LIVE THE IDEAL - Swami Chinmayananda

LIVE THE IDEAL

Swami Chinmayananda


You are not, unfortunately, what you think yourself to be. You think you are successful; others in your office are attributing your chair, perhaps to the greatness of your father-in-law. You think you are efficient and strict; others consider you as weak and bad tempered. You count yourself to be a kind father; others say that you are spoiling your son. You imagine that you are a great Romeo to your neighbor’s sister; she takes you to be a lunatic though of an interesting and entertaining type.

Thus, what you estimate yourself to be and what others judge you, from your actions, are poles apart from each other. Your so-called estimate of yourself is but your intellectual belief in some ideal picture of yourself; but in your dealing with the world outside you are acting just the opposite and the only one who is totally unconscious of the ugliness is yourself.

We have thus, in each one of us, a double personality playing in us at all times; one a personality which we believe in and another with which we act out. Roughly we can attribute the former to our Intellectual Entity and the latter to our Physical Person. Educated as we are, as a product of our study, appreciation and admiration of some of the perfect qualities, both moral and ethical, in other great men, we have a vague picture of the Ideal that we wish to be. This picture of the ideal, when entertained for long in ourselves becomes so clearly impressed in ourselves that we come to believe that we are the ideal that we cherish. But alas, Others suffer and groan under persecutions of what we actually are in our life.

Our Self-unfoldment, our growth in ourselves, our personality charm can burst forth in all its fragrance and joy into full bloom only when we plan for and bring about an actual translation of our idealism into our day – to – day life. We must live what we believe in. We must act upon our own cherished ideas.

We must strive to live our accepted philosophy of life. Or else, though a Bhakta we will run amuck to carry away our Sita, thereby inviting not only our own destruction but a host of sorrows to a million others around us.

As seekers and sincere aspirants to a higher cultural life you all must learn to translate your ideal picture of yourself in your own work-a-day-life. This is only possible through regular and sincere self-examination and long and careful introspection. Each day see the drama of your own day’s life, thrown upon the screen of your own mind and watch. Edit the play, take new decisions; discover the faults; avoid them in your next 24-hour’s life. Thus, one by one, weed out your weakness in your physical contacts and dealings, in your mental feelings and emotions, and in your intellectual estimations of things and beings.

An idler alone is satisfied by shop window gazing. Walk out into the world. Sweat and toil. Earn and save. And, rich with the fruits of your own honest labour, return to the shop. Push, open the door, walk in. Approach the counter. Order the thing of your fascination. And come to possess it as your own. So too, never allow to feel satisfied by recognizing glories in some body’s life; when you admire the meekness of Christ, the compassion of Buddha, the gorgeous joys of Krishna, the dignified suffering of Rama, the wisdom of Vasishta or the dynamic philosophy of Sankara, never sit back only to gaze at them and in futile wonderment, merely come to believe in them, but feel the urge to cultivate such a noble divine personality in yourself.
Be aggressively good. Strive hard and develop these traits and come to live and express it in the world. Be a Dhananjaya. What they did we too can do. There is nothing we cannot achieve. There is no thing impossible to a determined, sincere and industrious man of right judgement. Spare not yourself until you climb to the peak. Leave the valleys for others-the lesser ones-who are satisfied by the thrill of their crowded stink and mutual conflicts. Members of the Chinmaya Mission are not satisfied except by sunlit peak of Spiritual Perfection – therein awaits for you the realization of True Hinduism.