The Gates of Heaven and Hell

The Gates of Heaven and Hell

Story time (Don’t I just love stories).

One day the Zen Master Lao Tzu was meditating at his abode, when he was interrupted by a very anxious  Army General. The General, a mighty man who had won several battles was experiencing a lot of anxiety and restlessness within, and wanted to know if he would go to heaven or hell because of the wars he had fought and the number of people he had killed.

Instead of answering him, Lao Tzu knocked him on his head with his fist. The general, already an irritable person, was enraged. He screamed at Lao Tzu ‘HOW DARE YOU HIT ME ON THE HEAD’. His face grew red with rage, to which Lao Tzu calmly responded saying ‘Here lie the gates of Hell’. The General, immediately realizing his mistake bowed in front of the great Zen master ‘Please forgive me, I should not have lost my temper’ to which Lao Tzu, gently smiled and said ‘Here lie the Gates of Heaven’. The General went back in peace with a big smile on his face. Lao Tzu resumed his meditation.

All that Lao Tzu did was to trigger a response. The General’s first response was directly from his ego which drove him to rage. The Generals second response came out of humility and a sudden quantum moment where he realized that the choice of heaven and hell was within him and not some place he would go once he died. With this incident with the Zen Master, the General realized that the anger and guilt that he was carrying within as a result of his past deeds manifested itself in the form of a negative reaction. The moment he came to terms with it, his entire reaction changed in a matter of seconds.Basically, the general had to make peace with his past in order to experience heaven within.

Heaven within comes from being at peace with your life which in other words is a sum total of your past and your present. Since the present exists only in concept, it’s safe to say that our life is summed up by our past.

Everything that we did to bring us to WHERE we are now and WHO we are now.  The word PAST tends to terrify most people because it has a negative connotation. When someone says ‘oh he/she has a past’ it generally means they’ve not had a good past. The past isn’t negative, not by a long shot. The Past is experience, The Past is growth, The Past is a life that has been lived. The Past guides us to our future and teaches us invaluable lessons so that we don’t repeat our mistakes. 

The problem often lies when we allow the past to dictate our future. And that’s what leads us to hell within. The role of the past is to prepare us for the future not to dictate it. It strengthens us by putting us through the good times and the bad so that we evolve and grow. We learn about what works for us and what doesn’t. Past experience plays an important role in self-preservation. The Past highlights any alarming situations that we may be facing or are likely to face. Most importantly, The Past provides us with ammunition to make our choices. But do not allow it to make those decisions for you.  When we give too much importance to it by clinging on it, we experience hell within. 

Try this exercise- walk forward but look back. You can do it for a few steps but beyond that, apart from having a very sore neck, you will be directionless, I guarantee it, and you just might keep bumping into something or the other. And that’s because you’re not meant to look back all the time. Sure, when you do stop for a while in this journey of life, its fine to look back at how far you’ve come, smile, and say to yourself ‘you’ve come a long way, baby and yet there is still much to be done, so get up and get on with our journey’. Thank the past and move on. That’s when you will set foot into the Gates of Heaven within. Because you will be at peace J.  

Merry Christmas to all you wonderful people. May the coming year bring you peace within or as Kung Fu Panda rightly puts it ‘Inner Peace’.