Compassion - Notes to myself

I took my hand baggage and stowed it in the bins and pointed my window seat as mine to the husband & wife already occupied the middle and aisle seats. They gently got up and gave way to my possessive window seat which I always liked to occupy right from my first flight at the age of 34!

I was not lucky to fly when I was a child but I become one whenever I fly even today. I remember during my school days we were taken to the airport to show the plane and I was dreaming one day I should sit in the plane. Now I am tired of flying but still being a mechanical engineer, I always used to get excited to observe the take off and landing as though I am flying first time. May be this novelty keeps me alive to become a child whenever I get an opportunity.

When I sat in my seat and buckling my seat belt I noticed the guy next to me was so fat and hence occupied half of my seat with his posterior. In an economy class in a economy airlines one cannot expect more! That day morning only I read my Guruji's lesson on how to remain calm without becoming moody in spite of many environmental challenges. But this situation was really one of those for me to apply my Guru's advice. I was angry when that person pressed his giant like arms on mine. When this went on I was telling my mind 'Hey don't get annoyed and become moody' as I was practicing my Guru's wisdom.

Internally I was cursing this man in the next seat. Although I held the flight magazine in my hand, I was not reading it. As the flight took off they dimmed the light. I suddenly found the man in my next seat switched on the reading light, opened my tray and said 'Sir you can read now comfortably'. In spite of his wife cautioned him saying, 'The seat belt sign is still on and why are you opening the tray?', the man was not heeding to her plea.

I was amazed to see his compassion and felt ashamed of my poisonous thought towards him. I felt why I could not be compassionate to him while he could? I felt that all my wisdom and spiritual acumen is yet to refine myself and went on to take refuge in my Guru's book. With this incidence, I got an opportunity to examine my progress as a human being trying to become Jesus or Mahatma.

From bottom of my heart
Jai Gurudev