Mental Poise and Courage

 

Photo credit: His Holiness Sudhanshuji Maharaj

Mental Poise and Courage

Many times, in life we are faced with situations which require tremendous mental strength and courage. Sometimes we find the strength and courage and sometimes we don’t, and when we don’t, we face a lot of trauma and loss – it could be emotional, material or financial or a combination of all the three. In school and college, we either face bullies or get cowed down and bullied for the rest of our term in school and college. One way to face these bullies is to become personally strong and learn to fight. But always remember, if you take the violent path, there will always be a stronger person who comes along to knock down your pride sooner or later.

If you do become a good fighter, then your ego will make you strut around wherever you go, you will want to put your fighting skills on display, show off even. The best way is to learn these skills for defence, like Bruce Lee once did – your aura itself should put people off from taking you on.

The best way to defend yourself is with your own mental poise and courage. Why will anyone want to beat you up? Think about it, anybody wanting to harm you may be only because you had said something or done something to such person or his family sometime in the past, isn’t it! If you can recollect any such incident, the better way is to swallow your ego and apologise to that person. Say sorry, make him your friend instead.

If you are really innocent, then you will easily be able to send out a beautiful innocent vibration. He may then come near you but forget to attack you! I remember an incident when I had just started with meditation. I was driving down to the mediation centre from my office in the evening amidst heavy traffic. When I was approaching a bridge from the extreme left (close to the footpath), a motorbike squeezed through at great speed and suddenly braked right in front of me. I must have been doing 15-20 kmph and I too braked hard, and my car’s fender just touched the rear of his bike. Nothing happened, other than that the biker who was a Muslim got off his bike and started banging on the driver’s window.

I lowered the window and asked him what’s wrong – and he started abusing me, raised his fist to hit me. I was totally calm and relaxed, as if Swamiji was talking and not the usual me (who was very short tempered), I told him such small incidents keep happening, and it was you who came from the left in front of me and braked suddenly, if you feel hitting me will make you feel good, please do so. Maybe the calmness of my voice and my demeanour put him off, and he suddenly turned and left without a word.

So, the best defence is to keep a clean and serene mind; smile at him. If he still wants to come and hit you, you should have the courage to say, “Yes, if you like to do it and if you think that you are going to enjoy it, do it. I am ready to make you happy. Is that what you want? Do it.” He will never touch you then.