Tit for Tat...

This was loong weekend.. I had a book by Vinoba Bhave to read.. its a collection of his articles he wrote back in 1930s.. It is a thin book of hardly 100 pages written in Marathi so I thought I would finish it in a day.. but to prove my assumption wrong, Day 2 and I still haven't completed 15 pages.. reason being the brain storms some of his thoughts trigger in me after reading each article.. the one i liked most till now is "जशास तसे" means "tit for tat"

Many of us believe in “Eye for an Eye”.. fight a sword with a sword.. But this article shows the new aspect of this concept.. According to it, we dont need a sword to fight a sword. Instead we need ढाल - Shield.

When we say "Tit for Tat", we don’t understand its true meaning.. Its immature to think that the meaning of "tit for tat" is "sword for sword".. It doesn't mean to take revenge.. The only meaning of it is that your Shield should be as strong as your enemy's sword.. if enemy's question is filled with hatred then your answer should be filled with an equal amount of compassion...

For example, a teacher has to fight the ignorance of his students.. He cant fight it with ignorance saying "why should I only possess knowledge when children are full of ignorance?".. He can fight the ignorance of children, only with knowledge.. so he has the moral responsibility to be knowledgeable.. Deeper the ignorance of other person, stronger the knowledge one needs to possess to fight it..

When its dark, we switch on lights, if its hot we turn on the fan, we use water to extinguish fire.. every person knows these things.. But we very conveniently forget to apply the same rules in fighting hatred.. Use love to win hatred, use good to win bad, use truth to win falsity.. Over the years, all the saints and all good people around us tried to make same point, didn't they??

Disclaimer: the original article was in Marathi. I tried to put it in my words, so it is highly possible that I could not do the justice to the original emotion.. At some places, I may have translated it word to word.. Try to get the emotion behind the article.. It actually states very beautiful thought.. I will be pleased if at least some of you get the thought :)