Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

574 TALKS ON " AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER "

thoughts about you. Why should you? Then He
s^ys:

Not content with having done a'il this Tiarm to himself
and to his victim, the gossip tries with ^11 his might to make
other men partners in his crime.

(< Partners in his crime "—strong enough language [
TKat is how it looks to a Master. You think it is a
pity that people should talk foolishly, perhaps your
thought of it stops there. The Master regards the
thing as a crime. He knows very much better than
we know.

Eagerly he tells his wicked tale to them, hoping that
they will believe it; and then they join with him in
pouring evil thought upon the poor sufferer. And this
goes on day after day, and is done not by one man
but by thousands. Do you begin to see ^how base, how
terrible a sin this is ? You must avoid it altogether. Never
speak ill of anyone; refuse to listen when anyone else
speaks ill of another, but gently say, perhaps this is not true,
and even if it is, it is kinder not to speak of it.

The misunderstanding of it all is so dreadful. You
judge a man's actions without knowing their context,
as it were. You know, In the reading of any book»
how much depends on the context in which a parti-
cular word or sentence appears ; I suppose that there
is not a Scripture in the world, no matter how holy
or beautiful, which you could not make ridiculous by
taking some of its words away from their context, and
putting them by themselves. You are always" doing
that with the thoughts of other people. You find a
man to be irritable, he speaks sharply, perhaps