My first paying job was as a summer counselor at a Boy Scout camp, where I helped young scouts learn skills such as camping, canoeing, fire building, and knot tying. When I started I was only 12 years of age, hardly older than many of the boys who were coming for a week of camping.
One day a couple of weeks after I had started, Mr. Kruger, the head counselor, asked me to cut down a dead tree obstructing the knot-tying area, where we taught campers how to make half-hitches, square knots, bowlines, and other useful knots. I set out with an ax to chop down a tree about as big in circumference as I was.
My first stroke hardly made a dent in the bark. The next one wasn’t much better. After a half hour of steady work, I was still only an inch into the trunk. But I kept at it. Eventually, after skipping dinner and long after dusk, I came back sore in every muscle, with blisters on my hands, but a twinkle of accomplishment in my eyes. When I told Mr. Kruger that I had finished, I could see that he was both surprised and pleased.
In retrospect, I think he had ulterior motives. Perhaps, due to my youth, he wanted to test my mettle, or maybe it was some kind of hazing that first-year counselors had to endure. In any case, he eventually told me that he’d wanted to see how I would do against an old ironwood tree, one of the hardest woods known, used to make tool handles and ox yokes.
We all come into this life with certain qualities developed in past incarnations, some useful and some limiting. Perseverance stands near the top of those qualities needed by a yogi. It is more important than strength, or intelligence, or even good karma. We have seen many “straw fire” devotees come to Ananda over the years. At first they burn with a brilliant light, but soon fade into embers.
I remember once in the early years of Ananda being on a week-long tree-planting job with an immensely strong weight lifter. He wielded his heavy mattock with a single hand, and after planting the first dozen or so trees he looked at me proudly and said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” After a half hour, he was taking breaks every ten minutes and falling behind the others on the crew. By noon he had quit, giving a whole new interpretation to his statement of the morning. Soon after, he left Ananda.
Our search for Self-realization will inevitably draw challenges that seem too big or too tough for us. This is God’s way of testing and expanding our self-defined limitations. Success waits down a road that can be travelled only by perseverance. As Lahiri Mahasaya put it, “Banat, banat, ban jai.” (“Doing, doing, one day done!”)
In joyful perseverance,
Jyotish
13 Comments
What a great story and reminder of the importance of Perseverance, slowly, happily is surely :-)
Doing ,Doing, One day Done :). Thank you Nayaswami Jyotish for these words from Master on this article :)
Joy,
Prem
Thank you for your continuing words of inspiration
Thank you so very much for this story and reminder to never give up in our search for God.
Thank you dear Jyotish for these wonderfully inspiring writings. Your words help lift my soul. Much love to you and Devi.
At our beloved Center we call them “shooting stars”. It takes much inner determination to continue to perservere! Thank you for the uplifting reminder!
Blessings, Rev. Belinda
Dear Jyotish,
One of my favorite lines in any of Master’s chants, says it all… “In the Valley of Sorrow a thousand years or till tomorrow…”
Perseverance is the name of “this game”, that’s for sure. What a great story. I have been practicing fire making skills for two years and still have not made a coal. This is my “ironwood”, in worldly life and I will succeed with perseverance, just as in my Spiritual life I will succeed in self-realization. Whether it takes a thousand years or till tomorrow…
Bless you.
~~~Peace, Josette
Perseverance one of my favorite words. Many years ago when I stopped drinking and did not think it possible to stay stopped, I told myself repeatedly to persevere. That now seems long ago. Part of me putting down the drink for good was meditation.
This path of meditation takes perseverance too. When I want to stay in bed in the morning, I don’t. When I don’t want to energize…ugh… sometimes I don’t…but I always do my morning sit.
My family does not understand meditation’s importance, but I do.
Thanks for the reminder.
Thank you again, Jyotish!
I know this was a serious message. But I really got a delightful chuckle when you quoted the weight lifter as saying “When the going get’s tough the tough get going” and then you said “By noon he had quit, giving a whole new interpretation to his statement of the morning.”
You quoted Lahiri Mahasaya as saying “Doing, doing, one day done.” Do you, or does anyone, know if this is another translation of the same quote I heard somewhere at Ananda years ago which was “Making, making, one day made”?
I saw Devi’s picture in the email and thought she had written this and now I see your signature, Jyotish. I was kinda wondering about Devi’s job as a boy scout counselor at the age of 12.
I have to add one more thing and a thanks to Josette for her comment…I never stopped to think about Master’s lyric “In the Valley of Sorrow, a thousand years or till tomorrow…” Two thoughts just came. The second thought was probably the intended message which was that we have to persevere on the spiritual path regardless of how long it takes us to get out of the Valley of Sorrow. But actually my first thought which struck me most meaningfully was that, with perseverance, you never know but that you might get out of that Valley of Sorrow tomorrow, and without perseverance you might be stuck there for another thousand years!
This whole article is wonderful; thank you, Jyotish. But the words right before your signature–“in joyful perseverance”–really resonated for me. To me, those words capture the essence of Swami Kriyananda and of Ananda: times can get tough, challenges can be overwhelming, but it’s not about just grimly hanging on, it’s about JOY! Even when we’re just slogging through the muck of life, we’re slogging with joy. And that makes all the difference. In gratitude, Bhagavati
Wonderful and helpful writing! helpful in making resolve to persevere.Thank you so much for sharing this story.
Thank you Jyotish for writing about perseverance.
This quality deeply resonates with me, and is sometimes overlooked on the spiritual path.
Perseverance is the soil which allows other beautiful qualities to sprout and grow!
Blessings