CHAPTER IX

Convert emotions to strength

Emotions play a very important part in our lives. If emotions are controlled with intellect they can be turned into strength. Otherwise, they are a weakness. You should keep your emotions well under control. Let us discuss emotions in relation to the following heads.

1. Emotions and intellection
2. Facets of emotion
a. Love
b. Kindness
c. Pity
d. Charity
3. Effects of emotion
4. Roots of emotion

As we have discussed, an action committed without applying intellect is invariably a bad action. This can be very harmful not just to you but to the entire mankind. You should keep your emotions well under the control of your discerning intellect.

Be a master and not a slave to your emotion. There is nothing wrong is entertaining passions, but do not turn passionate. You can harbour your emotions, but do not become emotional. Have sentiments, but do not become sentimental. Emotions upset your intellectual balance and therefore you have to be careful. Having emotions is a virtue, but allowing them to control you is a vice.

The Mahabharata represents the fight between the good and the evil. When emotions overpowered Arjuna he refused to fight against his brothers, cousins and relatives who were part of the Kaurava army. Arjuna picked up his sword only after Krishna convinced him that it was his karma to fight against the evil. This is what happens when you allow your emotions to overpower your intellect.

There are good and bad emotions. Among the facets of emotion that are listed above, only pity is bad, the rest are more or less good. However, other forms of emotion too can turn bad if you do not apply your intellect.

There once lived a snake outside a village that was given to attacking people. The villagers were even afraid to use the road on which the snake lived. Such was the fear of the snake. However, the snake one day came in contact with a holy man, who preached the virtues of life. Inspired by the priest and snake turned a new leaf and began greeting people politely instead of attacking them.

Taking advantage of this, the villages began beating the snake and stoning it. The saint who returned to the village a few months later was surprised to see the battered snake. On seeing the saint the snake said: “Look at the state I have come to because I listened to you.”

To this, the saint replied: “There was no need to bite the people, but what prevented you from hissing and chasing them away?”

This is the effect of emotion when intellect is not applied.

Impure emotions: Emotions born out of selfish desires are termed impure emotions. When there is a concentration of emotions which are governed by self-interest, it turns to poison.

This may be compared to a bottle of medicine which carries the legend, ‘poison’. Though the medicine is meant to cure your illness, if you consume it in excess, it can be dangerous. The same holds good in the case of human emotions. As in the case of medicine, an excess of self-desires can be fatal.

Love: Love is universal and not selective. Selective love or feelings towards a particular individual cannot be termed as love. What we understand of love is personal love with attachments. An attachment binds you to the object and makes you dependent on a particular individual.

When a young man falls in love with a girl (which we call rise in love) he is so deep into the relationship that he looks at the people around him as a burden. When the parents react negatively to his relationship he develops an aversion towards them. And then, he starts meeting the girl clandestinely. Ultimately, he may even elope with the girl.

Such selective love creates misery around you. Love and attachment are opposed to each other. Attachment is a perversion of love. Attachment to a particular object or being generates an aversion to other objects and beings.

You need not be a sage. But at the same time, if you say: “I love everyone, I do not hate anybody,” it shows that you do not understand the meaning of true love. What is true love? Love is kindness… love is giving…love is the feeling of giving, rather than taking…love is the nature of helping a person who wants help.

A selective attachment to a being creates detachment towards others. Do you think the young boy who eloped with his girlfriend hates his parents? No. As a result of his selective love, he is in no mood to listen to his parents.

Your action should be such that you should not hurt anyone else’s feelings. Once you believe in universal love and not in the narrow context that we understand it now, you will realise the meaning of true love.

When I travel, I often meet the son of a family friend at the airport. Every time the aircraft land, he calls up his house and says, “Mummy, I have landed safely.” When I asked him about this, he replied: “It is a principle in my house that every member travelling should call before take off and after landing.”

The parents are so attached to their children that they are worried and miserable when they are in the aircraft. If there is even a slight delay in the phone call, the family breaks into panic. Such problems are created by too much of attachment.

Parents are attached to their children, because they expect their wards to take care of them in their old age. Often, expectations lead to attachment. When the children neglect their old parents, they are forlorn. This is the result of expectation and attachment. We should understand that there is no cause without an effect and no effect without a cause.

You probably start your emotion of love with your partner. It then grows to your family, children and so on. You should not allow your love and affection to stop at your family. Having generated this noble feeling of love, do not confine it to the family unit. Let the rays of your affection radiate all over. Your house therefore should be the centre and not the boundary of your love and affection.

Look at a child, he is always spreading love. He does not do anything with a selfish motive. When you see a lovely child you feel like picking him up and cuddling him, though he is not related to you. Selfless love not only spreads but also makes other people love you.

Kindness: Let us now discuss another kind of emotion, kindness—gentleness towards other beings and compassionate attitude. Kindness is like a fragrance in a flower. The fragrance creates a good atmosphere all around. However, the concept of kindness has been wrongly understood in India. It is the act of kindness that is important, not the mere thought.

To quote His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “My true religion is kindness.”

Pity: Pity is the feeling of sympathy towards the suffering of others. Often we see people who inflict suffering on themselves because they pity somebody. We always want to satisfy somebody else’s ego. We also change our course of action because we do not want to hurt somebody. We spend our entire lives trying to please others. We consider it cruel to break other’s heart. This is a low level of emotion.

When we see somebody suffering we merely allow pity to take over us. For instance, when we witness a road accident, you pity the victim; you sympathise with him and move ahead. But when you apply intellect to this pity, you will extend help to the victim, transport him to the hospital and inform his relatives. This is a good example of how not to allow your emotions take over you and create a concentrated layer of emotions.

Do not allow emotion overpower your whole self. By applying intellect, even bad emotions will turn into positive or good emotions.

Charity: The next aspect of emotions is charity. You should not involve yourself in charitable activities only if you believe that it will help you in the future. You must believe in the concept of karma and not expect any fruits from your actions. You must enjoy your actions without worrying about the results.

But even when you make a donation, you should select the right person. Does the person really need the money or is he making a fool out of you? I would like to narrate a real life incident to illustrate this point. When we were in the business of rice trading an officer from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) visited our office on Lawrence Road in New Delhi, with two of his colleagues.

I was also walking into the office at the same time and happened to tune into their conversation. The officer was boasting to his colleagues, “I was passing this way and so I thought I could make a quick buck out of Subhash.” A little while later the man walked into my cabin and gave me a sob story of how he was in difficulty and had lost all his money. I told him point blank that I had overheard his conversation and that I would not give him any money. The moral is that charity towards a wrong person or cause is of no use.

Recently, I heard about an old friend in the film circle who was on the verge of bankruptcy. I immediately had an urge to help him by taking over his company. The person was so overwhelmed that he was in tears. “I really want to give this company to you,” he said.

When I decided to help this friend, I had no motive in mind. But as we moved along, we realised that this company would actually fit into one of our projects. An act of charity towards the right person, without any expectation stands you in good stead.

A pious man once gave food and shelter to a traveller. In the morning he found all his gold ornaments missing, only to realise that the traveller was actually a thief. But as luck would have it, the thief was soon caught by the police and brought to the pious man’s house. But to the thief’s surprise, the man said: “Why have you brought him back, I was the one who gave him all the ornaments.”

The thief was surprised. “Why did you let me off, though I stole your ornaments,” he pleaded. The pious man gave him all his gold and said, “You should learn how to give, rather than how to take. The moment you have the feeling of a giver, the whole world is at your feet.”

Today, we find people going to the temple to seek favours from God. We have become beggars in front of the deity. Instead of seeking, learn to understand how to give, whom to give and when to give. You will be happy.

Do not desire, but deserve. Your actions should be such that you should deserve whatever you want rather than developing the desire. Learn from nature, give away the things that you want and they will follow you.

Effect of emotions: Do not use your emotion without thinking. Do not use them indiscriminately. You will recall the story of the snake and the advice of the saint who said: “Without a feeling of hatred, you could have hissed and chased the villagers away.”

Root of emotions: As an individual you should reach out from yourself to family, community, humanity and ultimately to all beings. When you reach out to all beings, you touch the roots of emotions.

All of us have a desire to achieve something. And when we fall short of this achievement, we feel a kind of deficiency. These thoughts take us away from the truth of supreme oneself. You are all powerful. The kind of power that you have is unimaginable.

The stream of thought flowing from you to the objects of the world is known as kama. This is your desire which makes you ignorant of the true self. When desires are self-centric, when they are of a selfish nature, they get developed into greed. This greed is called lopa.

Once you become greedy, the thought process continues and thickens. And when somebody interrupts that thought process, you develop krodha or anger. To overcome your anger, you need to go to the source. That is, desire. Desire has created greed and greed has created anger. If you cannot eliminate desire, at least reduce it. To reduce your desire, you need to exercise your thought flow.

You will be able to do that only if you are intellectually developed. Your intellect should therefore be well developed and alert to avoid any such indiscriminate flow of thoughts. If however, the intellect is weak, you will develop desire and greed and you will devolve. Since the world cannot always cater to your desires, you will become angry at the obstacles you face.

As a result, as desire, greed and anger well up, you will get into delusion. This is called moha. Your emotions mount up to the extent that it has two effects on you. You become arrogant with subordinates or the people who have developed less than you or become envious of people who are superior to you.

Arrogance and envy are two bad emotions. When you manage to maintain a level of success in your achievement, you start fearing. This is called bhay. Thus, a host of emotions invade your personality. They lead you to grief, misery, perhaps to your ultimate destruction, if left unattended. Desire will still remain the cause of this confusion and the chaos that we land ourselves in. The moment you keep enlarging your circle from yourself to all beings, there will be no thought of desire. The unrelenting law of nature is that you get what you desire. Practice this law in life. Deserve, never desire.

The Holy Bible says: “Seek and it shall be yours; Knock and it shall be open unto you.” That is the law. It is a great message to humanity to seek the Self within. Then, everything will seek you.