In the Kathopanisad, a Hindu scripture, the teacher cautions his student before he begins to instruct him. Says the teacher: Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached for the path of knowledge is as sharp as the razor's edge.

Is the path to knowledge as sharp as the razor's edge? It is. The path to knowledge is the path to self-discovery. Within yourself is the accumulated bias produced by selfishness.

Selfishness is itself a product of fear, and fear in turn is the child of ignorance.

So when you set about to learning, you need patience because, you have to engage in a long, and sometimes, seemingly unending battle with all the weaknesses built within yourself through ages, through many lives you have lived.

Patience also helps, because you run into three types of problems when you start about developing yourself. Problems from within-fear, wrong perception, inertia and doubt; problems from people around-ridicule, derision, and simple jealousy; problems from nature-bad weather, illness or natural calamity. Therefore, classes in India in the ancient days started with a prayer, and concluded with the word Shanthi-peace-repeated thrice.

The prayer and the peace sloka induced patience. Patience pays because in our journey to self-discovery, we always give when we are at the threshold of knowledge. We close the Pandora's box before the last angel appears.

Our mind is the Pandora's Box. Do not open it; if you open it do not close it. On your voyage to self-discovery, when you open your mind, out comes the angels of darkness-fear and its children, ignorance and its tribe, and they unsettle you. If you hold your patience and persist, you win. Give up, and you are given up. That is why it is said that successful people are ordinary people who have not given up. They had patience, and they persisted in what set out to achieve.

However, patience is not a quality that can be had overnight. Nothing of true value comes overnight. Easy come, easy go! Something that is accumulated or acquired by persistent efforts and practice stays forever. Patience comes with every inner battle you win in life. Patience brings understanding, love and compassion. It brings true knowledge-the knowledge of oneself. And the nature of oneself-the Upanishads, the Hindu scriptures, declare is Sat, Chit and Anand. That is truth, intelligence and happiness.

Only a happy and knowledgeable man can love truly for he would expect nothing from people. Saburi, that is what the Indian holy man of Shirdi, Sai Baba, called patience, is the 'manliness in men'.

ganeshan ramachandran