Question: What is the best way not to be bothered by the faults of others?

Sri Chinmoy: How not to see somebody else’s faults? Let us take faults as something ugly or dirty. On a table you see that ink has been spilt. As soon as you see the ink, your consciousness descends. Now it is up to you whether to look at the ink or to turn around and look at the garden.

Or let us think of a blackboard. You see that children have written some undivine things on the blackboard. They have practically ruined it; it is defaced very badly. What kind of inspiration are you going to get from the blackboard? If you are not getting any inspiration, then you have to be very wise and turn around. As soon as you turn around, you will see a garden or something else that is beautiful.

Always the answer is not to look at someone else’s faults. And again, if you look at someone else’s defects, you have to feel that your own weaknesses are like a magnet. You also have defects, and like a magnet they draw the weaknesses of the other person. Those very things that you hate, your inner magnet draws into your own system.

Insecurity, fear and stupidity — how we cherish them! How cleverly we try to hold on to them and hold on to them! We feel that they are absolutely necessary. Insecurity, we feel, is necessary; it keeps us alert. Insecurity makes us feel, “Somebody is behind me and he is going to go ahead of me. Those who are ahead of me are not bothering me so much because I am dying to be equal to them. But people who are behind me are creating more problems for me.” We are dying to be equal to those who are ahead of us, but it is the ones who are behind us who make us feel insecure. If a world champion goes ahead of me in a race, it is nothing new. But the moment an old lady goes ahead of me, my insecurity kills me! When we are insecure, we are always worried that our inferiors will try to go ahead of us.

In this way, we are constantly pulling problems towards ourselves. In one sense, problems make us feel that we do exist. But why do we not try to see each problem in a different light? It is the inner disease that everybody is suffering from.