Stories

This is a folk story from rural villages of Tamilnadu , India.

Son   :  Daddy , What is this ?

Father :  This is Elephant , son !

Son     :  But , what these people are doing ?

Father : They are killing it , my child

Son     : But … why they are killing the elephant ?

Father : They are killing the elephant , so that they can cut the ivory task and make elephant statues out of it “

Simple but powerful. Short but power packed. How neatly and crisply it riducles the acts of men !!!!

Am not going to  interpret the story. I leave it to you. Think about it , relate it to you , me , we , society in general , look around you , look at the world ……. find the meaning of the story from what you see in this world nowadays.

Do let me know…

“I Give You Three Wishes”

A man who was very poor thought that he might be able to please God in the form of the image in a famous temple. If he succeeded, he would ask for a boon — a special favor. He used to take to the temple whateverhe could scrape together — ripe fruits, candies, blossoms, coins — and lay them before the image.

One day the Lord, pleased with this humble worship, spoke aloud to the man: “All right, I give you as a boon three wishes and a pair of dice.” Rushing home even without thanks, the man told his wife the wonderful news. She told him to throw the dice and wish for wealth first. But he thought a moment and then said, “Look, we both have ugly little noses and people make fun of us. Why not ask for beautiful noses first?”

His wife was for wealth first, and caught hold of his hand to keep him from throwing the dice. Pulling his hand away he quickly threw the dice, exclaiming, “We want nothing but noses, beautiful noses.”

At once their bodies were covered with beautiful noses. Noses all over. What a nuisance! So they both agreed they would have to use the second wish to get rid of the noses. When people get excited they are likely to make mistakes like this; when he threw the dice again, the husband said, “Let these pesky noses be taken off.” At once they were gone, and the noses on their faces went too! Now they were uglier than ever.

Only one wish left. Why not ask to have a fine, well-proportioned nose on each face? Ah, but now some sense was dawning upon them: people would see the new noses and ask them about how they got them. They would have to explain and people would call them fools and make more fun of them all the more for wasting their three wishes.

So husband and wife threw the dice again asking for their own original noses to be put back on. This left them right where they were before.

“Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error.”

This is one story that my father often used to say when i was child. Its a story narrated by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahans about the belief and faith.

This story is about a farmer’s daughter whose duty it was to carry fresh milk to customers in various villages. One of the customers was a priest. To reach his house, the milkmaid had to cross a good-sized stream. People crossed it by a sort of ferry raft, for a small fee.

One day the priest, who performed worship daily with the offering to God of fresh milk, finding it arrived very late, scolded the poor woman. “What can I do?” she said, “I start out early from my house, but I have to wait a long time for the boatman to come.” Then the priest said (pretending to be serious), “What! People have even walked across the ocean by repeating the name of God, and you can’t cross this little river?” This milkmaid took him very seriously. From then on she brought the priest’s milk punctually every morning. He became curious about it and asked her how it was that she was never late anymore.

“I cross the river repeating the name of the Lord,” she replied, “just as you told me to do, without waiting for the ferry.” The priest didn’t believe her, and asked, “Can you show me this, how you cross the river on foot?” So they went together to the water and the milkmaid began to walk over it. Looking back, the woman saw that the priest had started to follow her and was floundering in the water. “Sir!” she cried, “You are uttering the name of God, yet all the while you are holding up your clothes from getting wet. That is not trusting in God!”

Never under-estimate the power of faith!

The story brings in a very important truth on faith and belief. Even if the Guru is not strong but if the disciple wholeheartedly accepts him/her as a Guru and have an absolete faith in his/her sayings . The strong belief/faith propels the disciple even if the Guru flounders.

This is a story from Buddha’s life….

Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers.  This was in the initial days.  While they were travelling, they happened to pass a lake.  They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, “I am thirsty.  Do get me some water from that lake there.”  

The disciple walked up to the lake.  When he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water, and right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake.  As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid.  The disciple thought, “How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!”  So he came back and told Buddha, “The water in there is very muddy.  I don’t think it is fit to drink.”  After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink.  The disciple obediently went back to the lake.  This time he found that the lake had absolutely clear water in it.  The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be consumed.  So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.  Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said,

“See what you did to make the water clean.  You let it be…. and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water.  Your mind is also like that!  When it is disturbed, just let it be.  Give it a little time.  It will settle down on its own.  You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down.  It will happen.  It is effortless.”

What did Buddha emphasize here?

He said, “It is effortless.”  Having ‘Peace of Mind’ is not a strenuous job; it is an effortless process!

When there is peace inside you, that peace permeates to the outside.  It spreads around you and in the environment, such that people around start feeling that peace and grace.

Also remember that you could be in very peaceful surroundings, where everything is wonderfully beautiful, but if your inside is disturbed, then that beauty is of no use to you. It does not mean anything to you.  For you to be peaceful, peace has to be generated from deep within you  - from your being to the mind, and from the mind to the environment.