PEACE WITH OUR NEIGHBOURS










“If you burn your neighbors house down,
it doesn't make your house look any better.”
-      Lou Holtz



Benjamin Franklin said, “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours.”

Now, who are our neighbours? Are they the ones who live next door? Or, the ones who live in our housing society? Or, in our locality, town, city, state or the country? Or, as Ana Monnar said, “All human beings are my neighbours; we share the same planet,”… Is that so?

Let’s be a little practical, here… Let’s talk about our immediate neighbors – the ones who live on our floors, in our buildings and in our housing complexes… That’s enough. If we can learn to live in peace and harmony with these neighbours, yes, I think, that’s enough… City, State, Country and the Planet – these are quite far. In fact, if we learn to live in peace and harmony with our immediate neihbours, we will be able to live in peace and harmony with our distant neighbours, too…

Peace and harmony are contagious… Just as disquiet and disharmony are!

This morning, on my way to my workplace, I met a middle-aged woman. She was returning from her daily Satsang. The subject of our discussion, when we met this morning, was the disharmony in our respective housing societies. She was telling me about her building. She said, “Ours is a stand-alone building… We just have 12 members in our building… But, two of our members have literally hijacked our peace with their bloated egoes and personal enmity… It has been going on for over twenty years… All peace efforts have failed… Before one problem gets solved, they cause another, and, the entire energy and focus of the Managing Committee and other members diverted towards dealing with these disputes… These two members simply do not have trust in other members… It’s an endless situation of ‘We are right, you are wrong’ Every Managing Committee gets tired and frustrated and, finally, gives up… No one is willing to offer his or her services for a thankless job and get harassed…Imagine, if just twelve of us can’t live in peace and harmony, how can we live so as citizens of our country?”

That’s why I said, that, if we learn to live in peace and harmony with our immediate neighbours, we will be able to live in peace and harmony with our distant neighbours, too…

Causing troubles at your place of living is not meant for a civilized human being… It’s very toxic. Often, it’s our neighbours, who reach out to us in our emergencies before our own relatives do… The quality of our relationship with our neighbours, therefore, shows what kind of humans we are… how civilized and refined.

The woman was telling me this, today morning: “Even a vampire would leave seven houses (from her own) before she stars attacking. Here, we are attacking our own houses!”

What is the use of our education and what is the use of possessing our expensive houses, if we do not know how to tame our egoes? We all have the power of making our choices… The desire to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours, is the choice we make. The woman, this morning, shared with me the analogy of the cat her teacher at the Satsang had given. “The Cat picks a mouse and her kitten with the same paws. But, she doesn’t pick her baby in the same way as she picks her prey… Because, the baby is her own!”

And, what about our neighbours?


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.:www.istockphoto.com

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