BANYAN TREE
TEACHING STORY
A LESSON IN SKILL
After winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master who was renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try and then split that arrow with his second shot.
“There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!”
Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain. Curious about the old fellow’s intentions, the champion followed him high into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out onto the middle of the unsteady and perilous bridge, the old master picked a faraway tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit. “Now it is your turn,” he said, as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground.
Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, much less shoot at a target.
“You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot.”
THIS, I KNOW
SRI KRISHNA
• There are three gates to self-destruction and hell: lust, anger, and greed.
• The key to happiness is the reduction of desires.
• Do everything you have to do but not with ego, not with lust, not with envy, but with love, compassion, humility, and devotion.
• For one who has conquered his mind, a mind is the best of friends, but for one who has failed to do so, a mind is the greatest enemy.
• Happiness is a state of mind that has nothing to do with the external world.
• Why do you worry unnecessarily? Whom do you fear? Who can kill you? The soul is neither born nor does it die.
• When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as though they were his own, he or she has attained the highest spiritual union.
INSPIRATION
Who likes to get hurt? No one. The path of pain is the least likeable path. Pain is an experience of hurt from an event or events of life. These events didn’t love and approve of you. Pain doesn’t stop here; it turns into suffering because you haven’t learned to heal it in the first go.
At a soul level your pain has a great task to fulfil. It is programmed by your soul for your awakening. Its end result is to make you graceful by realising your beauty. Know that resisting pain is like preventing a seed which is destined to bloom from germinating.
At a physical level you want to avoid pain because the very act of going through it makes you fearful. This definitely is not a similar state for your soul because its attention is fixated on the experience and learning. It knows that pain just like happiness is just a period you go through to reach the greatest virtue. It knows that Pain is a Path to Awakening Inside.
~ Sundaram Speaks by Hitesh Vashisht
ONE-MINUTE WISDOM
Condition for salvation
He who does not possess discrimination, whose mind is uncontrolled and always impure, he does not reach that goal, but falls again into Samsara.
But he who possesses right discrimination, whose mind is under control and always pure, he reaches that goal, from which he is not born again.
~Katha-Upanishad
JUST FOR LAUGHS
MULLA’S PERSPECTIVE
• The preacher was visiting Mulla Nasruddin in hospital; who had been injured in a fight. “I am going to pray so that you will forgive your enemy for hitting you with a brick,” the preacher said. “It might be better,” said Nasruddin, “if you wait until I get out of here and then you pray for the other fellow, Sir.”
• Mulla Nasruddin’s wife complained bitterly to him. “I am absolutely ashamed of the way we live. Mother pays our rent; my aunt buys our clothes; my sister sends us money for food. I don’t like to complain, but I am ashamed that we cannot do better than that.”
“You should be ashamed,” said Nasruddin. “you have got two uncles who don’t send us a dime!”
QUOTE
When we ponder over the value of human life and its transient nature, we will naturally be motivated to do our best.
—Swami Mukundananda