THE JOY &🔗

There is a very beautiful analogy
by Ramana Maharishi, an
enlightened master from India.
A dog chews a dry bone. As it
chews, fragments of the bone
will poke into its mouth making
it bleed. The dog thinks the
blood is coming from the bone
and it enjoys the blood. It
continues to chew on the bone
for the pleasure of the blood! It
doesn't realize that the blood is
coming from its own mouth and
not at all from the bone.

If violence excites you, you wait
for that kind of incident in your
life. If pain excites you, if you
believe life is a pain shaft, you
wait for that kind of incident in
your life in order to strengthen
and reinforce your belief. That is
the general human psychology.
Although people claim they want
to break the violence shaft or
pain shaft, they secretly nurture it.

The pain that you had ten years ago,
the pain that you had nine years ago,
the pain that you experienced seven
years ago, the pain that you
experienced three years ago, and the
pain that you experienced yesterday
are all unconnected, independent,
individual incidents. But you start
connecting all of them and create a
shaft of pain. You connect all these
thought shafts and create one big shaft.

You start thinking and believing,
'My life is pain.' Is that true? No!
What happened to all the sweet
incidents of joy that you
experienced in between? Surely,
there must have been at least a
few moments of joy in between?
They are simply forgotten. They
are never picked to form a shaft.
So the shaft, any shaft, is never
true, because it focuses on only a
fragment of your complete
biography.

The joy that you experienced ten
years ago, the joy that you
experienced nine years ago, the joy
that you experienced three years ago,
and the joy that you experienced one
year ago are all independent,
individual,unconnected thought
shafts. At the present time, you
connect all of those thoughts and
create a big shaft of joy.

You may identify your joy
with an object, a person, or
a space like a particular
vacation resort. Now you
will try again and again to
bring that back in your life,
to bring that person, that
object, that space, or that
same incident back in your
life. Try as you might, you
will not be able experience
the same joy again. This
puts you in further pain!