I lost my temper at a co-worker on Friday. It only lasted a moment, but a moment is enough to do a fair amount of damage. Who was right or who was wrong doesn't matter: in fact, neither of us was right and neither of us was wrong. We just disagreed at a particular moment about what to do. Nothing too terrible about that, right? Except for the emotional stridency and rigidity I felt at that moment, and to which I exposed my co-worker.
Fortunately, the other person is a "big" person and when things calmed down a bit we talked it through. I apologized profusely, probably too profusely. And shortly thereafter, I found myself thinking about a prayer.
There's a prayer I repeat every morning -- one of three -- called "The Prayer of Repentance," dictated by the spiritual master Meher Baba. I don't know for how long I've been saying this prayer daily -- 30-some-odd years or so. To quote another afficiando of this prayer, "It covers just about everything that I might get up to in a day." It's repentance in advance, you might say.
The basis of the prayer is very old: it's the ancient Zoroastrian tenet, "Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds." According to a Zoroastrian gentleman with whom I spoke in India, or "Parsi" as these folk are known there, the faith is about 7,000 years old. When I mentioned to him that scholars were confused about when Zoroaster actually lived, and sometimes place him between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, the Parsi gentleman told me a fascinating tidbit of oral history from his own tradition. He said that when Abraham -- yes, that Abraham -- was present on earth, the Zoroastrians of the time recognized him as their prophet returned, and insisted upon calling him by the name Zoroaster, hence the confusion. The historical Abraham lived, I believe, about 3,800 years ago.
Anyway, the prayer in question, which I'm not going to quote, continually weaves the thread of thought, word, and deed, changing the order so that sometimes it's deed, word, and thought, or word, thought, and deed. I always find it interesting when reciting it to notice this re-ordering of the words and wonder at what Meher Baba was up to when he chose to weave it in this way.
Not long before the incident last week, I had stumbled upon a snippet of a prayer in a movie, which I presume to be from the Quran, which went something like, "For we have not thought as we ought to have thought, and we have not spoken as we ought to have spoken, and we have not acted as we ought to have acted," or something like that. But it immediately struck me as very similar to the prayer I happen to say. I asked my co-worker, whose heritage is Arabic, if the prayer was of Quranic origin and she stated that it was. And then she started searching for a prayer on her phone. I thought it was the one in question, but instead she came up with something surprising. It is attributed to Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi.
Now before I quote this prayer, I'd just like to mention the difference that exists between our usual logical rationale, and the intuitive logic of the spirit. They are two very different things. Gandhi was obviously a political genius, and someone who had spiritual aspirations as well. I find in the realm of spirituality or philosophical thought, that Gandhi's intuitive logic, if I may call it that, is impeccable. All that I've said to this point is merely an introduction to the spiritual logic of Gandhi, which he gleaned from his own life and his own intent spiritual studies. Here goes, as quoted by my friend and co-worker:
"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny."
Amen, Amin, and Ommmm. So be it.
