WHAT IS SPIRITUAL ABOUT BEING PUNCTUAL? by Ramesh Bijlani

Author:Ramesh Bijlani
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Published: 2022-10-04T18:30:00+00:00

First published as a blog on 22 April 2017

Link: https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/gambling-is-not-a-gamble

GOSSIP

No GOSSIP: Go Silent, Settle in Peace

To gossip about what somebody is doing or not doing is wrong. To listen to such gossip is wrong. To verify if such gossip is true is wrong. To retaliate in words against a false gossip is wrong. The whole affair is a very bad way of wasting one’s time and lowering one’s consciousness.

—The Mother

Gossip is a favourite pastime and seems harmless. This harmless sentence makes time look like a problem and gossip an enjoyable solution. Time is a precious resource to be used, not a problem to be solved. That is point number one. And gossip is not harmless. As Sri Aurobindo says, ‘Chat of that kind has indeed a very tiring effect…because it dissipates the energy uselessly.’ That is point number two.

What do people gossip about? The list is endless, but one popular topic is ‘people’, and generally it consists of talking ill of somebody behind her back. This is the worst type of gossip and lowers consciousness the most. The person who talks ill of somebody knows that it is wrong and risky, and that is why she also tells the person who is listening not to tell anybody else. The listener is made to feel privileged because she is the only person in the world with whom this ‘fact’ is being shared. But the hope that a ‘secret’ shared will stay a ‘secret’ generally does not materialize. It gets shared with more and more, one by one, and each person with whom it is shared feels equally privileged. Finally, the secret is widely known and may eventually go full circle to reach, after getting considerably spiced up through each transmission, the person who gave it away the first time, or even worse, the very person who was criticized. It is said that once a friend of Socrates was very eager to tell him something about somebody who they both knew. Socrates interrupted him, and asked, ‘Are you absolutely sure that what you are going to tell me is true?’ The answer was ‘no’. Then Socrates asked, ‘Are you going to tell me something good about the person?’ The answer was again ‘no’. Finally, Socrates asked, ‘Will what you tell me do some good to me?’ The answer was again ‘no’. Socrates ended the conversation by telling his friend, ‘Then please do not tell it to me.’ Listening would have done Socrates no good but some harm, and to the friend who was going to tell him still more harm. What type of harm? What can be worse than wasting the non-renewable resource called time, and in this case, the wastage would have been made worse by lowering of the consciousness; the two together are a disaster.

Another much-loved topic for gossip is ‘events’, national and international. Generally, this type of gossip is full of criticism of leaders and governments. Since we criticize people who are remote or organizations that are nameless and amorphous, we think it is safe and harmless.

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