(Michelangelo s Pietà, St Peter s Basilica)

There was a famous sculptor in Italy known as Michaelangelo. A friend of his found him one day chiselling a big piece of rock. The friend told him: ‘Why are you working so hard with this rock? Why don’t you go home and take some rest?’ Michelangelo replied: ‘I am trying to release the Divine that is in the rock. I wish to bring out of this lifeless stone the Living divinity that is embedded in it.’ If that sculptor could create out of an inanimate piece of stone a living Image of God, cannot human beings vibrant with life manifest the living Divinity that resides in them?

What is the reason for this incapacity to realise the Divinity within? It is because we do not realise the soiled cover in which it is wrapped up. If our clothes get dirty, we change them because we are ashamed to appear in dirty garments. If our house is dirty, we try to clean it so that visitors may not get a bad impression. But when our minds and our hearts are polluted, we do not feel ashamed. Is it not strange that we should be so much concerned about the cleanliness of our clothes or our homes, but are not concerned about purity of our hearts and minds, which affect our entire life?

To purify our hearts and minds, the first thing we have to do is to lead a righteous life. Our actions must be based on morality. Indulging in abuse of others or inflicting pain on them is not a sign of human nature. The evil that we do to others ultimately recoils on us.(SSS Vol.17, pp. 54-55)