Concentrate on What You Want to Be (RE 100)

In this reflection, we read a passage by the Mother on the Dhammapada.

CONCENTRATE ON WHAT YOU WANT TO BE

As the beautiful scented lily rises by the wayside, even so the disciple of the Perfectly Enlightened One, radiant with intelligence, rises from the blind and ignorant multitude.

And finally, lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapada gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of rubbish by the wayside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten that it cannot give birth to the purest realisation.

Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself the supreme purity which can translate itself into a wonderful realisation.

The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that and not to be concerned with all the difficulties and obstacles and hindrances.

Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be, forget as entirely as possible what you do not want to be.

7 March 1958