OBSTACLES

:Ramana maharshi :

Many afflictions, like thunderbolts, heavily oppress excellent and virtuous devotees. You should know that this happens not to torment them but to firmly establish and make resilient [in tapas] the minds of those pure ones.
Guru Vachaka Kovai v 617.

Without his excellent mind losing its composure, let the sadhaka endure to the very end the tribulations that come to him through prarabdha. He should understand that they [the tribulations] are God’s blessed grace which enables him to attain divine fortitude. They have as their ultimate purpose the bestowal of liberation on the mature soul.
Guru Vachaka Kovai v 618.

Question: How is it that so much suffering comes to people who behave virtuously?


Bhagavan: It is good if suffering comes to devotees. The dhobi [washer man], when washing clothes, beats them hard against a rock. But he does so only to remove the dirt from the clothes. Similarly, all sufferings are given for the sole purpose of purifying the mind of the devotee. If we are patient, happiness will follow.

An uncut gem excavated from a mine will not attain brilliance unless it is cut and polished. Similarly, the true tapas, the sadhana that a sadhaka performs, will not shine except by the ordeals which are the obstacles to it.

Woman!!

Woman!!

Once upon a time ............

Why are you crying, a young boy asked his Mom? “Because I’m a woman,” she told him. 

“I don’t understand,” he said. 

"His Mom just hugged him and said, “And you never will, but that’s O.K.”…

Later the little boy asked his father, why do women cry so easily?

His father answered….

“When god made woman, he decided she had to be special. he made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world, yet, made her arms gentle enough to give comfort ,he gave her the inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times will come even from her own children.

he gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going and take care of her family and friends, even when everyone else gives up, through sickness and fatigue without complaining.

he gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all circumstances. Even when her child has hurt her badly.

She has the very special power to make a child’s boo-boo feel better and to quell a teenager’s anxieties and fears.

he gave her strength to care for her husband, despite faults and he fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart.

he gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife, but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside him unfalteringly.


For all of this hard work, he also gave her a tear to shed. It is hers to use whenever needed and it is her only weakness…

You see my son, “the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.The beauty of a woman must be seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart - the place where love resides.

So when you see her cry, tell her how much you love her, and all she does for everyone,and even though she may still cry, you will have made her heart feel good.