The same thing can be both good and bad. Whenever you speak of good, bad is also present. The world is a mixture of both. There is not good without bad. They are both sides of the same coin. Both are necessary. We have been given free will and discriminating capacity to select what is beneficial to us and to avoid what is detrimental to us. Even Cobra poison can be used as medicine.
Interpretation
Good and bad are interconnected, and one cannot exist without the other.
This quote by Swami Satchidananda emphasizes the duality of existence, where good and bad are intertwined aspects of the same reality. It suggests that our ability to choose wisely, utilizing our free will and discernment, is essential for navigating the complexities of life, as both positive and negative elements coexist and play vital roles in our experiences and growth.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one could use this quote to illustrate how challenges and hardships can lead to personal growth.
If you have done something meritorious, you experience pleasure and happiness; if wrong things, suffering. A happy or unhappy life is your own creation. Nobody else is responsible. If you remember this, you won’t find fault with anybody. You are your own best friend as well as your worst enemy. (99)
Begin with little things daily and one day you will be doing things that months back you would have thought impossible.
Anything that you throw comes back. All your actions are echoes.
. . . I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures? (233)
When you win and the other fellow loses, what do you see? A losing face. There is great joy in losing and making the other person win and have a happy face. Who will be the happiest person? The one who brings happiness to others.
Yoga is not only learning to stand on your head but also learning to stand on your feet.
Haie! Haie! These were the swift to harry; These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood. Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men!
The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
In a Transtromer poem, you inhabit space differently; a body becomes a thing, a mind floats, things have lives, and even non-things, even concepts, are alive.
Strife and Confusion joined the fight, along with cruel Death, who seized one wounded man while still alive and then another man without a wound, while pulling the feet of one more corpse out from the fight. The clothes Death wore around her shoulders were dyed red with human blood.
Rare is the union of beauty and purity.
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