Ripples in Mind

chanakyakripa

A man was sittingby a lake. He was throwing small pebbles into it from time to time. A young boyhappened to cross by. He was intrigued to see that after every few minutes orso, the man would toss a pebble into the lake.

The boy went up to the man and said,"Good pastime, this stone throwing,"

"Hmmm,"said the man. He seemed to be deep in thought and obviously did not wish to bedisturbed.

Sometime later, the man said softly,"Look at the water, it is absolutely still."
The boy said, "Yeah, it is."

The man tossed a pebble into the water andcontinued, "Only till I toss a pebble into it now do you see theripples?"
Yeah," said the boy, "they spreadfurther and further."

"And soon, the water is stillagain," offered the man.
The boy said, "Sure, it becomes quiet,after a while."

The man continued, "What if we want tostop the ripples? The root cause of the ripples is the stone. Let's take thestone out. Go ahead and look for it." The boy put his hand into the waterand tried to take the stone out.

But he only succeeded in making more ripples.He was able to take the stone out, but the number of ripples that were made inthe process were a lot more than before.

The wise man said, "It is not possible tostop the movement of the water once a pebble has been thrown into it. But if wecan stop ourselves from throwing the pebble in the first place, the ripples canbe avoided altogether! So too, it is with our minds. If a thought enters intoit, it creates ripples. The only way to save the mind from getting disturbed isto block and ban the entry of every superfluous thought that could be apotential cause for disturbance. If a disturbance has entered into the mind, itwill take its own time to die down. Too many conflicting thoughts just causemore and more disturbances. Once the disturbance has been caused it takes timeto ebb out. Even trying to forcibly remove the thought may further increase theturmoil in the mind. Time surely is a great healer, but prevention is always betterthan cure."

Point: Before youallow a thought or a piece of information to enter your mind, put it throughthe triple filter test of authenticity, goodness and value.