Gossip

GOSSIP

Why is it that we talk about other people? Is it possible to stop gossiping? We know it’s often useless and even wasteful of time to gossip. But our minds are such that we forget or rather lose our awareness, become inattentive and start doing things mechanically as if in a sleep. It gives us pleasure to gossip about others; and at the time of gossiping, we rarely ask, ‘What am I doing?’ and so we never wake up. But why start the activity at all? What prompts us to do so? Is it our inward poverty, the deep loneliness and emptiness in us which needs fulfillment?

We live in images and we always compare one image with another. This comparison tells us that we’re nothing; and the desire to be somebody apparently brings conflict or tension. In order to have peace, we resort to gossiping as an escape. 

Why is the mind so restless and always moving from one thing to another in order to have entertainment? It’s always occupied with something or other such as sex, food, a sport, children, ideas, feelings etc because if it is not so, we find ourselves badly uncertain and afraid of being unoccupied, empty and lost. It makes us realize that we are very lonely. To avoid that disturbing loneliness and to try to forget it, we wrongly resort to gossiping which is one of the many innumerable occupations of the mind. 

But all these occupations of the mind are related with external things, persons, activities and ideas and none of them are any helpful. One escapes from one external thing to another and remains imprisoned in the vicious circle. The loneliness with its misery deepens and the trouble continues. 

Our education and social nature not only can’t help, they even unhelp. You cannot depend on anything and anybody to get rid of this restlessness. You must ask only yourself and find the answer. But if you start thinking about how to get rid of it or how to suppress it, you will end up in more restlessness. So the best way is to stop thinking about the activity and just watch it going on silently. Let the activity go on without you being active or interested in it. Just attend to it totally. It’ll go.

Gossip is an enemy by its own right. It stops you from being sensitive, alert and intelligent. It is against spiritual progress, the real progress which we can actually have as our own indestructible asset. Gossip destroys our entire purpose of being a human being. It's like a disease that trouble not only the individual who gossips but also the whole humanity by degrading both parties. In that, this idle talk about others is the enemy of the mankind too. 

Don't gossip and don't react to anybody's gossip either, by being only an indifferent  witness.

Also, read things like educational apps and use them for self development.