Most fallen

Every morning, I make it a habit to meditate upon all the wrong I had done to others. I go over them one by one, starting with the people closest to me, my family, my relatives, my friends. Doing this, I realize, and am reminded in the process, that I had inflected pain on almost all of them in one way or another. Then I go over the people outside my intimate circle, people I had encountered in school, in work, or just someone walking by the street. I try to recall what I may have done. There are so many people I have hurt, so much pain inflicted, and that's just for my classmates in elementary school. And what about all the people who didn't even know that I've offended them? Like mentally criticizing a person walking by, or talking stink behind someone's back, or taking advantage of someone while they are unaware. And that's just for human beings. As a kid, how many dogs, cats, have I kicked with or without reason? How many times have I burned down or flood up an anthill? How many times have I roasted dragon flies on a stake or ripped them apart just to see how they'd react? How many murdered animals have I consumed in my lifetime? And that's just when I was a kid. A lot of living entities have suffered, a lot of hearts were broken because I got none. 

But the worse thing is that in spite of all I had done, I can still make myself believe that I am holy, I am better than others, I have the right to judge, I am sinless. And that is my disease. This is the reason why I am not tasting love for God and others. This arrogance hardened my heart. A hard heart that is so quick to anger, so masterful in defending one's pride. A heart so sensitive to faults by others but so tolerant of his own faults. 

My teacher said that this anger towards those who have done us wrong comes from the feeling that we are worthy. That we deserve better. We deserve to be treated with more respect. We deserve a better situation. Etc. And this is also possible only because of our forgetfulness of our own faults. I am faultless therefore it is only right that I be treated with the manner according to my greatness. 

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in His 3rd prayer, clearly stated the qualifications of a great personality: he is humble, he is tolerant, he is always ready to offer all respect to others without expecting respect in return, and he is feeling lower than the straw in the street. In other words, this person described feels he is the most unqualified, the most sinful, the most fallen. When one is in this state of mind, my teacher continued, no matter what wrong or evil may come to him he will feel no anger.  Because he is always aware of his faults, he feels in his heart that the wrongs he had done to others far surpasses the wrongs he is suffering. Therefore he feels he deserve, not to have a better situation, but the suffering he is receiving. Being in this state of mind of feeling the most fallen, feeling the most unqualified, he is actually qualified. 

When we become angry at our situation, or hold anger towards somebody, my teacher further stated, we are eventually angry at God, because He is the Supreme controller. Why did He allow this to happen to me of all people? Why did He allow jerks to walk the earth? Etc. In this way, feeling that God is our enemy we are denied of the opportunity to experience being under His shelter by loving surrender: I am the most fallen, I have no where else to go, with my sins no one can love me unconditionally like You do, You are my only rest and refuge, please protect me. 

A blessed day

Most people believe that in this day and age, it is easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find a person who is without envy. Because of the fruitlessness of the search they simply give up and say that perhaps no such a person exists. In fact because enviousness is so common in everyone, some even think that to be envious is actually good to some extent. It serves, as some would put it, as spice to our endeavors. It helps to drive a person to achieve, to struggle, to succeed. 

Today is a most glorious day. Because today I have known a person who I can say is free of envy. While it is easy for most people to declare "I'm not envious," for the sake of simply showing people how holy one is, the actual state of freedom from enviousness naturally surfaces as symptoms of related behaviors like humility, tolerance and respectfulness. When these are present then most likely envy is not. I have already heard from people the glories of this person's character, and it has been my constant prayer that I'd also be able to see, even just a glimpse, what they had seen in him that was so great. Today I felt that God finally answered my prayer. I have come to a sort of an affirmation of belief. 

I am an envious person, and although I am suffering from it, I'm completely clueless of how to get the feeling out of my heart. It comes automatically. I feel it is beyond my power to rid myself of this disease of envy. But listening to him today, something in my heart tells me that "this is the person who can teach me how not to be envious ever again." I've heard him talk many times as a teacher, and I politely listened like a regular student, but I believe it is only today that I have trully appreciated, and in the depths of my being accepted a Teacher. 

The amazing thing was that what he had said was not really something new even, he had been telling me those things long before. In a different manner, he reiterated the principle of humility, of feeling oneself to be lower than the straw in the street as an absolute requirement in attaining success in spiritual life. A person who actually feels he is lower than the dirt in the ground cannot be envious. He is not envious because he cannot find in himself the feeling that he is a worthy person. He feels instead that he is the most fallen, the most undeserving of respect, and the lowest. Ordinary people may say that they also feel that same way, that they feel that people are above them. Yes, people may also feel that way, especially if in truth they are actually that way: most fallen. But instead of humility what they will feel is envy towards those above them, because they feel they deserve to be above, they feel they deserve respect, etc.  After all, isn't it a basic human right to be protected from being belittled or insulted based on his low status? But the feeling of being the lowest, felt by a truly humble person doesn't necessarily come from being the most sinful or the most wretched, but is out of the grace of God and the mercy of His devotee. Only by the grace of God and the mercy of His pure loving servant can we overcome enviousness and the arrogance borne out of pride. We cannot simply immitate or cheat other people, for the sake of collecting followers or admirers, into believing that we are humble or that we are without envy. Eventually, because we are not getting any happiness from pretending, the hiding behind the mask will exhaust us. 

If one wants to be free of the envy that poisons the heart with anger, jelousy, arrogance and other inauspicious elements, then one must simply look for a person who has already freed himself from all these things, accept him as a teacher, render some service unto him, and surrender at his feet all one's self-centered notions about life, and instead approach as someone who doesn't know. That is the proper way of learning how to be free not only of envy but of all other undesirable things in one's life that hinder us from tasting real happiness.