Use the Hardships you Encounter as Opportunities and Tests

Do not give in to temporary excitements and anger, and thereby lose your peace of mind. Sorrow, loss, pain, worries are all tests to help you rid yourself of your weaknesses. They reveal whether or not you have developed firm faith and patience to endure hardships, and be unaffected by them. There is no use in merely passing examinations conducted by educational institutions. You must pass the examinations presented to you by life itself. It has been said, 'After acquiring all types of education, it is only a fool who doesn't know his own mind.' Whatever learning he might have acquired, a mean person will not acquire any good qualities from it. Then what is the use of all his education? After acquiring a lot of useless knowledge, he has only achieved the faculty for engaging in arguments and counter-arguments.

Why study so many things which have no value at all? Instead, make every effort to learn about that which has no death; that is the education which has lasting value. What is the knowledge which enables you to know that which has no death? That knowledge is the knowledge of atma, and that education is the atmic education. The one who has no death has no birth either. Everything which is born, which has come into existence, undergoes modifications and will eventually die, and thereby lose its form. The entire world and everything in it has a particular form. As it has form, it will undergo change. You should try to reach the state where there is no change at all. To do so you must gain self-knowledge, you must realize the atma.