Writing Feedback / My Little 'Buddha' [6]

My Little 'Buddha'

My day was not going well. Starting from the morning, various elements stressed me out. Therefore, I tried some soothing music. As usual I played my favorite songs on my player. Everything was going fine until the player capriciously started to make disturbing sound as though the CD was scratched. Owing to my tiredness and bad mood, I quickly got upset at my CD player and words escaped

"What is wrong with you?"

My efforts to clean CD didn't bring the desired effect, adding anger to my despondency. I soon got annoyed by the player and all in my rage, I threw it on the ground.

"No more bothering!"

Frustrated by all this, I thought of spending my time getting some fresh air. The serenity of the environment soon calmed my nerves. As my rationality returned, in no moment, I realized my mistake. I felt bad for breaking the player for nothing good and for not even trying to know the actual cause. My later discovery, that the actual problem was with the player's lens, made me more remorseful.

After a while, a unique thought stroke my mind - I began to correlate between my actions with a story that I had heard about Gautama Buddha:

Once, Buddha was preaching sermons to his devotees. Among them, one happened to be a wife of a pundit. The pundit, believing that Buddha polluted his wife's mind with absurd things, was very infuriated. So in rage, he began to upbraid Buddha in front of his followers. However, Buddha, instead of defending, remained quiet, just smiling. After an exhaustive rebuke pundit leaved. But he was astounded by Buddha's calmness despite his severe scolding. Soon, he acknowledged his fault that he shouldn't have condemned Buddha by not even trying to know who Buddha was and what were his intentions. He realized the greatness of Buddha. Therefore, he went back to Buddha and asked for forgiveness.

This incident of Buddha reminded me of my own. Like Buddha who even didn't speak a word against the pundit, my player did not respond to my unjustified actions but stayed quiet. As a result, I soon became aware of my folly. I learnt that to make someone realize his/her mistakes sooner and more effectively, we should rather stay calm than counterattack or even defend. Having arguments only exacerbates the situation and promotes the wrong beliefs. But, the silence urges adversary to go through profound thinking and realization which can never be accomplished by arguing. Besides, I learned that anger is an emotion to be avoided as it leads us to repent at the end, which was the case with pundit and me.

My heart ached in pain as I watched the broken CD player lying on the ground. How cruel I had been to my player that had been with me for three years. I picked it up and placed it on my desk. As I looked at my CD player, I felt it was smiling back at me and reminding me, never to be angry again. I felt Buddha himself was residing in it.

There was my CD player, there was my little Buddha.