Birds and bees

[Guest guest]

The prostitute Pingala said (Srimad-Bhagavatam, 11.8.15):

 

"A greedy person accumulates a large quantity of money with great struggle

and pain, but the person who has struggled so much to acquire this wealth is not

always allowed to enjoy it himself or give it in charity to others. The greedy

man is like the bee who struggles to produce a large quantity of honey, which is

then stolen by a man who will enjoy it personally or sell it to others. No

matter how carefully one hides his hard-earned wealth or tries to protect it,

there are those who are expert in detecting the whereabouts of valuable things,

and they will steal it."

 

Yesterday evening, while momentarily stopped at a traffic light, I noticed

a sparrow at the roadside. The tiny bird was frenetically accumulating small

sticks and bits of grass in its beak, evidently to take to a nest it was

building. My neighbor is similarly engaged in building a new home, so I saw the

parallel immediately. It rather struck me, then, when a large crow suddenly

swooped down from the sky and viciously attacked the struggling little sparrow

just as it had started to fly away with its goods, the hard-earned fruits of its

honest labors. The crow apparently intended to steal these construction

materials. Of course, my light had changed to green by this time, so I had to

take off too, lest I become the recipient of some night-rover's road rage. We

may be sophisticated human beings, but we're not all that different from these

creatures, since we too are often impelled by the same kinds of primal urges

that move the birds and the bees.

 

Sri Sukadeva Gosvami said (Srimad-bhagavatam, 2.10.4):

 

"The right situation for the living entities is to obey the laws of the

Lord and thus be in perfect peace of mind under the protection of the Supreme

Personality of Godhead. The Manus and their laws are meant to give right

direction in life. The impetus for activity is the desire for fruitive work."

 

MDd