THE MIRACLE OF NOT
GETTING AGITATED
Balanced Reaction
If you react by getting angry, it will provoke the ego of the person you are reacting to. He will unnecessarily become your enemy.
If you reply in a balanced manner, it awakens the other person’s conscience, and then you will be able to relate with each other in a natural way.
IF you react to something by getting worked up, agitated and angry, the result will be negative. If you happen to face something very difficult—say for example somebody’s harsh words—and, not allowing yourself to lose your balance, you reply without getting provoked, the result will be nothing short of miraculous. The outcome will be completely favourable. This is because if you react by getting angry, it will provoke the ego of the person you are reacting to. He will unnecessarily become your enemy. In contrast, if you reply in a balanced manner, it awakens the other person’s conscience, and then you will be able to relate with each other in a natural way. Every person, you must remember, is your friend—real or potential. It is your behaviour that leads to this friendship remaining intact or turning the other person into an enemy.
Consider in this regard a historical example. In the 13th century CE, the Mongols attacked the Abbasid Sultanate. From Samarkand in the East to Aleppo in the West, they captured a vast stretch of the territory that formed a part of the Muslim Sultanate. But a few years later, something miraculous happened—the majority of the Mongol tribes accepted Islam. Once enemies of Islam, they became its followers.
The noted historian Thomas Walker Arnold (1864-1930) researched this subject. In a chapter titled ‘Spread of Islam Among the Mongols’ in his well-known book The Preaching of Islam, he writes:
Tuqluq Timur Khan (1347-1363) is said to have owed his conversion to a holy man from Bukhara, by the name Shaykh Jamal al-Din. This Shaykh, in company with a number of travellers, had unwittingly trespassed on the game-preserves of the prince, who ordered them to be bound hand and foot and brought before him. In reply to his angry question how they had dared interfere with his hunting, the Shaykh pleaded that they were strangers and were quite unaware that they were trespassing on forbidden ground. Learning that they were Persians, the prince said that a dog was worth more than a Persian. “Yes,” replied the Shaykh, “if we had not the true faith, we should indeed be worse than the dogs.” Struck with his reply, the Khan ordered this bold Persian to be brought before him on his return from hunting, and taking him aside asked him to explain what he meant by these words and what was “faith”. The Shaykh then set before him the doctrines of Islam with such fervour and zeal that the heart of Khan that before had been hard as a stone melted like wax, and so terrible a picture did the holy man draw of the state of unbelief that the prince was convinced of the blindness of his own errors, and said, “Were I now to make profession of the faith of Islam, I should not be able to lead my subjects into the true path. But bear with me a little, and when I have entered into the possession of the kingdom of my forefathers, come to me again.
Some other developments took place after this meeting with Shaykh Jamal al-Din, and Tuqluq Timur Khan accepted Islam. After this, with great wisdom, the Khan told his people about Islam, and the majority of the Mongols entered its fold. Had Shaykh Jamal al-Din responded to Tuqluq Timur Khan by getting provoked and angry, it would have given a completely different turn to history. His normal response set history in a favourable direction.
