What Moves Mountains?
In India, we have the tradition of wearing a symbol on our foreheads. For men, it is the Vibhoothi or the SriCharanam, depending on whether you are a Saivaite or a Vaishnavite. For ladies, it is the Kumkum.
I went to a doctor recently to check on something. I forgot to wear the symbol on my forehead that day. The doctor, being a traditional person, asked “Where is your symbol?” I said, “Sir, I wear it off and on depending on my schedule and convenience”. He looked at me deeply, and then said, “Son, These daily practices, however small or minuscule they may be, carry great strength. You have to do them on a daily basis without fail. When things go awry, these are the support systems that give you the will power to carry on with your daily life irrespective of however bad the situation may be!”
It was an eye-opener to me. And it lead me to a sequence of thoughts about several things that we do in the Indian culture on a daily basis — yoga, meditation, daily rituals and practices to keep one’s systems clean, etc.
It also brought me the memories of Mahatma Gandhi and his Charkha. Charkha is a hand-operated device to spin cloth. Mahatma Gandhi used it as a symbol and a method for Indians to make their own cloth, and not depend on British textiles (which the British used as a tool to control Indians and their economy). Mahatma asked Indians to spin cloth in their Charkhas daily.
The amount of effort and the cloth spun might have been minuscule on an individual basis, but the amount of will power it generated raised a lot of inner strength in the people of India, united them, and eventually led to the freedom of India.
If you look at Gandhi, he was physically fragile. He cannot match the mighty power of the British empire in terms of physical strength, but the will power he generated because of his daily rituals and practices moved mountains.
And that’s what matters when things go either way — as you expected, or not as you expected. The power of daily, small activities, carries great strength in them that can make you move mountains!
What’s your Charkha then? Post your thoughts in the comments below.
Love, and Love.
