A
young man approached a Zen master to find solution to his unhappiness. The sage told him to put a handful of
salt in a glass of water and then drink it. The young man immediately spat it
out. The sage then asked him to take another handful of salt and put it in a
lake and told him to drink the water. The young man did not find it repulsive
now.
The
teacher shared a profound truth to the troubled learner: ‘the pain of life is akin
to salt. But the intensity we taste as 'pain' depends on the container we put
it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your
sense of things... Stop being a small glass, become a large lake!’
So often, so many of us find
ourselves in pain or hurt or failure. We feel let down by a person or the
situation. We cast ourselves as victims as our unhappiness arises from a
feeling of futility. And since we see the situation through a narrow cone, the
intensity of the hurting gets magnified.
Now, imagine seeing that person
or that situation from a perspective of a longer timeline. We may be playing
blind to the larger picture and focussing only on the exception. It is
pertinent to note that a timeline dilutes the intensity of pain. Similarly when
we see a singular negative experience in context of a larger set of
experiences, our interpretation tends to alter.
We must allow every emotion to
move beyond victimhood reactions. We must see every person, every action and
every situation from the larger perspective of a longer timeline. This is not
to dilute the reality of the person or the action or the situation; but it will
certainly dilute the intensity of pain and empower our response to cope with
that person or that action or that situation.
Make it large... a perspective that’s sane...
The lake, not the glass, will ease the pain!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
Goa, India.
