Brinerdin tablets for hypertension, what are its side affects? -

Instead of copying a whole passage, check out Rx.com it s a website what tells you all about medications.

Sorry, this is not a direct answer to your question. But I thought you might be happy with the following help, as it may give you way of decreasing your blood pressure without any medication at all: Psychological Vaccination against Diseases The following analytical meditation will either cure your diseases or give you the ability to live happily with them or do both. Say to yourself: I am ill as most people of the world are. All have some diseases or other: either in the body or in the mind. The body may have diseases for three reasons: Inheritance The consequence of karma and Predetermination or Fate. The blood that I was made from had some special capabilities in it together with some incapabilities. The capabilities are intellect power of memory, physical strength mental strength, determination, gentleness, leadership, or one or more other characteristics. From my forefathers I have got honor, wealth, relatives, habit, instinct, etc. These are the inheritances of which I am enjoying the benefits and also will continue to enjoy. Therefore it is also my responsibility to enjoy the inconveniences that I have inherited. If I do not accept the diseases of my forefathers then my children will not accept anything from my disease, suffering, and responsibilities. They will only receive my wealth and throw me into the grave. My mind asks me: Why did my forefathers contact diseases? Couldn’t it be otherwise? And I have the answer to this question: An individual or group survives only to achieve a goal, a cosmic purpose, which the individual or the nation achieves consciously or unconsciously by dint of their capabilities or opportunities or by way of satisfying the need of the instinct or reacting to necessity. But if that individual or nation does something that may result in their inability to do that duty, then they fall prey to diseases as a consequence of the law of equilibrium. There arrive in them weakness, inability, and at last control, as a result of which they cannot transgress the limits even if they ignorantly want to, or they simply do not want to do so. As a result the divine possibility that is hidden in them remains intact for a predetermined period and gets transmitted into the next generation in order to get expressed. And as long as the tendency to transgress the limits remains active in them the diseases also keep hibernating in them so as to save their worth. Therefore the diseases that my forefathers have given me are my real inheritance. I whole-heartedly embrace all my diseases. High blood pressure, diabetes ? these are not any diseases ? they are doctors of humans? teaching us the rules of self-control. If somebody did not have these diseases, then also, in order to be adequately human, they would have to willingly control themselves as much as they are doing now against their will. It is good to be wise after being afflicted by trouble. Knowledge never forgives humans: They have to be wise ? willingly or unwillingly. If a group of people remains ignorant for a long time, then a time will come when its progeny will either deny their unsuccessful, abominable past or entomb the ignorance by acquiring a lot of knowledge. Man becomes wise only by denying ignorance. If an individual or group of people fails to do so then they are destroyed. Still that ignorance cannot be in vain because its history makes others wise. So it will not be good for me to take any more time to be wise. Some diseases are created by my own karma. The Quran as well as any other scripture says that everything has its measure and limit. For this reason a transgression in anything upsets the equilibrium law of existence. The consequence creates diseases ? of the body and the mind. At first what falls prey to diseases is the mind, though usually the fact eludes our eyes. Then the society. And the body at last. And epidemic! The world is woven into the mesh of the law of causality. If something is supposed to take place as a result of something else taking place, it must take place if the latter does. Any exception is not desirable. If a cause would not create the expected result, then we could not desire good results after doing good deeds. Because we expect good results from good acts, we do not have the right to escape the consequences of something bad once we have done it. If, for example, I walk about in the rain and get wet as I please for five hours and catch cold and have fever, then there is nothing to be surprised at. Rather, I should be happy about it, since nature has not violated her own rules. If, on the other hand, I do not fall ill, then that will seem abnormal. The Quran says that man was created in toil. Therefore if I want to remain healthy without doing hard work or taking exercise then it will sound absurd. Lack of hard labor and excessive eating are the causes of diabetes and high blood pressure. So I will take hard work as part of life. There are some diseases that are predetermined ─ be that predetermination set a million years or only an hour ago. Whatever has been preordained for me according to the Universal Wisdom is undoubtedly good for me. That is because it is a test for me. The desire to get a certificate without sitting for the exam is only a vain desire. In the race with hurdles, the hurdles are the most important things to enjoy. A competition loses its right to be called a competition when its hurdles are removed. Whenever I get something as a grace from God I also get some problems and diseases with it. That is because in that way God limits my activities and desires so that I do not want to touch the sky. Uncontrolled pleasure may be a cause of destruction. Therefore, my Lord knows very well how much happiness mixed with how much sorrows will maintain the balance for me. If I have patience, then, when there will be no possibility of my making any further undesirable mistake, those troubles and diseases will vanish. My body cannot tolerate some types of food. This means that it will be good for me to stay away from them. So I will control myself in such cases. If the body could accept whatever the mind wants, then neither the body nor the mind would be pleasured after getting any pleasure. There are birds that time and again eat some pebbles even if there is no paucity of food. When cats and dogs eat too much they sometimes eat some amount of grass or some sharp leaves of some plants and vomit willingly. What it all means is that sometimes the body needs something that is not tasty or pleasurable, and that something that is pleasurable may have to be discarded if taken too much. Diseases do the cleaning in the body about the things that might be fatal in the future even if they seem to be pleasurable at present. The specialty of my personality lies in my diseases. However, there is nothing bad in using medicine, rather, it is better than remaining ill. Again, curing diseases and showing the right attitude to them are not the same thing. When our attitude to diseases becomes correct we either get rid of all diseases or are benefited by them more than harmed. .......................... The End of Insomnia: A Spiritual Formula Who Sleeps? You ll probably fall fast asleep by the time you ve finished reading this article. So let me keep you awake for some time. What is it that sleeps? The eye? Or the mind? Or the body? Just ask the question to yourself once again. And now don t look for an answer. If the answer to a question is fixed in advance of the question, then you don t need to think in order to arrive at it. Sounds funny? But the truth may be enjoyable. Paradoxical? But all quibbles and arguments stop on the edge of an ultimate paradox. At least our scholars have said so. Absurd? No, though unbelievable. The eyes can t sleep. Being inert objects, much like some instruments scientists work with, they can t even keep awake, much less sleep. If they could sleep, they could never wake up again. You ll get the point if you ask yourself the question quot;who awakens?quot; rather than the question quot;who sleeps?quot; Although time and again we happen to say, quot;My eyes are sleepy,quot; do we ever say, quot;My eyes are waking upquot;? Does the mind sleep? If you say yes, I ll say no. And if you say no, then I have my yes! Let me give your thought a little trouble, so that next time you can perceive the truth without any troublesome thought at all. The best way to think in the best way is to try your best not to think at all and observe how swiftly swarms of thoughts, like bees, rush into your head. Anyway, if it is the mind that sleeps, then who is it that says quot;I have sleptquot;? It is the mind, after all, that says that it slept. Although we don t know what mind is, we do know that we can t but say that we have minds. So regardless of whether we know for certain what it looks like, we simply think that we re thinking through the mind. In other words, although we can t prove that it exists, we can t do away with it. Once again, if the mind was asleep, how does it know that it was asleep? Therefore the mind can t be said to sleep. You say, quot;I ve tried to sleep but ...quot; Have you ever said, quot;I ve tried to wake up but ...?quot; How can you even think that you have freedom in doing something and not in undoing it? It s simply a belief that we try to sleep and sometimes become successful in doing so. If we really tried to sleep and could be successful, we could also try to wake up and be successful. Now suppose you tried to wake up somehow or other. Were you asleep when you made the trial? If yes, then you were not asleep. There can be no trial in sleep. Either you have sleep or the ability to think. One being the absence of the other, both can t take place at the same time. Or do you say no? Then I don t need to say that you were not asleep, because you ve said that you were not. Neither the body nor the mind sleeps. Still we need sleep. If they do anything at all, then what they can be said to do is wake up. But this waking doesn t mean waking up from sleep. Rather, it means waking up from the notion of sleep. Maybe you ve already started feeling sleepy! But please keep awake! It s not good to sleep with problems. The head as well as the eyes and the ears needs to be repaired before every attempt to have sound sleep. You wish that your eyes could sleep. Do you wish the same thing for your heart? I m not so clever that I ll wait for your answer. So let s see what sleep really means. The fact that you can t sleep doesn t make you ill. What makes you ill is that you feel troubled that you can t sleep. If, my friend, sleep is the opposite of thought, then, tell me, how can you sleep while you think so much about whether you re sleeping or not? Sleeping and thinking about sleeping don t and can t go together. If you ever want to think at all, then it would be better if you thought about how not to sleep! Yes! And that will work. Otherwise, your sleep will be compensated for by wakeful dreams. And that s not desirable. What s Sleep? So far we ve seen the nature of the problem. Now let s try to see its cause. Our previous discussion suggests that sleep is not a purely physical phenomenon, though it is influenced by the condition of the physique. If it were physical, the body could sleep without the help of the mind. When we take sedatives we sleep not because something called sleep gets into or out of the body but because the mind, whatever it be, is for some time not aware of the body. Nor is sleep a purely mental phenomenon, because if it were, we could sleep or wake up simply by the act of thinking. Sleep is, in fact, the temporary absence of the mind s awareness of the body. So all sleep disorders involve a body-mind imbalance. We can manage it only by a balanced course of action. For this reason sedatives are not and should not be the final solution. Rather, if they are adopted as a permanent method for sleep, the meaning of sleep will change, for sleep doesn t mean being unaware of the body by making the body artificially inactive; on the contrary, it means allowing it to go on its own - that is, not using it for some time ?o or more appropriately, not compelling it to be sensitive to the mind s instructions about external activities. All the aspects considered, sleep turns out to be a state of the body-mind relationship, partly resulting from the body being insensitive to the mind and the mind being unaware of the body. If it is so, then it must be an achievement as a consequence of some activity, not as a purely automatic, natural phenomenon. It can, in other words, be expected to happen in a natural way only if the conditions of the nature of the body and the nature of the mind are fulfilled. This means that sleep follows wakefulness and wakefulness results from sleep. It also means that sleep follows activity and exhaustion. If your mind helps your body in its activities, it will be in communion with it. Otherwise the relationship between the body and the mind will not be normal. How to Sleep? Now it s clear that you must fulfill one or more of the following preconditions for sleep: - There must be physical exhaustion. It the body is not exhausted, it will not sleep and still you ll complain about it. Sleep is freedom in darkness. This is why it s often referred to as frozen ignorance in spiritual sciences. But as far as the requirement of the body is concerned, sleep is solidified light indeed, because it is in sleep that the body and the mind are free from each other. - There must be sacrifice in order for sleep to take place. When you sleep, you bid farewell to the whole universe and dive into the sea of darkness. A child that is still addicted to play, unsatisfied, will not want to sleep, however much you chastise it. Likewise, if you grab hold of your thought of the world, you can t sleep. So when you go to bed just smile to the world and say, quot;If you can t forget me, my good world, then come with me into my dream.quot; - You should not be anxious about sleep. Something you feel anxious for will first discover that it s important in its own right and then demand a high price from you, that is, more anxiety. This is simply because what you concentrate on goes on attracting more and more of your concentration and thus helps you keep doing what you wanted to do, holding you away from the fulfillment of why you wanted to do that. So never try to sleep. Try, however, if you must, only to not sleep. If sleep doesn t seem likely to come , don t call to it; just be determined that you ll keep awake. If you don t value it, it will obey you in order to be considered valuable. If you love it while it s still at a distance, it will fall in love with you and rush toward you. Sometimes love means creating an opportunity for somebody to love you. - If you don t still feel sleepy, sit relaxed on the bed and start reading this book from any page, as if you were reading a meditation script. Do it only when you ve taken all preparation for sleep. It will work within minutes. It will work even if your closet is dazzlingly lighted. - Say no to pills for ever. They only give you inability to sleep. This inability, working on the surface of the mind, makes you feel unable to keep awake for the time being, which you call sleep. Pills are for emergency situations. - Practice the meditation prescribed at the end of this book. Do it regularly, even when you re ill. Meditation is fire that burns diseases, sometimes little bits of happiness with them. - Do not eat too much before going to bed. Do not however go to bed with an empty stomach. If possible, eat a little sweetmeat and say goodbye to the stomach. - Do not think that by falling asleep you re going to hide somewhere from world activities. This mental exercise, however, will work for some time, but it will also cause nightmares. My dear friend, if one or more of these methods help you have a restful sleep, then, upon waking up next morning, whether it s really a morning or not in the usual sense, pray for yourself, whatever religion you belong to, so that you, the owner of your body, can remain awake against all your fatigue and serve your Heart. .................. The Death of Abnormal Fear Many people are excessively afraid of something or other. Fear is an essential cause of all psychological diseases. Abnormal fear manifests itself as excessive expenditure in military activities and plans, ethnic conflict, political unrest, and social disorder. If there were no fear, people would forget how to love, especially themselves. On the contrary, when there is too much fear, people happen to love themselves abnormally excessively, with the result that they also happen to hate others beyond the limit. Let me tell you that you need to be surprised a lot now because I m going to tell you something which nobody has ever told you: Fear is one of the consequences of an individual s notion of the difference between themselves and quot;othersquot;. You re afraid of an unknown person, who you think may be your enemy, but are you afraid of your brothers or sisters or friends or near relatives? You would certainly not be afraid of your father or brother or sister if he or she were a big police officer, would you? If you re afraid of them, then that s because you admire and obey them, and hence fear that you might offend them or make them dissatisfied by your conduct. This is not fear, but obedience and politeness. Fear expresses itself in various forms which you must know in order to overcome it. And it can be managed only by acquiring the correct knowledge about it and by some meditation. Please note that it can t be removed by efforts. How can you remove something that does not exist at all? It exists only because you think it does. That s why you re not afraid in deep sleep or when you re unconscious. Surprisingly, fear is the most powerful medicine that can ever be found in the human mind. That s because it s fear that can cause the most fatal psychological diseases. So let s see how we can discover the best medicine for the mind and heal ourselves. Fear can be of two types: ? the fear of losing something and ? the fear of getting something. There can be no other types of fear. Let us consider some examples: ● the fear of losing security ● the fear of losing money ● the fear of losing relatives ● the fear of losing wealth ● the fear of losing an opportunity ● the fear of losing convenience ● the fear of losing advantage ● the fear of losing love ● the fear of losing fame ● the fear of losing any possession or anything that one loves ● the fear of losing life ● the fear of getting an injury ● the fear of getting a negative profit ● the fear of getting disgrace ● the fear of getting an enemy ● the fear of getting a problem ● the fear of getting anything that one doesn t like ● the fear of getting death If we think holistically, we see that all instances of fear can be identified as the fear of either losing or getting something. In other words, any instance of the fear of losing can be alternatively viewed as an instance of the fear of getting something. For example, the fear of losing money is nothing but the fear of getting a negative profit or loss. Again, any instance of fear of losing (or getting) can also be translated as the sum of two or more other instances of the fear of losing (or getting). For example, the fear of losing money means the sum of the fear of losing power plus the fear of losing convenience plus the fear of losing security, etc. My friend, let me encourage you by saying that what you re going to read will act as the best medicine on your mind. If you know something properly, that knowledge will make you so familiar with the topic that it will lose all its negativity and alien characteristics. Why are you afraid when you re ill? If you re confident that you ll not die of this disease, then you re afraid because you ll lose health or the opportunity to do some activities or duties. You re afraid also because you ll have to lose the ease of mind as well as the body. But when you fear that this disease may or will cause your death, you re afraid of losing your life. You ll always have some sort of fear until you meet the severest possible fear ? that is, the fear of losing your life. And it s only when you encounter the fear of losing life that you be gin to think about what life is. Again, life can have no meaning unless it has a clear purpose. So you can never find the root of any fear unless you have searched for the mission of life and you can never get rid of the fear unless you have discovered it for yourself. A simple question will help you a lot in perceiving the importance of relating the issue of fear to your concept of death. Just consider this question: Why am I afraid of death and not of sleep? What is my concept of sleep that makes me trust sleep and not death? You may think that at this point it s going to be philosophical, but actually it s not. It s simply the psychology of humans. A soldier in the war knows why they re in the war, so they don t resent being there or having to do what they are doing. It s no philosophy, though for some people some philosophical analysis may be required to arrive at the point. Any mission that you have in your life necessitates you to get involved in or create or invite a certain set of phenomena or situations. The totality of these psychological intentions and interactions with what you call the external reality is your life. In this life of yours there are quot;othersquot;, true, but you must also bear in mind that it is you who have defined what quot;otherquot; means and identified who the quot;othersquot; are and why. Your concept of quot;othersquot; determines how the others will interact with your concept of quot;Iquot; and quot;wequot;. Your psychology has defined your philosophy and your philosophy has differentiated yourself from quot;othersquot;. Your losing or getting is possible only because you have the concept of quot;othersquot; that will give you something or take something from you. If you are the body, the members of your family except you are quot;othersquot; to you. If you are your family, the people of other families are quot;othersquot; to you. If you are a Christian, the adherents of other religious doctrines are quot;othersquot; to you. In fact, all these dimensions of the quot;Iquot; and the quot;otherquot; are simultaneously true. But, unfortunately, for most of us, there is, and needs to be, an quot;otherquot; after the last analysis. But if your identification of yourself creates no residual quot;othersquot; at last, no matter how many levels of quot;othersquot; you happen to find in between, you ll have no fear and no feeling of dissatisfaction and meaninglessness in life. The label quot;wequot; is nothing but the psychological expansion of the label quot;Iquot;. When, during a war between your country and another, you utter the sentence quot;We are right in fighting against themquot;, the quot;wequot; you use refers to the entire nation you belong to. In the same way you can show yourself the different functional levels of the quot;Iquot; and quot;Wequot;. Humans are political beings in relation to the use of these words. But, hopefully, a persistent quot;Iquot; within a universal quot;Wequot; has the potential to assure more peace than discord. So, in order to be really happy, you must find around yourself a Universal quot;Wequot; in which your quot;Iquot; will feel secure, important, and active. Are you afraid of a thief s stealing your car, for example? Then think twice ? the second time differently. Have you ever been afraid that your brother might steal it? If yes, then you re not confident about whether he s your brother. If no, then try thinking about what makes you consider that the potential thief is not your brother. You may argue that brotherhood is a two-way relationship and even if I consider somebody my brother but he doesn t consider me so, my concept of quot;brotherquot; will not be very active in me. Relevant argument, but invalid. Love is always one-way. If you want to loves somebody, you can do that even if they don’t love you. However, if you desire that they also love you, then you must allow them to taste you through aloofness or misconduct or selfishness. Even the brothers and sisters born of the same parents wouldn t love one another if they couldn t fight with or hate one another up to a certain stage of their personality development. Are you afraid that death will come to you? This fear can make you exceptionally wise. As long as life s mission is not fulfilled, why should you die? Nobody should die after a long time. That s because death is part of our every-day life. By way of fulfilling the mission of life, we re dying every moment. By way of fulfilling the mission of life, we re enjoying or suffering something. In fact, we re doing both. When we eat something, hunger dies. When we love somebody, ego dies. Death is always there. If that is the case, then why do I fear an animal called Death expected to come from another planet? Can t I consider it one of my nearest relatives? If many things of the world can receive my love, why should Death be deprived? But fear will not forgive you. As long as you aren t fulfilling your mission on earth, Death will not come to you, only his shadow will, that is fear, by which it will remind you again and again of what you ve forgotten. So never forget Death if you re afraid. For fear is the shadow of Death. If you are tired of life, this shadow will give you shelter. If you remember Death every time you are afraid, you ll meet Death thousands of times in a month. In this process He ll be your best friend. Then a time will come when you ll no longer be afraid of him. Rather, you ll miss him if he doesn t see you every moment. And then he ll never come to you from a distant place. He ll always live with you. And probably you ll not die. Do not wait for death. Only the transient dies. Somehow or other you must help Death to do his business and receive the profits yourself. The human nature is such that humans do not fear anything except fear itself. If you accept fear and get into it, your mind will be fear-proof. Being afraid of fear is a contradiction in itself. Rather, it s the fact that humans enjoy fear. If it were not so, children wouldn t love horror stories. Only the right fear can heal the mind and remove other types of fear. That s the fear of doing something harmful to others; the fear of not being meaningful in the dealings of life; the fear of loving the transient; the fear of not being useful to others; the fear of being unethical; the fear of not believing that the entire universe, seen and unseen, known and unknown, past present and future, is somehow or other a unified whole and that I have my own responsibility for every part of it. If the right fear occupies the right place in the mind, then, even if there happens to be a feeling of uneasiness in the beginning, sometimes culminating in a kind of temporary psychological disease, a time will soon come when the mind will escape all limitations and fear. Then only love and compassion will abide in it. Then the true enjoyment will start. Fear is a function of the individual s genetic make-up, the environment they were brought up in, their personal experiences and knowledge, their values and past actions, and their concept of life. But, hopefully, all types of fear can be reset and thus removed. However, it will take only months for some while two or three years for those who are sensitive to fear of one kind or other on the verge of a chronic disease. The process is very simple and proven. The first patient on whom I have applied the technique is ? myself. When I was a child I was so timid that I even couldn t go to toilet alone at night. Every night I had dreams full of horror. I had acrophobia (fear of high places) and agoraphobia (fear of crowds and open spaces). I grew up with all these diseases only to discover later on that all my family members had some disease of this kind. In a word, mine is a timid family. I had to face the most embarrassing situation when my heart rate went up abnormally. I could easily feel that I shouldn t get so much afraid of such a simple thing but I couldn t help it. Finding no other way, I used to put my right hand on my chest, in the hope of saving the heart from going out of control . However, for reasons unknown to me till then, this technique worked. It was not until my initiation into intense spiritual practice that I found a solution to the problem. However, the disease culminated in a kind of psychosis when, as a result of my spiritual practice, I began to be aware of the fact that I was going to get transformed little by little, probably into a dead body. The remembrance of death and my past life brought about a vortex of diverse psychological forces in my mind. In the beginning the solution became more unbearable to me than any events that I had so long considered problems. I can t even tell how many times I had to visit the heart hospitals and how much money I spent, only to learn every time that I had no heart problem. Now I know that if it hadn t been for my desire to seek the truth through the practice of Sufism, I wouldn t have taken so long a time to recover. For the deeper I wanted to reach in the mind, the more fear I had to encounter. Even my physical health degenerated into such a dilapidated condition that a part of my left leg seemed to have died and remained so for more than three years. During four to five years, I continuously had the feeling of being physically burned inside and clear symptoms of the sensation sprouted all over my eyes, face, and body. But, surprisingly, there was no pathological trace of any problem whatever, except repeated infection in the throat. As the mind became hyperactive due to the transforming spiritual practice, there arose the problem of nausea, acidity, constipation, and a quake-like spasm in the body time and again. Every second I had to remember death, even in my sleep and dreams. Sleep evaporated from my eyes and head. However, after a certain stage of the problems, the reverse condition prevailed for some time ? excessive sleep and a feeling of exhaustion. I could realize that there was a drastic change in my mind but there was no concomitant change in my lifestyle, a mismatch that created the problems. Then I started eating less, sleeping less, and talking less and doing all types of work to keep the mind balanced. Now I m grateful to God that He gave me the excessive fear. If I had been bold, I might have done things destructive to others and myself. The fire that was in me was supposed to burn me only, and that it has been doing, but it might have burned the whole society if I hadn t happened to suppress it because of too much fear. Being the youngest son of a Sufi master of a small, poor village in Bangladesh, I was taught to love all and never to hate any specific human being for anything whatever. I was taught to speak well and behave well with people of other religions, especially Hindus, as there were no people of any other religious group around there. Father used to say, quot;Whether you are a Muslim will be clear from how you behave with the non-Muslims. quot;Though we have been observing numerous events ? both on the national and the international levels ? that clearly arouse doubt about the Islam of the people concerned, I never saw any exception in his life. Nearly half of the people of the village he lived in were Hindus, and all Hindus loved and trusted him so much that very few Muslims ? those of a religious leader sort ? liked him, if at all. Because I was taught to tolerate others misbehavior, and also to love their good behavior, I had to suppress my own feelings, however angry or sad I was. And this responsibility would have seemed to be an unbearable burden on me if I hadn t been timid. Time and again the timidity verged on cowardice, I admit, but this weakness also proved to be a boon. Still now I don t have any personal enemy. Your fear can save you. It can also make you bold. If you fear the right thing, then other wrong things will fear you and admire you. Do the following analytical meditation. Analytical Meditation Say to yourself: Why has life been given to me? It has been given to me so that I can overcome death. And why has death been made for me? It has been made for me so that I can overcome the limitations of life. Life is defined by death and death by life. One is the raw material for the other. I will not wait for any death coming in search of me speedily like a selective Search Engine on the Internet. I ve already embraced it because I can t live if I don t do so. I m not afraid of losing anything because nothing is greater than I am. I m not obsessed by the thought of getting anything, for my mind is not a vacuum that needs to be filled up by material things. If I do want anything, then I want happiness and sorrows, poverty and affluence, problems and solutions, disease and health power and weakness. I want happiness for others and sorrows for me, so that eventually they share my sorrows with me and sell their happiness to me in exchange for my sorrows. I want poverty ? If I don t find myself inflicted by it then I ll find one who is in it and rescue that person. I m not afraid to fight the battle of life. If I ve nothing to fight against then I m not important at all. .................. The Mystery and Power of Patience In the very beginning, let me tell you that patience is not a virtue. Nobody who wants to have patience in order to cultivate a virtue by following others have it cannot have it at all. Rather, the truth is that those who are already virtuous can have patience when they feel they should. And those who think they have little patience and try to have it by inculcating determinations repeatedly, hoping that they may acquire this extraordinary skill, repeatedly fail to do so, and either get disappointed or rationalize their frailty by saying that the bold need not have it. The result is predictable - self-denying impatience. So until and unless one clearly knows what patience is, one cannot have it. There are many people who think that they have patience or who want others to think so. Maybe that is one kind of pretence or non-assertive weak-heartedness. Merely tolerating something or keeping silent does not mean patience in any way. The truth is that patience is not a virtue that can be acquired; rather, it is a state of the mind that can be and has to be discovered. It is a state of mind that helps feel and meaningfully react to the external reality without the person having to alter the choices that they have already made. If that is so, then patience does not mean something that can be called a special virtue. If is there in everybody. Literally everybody. And it is not a virtue that needs to be acquired. It is part of life, part of living. Let us move slowly. What is patience? Does it mean holding oneself back even when the mind has decided to express an emotion, such as anger, sorrows etc., and thus remaining peaceful? Partly yes, and partly no. Yes because patience is a field of energy that can hold the streams of energy within its boundary for a specific time of emotional upsurge. And no because such a holding back is actually impossible in the long term, patience being no emotion itself. If patience were an emotion, it could be expected somehow or other to nullify the effect of one or more other emotion acting in the opposite direction. But it is not an emotion. It is ... what is it, really? Nor is it the state of the absence of emotion. If it were, then it could not contain and host other emotions. What is it, then? Metaphorically, if emotions are waves, then patience is ... not the shore nor the sea-bed nor the water nor the current, but the entire sea! Patience is not the absence of emotions or a state of the mind resulting from the training of emotions. It is the totality of emotions. Surprising as it may sound, it is the fact. So let us move steadily, without losing patience. What does it mean to have patience? Does it mean to postpone a decision until a latter point in time? Not necessarily. I want to kill somebody. I change my decision and decide to kill them after one month. Is it patience? Not necessarily. Patience is not doing or not-doing something. The deference of a decision to resist an undesirable stimulus is not necessarily patience. Let us take specific examples and judge the issue in light of them. Suppose that somebody hurts me physically. I get hurt and feel like paying the person in their own coin. However, I feel that I will not be able to go unhurt if I hurt him too, as I am weak. So I decide not to avenge myself of the hurt. Is that patience? Certainly not. Patience means refraining from expressing reactions even when one thinks that one is well in a position to do so. Or suppose I am in utter poverty. A very pious person says, quot;Have patience. Maybe God will change your situation very soon.quot; By way of acting up to his advice, I decide to have patience. Now the question is - What do I do when I have patience? Wait? Waiting is half-patience. However, I think we can anatomize waiting now. When one waits, one only expects to achieve a purpose in the future. So, while the probable achievement is in the future, the desire is present in the mind. This is waiting. So waiting implies remaining active in the mind toward the fulfillment of an objective. However, waiting means expectation if the thing desired for cannot be achieved now for some reason or other. If, on the other hand, the desired thing can be achieved at present but still the achievement is deferred to a future point in time, then that waiting involves patience, though, in my opinion, it is still not patience in the purest sense of the concept. Often we relate patience to anger or excitement. That is why we hear people saying, quot;Don t be angry. Have patience.quot; In this case patience refers to refraining from being activated by anger. In other words, patience means refraining from reacting even when the emotional movement temporarily demands that very reaction. But, truly speaking, external reaction cannot be managed unless the internal reaction is managed. Again, internal reaction cannot be managed if it is not understood in its totality or if it is not dissolved by love arising from the heart naturally. However, often there is seen to be little difference between love felt naturally and instinct. Therefore, acquiring proper knowledge about emotions, their causes and consequences helps the mind automatically get liberated from the trap of automated reflexes or habits. Talked of in connection with anger, patience involves unconditional forgiveness. If I think, quot;I ll react only when his behavior exceeds a limit but until then I ll have patiencequot;, then that non-involvement can hardly be called patience, because it is a planned overlooking, which is only a strategic move toward the achievement of goal. Patience, if it were equated with waiting, would mean accumulating or storing the intention to do something in the future. But accepting this concept creates a contradiction. So patience is not conditional forgiveness. After all, forgiveness can hardly be conditional. So we see that as long as patience is considered in relation to anger, it involves forgiveness, which is attributable either to knowledge or to love. Likewise, patience has a direct relevance to sorrows or sufferings, as we have alluded to in an example. I am suffering a lot for my neighbor s activity or conduct. But I am told to have patience and I do have patience. In that case I have to forgo some convenience. This is sacrifice. But truly speaking, such sacrifice may sometimes get transformed into a feeling of superiority or nobleness and thus become a business transaction. This is patience in the selfish sense of the term, not in the pure sense. Then what is patience proper? At this point we can enjoy the old story of the thirsty crow which flew around in search of water and, after a long time, found a pitcher in which there was a little water at the bottom. It was very intelligent and so dropped some pebbles into the pitcher, which he collected with effort. However, when the water level rose in the pitcher he found the water muddy and instead of drinking it, flew away, disappointed. However the second part of the story begins here… And another crow that was also thirsty observed this from a nearby place and came to the pitcher as the first crow departed. He waited until the water became clear and then drank to his fill from the pitcher. His patience made his intelligence meaningful and effective. Patience means waiting until the situation changes in such a way that there is eventually no need to have patience. More appropriately, patience means waiting in such a way that the very act of waiting changes the situation. One who is not angry does not need to have patience for anything, nor can he do so at all. But if one who is angry wants to have patience, then he must wait until the person or situation he is angry with changes completely, so much so that he does not have to have patience any more. Thus patience, rather than being a hibernating emotion waiting to be expressed in the future, must be a self-fulfilling state of mind. In fact, patience is prayer and benediction. It is love waiting to be transformed into knowledge. It is energy that will change the definition, not the word. It is the desire not to change oneself so that the other party or the situation changes. Patience is the best performance of personal duty and social responsibility. It is intelligence pregnant with creativity, light that does not move. One who claims to have patience must be convinced that it is his patience that will change the world that interacts with him and until such a change has been brought about, he should not think that he has ever had patience. .................... Source: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksea...