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Pravin Kumar
Age: 61 Zodiac: 
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 Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 3:21 pm |
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[size=18][A blind man and his friend were crossing a desert. They were going on different journeys but they must have met on the way, and the other man must have asked the blind man to join him. They were together for some days and their friendship deepened over that time. One morning the blind man got up earlier than his friend and felt around for his stick. It was a desert night and it was very cold, it was winter time. He did not find the stick, but there was a snake which had stiffened because of the cold so the blind man picked it up and thanked God saying " I had lost my stick but now you have given me a better, a smoother stick." He thanked God and said, "You are very compassionate."
Then he poked his friend with this stick to wake him saying, "Get up, it's morning."
When the friend got up and saw the snake, he became afraid and said, "What is that you are holding in your hand? Drop it immediately. It is a snake, it is dangerous."
The blind man replied, "Friend, in a fit of jealousy you are calling my beautiful stick a snake. You want me to throw it away so that you can take it -- I may be blind, but I'm not stupid."
His friend replied, "Are you mad? Have you gone mad? Throw it away immediately. It is a snake and it is dangerous"
But the blind man said, "You have stayed with me for so many days and you still haven't understood how smart I am. I had lost my stick and now the Almighty has given me a more beautiful stick, and you are just trying to fool me by calling it a snake."
The blind man, in his anger, thought that his friend was jealous and envious, and so he started off on his own. After a little while the sun came up and the snake warmed up and came back to life. It was no longer cold and it bit the blind man.
The pain I'm talking about is the same pain that the blind man's friend must have felt for his friend. Just like him, I also feel pain for the people all around. They are carrying a snake in their hands, not a stick, but if I tell them they wonder what jealousy is provoking me to say this. And I am not talking about someone else, I am talking about you.
Don't think I's talking about the person sitting next to you, I am talking absolutely to you. And I can see snakes in all your hands, yet anything that only looks like a stick is of no help, it is not a stick. But I don't want you to leave the path. And I don't want you to think that in a jealous state I am trying to snatch away your beautiful stick, so I don't directly call it a snake. Slowly, slowly I am trying to make you understand that what you are holding on to it is wrong.
And in fact I am not even saying that what you are holding on to is wrong. All I am saying is that there is something higher to hold on to. There is greater joy to be experienced, there are greater truths in life to be understood. What you are now holding on to can only lead to your destruction.
What we spend our lives doing eventually destroys us, destroys our entire lives. And when our whole lives have been destroyed, when our whole life is finished, there is only one pain and one sorrow that man suffers at the moment of death -- and that is his regret at losing a very precious life.
So today, the first thing I would like to say is that the thirst of which I spoke last night will airse only when you see, when you realise that the life you are leading right now is wrong. That thirst will arise only when you realize that the life you are leading right now is wrong. That thirst will arise only when you realize that the way you are living your life right now is absolutely wrong, meaningless. Is this such a difficult thing to understand? And do you know with any certainty that what you have collected so far has any value? Do you know for sure whether you will be able to know immortality with what you have accumulated? With all the efforts you are making in all directions, do you really know that you are making in all directions, do you really know that you are not just building sandcastles, or is there some solid foundation to it? Think this over, contemplate on it.
When you start to reflect and question life, a thirst begins to arise in you. A thirst for truth arises out of contemplation. There are very few who think about life, very few. Most people live life like driftwood floating down a river: it just keeps on floating and goes wherever the river takes it. If the river takes it towards the bank, it floats towards the bank,; if it takes midstream, it floats towards the middle of the river as if it had no life, a destination of its own. Most of us live the life of a piece of wood floating in the river - we go wherever time and circumstances take us.
Thinking about life and its purpose will help you to find a direction: whether you should live the life of a piece of wood floating in a river, whether you should live like a dried leaf which blows wherever the wind takes it, or whether you should be an individual, a person, a thinking person, one who has a direction in life, one who has decided what he wants to become and what he should be, one who has taken his life and its unfoldment into his own hands.
Man's greatest creation is himself: his greatest creation will be his own self-realization. Anything else that he creates will not be of much value. It will be like drawing a line on water. But that which he creates inside himself, that which he makes of himself, will be like a carving in stone: it can never be erased, it will be with him forever.
So think about your life -- are you a piece of wood floating in the river? Are you a dead leaf which is picked up and blown around by the wind? If you think about this, you will see that you are just floating like a piece of wood, and you will see that you are being blown around like one of the dead leaves on the ground, carried by the wind to wherever it is blowing. Right now the streets are covered with these leaves. Have you made any conscious progress in your life, or have you just been pushed around by the wind, have you reached anywhere? Has anyone ever reached anywhere like this? If there is no consciously chosen goal in life, one reaches nowhere. The thirst for a conscious goal will arise in you only if you think about it, reflect on it, meditate on it.
You must have heard this story about Buddha. This story is about how Buddha renounced his life, about how he became an ascetic and how the desirefor truth arose in him. It is a very famous story, and very meaningful.
When Buddha was a chilid his parents were told that their son would one day become either a great king, an emperor, or a great monk. So his father arranged everything so that Buddha would never experience any sorrow and should never feel like renouncing his life. He built a palace for him using all the artistry and craftmanship of those times and with all kinds of luxuries, gardens ......
And there were different palaces, one for every season, and he gave orders to all the servants that Buddha should never see even a wilted flower,: so that he would not come to know that flowers can die and the question, "Maybe I too will die?" would never arise in him. So during the night all the dead flowers would be removed from the garden. Any weak tree would be uprooted and removed. Only young people were allowed to be around him; old people were not allowed to enter becaue Buddha might think, "Man becomes old .... one day maybe I too will become old."
Until he grew up to be a young man, he did not know anything about death. He had never heard about death. He was kept totally ignorant of the people that were dying in his village so that he would not think, "If people die, then maybe I too will die one day."
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