461 Talk with measure
We will become a laughing stock
When get trapped with too many words
And get entangled in many things
If we pour down so many words
Can we call back our words?
Which we uttered in anger
And try to excuse by saying
That we have done because of anger
Anger will blind our eyes
It will darken our intellect
It will make us get entangled in trouble
Very quickly
Even though the tongue
Is very small and
Is made without any bone
It will bring havoc in life
Not that we don’t know this
Even before we talk
But there is not use
Realizing this after we have talked
The life will go smoothly
When we talk with measure
And try to reduce them as much s possible
Making others to long to hear it from us
Mathigiri, 3-8-2018, 10.30 pm.
Poor tongue which is blamed for all our angry words. At the end it is the power of anger which controls our entire personality when we burst out shouting when provoked. We all know about it. When we are provoked anger overcoming us never allows us to think the consequence of our own choice. One remedy for this is to reduce the very talk. A talkative person is the one who is often get trapped in the net of anger as one talk leading first to debate and finally ending up with argument and fight. Anger provoked by vain talk makes us to burst. No doubt in it that silence is gold even platinum and we all need to develop the art of silence to control our anger. The vow (vrta) of silence which our Indian tradition and several other spiritual traditions (by several mystic in other parts of the world) @ promoted this as the best antidote for vain talk.
Notes
@.…Iamblichus (Vita . Pythagorae 72.94 {Life of Pythagoras}.7 = DK {Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Rev. by W. Kranz} claims that new members were required to keep a five-year silence, and Hippolytus asserts that they “remained in silence sometimes three years, sometimes five years.”{Trans. Milton C. Nahm, Selections from Early Greek Philosophy (New York: Appletion-Century Crofts, 1964), p. 53} Such a long silence suggests a goal beyond the guarding of information. Palladas (AP {Apud (found in or quoted by) X.46) says that Pythagoras taught his followers to practice (p.178) silence because he had discovered “that this potent drug brings tranquility.” The Palatine poet Socrates says that Pythagoras’s students were “concentrating deeply upon silence and the eternal discourse of their souls.”— Thomas McEvilley, Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, (2002), First Indian Edition, 2008. pp. 178-79
Another practice which is found in India in a different scale than in the ancient Near East is religious silence. While the new temple was being built in Gudea’s city of Lagash, prohibition against noise were in effect throughout the city. In ancient Athens, one did not speak on top of the Acropolis. … Among the Indian orders such a vow is usually undertaken for a year, sometimes for a lifetime. This practice may have existed as early as the tenth book of the Rg Veda (X.136), where the Muni is referred to as “ecstatic with silence.”—ibid. p. 270
In BU, III.6, where there is a dialogue on Brahman, the position is finally reached where the questioner is told that Brahman is ‘a divinity about which further questions cannot be asked’, and at this the questioner ‘holds her peace’ (upararaama). This is, of course, in perfect agreement with the employment of the via remotionis in the same texts, where it is said that the Brahman is ‘No, No’ (neti, neti), and also with the traditional text quoted by Sankara on Vedanta Sutras, III.2.17, where Baahva, questioned regarding the nature of Brahman, remains silent (tuusniim), only exclaiming when the question is repeated for the third time, ‘I teach you indeed, but you do not understand: this Brahman is silence’. Precisely the same significance attaches to the Buddha’s refusal to analyze the state of nirvana. [Cf. avadyam, ‘the unspeakable’, from which the proceeding principles are liberated by the manifested light, RV, passim.] In BG, X.38, Krsna speaks of himself as ‘the silence of the hidden ones (mauna … guhyaanaam), and the gnosis of the Gnostics’ (jnaanam jnaanavataam); where mauna corresponds to the familiar muni, ‘silent sage’. This is not, of course, to say that He does not also ‘speak’, but that his speaking is simply the manifestation, and not an affection, of the Silence; as BU, III.5 also reminds us, the supreme state is one that transcends the distinction of utterance from silence—‘Without respect to utterance or silence (amaunam ca maunam nirvidya), then is he indeed a Brahman’. When it is asked further, ‘By what means does one thus become a Brahman?’ the questioner is told, ‘By that means by which one does become a Brahman’, which is as much as to say, by a way that can be found but cannot be charted. The secret of initiation remains inviolable by its very nature; it cannot be betrayed because it cannot be expressed—it is inexplicable (aniruktam), but the inexplicable is everything, at the same time all that can and all that cannot be expressed.—The Vedic Doctrine of ‘Silence’, in, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Perception of The Vedas, edited by Vidya Nivas Misra, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the arts, New Delhi, Manohar, 2000. p. 228.
461 அளந்து பேசு
வார்த்தையைக் கொட்டிக் கொண்டு
வம்பிலே மாட்டிக் கொண்டு
திண்டாடி தெருவில் நின்றால்
வேடிக்கை பொருளாய்ப் போவோம்
கோபத்தால் சொன்னேன் என்று
கோபத்தில் சொன்ன பின்னே
கோபமும் குறைந்த போதும்
சொன்ன சொல் மாறிப்போமா?
ஆத்திரம் கண்ணை மறைக்கும்
அறிவையும் மழுங்கச் செய்யும்
அவசரப் பட்டு வீணாய்
வம்பிலே மாட்டி வைக்கும்
சின்னதாய் உள்ள போதும்
செய்திடும் பெரிய வேலை
நரம்புமே அற்ற போதும்
நா செய்யும் நாசவலை
பேசிடும் முன்னே நமக்கு
தெரியாமல் இதுவும் இல்லை
பேசிய பின்னால் அதையே
உணர்ந்துமே பயனும் இல்லை
பேச்சினைக் குறைத்துக் கொள்ள
பிறர்கேட்க ஏக்கங் கொள்ள
அளந்து நாம் பேசினாலே
அமைதியாய் வாழ்வும் போகும்
மத்திகிரி, 3-8-2018, இரவு 10.30