Learn from Everything !!

In the Bhagvat Puran, there is a story of a King who meets a vagabond who was enlightened and was ever happy and blissful. The King wished to know who taught him the secret of living life so peacefully. “Who is your Guru?” the King asked. The vagabond replied that he has many teachers and he learns from everything. For example, he learns from mother earth to be patient, from fire to consume everything without being affected, from the oceans to be calm and be within boundaries etc. etc.

Thus, if one is prepared and willing to learn, one can learn from everyone and everything around us. We do not need formal teachers for learning is all around us. Just as the cell phone starts receiving signals as soon as it is switched on, we should "switch on" our learning sensors and we can enjoy learning virtually every moment of our lives.

There are people who, by their example, teach us good practices like discipline, patience, calmness, positive mindset, soft and pleasant speech, hard work, vigour, courage, perseverance etc. There are also people from whom we live how not to live. They do things which we detest like being complaining, by being cruel, by being dishonest, by lying, by cheating, by being violent, by wasting precious resources or by polluting etc. We can even learn from other things in nature like trees, mountains, oceans, wind, space, sky etc. as mentioned above.

Instead of being judgemental, we should look at every opportunity as a learning opportunity. Instead of correcting others, we should aim at correcting ourselves. We are in this world to evolve and improve ourselves to such an extent that we merge with the divine and become divine ourselves. What better way to do this than by learning all the time?