Opening The Door Of Your Heart

Finished reading "Opening The Door Of Your Heart" by Ajahn Brahm. A wonderful book which leaves the reader with answers to several questions he/she had in mind for long. Ajahn Brahm born Peter Betts, in London UK,on 7th August 1951 is a Buddhist monk. Brahm is the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Western Australia. He spent nine years studying and training in the forest meditation under Ajahn Chah.

 The way in which he has written the book surprised me a lot. I always had a belief that monks will be of Serious nature. They handle everything with utmost perfection and seriousness. But after going through this book, I realized how simple and humorous they can be. He had narrated some stories very humorously that I was laughing out loud, after reading it. But each and every page has some message to pass to the reader.

 My favorite from the book is " The hardest part of anything in life is thinking about it". Very true. All of us had several bitter experiences in our life, so far. And its human nature to think and think and think about it. This is the real problem, the more we think about the incident , the more we hurt ourselves. We all should
try our level best to NOT to think about it. Its not an easy task, but we should train ourselves to do that.

The first chapter itself gives a priceless message to today's society. We are in a society where relationships are not valued much. Most of us, points to the mistakes in a person all the time and knowingly/unknowingly are blind to the positive sides he has. Brahm explains this using a wall made of bricks. Imagine that we are
constructing a wall made of bricks. We arranged the bricks with much effort and perfection as far as possible. Once its set, we found that 2 of the bricks are projected a bit . We will be totally disappointed. We arrive to the conclusion that the whole wall became a mess because of the 2 bricks. Why aren't we looking at the rest 98 bricks that are very well arranged? Same is applicable to humans also. We break a relationship on seeing a fault from the other side, not at all considering how many good qualities the other person has.

Even if you are on cloud nine or struggling with your life, keep one thing in your mind : " This too shall pass". This will help us maintain a balance in our mind.

Ajahn Chah (Guru of Ajahn Brahm) described Blaming others as :

A man had an itch on his bum
He scratched his head
The itch never went away

Blaming others will never solve your problem. If something wrong happens, instead of blaming others, try to find a solution to handle the situation.

In one of the chapters, he narrates a story where 3 important questions are raised.

When is the most important time?
Who is the most important person?
What is the most important thing to do?

The answers are :
When is the most important time? NOW
Who is the most important person? The person you are with
What is the most important thing to do?  CARE

I have mentioned only few points from the book here ( which I liked the most). Its really a book worth reading. Planning to get a copy of few other books by Ajahn Brahm.