Saturday, August 8, 2009

Be clean


Everyone will readily agree with the title. After all, we have learnt while still as kids that "Cleanliness is next only to Godliness". A question to address ourselves would be in order here. Do we practice what we know ? If we do a mental audit of all our activities, will we get a reasonably high score ?

In India, it is a tradition not to wear footwear inside the house. As soon as we come back home, we need to wash our hands and legs before doing anything. Similarly, there are cleanliness rules for other occasions. Thanks to the influence of various cultural invasions into the country, many of our healthy practices are getting replaced by "modern" practices.

When we think of cleanliness, we should not just restrict it to ourselves. We need to keep our homes and surroundings clean too. It cannot be ignored under the presumption that it is someone else's responsibility. It can be clearly seen that the spread of various contagious diseases is contained if we keep ourselves and our environment hygienic.

Most importantly, we need to watch our minds too. Do we have clean thoughts? When we do get unclean thoughts, do we take the efforts to purify our minds? Are we obsessed with the desire to be clean? If we are, we can be rest assured that our lives will be healthy and happy. And by watching us, others will also get influenced to do likewise.

Lets resolve now to enhance the cleanliness in our lives.

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world." - George Bernard Shaw

"You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person."- Scott Sorrell

5 comments:

KParthasarathi said...

The most important places to keep clean and tidy arethe mind and heart.Ther should be conformity in thinking,speech and action, all of which should be clean.This is aprt from the hygenic aspect of personal cleanliness and the surroundings.
Thanks for highlighting the basic requirements

lakshmi said...

clean thoughts and clean mind with a clean body...........yes indeed it is next to godliness.
A dirty slum - would we ever want to enter it......certainly not then how can we expect God to do so...........
Nice one Vish

ramesh sadasivam said...

Nice post. Thanks for sharing.

I remember the movie ratatoiulle, where remy the mouse says, "Cleanliness is close to Godliness"

Anonymous said...

It is really painful to see that most of the so called educated people that we see today keep their homes very clean but their streets & surroundings untidy spreading illhealth all around..
A clean body with clean mind is the requirement of the hour..
A nice post..

Tyaagi

Vijay V said...

Very good message.
Its really painful in seeing some of our public places, like railways buses and the the streets.

I do agree with Mr.Tyaagi regarding cleanliness. People have a different attitude towards their homes and the public places. This needs to change.

Our SURROUNDINGS reflects our HEART and who we are. We always need to remember that our country is also our home. Its our duty to keep it clean.