Diwali is coming and the world around is all set to welcome it with a new zest. It is the biggest festival, celebrated and considered auspicious by people, across various castes and religions. Rows full of lamps are lit that display and communicate vibrancy. The lamps symbolically indicate that we shall remain bright and full of energy at every stage of life we are given to pass through. Remaining so may not change our circumstances, but it will certainly build in the spirit to overcome the problems and sustain through life.
How can we bring this vibrancy into ourselves while going through various facets and stages of life?
Through Right understanding!!
Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan says, “The right understanding that has become wrong is the reason why bitter fruits have come about. Wrong understanding is misery and right understanding is happiness.” Thus it is the understanding that one has, or one receives from outside, which becomes the basis of the misery or the happiness one experiences in life. So, whenever we feel miserable in life, we need to understand that there is some ignorance or lack of understanding on our part, which is responsible for it.
Let us understand with the help of the below narrated incidences, how we tend to suffer by our wrong understanding and how can we come out of that suffering through right understanding.
Suppose someone insulted you by saying, “You have no brains, you are foolish!” What would happen to you then? You would get upset and annoyed, right? But just think and see, whatever he said, isn’t it a fact? You do not have knowledge or understanding regarding so many worldly matters. And one or two matters in which you may have knowledge, also may not be up to the mark when compared with the depth of the knowledge the experts have reached. Then, why should anything that is a fact said, affect you?
It is because we believe that, “I am smart, I know everything (in spite of knowing mere one or two things).” It’s only this wrong understanding that upsets us and makes us feel insulted.
If someone insults you saying, “You are useless”, why to get upset? Can you not set it up, saying, “That’s true. I am indeed useless and unworthy for this world. But definitely, I am worthy for liberation.”
So, it’s not only about a common man, even Enlightened beings, at their elevated stage, face circumstances that could be disturbing; but they remained steadfast and furthermore, in equanimity, both outwards and within. Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan says, “Understanding is referred to that which does not allow one to trip and fall.” And the ultimate right understanding is gained when we receive the knowledge of ‘Who am I’ and ‘Who is the doer’ from the Enlightened One. This helps us solve any problem in life!
Hence, on this auspicious occasion of Diwali, let’s clear all the cob-webs of wrong understandings that have caused immense misery to us, and illuminate our life with the light of the Right understanding.
