With 2021 ushering in, it is always a good time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. This may include making a new year's resolution. Usually, these tend to be about physical fitness or diets. May be this time, we can think about our happiness and peace of mind. Mental happiness is far more than short term external pleasures.
It always fascinates me that a book or scripture written over 5000 years ago still has relevance in our present lives. As I read the Bhagavad Gita, I find that it always offers solutions to many issues of life.
Chapter 16 provides the answers to what our new year's resolutions should be. This chapter clearly distinguishes the characteristics of The Devine which are all the good qualities we must aspire to have and those of the Demoniacal that we should avoid.
There are 26 characteristics that we should work to have in us which make our character more divine. Here is checklist for you to tick to.
- Fearlessness. This comes with strong faith
- Purity of heart or free from immorality
- Steadfastness or firmness in knowledge
- Yoga
- Alms giving. Learn to give to others
- Control of the senses
- Sacrifice our time for meditation and prayers
- Study of scriptures
- Austerity or controlling ourselves
- Straightforwardness
- Harmlessness
- Truth
- Absence of anger
- Renunciation
- Peacefulness
- Absence of crookedness
- Compassion towards beings
- Uncovetousness or not being greedy and wanting to possess
- Gentleness
- Modesty or not being too proud
- Absence of fickleness or being firm in decisions
- Vigour or physical and mentally strong
- Forgiveness
- Fortitude or mental strength to encounter danger
- Absence of hatred
- Absence of pride
Hypocrisy, arrogance, self conceit, harshness and also anger and ignorance belong to one born in a demoniacal state.
We need to cultivate the divine qualities in us and shed the demoniacal.
All this applies even now as it did thousands of years ago. We should learn to close our mental gates to passion, anger and greed.
We can cultivate a change in our character. First, we need to check and find where we are now and which qualities we need to strengthen. The above list will help for that. The method to inculcate the missing quality in our lives is by making it a mantra in our daily meditation. For example, if truthfulness is our weakness , we can develop a mantra: I am a truthful soul and repeating it three or four times when meditating. Over time this quality will come into our conscious and then from there it will manifest in to our actions. Our actions are extension of our character.
I wish the readers of Asian Voice and Gujarat Samachar a fabulous 2021.
