Collect Flowers Not Thorns

In order to achieve peace, man should learn that these feelings of his are those of person who pucks thorns by choice instead of collecting flowers, and inflicts pain on himself. The sting of one thorn is hardly out when another thorn – hard and sorrowful event – comes up on the surface and wounds our feelings, rather opens old sores.

If, I now and again, apply to myself the stinging memory of past events, my mind will be filled constantly with them, which will fester, producing, in course of time, a cancerous growth. Being suddenly reminded of these events and consequently pained, or not forgetting them for sometime, all his indicates that the thorns are still there. Now that my aim is peace and I have to achieve happiness, I shall remove the thorns and burn them up in the fire of yoga.

Do not wise men pluck only the flowers, casting aside the thorns ?