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.
The concept that one ought to restrict one's political involvement to one's own state was deeply antithetical to those who were pursuing the accumulation of capital for its own sake.
As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?
To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience.
When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship.
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . . . Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.
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