In the life of Buddha, he was approached by a much-feared murderer. Angulimal had taken an oath that he would make a garland of a hundred fingers from his victims and the hundredth one he happened to meet was Buddha. Buddha had every right to fight back if he wanted; it would have been in self-defense. Or He could have run away. He could have collected ten people and beaten Angulimal. At that time when Angulimal approached, Buddha was walking on the road begging alms. When Angulimal shouted, “Wait!” Buddha said only one sentence. It is not that you can repeat that sentence and the same thing will happen to you—it has to be done with that Realization! Buddha said, “I’ve already stopped. It is you who are still moving.” Somehow it just clicked. Angulimal was a disturbed and agitated person. Buddha was already still. And that changed the life of Angulimal. He became a disciple, a monk, and so on. Buddha said it in such a way that it pacified him. It needs the goldsmith’s touch.
      Apply it to your day to day life: take time to be compassionate. Mind releases at that very moment. Have you seen how sometimes when you have had a good rest and get up peaceful and relaxed, you are nice to everybody until again tensions come in? Whenever you are in tension you use all kinds of logic to justify that you are right. While hurting others, you are right! And then you say, “I’m fed up, I’m tired, I can’t do it,” You get hysterical, thinking, “Everyone is bad. They’re making me this way.” Quite the reverse. Where was your positive attitude, your compassion, your consideration for others’ time and rest—not only in the ashram, home and society, but in any area of life? You say, “I have so much work to do.” I say, “You can do only one thing at a time. Do you know that? Just do one thing at a time.” It is not so much work, but you are trying to do so many things at one time, and that is impossible. From the common man up to the dictator the mentality is the same: “The more I can do, the more powerful I am, the more I can grab.”
 

      You have created your mental makeup and your patterns, and that has created tensions and agitations and loss of peace, loss of happiness, loss of joy in living. Now you have to bridge the gap. Being compassionate also includes one more great thing: love. When you are compassionate you will be loving, automatically. If you are a manager, you can be cold-hearted, if you’re a typist, you can be cold-hearted, if you’re a bookkeeper, you can be cold-hearted, even if you’re a carpenter you can be cold-hearted. But you cannot be cold-hearted if you are compassionate. There’s a warmth of love and passion there. It gives you the joy of living. This joy, this warmth of love makes you living. You’ll feel the life, the prana, the vital force pulsating within you. With the wings of compassion and wisdom you fly to Enlightenment.
      It is not so much the volume of what you accomplish that makes your life sublime. We try to do so many things and produce agitations and tensions without caring for our fellow beings. On the way we think nothing of putting down others just to get our intentions accomplished. When we forget our relationship to others in our attitude and conduct, we miss the dharma, righteousness. We come to materialism, devoid of dharma. Dharma does not teach us to accomplish things without caring. When we act righteously, we actually accomplish more. When we perpetuate individualism we disconnect from others. We put up signs that say, “Keep Out.” That is quite rude. All this tends to make us selfish; it creates a wider and wider separation. So much is now secret, hidden and individualistic that we have isolated ourselves into depression. And then when we need help and succor, we end up feeling all alone.