Notion Of Cruelty

Nature brings us many varieties in everything. This world would have been a boring place if everyone and everything behaved righteously and tread the path of wisdom. As the presence of antagonist highlights the role of protagonist in a play, we realize the nature of true enlightened ones when there are cruel people around.

Being cruel is to knowingly inflicting agony and discomfort to others and having no concern regarding their suffering. The severity increases when the cruel person performs the wicked acts on others who have helped him earlier. 

Generally, a snake is depicted to be cruel in nature. Even if food is offered to this animal it doesn’t care to remember the succor it received. It does not show gratitude and instead would not hesitate to bite & poison the same source which offered it food.

A subhashita underlines this:

 

By drawing a reference to the behavior of snake, it provides a glimpse of what to expect from a wicked person. It goes even further to indicate that at least a snake can be controlled by skilled persons to avoid the harm the snake would cause. However it rues that there are no such techniques to stop a cruel man from committing his non-virtuous actions.

It is an easy task to acknowledge for anyone who becomes acquainted with such persons of inhuman nature.  The best thing to do on such occasions is to maintain a distance from them and pray that they gain the knowledge of ethical and moral path. 

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Behavior of Great Men

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Latent Value Of Chattels

Human psychology tricks us many times into believing that what we already possess is of less value when compared to the stuff that we don’t own. We often encounter situations where we are intensely searching something that we badly need without realizing that our quest would finally end up in a most unlikely place and that it was within our reach all the time. 

It would of course be a relief at that instant when we would have laid our hands on the new-found stuff but at the same time also embarrassing to learn that we had ignored it all the time.

One of Aesop’s fables drives this point home. A woodcutter used to earn his livelihood by selling firewood. It was a tradition in those days to pray wooden idols for wealth. 

The woodcutter had received one such wooden idol from his father who used to revere this idol always. He had heard from his father that the idol was very precious. 

Every day the woodcutter used to pray in front of this idol to make him rich.  However nothing seemed to happen. 

One fine day he ran out of his patience, took his axe and hit the idol hard. The wooden idol was destroyed and shattered into pieces. But the woodcutter was in for a surprise. 

He saw glittering gold coins that had fallen out of the idol. All these days the idol was storing the wealth that he had yearned for. Now he realized why his father mentioned it to be of great value.

We do not realize the worth of items that we use daily and look for apparently valuable items that we don’t own yet. We are deceived by the external world to such an extent that we fail to perceive what lies within ourselves, well within our reach. 

The woodcutter in the legend could finally be able to enjoy the hidden wealth but in a fit of rage. Unlike the woodcutter, the intelligent ones would know to control their anger and recognize the latent value of their chattels as well. 

Let us strive to reach that intelligence level.

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Most difficult battle of life

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Pleasure from inflicting pain on others

As young children, we have read the classic story of the fox and the crane which presents the notion of tit for tat. The fox invites the crane for lunch and offers food on a plantain leaf. The fox relishes its lunch but the crane cannot even get a bit of the meal into its beak. In the meantime fox also laughs heartily at the crane’s plight and pats himself on the back to have successfully tricked the crane. 

A few days later the crane invites fox for lunch and puts a long necked barrel in front of him containing delicious food. While the crane savors it, the fox struggles to reach the food and instead gets its head stuck in the barrel. 

The story concludes showing the crane in good light depicting its intelligence to inflict the insult in return for the one that itself suffered. 

However before we stop at this conclusion, let us analyze the behavior of fox. Why in the first place fox had to invite crane and create an unfortunate situation? A simple thought that would appear in our mind is that the fox wanted to make fun of the crane. 

Now, let us look at our own environment. How many such people do we find who are most interested in indulging in such activities to cause agony to others? It is the sadistic pleasure that they derive out of each such situation which prompts them to continue their antics. 

They laugh and jeer at the person who is suffering. They make merry when they have made others fall into their trap. But before they realize that it is not a righteous act, they would have committed a morally unjustifiable sin. 

We need to consciously maintain a safe distance from such persons and keep reminding ourselves about the unpleasant path such a callous attitude leads us to.   

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Merriment Myths

All of us have different notion of happiness. We can hear people mentioning “After I get rich, I’ll be enjoying the rest of my life!”, “I’m searching for my perfect life partner and once I find the person, I’ll be very happy”, “If I get good grades, I’ll be happy”.  

We would have a set a goal and believe that after achieving it, we will really be happy. Certainly the sense of achievement takes us into a state of excitement, so no wonder most of us think like that. But how realistic is this?

It turns out that we fall into the trap of misbeliefs that if something happens then it results in happiness. In short, it would mean that you don’t need to be wealthy or enter into wedlock to lead a happy life. 

This article based on an extensive research carried out in this direction explains the most common myths about happiness. It emphasizes the fact that there is no step by step guide to become the happiest person. Likewise there is no certain path to get into a miserable state.

We cannot, however, deny the fact that our mind would indeed reach a blissful state, let that even be for a few moments, which is what we would term happiness. We should bear in mind that there is nothing like “happily ever after” and learn to treat the happy and sad moments as milestones in life. 

Perhaps a monk’s life would teach us a lot on this matter. Maybe we can get some inspiration from the happiest person currently in the world! 

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Franklin aphorism - The doors of wisdom are never shut

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