couple of stories

[Guest guest]

I recollected couple of good stories and jotted down the same. Hope you will

find them interesting and meaningful.

 

Where is God?

 

Once a guru wanted to test what his disciples have learned about God. He gave

each of the three disciples one bird each. And told them to go and kill the bird

in a place where no one is watching. After sometime two of the disciples came

back. One said he found a secluded place in the forest and he knew no one was

watching him. Second disciple said he went into a dark cave where there is no

one and he was also sure no one watched him. Till night the third disciple

didn't return. He came back in the night with the bird still alive in his hands.

Guru asked him what happened. He said he could not find a place where there is

no one. Everywhere he went he felt presence of God. He tried forest, caves,

mountains and every where. He finally gave up and came back. Guru smiled and

told this disciple he understood the essence of his teaching and blessed him.

 

Note: Killing a bird is something one would want to hide from others and that is

why this must have been used as an example.

 

Rituals

 

Lot of times we find some steps in rituals meaningless. It is important to

understand importance of a particular ritual before doing that. The following

was a story I remember reading long time back and comes back to my mind

frequently.

 

Once upon a time in a family that is used to daily pooja to God, the head of

family used to perform pooja for one hour early in the morning. When he was

doing pooja he was getting disturbed with the family cat which used to get into

kitchen and knock things down and he had to summon someone to take care of the

disturbance. To avoid this problem he decided to keep the cat under a basket

before starting pooja. After completion of his pooja he used to let the cat out.

This practice continued for years and after him his sons also did the same. It

became a standard practice to put the cat under basket before starting pooja.

After years passed this became a custom in the family.

 

Now the family does not have a cat. So they take pains to bring a cat and put it

under the basket before starting a pooja. Getting a cat and putting it under a

basket became a pre-requisite before starting pooja. Pooja cannot be done if

there is no cat.

 

This simple story illustrated how some of the customs are set about and the

moral of the story narrated was it is important to understand the relevance of

custom before following that. A custom that does not have any bearing on the

main aspect be better done away with.

 

Regards

 

Kishore