the various
disabilities of other people; only think how much they have to put up with in
you! When you make such a failure of organizing your own life, how can you
expect everybody else to come up to your own standards?
Unsolicited advice is rarely listened to. We may, of course,
speak our mind if we think it necessary; but if there is no response to our
best intentions, then all we can do is to pray and remain silent, leaving
everything in God’s hands. The fact is if we truly know ourselves, there will
be nothing in the lives of others that will really shock or surprise us. When
we fail so often to live the way we want, how can we expect others to be
perfect?
3. We like to have everybody around us quite perfect, but
our own faults – we never seem to correct them. Tom, Dick and Harry must be
strictly called to order, but we aren’t fond of being called to order
ourselves. It is always the other man that has too much rope given him – our
wishes must not be thwarted; rules for everybody else, but our own liberties
must not be abridged for a moment. My neighbour as myself – it is not often, is
it, that we weight the scales equally?
If we were
all perfect, we should give one another no crosses to bear, and that is not
what God wants.
It is easier to look outside than to look inside our mind.
It is easier to see the faults of others than our own. We hope to make the
whole world perfect but fail to understand that it is not possible, that the only
thing that we can change is ourselves. If the world looks to us like a wild
field, full of thorns and broken glass, we cannot expect others to cover the
whole surface of the planet with a carpet so that we can walk safely. The
reasonable and only possible solution is to wear shoes ourselves.
This
understanding of our own weaknesses and failures will also bring a
compassionate acceptance of other’s faults.
4. He will have us learn to bear the burden of one
another’s faults. Nobody is faultless; each has his own burden to bear, without
the strength or the wit to carry it by himself; and we have got to support one
another, console, help, correct, advise one another, each in his turn.
Meanwhile, there is no better test of a man’s
quality than when he cannot have things his own way. The occasions of sin do
not overpower us, they only prove our worth.
Goodwill and sincerity are essential for a peaceful and
happy interaction with others. Once Saint Martin of Porres and Saint Rose of Lima were separately given
the task of decorating the altar of a certain church. They had never met
before, and they didn’t know that both have been given the same task. So St.
Rose decorated the altar with several flower vases and left to do some other
chore. In the meantime, St. Martin came in
through another door and started his own decoration, changing the order of the
vases. When he had finished, he stepped aside to look at his work from a
distance. At that precise moment St. Rose came in, and seeing that someone had
moved the vases, put them back in the previous order. After doing that, she
noticed the presence of St. Martin and asked
him if he had changed the vases. When St. Martin said he had, she returned the
vases to the order chosen by St. Martin, so St. Martin
asked her:
“Why
did you do that? Do you like it better this way?” “No,” she answered, “but I
have an ego to conquer.” Then ST. Martin
immediately went and changed the vases to the order selected previously by St
Rose. Now St. Rose asked him, “What happened? Do you like better my
arrangement?” “No,” said St. Martin, “but I
also have an ego to conquer.”
