Tolkien's quote - Day 1 of 3 day Quote Challenge

Pic courtesy here

I am a self proclaimed member of Lord Of The Rings (LOTR) cult. I have watched the movie series recently just an year ago and I am still reading Tolkien's work but that quote above is responsible for my admiration for the writer. It was a time when I began having serious questions about Capital punishment. It is a debatable topic with many countries against Capital Punishments. Reading Buddhist philosophies filled me also with doubts whether that's the right way of meting out justice to criminals as I have began to see life and death as something not to be decided by mankind except, of course, in the cases of need for survival like self-defense. And while watching LOTR when I heard these lines stated by Gandalf to Frodo, immediately it cleared my mind about what and why I should believe. For those who haven't watched the movie Frodo who was full of goodness wants to kill Gollum who was evil when he gets the opportunity but the above advice from his mentor, Gandalf, stops him from doing so and he leaves the filthy creature to its fate. In the end Frodo is about to succumb to evil when Gollum's timely interruption blinded by it's own selfishness saves him. The natural unfolding of the events proves to be the saving grace for Frodo. Had he killed Gollum previously, it would have proved fatal to not only just Frodo but to the whole world. As Gandalf say to Bilbo Baggins, "True courage is about knowing not when to take a life but when to spare one". What a deep philosophy! The message is simple, we never know what is the role each of us play in the cycle of life and death. It is the providence and law of karma that decides our future and we are too small and naive to understand that.

Sometimes the immediate solution to our problems may prove unhealthy for us in long term. Thus, we should not look for solutions to our situations, but right conduct. How much difficult it may be in our current situation, only right attitude can give us lasting peace and happiness. This can be applied to our daily lives. Sometimes we get hurt by people around us, anger fills in and we want to give back, I still sometimes do that, but the real response to such things is try not to react. That help us to retain our composure and contain the complex conditions before us. Storms pass, people calm down but since, we have not given them anything ugly that they can remember about us, they have no option but to be good to us eventually :)

And that brings me to a quote from my poem Karma and Fate, written by Piyush and me.

Awakening in Oil

________________________________________

The rules for the 3 Day Quote Challenge are simple. 

- Post a favorite quote of yours for 3 consecutive days, obviously a different quote each day from any book, any author of your choice. It could also be your own quote.

- Nominate 3 bloggers with each post to challenge them.

- Thank the person who nominated you.

I am thankful to Salvi Prasad for nominating me to 3 day Quote Challenge. I personally like all such challenges that do rounds in the blogging circle :) Just tweaking it a little. I am adding my own quotes along with the ones that have inspired me.

As part of nomination, I am nominating these wonderful bloggers hoping they would share their pearls of wisdom with us

1. Sir Sreedhar Bhattaram at Reflecting on Life

2. Sir Abhijit Ray at Occasional Musings

* * *